The Floating Island (21 page)

V
EN WOKE TO THE SOUND OF HEAVY FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING.

He sat up quickly, rubbing his eyes, hoping to make them better able to see in the dark. The lantern had gone out, as it frequently did, and the jailer had not returned to relight it. The dim glow appeared in the distance as the footsteps moved closer.

Ven ran his finger over the cold stone wall of his cell. On his first night there he had followed the custom and carved his name into it, along with the names of the other condemned inmates who had been imprisoned there.

With a jangling of keys, the jailer appeared, hurrying down the stairs. He got to the cell just as the contingent of four guards came around the corner, the constable with them. The bristly man looked at him for the first time with what Ven believed might have been sympathy.

Struggling to keep his last meal in his stomach, Ven rose from the cot. The soldiers had come like this once before, but they had only retrieved the sheets on which he had written his account and marched off into the darkness again.

This time he suspected they would take him as well.

“Good luck, lad,” the jailer whispered as he unlocked the cell door.

“Thanks,” Ven mumbled. The guards came to a halt outside the cell, and the leader gestured to him.

“Oh—excuse me,” Ven said over the angry screech of the rusty metal hinges as the jailer pulled open the door. “I didn’t think to ask your name.”

The jailer blinked. “Nobody ever does,” he said as Ven stepped out of the cell.

“May I know it?”

The bearded man blinked again. “Harumph—well, yes, I guess,” he said awkwardly. “’Tis Henry. Why do ya want to know?”

Ven smiled weakly. “Just curious.”

The lead guard signaled to the constable, who held out the iron manacles for Ven’s wrists.

“Thank you, Henry,” Ven said. He fell in line with the constable and marched away with the soldiers, all the while trying to keep from throwing up.

They followed the soldiers back up the dark staircase and down a tremendously long hall lined with rich tapestries and marble statues to two towering doors, which were opened by two guards in full uniform. Ven’s eyes stung from the daylight.

The doors led into a mammoth room with a towering ceiling and a long blue and red carpet leading up to a wide carpeted platform in the middle of the room. In the center of the platform was a magnificent throne, made of carved wood that had been leafed in gold and inlaid with blue lapis in a channel down the arms.

The throne, like the room around it, was empty.

Ven’s escort led him to a doorway in the side of the throne room, then stopped.

“You are to go in here,” the lead soldier told him.

Ven nodded.

The soldier opened the door.

The room into which Ven was led was huge, round, lit with lanterns, and filled with puzzles.

There were many small tables and benches around the smooth marble walls that held chess and checker boards, and games Ven recognized—Wari, Parchisi, Hounds and Jackals, Ferses, Fox and Geese—and many more that he didn’t. Most of the tables, however, held puzzles of all kinds, in varying degrees of completion. Some were made of stones, some of glass, some of wood, some of metal, some of jewels, and other materials he didn’t recognize. Many of them stood taller than Ven, and were shaped like buildings, or trees, or strange animals, or mountain ranges, or shapes he had never seen before. One was shaped like a globe with a side missing.

A tall, thin man with a sour expression, dark eyes, long hair bound back with a tiny gold chain stood at the windows. His face was shaped differently than Ven had seen in a human before, making Ven wonder if, like McLean, he was of another race. He was dressed in midnight-blue robes that were embroidered in all kinds of shapes, and in his hand was a long staff of dark wood on top of which was carved an eye.

In his hands were papers Ven recognized, the top one smudged with ink.

He was the most regal person Ven had ever seen, and he turned as Ven and the constable entered the room, then walked forward until he came to a large table in the room’s center.

At the table sat a young human man in a plain cloth shirt and dark blue trousers tucked into boots. He had long dark hair and bright blue eyes, blue as the sky. Ven guessed that he was about twenty years old.

“Bow, you idiot,” the constable whispered.

Ven bowed to the tall man. The man’s eyebrows shot up into his hair, and his hooked nose wrinkled in disdain.

The young man at the table chuckled.

The young king smiled pleasantly at Ven.

“Perfectly natural confusion,” he said politely. “Happens all the time.” He rose from his chair and extended his hand to Ven, who shook it, much to the horror of the king’s man and the constable.

Ven quickly let go of the king’s hand.

“I’m Vandemere, high king of Serendair,” said the young man. “This,” he said, pointing to the older man, “is my assistant Vizier and adviser, Galliard. My chief Vizier, Graal, is away on an extended trip. I am certain he would have liked to meet you. He has a fondness for Nain.”

Ven blinked, but said nothing. His curiosity, which had disappeared while he was in the dungeon, was beginning to spark back to life. He wanted to examine every puzzle and game in the room, to ask what a Vizier was, where the chief one had gone, and why the king wanted to see him, but he settled for bowing again.

“I hope you were not mistreated in the dungeon. It was not my intention for you to end up there, but there was some confusion while I was away.” The king looked at the Royal Vizier.

“No, Your Majesty,” Ven said quickly. “Henry looked after me very well.”

“Henry?”

Ven coughed awkwardly. “The, er, jailer.”

The king’s eyes gleamed with interest. He looked down at a different set of papers.

“You’ve been accused of some serious crimes,” he said. “Some of them punishable by death.”

Ven swallowed hard. “Yes, Your Majesty—though I don’t know what, exactly.”

