New Lands (THE CHRONICLES OF EGG) (34 page)

They gave me beef and milk as well as bread and water, and early on, they brought in a pallet for me to sleep on. Whatever they had planned for me—I was sure it involved writing out the map, but beyond that, I had no idea—they didn’t want me too hungry or tired to be useful to them.

I tried not to think about what was going to happen next. Seeing Pella Nonna in Rovian hands—and watching Roger Pembroke trot off toward the palace like he owned the place—had snuffed out the last of my hope that things might turn out okay. So I tried to spend the time living in my memories—of the better times with Millicent, and with Guts when we were first in Pella, and even the odd moment with Dad growing up on Deadweather.

Those two days with Dad at the end put a whole different color on my memories of him. Looking back, I found moments—like when he wrote “MUST ONE BOOKS” (he wasn’t much of a speller) on the ad he placed for a tutor, because he knew how much I loved to read—where it was clear he’d been looking out for me in a way that I was pretty sure proved he loved me.

I wished I’d told him I loved him, the way I had with Millicent. But the truth was, I didn’t realize it myself until he was gone for good.

And he’d never been much for that kind of thing, so maybe it was best left unsaid.

There were bad memories, too. I tried to keep them out of my head, but there was one in particular that wouldn’t let go of me—or maybe it was the other way around.

It was the old man with the frightened eyes and trembling lips. The one I couldn’t kill. I’d done a lot of stupid things to wind up in that cell, but none of them tore me up inside like that one did.

If I’d just had the guts to kill him, it would have all been different. I’d probably be with Millicent and my friends in the wilderness somewhere. Dad might even have joined us. Even if he hadn’t, he’d still be alive.

I could’ve done it. I had the stone in my hand and all the time in the world to bring it down on the old man’s head. Why didn’t I?

Was it mercy? Was I a good person for not having done it? Was it better to have spared the old man’s life, even though it cost Dad his, and was about to cost me mine?

Or was I just a coward?

There’s a line about courage in my favorite book,
Basingstroke.
The main character, James, gets impressed into the army, and
they’re marching off to battle, and the lieutenant tells his men, “Show me courage!”

James elbows the man next to him and says, “How do we do that?”

And the man says, “Nothin’ to it. Just see what needs doin’. Then do it.”

I’d seen what needed doing, clear as day.

I just couldn’t do it.

FINALLY, THEY CAME
for me, so soon after my last meal that I knew it couldn’t be another feeding. The door opened, and two soldiers beckoned me into the hallway. They led me down the hall and up the stairs, then down another hallway and into a room with a wooden table and three chairs.

In the middle of the table were a pitcher of water and two glasses. Off to the side, an inkpot and a quill pen were carefully arranged atop a short stack of parchment.

They took my manacles off and motioned for me to sit. Then they left the room, closing the door behind them.

I poured myself a glass of water. Under other circumstances, I might have waited to ask for permission. But I’d been parched for as long as I could remember—even after they started feeding me, I couldn’t seem to get enough water to slake my thirst—and I figured there was nothing they could do to punish me that was any worse than what was coming anyway.

I kept refilling my glass until the whole pitcher was gone. Then I sat and waited.

Fifteen minutes later, Roger Pembroke entered. He was
clean-shaven, in a blue linen long-tailed coat over a white silk shirt. He shut the door and walked over to the table.

He picked up a glass and the empty pitcher. When he felt its weight, his eyebrows rose a little. He smirked.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” he asked, lifting the pitcher slightly.

“I need to pee,” I said. It was true.

Pembroke went to the door and opened it. “Boy needs a privy.”

The two soldiers from before must have been guarding the door. They came in and escorted me off to do my business.

When I came back, the pitcher was full again. Pembroke was sitting casually, his fingers entwined over his stomach and his legs stretched out in front of him.

“Sit,” he said.

I sat. He poured me a fresh glass of water. Then he stared at me with his ice-blue eyes. They weren’t hateful, or angry, or even friendly. They just stared, with no emotion at all.

“I don’t suppose there’s any mystery as to why we’re here,” he finally said. “I only hope your memory’s equal to the task.”

He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and pulled out a worn piece of folded parchment. He slowly unfolded it and placed it on the table in front of me.

“This should help get you started.”

I stared down at the smudged figures, scrawled with a charcoal pencil. It was the same sequence of Okalu hieroglyphs that began the map in my head. I’d never seen that particular parchment before—not up close, anyway—but I instantly knew where it came from and who had written it.

It was the parchment that started the whole thing—the one my father had copied from the wall of the tomb before he took us to Sunrise and we met the Pembrokes. The one that made the Moku think Dad was footman to a goddess who’d just floated down out of the eastern sky.

Dad kept it in his pocket. The only way Pembroke could have gotten it was by robbing his corpse.

I could feel the bile rising in my throat.

“You stole that from him. You robbed his dead body.”

