Deadweather and Sunrise (23 page)

“Of the Okalu?”

“What’s the Okalu?”

“Seriously? You don’t know any of it? With all the books you’ve read?”

“I never read one about that.”

She sighed. “Right. Where to begin…? A hundred years ago, when the Cartagers first came to the New Lands, there was a Native tribe that ruled the whole area. They called themselves Okalu. The People of the Sun.

“And they were quite advanced for savages. They had cities and writing, and supposedly they could do things we can’t even imagine. Like setting things on fire just by looking at them. Some people think there was a trick to it, like a technology or something we don’t know about.

“But others think, and the Okalu themselves said, that they had magic powers. Which they got from the sun—they said it was a living thing, a god in the sky that they called Ka. Every morning, the whole tribe would bow down to worship the sunrise and give it thanks. And every night, they’d do the same to the sunset, and ask it to come back again and renew their powers for another day.

“They had two main temples. One back on the mainland, that they used all year round, and one on Sunrise, on top of Mount Majestic, that they only went to once a year. I’ve been there. It’s mostly ruins now, but looking at it you can imagine, back then, it must have been magnificent.

“No one lived on Sunrise. It was sacred ground, just used for the temple. And once a year, at the summer solstice, the whole tribe would cross the Blue Sea from the mainland and come there, and they’d have a huge ceremony, called the Marriage of the Sun.

“They’d take one girl from the tribe—the Princess of the
Dawn—and they’d cover her in gold and jewels and offer her up to the sunrise to be Ka’s wife. And supposedly, she’d rise into the heavens, draped in her jewels. And never return.”

Millicent smiled. “When I was little, I used to pretend I was Princess of the Dawn. And I lived in the sky, and ruled over everyone.”

That wasn’t hard to imagine.

“In exchange for his bride, Ka would grant his powers for one more year to the head of the tribe, the Fire King, who he blessed with a sacred object, the Fist of Ka, this sort of”—she gestured toward the knuckles of her hand—“giant ring or glove, or something. It’s unclear exactly what it was. But when the Fire King wielded it, he had all the powers of Ka: to burn, to kill, even to heal.

“And then the Cartagers came. Just a few explorers at first, but eventually they sent a whole fleet of soldiers to conquer the mainland. And they had guns and horses, neither of which the Natives had ever seen, and the Okalu thought they were Thunder Gods, come to destroy the People of the Sun.

“At first, the Cartagers won every battle, and they got all the way to the gates of the main Okalu city, where the Temple of the Sunset was. But then the Fire King, Hutmatozal, raised the Fist of Ka against them, and supposedly, most of the Cartagers were struck dead in an instant. The only ones who survived were those who’d agreed to worship Ka themselves.

“What was left of the Cartagers retreated to their ships and were about to set sail when another tribe—the Moku, who’d been ruled by the Okalu forever and hated them—came to the Cartagers and offered to help. They told the Cartagers about the
yearly pilgrimage for the Marriage of the Sun, which was just about to happen.

“So the Cartagers set a trap on Sunrise. They took the cannons from their ships and set them up on the harbor cliffs, where the fortresses are now. The Okalu arrived. And supposedly, because they thought the reason they’d nearly been wiped out by these Thunder Gods was because they hadn’t been generous enough to Ka, they brought with them their entire treasury as the princess’s dowry—every bit of gold and jewels the tribe had. The moment they landed, the Cartagers opened fire and slaughtered them all. And that was the end of the Okalu.

“But the Cartagers never found the dowry. It disappeared, along with the princess and the Fire King himself and the Fist of Ka that supposedly gave him his power. The legend is that they disappeared inside Mount Majestic. And someday, the Fire King will reappear, along with a new princess, and offer the treasure again as her dowry. And Ka will give his blessing, and the Okalu will rise again.

“That’s the legend. And that’s why, if the Fire King’s treasure really exists, it must be on Sunrise somewhere.”

It was a lot to absorb. And I didn’t know what was real and what was just legend. Nobody did, from the sound of it.

“All I know,” I said, “is there’s something on Deadweather. And it’s Native. And it was important enough to make my dad come to Sunrise and look for someone to help him understand it.”

“That could be anything,” she said. “But I wouldn’t go thinking it’s some huge treasure. Let alone the Fire King’s.”

I didn’t know what to think. “Guess we’ll find out.”

“Guess we will.” She stretched her legs out across the deck and
leaned her head back against the seat, cocking it toward me. I wished the tiller weren’t between us, because if it hadn’t been, she might have rested her head on my shoulder.

“I missed you, Egg,” she said.

She missed me.
My heart soared.

“I missed you, too.” I turned toward her, opening my mouth to spill out my guts, to tell her how much I loved her. But before I could form the words, she caught my eye and grinned, scrunching up her nose.

“It’s no fun with just Daddy and Mother.”

No fun?

I came back down to earth, slumping back in my seat. I’d read enough books about star-crossed lovers and doomed romances to know that when the person you love gets accused of murder and has to run away, there’s a lot of ways you can react. Inconsolable weeping, suicidal hysteria, violent rage—even silent brooding’s okay, as long as you’re plotting something underneath the silence.

But saying it’s “no fun”?

She might as well not have missed me at all.

I crossed my arms and went into a heavy sulk. But she didn’t even notice. She was staring up at the dimming stars.

“Mother wants to send me away. Off to some boarding school on the Continent. Thinks I’ll never be a proper lady if I stay on the island.”

Fine. Go. See if I care.

“Daddy will never let her, though. He needs me too much. Hasn’t got nearly enough levelheaded advisers. This whole
Earthly Pleasure
fiasco made that perfectly clear—”

Given everything that had happened, it was also perfectly clear that Millicent wasn’t half the confidant of Roger Pembroke she thought she was. But the words were tumbling out of her so quickly that all I could do was shake my head and roll my eyes.

