The Automaton's Treasure

  “That's not Qilar proper.” It was Hafsa. She leaned up against the railing beside me, the wind blowing her hair away from her face. “You have to pass a handful of these narrow little islands before you get to the river mouth. And that's how we get to the great treasure, isn't it, little automaton?”

  I translated her question, and Safin nodded. “The river will take you to the great treasure, oh yes.”

  “It is,” I told her. “How much longer until we get there? To the river's mouth?”

  She shrugged. “About half a day, most like. We should be there by nightfall.”

  I thought about the captain, hunched over in the moonlight, watching the crew.

  “At any rate, the captain wants to see you.” She jerked her chin up at Safin. “Both of you.”

  I nodded and told Safin. He let out another cry of “Great treasure!” and scurried up my leg and settled around my neck, in his preferred traveling position. Together Hafsa and I walked to the captain's quarters. The crew's lassitude had worsened since the bells rang, and they called out to Hafsa as she walked past.

  “Get some work done!” she shouted back at them, which only made them laugh. I was grateful they mostly ignored me.

  Hafsa knocked on the captain's door. Rafi answered and gestured for us to step inside. It was as dimly lit as I remembered, and the air was thick and smelled of burning leaves.

  Something shifted on the divan—the captain, stretched out on his back, smoking a pipe.

  “I hear we've arrived,” he said, and the smoke curled around him.

  Rafi disappeared into the back room.

  Safin leapt off my shoulder and landed on the floor with a clank. The captain smiled at the noise, and drew in another breath of smoke. When Safin scurried across the floor, the captain's eyes followed him.

  “Great treasure!” Safin cried in Qilari.

  “What did it say?”

  “'Great treasure,'“ I said.

  “Ah, yes, the great treasure.” The captain sat up. “Hafsa, you don't need to stay in here. Go make sure the crew actually steers us into the bay. They've been lazy these last few days.”

  “Yes, sir.” Hafsa bowed her head and slipped out, a triangle of sunlight appearing and then disappearing with her.

  The captain extinguished his pipe and set it on the table beside the divan. He stood and stretched, unfurling to his full height. Every time I saw him I thought he didn't look human, but I could not say why. All his parts were right, but they didn't come together in the right way.

  “I want to know the directions before we disembark,” he said, talking to me. “You will sit at that table there—” He pointed with his pipe “—and write down word for word what the little metal beastie has to say.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He nodded, and pointed at the table again. I told Safin what we needed to do. There was one chair set up at the table, and in front of that chair was a stack of parchment, a quill and ink.

  “I'm assuming a nobleman's daughter knows how to write,” the captain said.

  I nodded, my throat too dried up to speak. I sat down at the table and dipped the quill in the ink. Safin hopped up on the table.

  “I'm ready,” I said.

  “It's easy,” Safin said, and I wrote that down, just to be sure. “But you will need small boats, not a big one like this. Follow the river away from the sea. Easy, easy!” He turned in an excited circle and blinked at me, eyes refracting in the lamplight.

  I finished writing. “He's going to want more detail than that,” I said. “How long do we follow the river?”

  “A long time, yes. You will pass the bone trees and the baelfires. The great treasure lives in a house on the water. Most easy to spot.”

  I paused when he said great treasure lives. My Qilari had improved vastly over the last three months, and I didn't make the minor translation mistakes I did when I first started speaking with Safin. But it seemed odd to phrase it that way, to say lives instead of is kept. But then, Safin wasn't alive in the way I was. Maybe his understanding was different.

  I finished writing out the instructions and handed them to the captain. He didn't say anything about the great treasure lives, only nodded like he was satisfied. He folded up the instructions and slipped them into the pocket of his jacket.

  “These better guide us true.” His gray eyes leered at me. “If they don't, I will kill that creature and then I will kill you.”

  I couldn't move. My body felt cold.

  “You tell it what I just said.” He gestured at Safin and turned away. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and then relayed the message to Safin.

  “Kill!” he said. “Oh no.”

