Mearsies Heili Bounces Back (30 page)

But here he was at last. I sat alone while he took out one
of his charts and spread it onto the table. “This is where we lie,” he said,
touching the harbor, beautifully illustrated with soundings, each of the tiny
islands off the mouth of the river drawn in. His finger swept eastward. “And
here is Chwahirsland.” He jabbed his thumb down on that huge land, bordered by
high mountains raised centuries ago. “As for Mearsies Heili, no one knows
anything, so far. It might be too early for news to come the long way. What I
do know is that Puddlenose Sherwood is a prisoner in Narad.”

“If the news from home isn’t here, then how did you find
out?”

Captain Heraford looked uneasy. “Same method we found out
about you, when you were imprisoned there. A letter, delivered right here.” He
smacked the table. “We almost did not go the first time. Thought it some kind
of trap. Except that the note was written in Mearsiean, and we couldn’t figure
out why anyone would want to trap us by such a strange method. Why not just
attack us on the ocean?”

“Okay.” Now I understood more about our first rescue. I also
got it that he hadn’t wanted to tell us everything.

And I realized he
still
wasn’t telling us everything.
Like, why so interested in Mearsieans in the first place, being as they lived
and sailed here halfway around the world from MH? But I decided there were more
important things to get straight, before I started nosing into his personal business.

So, back to my personal business. “Ugh! I wonder if that has
anything to do with me?” And when he looked a question, I said, “I got slammed
by magic to Tser Mearsies. I ran away, and here I am, trying to get home. But
if Puddlenose got clinked, we gotta get him out first!”

“I just got back from making some raids. Stirring up a
little trouble among the transports forming to shift warriors to Mearsies Heili
to hold it for Kwenz.” Captain Heraford grinned. “I want to go back to that
when we’ve finished our business. I figure our immediate plan has to be to prevent
that transport convoy from setting sail, any way we can.”

I nodded. Then I thought about Shnit’s horrible castle. Fear
cramped my insides, though I was determined not to show it. “Um. Where is
Shnit? Is he there snailing about?”

“No, word on the sea puts him in Mearsies Heili overseeing
his brother’s establishment of control.”

I jumped to my feet. “Then that’s perfect! We can get in and
rescue Puddlenose before the head slime gets back. Then go home and I find
Clair. And she and I will figure out how to boot Kwenz out.”

Captain Heraford gazed at me, smiling, his grownup thoughts
clear enough. “Cherene Jennet, I know that Clair regards you as her friend.
More like a sister. That might mean, to many, that she would expect you to keep
yourself safe.”

I frowned at him, more in question—right now—than in
affront. “I should hide until MH is safe? But then who is going to get the
clods out of the kingdom?”

“I am working toward that for starters,” Captain Heraford
said, that wry tone back. I did not understand it, but as he was helping us, I
didn’t let it bother me. “But I do not expect to do much on my own. I will find
allies. Some of my own pi—ah, free trader allies.”

Ahah, I thought. You
were
a pirate! We knew it!

“I suspect Ka Nos of Seram Aru will be on the lookout for
mage allies. We might find others.”

“You mean grownups. Park the kiddies—we’re supposed to play
and have fun, while the
grownups
take care of everything?” Now the anger
started sparking, though I did try to fight it.

Captain Heraford said gently, “In many parts of the world
that would be considered the responsible action.”

I scowled at him, but he did not look away, or apologize. He
was too serious for that.

I fought my temper back down below a boil and thought hard.
He was waiting for me to say something—so I whatever I said should be smarter
than a bunch of insults against busybody adults. Even though I was thinking
them.

So what
should
I say?

Everything he’d said sounded quite reasonable—from the
grownup point of view. I knew that Clair listened to some grownups, but I
seldom trusted them, and even less seldom liked them. Captain Heraford was one
of the exceptions.

I wound my legs tightly round the bench legs as I struggled
with emotions and thoughts. Captain Heraford was serious in having this
planning talk with me right now, instead of chasing off the little kiddie and
telling me to go play princess—

Princess—

I said, “When Clair picked me to be her princess I thought
that meant to be like her sidekick. Just, you know, be her best friend. Then
she asked me to learn some magic. Just in case. So I did.”

