Deadweather and Sunrise (14 page)

“What cabin?”

I didn’t answer. He shook me with his thick arms.

“Give me the number!”

“Six.”

He didn’t look convinced, so I added, “-teen.”

“Sixteen? That right?”

“Yes. And my father will sue you if you don’t let me go!” I narrowed my eyes, trying my best to look like an arrogant rich boy. Might as well go all in.

He laughed. My heart sank.

“So your father… is Lady Cromby of Esqueth?”

He started up the stairs, dragging me behind him. “Let’s you and me go see the director.”

TEN MINUTES LATER, I was sitting in a luxuriously outfitted cabin on the quarterdeck, my hands tied behind me with a ribbon, being stared at by a man the cook addressed as Mr. Pilcher. He was big, and not just in size—his words and his movements were all melodramatically exaggerated, like he was acting in a play and needed to make sure the people in the back of the audience didn’t miss anything.

He hadn’t liked being woken up—when he first opened his cabin door to find us standing there in the damp fog, he gave the cook a lecture about his need for sleep that was so emotional I thought it might end in violence.

But once the cook explained things, he seemed to warm up to the situation. It was his idea to tie my hands, and he gave the cook both the ribbon and some very specific instructions about how to use it.

Now he loomed over me, eyes bugging out under his thick eyebrows, wearing a sleeping gown of creamy silk that fit him like a tent.

“Tell me, my filthy little thief—what are you doing on my excursion without a ticket?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. I wasn’t about to tell him the truth—I knew Roger Pembroke was one of the
Earthly Pleasure
’s owners, which made this man another Pembroke employee. But it was obvious I’d come from Sunrise, so I needed to account for that somehow.

“Hellooooo? Anybody home?” He rapped me lightly on the head with his knuckles. As I looked up at him, he wiggled his
bushy eyebrows, which made him look so comically strange it was hard to concentrate on my answer. I lowered my head and stared at the floor.

“I was… cabin boy. On a ship. Docked at Sunrise. The captain was cruel and vicious… and—”

“What sort of a ship?” He put his hand under my chin, lifting it up so I was forced to look into his buggy, dancing eyes. “Hmm? Was it a merchant? Or perhaps—”

Then he suddenly reared back with a gasp, putting his hand to his mouth.

“Oh, my…” He turned to the cook, a smile spreading across his face. “I’ve just had a brilliant idea! Keep an eye on him. Back in a jiff.”

He threw on a long, fur-lined coat and dashed from the cabin. A few minutes later, he returned with another man—tall, stooped, and grizzled, with a gray-streaked beard. He wore a simple wool greatcoat and was still buttoning his pants.

Pilcher sent the cook away with a curt order to get breakfast going. Then he introduced me to the grizzled man with a grand wave of his hand.

“Captain Lanks, meet our pirate.”

“I’m not a pirate,” I said.

“You are now,” said Pilcher.

The captain looked from me to Pilcher, still blinking sleep from his eyes. “That’s no pirate. He’s too well-fed. And not enough scars.”

Pilcher rolled his eyes. “Captain, use your imagination! With a bit of makeup… possibly some wardrobe… I can turn this boy
into a sharp-eyed devil sent to prepare an ambush by the most ruthless pirate on the Blue Sea! The advance party of Burn Healy himself! What do you think? Stroke of genius?”

He waited for the captain’s response, eyes shining with excitement.

The captain just looked tired. “Not sure I’m following you.”

Pilcher sighed impatiently. “It’s my job to provide our guests with a thrilling journey to an exotic but dangerous land. And they’ve had exotic coming out their ears. But the dangerous part’s been a real bust. There weren’t even any snakes on Sunrise. That Native in chains we paraded around just looked depressed. And there’s been grumbling. Because these people want some danger for their money—”

“And it’s my job to make sure they don’t get it.”

“Not the real thing! Just some vicarious experience of it! A frisson of danger! The suggestion of peril. And when it comes to the Blue Sea, nothing says peril like pirates.”

“Fine. Say he’s a pirate—”

“I’m not—” I started to protest.

