Rising In The East (5 page)

T
he four pirates stood around the pool for a moment, staring at their prize—so close, and yet so cursed.

“I say, Diego,” Jack whispered finally, “could you just reach in and grab that for me? I don’t want to get my hands wet.” He lifted his hands in the air—not his cleverest trick, as he was still drenched from head to toe after the swim down through the ocean.

“No, senor!” Diego said. “
You
grab it! This is your quest.”

“Whatever happened to all your respect for your captain?” Jack wanted to know. He made a grievously wounded face. “What happened to being a loyal crew member, Diego?”

“I
am
loyal,” Diego said, “but with the whole Spanish navy after Carolina and me, I need all the luck I can get. I can’t afford to make it worse.
Lo siento
—I’m sorry, Jack.”

“All right,” Jack said. “Billy? How’s about it? Do an old chum a favor?”

“Don’t even try,” Billy said darkly. “This was your idea, Jack.”

Jack sighed deeply. There
had
to be a way to get the opal without cursing himself. He glanced hopefully at Lian, but he could see from her sly smile that he’d have no luck there.

He edged closer to the pool, mesmerized by the glimmering rock at its center. It wouldn’t be hard to reach into the water…with just one movement, it could be his…but what if the curse was real? He couldn’t afford another curse. Not with creepy little shadow beasties already haunting him.

Suddenly, the surface of the pool began to bubble. Jack jumped back.

“What’s it doing?” he asked. “Why is it doing that?”

Tiny bubbles foamed to the surface, faster and faster until the opal was hidden beneath the spray. Jack felt a moment of panic as the opal vanished. What if someone else was stealing it right now? He lunged forward to plunge his arm into the pool, but just as his fingers touched the water, a shape rose through the bubbles and burst into the air in front of him.

With a shout, Jack fell back against the coral. He rubbed his eyes, blinked several times, and then rubbed them again. Billy and Diego were staring openmouthed at the pool. Or, rather, at the pool’s new inhabitant.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Jack said. “I believe I was promised no mermaids.”

“Did you misssss usssss, Jack Sssparrow?” the mermaid asked, narrowing her haunting dark eyes at him. She pulled herself out to sit on a rock, and the others gasped, seeing her bright blue tail for the first time.

“I wouldn’t say I
missed
you, precisely,” Jack said to the familiar Scaly Tail. “More like I hoped never to see you again, to be honest.”

“Honesssst?” the mermaid sniffed. “You? You who cheated usssss out of your eternal companionship?”

“I
am
good company,” Jack agreed, “so I can see why you’d hold a grudge about that. Still, it’s been quite a long time, you know.”

“Our kind never forget,” she said. “And you’ve brought friends along. Thisssss one I know,” she said, motioning to Billy, “but the othersssss…”

“Oh, these folks. Yes, right. Diego, Lian—meet Morveren. Morveren, Diego, and Lian. Okay. Done? Good. And now how about you? Where’re your friends? Don’t think I’ve ever seen you without Aquala and Aqueduct or whatever she’s called.”

“Aquila,” Morveren corrected. “They are otherwise occupied.”

“Yes, you have seemed to have a lot of trouble in merfolkland since I liberated your subjects all those years ago, haven’t you?”

Morveren hissed.

“What’s that? Bitterness? Rather undeserved, I’d say,” Jack said. “You were the ones who tried to trick me out of my freedom the first time we met.”

Morveren spread her hands to suggest that he should expect that kind of thing from her. “Mermaid,” she said.

Jack made the same gesture. “Pirate!” he said.

“Hmm,” she said. “Touché.”

“What is she doing here now?” Diego asked Jack.

“I might ask you the ssssame quesssssstion,” Morveren said. “Why are you here, Jack Ssssparrow? Looking for ssssssomething?”

“No, no,” Jack said blithely. “Just passing through. Isn’t this the way to Shanghai? Don’t tell me we’re lost again. I blame Barbossa.”

Morveren stared at him with cold eyes. She lifted one hand and clicked her webbed fingers. Suddenly the light in the room went dim. The pirates turned to find the Rainbow Serpent’s head blocking the entrance to the cave. And now the snake was quite awake, much more awake than Jack really liked his beasties to be. It blinked enormous orange eyes at them and its tongue flickered within inches of where they stood.

“All right,” Jack said, throwing caution to the wind. “Here’s the truth. We’ve come to get that opal, but we don’t want to steal it, because of the curse. Not saying we won’t, just saying—we’re open to other options. Why steal when you can negotiate, eh?”

