Deadweather and Sunrise (22 page)

I stopped too. “Millicent…”

She was so far ahead I couldn’t even see her in the darkness. But I heard her stop and snort with exasperation. She came back down the path, fading into view like a ghost in her billowing white nightgown.

“Egg, you’ve
got
to follow me. Every man on Sunrise is looking for you—”

“I know! I’ve seen the poster.”

“Brilliant picture, wasn’t it? I drew that,” she said proudly.

“That’s terrible!”

“What do you mean? It looked just like you.”

“It’s a WANTED poster! Couldn’t you have made it
not
look like me?”

That caught her short. But only for a second. “Whatever. The point is, you’ve got to get off Sunrise. And you can’t go by the port, because Daddy’s got soldiers searching every ship top to bottom for you before it leaves.”

“So what can
you
do?”

“I’ve got a boat.”

“But you just said the port—”

“It’s not at the port! Come on!”

She started off again. Guts and I looked at each other.

“This island’s hundred-foot cliffs all round,” he said. “No port but the port.”

“Worth a look,” I said, and ran off after Millicent.

Once he finished cursing, Guts followed us.

THE FOOTPATH ENDED half a mile later, somewhere along the upper reaches of the shore road. We crossed over to the cliff side and followed the road for a while as Millicent studied the shallow line of trees fronting the cliffs. Twice, she stopped and doubled back, which made Guts roll his eyes and snort in disgust.

I asked her if there was anything I could do to help.

“Yes,” she said. “Make him shut up.”

“Didn’t say nothin’, you——.”

“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“Speak of ’er again, I’ll slit yer—”

“Oh, good! Here it is.”

She stepped between a pair of large pines to a barren, unremarkable spot at the top of the cliff. As Guts and I followed, she picked her way over a few big rocks to reach the edge, which seemed to plummet straight down to the sea below.

“Follow me,” she said. Then she stepped out over the edge into what looked like thin air.

We watched, dumbfounded, as she slowly disappeared, half a foot at a time.

“Come on!” she called to us as her head sank out of view.

“Yer first,” said Guts.

I gulped and followed Millicent’s path to the edge. On the seaward side of the rock, invisible to the eye until you were almost on top of it, was a narrow row of a dozen steps cut into the side of the cliff. Millicent was at the bottom of them, leaning lightly against the side of the cliff and smiling up at me.

As I started toward her, she took a few more steps and disappeared from view beneath an overhang. By the time I reached
the end of the first section, the next one had come into view, leading down the cliff’s face. Millicent had paused again to look back at me.

“Is he coming?”

I looked up. Guts was on the steps behind me.

“Keep movin’! Got nowhere to go.”

I started down the stairs toward Millicent.

“Whatever you do, don’t look left,” she said as she started moving again.

I looked left—and immediately went dizzy with terror, because there was nothing but air between the side of the step and the sharp rocks rising out of the sea a hundred feet below me.

I clutched the side of the cliff with both hands and pressed my head against the rock wall to try and make the dizziness go away. Behind me, Guts let out an annoyed grunt.

“What’d ye stop fer? Almost ran into ye!”

“Sorry!” My voice sounded like someone was strangling me.

“You looked left, didn’t you?” Millicent called out brightly. “Try not to do that.”

We were on the stairs for maybe two minutes, but it felt like an hour. Finally, about twenty feet above the waterline, they turned sharply inward, disappearing through a little archway that we had to crouch down to squeeze underneath.

Inside, it was pitch-black and ten degrees colder.

“Hand me that sack,” I heard Millicent say from somewhere just in front of me.

I held out the rucksack of food and water she’d prepared for us, which I’d been carrying on my back since we left Cloud Manor.
She took it from me, and a few moments later, she struck a match, lighting the immediate area.

We were on a platform cut into the wall of a narrow, high-ceilinged cove. A small, single-mast boat bobbed in the water below us, tied up to iron cleats hammered into the rock.

“Give me a minute. I’ll find the lantern,” Millicent said. She was halfway down the steps to the boat when her match went out. I expected her to strike another right away, but she knew her surroundings well enough that the next one she lit was to fire up a lantern she’d retrieved from somewhere on the boat.

She beckoned for us to get on board.

“Oars are under that bench. Keep to starboard getting out of the cove—there’s some nasty rocks just under the waterline to port, but it’s a deep channel otherwise. There’s a jib and a main in the cabin, but the jib might be more trouble than it’s worth. Wait till you’re out to raise the main. All right?”

She had her foot on the deck rail, ready to step off the boat.

“I’m not sure I got that,” I said.

“Which part?”

“The jib and the… raising the…”

“Don’t you know how to sail?”

“Not really, no.”

“For Savior’s sake, Egg! You grew up on an island!”

“I grew up on a mountain! That happened to be on an island. We didn’t exactly leave very often.”

She turned to Guts. “What about you?”

He shrugged. “Know from a jib an’ a main. Don’t mean I can sail.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “Didn’t you live on a ship?”

“Yeh, moppin’ decks. Loadin’ cannons. Weren’t the pilot.”

Millicent was shaking her head in amazement. “I can’t believe it. Neither of you knows how to sail?”

“We’ve got oars. Can’t we just paddle?”

“Not if you actually want to get anywhere! How far are you going?”

“Deadweather.”

She sighed. “I’ll just have to take you myself. Ridiculous! And dressed like this!”

“It favors you.”

“Don’t make me blush. Now get those oars out.”

“Hang on.” Guts was staring suspiciously at Millicent. As he spoke, he gestured at her with his knife. “Just ’cause yer comin’ don’ mean yer sharin’ the treasure.”

“Don’t be stupid. I don’t need any treasure. Besides, you’re barking mad if you think you’re going to find it on Deadweather.”