I paused, scowling at my hands as way too many thoughts
skittered round inside my head like a bunch of boiling beetles.

“Go on,” said the Captain.

I sighed. “I don’t know how to put it, but I was supposed to
give a tentacle now and then. Help, I mean—that’s how we call helping each
other. So anyway if she had to go somewhere, I’d park my duff on the throne for
morning court, and at least try to solve easy problems, or tell people to come
back later. Visit the provinces if she needed me to. And of course keep an eye
out for Jilo, who’s been sent by Kwenz to spy on us, of late. We thought, to
find our hi—uh, something. But maybe it had to do with this plan of theirs.”

The Captain waited patiently. The inward-slanting stern
windows were blue with the fading light, the water below quietly slap-slapping
against the hull. Feet thumped back and forth on the deck overhead. In the
distance, lightning flared again, sudden and blue-white as another storm moved south
of the city.

I drew in a deep breath of the fresh, salt-tangy air. “Everybody—the
Auknuges, Kwenz—everybody seems to think a kid on the throne is like a sign to
come in and grab anything they want. But how to keep ’em out besides our
patrols? We don’t have any army guys, or any of that floob. So Clair had a lot
of magic thingies. Things the grownups don’t know about.”

“Are you saying she has wards up that will rid the kingdom
of enemies?”

I sighed. “I know she has some wards and protections. In
case of certain things. So I have to find her. And then she will know what to
do. Even though she’s a kid.” As Captain Heraford began to protest, I said
quickly, “First we rescue Puddlenose.”

“We?”

“I have black hair. All Chwahir have black hair, or
super-dooper dark brown hair, on account of not being able to get out and mix
with other people for centuries and centuries. I can disguise as an errand
boy—since girls aren’t allowed to travel or do anything, there, I’ll find him.”

Captain Heraford frowned at me. “I’m trying not to see a
twelve-year-old child,” he admitted, and raised a hand as I began to protest. “And
I remember myself at your age. As long as Shnit is not in residence, and I go
with you, and a couple of my better boarders, we’ll stay with your plan.”

I bit back a
You can’t tell me what to do
. He was
taking me to Puddlenose, he was fighting the bad guys, and he’d listened to my
plan. Any adulterooni could be ignored.

o0o

Within a couple days of sailing we met up with some other
ships, the captain’s allies. By then the kids on board had fitted me into a
watch, which I really liked. This time I shared one of the tiny cabins with the
girl. She had the bunk, and I got a hammock, which I loved.

The girl was about fifteen. She was the one who rowed the
boat. She practiced sword-fighting with me, and a couple of boys who loved any
kind of joke, which meant a lot of laughing as we worked. The rest of the crew
were grownups of various ages, a couple of women and the rest men. They drilled
for fighting even more than they had on my first journey. My action station,
since my magic was blocked, was in the tops, holding a firepot for the
bow-and-arrow crew; I’d wrap oil-soaked string round an arrow and set it afire
before handing it to one of the shooters.

That was for battle. Captain Heraford made it plain that
battle against the huge number of Chwahir was a last resort. Though most
scoffed, when we actually reached the border—and you could feel the heavy
magical barrier—and saw the millions of masts sticking like pins toward the
gray, low skyline, everyone sobered up. There were far too many of them to
attack head on.

Captain Heraford waited for a thunder-squall for us to
cruise under as cover. One had been reported slowly boiling out of the west. We
pulled back beyond the horizon and he signaled for the other captains to come
aboard.

A couple of them looked like pirates, we kids noted,
watching from the mastheads as we ate our midday meal. We weren’t invited to
the strategy session, but after the captains departed again, Captain Heraford
called me down to his cabin.

“Here are the details,” he said. “I’m going to take a party
with me in the longboat to accompany you to the capital. What they are going to
do is take boats among the enemy, while covered by the storm, and do a lot of
damage. We can join as soon as we have Puddlenose safely out of there.”

I nodded fervently.

And so it went.

