Deadweather and Sunrise (31 page)

Within seconds, the lower road had filled with a sea of blue uniforms, bayonets glinting in the morning sun.

I searched the throng for Pembroke. All I could see were soldiers.

When the last of them came into view, someone must have barked an order, because they stopped in unison. Just as quickly, the drums stopped.

The silence that followed was much more unsettling than the drums themselves.

Then I heard his voice.

“My name is Roger Pembroke,” he boomed from somewhere in the back of the sea of troops. “I am the lawful owner of this land. I’ve come to retrieve my daughter and bring a murderer to justice. To anyone who can hear me, I offer a warning and a promise. The warning is this: the penalty for harboring a fugitive is death.”

He let that one echo through the orchard before he continued.

“The promise is as follows: if I leave here peacefully, with justice served and my daughter unharmed, as a token of my gratitude I will bestow on every employee of this plantation a bonus of one hundred pieces of silver.”

I heard the low grumble of voices to either side of me. The pirates were mulling over the offer.

“He’s lying!” I hissed at them.

“Let me repeat that!” Pembroke called out, still unseen. “A hundred silver for each of you! And all you need to earn it is to stay out of our way.”

There was a sudden clatter on the porch, followed by a gurgling bark from Mung. I looked to my right to see him glaring down a line of abandoned rifles at the last of the pirates, hobbling out of sight around the corner of the porch.

Mung looked at me helplessly. The rest of them wouldn’t be back until it was time to collect their money from Pembroke.

I turned to look at the other side of the porch. They’d all disappeared on that end, too—except for Quint, who was still standing on top of his stew pot but looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.

And Guts, who was crouched over the short cannon fuse with a match in his hand, ready to light it.

“Say the word,” he said.

“Don’t!” I held up a hand, begging him off.

Then I looked back at the sea of troops. It was hopeless. Pembroke’s money had beaten me before we’d even fired a shot.

“Forward!” I heard a soldier yell.

The troops fanned out, spreading into skirmish lines as they began to march on the house.

“Guts, be smart,” I whispered. “Get out of here. If you tell them you’re a field pirate, there’s a hundred silver in it for you.”

“Nuts to that,” he said, and lit the fuse.

The thunder of the cannon nearly burst my eardrums, and the smoke briefly obscured my view as I felt the earth shudder from the impact.

When the smoke lifted, the same array of troops was in front of us—all staring at a smoking crater two-thirds of the way between the house and the front line of soldiers.

The only thing Guts had killed was the front lawn.

“Nuts,” he croaked.

Then he hurriedly dragged the cannon back to reload. But there wasn’t any time. The soldiers had quickened their approach, and they’d be on us with their bayonets long before another round was ready.

I could shoot one of them, maybe even two or three, considering the loaded rifles abandoned all around me. But it was pointless.

Unless I could shoot Pembroke.

But I couldn’t even see him.

And the soldiers were closing in. I had to draw him out quickly.

“I HAVE WHAT YOU WANT, AND IF YOU KILL ME YOU’LL NEVER GET IT!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

Someone barked an order. The troops stopped advancing and went into a defensive crouch. A hundred guns pointed in my direction, the closest one less than thirty feet away.

“Is that you, Egg?” I heard Pembroke call out mildly. His voice was coming from the rear, where a cluster of soldiers stood together.

“It is.”

“Where’s Millicent?”

“Never mind that,” I said. “I’ve got the thing you’ve been searching for.”

“What might that be?”

“Come closer and we’ll talk about it.”

“Not unless you stop reloading that cannon.”

I motioned for Guts to move away from the cannon. He gave it up reluctantly, moving back to the other side of Quint and picking up a pistol.

There were a dozen bushels of dirt at the top of the porch stairs, guarding the front of the cannon. Taking care not to stand up and present a target, I shoved the middle ones down the stairs with one hand, then swung my leg out, pressing my foot against the cannon’s carriage and giving it a hard shove until it rolled forward and tumbled down the steps with a heavy crash.

Then I scurried back into cover.

“Show yourself!” I yelled.