“Shut up, boy. Say he is… what do you want to do? Flog him?”

“Obviously that. The boy stole food, it goes without saying. But more. And bigger.” Pilcher’s eyes danced with intrigue. “I want to maroon him.”

My chest started to thump. Marooning meant slow death by starvation. Or madness.

The captain winced. “Once we’re on the Maw, there’s no island within a thousand miles of latitude. And the prevailing winds will make it next to impossible to double back—”

“We’re not on the Maw yet, are we? We’re still in the islands! Surely there’s a deserted one nearby.”

The captain was silent. Pilcher pressed him.

“There is! Isn’t there? Captain, don’t make me assert my—”

“There’s a handful. To the north, above Pig Island. But we’d have to change course immediately. And it’s dark, and we’re in heavy fog—”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“If we change course now, we’ll lose our escort.”

“Pffft.” Pilcher made a funny gesture with his hands, like he was shaking water from them. “Morning will come, the fog will lift. He’ll see we’re not on course. And he’ll wait. We’ll catch up in no time. Snip, snap.”

The captain sighed. “Mr. Pilcher. Your job is entertainment. Mine’s getting us back to Rovia safely. And the Blue Sea, I’d remind you, is full of ACTUAL pirates. Some of whom are actually dangerous.”

“And the worst of them’s protecting us! What do we have to fear?”

“Losing him! Without his escort—”

“We’re not going to lose him! How long could it take?”

“Half a day, at least.”

“That’s nothing! This marooning’s going to be priceless! I’m already imagining the ceremony in my head! Now, turn us around, man! We won’t lose him in half a day.”

Lose who?
I vaguely remembered Pembroke boasting to my father about the precautions he’d taken to ensure the
Earthly Pleasure
’s safety… and Millicent telling me her father controlled
the pirates. I hadn’t really believed her. But apparently it was true, of at least one pirate, anyway.

The captain was shaking his head. “I’m not in favor of this.”

“I don’t need your approval. I just need you to turn the ship. And quickly—if we don’t get the marooning done by midafternoon, I’ll have to reschedule the shovelpuck tournament.”

“For Savior’s sake… Can’t we just make him walk a plank?”

“There’s no mystery in that! Plop, thrash, and he’s dead.”

“He’ll die if you maroon him.”

“But not while we’re watching. There’s a fine line between entertainment and barbarism. Now, get it done! I’ve got LOADS of planning to do.” Pilcher opened his cabin door and motioned for the captain to exit.

“For the record, you’ve ordered this action against my judgment.”

“Yes, yes, yes. That’s fine. Cover your backside. Just do it! Shoo!” He waved his hands, and the captain trudged out, still shaking his head.

Pilcher shut the door. Then turned and leaned back against it, smiling at me like a cat with a mouse under its paw.

“My, my, my… I’m going to make you SUCH a nasty little pirate.”

IT WAS JUST AFTER BREAKFAST, and four hundred pairs of eyes were glued to Pilcher—pink-faced and sweaty, his voice booming from the dining room stage as he narrated the breathtaking, although completely untrue, tale of my discovery and capture.

“Seaman Grimsby lay crumpled on the deck, bleeding and
unconscious, clinging to life, as the bloodthirsty cur secured the knife in his teeth and leapt to the rigging…”

I was the bloodthirsty cur. I stood next to Pilcher, legs in chains, my head and arms locked into a makeshift stock the ship’s carpenter had built on such short notice that fresh splinters dug into my neck every time I tried to shift my position.

“The pirate climbed, catlike, up forty feet of ratline to an errant rope, from whence he swung, like some terrible ape of the darkest jungle, over the heads of Leeds and Austin and onto the poop deck.

“Austin’s blood ran cold as he realized the object of the pirate’s design—the swivel gun! If he reached it before them, their death was assured—the bowels of our intrepid young seamen would be splattered about the deck like a drunkard’s vomit…”

Next to me were the heroes of the story, the three handsomest crew members Pilcher could find. Grimsby’s head was heavily bandaged, Leeds had his arm in a sling, and Austin had a bright red cut down three inches of his cheek that had taken Pilcher an hour of careful work with a theater makeup kit to make convincing.

