Island of Fire (The Unwanteds) (2 page)

Sean raised an eyebrow as Meghan took a closer look at Henry’s injuries. “Crow?”

“The Silent boy,” Alex said. “Henry named him.”

“That
is
his name,” Henry said. “He showed me. He drew a bird in the sand and I guessed it.”

“I’m going after him,” Alex said, finding it a little easier now to take charge than he had just a few short weeks ago. “Sean, you want to get the story?”

Sean nodded. Alex started off toward the gate and then stopped, turned, and called back, “We need to have a meeting. You, me, Meg, Henry, and the Silents. See if you guys can find out if Mr. Appleblossom and Carina are available too. They’ve had their hands full with the fish catchers the last few days.”

“Got it,” Sean said.

Alex’s best friend, Meghan, whose skin was mostly healed
around the band of metal thorns on her neck, could only nod in response.

Alex didn’t have to go far before he saw Crow walking back toward the gate. He caught up with the boy and turned around, walking with him. “You okay, little guy?” Alex asked.

Crow nodded and punched his fist into his other palm.

“I know,” Alex said. “But I don’t want you to fight. I shouldn’t have sent you guys out in the open with food like that. People are mean when they get desperate.” He pressed his hand into his own stomach, trying to batten down the hunger. He knew he didn’t have much time before the little plot of land that had once been Artimé became a battleground of infighting. And if that happened, the Unwanteds were doomed.

Who was Alex trying to fool? If he didn’t do something quick, they were already doomed.

Crow kicked the dusty road with his bare foot as they turned in at the gate.

“We’re going to have a meeting. I’d like you to be there, okay?”

The Silent boy made a fist and tapped it to his chest. It was the new Artiméan symbol of loyalty, which meant “I am with you.”

Alex smiled. “Good.”

They made their way to the shack. Alex poked his head in and spied Henry sitting in the midst of dozens of other Unwanteds, most of whom were trying to get their six-hour shift of sleep. “Meet by Florence,” Alex whispered, trying not to disturb the slumbering masses. The roof was the only private place around.

The small team of Unwanteds assembled one by one around Florence. It was a strange group, since three among them were unable to make a sound, and a fourth, Carina’s baby boy, spoke only gibberish.

Henry scrambled up Florence’s limbs to the roof and then reached down to take the baby. Alex, Meghan, Crow, the Silent girl, and Carina all climbed up too, and they sat in the shade—for the moment—of Quill’s forty-foot-tall stone wall.

Alex looked at the Silents. “So, your name is really Crow?” he asked the boy.

The boy nodded.

Alex smiled. “Nice.” He looked at the girl. “I wish I knew your name,” he said.

She tilted her head and both she and Crow pointed upward.

Alex frowned and looked up. “Cloud?” he guessed. “Blue? Sunny? Star? Rain?”

The girl shook her head and pointed again.

Carina and Henry looked on, and then Henry piped up. “Is it Sky?”

The Silent girl nodded, her face breaking into a bright smile.

“Sky,” Alex said, gazing at her. He liked the sound of that. And then he blushed and looked down to see if Sean was coming.

On the ground, Sean appeared, along with Mr. Appleblossom. “Um . . . ,” Sean said, looking first at the man, who was one of the original Unwanteds Mr. Today had saved, then glancing up at the roof. “Is this going to be a problem, Sigfried?” he asked the theater instructor.

“Oh my,” Mr. Appleblossom murmured, “what a predicament indeed.” He gazed imploringly at Florence’s ebony face. “It’s not the height that bothers me, of course. I’m nimble quite enough, though lacking speed. But think of when she wakes! Severe remorse—without our gentle mage to intercede. I may as well attempt a pommel horse.” Instead he drew back a few steps and gave Sean a measuring glance. “Or vault,”
he murmured, suddenly thoughtful. “At that I may perchance succeed.” He brought a finger to his chin, calculating his odds of running and vaulting to the roof using Sean’s back, rather than disrespecting the enormous warrior trainer.

