Deadweather and Sunrise (26 page)

“Not fer long,” growled Guts.

The baker laughed. “Points for spunk,” he said, taking three loaves from his shelf and handing them to us.

“Yer dad back, too? Brother an’ sister?”

“No,” I said. “They’re dead.”

“Ye were, too, up till a minute ago.” He patted me on the back as he walked us to the door. “Try to stay alive—ye owe me ten.”

“Ten?”

“Fat man paid on credit, too.”

THE BREAD WAS just half a day old and still soft inside. We ate it as we walked up the familiar rutted road through the muggy half jungle. Along the way, I kept my ears alert for the sound of anyone coming down the mountain from the other direction. I didn’t know what to do about Percy and the soldiers, and I sure didn’t want to run into them on the road.

Millicent’s mood had improved since we’d left Port Scratch and she was able to shed her cabin boy clothes. She loped along, swinging her arms in the confident way she had, occasionally darting over to the side of the road to investigate the strange cries of one of the forest birds.

Guts carried his knife in his hand as he walked. “’Oo’s this fat man?” he asked.

“My old tutor,” I said.

“Any chance he’s on yer side?”

“Not much,” I said.

“’Ave to kill him, then. What’s his weakness?”

“He’s fat, lazy, and stupid.”

“Then how’d he get thirty soldiers to follow him?” Millicent asked.

The answer was so obvious it made me angry. “Because he’s working for your father!”

“You don’t know that,” she said stubbornly.

“Savior’s sake, Millicent!”

“Thought we been over this,” said Guts.

“Your father’s trying to kill me—”

“Only because you killed Birch, and Daddy’s loyal to—”

“No, because there’s something up there that he wants!” I pointed up the mountain. “Why can’t you see that?”

“Because he would have told me! It’s too big! And that would mean that he…” Her voice trailed off for a moment, her eyebrows knitted together in a frown. “If what you think happened is true, everything I know about my father is wrong. And it’s not.”

I turned back up the road. There was no point in arguing.

“Come on. It won’t be long now.”

I LED THEM OFF the road just below the lower orchard, hoping to keep out of sight until I found a friendly field pirate who could tell me what was going on. I wasn’t sure how many of them would be on my side—they might have worked for Dad, but they weren’t exactly devoted to him, and anyway they were pirates, and in it for themselves. I figured I could count on at least a few them, though. For one thing, they couldn’t be too thrilled about sharing the plantation with a bunch of Rovian soldiers.

But I couldn’t find a soul. The orchard was empty and silent. Big, squat cargo crates stood unattended in the middle of the rows, half full of ugly fruit and abandoned in mid-harvest.

We slipped through the trees, stopping at every row to search for signs of life. There was no one, and the eerie emptiness of it made my stomach tighten.

I stopped at one of the crates and picked up a fruit.

“Anybody want one?”

Millicent and Guts both joined me, peeling away the loose, wrinkled skin and tearing out the thick sections of citrus.

“It’s not as bad as I thought,” said Millicent through a mouthful.

I ate three. The others stopped at one and waited impatiently for me. When I couldn’t put it off any longer, I led them up toward the house, on a roundabout path that took us past the stable. There were four horses in the outside pen that I didn’t recognize, along with a large wagon that must have been the one the baker told us about. But there were still no people.

We climbed the hill a little farther, and the main house came into view. The roof looked even more saggy than ever, but the big porch and the shark’s jaws over the door were exactly the same, and my throat got lumpy to see the place again.

I led Guts and Millicent around to the side door, and we went inside. The smell was instantly familiar. Even before we’d crossed the hallway to the kitchen, I knew I’d find Quint the house pirate in there, cooking a stew over the big black stove.

He was in his usual spot, perched on top of the counter, his head not much higher than the top of the pot, stirring the stew with a long wooden spoon half as tall as he was.

“Quint?”

He nearly fell off the counter at the sight of me. Then he broke into a wide smile, dropped the spoon, and vaulted onto the floor, waddling over to me on his stumps.

“Egbert! Give us a hug, boy!”

I fell to my knees and hugged him tightly.

“Percy said ye was dead!”

“He lied.”

“Shoulda known. Pink-fingered crapsack.” Then he waddled backward a bit and looked up at Millicent. And smiled maybe a bit too keenly.

