The Fork-Tongue Charmers (20 page)

“What are you doing here, you cockle-knocker?” Rye said, her ears burning.

“Such language from a young girl,” Dent said. “You'll make an old sailor blush.”

“The way you set us adrift, you'll be lucky if the only thing we do is make you blush. Wait until my mother gets hold of you.”

“Now, now, let's not be rash. I've already got myself in quite a twist—literally, you see.” He grimaced and touched a knee that appeared to be swollen to twice its normal size.

“Where's the
Slumgullion
?” Rye demanded.

“At the bottom of the sea, sorry to say.”

Folly's eyes were wide. “What about your crew?”

He looked up from his twisted joint. “Scattered like the wind. Some have surely washed ashore in the Lower
Isles. Others are likely paddling for the Shale. The lesser swimmers, well, they may be dancing with the crabs.”

“Was it a storm?” Quinn asked.

“Of course not,” Dent said, taking great offense. “It takes more than a spring blow to set me off course.” His one eye looked up at them without its usual mischievous glint. “We were attacked,” he said sharply. “By a full-blown warship. Three decks. Two hundred men.”

“A warship?” Rye said. “Whose?”

Dent clucked his tongue. “Longchance's, of course. A small sloop had been following us since the day after we left Drowning. Surely you saw it in our wake at one point or another?”

Rye, Folly, and Quinn looked at one another blankly.

“Well, imagine that. There are still a few things a ship's captain knows that three rapscallions don't,” he said, although his tone was not unkind. “I assumed the sloop was tasked with tracking our whereabouts . . . and reporting back to our friends who gave us such a warm send-off in Drowning.”

“That's why you set us adrift in the fog?” Rye thought out loud.

“Aye, lass,” the Captain said, narrowing his eye. “It was my only chance of getting you to Pest safely. I hoped we would sail off and lead the sloop away none the wiser. I couldn't take the chance of mooring in the
cave—they'd discover our port.”

“This cave is a port?” Quinn asked, looking around with new eyes.

“Aside from Wick Harbor, it's the only navigable port for heavy ships on High Isle. Few know its secrets. I wasn't keen on sharing them with Longchance or his Constable.”

Dent crossed his arms and furrowed his brow.

“But what I didn't expect were the warships trailing in the sloop's wake. It took but one to sink us. The three out at sea now could sack the entire island.”

Rye's skin went cold. The ships on the horizon were no merchant caravan.

“We need to warn the Belongers,” she said to Folly and Quinn. She turned and rushed for the mouth of the cave, her friends hurrying after her before she dragged them off by the ropes on their wrists.

“A grand idea!” Dent called after them. “But could you help an old salt to his feet first? Hello?”

A
bby met the children at the door with a broom in her hands. Her welcoming look turned sour when she recognized the man propped up between them. She flipped the broom upside down, gripping it like a club as she marched toward them.

“Mama, no!” Rye said, stepping in front of Dent to protect him from what was sure to be a wicked braining. “Wait until you hear what he has to say.”

The Captain nodded enthusiastically and flashed a crooked smile.

“Then, if he still deserves it,” Rye added, “give him a good knock upside the head.”

The Captain frowned.

Abby set her distrust aside long enough to hear him out, but not so much that she was willing to let him inside. She dragged two chairs outside the farmhouse door and propped his knee up with a compress of warm herbs. That was a good sign, Rye thought, although given the look on Abby's face, a braining still wasn't entirely out of the question.

Waldron leaned on his staff and listened from the doorway of the cottage. Rye noticed Hendry, Rooster, and Padge hovering anxiously a healthy distance away. They craned their necks trying to get a better look at him. Waldron furrowed his bushy eyebrows, and Rye suspected that he hoped his ugly glance would convince them to leave. He had no such luck.

Abby approached Waldron after she finished speaking with Dent.

“We need to go to Wick,” she said.

Waldron pinched his beard and shook his head. “They won't listen.”

“Of course they will.”

“I know them,” he grumbled.