The king consulted the papers. “Thievery at sea, which carries a higher penalty than on land. Multiple murder in the deaths of the crew of the ship that sank. Do you understand these charges?”

“I—I think so,” Ven stammered. “But—”

“Answer His Majesty’s questions and do not speak otherwise,” snarled the Vizier.

“I ordered you to be summoned here because I found the report from the captain of the
Serelinda
very interesting,” King Vandemere continued, returning to the table and sitting down again. “In it he states that you were found floating in the sea because an albatross marked your position. This is a very important sign, perhaps an omen of something about to happen. I must know what it means, how you happened to come to my island, and whether or not you are a danger to the people of my kingdom. I’ve read your account, but I wanted to see you for myself, and hear the tale in your own voice.”

The young king opened a wooden box the size of a loaf of bread on the table, then turned it over. Inside were many oddly shaped pieces of glass, in every color Ven could imagine. He carefully spread the pieces out on the table in front of him, then looked up at Ven and smiled.

“Tell me your story,” the king said.

So Ven took a deep breath and told the king the tale of his birthday and everything that had happened since. He started with the falling of the albatross feather, then told about the Inspection, how all was going well until the Fire Pirates appeared.

The king listened intently, with no expression of disapproval or disgust on his face. He was very easy to talk to, and Ven found himself telling him naturally all the details of what happened, including his own role in the sinking of the ships. He hesitated for a moment, realizing he might be confirming the charges against him, but Vandemere just continued to listen, moving the shapes of glass around, fitting them together like pieces of a puzzle.

Ven told him about the merrow, Megalodon, and the Floating Island. He told him about Char, and Marius, and everything that befell him since he arrived in Serendair. He told him about the Singer who could see the Spice Folk, and the Gwadd girl who could make flowers grow and talk to mice. He even told Vandemere about Ida, how he had been spared from losing his money to her by the albatross feather, and how she had tried, in her own ugly way, to spare him from arrest. All the while he talked, the king played absently with the puzzle pieces on the table in front of them.

Ven’s voice shook as he talked about the hauntings at the Inn, but the king only nodded, spinning a black piece of glass around until it fit into the puzzle. Finally he told the king about Mr. Whiting and his arrest.

When Ven finally came to the end of his tale, he felt winded, as if someone had knocked the breath out of him. Once his story had come to an end, the king stopped moving the pieces of the puzzle. While many of the shapes lay unused on the table, the design the king had been fashioning was almost complete. It was a swirl of what looked like blue and white waves beneath a shining sun, with two pieces missing.

Silence filled the room.

The king sat quietly for a long time, with his elbows on the table and his hands folded in front of his mouth. Finally he spoke.

“The barrels of magnesium and such that you used to blow up the Fire Pirate ship—were they full?” he asked.

Ven thought for a moment. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

The king nodded. His hand went to the pile of shapes. He selected an orange one, then fitted it into the almost-finished puzzle. He stared at it for a long time, then looked up at Ven.

“Who, besides your father, knew that you were undertaking the Inspection that day?”

Ven blinked. “My brothers did,” he said uncertainly.

“Well, of course,” said the king, smiling slightly. “They rigged the draw so that you would have to go.”

“They did?”

“Yes. But other than your family, who knew? The harbormaster?”

Ven shook his head. “The harbormaster is extremely busy,” he said. “An Inspection is scheduled when the shipbuilder thinks the vessel is ready. The harbormaster only hears about it after the Inspection is done, and then he signs off on it so the new owner can take possession.”

“And the new owner of the ship that sank—that was Mr. Witherspoon?” the king asked.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

The king smiled. He selected a last puzzle piece, a white one, and fit it into the picture, completing it.

“Witherspoon was in on the attack, I’d wager,” he said.

Ven’s mouth dropped open. “How can that be?” he asked. “What possible reason would he have to have his own ship stolen?”

Vandemere sat back in his chair and crossed his hands over his stomach.

“If it hadn’t passed the Inspection, he hadn’t paid for it yet, am I right?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

The king’s smile grew broader, as if he were enjoying a particularly rich dessert. “And Witherspoon told you they had already begun loading goods onto the ship, even though he knew that might cause a problem with the Inspection?”

Ven thought back to that morning in the office. “Yes, he did,” he said.

“So those barrels of explosives, which you said were bolted into place, were put there by Witherspoon—not forgotten by your brothers when they were making the ship,” the king said. “They were full; if they had been used in the manufacturing process, they would have been partially empty.”

Ven’s head felt like it was about to explode. “You’re right,” he said, his mind teetering wildly. He remembered what Whiting had said to him that day in the dungeon, about Fire Pirates needing support, and getting it from people in the sea trade, like sea captains.

And ship owners.

“Witherspoon must have made a deal with the pirates,” the king said. He ran a hand over the completed puzzle. “He must be one of the people who supply them with the ingredients to make their fire. I’d bet that he had an arrangement with them—they were to attack the ship, burn the sails, kill the crew, then take it and sell it—or perhaps they just paid Witherspoon for it to use themselves. Witherspoon would not have to pay your father for it, since it never passed Inspection. So he made money on the deal, and your father lost his ship, his son, and maybe even his business. That’s an evil man, to be sure.”