  “You didn't lie to me, did you?”

  “Of course not! I want to see the great treasure!”

  “We're fine, then.” I pressed my hand against my forehead. “We're fine.”

  But I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.

  We took four boats total, a quarter of the crew. The full moon was a shining silver disk that lit the ocean with streaks of light. I rode in the head boat, with the captain and Rafi and Safin. Hafsa led the second boat, shouting orders as we bounced through the choppy waves.

  “We can enter there,” Safin said, and pointed. He was wrapped around my shoulders, close enough that I could hear his gears clicking.

  I looked to where he pointed. The river mouth was narrow, flanked on either side by a pair of cypress trees with branches tangled overhead, forming an arch. The ocean was bright in the moonlight, but past that arch everything was dark.

  “We can enter there,” I said to the captain.

  “I saw.” He held my written instructions in his hand, and they rippled in the wind.

  We passed through the cypress arch and the world went dark. No moonlight filtered through the thick vegetation of the swamp. The touched crewman scrambled to ignite lanterns, sending them up to drift alongside our boat. They cast small spheres of greenish light, hardly enough to see by. The air thickened with humidity. I stroked Safin's tail without thinking, and a noise rattled deep inside his chest, like a cat's purr.

  We continued on. I relieved Rafi from rowing duty, and the rhythmic thump of the oars against the water soothed my nerves. No one spoke. We all seemed to be holding our breaths.

  We came to a knot of white trees, twisting out of the swampy muck.

  “The bone trees,” Safin said.

  I'd seen pictures of them in my illustrated history, but I'd always thought the pictures were an exaggeration. Here in the darkness I saw they weren't. The bone trees looked like hands, with long thin fingers grasping the air. I knew from my book that if you cut them, they do not bleed sap, but dry white dust.

  The captain's shoulders tensed as we slid past, and he kept his eyes on the bone trees, his hand on his pistol. Rafi laid a hand on the captain's upper arm, and for a moment the captain seemed to calm. Rafi dropped his hand, but I still saw it, that flicker of intimacy.

  We passed the trees without incident.

  “Now for the baelfires,” the captain said.

  “And then the treasure,” I added.

  “For your sake I certainly hope so.”

  I'd read about the baelfires too, and I knew they were spots of light that lured weary travelers into the darkness. We rowed along, and the air shifted. My skin prickled, and Safin pressed closer to me.

  A light blinked out in the trees.

  “Concentrate,” the captain said sharply. “Stay in the boat.”

  “Stay in the boats!” Rafi shouted, cupping his hand around his mouth. “Pass word along, Hafsa! Stay in the boats!”

  Hafsa's voice echoed through the swamp, and then the next boat leader's, and the next. There were more baelfires now, bobbing out of the woods and over the water. They were lights, no different from our lanterns, but I wanted nothing more than to leap out of the boat and chase after one. I wanted to capture it and hold it in my hand. It would lead me to her, I knew it—it
would lead me away from Qilar, away from the Ocean's Dagger, back to my home.

  “Stay strong,” Safin whispered. “They lie.”

  “They don't talk,” I snapped.

  “They still lie.”

  I plunged the oar into the water. The captain gazed after the baelfires, his face full of longing. It mirrored my own feelings, my own desire to leap into the water, to chase them through the darkness.

  Rafi grabbed the captain's hand and squeezed it tight.

  “Look,” Safin said. “Look at their hands.” His voice was urgent. I looked and it wasn't the captain and the first mate holding hands, but me and her. The baelfires might have claimed that they could take me to her, but she was the one who held me in place, the one who kept me safe.

  I didn't think our trip through the baelfires would ever end. They flooded the swamp with light, but I rowed forward, sweat pouring down my back.

  And then they blinked out and were gone.

  “Is that the house?” the captain asked.

  I jerked my head up. A house had formed in the sudden darkness, with white-washed walls and lights in the windows. It perched on the edge of the water, and lanterns—true lanterns and not baelfires—lit a path from the river to the door.

