New Lands (THE CHRONICLES OF EGG) (12 page)

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out Guts’s hook. He waved it over Guts’s face.

“Maybe I’ll use this. How ye like that? Pluck yer eyes, fer starters…”

I turned my head away, sick with horror. Guts was going to be ripped apart, just a few feet from me, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Soon enough, they’d kill me, too. Roger Pembroke would get what he wanted. And I’d never see Millicent again.

When you added all that to the pain in my gut and the lack of food, water, and sleep, it’s no wonder I started to hallucinate, seeing things I knew weren’t really there.

It started with a flicker of movement in the gloom beyond the ladder that led to the upper deck. Then it slowly grew until it entered the dim circle of light cast by the overhead lamp and hardened into the ghost of a man, short and skinny and dressed in sailor’s leggings and a baggy shirt.

It lurched slightly as it moved, hands pressed together to hold a tightly knotted burlap sack, swollen with something bulbous and heavy-looking.

As it passed under the lamp, it rotated its head toward me, and I nearly gasped when I saw it had Millicent’s face—only pale and wraithlike, with terrible dark circles under its eyes. What would have been her long golden hair was matted and dull, bunched up in a straggly ponytail.

The ghost stared at me with hollow eyes. Then it slowly shifted the sack to one hand and raised a finger to its lips.

I couldn’t have made a peep even if I’d wanted to.

It started moving again, through the pool of lamplight toward Birch. It was still lurching, like the sack it held was a chore to carry.

Birch was bent low over Guts, still taunting him with Lucy.

“…Nah! Not yer eyes! Then ye can’t watch the fun! How ’bout I start lower down? Carve me name in yer belly? Then when ye die…”

The ghost came to a stop just behind Birch and slowly hoisted the sack up over its head.

“…an’ ye go to the devil, he’ll know it was me wot sent ye! How ye like—”

In one swift, violent motion, the ghost swung the sack down against the back of Birch’s head. To my surprise—heavy as it seemed, I figured it was a phantom sack that would pass right through him—it collided against his skull with a crunchy thud.

Birch staggered to one side. The ghost followed, raising the sack to hit him again.

The second blow brought him to his knees. Then there was a third, and a fourth—I imagined I was hearing the ghost utter a fierce little grunt with every swing—and with the fifth strike, the phantom sack seemed to burst, dissolving into a shower of
tinkling shards that clattered to the floor around Birch’s unconscious body.

I could’ve sworn I heard the ghost mutter “Oh, blast!” but I knew that wasn’t possible, because ghosts couldn’t talk any more than they could grunt.

It crouched down over Birch’s body, facing away from me. I couldn’t see what it was doing, but I figured it was sucking the everlasting soul from his body, because I’d read a story once about ghosts, and I knew they did that kind of thing.

“Where the
blun
did
you
come from?” I heard Guts sputter. I was about to call to him when suddenly the ghost rose up in the air and began to lurch toward me.

As haggard and hollow-eyed and sallow-skinned as it was, it looked so much like the real Millicent that for an instant, I thought it actually was her—and that she was leaning over me, lowering her head toward mine, so she could kiss me.

But when it got close, its breath was so rancid and sour I knew it must be some kind of unearthly demon, because the real Millicent never could’ve smelled that bad.

It pressed a clammy palm against my head, pushing it to one side, and I recoiled in horror, certain the demon was about to suck my soul out through my ear.

Then I heard jingling, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the ring of keys it was holding, taken from Birch’s pocket.

And when the demon barked, “Savior’s sake, Egg, move your fat head so I can unlock this stupid collar!” I realized I hadn’t been seeing things at all.

I
t took Millicent some doing to get the chains off me—she kept fumbling the keys, and when she finally got my neck free and moved on to my wrists, she tried the same key over and over, even though it clearly didn’t fit in the lock and there were two more on the ring.

“Maybe try the others,” I suggested.

“What do you think I’m doing?” she snapped. She wasn’t herself—the surly attitude wasn’t all that unusual, but the horrid breath and ragged appearance definitely were. Worse, she was woozy and unfocused—even though I knew it was her in the flesh, her normally sharp eyes still looked ghostlike and vacant.

“Hurry!” hissed Guts. “He’s gonna come to!”

I couldn’t tell if Birch was stirring, but even if he wasn’t, there was no telling how much time we had before someone came down the ladder and found us. So when Millicent finally got my wrists free, I asked her for the keys.

“Why don’t I do the rest?”

“Ugh! Fine.” She handed them to me, then wandered off toward Birch’s body. I unshackled my ankles and sprang up to free Guts. I had to step around Millicent to get to him—she was kneeling on the floor by Birch’s legs, stuffing her pockets with the scattered contents of the burst sack.

They turned out to be hundreds of newly minted silver pieces, although just then I was too frantic to appreciate that Millicent had just saved us by coldcocking Birch with a sack of her father’s money.

As I went to work on the lock for Guts’s neck collar, I heard what sounded like voices of alarm somewhere far above us.

We had to find a way off the ship, and fast.

The instant I unshackled Guts, he jumped up from the plank and started to stomp on Birch’s head with his bare foot.

“Cut it out!” I hissed. “You’ll break your foot!”

As I looked around the deck for portholes, I felt a smack on the back of my leg. It was Millicent, still kneeling on the floor and stuffing her pockets full of coins.

“Help pick these up!” she demanded.

“There’s no time!” I told her. “And we don’t need it!”

“Course you do! You’re poor as pantry mice!”

She reached up and shoved a fistful of coins into my pocket.

Guts was still stomping on Birch’s head. I couldn’t blame him for it, but it was as big a waste of time as picking up the coins.