“She’ll never know. We won’t tell her, I promise,” said Sean, his eyes widening in alarm when he realized what Mr. Appleblossom was considering. “There’s really no other way to get up there—I’m not nearly big enough to be used as a gymnastics apparatus. Besides, I’m sure Florence would be glad she helped us in her own way.”

The theater instructor shuddered, then set his shoulders and carefully climbed up the statue to the roof, where he settled next to the others. Sean followed.

“Well then, everyone,” Alex began, and then he cleared his throat a little. “It seems things are beginning to crumble.”

Meghan’s eyes shot open wide.

“To put it bluntly,” Sean said.

“How much water is left?” Alex asked Sean.

“About a barrel and a half.”

Alex turned to Carina. “And the fishing?”

“They’re catching a dozen or so each day, and some
shellfish. Not enough to keep us all from starving, I’m afraid, no matter how thin we make the broth.” Carina looked down at her hands. “People have been fighting over it the last few days. It’s not good.”

“I got attacked,” Henry said. He still held baby Seth, who was content for the moment to sit and gnaw on Henry’s shirt collar. “I was trying to bring you some broth, Carina. Two guys came up to me and Crow. They grabbed the food and shoved me.” He shifted the baby to his other leg. “They took off and Crow chased them.”

“I’m so sorry,” Carina said. “How could anybody do that to you?” She looked at Crow. “Did you see what they looked like?”

Crow nodded.

“You’d be able to recognize them?”

The boy nodded again.

Mr. Appleblossom shook his head. “My guess is that these thugs will not be back. The high priest’s guards are bribing Artimé. We’ve lost a score so far—I’m keeping track. What boy would starve when facing a soufflé? I blame them not for joining that wolf pack.”

Alex winced. “Twenty gone? I guess it’s not surprising.”

“It won’t be long before a true uprising,” the theater teacher added in a quiet voice, completing Alex’s couplet.

Alex turned to look at the instructor, his stomach feeling as pinched as Mr. Appleblossom’s heat-flushed cheeks and sunburned forehead looked. “I know, Mr. A,” he said with a hint of desperation. “I’m trying.”

“Of course you are, my boy. I have no doubt.” Mr. Appleblossom patted Alex’s shoulder and gave him a sympathetic look. “I hope the rest of us can help you out.”

“I’m open to any suggestions.” Alex pulled Mr. Today’s note from his pocket and unfolded it. “I know you’ve heard it before, but I’m going to read this to you all again,” he said, looking around the group. “If you think of anything that might help me solve these clues, please say it, no matter how silly it sounds. We’re desperate. Here goes:

Follow the dots as the traveling sun,

Magnify, focus, every one.

Stand enrobed where you first saw me,

Utter in order; repeat times three.”

Alex looked around the group. “Anyone?”

Sky, the Silent girl, closed her eyes and frowned, a look of concentration on her face.

Carina looked out across the water to the west. “Do you still believe the dots are the islands?”

“I don’t know what else they could be,” Alex said. “Trees? We don’t have any. Buildings? Ditto. The clue refers to the sun, and the sun sets over the islands we can see. It seems the most logical thing.”

“But I don’t get how you are supposed to magnify and focus on them when we can’t see them all from here,” Sean said. “And we’re stranded. Maybe we shouldn’t have used the raft for firewood.”

Sky opened her eyes, sat straight up, and shook her head violently. She clutched her hands to her throat and fell back against the shingles, feigning death.

Alex gave his newest friend a small smile, impressed with her theatrics, though now wasn’t the time to mention that. “She’s right,” he said. “The water is really too rough out there for a raft, as Sky and Crow know. Besides, I’m not sure what an excursion would do for us—I wouldn’t have the first idea of
what to magnify and focus on once we got to the other islands. Even with a powerboat it would take days and days to stop at all of them. And talk about dangerous—we have no idea what kinds of people we’d face. . . . ” He trailed off and couldn’t help but glance at Meghan’s neck. She looked back at him, her sober gaze unwavering. How badly Alex wished he could fix her, but with no tools or magic or medical supplies, he didn’t dare risk trying. He wondered if she’d ever be able to speak again. Or sing.

