The Tree of Water

  Char was lying on his back. Standing on top of him, looking confused, was a slender dog the color of butter and cream, with long ears the color of toasted marshmallows. He was staring down at Char as if he knew him.

  Ven realized a moment later that he did.

  “Finlay!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

  Char’s eyes were closed tight. He opened them slowly.

  “Is—isn’t this Mr. Coates’s dog?” he asked. “From the weapons shop?”

  “One of them,” Ven said. “Hey, boy! What are you doing here? How did you get out of the Gated City?” He crouched down and held out his hands to the yellow dog.

  Finlay leapt off Char’s stomach and trotted over. He licked Ven’s hands while Ven scratched his ears.

  “I assume you’re not expectin’ him to actually answer you,” Char said, slowly standing up. “The only talkin’ animal in the upworld I know is Murphy the cat—at least if I’m rememberin’ correctly. My brain is boiled since we’ve been in the sea.”

  “What could he be doing here—in the wreck of the Athenry?”

  “Dunno,” said Char. “Could he be one o’ the only innocent prisoners she ever held?”

  As if in response, the dog ran over to the dark hold opening and began to bark.

  Ven followed him. He peered through the opening.

  Cowering in the back of the ballast tank at the bottom of the ship were two human children, a boy and a girl. Ven guessed them to be about Char’s age. They were ragged and thin, and their eyes were wide and hollow in their faces, which Ven could barely see in the slashes of light that came in from a pair of small slats on each side of the ballast tank, too narrow for a person to fit through.

  But just wide enough for a skinny dog.

  They looked scared to death.

  Ven’s heart leapt into his throat.

  * * *

  They looked more afraid than I had ever seen anyone look in my life.

  Their raggy clothes were ill-fitting, as if the children had shrunk since putting them on. After a moment I realized it was because the clothes were made to fit human adults, and were just too big.

  Both of them were chained to the wall with leg irons that were probably left over from the Athenry’s days transporting criminals to their prison-colony home. There were two small cots with thin blankets behind them, with chamber pots underneath. An empty flask and a few scraps of bread lay on the floor near them.

  Otherwise the ballast tank was empty.

  And as my heart sank all the way from my throat to my stomach, I realized we must have found the only innocent prisoners the Athenry had ever held.

  * * *

  “Water—please,” the little girl whispered.

  Ven and Char looked at each other. Then they dug furiously into their packs and pulled out the half-full flasks of fresh water the Cormorant had given them. Ven pulled out the cork from his, hurried to the girl, and held the flask to her lips. She drank greedily as Char let the boy drink the rest of the contents of his flask.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Ven said to the boy, who was shaking so hard that the water was spilling over his face. “We’ll help you. Who are you?”

  The little girl leaned forward. Just as she did, the last light of the day splashed through the slats in the tank. In that dim light Ven could see that she had dark eyes with dark circles beneath them and similarly dark hair. The boy, on the other hand, had hair that was almost colorless and eyes the color of the sky.

  The girl said nothing.

  “Ahem. Maybe they’d be less afraid if they weren’t chained to a wall,” Char said pointedly.

  “Oh! Yes. Sorry. My brain is still addled from the salt water.” Ven took the skeleton key out of his pocket. He read the inscription again.

  “All right,” he said. “Here goes.”

  He reached for the leg iron that was clasped around the little girl’s leg. The girl shrank back, trying to scramble away. Ven put his hands up.

  “Whoa. Don’t worry,” said Char. “He’s just tryin’ to help. If ya hold still, he might be able to set you free. Hold still a minute.”

  The children looked at each other. When they did, Ven noticed that in spite of having totally different coloring, they both had the same long thin nose that hooked slightly at the bottom.

  Ven held up the skeleton key,

  “May I?” he asked. He tried to keep his voice as gentle as he could. Finlay came over to him and sniffed at the long thin tool, then walked away, seemingly satisfied.

  The children exchanged another glance. Then the girl nodded.

