New Lands (THE CHRONICLES OF EGG) (7 page)

“’S’all I need.”

“Wha’s you name?”

“Guts.”

“Gu’s? Like”—the kid pointed to his stomach—“on you insides?”

“Guts like I got ’em, ye
bada pudda palomuno porsamora.
”

The big-nosed kid just laughed at the mouthful of insults. The guitarist, who’d been turning his head from side to side as he tried to follow the conversation, perked up at the curses and asked his friend a question in Cartager.

Big Nose explained, and the guitarist started to laugh, too.

I expected Guts to blow up at that. But he just smiled bigger.

“Ten gold. Wot ye say?”

I nudged Guts, then whispered in his ear.

“Is this a put-on?”

He shook his head. “Just wait.”

Big Nose was shaking his head, like he felt sorry for Guts.

“You wan’ lose you money, man? Illy play bes’ guitar in Pella.”

“Not no more.”

The other musicians chimed in, speaking Cartager. I looked around and realized we’d started to draw a crowd. People were trotting over, whispering and chuckling to each other as they pointed at Guts’s hook.

Big Nose gave Guts a helpless shrug.

“Okay, man. Ten gold. Hope you can pay. ’Cos we got big friends.”

I whispered to Guts again. “How are we—?”

“Shut up. Gonna be fine.”

He was still smiling. In fact, the grin hadn’t left his face since he’d first heard the music on the street almost an hour before. In the whole time I’d known him, I’d never seen him smile for more than a second or two.

It was kind of unsettling, to be honest.

The guitarist sat up straight, put the guitar across his lap, and played a short run of notes, his fingers skittering over the strings. Then he paused for a moment, fiddled with a couple of the tuning pegs, and launched into a song.

Like the rest of the music I’d heard that day, it had a hypnotic,
chugging rhythm, over which he played a dancing line of notes that I would’ve found beautiful if I weren’t so worried about what Guts had gotten us into. As the Cartager played, I looked around at all the happy strangers and wondered how many of them would help beat the ten gold out of our hides when it was over.

Some of the men were pretty huge.

The guitarist finished his song, and the crowd clapped and hooted their approval. He stood up, handed his instrument to Guts with a wink and a smile, and motioned for him to take his place on the steps.

Guts sat down. A hush fell over the crowd. I took a quick look around to figure out the best direction to run when it was over.

Straight back, toward the far corner of the courtyard.

I waited for Guts to look up at me so I could signal the getaway route.

But he kept his head down, focused on the neck of the guitar, where he was testing the straight edge of the hook against the strings. It was just long enough to cover them all, and as he ran it down the length of the neck, it made a squeaky noise that didn’t sound much like music to me.

There were titters in the crowd. Big Nose shook his head and sighed, half-amused and half-pitying.

Guts stretched out the fingers of his right hand. Then, with the hook pressed against the strings on the neck, he picked out a few tentative notes.

One of them struck false. Guts stopped smiling.

There were a few more titters, but also some pained looks.

I hoped I could run on a full stomach without throwing up.

Guts pulled Lucy away from the guitar’s neck. Reached under the cowl to loosen the strap. Readjusted the hook. Tightened the strap one more time.

Then he took a deep breath and began again.

It started with a single note—a long, keening wail that shimmered in the tropical air before it slowly fell away into silence.

Then another. And another. And another, rising to a patter that slowly built into a flood, the notes sliding in and out of each other as the hook flashed back and forth across the neck while the fingers of Guts’s good hand tripped the strings in a fast-rising blur of movement.

I don’t know what he played, what kind of music it was or where it came from, but it was gorgeous and ecstatic and terrifying, sometimes all at once, ranging in size and shape from towering shards of barely controlled fury all the way down to delicate, plaintive whispers so quiet I could hear the rustle and creak of people in the crowd rising up on tiptoe as they strained to hear.

There was a moment of silence when he finished, followed by a roar of pleasure like I’d never heard before. People were stamping and cheering, crowding around Guts to congratulate him. Even the guitarist he’d beaten couldn’t stop himself from flinging his arms around Guts in a friendly hug.

In the middle of the celebration, Guts caught my eye. His grin widened as he gave me a knowing look that said,
Gonna be fine.

D
ear Millicent,

It was only a sentence, but it took me two hours at a desk and ten pieces of parchment just to get that far. Part of the problem was that I’d never written a letter before, or even seen one, so all I had to go on were the ones I’d read about in books.

The greeting alone gave me fits.
Dear
seemed much too fussy, like something an old lady would write.

I tried
Cheerio, luv,
which was how Eustace started his letters to Gwendolyn in
The Crisps of Upper Mattox,
but I didn’t know what it meant. And since I’d always thought Eustace was full of himself, I decided it was a bad risk to copy him.