Abby stared at him hard, waiting. Rye was surprised to see that, for once, Abby's glare wasn't enough.
Waldron just shook his head again.

“I'll go myself, then,” she said flatly.

“Save your breath, Abigail,” Waldron huffed. “You'll only be disappointed.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “No more disappointed than I am right now.” She turned to Rye. “Riley, introduce me to your new friends.”

Rye introduced each of them.

“Tarvish—your aunts and I were childhood friends,” Abby said cheerfully to Hendry. “We used to chase otters together in the river. And Rooster—I knew your father. He used to steal my pies from the windowsill,” she said good-naturedly. “I'd recognize that Dunner haircut anywhere.” Rooster blushed.

She smiled at the long-haired little girl. “Padge, are you—”

“Your grandmother was my grandmother's aunt,” Padge chimed in.

“Of course,” Abby said, taking Padge's hands warmly. “We're cousins. Distant—but cousins nonetheless.”

Rye shook her head. She wouldn't want to climb her family tree; she might never find her way back down.

“Come, children,” Abby said to Hendry, Rooster, and Padge, “let's hurry to Wick to speak with your parents and the others. I'm afraid there's no time to waste. Folly, Quinn, Rye—you too. We'll need as many voices as we can spare to spread the word.”

Rye paused as Abby and the others headed down the path. She glanced back at Waldron in the doorway.

“Will you come?” she asked.

Waldron shook his head slowly and cast his gaze to the sea. “The Belongers hear nothing but their own bickering. They won't listen to Abigail. They won't listen to me.”

“We have to try,” she implored, but Waldron's bristled jaw remained set. He didn't move.

Rye bit her lip, turned, and ran after her mother.

Abby hurried through Wick, speaking urgently with every Belonger who remembered her. Before long, the word had spread quickly among the villagers themselves, and Rye saw animated conversations spring up in clusters up and down the winding streets. Soon the village was consumed by the angry shouts of the Belongers, and Rye eagerly waited for them to call in the teams from the seawalls and take up their arms. And yet, unbelievably, the men and women didn't lay down their ropes. Rye was dumbfounded when she realized what was happening.

The Belongers yelled not in response to Longchance's ships, but to each other.

“We'll take the children to Westwatch,” a gray-bearded Fisher barked. “It's long since abandoned, but there are still walls and gates.”

“We're outmanned. We should all go with them!” called a Fiddler with a white plume of hair cut identically to Rooster's.

“Who are you to say?” a different fisherman yelled back.

“That's right, Fiddler,” a thick-armed Crofter chimed in. “You haven't won a Pull in ten years.”

“The Fishers are still in charge until the Pull is complete,” the fisherman said, crossing his arms with finality.

“Hold on now, that's not so,” the Crofter said, waving both hands in protest. “Once the Pull begins, no one is in charge until we have a winner.”

“Ha! Then we have as much say as any of you,” the Fiddler yelled.

After much loud debate, nobody could recall whether there was any such rule, so they all turned back to the ongoing battle on the seawalls with even greater intensity than before. Cupping their hands to their mouths, the Crofters and Fishers urgently cheered for their teams to hurry up and finish off the other side.

Fingers were pointed and bodies were shoved. A few levelheaded Belongers tried to maintain the peace, but as tempers flared the crowd seemed less inclined than ever to pay attention to pleas for common sense. Abby's voice was now drowned out entirely.

The Pull itself continued, the Crofters and Fishers heaving at the rope with what little energy they had left.

Rye's ears burned in anger. How stubborn could they be?

Then it occurred to Rye. Maybe the best solution was the simplest one. And maybe it could be found right under her nose.

Or in this case, in her boot.

Rye ran to the water's edge and plunged in. The swim into the harbor was a short one, but the cold water and her nervous energy left her spent by the time she pulled herself onto the manmade rock island at the center of the seawalls. With her awkward swimming style, any onlooker could have mistaken her for a dog paddling out to chase a gull.