  Ven took hold of the padlock on the girl’s ankle. He winced at how bony and bruised that ankle was. Then he slid the skeleton key inside the hole in the padlock and jiggled it around.

  A solid thunk echoed through the ballast tank.

  The children’s faces lit up. The little girl pulled the shackle off her foot and tossed it across the ballast tank and into a wall. Then she grabbed the shackle around the boy’s ankle and held it still for Ven. He quickly freed the boy from his chains. The key almost fell out of his hands as the girl threw her arms around his neck and hugged him.

  “Thank you,” she said. Her voice was stronger than the first time he had heard it.

  “Will you please tell us who you are?” Ven asked. “We’ve been looking for you for a very long time.”

  “How can that be, if you doesn’t know who we is?” the girl said.

  Ven and Char exhaled at the same time. Then Ven held the key up where she could see it.

  “I found this in a glass bottle floating in the sea on one of the skelligs outside the harbor to the north,” he said. “There was a scrap of oilcloth wrapped around it with just one word—Athenry.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Ven blinked. “Well, it’s—this place, where we are. The prison ship, the Athenry.” The children just stared at him. “This was once a small part of a gigantic ship that brought prisoners from far away to the Gated City, to live in it as kind of penal colony.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said the girl. “I don’t know what those words mean. None of them ever telled us anything about where we is.”

  “Them?”

  The girl hesitated. “The guards,” she said finally.

  “Guards? There have been people holding you captive here?”

  She nodded. “They bringed us food and water every few days—until about ten days ago. That night, there was a big boom. We could feel it, even in here. The tide was high, because the water was coming in.” She pointed to wet spots on the floor. “And it will be coming in again soon. But after that night, no one comed. We runned out of water two days ago.”

  “That must have been the attack on the Gated City,” Ven said to Char. “The Cormorant said the tunnel was sealed half a turn of the moon ago—that means about two weeks. They must have been held captive by the thieves from inside the city—probably Felonia’s thugs from the Raven’s Guild. Once the tunnel was sealed, the guards couldn’t get out to bring them supplies.” He turned back to the girl. “You’ve been without food and water for ten days?”

  The girl shrugged. “Only water. The animal has bringed us food. He comed not long after the boom. He bringed us some bread. He goes out every night and comes back with something to eat. But I don’t think he can carry water.”

  “He must have escaped during the attack,” Ven said to Char. “The sea Lirin wouldn’t have paid any attention to a dog fleeing the tunnel.”

  “How long have you been here?” Char asked.

  The children stared at them.

  “We don’t remember ever not being here,” the little girl said.

  “You’re kiddin’.”

  “You’ve lived here all your lives?” Ven asked in disbelief. “Have they ever let you out?”

  “Never,” said the little girl. “At least not when we’re awake. Every now and then they gives one of us a drink that makes us fall asleep. Then they comes in and
takes that one out in a blanket. When they comes back, we’re still asleep. But they never takes both of us at the same time. Just one. I heared the guards talking once, and they said they were taking us to him, but we never get to see him, because we is asleep. But he comed to see us once, I remember. We both was awake. That was a good day.”

  “He? Who? The dog?”

  The children exchanged a glance. Then the girl spoke again.

  “Our father. The guards bringed him one night when the moon was full, a long, long time ago. We was very little then. He wasn’t allowed to stay very long, just long enough to hug us and tell us our names and not to be afraid, that he would find a way to get us out one day. But he never did. He never comed back. I don’t think he ever will. It’s been a very long time.”

  Ven scratched his head. His curiosity was blazing like wildfire, making his scalp and skin itch. “You’re brother and sister?” The children nodded. “Twins?” They looked at him oddly, and he realized if they didn’t know the word for dog, they probably didn’t know what he meant. He thought about every warning he had been given in the sea about telling names, and then threw caution to the winds. “I’m Ven—and this is Char. Can you tell me your names?”

  “I’m Hannah,” the girl said after a moment. “And my brother is Sam. He doesn’t talk much, so I do it for him.”