I started again with
My darling Millicent,
but that looked too gushy.

And
To she for whom no sacrifice is too great and death is not to be feared should it hasten our blessed reunion
felt like overkill. Besides which, the character who wrote that (Miles Cavendish, in
A Storm Upon the Heath
) wound up jumping off a cliff, and I didn’t want to give Millicent the wrong idea.

So I was stuck with
Dear.

Then there was the opening sentence, which had chewed up even more parchment. First I tried:

But I was afraid that might scare her off.

I think about that moment when you kissed me a hundred times a day.

Too honest. Also likely to scare her off.

There are a lot of pretty girls in Pella Nonna, but seeing them just makes me miss you more.

That felt wrong for a bunch of reasons. Once I crumpled it up, I decided to avoid the whole subject of my feelings for her, at least up front. So I started again with:

How’s the weather on Sunrise?

But that just seemed chatty. And the truth was, I didn’t care what the weather was like on Sunrise. I just wanted to let her
know what was happening with us. So after a few more failed attempts, I decided to just do that, and to quit tossing out parchment left and right, because it didn’t come cheap and I was running low on it.

A lot has happened since the last time I saw you. Guts and I have been in Pella Nonna for two weeks, and although we’ll be leaving soon to get the map translated,

I hoped that was true. The question of when we were going to leave had been a real sticking point between me and Guts.

it’s been amazing to visit here. You know how in books, Cartagers are always villains? Well, the ones back in Cartage might be, but in Pella, they’re not like that at all. They’re friendly, and easygoing, and they like to listen to music and eat and drink and have a good time.

No one works very hard, which they can get away with because there’s gold everywhere—the Cartagers bring it in from mines somewhere in the southern hills, and there’s so much of it lying
around that traders come here from all over the world to sell their goods, and even the servants seem to be pretty well off.

Guts and I were definitely well off. I was writing the letter with a peacock quill and a silver inkpot, which I’d found in a drawer of the fancy hardwood desk in the huge living room of the apartment that Salo—he was the tall, friendly, big-nosed band member who spoke Rovian—had helped us rent using the money Guts made from playing music.

There are people here from all over the world, including places I never even knew existed. Mandars, Gualos, Ildians, Umbergians…pretty much every kind of people except Rovians. I’m not sure why there aren’t more Rovians, because everyone’s been very nice to us in spite of our ears.

I’d asked Salo about it. He agreed it was odd that there weren’t any Rovians around, but he’d never heard of the Banishment Law. And when I told him about Racker’s warning that we’d be killed if we set foot in Pella, he laughed.

“That captain smart, man. He lie to crew, keep them on ship. Crew stop in Pella, crew never leave. Pella
booya
!”

Booya
meant good, tasty, delicious. Pella was definitely
booya.

There are tons of Natives, too, from a dozen different tribes, and I was surprised to find out they’re all as different from each
other as Rovians are from Cartagers. Some of the ones in Pella are laborers, but a lot are traders and businessmen, and some are even richer than the Cartagers.

The problem for us is that none of them are Okalu. When I got here and started asking around, people kept telling me “Okalu grawa.”

It turns out “grawa” is Cartager for “dead.”

You know some of the history already,

Millicent had once told me the story of the Fire King’s tribe, but I’d forgotten most of it. It took a lot of walking around and awkward conversations with people who didn’t speak my language before I managed to track down a Fingu shopkeeper who
not only knew Rovian, but could fill me in on what had become of the Okalu.

I almost wrote
really annoying.
But I didn’t want to sound bitter.

And to be fair, Guts being famous had its advantages. We were staying in this amazing apartment, and he gave me all the money I needed to buy things. And I had to admit the days were pretty good, because the band played in the square, and I could lounge
on the palace steps and listen to them, and eat tasty food, and take in the sights.

But at night, he went out to play at private parties for rich people, and I wasn’t invited. After a while, it got boring sitting home alone. I couldn’t even read, because all the books in the apartment were written in some weird squiggly language that I think was Mandar.

So I’d go to bed early, because I was alone and there was nothing else to do, and I’d fall asleep thinking about Millicent.

And then in the middle of the night, Guts would come home, along with half the band and the giggling teenage Cartager girls who followed them everywhere, and they’d have a party in the living room that was impossible to sleep through, and sometimes went on until dawn.

Even worse, now that Guts was famous, and making good money from playing his music, he didn’t seem all that worried about finding the treasure anymore.

But I didn’t want to get into any of that with Millicent. So I just wrote:

I stopped writing in midsentence, because I’d just realized there was no point in going on.

I couldn’t send a letter to Millicent. It was madness. And not just because I wasn’t sure how to send one in the first place—I knew from books that people got letters “in the post,” but I wasn’t too clear on what that meant, or how you went about finding a post, or what you did with the post after you’d put the letter in it.