  “The great treasure!” cried Safin.

  “It's the house,” I said, weariness dragging down the edges of my voice.

  Safin slithered down my leg and rushed to the edge of the boat, curling his claws around the side. His eyes glowed.

  “Yes!” he clattered. “Yes, yes, yes!”

  The captain nodded at Rafi, who stood up and shouted for the boats’ leaders to tie off at the rickety pier jutting over the river.

  The captain climbed ashore and turned to face his men. “Rafi, Marjani, Hafsa, come with me. The rest of you wait for Hafsa's signal.”

  Hafsa nodded.

  I crawled out of the boat, aware of a wary intelligence passing through the trees, watching us, waiting. It was the first time I'd been on land for almost half a year, and my legs wobbled and shook. Hafsa caught me, and said in a strained voice, “You'll adjust.”

  “This way!” Safin shouted. “The great treasure will be delighted to see me!”

  Another mistranslation. I was tired, and frightened, and I missed my life back in Jokja. But on shaking legs I followed the captain as he made his way up the house's front steps. The lanterns bobbed alongside us, winking like the baelfires. I trembled.

  We came to the front door. Safin stood up on his hind legs, twisted the doorknob with his little clawed hands, and scurried inside.

  “Great treasure!” he shouted.

  Magic seeped out of the house, strong enough that I could feel it wrapping around me, thick and warm and heavier than the air. I was wary of crossing the threshold, and the others held back too, even the captain. Through the doorway I saw no great treasure, only a small room with a lit hearth, shelves of books and trinkets, and an old woman sitting in a rocking chair.

  “My life's light,” she gasped in Qilari, rising to her feet. I don't think she even saw us as Safin scrambled up her skirts and wrapped around her neck as he'd done with me so many times before.

  “The hell is this?” the captain roared, shoving us aside. “Where's the treasure?”

  The woman glared at him. “A long way from the Empire,” she said, not in Qilari but Empire, in the dialect of the aristocrats.

  “I'm from no country,” the captain said.

  The woman glared at him for a moment longer. Then she gasped. “You're from the Mists,” she said, and the magic intensified. I could smell it now, a scent like rotting flower petals.

  The captain drew back and pulled out his pistol. “Not anymore. Where's the great treasure the automaton promised us?”

  The woman curled her hands into fists. She didn't look away. Safin tightened around her shoulders, his eyes wide.

  The great treasure lives.

  The great treasure will be happy to see me.

  I bent over and vomited. Hafsa shouted and jumped back. She asked me what was wrong. I ignored her, only wiping my mouth and looking up at Safin.

  “Great treasure,” I said in Qilari.”That's what you call her, isn't it? Great treasure.”

  “She is my great treasure, yes.” Safin nodded his head. “She created me.”

  I thought I might faint.

  “What the hell is going on!” the captain shouted. “What are you saying?”

  The woman began to laugh. I could only stare at her, terror eating me from the inside. “Oh, you poor thing,” she said in Qilari. “You told a man from the Mists you had a great treasure, and then you brought him to me.” She laughed again. Her magic rippled, and the captain cursed and rubbed at his head.

  They were going to kill me. I didn't know what the Mists was, but I knew they were pirates, and they were going to kill me.

  The captain swung his pistol over to me. “What did she just say?”

  “I'm the great treasure,” the woman said, speaking Empire. “My name's Talia of the swamp, and I'm the only treasure you'll find here.”

  All I could see were the captain's horrible gray eyes. “I swear I didn't know!” I cried. “Safin never specified. I—” Tears formed in my lashes. The day I’d learned I was banished I'd felt like dying, but I didn't know what death was.

  Hafsa rested her hand on my back. She looked at the captain. I was aware of her hand hovering over her own pistol.

  But the captain didn't shoot me. He stalked up to Talia and yanked Safin off her shoulder by the tail. Safin shrieked in protest and swung his tiny clawed hands at the captain's face. Talia shouted something in a language I didn’t recognize, and the captain doubled over, dropping Safin to the floor. Safin landed on his feet and scrambled back to Talia.

