Deadweather and Sunrise (5 page)

I was half aware that these people must have been passengers on the
Earthly Pleasure,
but at that point, they (and everything else that wasn’t food) were meaningless compared to the street meat shack, which Dad passed without so much as a look.

It was midday, and the big iron grill behind the vendor’s open counter crackled and smoked with roasting meats. To follow Dad, we had to pass through the cloud of smoky air that surrounded the shack, and when the smell hit me, my stomach wrung itself out with wanting.

The others had a similar reaction—Percy actually whimpered—but Dad was moving fast, and we didn’t dare pipe up to complain. He zigzagged through the cowlike crowd, weaving into the road where necessary, until he reached the lawyer’s office.

It was a tiny two-story building with
JULIUS ARCHIBALD—LEGAL SERVICES
painted on a wooden sign above the porch. Dad climbed the low stairs and rapped on the door as the rest of us waited at the edge of the street.

A little man opened the door. He was so short that he found himself staring through his spectacles right into Dad’s chest. His eyes moved up until they reached my father’s.

“Masterson. Quite early in the season for you. Did the crop fail?”

Dad shook his head. “I’ve need fer consultation. Plainspoken and private.”

“Of course. For a modest consideration.”

Dad lowered five coins one at a time into the tiny man’s hand. “There’s two fer honesty. Three fer privacy.”

The coins disappeared into the lawyer’s vest pocket. “Please. Come in.”

Dad was halfway inside when Venus saved us. “Dad! We’re starving!”

“Right.” He stepped back out and dug for a few smaller coins, which he gave to Percy. “No jelly bread. And don’t stray.”

The four of us were gone before he finished the sentence.

There were two customers ahead of us for street meat, and the minute it took them to complete their order seemed more like an hour. Percy scowled at the backs of their heads while Adonis jiggled his leg and Venus chewed her knuckle.

“I want bird. Two of them.”

“Me as well.”

“Anything’s fine for me.” Which was true. I was so hungry I could’ve gnawed the charred bits off the grill without waiting for it to cool. Besides, direct requests tended to backfire on me.

The customer in front of us had barely gotten his skewer when Percy elbowed him aside, jammed his fists onto the counter, and leaned in so hard that the vendor nearly fell backward into his grill. “Give me double mutton fancy, four redbirds on the bone, and…” Percy turned his head to look at me. I tried to seem bored, because I knew the hungrier I looked, the crueler his order would be.

“Got any pickled rat?”

I must have looked like I was starving to death.

“Sir, this is a reputable establishment. We serve no rat.”

“What’s your bottom shelf?”

“Innards.”

“What kind?”

“It’s a mix. Brains, pancreas, bit of spleen—”

“Give us that.”

“Comes on a bun.”

“Skip the bun.”

The innards actually weren’t bad, although they would have tasted better if I hadn’t known what they were. I finished first, because my portion was smaller and I wasn’t much interested in chewing it, and spent a few minutes watching the crowd.

On the surface, they were like most of Sunrise Island’s permanent residents—Rovian looking, elaborately dressed, and clearly disgusted by us. But there were small differences. Their skin was paler, except for the ones whose faces and necks were red with sunburn. Their clothes—three-button coats, cravats, bustled skirts—were both more fancy and less appropriate for the weather than a Sunriser’s usual cotton and silk. They suffered for it in the midday heat, beads of sweat creeping down the men’s brows under their top hats, the women holding parasols and fanning themselves.

In spite of the heat, they all smelled unusually pleasant, like they’d rubbed themselves with lavender.

And the looks they gave us as we stood by the meat shack, my siblings and Percy still gnawing their food with both hands to their mouths, were as much confusion as anything, like they couldn’t figure out how we’d gotten there. They gave us a wide berth as they strolled past, heads turning slightly to keep us in their line of sight for a few extra feet, as if we were unpredictable wild animals that might lash out at any second.

A family of five passed us, the youngest son staring at me with saucer eyes, and I was about to bare my teeth at him just for fun when Dad’s voice made me jump.