  “Who teaches you things?” Ven asked. “How did you learn to talk?”

  Hannah shrugged. “I listen to the guards when they don’t know it.”

  “We need to get them outta here,” Char said. “The tide’s comin’ in, and soon it will be Total Dark. They probably can’t swim.”

  “You’re right,” said Ven. “This dog is Finlay, by the way—he belongs to a friend of ours inside the Gated City. I’m glad he has taken care of you.” He helped Hannah to stand, while Char helped Sam, then signaled to Finlay, and slowly helped them out of the ballast tank and into the dark core of the prison ship.

  “It’s prolly a good thing it’s dark,” Char said as he pulled Sam’s arm up over his own shoulder to steady him and help him walk. “After spendin’ their whole lives in darkness, the sun’s gonna burn their eyes at first.”

  “Very true,” said Ven as he helped Hannah out of the shipwreck and onto the rocky sand of the windswept beach. “Plus it should help hide us until we get back to the Crossroads Inn. We’re going to have to walk right past the Gated City—and even if the thieves aren’t able to get out right now, they still always have guards on the walls and people on the Skywalk. I think we should try very hard not to be seen. I want Felonia to think I’m long gone.”

  “Yeah, and we don’ wanna tip her off that these two are free,” Char said. “I don’ know why they were so important to the Thief Queen, or whoever was keepin’ them prisoner, but there’s sure to be some fallout when they find out they’re missin’.”

  “If they ever do,” Ven said. He looked back at the broken piece of the Athenry. It looked like nothing more than a large black rock formation in the dark. “No wonder no one knew what had become of it. It must have run aground in the harbor just outside the Gated City, probably in a storm. All these years it’s been here, the last dozen or so serving as a prison for these guys. I wonder what’s so special about them.”

  Char looked back at the Gated City in the distance. The torches had been lit all along its high walls, filling the darkness with thin wisps of smoke rising ominously into the air.

  “We prolly will never know,” he said. “At least I won’t. I’m never goin’ back in there again—and that’s prolly the only place to find out.”

  Ven came to the edge of the beach where the dry, rocky dunes met the wet sand. He squinted in the darkness, but could see nothing but the rolling waves.

  “Amariel? Are you there?”

  “Yes.” Her voice floated over the wind and the crashing of the waves. “Can’t you see me? I can see you clear as day.”

  “Not a bit,” Ven admitted. “Can you follow us down the coast back to central Kingston?”

  “Certainly,” shouted the merrow over the noise of the ocean. “Who do you have there?”

  “The innocent prisoners.”

  “Ah! So that’s the Athenry,” Amariel said. “I guess that makes sense. By the way, there’s someone watching you from the wall of the Gated City.”

  Panic coursed through Ven, quenching his curiosity and leaving him weak.

  “Where?”

  “About midway down the wall, towards the Outer Market. On the good side of the tunnel. Near the torch that keeps flickering.”

  “Hannah, do you think you can stand without help for a minute?” The girl nodded. Ven dug into his vest pocket and pulled out the jack-rule. He extended the glass that magnified things from far away, thankful that he had not dropped the tool in the sea the many times he had come close to doing so.

  He held up the jack-rule’s glass to his eye.

  And gasped.

  45

  A Rescue, Long Time in Coming

  What looked like a giant watery eye, black as the coming night, was staring back at him from within a dark, floating ring.

  Ven almost dropped the jack-rule.

  He blinked quickly, then held the glass up to his eye again.

  The floating eye was gone.

  In its place he saw a man in a long, dark cloak and hood. He was standing near one of the large streetlamp torches, half turned away, putting a spyglass of his own into the folds of his cloak. Then he turned back to Ven.

  As if he could see him.

  I must have been looking straight into the lens of his spyglass, Ven thought.

  The man stood motionless for a moment. Then he grabbed his hood and pulled it down.

  Ven gasped again. Even in the almost-complete dark he recognized him.

  “It’s Mr. Coates!” he shouted. “Char, it’s Mr. Coates!”