The mermaid tilted her head at him. “How refreshingly honesssst of you, Jack Sssssparrow.”

“I’m like that sometimes,” Jack said. “More often than you’d think. Always catches people off guard, though.”

Morveren said something in a hissing, clicking language to the snake. It hissed back at her.

“The Rainbow Ssssserpent says a trade might be acceptable to him,” Morveren said, “if you have anything of equal value.” Her blue tail flicked against the rock.

“Oh, no,” Jack said. “I’m not falling for that trick. No one will ever steal my freedom from me again!” He paused to think for a moment. “Would you like one of them instead?” he asked, pointing to Diego and Billy.

“Jack!” Billy protested.

“
Captain
Jack!” Jack responded in the same outraged tone. “Oh, all right, you can’t have them either.”

“The Ssssserpent is more agreeable than I am,” Morveren said. “He will accept an alternative. What do you have to offer?”

Jack thought. He felt through the trinkets woven into his braids. Each represented a different adventure. He had already added a tiny silver llama to symbolize his meeting with the Incas. But nothing he could find in his hair seemed worthy of trade for the opal. “Too bad,” he said, thinking of the knotted string
quipu
Tia Dalma had given him. “I had this lovely kee-poo you might have liked. If you’re into knotted string, that is.” He was glad he had left his hat on the
Pearl
—imagine if the serpent had demanded that! Jack would never give up his marvelous hat!

Billy and Diego were searching their pockets, so Jack did the same. A couple of doubloons, a few crumbs of hardtack, and a pair of loaded dice rolled through his hands. Then his fingers touched something cold and heavy.

He pulled it out and discovered the tiny stone head they’d been given on Rapa Nui.

He also distinctly saw Morveren’s eyes light up when she saw it.

“Well, there’s this,” he said, slowly turning it between his fingers. “But it’s
so
valuable…I really don’t know if I can bear to part with it. Tell you what—”

“No,” Morveren said quickly.

“You don’t know what I was going to say!” Jack objected.

“You were going to propose a duel,” Morveren said.

“All right,” Jack admitted. “You did know what I was going to say.”

“A duel like the one you used to sssslither out of our deal last time,” Morveren said.

“Oh, yes,” Jack said, “it was definitely
me
doing the ‘ssssslithering,’ what with you making me fight lots of giant toothy beasties. Certainly
I
was the tricky one there!”

“We will not accept a duel thisssss time,” Morveren said, folding her arms and setting her jaw stubbornly. “A trade or nothing. You give us that sssssstone head, and we’ll give you the opal. Else, you leave with nothing. And ‘nothing’ includes your lives. ‘Ssssavvy?’”

That sounded more than fair to Jack, but he knew he had to make Morveren think she had gotten the better end of the bargain. “Ooooooohhhh,” he said as if the idea pained him. “I don’t
know
…it’s such a
precious
little head…I mean, we use it
allllll
the time.”

“Yeah,” Diego said, catching on. “You can’t let go of that, Jack! It would be a terrible loss! Just crushing!”

“It is that or nothing!” Morveren thundered. “You have two choicesssss: accept the trade, or be eaten by the Rainbow Sssssserpent!”

Ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
, agreed the snake.

“Well, when you put it that way,” said Jack. He sighed theatrically. “I suppose we have no choice.” He held out the stone head, shaking his head as if he were about to cry.

Morveren reached into the water and picked up the opal. It gleamed with hidden fire as she lifted it into the air. Jack stepped up to her, and in one motion, they traded objects.

Jack hid his glee. The opal was his, fair and square. He hadn’t stolen it, so he wouldn’t be cursed!

“Now get out,” Morveren said. “And don’t come down to thissssss area of the seasssss again, Jack Sparrow. “

“Not frightening me,” Jack said.

Morveren glared at him.

Diego tugged on his sleeve. “Come on, Jack, before you really say something stupid.”

“By your leave,” Jack said, bowing deeply to the mermaid and the serpent. The four of them edged out past the snake’s gleaming scales, hurried across the floor, and ducked into the tunnel. As they ran toward the cave mouth at the end of the tunnel, Jack grinned sideways at Billy.

“Admit it, Bill,” he said, “you love this.”

Billy snorted. “Yes. Nearly being eaten by serpents is my idea of fun.” Billy jumped through the barrier and started swimming away, with Diego close behind him.

Jack turned to Lian and held out his wrist. “Ready to be tied up again, love?”

She giggled, shaking her head, and then ran forward and dove across the barrier.