A moment later, the cluster of soldiers at the back parted to reveal a small group of men in civilian dress. Pembroke stepped forward from the group.

“Satisfied?”

I crouched behind one of the bushels under the porch rail, sighting him down the rifle in the little open slot created by the space between the bushel and the top rail. From the other side, the rifle wouldn’t be visible. He might guess I was aiming at him, but he wouldn’t know for sure.

The problem was, he was still most of the way down the road, too far away for me to be confident I’d kill him with one shot. And I probably wouldn’t get a second.

“Come closer,” I called out. “I can barely see you.”

He took a few steps forward. Still not close enough.

“Let’s not play games. What do you have?”

“Come closer!”

“I’m close enough. Tell me what you have.”

I wasn’t going to get a better shot. My finger curled over the trigger.

“Here it is,” I started to say—

“DADDY!”

She must have been watching from inside the house, because she burst out the front door and down the steps so fast that by the time I readjusted my aim after the startle her voice gave me, she was standing right in my line of fire, the only figure in the thirty feet of no-man’s-land between the porch and the front line of soldiers.

“Millicent!” He started toward her.

“Stop! Not another step, Daddy!” He did as he was told.

“In fact, move back. All of you,” she said, making a wide shooing motion at the soldiers.

They stared at her, bewildered, and held their ground.

She put her hands on her hips, her shoulders thrust back indignantly. “Seriously, Daddy, make them move. We’ve got a lot to discuss, and I really don’t think all these guns are helpful.”

Pembroke turned and muttered something to a soldier in the cluster at the rear. He must have been their commander, because he barked, “Fall back!” and the soldiers retreated a respectable distance to watch the situation unfold.

“Here’s the thing, Daddy… Can you hear me all right?” She was speaking so loudly they could probably hear her in the lower orchards.

“Yes, darling,” he said, more than a little impatiently.

“There’s been a terrible series of misunderstandings. Absolutely dreadful. First Egg goes out with Mr. Birch on a perfectly pleasant excursion, they’re getting along famously, when suddenly there’s a horrible accident. Birch trips on a root, falls to his death, and somehow everyone gets it in their head that Egg pushed him.

“Which couldn’t be farther from the truth. I mean, Daddy, you know Egg. He’s the gentlest and sweetest of souls, and he’d never hurt anyone on purpose, LET ALONE KILL HIM…”

As she said this, she turned away from her father and threw a pointed stare in my direction, as if to say,
Put that gun down.

“Shoot him,” muttered Guts from the other side of the porch.

“She’s blocking my shot!” I muttered back.

“And that’s just the start of it, Daddy,” continued Millicent. “There’s been a whole series of absolutely fantastical rumors
swirling around. Completely unbelievable, and so slanderous of you I ordinarily wouldn’t even dignify them with a response. But they’ve gotten so widespread that I really must mention every single one so you can denounce them all, unequivocally, in front of all these people.”

“Darling, I really don’t think—”

“Here’s the first one: that you intentionally rigged that balloon accident to send Egg’s family to their death. That can’t possibly be true, can it?”

“Of course not, darling.”

“And the idea that you sent Birch to kill Egg—it’s preposterous, isn’t it?”

“Quite so, sweetheart.”

“That’s what I keep telling everyone! It’s laughable! But they’re quite stuck on the idea, probably because of the other rumor—that you created some phony adoption certificate and forged Egg’s name to it so you could take control of the plantation. Surely
that’s
false, right, Daddy?”

Even from a distance, I could see Pembroke’s face begin to turn red.

“That’s a bit less clear, darling—”

“Then let’s clear it up straightaway! Egg, did you ever agree to be adopted by my father?”

“No, I didn’t,” I called out.

“You never signed any papers to that effect?”

“Definitely not.”

“So if any papers did exist, they’d be forgeries, and completely illegal?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Millicent—” There was a hard edge to Pembroke’s voice. She’d pushed him to the limit.

“Don’t get cross, Daddy. It’s not your fault at all! I think I know what the problem is.”

“Which is what?”

“Shoddy legal advice. Is Mr. Archibald with you?”

