Blue Sea Burning (24 page)

Smoke

WE SPENT THE NEXT
two days getting ready—buying supplies, sewing slings, lashing bundles of long oars to the deck of Cyril's sloop—and even considering the dread and uncertainty over what we were about to do, it could have been a very pleasant two days. The work wasn't hard, I was with my friends, we had plenty to eat, the hotel beds were top-notch . . . and the swelling in my injured wrist finally subsided, to the point where it quit hurting and I could take the splint off.

Even so, I was miserable. And all because of the mess between me, Millicent, and Cyril. Whenever I saw her speak to him, I couldn't help pricking my ears up and going into a funk if it seemed like they were enjoying each other's company.

And every time Millicent and I got to talking, Cyril would puff out his chest and crow like a rooster to get her attention back.

Soon enough, she must have decided she was better off avoiding us both, and she started spending all her time with Kira. They'd whisper to each other in low tones, and then one of them would sort of roll her eyes, and I was sure they were laughing at me. Or possibly Cyril. But probably me.

It was maddening, even more so because not only was it impossible to speak to Millicent alone, but I couldn't get Kira alone, either—and I desperately wanted to, so I could grill her about Millicent's intentions.

Guts thought we were all acting like idiots, and said so a couple of times an hour. Which just made the rest of us defensive and cranky.

Then we set sail for Sunrise, and it got even worse, because now we were all packed together with nowhere to escape, and Cyril started ordering everybody around like he was the captain. Which he kind of had to—if there weren't any cannonball holes that needed plugging, we were all pretty much useless on a ship except for Millicent—but that didn't make it any less annoying.

“I hate him,” I whispered to Guts on the first night as we curled up to sleep between two stacks of oars near the bow. “If he lectures me one more time about reefing a sail . . .”

“Want to shoot him? I got a gun.”

“You brought a gun?”

“Brought four of 'em,” he said. “Dunno how to use no sling.”

“You can't use four guns, either. Not at once.”

“Got extras. Case anybody else wants one.”

“No, thanks,” I said. No matter what happened, I couldn't imagine myself shooting anybody.

Not even Cyril.

It rained on the second night, hard enough to chase us all belowdecks to sleep. It was crowded down in the cabin, and when I woke up a little before dawn with someone's foot in my face and no patter of raindrops overhead, I decided to relocate to the deck.

I was just about to crawl into my usual spot between the stacks of oars when I heard a voice whisper behind me.

“Good morning.”

It was Millicent. She was curled up like a cat in the cockpit.

“Hi.”

She uncurled her limbs and sat up, leaving enough room for me to sit down next to her.

I didn't wait for an invitation. In fact, I moved so fast I tripped and almost fell into her lap.

“Careful—”

“Sorry—”

“It's all right.”

She yawned and stretched her arms, then folded them tightly over her chest, hugging herself for warmth.

“Are you cold?”

She nodded. I put an arm around her, fully expecting that she'd brush me off. But instead, she burrowed in, so close that a few strands of her hair tickled my face.

Just being close to her made me feel peaceful and contented all the way down to my toes, like someone had covered me in a warm blanket.

It was all I ever wanted, really. Just to be close to her.

I hoped the others wouldn't wake up too soon and ruin it.

“It won't be long now,” she said. “Should be there by tonight.”

She tilted her head and looked up at me. “Are you scared?”

“Not really.” It was true enough. I'd had so many petrifying experiences over the past couple of months that what lay ahead didn't even feel particularly dangerous.

“Are you?” I asked her.

“I'm terrified,” she said. It came as a surprise—I'd seen Millicent less than self-confident before, but I'd never actually heard her admit it.

“It'll be fine. If things go wrong, we'll just ditch the plan.” If that happened, I'd need to get off Sunrise Island in a hurry—but I wasn't too worried about that, mostly because of my uncle. He'd hunted me down on the dock the day before we left and pressed a small sack of gold coins into my hand.

“You get in a fix, buy yourself passage back here,” he said. “Anybody gives you trouble, let them know it'll end with me slitting their throat.”

“Think that'll work?” I asked. “Even on Sunrise?”

He nodded. “Trust me. Your average Pembroke lackey isn't long on courage—especially with his master off mucking around in the New Lands.”

But Millicent hadn't gotten any promises like that, and her eyebrows were scrunched together with worry as she considered what I said.

“I don't know. Even if things
don't
go wrong . . . once we free the slaves, it's not going to be very pleasant for me on Sunrise.”

I hadn't thought about that. For Guts, Kira, and me, it didn't matter—it wasn't like we had plans to stay on Sunrise any longer than we had to. But it was Millicent's home. Or had been.

“Aren't you going to Rovia with your mother?” I asked her.

She sighed. “I suppose so. What about you? What'll you do when this is over?”

I thought about it. “Guts wants to go find the Fire King's treasure, back on Deadweather. And I promised my brother I'd go back there and help him with the plantation.”

“Is that what you want? To go back to the plantation?”

“No.”

“Then don't. You should do what you want.”

“It doesn't always work like that,” I told her.

“Why not?”