Just beyond the barrier was the roaring sound of spinning water that was all too familiar to Jack and Billy. A waterspout portal. Lian had jumped in and had probably been sucked up to the surface already.

Jack carefully wrapped the opal in his vest. “This part’s fun,” he said to Diego.

Billy raised an eyebrow. He’d been severely injured in the merfolk’s waterspout portals before.

The portal spun like a funnel in the water before them. Jack motioned to Billy and Diego to follow him, then he jumped into the portal. The whirling water spun so fast that Jack couldn’t understand which way was up. Fish, seaweed, shattered shells, flotsam, and jetsam spun around him in the water. And then he was bobbing on the surface. Right behind him, Billy and Diego shot up out of the water.

But as soon as the three of them had broken the surface, something tugged at Jack’s braids. For a moment he thought it was just the water—but when he glanced sideways, he saw two shadows darting on either side of him like demonic fish. They wove through his hair, pulling him back under. One floated in front of his face for a moment, then shot up his nose. Immediately he felt like he couldn’t breathe. The anchors in his chest were back, dragging him farther away from the surface, down into death. The shadow illness had chosen the perfect moment to try to kill him.

Jack flailed his arms and legs, kicking and fighting with desperate strength. He could feel the energy draining out of his whole body. The spooky darkness of the ocean depths seemed closer than the light up above. He was
not
going to drown. He
refused
to drown. What an ignominious death for a pirate. Captain Jack Sparrow, greatest pirate in the world, was not going to die this way.

J
ust as Jack thought he was about to lose consciousness, a grip of steel locked around his wrist and yanked him upwards. Lian’s robes swirled around him as she towed him to the surface. She’d returned for him! Jack snorted out a spray of bubbles and saw one of the shadows go spinning away.

Lian and Jack burst into the open air. Jack inhaled deeply, filling his lungs until his heart was calm again.

“Are you all right?” Lian asked anxiously.

“See, I knew you liked me,” Jack said with a wink. “Just wanted you to prove it.”

“Do you have it?” Sao Feng called eagerly from above them. “Do you have the opal?” He leaned over the railing of the
Pearl
, the sun reflecting off the dome of his head. Apparently while they had been gone, Sao Feng had moved ships. Jack’s crew lined the rail, peering down at him curiously. Jack noticed that Carolina was even more delighted to see Diego than Marcella was. (Marcella was too busy throwing a tantrum over the fact that Diego had brought her no precious jewels from the treasure trove she imagined at the bottom of the ocean.) Perhaps Carolina was finally starting to notice the lad after all.

Billy and Diego hurried up the rope ladder to the deck, followed by Lian, and then Jack. Jack took his hat from Carolina’s outstretched arms and clapped it on top of his wet head, instantly feeling much better. A good hat made all the difference.

“Well?” Sao Feng demanded.

“First I want to know about the vial,” Jack said cagily. “You said you would tell me where it is.”

“Did I?” Sao Feng said. “I believe if you think carefully, the terms are not quite so clear. I implied I would help you find it. But to do that, you will have to accompany me back to Singapore.”

“Go with you!” said Jack. “That’s not exactly my style, mate. I’m not much of a follower.”

“Not much of a leader, either,” Barbossa muttered, but only Diego heard him. The Spanish sailor filed that away in his mind with the other suspicious comments he’d heard from the first mate.

“Besides, it’s not very subtle, showing up with an entourage,” Jack said with a grimace. “It’s rather flashy. Hallo, over here, come to steal your Shadow Gold, ta very much. Savvy?”

“Trust me,” Sao Feng said in a manner that did not inspire trust at all. “This is the best way for you to get your Shadow Gold. You need my help.” He held out his hand. “Now. The opal.”

Jack touched the smooth surface of the stone tucked inside his vest. The temptation of all that power was very strong…but the memory of the shadows trying to drown him was stronger. Resigned, he pulled out the opal and plopped it into Sao Feng’s hand.

“Beautiful,” Sao Feng whispered, holding up the opal to watch it sparkle in the sunlight. “Just as I dreamed.” He formed a thin-lipped smile. “Liang Dao will be so pleased.”

T
he busy, dilapidated streets and stinking markets of Singapore were infested with agents of the East India Trading Company, but Sao Feng sailed right past the official docks and brought the
Empress
to anchor in a secluded harbor just north of the city. It had been a long trip, but Jack thought it wasn’t so horrible, what with Lian and Park around.

From the quarterdeck of the
Black Pearl
, Jack watched his crew tie up alongside the junk and surveyed the welcoming party waiting for them.