“Hel-lo! ’Oo are
you
?”

Millicent wrinkled her nose and crossed her arms in front of her.

“This is Millicent and Guts. They’re friends of mine. And this is Quint,” I told them as Quint stepped to the butcher’s table, reached up with his arms, and swung himself onto the tabletop, putting himself more or less at eye level with us.

“So where ye been, boy? What ’appened?”

“You first. Where are the soldiers?”

“Diggin’ up the mountain, ’long with the others. Lookin’ for the Fire King’s voodoo.”

“Did they force the field pirates to help?”

“Didn’t have to force nobody. Percy said the new owner’d share whatever we found with us.”

“What new owner?”

“Man who adopted ye. It’s on the papers.”

“What papers?”

“Over ’ere.”

Quint vaulted to the floor again, and we followed him as he
waddled into the den, where Dad kept all the plantation paperwork in big, messy piles on a long table.

He hopped onto a chair and pulled several documents from one of the piles, handing them to me one by one as he read their titles.

“‘Certificates o’ Death’—probably need to rewrite yers, seeing’s how yer not dead—‘Certificate o’ Legal Adoption’… ‘Transfer o’ Title’…”

I’d seen the adoption one before, although now it contained a signature forged as mine, right next to Pembroke’s. The death certificates were made out for each of our family members and signed by Archibald the attorney.

The transfer of title to our plantation was signed by Roger Pembroke as the recipient.

I handed them all to Millicent without a word. As she looked at them, her face grew pale.

“Think I need to sit down,” she whispered.

“’Ere, luv.” Quint hopped to the floor, and she sank into the chair, still staring at the documents.

“Where on the mountain are they digging?”

“Upper orchard, ’tween ’ere an’ Rottin’ Bluff. That’s where yer dad was ’eaded when he found whatever it was set him off. Stands to reason it’s the place to look. Course, nobody’s had much luck.”

“Do the soldiers carry their guns with them?”

“Not lately,” said Quint. “They’re in the next room.”

I couldn’t believe our luck—five rifles were lined up in a neat row against the wall by the front door. While Guts and I loaded two of them, I gave Quint a quick summary of the past month.

By the time I was halfway through, he’d started loading a rifle of his own.

We gathered up extra powder and shot, then hid the remaining two rifles behind a cabinet in the den. Millicent was still sitting there, staring into space.

“We’re going up the hill. Do you want to come?” I asked.

She shook her head slowly.

“Men do awful things sometimes,” I said. “All of them.”

She didn’t answer.

“We’ll be back soon,” I said, and we left her there.

WE STARTED UP the hill, through the upper orchard toward Rotting Bluff. I carried Quint’s rifle for him so he could keep up with us by walking on his hands.

Within fifty feet of the house, the holes started to appear, in sizes ranging from a few spadefuls to gaping, ten-foot-wide excavations. The farther we climbed up the mountain, the more plentiful they were. Pretty soon, we began hearing scattered voices.

Then the field pirates started to appear, working alone and in small groups, digging here and there without any apparent strategy or direction. When they saw me, most of them gaped in surprise. A few smiled and waved.

All the way up the mountain, I could feel my courage growing. Holding a rifle in each hand helped, as did having Guts and Quint on either side of me. But so did the fact that these were my family’s fields, and seeing them torn up so mindlessly was making me angry. I was going to find the men who had done this and throw them off my land. And it would be right and fair.

A few hundred yards below Rotting Bluff, we ran into Mung, who gurgled an incomprehensible greeting and hugged me so excitedly I almost shot him by accident.

Finally, he let me go and babbled something, a questioning look in his eye.

“I’ll explain it later,” I said. “Right now, we’ve got to get rid of Percy and those soldiers.”

He nodded, then picked up his shovel and brandished it with a fierce look. I smiled and nodded back, a little lump rising in my throat. Like Quint, he was on my side, no questions asked.

By the time we got close to Rotting Bluff, a clutch of field pirates had abandoned their digging to follow us. Unlike Mung, I couldn’t tell whether they were joining our march out of solidarity or because they smelled blood and wanted to watch it get spilled.

