Deadweather and Sunrise (29 page)

The sun was almost touching the horizon when we got there. I stood at the foot of the grave, the sun at my back, and looked around. Stretched out above me was the long slope of the volcano,
a glum expanse of rough black rock that tapered as it rose up to the rim, where a few thin curls of smoke wafted into the sky.

It looked just like it always had, a colorless wasteland… except for one spot, off to the right a hundred yards above the grave, where a section of rock had crumbled away to reveal a sharp seam of nearly white granite, jutting six feet straight up out of the earth like the blade of a knife. I’d never seen it before, but it must have been there all along, buried under a frozen crust of black lava, and had reemerged after some minor earthquake shook its cover loose.

I started toward it, and Millicent and Guts followed. As we approached from the side, an opening came into view. It was a two-foot-wide crack down the middle of the granite face. The sunlight was hitting it at an angle that revealed the beginnings of a cave inside.

Guts nudged me. “You first.”

I squeezed sideways through the opening, stepping to one side once I’d entered so the others could come in behind me.

We were in a wide, low-ceilinged chamber, twenty feet across and half as deep, and not quite tall enough for me to stand up straight inside it.

At first, it seemed barren. But once my eyes got used to the dim light, I realized there were markings on the far wall—dozens of small, squarish figures, painted in a dark color on the smooth white surface of the granite. They were arranged in two large clusters of long, straight rows, set two feet apart with a series of random-looking squiggled lines and marks in the space between the clusters.

Each little square figure was about the size of a fist, a blotch of
wavy lines inside of rectangles, forming geometric shapes… no, they were hieroglyphs, picture-writing—a bird, a spear, an eye… a face, with long hair and lines radiating out from its head…

Millicent shrieked, startling me so much that I recoiled and hit my head on the ceiling.

“What?”

“Look—” She was pointing down, at something lying across the floor along the wall under the markings. At first, I thought it was just one of the thin, irregular rock formations created by fast-cooling lava.

But no. It was too symmetrical, a double row of slender lines arcing up out of the ground and meeting at a long, smooth plate.

It was the rib cage of a skeleton. I followed the line of the breastbone with my eyes until I found a human skull, dimly visible in the gloom. Peeking up out of the ground in a semicircle under the skull was a broken line of small, colored stones that ended in a little lump of earth just under the jaw. One of the stones glinted brightly, its surface catching a stray ray of sun coming in through the entrance.

I was bending over them for a closer look when I heard Guts say, “More behind ye.”

I turned to find two more sets of bones in jumbled piles on either side of the cave entrance. A pair of leg bones stuck straight out of each pile, parallel to the entrance.

It looked like they’d died sitting up, guarding the entrance, and the skeletons had collapsed as the bodies decayed.

Millicent knelt in front of the skull of the first skeleton, brushing the dirt from the semicircle of stones. As the earth fell away from them, it became clear that they weren’t just rocks but gems: most were obscured under a layer of caked-on grime, but I saw
glimpses of what looked like rubies, emeralds, and even a diamond.

“It’s a necklace,” she said. She worked her fingers into the dirt under one of the stones and tugged, pulling loose a limp, dirt-encrusted tendon of something that at first I couldn’t place.

“What’s that?”

“A feather. There was one between each stone.”

“How do you know?”

“Because that’s how the books describe it. Along with this—” She dug under the lump of earth at the base of the necklace until it crumbled, revealing a three-inch pendant. She scraped the dirt from the pendant to reveal an intricate, multicolored bird, wings extending up over its head, with a diamond for an eye and ruby feathers speckled with sapphires and emeralds.

Even clodded with dirt, it was magnificent. Millicent’s eyes were wide with wonder as she stared at it.

“It’s a firebird. That’s his insignia.”

“Whose?” demanded Guts.

“The Fire King’s.”

“Then where’s the treasure?” asked Guts, looking around the chamber. Other than the skeletons, there was nothing in it but a pile of debris in the corner—a couple of small bowls, a rounded stone in the shape of a pestle, and some crumbling chunks of dry fabric that looked like they came from rotted-away containers.

“Maybe my father took it,” I suggested.