“Sometimes, the thing you want to do isn't possible.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “You just have to—”

“Your mother asked me to come to Rovia,” I blurted out.

She turned her head to me in a sudden jerk, then looked away almost as fast.

“Do you want me to?” I asked her.

“Well, aren't
we
early risers?”

It was Cyril. He practically leaped the steps from the cabin to land in front of us.

Millicent quickly slipped out from under my arm.

“
Do
you?” I asked her again.

She stood up. “We should start breakfast—”

“Millicent—”

“I don't know!” Without looking back, she ducked past Cyril and headed down into the cabin.

He gave me an apologetic wince that was as fake as most of his smiles. “I'm sorry. Did I interrupt?”

I WOULD HAVE BROODED
over Millicent all day if something much more unsettling hadn't appeared over the horizon that morning. The leftover haze from the previous night's rain had burned off to reveal the blue-gray peak of Mount Majestic up ahead. A few more hours, and we'd reach the coast of Sunrise.

“Look at that strange cloud,” Kira said, squinting into the southern sky beyond the mountain.

The cloud was rising in the distance like a wind-bent tree, with a long puffy trunk that spread wide as it rose, expanding across the sky for miles. Its color was as odd as its shape—mostly white, but shot through with streaks of dark gray.

My stomach suddenly dropped as I realized what I was looking at.

“It's not a cloud,” I said. “It's the volcano.”

Deadweather was erupting.

Or had just erupted.

Or was about to erupt.

I didn't know which. I'd lived on the shoulder of that volcano, watching it belch and hiss and smoke off and on for thirteen years. But I'd never seen anything like that plume. This was a whole other thing.

For the rest of the day, I fretted over my brother and the field pirates, running through all the possible scenarios in my head.

They had time to leave. They didn't have time. They had time, but no boat. They didn't need to leave at all.

It only looks bad. It's as bad as it looks. It's worse than it looks. They all died instantly. They didn't die at all. They'd suffered unimaginable pain. They're not suffering at all. It's only a nuisance.

The house was destroyed. The house is buried. The house melted in a sea of lava. The house is fine.

They're all fine.

They're all dead.

Adonis will never forgive me. Adonis will be thrilled to see me again.

There's a mess, and I'm going to have to help clean it up.

As we got closer, the plume got bigger. Around late afternoon, just as Sunrise's coastal cliffs were coming into view, ominous brown threads began to appear in the gray-and-white column of smoke.

“So much fer findin' that treasure,” Guts muttered.

“Shut up, Guts,” Millicent said sharply. She and Kira had spent the whole afternoon telling me not to worry, that it was going to be all right, that maybe volcanoes poured oceans of smoke from time to time without erupting, and I shouldn't jump to any conclusions.

I would've told them not to fuss over me. But all the attention from Millicent was driving Cyril nuts, and I couldn't help milking it a little just to make him suffer. Eventually, he was reduced to what he must have thought was a heroic-looking stance, sitting bolt upright at the tiller and staring at the horizon while the rest of us ignored him.

He was doing such a good Lothar the Lone impression that I started to wonder if he'd read
Throne of the Ancients,
too.

I'd gone back to staring at the plume rising from Deadweather when I heard his voice, in what I'm sure he must have thought was a very serious and grave tone.

“There's more smoke,” he said. “It's coming from Sunrise.”

I rolled my eyes.
Nice try.

“He's right,” said Guts. “Look over there.”

I turned from the distant volcano to the island looming ahead of us. The air around Mount Majestic was clear, but a hazy smudge of black hung low in the sky along the eastern edge of Sunrise.

Something was burning in Blisstown.

HALF AN HOUR LATER,
we were closing in on the shore off North Point. The volcano on Deadweather was already forgotten, even by me.

The black smoke rising from Sunrise had faded at first, then sprang up again in a different spot, thicker and darker than before. Both times, it was coming from somewhere in Blisstown, but the island's cliffs kept the harbor hidden from us, and it was impossible to tell exactly what was on fire.

As best we could figure, there were only three possible explanations for what we were seeing. Accident. Cartagers. Or Ripper Jones.

The fact that there were at least two different fires, burning in two different places, seemed to rule out an accident.

And we couldn't for the life of us figure out where a Cartager invasion might have come from. Their only military base within easy sail of Sunrise was on Pella Nonna. Even if Pembroke had lost it by now, my uncle had sunk all the Cartagers' warships.

That just left the Ripper. But nobody was discussing what that might mean, I think because we were all hoping it wasn't true. For all the time we'd spent cooking up a story about Ripper Jones invading the island, we'd never once discussed what we might do if it turned out to be true.

We'd just rounded North Point when the explosion came, louder than thunder. Almost instantly, an angry black cloud billowed up from the cliff above the far side of town.

It was the southern fortress—or what was left of it.

“Must've been the magazine,” said Guts. “Somebody blew all their powder.”

The northern fortress was coming into view atop the cliff on the near side of us. There was smoke rising from that, too, thin and ragged now—but the hole where one of the fortress walls used to be told us its magazine had been blown as well.