Mearsies Heili Bounces Back (15 page)

We all sat together, crowded arm to arm at a roundish table,
where we were served on wooden tray-dishes, with square, squat cups. When the
table is heaving all around with the deck, it makes sense to have these kinds
of dishes. You also learn not to pour a full cup.

“Okay,” I said, when we were alone. “I think we’re all right
with these guys, but one thing for sure. When we get home we are going to
practice untying ropes.”

“Check,” Id said. “Us, too.”

“And we’re going to get Diana to teach us about locks.”

“Check,” everybody said.

“And we’re gonna have to learn at least something about
maps.”

Sherry sighed.

o0o

The captain told us that they did not carry passengers, and
that everybody had to work. He acted kind of like he was kidding, but I had
that feeling it was kind of a test. Maybe he thought I was going to act like a
snobby princess, or maybe he just wasn’t sure if having kids would be trouble,
but anyway, everybody cheered.

Since we agreed to work, that made us part of the crew, so
the captain invited us to sign our names in his own log book. And that was an
excuse for a party, with food, singing, dancing, and music, our first night.

The second day, we each got assigned to a crew member to
learn something. So we learned the parts of a ship, and what all the ropes are
called. We got in the halyard line and hauled sails up, we each took turns at
the wheel, and Sherry and Seshe, who both love cooking, helped in the galley.
That was a tiny space, amazingly put together like a puzzle box, so not many
more than the cook, his cook mate, and one kid could be in there.

The rest of us had to set out dishes and then dunk them in the
magic bucket, which was boring but familiar work. There was other stuff to
learn that you couldn’t do in a day, like mending sail (you really had to be
strong—sailcloth feels as stiff as a board, and about as heavy, when you touch
it) and honing weapons and fletching arrows.

Captain Heraford stopped being so prickly-formal around me.
I couldn’t quite figure out why he’d been that way as soon as he heard I was
the princess of Mearsies Heili, but I finally decided whatever had caused it
had nothing to do with me. It was partly something from his past (which he
didn’t talk about) and partly grownup weirdness.

He liked our words, though, even English ones like ‘kids.’

o0o

Puddlenose swung down from the hatch and dropped onto the
companionway, then dashed into the wardroom, where most of us kids were having
some hot chocolate. It was raining hard out on the sea—nothing visible but gray
in sky, air, and ocean—and the only one who wanted to be out was Guess Who.

“We’re going on a raid!” Puddlenose said, rubbing his hands.

“A real pirate raid?” Id asked. “Yow!”

“Yes. Captain Heraford says that the Chwahir spies in Danai
Harbor need to hear
Tzasilia
’s name mentioned with this raid. So they
won’t be thinking of us if Shnit of the Chwahir decides on some kind of magic
search, or whatever.”

We’d been close to the rocky coast for a couple of days,
while that storm moved overhead and blew out to the eastern seas. Most of the
shore along Chwahirsland was super high cliffs with a lot of stripes of
different colors of rock, covered with birds’ nests and not much else. Then the
land dropped away westward into Danara, the country with all those
troublemakers—Captain Heraford said most of the people causing the most trouble
were involved with the Chwahir, who were constantly trying to expand their
borders.

Between the harbor and the border (Danara being a tiny
country) there was a headland with a very new and imposing mansion on it.

Captain Heraford said, “You kids can come on the raid if you
like. I’ll assign you to sack the rooms of the family, while we take care of
the customs end of things. But if you do, you have to dress like us. We don’t
want reports of you Mearsieans going out. You need to be pirate kids. If you
know Sartoran, good, but if not, don’t talk.”

“How about nonsense talk?” Sherry asked. “We’ve done that to
PJ before.” She turned to me. “Gibble-gabble snackle-bag?” She pointed out the
scuttle.

I spread my hands. “Forblsnerg gribblspitstik.”

Captain Heraford laughed. “That’s fine. Take all their
treasure you like. Snord’s kids are even worse than he is.”

Seshe looked troubled. She didn’t say anything in front of
Captain Heraford, but the rest of us noticed.

As soon as the Captain left to go plan with his grownups,
Puddlenose said impatiently so Seshe, “You can always stay here.”