The trees were thinner at that point, and Rotting Bluff came into view when it was still forty yards away. It was unrecognizable—the rampart was still there, with its cannon pointed out over the cliff, but all the land around it had been dug out in a trench so wide that I was surprised the rampart hadn’t broken off and fallen into the sea.

And they were still digging over at the base of one of the massive rocks near the cliff’s edge—a cluster of pirates, five Rovian soldiers stripped down to their bare chests, and Percy, who wasn’t actually digging so much as pretending to dig, leaning on his shovel as he wiped the sweat from his meaty forehead.

I gave Quint his rifle and trained mine on Percy. We were twenty yards away when the first soldier noticed us and called out to the others, who gradually turned in our direction.

Percy’s jowls sagged at the sight of me.

“Egbert… so glad you’re all right. Feared the worst—”

“Put down those shovels and get off my land,” I said. We
stopped at the lip of the big trench, our guns pointed across the sunken no-man’s-land at them.

“No need for that, boy—”

“Put them down and get off my land,” I said again.

The soldiers looked at each other, not sure how seriously to take this.

“Put ’em down, or we’ll kill ye, ye——,” said Guts.

Percy was trying to smile, but it looked more like a grimace. “Let’s us talk about this—”

“There’s nothing to talk about. Put down the shovels and leave.”

They didn’t move.

“Do it!” barked Quint.

They still didn’t move. The soldiers seemed to be waiting for a word from Percy, who was frozen in place.

“’Oo do I shoot first?” asked Guts loudly.

“Not yet!” I whispered to him. I was suddenly wishing I’d put a little more thought into strategizing. We had the guns, but even if you didn’t count the pirates, there were twice as many of them as there were of us, and once we’d each fired, it would take more time to reload than it would for them to close the distance between us. And if it came to a fistfight, I didn’t like our odds.

Then there were the pirates. I had no idea whose side they were on. From the looks on their faces, I don’t think they knew, either. I could hear Mung growling supportively behind me, but he and Quint were the only ones I felt sure of one way or another.

“You,” I said, pointing my gun at Percy, “and the five of you”—I waved the barrel at the soldiers—“need to get off my land. Or die.”

I tried to sound calm and deadly, but I couldn’t quite get the flutter out of my voice.

Percy set down his shovel and started down the far side of the trench, slowly moving toward me.

“Trouble is, boy,” he said in a friendly voice—as friendly as he was capable of, anyway—“this isn’t your land. It’s your father’s.”

“My father’s dead.”

“Not your old father. Your new one.”

“He’s not my father!”

“Shoot ’im!” hissed Guts.

Percy was halfway across the no-man’s-land, smiling up at me.

“Afraid he is. I’ve seen the papers.”

“Lies on paper are still lies.” My face was starting to burn hot, and the rifle was getting heavy. I was shifting its weight in my hands when I heard a
pooft
sound from off to my left.

Everyone startled, turning toward Guts, who was glaring at his smoking flintlock, which had been aimed at Percy when it misfired. Guts shook the rifle, bellowing angrily at it, and it suddenly discharged with a loud roar. The round kicked up a harmless cloud of dirt in the trench twenty feet from Percy.

As Guts cursed with frustration and dropped to his knees, frantically trying to reload, two of the soldiers took a step toward him, only to stop when Quint turned his own rifle in their direction.

With a nervous glance at Guts, Percy quickened his pace toward me, his voice growing urgent.

“Think, boy! Can’t kill us all. Even if you do, more’ll come. Hundreds! There’s no stopping it.”

He paused at the near end of the trench, just ten feet away from me. “Besides, you’re too good a boy to shoot an unarmed man.”

“Shoot ’im!” yelled Guts, twitching so angrily that he spilled
half the black powder he was hurriedly shaking into his rifle’s muzzle.

Percy started up the short slope toward me, close enough now that he’d be impossible to miss. My finger tightened on the trigger.

“Come any closer, and I’ll shoot!” I yelled at him.

Percy stopped. Two more paces, and he’d be close enough to grab the barrel of the rifle.

“Would you, really? Shoot your old Percy? Unarmed, helpless as a dog? You’re too good for that. You know your lessons. You know that’s a sin.”

“SHOOT ’IM!” screamed Guts, his rifle cradled in the crook of his elbow as he yanked out the ramrod with his good hand.