“No, dear. He’s back on Sunrise.”

“Well, I think you should have a
very
pointed conversation with him when we get home, because he’s obviously served you quite poorly. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I suppose it’s possible.”

“It
must
be the case! Because I love you so
very
much, Daddy. You’re the kindest, most honorable man in the world, and you’d
never
hurt an innocent person, or try to take what isn’t yours. I mean, if you’d really done
any
of those things, my heart would simply break! I could never speak to you again.”

Her voice wavered a little. She paused for a moment. When she started again, she was all brightness and good cheer.

“But that’s
obviously
not what happened. So can we all just agree, on both sides, that this was completely silly, and with the possible exception of one incompetent lawyer, no one’s done anything wrong? Egg?”

I looked at Guts. His eyes were scrunched together in a confused look, and a little disappointed, too, like he was sorry the morning might not end in a rain of bullets after all.

“Works for me,” I called out.

“Daddy? Do you agree?”

“To what, now, darling?”

“Do you agree that Egg didn’t kill Birch, he’s not your adopted son, and the plantation is his property?”

Pembroke was silent.

“Please tell me you agree, Daddy. Because I love you so.”

I saw his shoulders rise, then sag a bit. When he spoke, I could barely hear him.

“Of course, my love.”

“Oh, that’s
such
a relief!”

She raised her hands, addressing everyone like the director of a play. “Now, let’s all put the guns away and go about our business! Daddy, Egg, come meet me in the middle so we can shake hands and part as friends.”

It took some doing on both sides to make that happen. There was a long, muttered argument among the cluster of civilian men on Pembroke’s side that Millicent had to horn in on, and it took me almost as long to convince Guts to set down the pistol he was holding and agree not to shoot anybody.

But within a few minutes, the soldiers’ guns were strapped to their backs, they were facing downhill in formation for the march back to the port, and Pembroke and I were standing with Millicent in the middle of the lawn, near the fresh crater left by the cannonball. Pembroke’s associates watched from a safe distance over by the soldiers, as Guts, Mung, and Quint stood on the porch.

“Now, let’s shake hands so Daddy and I can sail away to Sunrise and forget this whole thing ever happened,” said Millicent.

Pembroke’s face was expressionless, but his eyes never left
mine. The firm grip of his handshake stopped just short of being painful.

“Terribly sorry about all these misunderstandings,” he said.

“That’s all right,” I said.

“We certainly enjoyed having you as a houseguest those few weeks.”

“Thank you for your hospitality,” I said, trying to sound sincere.

“Wouldn’t mind having you again. In fact, you’re more than welcome to come back with us now if you’d like.”

“Think I’ll stay here,” I said.

“Shame. Still, hope to you see you again soon.” He smiled when he said it, but the look in his eyes made my blood run cold.

He turned away. “Come along, Millicent.”

“Just a moment, Daddy. I need to say good-bye to Egg.”

She stepped past him toward me, with a kind of smile on her face I’d never seen before.

“Thank you,” I said. “For everything.”

“Is this a good smile to remember?” It was sweet and tender, but less confident than usual. It almost seemed shy. Like a lot of things about her, it confused me.

But I liked it. I nodded.

She stepped closer, so close our chests were almost touching, and slipped her fingers through mine.

“Remember this too,” she breathed, as her lips rose to kiss me.

I let my eyes fall shut as I leaned into her. When we finally separated and I opened my eyes again, I saw spots.

She laughed a little. I did too.

Then I saw the look on her father’s face.

Someone was going to pay for that kiss.

It might have been me, right then—I wouldn’t have been surprised if Pembroke had reached out to strangle me with his bare hands. But she tugged him on the arm, guiding him away from me.

“Good-bye, Egg!” she called.

“Good-bye,” I said.

Pembroke gave me one last cold look.

“See you soon, boy.”

Then he turned away, and they started off toward the others.

I turned around and began to walk back toward the house. I felt like I was floating, blissful and stupid.

Which was why it took me so long to register the look of alarm on Guts’s face.

He shouted a warning as he started toward me, his eyes locked onto something over my shoulder.