Ven said nothing.
* * *
I didn’t want to believe him.
At the same time I was afraid not to believe him.
I wanted to go home. I wanted to go home now more than anything. Even if it meant facing my parents. Even if it meant my brothers and sister resented me and didn’t speak to me for the rest of my life.
From the moment I met the captain, he had been nothing but kind to me. Mrs. Snodgrass, too—the other kids at Mouse Lodge and Hare Warren might have found her to be a little frightening, but my mother is the same way, stern, bossy, insistent that everything be done just so, and even a little bit scary. But my mother is a good woman.
Mrs. Snodgrass seemed like a good woman.
Whiting had been nasty to me, but it was hard to deny what he was saying.
I didn’t have any idea what to believe.
I felt like a Revenant at the crossroads myself—unsure which path would take me home. Lost in the dark.
I missed my family. I wished any one of them was there to help me. I wished my father was there to help me tell what the hammered truth of the situation was.
My head was spinning so fast that it made me dizzy.
* * *
“Ya gonna talk to Galliard, then?” the jailer with the bristly beard demanded. “How many bloody times do ya expect me to trot those stairs, man?”
Ven’s hand went to his pocket. He pulled forth his grandfather’s jack-rule, remembering what his father had said on Ven’s birthday as he gave it to him.
It will always measure truer than any other instrument could.
Slowly he opened the measuring tool and extended the magnifying glass.
“Yes,” Mr. Whiting told the jailer. “I’m going to drop the charges and take custody of this prisoner as soon as I can speak to the Vizier.”
Ven raised the magnifying glass to his eye.
At first he could see little in the dim light of the jail cell, and what he could see was out of focus. Then he tilted it a little and caught the lanternlight, and the image sharpened.
The magnifying glass was pointed toward the jailer’s coarse beard, and tucked within the folds Ven could see pipe ashes and the crumbs of the man’s breakfast. He moved the glass to the left as Whiting continued to talk to the jailer, and examined the hawk-nosed man a little more closely.
Ven started at the top of his head, then moved down until the glass caught a sudden glint in the folds of Whiting’s gray robe. He turned the jack-rule carefully to enhance the image.
A rainbow sparkle gleamed within his pocket. Ven recognized the colorful pattern of the light.
Whiting had a diamond vial of his own.
Before he knew what he was doing, a word formed in the bottom of his throat and shoved its way up his neck until it came out his mouth.
“No,” he said quietly.
Both Whiting and the jailer fell silent, then turned to him, shock on both of their faces.
“What did you say?” Whiting asked, disbelief in his voice.
“I said no,” Ven replied, louder this time. “I’m not going with him.”
Through the glass in the jack-rule he saw the veins pop out in Whiting’s forehead, and beads of sweat emerge as the man strode over to the cell bars again.
Ven quickly folded the measuring tool and put it back in his pocket.
“Are you daft, boy?” Whiting demanded. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?”
“Every one of them,” Ven replied, a tone of bravery that he didn’t feel ringing in his voice. “And I disbelieve every one of them as well. You aren’t here to help me; you are certainly not my friend. You want the Living Water for yourself, nothing more. You have since that day on the ship when I got your place in the longboat. I’m not going to help you get it. I will take my chances with the king’s justice.”
Whiting’s eyes darkened with rage.
“You’re a fool,” he snarled, his mask of pleasantness gone now. “Look around you, Nain brat. Do you like this place? It may very well be your home for the rest of your life.”
Ven shrugged. “Well, we Nain like it underground,” he said. He stepped away from the bars of the cell as Whiting jammed his fingers through them.
The hawk-nosed man laughed sharply.
“This cell is not the only underground you will see before I’m done with you, boy,” he said. “When the king returns, you will be tried for your crimes as the fifty-year-old Nain that you are, not the idiot boy you appear to be. Thievery of my ring aside, the king will hold you responsible for the deaths of all those sailors you blew to smithereens on the Angelia. You will hang for sure, and then they will plant you underground forever. With any luck, they will bury you at the crossroads, with all your Revenant friends. What a joy that will be, now, won’t it? You can haunt the night with them for eternity.” A cruel smile spread across his face at the look on Ven’s.
Ven had gone white, but from shock, not fear.
“How did you know the name of that ship?” he asked. “An unchristened ship, in Vaarn Harbor? No one was supposed to know that.”
Whiting’s smile faded. He leaned as close as he could to Ven through the bars.
“You truly must be stupid, even for a Nain,” he said disdainfully. “I would have thought you might have noticed by now that I know many things that no one is supposed to know.”
He turned on his heel and strode up the stairs into the darkness, leaving Ven and the jailer behind, both blinking, one on each side of the bars of the cell.
19
The King
* * *
After that, I lost all track of time.
I wrote until I couldn’t think of anything else to write, and then I gave my papers to the jailer, who nodded at me and went back up the stairs again. I assumed he gave them to whoever would give them to the king. Now he only returned to feed me.
Leaving me, most of the time, alone in the dark, with little to do but sleep, and worry, and wonder how Whiting and McLean, and everyone else, seemed to know things that they shouldn’t.
I did a lot of all three.
* * *
VEN 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.
* * *
I realized from the moment I saw those names why men would carve them into the wall. It was their only way of remembering who they were in this place of endless darkness, where time didn’t exist. I used my great-grandfather’s jack-rule, which they hadn’t taken away from me. My father probably would have thought it a disgraceful use of an honored tool, but I think Magnus would have understood.
As the sound of the boots grew closer, I wished I had been able to write a last letter to my mother. I had been trying to do so since they put me in the cell, but the words just wouldn’t come.
* * *
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.
* * *
It was then I realized I was in the presence of the king. But I had been foolish enough to bow to the wrong man.
I could not have been more surprised—or more stupid. I remember turning and bowing again, or trying to. The constable whomped me on the back when I didn’t assume a respectful position fast enough. I fell forward, thumping my head on the table and sending puzzle pieces flying in every direction.
I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me whole.
* * *
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.
* * *
I took his hand gratefully, and shook it firmly, a handshake that was all business, just as my father had taught me. “A man’s only as good as his word and his handshake,” he used to always say.
I heard the constable gasp behind me, and the king’s man looked ready to light me on fire with his eyes.
I learned later that I was supposed to either bow over the king’s hand, as a foreigner, or press my forehead against it, if I were a native of the island. Shaking it was terribly bad manners. I was doing everything wrong. But at least I was consistent.
* * *
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 Fo
lk, 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?”