Millicent was crouched in front of the painted markings on the wall. “No,” she said. “There’d be too much. And I don’t think it was ever here.”

“’Ow d’ye know?” Guts asked.

“Because why else would they draw a map?”

We crowded around the wall, studying the drawings as Millicent tried to make sense of them.

“Look,” she said. “That third hieroglyph at the top—a firebird, just like on the necklace, with two lines and a dot beneath it—that’s the mark of Hutmatozal. And that one—” She pointed to a hieroglyph somewhere in the middle of the first cluster that looked like a lightning bolt over a fist. “That’s the Fist of Ka.”

“And this…” She made a large, sweeping circle with her finger, taking in the area between the two clusters of hieroglyphs. There was a mess of scattered markings across it—dotted lines, crooked squiggles,
X
’s, and a few random hieroglyphs. “That’s got to be a map.”

“To what?”

“That must be what the rest of it tells us,” she said. “How to read the map.”

As the sunlight died, I studied the strange pictures and mysterious shapes. They were all gibberish to me. But the closer I looked, the more convinced I was that Millicent was right.

This was what my father had copied onto the parchment he brought with him to Sunrise. Pembroke had let that copy drown somewhere in the ocean along with my family, because he knew he could find the original back here.

This was what he’d killed my family to get his hands on. This was what he was coming for.

It was getting too dark to see. We left the cave and made our way back around the mountain and down to the house, to eat a
meal of Quint’s stew and try to decide what to do when the sun rose and the soldiers returned.

WE WERE FINISHING our dinner when Otto turned up at the front door.

“Harvest’s comin’ along,” he said as I let him inside. “Keep the pace up, we’ll be ready to load in when that ship docks.” He looked down at the crates beside the door. “These the guns Stumpy brought up?”

I nodded. He made a quick inspection of them, letting out a low whistle over the grenades.

“Changes things, don’t it?”

“Hope so,” I said.

“Question is, wot’s the plan fer usin’ ’em?” Otto stared at me, an eyebrow cocked questioningly over his good eye. “Don’t s’pose ye got one?”

“Actually, I do.” I’d been mulling over our strategy since the night before, and Guts and I had discussed it at length while we were wrestling the cannon down the hill. “As far as the soldiers know, all we’ve got is a handful of rifles—and your men aren’t necessarily on our side. On top of that, the soldiers won’t open fire unless they have to.”

“How do ye know?”

“I just do.” I looked back at Millicent, who was leaning against the door frame to the kitchen and listening. Pembroke wasn’t going to risk accidentally shooting her if he could help it. “So their plan will be to frighten us into giving up without firing a shot. They won’t sneak up on us, because that could cause panic, and panic could lead to a shootout. So my guess is they’ll send
their whole force straight up the road in a show of strength, and only take up battle positions if they run into resistance.

“Which means the thing to do,” I continued, “is for most of your men, all but ten or so, to stay in the lower fields, gathering the harvest. Hide your guns in the fruit crates, look like you’re busy working. Don’t give them any reason to think you’re a threat. They’ll march right past you, up the road to the house. Once they’ve passed, get your guns and slip in behind them from the orchards on either side of the road.

“Guts and I will take up position on the porch with the rest of the men. Lure the soldiers in as close as we can. Then open fire with the cannon—”

“What?!” Millicent cried out.

“Shhh!” hissed Guts.

I did my best to ignore them. “As soon as we do, the rest of you open up in a crossfire.”

Otto nodded. “Not bad.”

“You can’t be serious!” Millicent grabbed me by the arm. “Egg, that’s murder!”

“It’s them or us—”

“You
can’t
fire first. You’ve got to do everything you can to avoid it!”

“We
have
to,” I said. “It’s the only way we can win.”

“’E’s right,” said Guts.

“It’s a decent plan, girlie,” said Otto.

She stared at the three of us, her mouth tightening in anger. “You’re pigs. Every one of you!”

She turned her back on us and clomped up the stairs. We heard a door slam.

“Might want to tie that one up in the mornin’,” Otto suggested. “She could be trouble. Other’n that, nice work. Be up to fetch the guns at first light.”

He left the way he came. Guts went over to the crates and started unpacking rifles. “Oughta load these.”