The blank stare didn’t waver. Pembroke slowly leaned forward in his chair until our faces were just inches apart.

“That’s right,” he said. “That’s exactly what I did.”

Then he leaned back again.

“Now finish it.”

I didn’t move for a while. When I finally did, it was to drink another glass of water.

We stared at each other through the silence. Then Pembroke looked away, pursing his lips as if he’d just remembered something.

“I’d almost forgotten…Someone wants to join us.”

He stood up and went to the door.

“Could you bring him in, please?” he asked one of the soldiers.

I heard the soldier walk off. As Pembroke returned to his seat, I looked down at Dad’s parchment. The lines were thick and shaky, their proportions badly distorted from the original. It looked like a child had drawn it—and for a moment, I felt embarrassed for Dad, and sorry that he’d spent so little time with a pencil that he could barely copy figures.

Then I had to look away, because I thought I might cry. I took a couple of deep breaths to steady myself.

When I looked back, there was a man in the doorway. He was big and rough, with a face so deformed that at first I didn’t recognize him. The nose was out of line with the mouth, there were wormy lumps over the left eyebrow, and underneath it the eye was gone completely from its socket, leaving a puckered, red-scarred hole.

His one good eye burned with hate.

“Mr. Birch. So glad you could join us. Have a seat.” Pembroke waved to the empty chair next to him.

Birch sat down, never taking his eye off me.

Pembroke placed a gentle hand on Birch’s shoulder.

“Not to bring up a sore subject, my friend—but remind me again how you lost that eye?”

“Little — kicked it out,” Birch growled.

My mind flashed back to Guts in the dingy hold of the slave ship, taking his foot to Birch’s head.

Pembroke nodded in my direction. “
This
little —?”

Birch’s lip curled. “Nah. But he’ll do.”

Pembroke nodded, approving. Then he leaned in toward me again.

“Tell you what,” he said. “I’m going to give you two minutes to draw that map. And if you haven’t done it by then, I’ll leave you and Mr. Birch to discuss the situation privately.”

Pembroke sat back and waited for me to make my decision.

Birch pulled out a rusty pocketknife and began to inspect the jagged, brown-crusted blade. After a moment, he raised his eye to stare at me again. He was smiling.

“Got plans fer you,” he said. “I been thinkin’ ’bout this fer a while now.”

I looked at the floor.

One way or another, I was going to die. I knew that.

But I wasn’t going to let them get that map out of me.

I was going to show them what courage was.

The two minutes passed.

Pembroke got up and left. He shut the door behind him.

Birch went to work on me.

He liked his work, and he was good at it.

I didn’t last long.

When Pembroke finally came back, I begged him to let me draw the map.

Once they got Birch out of the room, that’s what I did.

I did such a good job on it that when dinner came to my cell after they locked me back up, there was jelly bread for dessert. I cried as I ate it.

THE LAST PIECE
of jelly bread was still in my mouth when the cell door burst open. Roger Pembroke stood me up and pinned me to the wall by my throat.

“YOU THINK THIS IS A JOKE? THINK YOU CAN PLAY GAMES WITH ME?”

His face was bright red. A thick, angry vein bulged on his forehead.

I tried to speak, but he was crushing my windpipe, and all I could do was dribble bits of food onto the back of his hand.

He slammed me to the ground and kicked me once, so hard it knocked the wind out of me.

“Don’t know…what you mean,” I managed.

“GIVE ME THE REAL MAP!”

“I did!”

He picked me up and bashed me against the wall again. His burning eyes locked into mine.

“Who wrote that nonsense? Was it the Okalu girl? WHERE IS SHE?”

My whole body was shaking. “Don’t…know…what you’re…talking about.” I gulped air. “I drew the map. From the tomb. Memorized it best I could. If it’s wrong…I can try again…”

His eyes searched mine. The fury was slowly leaving his face.

He let me go and took a couple of steps back.

“You’re actually serious?”

I nodded. “I gave you what I had. Right from the tomb. Best I could.”

The fire in his eyes fell to a smolder. He looked at the wall. Sighed deeply. Rubbed his face with both hands.

Then he started to laugh.

“What is it?” I asked.

He kept on laughing for a while. Whatever the joke was, he seemed bent on enjoying it.

When he was done laughing, he sighed again. It was a heavy, worn-out kind of sigh.

“I’m not one for talk of the Savior,” he said in a wistful voice. “But I’ll say this…If God exists, He’s got quite a sense of humor.”

He started for the door.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Because after all that time and trouble…the damned thing’s worthless.”

A
fter Pembroke left, I lay in the darkness for a long time, trying to puzzle out what he meant by “worthless.” At first, I figured he was talking about the map—that it wasn’t a map after all, or it was but just didn’t lead to the Fist.

But the way he’d said “all that time and effort”—with a sort of heavy weight in his voice—made me wonder if he wasn’t talking about something else.