The pirates at the end of the dock were as menacing and stone-faced as the ones on Sao Feng’s ship. But instead of the dragon symbol that all Sao Feng’s pirates wore, these pirates wore blue robes with Lions emblazoned in silver thread. Jack wondered when the brothers had chosen their animals. He thought he’d feel rather threatened, too, by a brother who chose something like a dragon to represent him. Now, a nice
dragonfly
, that’d be different. Much friendlier.

Sao Feng descended from his ship like an emperor returning to his palace. Although the pirates in the lion robes were clearly meant to be guards, he treated them like a royal audience, smiling at them majestically and sweeping past them as if unconcerned by their threatening stances.

Jack wished he felt that confident. He couldn’t help but notice the very long, very sharp swords they were all carrying. He also noticed that they looked even less pleased to see Jack than most people who knew him, which was saying something.

But he squared his shoulders and sallied bravely down the gangplank with Barbossa, Carolina, Diego, Billy, and Jean. Marcella had wanted to come and pitched a fit when Jack said no, but he was sure that if anyone could ruin the deal he was about to make, it was her. He tipped his hat at the guards as they sauntered by. The pirates closed rank behind his crewmates and stayed on their heels as they marched off the dock, through an immaculately tended garden, and up to an opulent pagoda dripping with silver and jewels. Two large jade lions roared on either side of the entrance alongside large china pots planted with tall green shoots of bamboo.

Sao Feng and his men slipped off their shoes in one practiced movement as they stepped onto the cool marble floor of the palace. Sao Feng cast a meaningful glance at Jack’s feet.

“Really?” Jack said. “You think that’s wise, mate? Do you know how long it’s been since some of these blokes took their boots off?” He leaned forward and whispered. “Especially Barbossa. Don’t tell ’im I said so, but hold your noses now, boys.”

His first mate had clearly overheard, as he was now glaring furiously at Jack.

“It is custom,” Sao Feng said courteously.

“Oh, all right,” Jack said. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

There was a long pause while Jack and his pirates wrestled with their shoes, but finally a line of pirate boots stood against the wall. (And to be fair to Jack, he was quite right about the smell.) Sao Feng wrinkled his nose, but turned in a whirl of robes and strode on down the long hallway.

“Nice place your brother’s got here, Sao,” Jack commented, marveling at the silk tapestries and red lanterns lining the walls.

Sao Feng snorted. “It is all so obvious,” he said. “The East India Trading Company could find him at any moment. And then how would he escape? How would he defend this place? Much better to have a secluded lair with ample underground tunnels, close to the heart of the city. Out here everything goes by, and he does not know. There is no one to carry the whispers to him. His spies are pathetically inadequate. Company agents could be sneaking up on us this minute and we would have no idea.”

Jack glanced around uneasily. He definitely did not want to run into any East India Trading Company agents. His encounters with them never seemed to go very well…a problem that Jack was quite sure was not his fault.

The hallway opened into a palatial throne room. What seemed like hundreds of pirates in blue and green robes stood or squatted around the edges—conversing in low voices, trading goods, gambling, drinking tea, all in subdued voices. Jack couldn’t wait for the day he had that many pirates following
him
around!

At the far end of the room, yellow banners emblazoned with red lions hung from the ceiling around an enormous carved-mahogany chair. Seated in the chair was a man who looked like Sao Feng, but with a shorter moustache and beard, yellow robes instead of green, and more of a paunch around his middle. His eyes were just as shrewd and calculating, however. He pursed his lips as the pirates approached his throne.

“Brother,” he said slowly. “You have returned. Unscathed. How…delightful.” His gaze panned across Jack and his crew. “And you brought friends. Charming.”

“I brought more than that,” Sao Feng said proudly. Around the room, pirates stopped what they were doing to stare at him. Liang Dao leaned forward with a hungry expression.

“The opal?” he said. “You stole it?”

Sao Feng threw back his sleeve to reveal the opal in the palm of his hand. He held it up so the whole room could see it. Sunlight from the windows high in the walls caught the fire within the opal and magnified it so it sparkled brightly like a black star in Sao Feng’s hand. A murmur of awe echoed around the room.

Sao Feng waited a dramatic moment until the whispers died down. Then he stepped toward his brother and, in a voice everyone could hear, declared, “I did not steal it. It was given to me. This opal is rightfully mine—and with it I claim the throne of the Pirate Lord.”

“What,
now
?” Jack said as the room exploded into a hubbub of noise. “Can’t we get my bit over with first, please? Just throw us the vial and we’ll nip out the back, leave you lot to it, cheerio.”