“—although Daddy seems strangely thrilled about it, like there’s some kind of opportunity to be had. Which I can’t fathom in the slightest—I mean, Rovia’s finest families, robbed blind, stripped to their underwear, scared to death, and abandoned at sea? How on earth could that be a good thing? But Daddy thinks there’s some angle to be played involving Cartage and the New Lands… It’s a terrible waste, you know, the Cartagers control this whole continent full of resources, and they never
do
anything with it. Still, I can’t for the life of me understand what that’s got to do with a pirate attack. But that’s the thing about Daddy—he’s brilliant, always three steps ahead of everybody else, and he plays his cards
very
close to his chest—”

“Millicent.”

“What?”

I was staring at the horizon. Straight ahead of us, the skyline was turning pink.

“Are you sure we’re headed west?”

“Of course.”

“Then why’s the sun rising in front of us?”

She sat up straight, staring at the bleeding edge of dawn.

“That’s the strangest thing… It’s rising in the wrong place.”

My jaw dropped. “Is
that
what you think?”

“What else could it be?”

“We’re going the wrong way!”

“Impossible. I had us going west.”

“What’s more likely—the earth started turning in the other direction, or you went the wrong way?”

She let out a little huff of annoyance. “Whatever. We’ll change course and it’ll be fine.”

BUT IT WASN’T FINE. We’d been under way well over an hour by then—long enough for Deadweather to be on the horizon if we’d been headed the right way. Instead, there was nothing but ocean in all directions.

We sailed west, the direction we should have gone in the first place, until Guts woke up and started an argument about whether it was the right way to fix the problem. All three of us had a different opinion, but no one knew for sure, and the maps we found in the cabin were useless because we didn’t know where to locate ourselves on them. West of Sunrise? East? South? How far?

The sun climbed higher, searing our faces and making everyone sweat up a thirst. But we only had a skin of water, and it was two-thirds gone before we realized we’d need to make it last.

We took to the cabin to escape the sun, tying off the tiller and sitting in a tense silence while taking turns poking our heads out to see if anything—a spit of land, another ship—had appeared on the horizon.

Nothing did. Hours passed. We were well and truly lost, trying to make our way west, because at least that way we’d eventually run into the New Lands. And while they were mostly trackless jungle, sailing in any other direction could guarantee us a slow death on a thousand miles of open sea.

But the sun was high, and the wind kept shifting, and soon we weren’t even sure which way was west.

Millicent and Guts picked at each other until a screaming fight broke out. After the yelling burned itself out, both of them refused to speak. Not that there was much to say. Just bitterness and fear. Fear that we wouldn’t sight land or another ship, and fear that we would, only to find ourselves at the mercy of pirates—or, in my case, anyone who knew five thousand pieces of silver were theirs for delivering me to Roger Pembroke.

The sun started to drop, and the wind died down, leaving us nearly becalmed. My head hurt from lack of water, and I realized it had been almost two days since I’d slept.

So I wedged myself into the corner of one of the beds and fell into a heavy sleep, full of strange nightmares—of gods dressed as pirates, and savage battles, and pigs feasting on jewels that spilled from the guts of slaughtered Native children.

I woke up to the sound of Millicent’s voice.

“We’re saved!”

Guts had been asleep as well, and we both tumbled out of our beds and scrambled up to the cockpit.

It was well past dark, our sails were struck, and Millicent was waving the lantern over her head in the direction of a three-masted galleon, closing fast on us from less than a hundred yards ahead.

“She would have gone right past, but I signaled her, and she turned!” she said excitedly.

I stared at the ship, close enough now that I could make out the carved wooden figurehead on its bowsprit. On the Blue Sea, nearly every ship’s figurehead is the same—a winged Goddess of the Sea, who’s supposed to guarantee the crew divine protection. It’s such a common superstition, and sailors take it so seriously,
that I’ve heard of crews who refused to sail without one, or returned to port just to fix a broken goddess figurehead.

This figurehead wasn’t a goddess. It was a skeleton, grotesque and distorted, the jaw of its skull wrenched open in a terrible shriek.

There was only one ship on the Blue Sea with a figurehead like that, and a captain and crew cocky enough to defy the superstition and sail behind it.

I opened my mouth to speak, but Guts beat me to it.

“Fool!” he yelled at Millicent. “It’s Burn Healy!”

T
here was no mistaking the
Grift,
Burn Healy’s flagship. And not just because of the skeleton figurehead, but because no one else on the Blue Sea commanded that kind of sleek, saddlebacked galleon. Only the Cartager Navy had the skills and the money to build such a ship, and only Burn Healy had the guts and the muscle to take it from them.

There was no point in trying to escape—not only was the ship almost on top of us, but I knew the only victims who survived an encounter with Healy were the ones who surrendered instantly and offered up everything they had as plunder.

What scared me most right then was that the only thing we had worth taking was Millicent.

I turned toward her, my brain churning to think of where on the little sailboat we might hide her away from a crew of rough
men all but certain to treat her with unspeakable horror—and I couldn’t believe my eyes. She was smiling.

More than smiling. She looked thrilled.

“Burn Healy? That’s brilliant! He works for my father!”

Like it usually does when it gets a piece of news it can’t handle, my brain shut down completely.

Guts was quicker to react. “Nuts to that! Healy don’t work fer nobody!”

“My father’s hardly nobody. And Healy owes him. He was supposed to guarantee the
Earthly Pleasure
safe passage, and he completely botched it! Daddy was only just meeting with him last night, and he was
very
cross before he left, so I’m sure Healy’s gotten an earful, and he’ll be desperate to get back in Daddy’s good graces. All I’ve got to do is tell him who I am, and he’ll fall all over himself—”