“I know.” She continued to cut her biscuit into small
pieces, the way she always did. She never chomped and tore at bread with her
teeth, like us.

Puddlenose sighed. “What’s your problem? He said they’re
rotters.”

“Even rotters have a right to their stuff.” Seshe’s cheeks
reddened. “I don’t mean to be sounding like I’m judging.”

“But you are.” Puddlenose scratched his head.

“My thoughts are my own. I did not say anything until you
asked.”

Puddlenose left, still scratching his head.

Dhana leaned forward. “He wants you to be in favor.”

Seshe said, “What if PJ says that because you are nasty to
him, he has a right to raid the Junky?”

I tried not to groan. I really wanted to go on a raid, and I
was ready to believe that the Snord family was evil because I liked Captain
Heraford. Then I remembered what Clair had said about scruples—and I could tell
that Seshe hated to be left behind. But she wasn’t going to go if she didn’t
feel right about it.

Puddlenose ran back in, and thumped his hand on the table. “
That’s
why these cuttlefish are the target! This Snord geezer is a robber, all in the
name of custom! He takes extra shares, and he has the newest government behind
him. He lets his kids pick what they want off people’s ships, and the ship
owners can’t do anything about it, if they want to do custom in the harbor!”

Seshe crossed her arms. “You should have told me that in the
first place. Where’s the box of pirate outfits?”

Klutz adopted a striped shirt from a really, really big
pirate. It was like a tent on her, and the yellow and green colors looked
terrible with her red hair. Naturally she was thrilled. The rest of us got
bright-colored outfits and tied them on with silk sashes.

The grownups were going to do the boring part—capture the
guards, and steal all the customs official’s papers, to show to the government someday,
if there was ever an honest government.

We rowed over at night. The house was huge, three stories,
with a lot of windows in sort of smoothed, rounded towers. Not really a castle,
or it was what the captain called a fortified palace, if that makes any
sense—spires and tower rooms and so forth, but with big picture windows, and
gardens instead of moats and spiked walls.

There were guards, but they weren’t very good, or maybe
they’d gotten lazy. The privateers tackled and tied them all up, and we kids
were sent up to the rooms where the family lived.

We found Lady Snord by the sound of her voice. She’d just
finished having a party, and was shrieking orders at the servants, and
complaining through closed double doors about their guests, as she got out of
her party duds. I guess she thought his lordship (they were celebrating their
rise in rank) was listening. She didn’t know he was tied up, gagged, and lying
in the middle of his floor as pirates looted his office.

We looked at one another, unsure what to do. Lady Snord
sounded like Fobo, but nobody particularly wanted to tackle and tie her up.

Then Klutz got a great idea. She flitted to the balcony
outside the main bedchamber. When Lady Snord stalked through, scattering
servants like chickens in a barnyard, Klutz leaped off the balcony, a glowglobe
held under her chin so she looked like some kind of horrible ghost.

I promptly made an illusion writhe up from Klutz, like a
monster ghost.

We all shrieked, and Lady Snord shrieked the loudest—and
fainted!

While the servants ran to her aid (or away) we nipped into
the room she’d just left, which, sure enough, was her treasure room. Talk about
treasure!

We all loaded up on necklaces, rings, brooches, jeweled
belts, and a whole lot of tiaras good enough for queens. Klutz grabbed what she
thought was a beautiful sea-green gown. (It turned out to be a nightgown, which
annoyed her, but Gwen took it, ripped off the decorations, and wore it as a
gown anyway.)

Then we went on down the hall to what we discovered was the
daughter’s room. The girl, a teenager, was asleep. She had even more tiaras
than her mother, and about fifty rings, plus enough fancy clothes for the
entire cloudtop city. We piled more loot onto our stash (Klutz wearing five
tiaras at once) and moved on down the hall at a much slower pace.

There were twin boys. They woke up. One hid, whining and
pleading, the other tried to tackle the closest of us, which was Id. Seshe and
Id wrapped him up in his own blankets like a giant worm, then we looked around.
There were some jeweled swords, and some fine hats with expensive curling
feathers, a beautiful carved and begemmed board-and-marker game, and a treasure
box with keepsakes in it. We dumped out the keepsakes (game markers, a note, a
worn piece of riding gear), threw a few things into the box, and lumbered on
downstairs to meet the others.