  “Seriously?” Char’s voice rang with excitement. “Oh, I’m so glad he’s alive. Last time we were in his shop, I wasn’t sure he had made it out, blood on the floor an’ all.”

  Ven turned the tiny ring on the edge of his telescoping tool to try and focus better. Mr. Coates’s dark eyes above dark circles and beneath dark hair came into view. That hair seemed a little grayer than the last time Ven had seen it a few months before, but perhaps he was imagining it.

  He stepped back a little farther, and saw through the glass that at the man’s side was an enormous dog, muscular and shaggy, standing atop the Skyway with the weapons maker. The giant beast shook, and tufts of hair exploded into the air around him and were carried off a moment later by a gust of wind into the dark. Ven broke into a wide grin.

  “It’s Munx!” he called to Char. “Munx is on the Skyway with him!”

  Char exhaled happily. “Good. Good—he’s all right too, then. I love that dog.”

  Mr. Coates held out both his hands in front of him, palms down. Then he put one hand flat on his chest, near his heart.

  “He’s trying to tell me something,” Ven said as the weapons maker repeated the gesture. “But I can’t tell what it is.” He held the small telescope out for Char to look through. Char did, then shrugged.

  Ven peered through the glass again. Mr. Coates was patting his chest harder now, insistently.

  “It looks like he’s trying to say that something belongs to him,” Ven said. Through the glass he could see Mr. Coates look over his shoulder anxiously. The man reached back into the folds of his garment and took out his spyglass again. He extended it toward them, looked through it, then began sweeping his left arm violently, as if to hurry them away toward the north.

  “He wants us to get out of here, that seems clear,” said Ven. “We had better do as he says.” He heard a bark, and turned around to where the two young former captives stood, fighting to remain upright in the sea wind.

  Finlay, Mr. Coates’s other dog, was running in circles around Sam and Hannah, chasing the foaming waves away from the children as they skittered back into the se
a. Char chuckled, but Ven felt the backs of his eyes burn with sudden curiosity.

  And realization.

  “They’re—they’re his,” he said slowly. “That’s what he’s telling us, Char—Sam and Hannah are his kids!”

  “Criminey,” Char whispered. “Are—are you sayin’ he’s the one that put the skeleton key in that bottle?”

  “Makes sense, doesn’t it?” Ven said as he hurried toward the little girl. “When you saw the skeleton key, you remembered you had seen one like it in his shop. And he told us that while he knew about the tunnel out of the market, he couldn’t leave, didn’t he? There are many layers in a prison—it all depends on who’s doing the watching, that’s what he said, remember?” He stopped in front of the young girl. “Hannah—can you look through this, please? Up on the wall.”

  The girl stared at him, then reluctantly put her eye to the glass.

  She stood still for a moment, then began to shake with excitement.

  “That’s him! That’s our father!”

  “Oh, man, we gotta get them outta here,” Char said. “If he’s on the north wall of the Gated City, he’s real far away from his shop in the Outer Market. In fact, he’s a deep as you can get in the Inner Ring—right in the middle of the Raven’s Guild territory. He’s prolly watchin’ to make sure we get the kids outta the Athenry and to safety.”

  “Let’s do that, then,” Ven agreed. He took hold of Hannah’s arm. “Come on—let’s get out of here.”

  “I want to see him! I want to see my father!” the young girl squealed, twisting away.

  “Come with us—please come with us,” Ven begged, pulling her as gently as he could. The sand was slippery, and he was having trouble standing upright after all the time in the sea. His lungs and skin were still waterlogged, and even the weak girl was more than he could hold on to.

  Hannah twisted free and stumbled toward the city in the distance. She had only gotten a few paces before Char tackled her, pulling her down with him in a heap on the sand. “It’s all right,” he said, grabbing her arms as she scratched at him. “I know—I really do—but we can’t go there right now. We have to get you and Sam to safety before we do anythin’ else—your dad wants it that way, too. Come on. Please. Just come on.”