“That’s done, then.”

Over Dad’s shoulder, I caught a glimpse of Archibald the lawyer running across the road, then vaulting up the steps of the Peacock Inn and disappearing inside.

“’Ave to wait a bit now.” Watching Adonis lick sauce from his fingers, Dad rubbed his mouth. “Could use a bite meself.”

He eyed the street meat vendor a moment, then turned away. “Let’s head to the Peacock.”

THE DINING ROOM of the Peacock Inn was as crowded with the new arrivals as Heavenly Road had been. Dad paused inside the door, and I think he would have gone back for street meat if a dozen heads hadn’t turned to stare at him. At that point, plunging forward was a matter of pride.

The sour-mouthed man who seated guests from a little standing desk at the dining room entrance did his best not to notice us, staring down at the desk like there was something absolutely fascinating on it, until the level of Dad’s voice threatened to stop all conversation in the room.

“S’cuse me… pardon…’Ey! Server!”

“May I help you?” As he grudgingly locked eyes with Dad, the middle of his face puckered like he’d just smelled something revolting. Which, to be fair, he probably had.

“Need a table. Spot o’ lunch.”

“Yes, well…” The sour man made a show of reviewing a page of scribbled names. “I’m terribly sorry, but we’re rather overbooked
at the moment. What with the boat in, you know. Afraid you’d have to wait.”

“How long?”

“Perhaps Thursday.”

Dad’s head reared back, up and off his shoulders. It was a move that, if I were standing in front of him, would have meant an incoming fist.

“Ye know I’m a regular?”

The sour man’s blank look said, no, he was not aware of this.

“Savior’s Day and Resurrection Sunday. Regular as clockwork.”

“Oh. I see.”

“Take my business elsewhere if I’m not well served.”

“Certainly wouldn’t want that… There is one other option. For our favored guests.”

“Which is?”

“A private dining room. Just let me… yes! One’s available now. For a modest surcharge.”

“How much?”

“Three hundred.” The sour man’s mouth stayed frozen, but his eyes warmed with pleasure as Dad’s head sank back into his shoulders. Short of an explosion—unlikely but possible, because Dad’s fuse got short when he was hungry—the battle was over.

As Dad stewed over the least embarrassing way to exit the room, a door at the back of the hallway opened and a man stepped out. He was middle aged, handsome, and almost as tall as Dad. He walked in a way that immediately reminded me of a book I’d read about Lord Calverstop, the hero of the Battle of Olstom. It was the kind of confident swagger that could convince men to follow him off a cliff without so much as looking down.

As two other men—both older, fatter, and not nearly the type you’d follow off a cliff, even though one of them was in Rovian military dress—emerged behind him, he moved toward the exit, only to stop at the sight of Dad.

“Pardon my interruption, but… are you by any chance Hoke Masterson?”

“That’d be me.”

The handsome man smiled, showing a full set of teeth. “The agrarian wizard of Deadweather Island! My dear sir, it is an honor!” He said this so sincerely that Dad, in spite of his natural suspiciousness, was obliged to shake the man’s outstretched hand.

“Allow me to introduce myself. Roger Pembroke, local businessman. I’ve heard of your legend for years, and have long desired to meet the man who could build a thriving enterprise in such an unlikely environment. Truly, sir, I stand in awe of you.”

The sight of an apparently upstanding and well-respected Sunriser showering Dad with compliments stunned us all, Dad especially. As Dad’s mouth hung open in shock, Pembroke introduced his companions. The soldier was Colonel Something-or-other, and Pembroke referred to the second man as “Governor Burns,” making me briefly consider the dizzying possibility that the jowly, balding fellow shaking my father’s hand was the actual, king-appointed governor of Sunrise Island.

Both men left in a polite hurry, and when they were gone, Pembroke drilled back into Dad.

“I’d relish the opportunity to speak with you about your experience in business. Are you coming or going?”

“We was, ah… undecided.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Bit peckish, yeh.”

