Jim Morgan and the King of Thieves (35 page)

Snow crunched beneath the soles of his shoes, and he looked up to find himself back in the courtyard of the tree again. The white door had become the green one through which he’d first come, and the magical tree’s blossoms were now closed in the moonlight. For a moment, Jim wondered if it was possible that he had dreamed the
entire episode up, but the amulet’s chain was cold in his hand, and the memory of his father still stung him real enough. As he padded through the snow passed the tree, he noticed his own pair of footprints circling around the other side, and Jim could not help but marvel at what a tremendous adventure he’d been having since fleeing his house those many months ago.

Jim came to the door at the front of the courtyard and pushed it open, half-expecting Red and the Dragons to jump him as soon as he stepped through, take the amulet by force, and leave him and Lacey to find a way to free the Ratts on their own. But much to Jim’s surprise, when the door opened, he found the Dragons in chains, along with Lacey, and even more shocking, so were the Ratts. Jim scrunched his eyebrows in surprise, taking in the entire scene before him.

Constable Butterstreet and his deputy were indeed standing watch over the unruly lot of pickpockets, manacles about their wrists, but not one of them noticed Jim in the least. Their eyes were locked on the street, and only when Jim followed their gazes did he understand just how sticky the situation had become.

Royal marines lined up against a slew of mangy pirates. Swords, pistols, and bayonets gleamed in the light of the torches. At the head of the pirates stood the gold-toothed salt, MacGuffy, and while the old buccaneer’s toothy smile was enough to give Jim a start, it was the sight of the marine commander that turned his blood to ice. Harsh shadows on his pale face, his gloved hand gripping his sword, stood the black-haired captain, Bartholomew Cromier, the man who had once tried to kill Jim in his father’s study.

The ghoulish captain and the old sailor faced each other in the street, their armed men ready for battle at their backs. The marines firmly held their ground, but their fair faces hardly matched the cocked smiles and crazed eyes of the wild pirate bunch across from them, itching for a fight.

Jim watched all of this like a spectator at a boxing match until a raspy voice called attention to his presence.

“Well, well, Jim Morgan,” the King of Thieves muttered, slinking from a nearby shadow. “You had it in you after all! Well done, my boy, well done indeed. But it seems we find ourselves in a rather precarious predicament.” No sooner than the King of Thieves said this than every party involved in the fierce standoff noticed Jim’s arrival, and nearly a hundred heads turned at once to find him there, and nearly two hundred eyes lit up with recognition.

“Jim Morgan!” Captain Bartholomew Cromier set his icy cold sights on the boy, a sort of madness glittering in his blue eyes, fury glinting off the teeth in his wolfish growl. “You’ve caused me quite a bit of trouble since the last time we met.”

“Not nearly as much as you’ve caused me, you murderer!” Jim’s fingers and toes crackled with electricity, an angry heat blazing up from his chest, flushing his face a fierce red.

The captain, cheeks still as pale as the winter weather, grinned cleverly and turned to MacGuffy. “I’ll tell you what, sir,” he said, putting on the airs of a merciful noble. “I’ll do you a favor in exchange for a small token. You let me take the boy, to punish him for crimes against the crown, and I’ll leave your special little place alone for now, which I’m sure should be plenty enough time for your quick hands and feet to empty it of all its plunder.”

MacGuffy chuckled and his men laughed and chortled right along with him. “Well, that’s migh’y generous of ye, my liege.” MacGuffy arched his eyebrow high, staring fearlessly into the young captain’s face. “But as ye said earlier, we be pirates. And as a general rule, pirates don’ care too much to see anyone punished for crimes against the crown, sire. An’ it seems to me that the boy here is accusin’ ye of some crimes of your very own…and I find that more than a teensy curious, eh?”

Bartholomew bristled and, for the first time, visible even from where Jim stood by the door of the vault, the slightest tint of color touched his white cheeks. “I’m giving you a chance to walk away with your life, old man. What do you care for the boy? He’s a liar and a
thief. Keep your treasure, keep your lives, keep your tongue in your mouth, and walk away.”

“I’m no liar!” Jim raged from where he stood, no longer caring that there was nowhere to run or nowhere left to hide. “I saw you with my own eyes! You killed Hudson and you helped kill my father!”