“Come on!” I slugged him on the arm, then moved to the lantern, taking it off its hook so I could explore the rest of the deck.

I started forward with the lantern, and I heard Millicent curse behind me as she lost the light she needed to gather the coins.
Guts followed me, strapping on his hook, which he’d plucked from the floor where Birch dropped it.

Beyond the ladder were two more lengths of planking with chains for slaves. Past those, the ship began to narrow, tapering toward the bow. Small, floor-to-ceiling storage compartments ran along both sides. I opened one and found nothing but a pile of stone blocks with steel rings embedded in them. Some of the rings had manacles attached on short chains.

I kept going. Two compartments from the bow, I found a little cabin with a short bed and a hinged table. There was still no porthole, but it gave me hope that I’d find something else—and when I opened the final compartment, there it was.

I’d found the head. It was a cramped space, half of it filled by a boxlike structure just the right height for sitting, with a round hole in the middle about a foot across.

I peered down through the head. Since it was night, I didn’t expect to see anything except blackness—but to my surprise, the water was clearly visible about ten feet down, light dancing on its surface.

It was flowing past the hull at a good clip, foam spraying up off the prow. That was bad.

“We’re moving out to sea,” I told Guts.

“Wot!?” He looked past me down the head, then cursed.

“Can’t fit through that,” he warned me. “Too narrow.”

“I’ll bust out the seat. You get Millicent.”

We both started back toward the middle of the deck. As Guts continued on, I stopped at the storage compartment where I’d seen the heavy stone blocks. I’d just picked one up when I heard Millicent’s voice.

“Let go, you sod!”

I found them near the ladder. Guts had Millicent by the waist and was trying to drag her backward as she struggled, spitting venom.

“Get your hands off me!”

“Yer outta yer tree!” he said.

“Quiet! Both of you!” I could hear an increasingly loud commotion somewhere on an upper deck, and I was terrified someone from the crew would hear us yelling and come down to investigate.

“She was halfway up the ladder!” Guts exclaimed. “Had to pull her off!”

“I’m just going to the galley,” Millicent said, as if it was the most reasonable thing on earth.

“Are you out of your mind?!”

“I’m
starving
! And I’m
sooooo
parched!” she said, with an exaggerated roll of her head that only made her seem more crazy.

“Yer mad!”

It was worse than mad. It was suicidal. And yet Millicent was looking at us like we were the crazy ones.

“I won’t take much. They’ll never miss it.”

Her eyes fluttered just then, like she might faint, and I suddenly realized what was wrong. She must have been hiding on the ship for days, and she’d gone batty from lack of food and water.

As I reached out to steady her, I heard footsteps on the deck above us. We were running out of time.

“So if you don’t mind—” she started to say, lunging for the ladder.

“Food and water’s this way!” I said, yanking her back toward the head.

She stumbled, unsteady on her feet. “No, it isn’t!”

“Yes, it is!
Tons
of it!”

“
Pffft!
”

Guts got the idea and joined in. “Oh, yeh! Seen it! Cakes and all. Big feast!”

Once we’d gotten her staggering in the right direction, I left her to Guts and rushed ahead with the stone block. When I got back to the head, I brought the block down hard against the wood surrounding the hole.

It made a terrible racket, and I felt the shudder up through my feet. But the wood didn’t budge.

I panicked and started to bang on it so wildly that when the wood finally gave way, I fell forward and almost dropped the block into the water. With a few more shots, I managed to open up a hole big enough to fit through.

By this time, Millicent had figured out she’d been swindled.

“That’s the loo!”

As I stepped out of the head, I heard a voice calling down from the top of the ladder.

“Mr. Birch! Need ye up top!”

“Through the hole! Quick!” I told Millicent.

“You’re not serious! People poop out of that!”

“
Mr. Birch…!
”

“Go!” I said to Guts.

He squeezed past me and vanished through the hole.

I heard feet on the ladder.

“Come on!” I begged Millicent.

She looked offended. “If you think for a moment I’m going to jump in a privy—”

I picked her up by the waist, swung her around, and dropped her through the hole. By the time I went after her, there were feet pounding across the deck toward me.

The ship was moving fast enough that I didn’t hit Millicent when I came down, but as I kicked back up toward the surface, I conked my head pretty good against the passing hull and had a panicky moment of fear that the rudder would knock me cold as it went by.

I started kicking and paddling in the direction I thought was sideways to the boat. It seemed to be taking an awfully long time to break the surface, and I realized my shoes were dragging me down, so I kicked them off.

Finally, I surfaced and started gulping air, and there was light—far too much of it for the middle of the night—and I turned to look around and discovered why.

The boat was on fire. Even as it continued to move out to sea, its two topsails were burning out of control.

I treaded water, which was harder than it should have been, and looked around for the others. There was no trace of them.

“Millicent! Guts!”

Someone broke the surface about ten feet away. I swam toward them, and as I did, I could feel my pants sucking me downward. I was about to shed them, too, when I realized the problem was the silver coins Millicent had shoved in my pocket. I quickly dug them out and let them sink.

“Guts?”

“Help!” he gurgled, and I realized he had Millicent in his good hand and was trying to pull her head above water.

I got a hand on her as well, and we struggled together for a moment until we managed to get Millicent’s head up. She coughed water, so I knew she was breathing. But she was heavy as a stone.

“Swim!” Guts urged her.

“Trying…!” She grunted, and as I readjusted my grip on her, my hand scraped against something hard near her waist, and I realized her clothes were still packed full of the silver coins.

“The coins! In her pockets!”

I felt around until I found a pocket and started pulling coins from it.

“Need those!” she protested.

I ignored her. “Kick your shoes off!”

“
Need
them!”