“Then please! Join me! As my guest. It would be an honor.” He turned to the server. “Honus, could you procure a private dining room for us? On my account, of course.”

The server gripped the side of his desk, like he was trying to avoid a sudden faint. “Right away, Mr. Pembroke.”

A
n hour later, a white-shirted waiter was clearing the remains of the greatest meal I’d ever seen, made all the greater by the fact that I’d actually gotten to eat some of it.

Unclear on the ground rules for tormenting me in front of Roger Pembroke, Percy and my siblings had decided to ignore me and focus their attention on stuffing themselves sick with a massive second lunch of smoked pork, swordfish, bittersweet greens, and mashed potatoes soaked in butter and herb. By now, their bellies were so swollen that Adonis was staring slack-jawed into space, Venus’s eyes kept flitting shut, and Percy was quietly squirming as he tried to loosen his belt without anybody noticing.

Dad hadn’t so much as glanced at us since we’d taken our seats, his attention absorbed by Pembroke’s bottomless thirst for even the smallest details of the ugly fruit business. At first, Dad had limited himself to one-word grunts and the odd short sentence.
But Pembroke was so charming, and he refilled Dad’s wine glass so eagerly, that Dad had been won over to the point where his answers ran to paragraphs, some of them containing more words than I’d normally hear him use in a week.

“Do you export to the Continent?”

“Nah, it’s all oranges with ’em—they’re ’orribly stuck up about it, like fer fruit to be worthy it needs be pleasant to look at and sickly sweet. Plus in the forty days it takes crossin’ the Maw, ’alf the cargo rots.” Dad scowled. “Nah—most o’ my trade’s to the Fish Islands. That, and… well, ever since the war, they can’t get Barker oranges on the mainland… so I been runnin’ the occasional boat to Pella Nonna.”

Pembroke raised an eyebrow. “Trading with Cartagers—that’s politically adventurous.”

“Don’t care fer politics. I’m a businessman. And Cartager gold spends the same as Rovian silver…”

Dad droned on, but I stopped hearing anything just then, because the waiter had reappeared with a tray of sugar-glazed jelly bread still steaming from the oven. At the sight of it, Adonis snapped out of his daze, Venus gave an achy moan, and Percy dropped his chin and tried to force a belch that might clear enough room in his gut to cram in more food.

I sat bolt upright—since I started the meal still hungry, I not only had room for dessert, but this would be my first taste of jelly bread. In all our trips to Sunrise, I’d never once had any. Denying me jelly bread wasn’t official family policy or anything. It just always seemed to work out that way.

So when the waiter set the tray down in the middle of the
table, I had to force myself to remember my manners and wait a polite second before reaching out for a piece.

Waiting turned out to be a terrible idea, because in that second Adonis slid the tray in his direction, leaving it just out of my reach.

As the greedy hands of Percy and my siblings tore through the bread, I made a second effort, stretching myself across the table so desperately that Dad noticed the movement out of the corner of his eye and glanced my way.

I quickly sank back into my seat. When Dad turned back to Pembroke, I locked eyes with Adonis.

Please,
my eyes said.
Just one piece.

Not in a million years,
said Adonis’s eyes.

By the way,
his eyes added,
I’m enjoying this.

To take my mind off the disappointment, I forced myself to listen to Dad and Pembroke. Dad was leaning forward, his voice low and tentative.

“Say, ah… ye got any pull with them what provisions the silver mine?”

Pembroke smiled. “A bit. Why do you ask?”

“Just wonderin’ if them slaves ever get scurvy. In case o’ which—bit o’ ugly fruit in the diet might do ’em right.”

Pembroke’s smile disappeared—and when he spoke, his voice had gone suddenly cold and formal. “Sir, I assure you—the Natives in that mine are paid an honest wage. Slavery is an abomination and a crime—not just by the laws of King Frederick, but in the eyes of our Savior.”

He said it quietly, but with such a steely tone that Percy and my
siblings all stopped chewing and turned to stare across the table. Everyone suddenly looked worried, Dad especially.