I started toward the stairs. “I’ll help in a minute. I’ve got to go talk to Millicent.”

“Long’s ye still can.”

“What do you mean?”

“After tomorrow, she’ll be done with ye.”

“How do you figure?”

He shrugged. “One o’ two things ’appens. Ye die… or ’e does. If it’s ’im, she never forgives ye.”

“But she knows now. What he’s really like.”

He shook his head. “Don’t matter. Kill ’er dad, that’s it for ye.”

There was nothing to say to that, because I knew he was right.

IT WAS A LONG WALK down the upstairs hallway to Venus’s bedroom, because I needed to solve the unsolvable before I got there.

How could I get rid of Millicent’s father without losing Millicent?

I had no idea. I knocked on the door.

“It’s me,” I said. “Can I come in?”

I heard her sigh. “Yes.”

She was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. I shut the door behind me.

“I’m sorry—”

“Stop.” She sat up. “You’ve made your plan. And it’s stupid, and you’ll die—”

“I have to—”

“Just listen to me! I’ve got a better plan. We’ll copy the map, scrub the original off the wall so they can’t find it, and then run.”

“I’m sick of running—”

“Better than dying.”

“But it’s pointless! Say we run. Say we can somehow get off Deadweather without a fight, which I doubt. The map’s useless if we can’t translate it. And the only Natives who can do that are in the silver mine back on Sunrise—”

“No,” she said. “There’re others.”

“Where?”

“In the New Lands.”

“Are you sure? I thought all the Okalu were wiped out.”

“Not all. There’re remnants of them. Somewhere in the north. Might even be some in Pella Nonna. Isn’t that where the cargo ship’s headed?”

I nodded. Pella Nonna was the closest Cartager port in the New Lands, backed up against hundreds of miles of wilderness. I didn’t know much about it, other than it was strange and exotic and I didn’t speak the language.

“I don’t speak Cartager,” I said.

“Well, I do,” she said. “So we just have to avoid my father long enough to get on that ship. Then we’ll be safe.”

“Because he wouldn’t follow us? He’d just give up?”

The look on her face said she knew he wouldn’t.

“I can’t spend the rest of my life running away from your father.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, pursing her lips. She took a deep breath and held it for a long time before she exhaled sharply. “Then you and Guts go. I’ll stay behind. When he comes here, I’ll talk to him. I’m still his daughter, and he loves me—”

“He’ll tell you what you want to hear, then he’ll do what he wants.”

“If I make him promise—”

“He’ll break it.”

“Egg, he’s not a monster—”

“He killed my family, and he barely knew them!”

“He didn’t—”

“Yes, he did! He murdered them! You can’t deny it!”

She started to cry silently, her face wrinkled up and her body shaking.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I don’t know what I was apologizing for, but I hated to see her like that.

I sat down on the edge of the bed, and she buried her head in my chest. I put my arms around her and stroked her hair gently.

“Don’t do it,” she whispered. “It’s suicide.”

“No… it’s going to be okay,” I said, even though I knew it wouldn’t be.

Finally, she stopped crying.

“I have to leave,” she said. “If you’re going to fight him, I can’t stay.”

I nodded. There was a hollow, heavy feeling in my stomach, and my whole body felt like it was getting sucked into it. I took a deep breath, trying to fight back against the heaviness.

“Do me a favor,” I said.

“What?”

“Smile.”

She let out a little half laugh and wiped her eyes. “Why?”

“So I can remember you like that. In case I never see you again.”

“Oh, Egg…” She put a hand on my cheek and gazed into my eyes with a smile full of hurt.

I couldn’t tell if the hurt was because we were doomed to be apart, or because I was a fool for liking her that way and she didn’t know how to tell me.

I looked away. I had plenty of those pictures of her in my head—the ones that asked the question without answering it. I didn’t want another one. They just made me confused.

What I wanted was something that gave me an answer. Like the very first one, that bright pure smile she gave me on the lawn when we were alone together for the first time.

If she gave me that again, just once, I could lock it away in my head and keep it forever. I could remember every detail of it.

That’s what I was thinking when a different answer came to me.