I won’t list all the booty, except for the huge, fold-topped,
high-heeled buckled boots that Puddlenose took from the lord’s gigantic
wardrobe. He delighted in clumping around in those stupid things—though they
didn’t last long on the deck of a ship, which was wet more often than not. But
the boots reminded me of an idea I’d gotten a while back.

Puddlenose jokingly said I should try them as they’d be good
for booting enemies. Not if I couldn’t get one on, or kick well ... but what if
I put a spell on a shoe in order to launch enemies away, like a mighty kick? I
was always on the watch for some way to give us girls an edge in a fight, when
none of us wanted to be ventilating anybody’s innards.

Puddlenose also got a plumed hat, and a fine sword that
Snord had lifted from someone. Puddlenose named it Lordsnordsword, and vowed
that he was going to learn how to use it.

Captain Heraford called us all together and said, “Now you
kids don’t have to listen if you haven’t a mind, but we always talk over a raid
after.”

We all said we wanted to hear what he had to say. I was
hoping to hear praise, which we got, but then he said, “If you’re going to be
privateers, and not pirates, you should always be neat. Don’t throw things
about. Take a moment to see what’s worthwhile, and leave the rest be.” He
grinned. “Besides, it makes ’em madder when you’re neat. It’s called
style
.”

Puddlenose grinned. Klutz and Id laughed.

“You did make good picks,” the captain finished up, touching
some of the things we’d added to the loot pile that would go to upkeep on the
ship, food, and pay for the sailors. “And you were fast.”

“We got plenty of practice being fast at the Squashed
Wedding Cake.” I touched a tiara made with tiny sprays of emeralds. “Only
nothing in Fobo’s horrible palace is pretty!”

Captain Heraford said, “I’d had a rule, no kids. Seems some
are more trouble than aid. But I might just change that rule.”

We grinned, and some of us put more into the loot pile.

And so we sailed east on a strong wind. The privateers had
stocked up from the Snords’ pantry and buttery for a long trip, and off we
went, straight toward the dawn.

The days melted away, one after another, as we got used to
shipboard life. It was wonderful! It took me a while before I dared to climb
all the way to the tops, but once I did, I could see that much farther. When we
got away from land, we began to see the occasional spouts of great whales in
the distance. Sometimes dolphins leaped around, playing with each other and
showing off, and one time, some mer girls with kelp woven into caps on their
hair leaped with the dolphins, waving to us and laughing.

“Can we go play with them?” Sherry asked. “They look
friendly.”

“You could, I suppose,” Captain Heraford said. “But I’ve
never heard of anyone coming back.”

We decided not to swim out to meet the mers. If they swam
close and talked to us, we’d talk to them, but they never did.

A few thunderstorms roared through. I was so glad I had my
magic, though again, I didn’t want to zap back to MH and leave the others to
whatever happened. Some princess I’d be! So I stayed on my bench in the
wardroom, where most of the others were huddled. We all felt better together,
even if all you saw in the light of the swinging lamp was scared faces.

Puddlenose was not there. He was up on deck having fun
watching the giant waves come as the ship climbed up and up. Dhana was ...
somewhere.

I tried hard to look unconcerned as I leaned way forward.
The bow slanted upward like a rocket about to launch. Then it would plunge
down, and I’d brace my feet on the deck and lean back. I never liked roller
coasters, I thought dismally ... but finally I realized we were climbing a
shorter time, and not so steeply. Same with the plunges.

The wind howled less, and once again we sped under plain
sail, the white water feathering up behind to frame our wake.

Everybody except the weary watch crew stuck on duty crawled
into their bunks and slept.

o0o

Much as I loved being on
Tzasilia
, and good as I’d
gotten at my chores, I was ready for land again. You really have to like being
wet a lot to sail, and you have to not mind that you can’t do the work and then
let your surroundings just be for a while, like in moving to a new house.
You’re constantly doing jobs, especially with the sails. It’s worse than
washing dishes, because it’s heavier, and you’re out in the weather. Not that
Captain Heraford gave us the tough jobs. The grownups got the worst of them.
But we did have to serve night watches, to be fair, which means staying up all
night, or sleeping with your head on your knees, and jumping up if the watch
mate calls for the hands.