  The captain peered up at Talia. His face was pale and drawn. “So you’re telling me you have the gold and the jewels to create that thing but there's no treasure in your home?”

  “I used it all up.” Talia smiled. “And besides, I said no treasure for you. I'm not in the habit of helping monsters.”

  “I'm not a monster.” The captain straightened, although his steps were wobbling and uncertain. “I was cursed away from sunlight because I once helped you people. I'm never allowed back home. Don't talk to me about monsters.”

  Talia didn't seem like she believed him. I was still weeping, tears streaming silently over my face. Hafsa was the only one who noticed.

  “If you want treasure so badly,” Talia taunted, “you could always take Safin.”

  The captain glared at her. Safin coiled around her feet, but he didn’t seem frightened. If the thought of absconding with Safin had crossed the captain’s mind earlier, I doubted he would attempt it now, not with Talia’s magic moving so thick and clammy though the little room.

  “So that's it, then,” the captain said. “You've got nothing.” He turned to me. “Nothing,” he spat. He pointed his pistol at me again.

  I didn't want to die. Not yet.

  “Wait!” I shouted through my tears. Everyone looked at me, and my thoughts churned to keep up. “What about—what about a reward?”

  “Excuse me?” Talia said.

  I rubbed my sleeve over my face to dry my eyes. I drew myself up like I was still my father's daughter. “A reward. For bringing back Safin.”

  The captain lowered his pistol.

  “He clearly wanted to come back. I'm not sure why he was on the Ocean's Rose—”

  “He was stolen.” Talia lifted her chin. “By pirates like you.”

  “The Ocean's Rose was a passenger liner,” I said. “It was overtaken by pirates later. Whoever stole him wasn't a pirate.”

  Talia didn't say anything.

  “So, yes, he was stolen.” I took a deep breath, trying to steady my heartbeat. “But not by us. We brought him back to you. How many people, pirate or otherwise, would have done that? It would have been easy to sail on to Lisirra and have him smashed to pieces for the gold.”

>   Safin blinked up at me.

  “But we didn't. We returned him.”

  “Because you thought there was a real treasure.”

  “We still returned him.”

  I was desperate, but Talia looked at me for a long time, like she was sizing me up. Then Safin slid up her skirts and whispered something in her ear. She looked at him, looked back to me.

  “Fine,” she finally said. “Pick something off the shelves. Bottom ones only.”

  I felt dizzy. Maybe I wouldn't die today after all.

  I crouched down in front of the bottom shelves. It was crowded with charms and spells and potions. Magic. I didn't recognize what sort, whether earth magic or water magic or wind magic, because I'd never really had the capacity for enchantment. But I did recognize that these charms were simple. Basic. The touched crewman could put them together without even trying.

  I glanced over at the captain. His gun was still out, and he was glaring at me through his stringy hair.

  I decided to take a chance.

  “These are worth nothing.” I rose to my feet. “We sailed three months to bring Safin back to you, and he's not even injured. Not missing a single scale. Surely you can part with something a little more powerful than a half-day protection charm.”

  Talia grinned. “So you aren't as stupid as you look. Fine. Choose from any shelf.”

  I turned back to the shelves. Most of the other items were too advanced for me, so I gestured Hafsa over.

  “Those bags there,” she said. “They're excellent for navigation and evading enemies. Most of this wouldn't do us any good, but those—those will do nicely.”

  I grabbed the bags off the shelf. They were sewn out of worn velvet and felt empty.

  Talia scoffed at our choice. “Sailors,” she muttered. “Pirates.”

  “Thank you,” I told her. “For the reward.”

  I didn't expect her to respond, but instead she spoke in Qilari: “You watch out for that captain. He's not human.”

  I didn't know what to say to that. Rafi and Hafsa and the captain had already stepped outside. A few more days and I'd be in Idai City. Maybe the captain wasn't human. I don't think it mattered to his crew, not one bit.