New Lands (THE CHRONICLES OF EGG) (5 page)

Healy glanced at Guts, then back to me. When he spoke, it was in a low, oddly wavering voice.

“I imagine you’re at loose ends…between your family and this Pembroke business…If you and your friend want to come with me…temporarily, mind you…I’m sure I could figure out what to do with you.”

It was dumbfounding—not just the offer itself, but the fact that Burn Healy suddenly seemed less than completely self-assured. In fact, he seemed almost as confused by his offer as I was.

I looked up at his ship, at the line of stone-faced killers on the deck with their guns still trained on the
Thrush,
and at the red flag of piracy snapping in the wind over its mast. Then I looked back at Guts.

“Can I…talk it over with my partner?”

“Partner? Oh! Yes. By all means. Have at it.” Some of Healy’s usual verve returned, and he motioned me toward Guts with a wave of his hand.

“Wot is it?” Guts muttered when I’d dragged him off to a corner of the foredeck.

“He wants us to come with him.”

“Wot, on his ship?”

“I guess so, yeah.”

“Wot the
pudda
for?”

“I don’t know. I think he wants to help us.”

“Help us how?”

“Well…he guessed what we were after. And he said it’s not worth the trouble. And Pella’s no place to be at the moment. And if we come with him, he’ll…‘figure out what to do with us.’”

“
Blun
to that!”

“Keep your voice down! Look, I don’t know what he’s getting at, but—”

“I do! Wants the treasure!”

“You think?” That hadn’t occurred to me.

“Course he does! S’plains everything! That’s why he helped ye against Pembroke! ’Cause he knew ye had the map! So he gives ye the guns ye need to slip the richy, then follows ye out here, makes like he’s savin’ ye again! And yer so grateful, ye spill yer guts to him! So he gets the map, slits our throats, makes off with the treasure!”

Guts let out a low whistle. “Real
porna mafalo,
he is.”

I chewed on that for a while. It did explain a lot. But I just didn’t buy it.

“I don’t know…I feel like we can trust him.”

Guts snorted. “That’s ’cause ye never lived on no pirate ship.”

“He’s not like the Ripper! You heard what he said to the crew—he’s hunting him down! Burn Healy’s not that kind of pirate.”

“Don’t be a fool! Friendly or not, sooner or later…” His face twitching, Guts unstrapped Lucy and raised his left arm to show me the rounded stump where his hand should have been.

“Only one kind of pirate in this world,” he said.

That settled it for both of us.

There was just one problem.

“How am I going to tell him no? He’s Burn — Healy. What if he kills me?”

“He ain’t gonna…” Guts’s voice trailed off as he considered the situation.

Then he grabbed my arm in a tight squeeze. “’Fore ye go over there—draw me the map, will ye?”

“Oh, shut up!” I tore my arm away and started toward Healy.

It was the longest twenty feet I’d ever walked. He must have heard me coming, because he turned to look at me when I was still a few steps away.

“What’s the verdict?”

“We…kind of…” Talking to him was suddenly as hard for me as it had been for Racker. “M-maybe…rather…”

“Not come?” His eyebrows jumped. But not like he was angry. Like it was a big relief.

“Well, more’s the pity. Best of luck to you.”

He gave me a smile and a friendly pat on the shoulder. Then he took off so fast he was halfway up the plank before I had time to exhale.

WHEN THE
GRIFT
disappeared for good over the horizon, a cheer of joy went up from the crew. But something had been bugging me almost from the moment Healy had left the
Thrush,
and once the cheers died down, I finally shared it with Guts.

“The thing is…he’s Burn — Healy, right?”

Guts nodded. “Burn
pudda
Healy.”

“So if he wants something, he takes it. And if he wanted the map—why not just kidnap me? Drag me on board? It doesn’t make sense.”

Guts thought about it. “Nope. Guess it don’t.”

“I think he really
was
trying to help us. And he warned me about Pella. Said it’s ‘no place to be. Especially in the next few weeks.’ Like something bad was going to happen there.”

We were both quiet for a minute.

“I think we should have gone with him,” I said.

Guts gave a twitchy shrug.

“Too late now.”

He was right about that, anyway.

N
ot long after we parted ways with Healy, the cry of “LAND HO!” went up from the crow’s nest. Soon enough, the mountains came into view, a distant range of jagged blue peaks. Racker turned the
Thrush
parallel to the coastline, and we followed it through the night and into the next morning.

It dawned foggy and gray. We couldn’t see mountains anymore, or anything at all through the haze. By late morning, I was starting to wonder if we’d strayed off course when a massive fortress appeared out of the gloom, flying the purple and orange of the Cartager royal flag.

Its giant walls were brown and smooth, like they were made of clay, and the whole thing seemed to float on the water, unattached to anything. It wasn’t until we cleared the far side that I realized it was built on a long finger of rocky land that jutted out at the end of a large bay.

We continued into the bay, and ships began to appear at
anchor. There were a few familiar schooners, but mostly they were strange and exotic-looking: giant galleys with dozens of oars and curved hulls as round as sausages, or lopsided single-masters with towering sterns and squared-off bows so low they didn’t look seaworthy.

As we got farther in and the whole port came into view, I counted over a hundred ships, moored in the bay or docked at one of a dozen long piers. Tied up at the northernmost piers, by the finger of land that led to the fortress, were three gargantuan Cartager men-of-war, their triple decks bristling with cannon.