Now this got the pirate’s attention. MacGuffy’s teasing smile twitched with madness to match his glee. “It may come as a surprise to ye, captain,” MacGuffy said lowly, so low that Jim could barely hear. “But we are more than a bit familiar with the boy’s father - Lindsay Morgan was his name.”

Bartholomew Cromier’s face twisted into a cruel snarl, and he leaned in close to the pirate, speaking as low as MacGuffy. “Yes, Lindsay Morgan, scourge of the Pirate Seas. Yes, I killed him and his man, and you can thank me later.”

“ARRGGHH!” MacGuffy suddenly cried, whipping his old cutlass from his bandolier with blinding speed. Bartholomew Cromier, who claimed to be the best swordsman in the king’s navy, barely evaded the blow, quickly brandishing his own blade in defense. “Undeserving murderer!” MacGuffy growled and then called back to his men. “He admits to it! He killed Morgan!”

“ARRGGHH!” the gang of pirates howled into the night, both they and the marines across from them readying their weapons for battle.

“What will you do, old man?” Bartholomew challenged. “You’re without your leader, and you have only this handful of men at your back. This entire city is full of garrisons of the king’s men, guards, and soldiers! They are at my command! If he has any sense in his head, your own captain has undoubtedly unanchored whatever ship on which he now cowers, and has fled out to sea! Dread Steele, indeed. If he were here, that coward would have at least had the good sense to take my deal and give me the boy!”

“Would he now?” MacGuffy smiled again. “Why don’t we ask him?” With three quick tugs of his free hand, MacGuffy pulled away a wig, a false beard, and a fake nose from his face. He straightened his back and loosened his shoulders, spitting a set of false teeth from his mouth.

Jim, the Ratts, and Lacey dropped their jaws nearly to the snowy ground at their feet. “Dread Steele!” they cried together.

Bartholomew Cromier’s prideful sneer fell away, and he took two steps back from the now dark-haired pirate captain, standing confidently before him. “The boy will go free,” Steele proclaimed. “And you shall pay for your crimes! Have at you!”

The battle erupted in the night. The pirates charged the marines, and Steele and Cromier clashed together, the streets suddenly filling with shouts and cries, clangs and cracks.

Jim backed away until he hit the wall of the Vault of Treasures behind him. He saw Butterstreet swoop the chained children into his arms and throw them against the building, keeping himself between them and the melee in the street. As for the skirmish, Jim could hardly believe his eyes. MacGuffy, once the old pirate, now the famed marauder, Dread Steele, attacked Bartholomew Cromier with all of the rage Jim himself wanted to throw at the Captain. Steele seemed as crazed for justice as Jim was, and Jim thought back to the fury that had gripped the pirate at the accusation of playing a part in Lindsay Morgan’s murder. Why would Lindsay Morgan’s oldest adversary fight so hard to avenge him?

Jim had little time to ponder this mystery, however, for as swords and clubs and muskets and bayonets clashed before him, he felt the King of Thieves and Wyzcark creeping up on him from the shadows by the wall.

Jim leapt back from the two master criminals, lifting the amulet high above his head by its chain. “Back off, or I’ll smash it on the ground! I swear I will!”

The King of Thieves and Wyzcark stopped dead in their tracks, the king throwing up his hands as though deeply offended. “Why Jim, I’m disappointed! I would never steal something that has already been agreed upon between two thieves.”

“You’re a liar!” Jim leveled his finger at the King, pulling the amulet just a bit farther over his shoulder.

“A liar?” The King formed the most believable, hurt look on his face. “On the contrary, Jim, I am a man of my word. I made a deal with
you, and I always keep my promises.” The King reached behind his back and, from seemingly nowhere, produced Jim’s box, still locked tight by gypsy magic. He held it up on the tips of his long, spindly fingers, like a gift presented to a lord.

Jim’s eyes lit upon the box and, without thinking, his hand holding the amulet dropped just a little.

“You see, Jim,” the King said, his eyes glittering in the moonlight as they coveted the amulet in Jim’s hand. “This is business. You did something for me, now I shall do something for you. Don’t think me a fool Jim, for I don’t take you for one. This box is the key back to the life you were born to, isn’t it? A key back to the life you deserve.”

Jim couldn’t take his eyes off the box. As much as he hated to admit it, the king was right. It was all right there, Hudson had said so, so many nights ago. Even though the treasure in the Vault was gone, the box was all that Jim had left, and perhaps his only means back to his old world of ease and comfort, of servants and clothes, of riding lessons and harpsichord playing, of anything his heart desired.