“Good enough for me,” I said, handing Guts one of the oars. The thought of Millicent coming with us was making me a little light-headed.

Reluctantly, he put down the knife to take the oar. Then he leaned in, muttering in my ear. “Don’t trust her. She’s witchy.”

“She’s not,” I said. “Believe me.”

“I’m not what?” asked Millicent.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Witchy,” said Guts.

“Oh, terribly! In fact, I’m planning to kill you both at sea,” said Millicent. “Now, give me that oar,” she said, holding her hand out to Guts.

“Why?”

“Because they work much better when you’ve got two hands.”

His face twitched with anger, and he drew back the oar like he was going to swing it at her. I quickly got a hand on it.

“Don’t. Please. She’s only teasing.”

He made an odd, angry gurgling noise. But he let me take the oar. As I turned to give it to Millicent, he snarled at her. “Watch yerself!”

“I’d suggest you do the same, but I don’t know how you could watch anything with all that hair in your eyes. Next time you’re play-acting with that knife, why not use it on your bangs?”

There was another angry gurgle, and he went for his knife. So did I. He got there first. But at least I managed to put myself in between him and Millicent.

“She’s only kidding. Really. Even though she’s being an idiot.”

“Excuse me?”

“You are. Seriously.” I took my eyes from Guts just long enough to glare at her.

Guts growled again. “Don’t have to take this.”

“You’re welcome to step off. Wait for another girl to come by with a boat.”

“MILLICENT!”

“No? Right, then. Why don’t you make yourself useful and fetch the main? It’s in the sack down in the cabin.”

“Not yer—— servin’ boy!” Guts took a step toward her, and I had to put my hands out to make sure he couldn’t stab her without hitting me first.

“Of course you’re not, and she’s being a complete idiot—”

“Who’s the only one among us who knows how to sail. And happens to own the boat.”

“And there’s that. So please, please, don’t stab her.”

“And do fetch the main. It’s rather critical to the entire undertaking,” she said with a smile.

Guts twitched like he was halfway to a seizure, and made some more growling noises, but he let me steer him toward the cabin.

“She actually does mean well,” I told him quietly.

“Keep her out my way.” He stomped down the cabin steps, twitching and muttering.

When he was gone, I lit into Millicent. “For Savior’s sake, would you stop winding him up? Do you
want
to get stabbed?”

“He’d never use that knife.”

“He would, actually. He’s quite violent. And not well in the head.”

“What kind of ‘not well’?”

“The kind that stabs people! Look at this.” I opened two buttons on my shirt and pulled it far enough off my shoulder to give her a good look at the blood-crusted bite mark on my shoulder.

“Oh, that’s awful! Does he have a dog?”

“No, that was
him.
”

Millicent’s eyebrows jumped. “Right, then. Good to know. Thanks for the tip.”

Millicent laid off Guts after that, settling for bossing me around instead. She tried to give me orders like I was an ordinary seaman, but she quickly realized that words like
clew
and
halyard
were going straight past me, so she had to settle for pointing and using simpler instructions, like “pull down on that rope” and “let Guts do it.”

And “watch out for the boom.” Which I wish she’d said a little faster, because then I might have ducked in time and not gotten
clouted across the back when the arm of the sail swung over the cockpit. But at least it didn’t hit me in the head.

Eventually, we got under way. Millicent set a course to the west and settled back in the cockpit with her hand on the tiller.

“It’s chilly,” she said, hugging her arms to her chest. “Can you fetch me a blanket from the cabin?”

I went inside and found Guts already fast asleep, curled up in one of the cabin’s small but cozy beds. I took a wool blanket from the other one and brought it back to Millicent. She wrapped it around herself like a shawl as I took the seat beside her on the other side of the tiller.

It was still an hour or so before dawn, and the sea was calm under the moonlight. I watched Millicent for a while, studying the curve of her cheekbone and the long wisps of hair that the wind blew across her face, until she caught me at it and I had to stop.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing.” I turned away and studied the water instead.

“Tell me what happened,” she said. “With Birch.”

I told her the whole story, careful not to look at her when I got to the part where Birch said “boss’s orders.” I knew she wouldn’t like hearing it, but I wasn’t going to leave it out.

“That’s not how they told it at all,” she said when I was finished.

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“The men in the gorge. The ones who saw it happen.”

“What did they say?”

“That Birch was waving to them from the top of the cliff, and they were waving back when they saw you step out from behind and push him over the edge.”

“They told you that?”

“No. They told Daddy. He was very upset.”

“Millicent… I’m telling you the truth.” I could feel my jaw tighten as I spoke.

“Sometimes when things happen very fast, especially if they’re scary—”

“It’s got nothing to do with scary! He tried to kill me! You think I’m lying?”

“No, I just—”

“Why on earth would I push him off? I didn’t even know him!”

“Don’t get angry—”

“And he didn’t know me! Why would
he
try to kill
me,
if someone hadn’t told him—”

“STOP!” It was a sharp, sudden burst of temper, a kind I’d never seen from her. And one that reminded me of her father.

Just like him, she quickly reeled it back in. When she spoke again, it was practically in a whisper.

“Let’s not talk about it. We’re not going to convince each other of anything. And I believe you. I’m sure Birch attacked you first. But I also know, in a million years, Daddy wouldn’t have ordered him to do that. Somehow there’s been a terrible misunderstanding. And I’ll get it worked out. I’ll fix it, I promise. I’ll make it right between you and Daddy.”

There was no point in arguing. Like she’d said, we weren’t going to convince each other of anything. So I changed the subject.

“Why don’t you think there’s any treasure on Deadweather?”

“Because Daddy would have told me. And it’s not part of the legend.”

“What
is
the legend?”