“There wasn’t a moment to spare! Austin searched out Leeds, locking eyes with his compatriot across the fog-shrouded deck. Leeds’s arm, broken and useless, hung by his side like a salami. But one arm—and the brave heart of a hero—was all he needed. He drew his sword…”

I had to admit, Pilcher told a good story. Everyone was entranced. A few of the ladies in the crowd were swooning. The men and boys glared at me with hate.

I would have tried to speak up in my own defense, but Pilcher had warned me that every time I opened my mouth during the performance, he’d add another ten lashes to the twenty he’d already promised to lay across my back before the marooning. I’d read about the lash in a history of the Rovian Navy—in experienced hands, thirty lashes could drain enough blood to kill a man.

So I kept my mouth shut. Pilcher built the story to a brilliant climax—apparently, I would have come out on top if Grimsby hadn’t woken up and distracted me at a critical moment in the final sword fight—and finished up with my confessing to him my fiendish plan to slit the throats of the captain and crew and send up a signal flare to trigger the final, fatal ambush by my dark master.

“And who was this evil puppet master, his greedy eyes coveting our fair prize from across the Blue Sea? Why, it was none other than—”

Pilcher stepped over to me, grabbed my hair in his fist, and pulled my head up violently, exposing the flame tattoo he’d inked onto my neck an hour ago.

“BURN HEALY!”

There was a collective gasp. Toward the back, a woman gave a terrified shriek and fainted into her pastry.

Pilcher nodded grimly. “Cast your eyes upon him, ladies and gentlemen—this emissary of the devil.”

One of the brats from the gun deck, the ten-year-old with the cruel face, rushed the stage, yelled “EVIL!” at me, and spit in my eye.

There was a tense pause as the audience looked to Pilcher for
his reaction. None of them had captured a pirate before, and they didn’t seem to know if spitting was appropriate behavior.

Unfortunately for me, Pilcher smiled approvingly at the brat. “Right you are, son! He’s the devil himself!”

This unleashed a wave of hate, all of it directed at me. A crowd of people rushed the stage, and in the several minutes before Pilcher had enough and called out for order to be restored, I was slapped, punched, kicked, pelted with food and hot coffee, and spit on by at least a dozen people, young and old, men and women alike.

“Fear not, my good people!” he called out as they returned to their seats. “This incorrigible fiend will have his reward! We’ve set sail for the nearest uninhabited island! Upon sight of it—in accordance with the laws of the sea—he shall be tied to the mast, given twenty lashes, and marooned with no possessions but the mercy of Our Savior!”

A cheer went up from the crowd. Pilcher beamed with pleasure.

“The shovelpuck tournament will begin immediately afterward. Thank you! Enjoy your morning!”

ONCE THE DINING ROOM had emptied, two crew members pulled me out of the stocks, chained my wrists together, and took me down to the hold, where they tossed me inside a tiny storeroom with no light. I heard the clank of a lock being put on the door, followed by their footsteps fading away up the stairs.

I wiped the spit and the blood off as best I could in the dark. Then I cried. Not from the pain, although there was plenty of that, but the humiliation. The way I’d been treated made me feel
sick and dirty inside, and the fact that it had been done by some of the finest members of Rovian society was almost impossible to believe. Even Adonis, vicious as he was, rarely spat on me.

And while I could imagine things like that happening in Port Scratch—in fact, I’d SEEN things like that happen—I’d always consoled myself, when I dreamed about life outside of Deadweather, with the thought that somewhere there were better, more civilized people, who wouldn’t turn into a pack of snarling dogs because a man who was good with words had whipped them into a frenzy.

In its way, this was worse, and more demoralizing, than learning Roger Pembroke was evil and wanted to kill me. Because he was just one man. This was a whole boat full of the best sort of people, and when I was chained and helpless, they’d treated me like an animal.

And there was worse to come. I was going to be flogged, probably halfway to death, and then left alone on a deserted island with no food or water.