They discussed the clue at length, with the best suggestion coming from Mr. Appleblossom, who wondered aloud if one could see the other six islands in the chain from the top of the wall, and if so, perhaps there was a pattern to be found by viewing all of them at once.

“Okay,” Alex said, “but how do we get up there?”

“I guess I’ll get to work building a ladder,” Sean said.

“Out of what?” Henry asked, incredulous. “We don’t have any wood or metal, just a few barrels . . . ”

Sean glanced down at Florence, his jaw set, and then turned his gaze to the multitude of frozen, once-magical creatures that lined this side of the wall: squirrelicorns, beavops, platyprots,
and more lying stiff and helpless without Mr. Today’s magic.

“With them,” he said quietly. “Stack them up like a staircase, I guess.” And then he looked out over the sea, shaking his head. “Without a solution to Mr. Today’s clue, they’ll never come to life again to know the difference.”

A
s High Priest Gunnar Haluki was tied up at the moment, the new Associate High Priest Aaron Stowe wasted no time shortening his official title to High Priest Aaron. It was just easier for the people of Quill that way, he declared, and it took much less time to say and write.

Not that Aaron could write quite yet. But soon. He’d been practicing with one of the scholars, Crete Sepulcher, a middle-aged man with crinkly, paper-thin skin and the personality of a rock.

Aaron sat at his desk with a rare piece of paper, scratching
on it with an ancient stick of a pencil. As a young boy, he’d always wondered how the markings got on the paper. He never imagined it was with a stick. It made him think of Alex, drawing with that stick in the mud in the midst of a downpour in the backyard. And how he’d tried it too. And how he’d been caught, but his father had mistaken him for Alex. With his eyes, Aaron had pleaded with Alex to go along with it, to take the blame so Aaron wouldn’t get an infraction.

He looked at the pencil now, turning it in his hands, tracing the ridge with his finger, down to the dull, whittled point. Remembering. It all seemed a very long time ago. But the look of betrayal on Alex’s face . . . Aaron closed his eyes and tried to forget it. Tried to stop the words that taunted him.
The only reason you’re sitting here now is because of him.

Standing abruptly, Aaron dropped the pencil on his desk and strode to the window. An ugly gargoyle statue wearing a pink bow around its horn rested on the ledge, very nearly staring up at the young high priest. “Haluki had the strangest sense of decor,” Aaron muttered. He gazed through the glass down the long driveway, then turned his eyes back and traced his gaze along the ever-present, ever-boring wall.

“Secretary,” Aaron said in a raised voice.

Eva Fathom appeared in the doorway, her name—and indeed her identity—discarded once again.

“Find me a dozen strong Necessaries and the most powerful tools we have. Giant hammers, sharp picks, shovels. My guards and I will meet them at the portcullis at sunrise tomorrow.”

“Of course,” murmured Eva, but she smirked to herself. The rusty, broken-down gate to the palace could hardly be called a portcullis, but the new high priest was fond of making his things sound important, especially when they weren’t.

“Next,” Aaron went on, “send two more guards to Artimé to infiltrate. Tell them not to fight—just create some more unrest and keep the grumbling going. It’s been working. We’ve taken in nearly two dozen so far and have put them right to work for our Wanteds.”

“Very good,” Eva said. She folded her hands behind her back, waiting for more tasks.

Aaron turned, looking down his nose at the woman. “And get me an update on the whereabouts and activities of the Restorers. Is Haluki dead yet? Where’s Gondoleery? She’s all but disappeared.”

Eva hadn’t seen Gondoleery at all since the battle, but instinct nudged her not to admit that. Instead she said, “Many of the Restorers are taking a rest after all their hard work, but Liam Healy and Bethesda Dia Gloria are still stationed at High Priest Haluki’s house.”

Aaron narrowed his eyes at her. “
I’m
the high priest.
Secretary
.”

Eva pursed her lips and turned them into a thin-lipped smile. “My apologies for the slip. I don’t know what I’m to call him now.”

“Call him . . . oh, who cares? Just don’t call him
that
.”