Then the city itself peeked out of the fog, starting with a ragged line of buildings, some as high as six stories tall and all made of the same smooth brown material as the fortress. They were packed so close together that at first I thought they were all one building, like some sort of giant rectangular anthill.

We dropped anchor in the middle of the bay, and Reggie used signal flags to hail a few distant figures on the docks. Guts fetched the rucksack full of our weapons from the hold, and we fidgeted on deck as we waited for a boat to row out so we could hitch a ride to shore.

I thought about asking Guts for one of the guns from the pack, but I was so keyed up my hands were shaking, and I didn’t want to accidentally shoot anybody.

The Cartager soldiers came out first, in four long boats. There were two of them in each boat, big men with tiny ears and jowly necks, all so overfed and sleepy-looking I never would have guessed they were soldiers if they hadn’t been carrying rifles and wearing long purple uniforms that most of them left unbuttoned over their swollen bellies.

“Don’t look like killers t’me,” Guts scoffed. “Look like purple slugs.”

I had to agree. They seemed too lazy to hang anybody dead. None of them did a lick of work—as best I could tell, they were only in the boats to keep an eye on their Native laborers, who couldn’t have been more different from the soldiers.

The Natives were lanky and trim, with copper skin and wide, flat noses. They went barefoot and shirtless, dressed only in pale cotton breeches that hung loosely off their hips. Two of them manned each boat, handling both the rowing and the loading of the big crates of ugly fruit that just barely fit in the boats.

“Okalu?” I called to a couple of the Natives, but they didn’t even look up at me.

I wasn’t about to get on a boat with armed soldiers, no matter how fat and sleepy they looked, so once Reggie promised us civilians would be coming out, too, we stayed put and waited for a better option.

Half an hour after the last of the soldiers pushed off, a much smaller boat arrived, manned by a pair of Natives. One of them looked like all the other Natives, skinny and shirtless, but I would’ve mistaken the second for a Cartager if it hadn’t been for his ears, nose, and skin—he wore a frilly silk Continental shirt over a big belly, and he didn’t even bother to get up when the fruit crate proved too wide for the boat and nearly capsized them.

That sent a few dozen ugly fruit into the water. Fortunately, they floated—and although the silk-shirted Native produced a short club that he shook at the skinny one, he didn’t end up using it, because Skinny dove right in to recover the fruit.

Eventually, Skinny got it all loaded in—not just the fruit that had gone overboard, but the entire contents of the crate, which he dumped directly into the boat, filling it almost to the gunwale before he sent the empty crate back up to the
Thrush.

I didn’t like the looks of Silk Shirt’s club, so we decided to wait for the next boat. We were watching them cast off when Racker turned to us.

“Change your mind about Pella?” he asked.

“Just waiting for the right boat,” I said.

“Right or not, that’s the last one,” he said. I looked back at the deck and realized there wasn’t any ugly fruit left on it.

“Wait!” I yelled down at the Natives in the rowboat, who were pushing off from the
Thrush
’s hull. They looked up at me, confused. Then Skinny raised the oars to row away.

I was just starting to panic when Guts jumped over the deck rail and down into the boat, the rucksack strapped to his back.

He landed ugly, nearly swamping the boat and turning it into a chaotic tangle of fruit, limbs, and angry Natives. I stood there gaping at the sight until I realized the boat was already too far from the
Thrush
for me to make it at a jump, and getting farther away with every passing second.

I took a deep breath and went into the water.

When I broke the surface, I could hear Guts and the Natives yelling at each other. With a few frantic strokes, I managed to make it to the boat and grab hold of the gunwale above my head. It was too high for me to lift myself up into the boat, and from the angle I was at, I couldn’t see much except the bare back of the skinny Native.

The yelling was getting worse. Guts had used up his whole supply of Cartager curses, and the Natives clearly understood them and didn’t appreciate it.

“HELP!” I called.

That got Skinny’s attention, but not the way I wanted. When he turned and saw me, his eyes flashed with anger, and he raised one of the oars to clock me.

“DON’T, YE —!” That was Guts.

“— —!” That was Silk Shirt, giving a panicky yell in a language I didn’t understand.

Skinny’s oar froze in midair. He looked over his shoulder, and I heard him gasp.

“Help him up, ye —!” That was Guts again. He had to repeat himself a few times, because Skinny didn’t understand Rovian. But eventually, Skinny put down the oar and turned around to help me.

His eyes were wide with worry, and once he’d managed to haul me into the boat—which was so overflowing with ugly fruit there was barely any room for me—I saw why.

Guts had one of our guns in his good hand. He was sweeping it back and forth at the two Natives, like he was trying to decide which of them to shoot.

“Grab a gun,” he told me. “Can’t cover ’em both where I’m sittin’.”

“Are you mad!? You can’t shoot them!”

“Don’t have to—just gotta look like we might. C’mon! In the pack!”

He was in the middle seat, the ugly fruit piled so deep around him I couldn’t see his lower legs. Our pack was on his lap.

“This is bad,” I said. “This is
really
bad.”

“Could be worse. Could be them holdin’ the guns. C’mon!”

He jostled the pack with his leg. I didn’t much like his plan, but I didn’t have a better one. So I took a gun from the pack and pointed it in the general direction of Silk Shirt, who was sitting up at the bow.

Then I shoved some ugly fruit aside with my free hand and wedged myself into the middle seat next to Guts, facing forward. Guts was facing the other way, his gun on Skinny back in the stern.