Deadweather and Sunrise (27 page)

Percy looked at Guts and shook his head, his fleshy neck jiggling against his collar. “No. Egbert’s a good boy. He’d never shoot an unarmed man.”

He looked back at me. “Isn’t that right?”

“I’ll shoot you if I have to,” I said. But I wasn’t sure I believed it.

Percy didn’t. He took another step toward me.

“DO IT!” screamed Guts. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him drop the ramrod. Once he filled the pan with powder, he’d be ready to fire again.

My heart was pounding in my chest. I could feel my finger against the trigger, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull it.

“I will!” I warned Percy through gritted teeth.

“You won’t,” said Percy softly, taking the final step, his hand reaching out for my rifle.

Then the gunshot was echoing off the rampart, and he was tumbling backward into the trench.

As Percy writhed in the dirt, crying out and clutching a
shoulder stained red with blood, I looked down at the gun in my hands. The flintlock was still poised over the pan. It hadn’t gone off.

I looked at Guts to my left. He was still on his knees, holding the open powder flask over the pan as he stared past me, his mouth open in surprise.

I followed his gaze to my right, to the figure standing just behind Quint.

It was Millicent. She was holding a rifle.

She stepped forward and addressed the soldiers, her face cold with hate.

“Get off this land, or we’ll kill you all.”

A
fter Millicent shot Percy, the soldiers put down their shovels and left in a hurry. We let them take their wagon and horses—Guts wanted to hang on to them, but it felt like stealing to do that, so we only kept the guns.

The sun was beginning to set as we watched them rattle down the hillside in the wagon, with Percy clutching a rag to his wounded shoulder and crying out in pain with every bump. Quint had gone back to finish his stew, and the field pirates had disappeared to their barracks for dinner, leaving Millicent, Guts, and me alone on the porch of the main house.

“Any chance that wound will kill him?” I asked.

“Not if it don’t turn to cheese,” said Guts.

“We can only hope,” said Millicent darkly.

She was sitting on the porch steps, the rifle still in her hands. She held it by the barrel, digging the edge of its stock into the dirt as she brooded.

“Are you all right?” I asked her.

She looked up at me. Her eyes were still cold and hard. “He lied to me. About so many things.”

“That’s what men do.”

“Not my father. Not to me.”

She lifted her chin and stared at the reddening sky. “They’ll be back, you know. Daddy won’t wait. He’ll come right away. With a hundred men, at least.”

“We’ve got to find that treasure before they get here,” I said.

“Say we do,” said Guts. “They’ll still come.”

“But we won’t have to be here,” said Millicent. “We can run.”

“I’m tired of running,” I said.

Guts stared at me. “Gonna stay an’ fight a hundred soldiers?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Nuts to that! Couldn’t even shoot whatsisname. Standin’ right in front o’ ye.”

I shook my head. “That’s because it wasn’t fair. He was unarmed.”

“Won’t have that problem again. Be a hundred of ’em next time. Then ye’ll see what not fair is.” Guts’s whole face and shoulders twitched after he said it, like he was shuddering at the thought.

“You can’t fight them with five guns,” said Millicent.

“My father’s got a hunting rifle.”

“So you’ve got six? Oh, that changes
everything.
”

“Plus a cannon,” I said.

“Still not enough.”

“And fifty pirates.”

They were both quiet for a moment, thinking it over.

“Would they fight for you?” Millicent asked.

I stood up. “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

THE FIELD PIRATES had just sat down to their usual meal of slop when we entered the long, lamplit barracks. It was noisy with chatter, but as they realized we were there, the talking fell away. It was an unwritten rule that only the field pirates were allowed in the barracks—even Quint wasn’t welcome in there—and a hundred unfriendly eyes glared at us.

Although it was more like eighty unfriendly eyes, because a lot of them weren’t working with a full pair. And Mung actually seemed happy to see us.

“What can we do for ye?” asked Otto the foreman coldly. He’d been the foreman for years, because he was the smartest of the bunch, and because he’d beaten the last foreman to death with a brick.

“Need yer bottom wiped?” someone yelled at me from the crowd, to snorts of laughter.

“Soldiers are coming to take back this plantation,” I said in as loud a voice as I could muster. “Will you help me fight them?”

There were a few more snorts of laughter. Mostly it was silent.

“Wot’s in it fer us?” Otto asked.

“They’re after a treasure,” I said.

“That’s hardly news, sonny.”

“If we find it instead of them, we can all share it equally,” I said.

Behind me, I heard Guts quietly curse. It must have occurred to him that he stood to keep a lot less than a third of the treasure if this deal held up.

“Same offer the soldiers made,” said Otto. “Wot’s the difference?”

“The difference is I’m not lying to you,” I said.

“Not good enough, sonny,” said Otto. “Best o’ luck to ye.”

He picked up his spoon and returned to his slop. The others followed, and the barracks quickly filled again with the clanking of spoons and the growling of voices.

I thought for a moment. If I didn’t get them on our side, we were doomed—the best I could hope for would be to flee across the ocean and hope Roger Pembroke wouldn’t send anyone to follow us. But that wasn’t likely, especially if Millicent was with us.

It was going to be a long shot stopping him with this bunch, anyway. But Burn Healy’s warning was fresh in my mind, and I felt sure if I ran away now, the odds of my killing Pembroke weren’t going to get any better down the road.

So I had to convince them to help us, with whatever I had. And all I had, really, was one thing:

“What if I give you the plantation?”