“No!” Sao Feng said, drawing his sword. “You must fight alongside us to get what you want! Fight, Captain Jack Sparrow! Fight, any pirate who stands with me—all of you who know that I should be Pirate Lord, not my brother. Not Liang Dao!”

“Never!” Liang Dao shouted. “To me, loyal warriors!”

And before Jack could do a thing about it, a pirate in yellow was pointing a very wicked-looking sword at Jack’s throat. Jack’s crew grabbed their weapons, forced to defend themselves.

Jack gave the sword an alarmed look and moved it away from his throat with one finger. “That’s better,” he said and leaped into battle with the attacking soldier. “I say,” he shouted at Sao Feng as swords clanked and crashed around him. “This is rather unfair. You might have given us some warning that we’d get caught in your harum-scarum coup here!”

“But then you wouldn’t have come!” Sao Feng cried over the din with a triumphant gleam in his eyes. He was locked in a struggle with his brother, each parrying the other’s sword strokes with ease. “And surely, Captain Jack Sparrow, you would not have wanted to miss a battle as glorious as this?”

“Actually, that would have been all right with me!” Jack called back, ducking under a wild swing of his opponent’s blade. “Just so you know for next time!” He leaped over the blade as the pirate swung at his bare feet.

The clash and clang of swords echoed off the walls. Carolina and Diego were fighting backto-back, practicing the moves they’d learned together on board the
Pearl
. Barbossa leaped behind a column and fired his pistol at any pirate who came near him. Jean and Billy fought bravely, hardly knowing which pirates were friends and which were foes. It seemed like several of the pirates in blue were switching sides to fight for Sao Feng. They could not resist the power of the opal.

Lian and Park threw themselves into the fray, too. Jack paused in his fighting to admire their abilities for a moment. They both whipped the steel chopsticks out of their hair and used them with vicious skill. Their steel-tipped fans sliced and slashed, leaving trails of blood and ribbons of yellow robes discarded on the floor. Jack was very glad they were on his side. When he managed to catch Park’s eye, he blew her a kiss.

There was a loud clatter behind Jack as Liang Dao’s sword flew out of his hand and skittered across the marble.

“Aha!” Sao Feng cried triumphantly, seizing his brother and hauling him over to the throne. Keeping his sword at Liang Dao’s throat, Sao Feng stood on the chair and fired his pistol in the air.

All over the throne room, the fighting stopped.

“It is over,” Sao Feng said, indicating his defeated brother at the end of his sword. “I am your Pirate Lord now.”

“You tricked me,” Liang Dao snarled, his gaze fixed on the sharp tip pressed to his jugular.

Sao Feng shook his head gravely. “That is what a pirate does, Liang Dao. You are no good at it—and that is why I should be a Pirate Lord instead.” He reached down and yanked a cord necklace off Liang Dao’s neck. Holding it up, he announced, “The Piece of Eight is mine!”

A great cheer went up from all the pirates. Jack noticed that several of the pirates in blue were hurriedly stripping off their lion robes and cheering as if they’d been on Sao Feng’s side all along.

“Kill me,” Liang Dao growled. “You have disgraced me, brother. At least show me enough respect to not make me live through the humiliation of this day.”

“You do not deserve to die,” Sao Feng said. “You will live, but in disgrace.”

“Ahoy, your nibs!” Jack said, drawing Sao Feng’s attention to him. “Do you think we could spare a moment for my reward?” He held out his hand palm up. “The vial, if you please?”

“What vial?” Liang Dao asked, struggling as two pirates came up and tied his arms. “What has my lying brother promised you?”

“The uh—the vial of Shadow Gold—don’t tell me…” Jack trailed off. The answer was clear from the smug look on Sao Feng’s face.

“Oh, there’s no Shadow Gold
here
,” Sao Feng said. “My apologies; did I give you that impression?”

“You bloody well did,” Jack said evenly.

Sao Feng laughed maniacally.

“What about the Pirate Code?” Carolina cried. “Where is your sense of honor? You made a deal!”

“I did,” Sao Feng said calmly. “And I will keep my promise. We just had to make this brief detour along the way.”

“Sounds a bit like my trip ‘home’ to North Carolina, doesn’t it, Jack?” Billy said, glaring at his captain.

Jack drew his sword. “Well, then. If you can’t help me find the next vial of Shadow Gold—”

“But I can,” Sao Feng said. “We both know another Pirate Lord who is certain to have one. And only I can take you straight to Mistress Ching.”