We all dressed in black duds (me in borrowed stuff from
their storage trunks), and the grownups loaded up with weapons. We took the
longboat with its sea-colored sail and pitched and tossed for shore in the
middle of the night, as the storm system moved slowly in. The little inlet was
one Puddlenose had shown the captain, at the mouth of a bitter mountain stream,
not much good to anyone. The water was polluted from coal ash and the residue
of Shnit’s horrible border protection spells. A ways out we took down mast and
sail and rowed in, arriving before dawn. Then Captain Heraford had us turn the
boat upside down and stay under it all during the long, bleak Chwahir day. It
rained and thundered intermittently, the occasional sun filtering through such
heavy magical wards it was more like a winter sun, distant and weak.

Being here again was like having a blanket drop over your
mind, soggy with bad feelings. I’d forgotten that. All my brave determination
seemed to leak out as the long day passed. Along with a pack of
bread-and-cheese sandwiches and a jug of water, the captain and his party had
brought some cards to play games during the long day, as they watched and slept
by turns. I lay at one end, peering under the crack they’d carefully made. The
beach was strewn with the ruins of boats and ships—never cleaned up. When I
asked, Captain Heraford said that some were enemies, some Chwahir. How depressing!
And how like Shnit, not to care. I was glad to fall asleep and nap most of the
day away.

But the detritus hid us, and as soon as night fell, we were
off, sneaking toward Shnit’s horrible city, which is a long snaky thing—walled
and guarded—along a river. The north end, which is where the royal castle lies,
isn’t all that far from the estuary where we’d landed, but we had to duck and
watch for the constant patrols. Shnit had hundreds and hundreds of men (and
it’s only men) on ceaseless patrol just to guard him. From his own people as
well as any enemy who’d be crazy enough to ever set foot in Chwahirsland.

Ahem, like us.

But we had reason.

I think I’ve mentioned that Clair got this idea that the
reason why the Chwahir guards act so slow and cloddish and make a lot of
mistakes is because they exist under heavy enchantment, meant to keep them from
thinking for themselves. They follow orders.

We sure saw proof of it here as we followed a patrol in at
the watch change, just before midnight. The marching squad never looked back.
We’d run along the wall, directly under the sentries, who never looked straight
down, just out at the bleak, barren horizon.

It was tougher getting through the gate. We popped through,
one by one, bending low, ducked immediately to one side, and then crouched in a
group behind the gate-keeper’s storage shed, as the new patrol marched out of a
building, across the courtyard, through the gate, and then away.

Now it was time for the gate to close. The captain motioned
to us to pick up some of the jumble of stuff we found—baskets, a rope or
two—besides the gate-keepers’ shed, and walk in a head-lowered single file line
across the court, just like Shnit’s servants walk.

And no one paid us the least heed.

The miasma of malevolent magic made my head began to ache,
and my shoulder blades itch as if I were being watched, but I remembered that
was the way one normally felt in this horrible place. If you can call that
normal. It was for the Chwahir, which is why it was so hard to hate the everyday
ones. But I had
noooooo
problem hating, despising, loathing, not to
mention abhorring, abominating, detesting, and execrating (I learned that word
just
for Shnit) their leaders.

We entered a servants’ door, and then we had to make our way
upstairs in that bleak, cold stone castle to where Shnit lived, in the highest
tower.

From the looks of things, he was still gone. Even so, my
heart was kathumping, and not from the climb, when at last we reached the top,
having had to duck or turn our backs or just freeze in place when other
servants or the endless soldiers walked by. If you froze and looked away, they
didn’t seem to see you—but of course you never knew if someone might be under a
compulsion to be searching for anything or anyone out of place.

The captain’s orders were to attack guards only as a last
resort. That would leave a trail for Shnit to follow—plus, even if we didn’t
kill them, Shnit would. We all remembered what Puddlenose had told us. If Shnit
thought his guards (enchanted as they were) hadn’t done their job, he would
have them all executed. So it was important that, afterward, every guard report
that nothing had been out of the ordinary. And Shnit wouldn’t be able to prove
how anyone had gotten in or out, except by magic—and only
he’d
be to
blame, since no one else was allowed to use magic.