The thick rope slunk back and forth in the squeaking pulleys just above her head. The Driftwood Crown tottered over the intricate system of wheels and gears. Rye swallowed hard and resolved herself to her task.

She reached down and drew Fair Warning from her sopping boot.

The rope proved to be tougher than Rye had expected. She had to saw at it, strand by strand, pushing Fair Warning through each fiber with all of her strength. If anyone spotted her or called out she was too preoccupied to notice, until, finally, the remains of
the rope snapped with a loud twang. She barely threw herself down in time to avoid the flail of one end as it whipsawed past her face.

The pulley system jammed and groaned before collapsing into a bent iron knot. Something clunked her hard on the skull and settled askew atop her head. On the seawalls, the teams of pullers lurched and tumbled backward, falling onto their backsides or into the harbor itself.

Rye cringed. She hadn't thought about that part.

But what struck her most was the absolute quiet. All she could hear was the lap of waves against the walls. The boisterous Belongers had plunged into silence as they stared, dumbfounded, trying to determine what exactly had happened. Had the Fishers won again? No, both teams were dazed and climbing to their feet. Had the rope broken?

Then someone called out. Fingers pointed, this time at Rye—alone on her tiny island at the center of the harbor.

Suddenly it was quiet no longer. Hordes of villagers rushed down each of the seawalls, the colored tartan of the competing factions blending together as they charged toward their common enemy. They pressed close to one another on the rocks, their ruddy, bearded faces glaring down at her in rage.

Rye looked at Fair Warning in her hand. The
Belongers had seen it too. Their eyes drilled into her, demanding an explanation. With her other hand, she carefully patted her skull. She felt a wooden circlet between her fingers, sitting low on her brow and too big for her head.

Pigshanks
, she thought.

“I'm sorry,” Rye called, as she carefully removed the Driftwood Crown and set it on the rock beside her. Up close, she could see that its three jagged spikes were carved into the shapes of a fish, a ram, and clockwork gears. “But you must listen. The Isle is in danger. Look! The ships are coming, and they won't wait for you to decide who's in charge.”

But the Belongers did not turn their attention away from her.

“It's a child!” someone called.

“Whose is it?” another onlooker demanded.

“None of ours!”

“An Uninvited!” a different Belonger spat, as if the words themselves were distasteful.

“STOP!” commanded a voice so deep and powerful that it seemed to echo from the hills. The crowd hushed into quiet whispers.

“The girl is no Uninvited!” the voice called as it moved through the crowd. “She's as much a Belonger as any of you.”

Rye's heart jumped as the man pushed his way to
the edge of a seawall. It was Waldron. When he used his staff to push himself up to his full height, he stood taller than nearly all of the other men. A stunned buzz seemed to fall over the Belongers. The faces Rye could see looked to one another in disbelief.

“And she has more sense than all of you combined,” Waldron continued, voice booming. The crowd rustled. “Does your stubbornness clog your ears? Look to the sea! The true Uninvited have come for Pest once again.”

Waldron thrust his staff toward the water. Following its path, Rye saw the enormous warships. Closer now, they towered like castles rising from the water.

“There will be time for petty squabbles tomorrow! For now we must stand together. The men on those ships outnumber us three to one! But they have yet to taste the wrath of Pest. Secure your children, take up your arms, and defend this High Isle, as we have always done before!”

If the Belongers were inclined to protest, the return of Waldron Cutty seemed to shock them into action.

“You, Master Dunner,” Waldron called, pointing his staff to the Fiddler with the white plume of hair. “Dust off your toys of mayhem and get them into place.” He turned to a group of fisherman. “Fishers, barricade the harbor. And Crofters, use those farm muscles to retrieve
the weapons. Tell me you haven't forgotten where you put them!”

The Belongers tore from the seawalls and made for Wick. From the wall above her, Waldron caught Rye's eye and gave her a nod.

Rye smiled back, and for the first time recognized the man her mother had described. She knew that somewhere in the crowd, Abby would be smiling too.