The spoons stopped clanking.

“’Ow’s that gonna work?”

“Same as the treasure,” I said. “We’ll all own it equally. Effective immediately.”

There was a short silence, followed by a sudden burst of noise as fifty pirates all started talking to each other at once.

Otto stood up and pointed at the door. “You three wait outside. We gots to discuss this.”

We didn’t have to wait long in the moonlight outside the barracks—within a few minutes, the door burst open, and the whole crew ran past us for the orchard. A few held lanterns. The rest carried harvesting hooks.

Otto paused in front of me, his gray teeth glinting in the lanterns’ light as he smiled.

“Got yerself a deal, sonny,” he said. He held out his hand, and we shook on it.

“Where are they all going?” I asked.

He rubbed his neck, looking a little sheepish. “Bit of a crisis. Cargo ship’s due into Port Scratch in three days. S’pposed to carry the early harvest to Pella Nonna. We been slacking off o’ late, first ’cause yer dad was gone, then ’cause we was lookin’ fer that treasure. But if we don’t get the harvest in and loaded on that ship, likely as not, the plantation goes under.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Means the contract’s busted, ship sails without us, fruit rots in the fields, an’ we can’t lay in stores. No food, no money… whole racket falls apart.”

I was furious. “Why didn’t you think about all that before a minute ago?!”

“Weren’t our problem. Up ’til a minute ago, we just worked here.”

I MANAGED TO CONVINCE Otto to let Stumpy the driver ride down to Port Scratch and let us know when Percy and the soldiers managed to set sail so we’d have some idea of how much time we had before the reinforcements returned from Sunrise.

Other than that, Otto insisted he couldn’t spare any men to help look for the treasure in the morning. The pirates would only stop their frantic harvesting long enough to fight when the soldiers returned.

And that wasn’t our only problem—none of them had guns (Dad had forbidden it, which if you think about it, was a pretty
sensible policy), and there wasn’t any money available to go to Port Scratch and buy some.

“There’s got to be money somewhere,” I pleaded with Quint when we got back to the house.

“Not till we sell the harvest. And most of that’s pledged to provisions. Can’t buy guns with it ’less yer not plannin’ on eatin’ again till spring. And this lot won’t stand fer that.”

“Didn’t Dad keep any money in reserve?”

“Some, yeh.”

“Where is it?”

“Sewn into his coat.”

“Which coat?”

“The one he wore to Sunrise.”

THERE WASN’T MUCH TO DO after that but go to bed and hope things looked a little less bleak in the morning. Millicent disappeared into Venus’s bedroom upstairs, and Guts sacked out on Dad’s bed, snoring almost as soon as he hit the mattress. I could have slept upstairs with them, in Adonis’s room, but I wanted the comfort of being in my own bed for the first time in a month. So I retreated into my familiar little windowless box off the kitchen to lie in the darkness and worry about how I was going to come out of this mess alive.

The comfort was spoiled a bit by the fact that my bed smelled like a soldier, not to mention the fact that I’d just traded away my family’s plantation for the allegiance of fifty crippled pirates who’d be useless against armed soldiers unless I could somehow find guns for them.

Then there was the treasure. Assuming it was there, I had no idea how to find it. Dad had stumbled upon it on his way up to clean the cannon, which meant it was somewhere between the house and Rotting Bluff. But Percy had known that, too. And even with upward of fifty men, all digging frantically for a week, he hadn’t found a trace of it.

Although the more I thought about it, the more pointless all that digging seemed. Dad didn’t have a shovel with him when he went to clean the cannon that morning. So why would anyone need to dig to uncover whatever he’d found?

It seemed utterly stupid, but then it was probably Percy’s idea, and he’d never had much in the way of brains.

I could find it—I just had to be clever enough to think it through. To think like Dad.

What path did he take up the hill that morning? Straight up? Or something roundabout, like following the cliff’s edge? That’s a longer and harder climb, but there’s a view of the ocean.

Is that thinking like Dad? Did he ever take the scenic route anywhere?

Not if he could help it. Dad didn’t go places without a purpose. He’d—

I heard the creak of the wooden steps. Someone was coming downstairs. A moment later, there was a dull
thop
, followed by a barely audible
“mph!”
as whoever it was stubbed a toe on my door frame.

“Who is it?” They were only a few feet away, but without a lantern it was pitch-black, and I couldn’t see a thing.

“Did I wake you?” asked Millicent.

“No.”

“Can I stay down here for a bit? I can’t sleep, and my bed smells like a soldier.”

“Mine does too,” I said.

“That’s all right.” I felt her bump into the side of the bed frame. “Is that you?”

“Yeah.” I felt her weight push down on the thin straw mattress, and I wriggled to the far edge of the narrow bed to make room for her.

Her arm pressed down on mine, and something soft landed on my head. “I brought a pillow.”

“Oh.” I shifted my head over to make room for her pillow. My heart was beating fast, but my brain felt thick and slow. I wanted to say something clever, or charming, but I couldn’t think of anything.

We were silent for a while. The part of her arm that was on top of mine felt warm and soft through my shirt, except for what must have been her shoulder blade, which was digging painfully into my upper arm. I wondered if I should roll onto my side, or if that would ruin everything.

“Your soldier doesn’t stink as bad as mine did,” she said. Then I felt her shift position, turning away from me, and I thought I’d ruined everything just by doing nothing.