“And Jim, for all the danger that you’ve faced on my behalf, for all the hardships you’ve suffered these past few months, I’ll make a new deal with you. Use the amulet now. Unlock this box. Take back what rightfully is yours. Then we can find new treasures together, as many and as much as we could possibly imagine! Believe me boy, I have never offered to share such power so wholly and completely as I offer to share it with you now.”

“Don’t listen to him, Jim!” Lacey cried out, but Jim was deaf and blind to all else but the King of Thieves and the cursed box. he lowered the amulet even farther, his shoulders slack, and his gaze still fixed on his box.

“We could be kings, Jim Morgan.” The king drew closer and closer to Jim, his voice low and comforting. “Not false kings of thieves and gangs, nor rulers of hungry, dirty streets, we could be true kings, rulers of lands and men we have never even seen nor known before. Join me and leave the others behind. The box is yours. Untold treasures can be ours! I’ll be like a father to you, and you can be like a son to
me. Unlock the box and take the first steps back to where you truly belong.”

Jim’s hand raised again, though this time not above him, but before him. He lifted the amulet to eye level, between him and the box. A faint glimmer emanated from the center of the amulet, the glow reflecting in the eyes of both Jim and the King of Thieves.

“Jim!” George called, but Jim was deaf to their words.

“That’s it, Jim,” the king coaxed. “Time to live up to your potential. Just wish with your heart, speak the name of the amulet, and the life you deserve will be yours again.”

The glow around the amulet became a bright flame of green light, flashing in the dark shadow of the night, splashing the white snow at Jim’s feet with glimmering sparkles. Jim knew what he wanted, most of all in the bottom of his heart, and he envisioned his life, where he would be, and with whom, picturing it all the way to his dying day. He knew what he had to do. The amulet’s light was almost blinding now, and the king and Wyzcark had to squint against the green blaze.

Jim held the amulet high and his lips moved as though under another’s control. “I wish to unlock that which is held fast. I wish to unlock the desire of my heart…my treasure…”

“Yes Jim!” the king cried. “Do it!”

Then something happened the king did not see coming. Jim whirled on his heel and thrust the amulet toward his chained friends. “PORTUNES!” He cried with all his might, and at the sound of his voice, a flare of green flame devoured the chains about the wrists of the Ratts, Lacey, and even Red and the Dragons, leaving nothing but magic embers floating in the night.

“No!” the king cried, for Jim then hurled the amulet through the air to dash it against the cobblestone street. The King, forgetting all else, stretched out for the Amulet with his spidery fingers, but he was too late, the medallion crashed into the stony street and broke apart, shattering to pieces in a blazing, green explosion.

Down on his knees, clutching at the broken shards of the amulet, the King raged and howled and cursed. Jim feared what the King
would now do, as madness fully gripped him. But as the King breathed murder towards Jim, the escaped green fire flowing from the ruined talisman climbed up the King’s spidery fingers, snaking it’s way up his long, skinny arms.

“Foolish boy!” the king rasped, his face shaking with fear as he tried to swipe away the green light that now so quickly enveloped him. “Look what you’ve done! It could have been so easy. The treasure was in our grasp. It could have been ours! It could have been—” The King never finished those words. The green magic consumed his entire body, and in a final brilliant flash and puff of green smoke, the King of Thieves vanished into nothingness.

“Look at vat you’ve done!” Wyzcark leapt out from where he was hiding, his crooked little dagger glinting in his fat hand. “You’ve cost us everything, Jim Morgan!” Wyzcark pulled the blade back to strike, but from nowhere, Constable Butterstreet and Thomas, his deputy, jumped between the boy and his attacker.

“You’ll not be hurtin’ these children on my watch, jackanapes!” Butterstreet rumbled. “They’re-gonna-sing-in-my-church-choir!”

The two King’s Men were about to seize the fat, little thief, but Wyzcark slashed out with his knife, backing Thomas and Butterstreet away for just a split second. Then he fled like a clumsy, howling wraith into the shadows, Butterstreet and Thomas hot on his heels. More terrified shouting and screaming followed as Red and his lunks ran off in the other direction as fast as they could, without even a thanks to Jim for setting them free.