The Celestial Globe: The Kronos Chronicles: Book II (20 page)

“There is one thing I don’t want my sailors to know,” said Treb.

“Yeah? What?”

“How little faith I have in you.”

“Those sailors were Bohemian,” Neel pointed out. “Bo-hee-mee-un. Seems to me you should be hassling someone else. Someone blond.”

“So you think Tomik tipped off those sailors. Now why would he do that?”

“To be rescued by them. To go home.”

“Hmm. Yes, that does make sense. Or it would if I hadn’t seen Tomik cut the drogue loose.”

Neel didn’t reply.

“You’re talented, coz,” said Treb. “But what are your skills? Thieving and lying. Not exactly things that inspire confidence in you. So far all you’ve done is put our mission at risk. We need the Celestial Globe, and you need to help me get it if I’m going to be able to trust you again.”

“Maybe I don’t
want
your trust,” Neel shot back.

“Don’t think that hasn’t occurred to me.”

Treb stalked out of the pantry, and left Neel in the dark.

• • •

“T
HE CAPTAIN
wants to see you,” Andras told Tomik.

Tomik nodded wordlessly. He had a pretty good idea of why he’d been sent for. He followed Andras toward the stern of the ship, and the captain’s quarters.

Tomik paused nervously outside Treb’s door. Maybe he had made the wrong decision. Maybe he shouldn’t have cut that rope. “Klara?” he asked.

“She’s fine.” Andras put a hand on Tomik’s shoulder and opened the door.

Treb was seated on an intricately carved, satin-backed chair that must have cost a fortune. He leaned across an elegant table to knock the ashes of his pipe into a brass bowl, glanced at Andras, and flicked his gaze at the door. Andras left.

Tomik didn’t want to look at Treb directly. He stared at the satin arms of the chair, which were water-stained.

“We plucked it from the sea,” Treb said in Romany. “There are storms that smash other ships to pieces, but not the
Pacolet
. We’re scavengers. Most of our wealth has been taken from the dead. Sometimes we come across things bobbing on the waves: trunks, furniture, bodies. This, for example, was found in the pocket of a corpse.” Treb reached into his coat, pulled out a tube, and passed it to Tomik.

Tomik inspected the leather cylinder, noticing the glass lenses on either end. He peered through the smaller lens.

Treb began, “It’s a telescope. For seeing—”

“I know,” Tomik said. “For far away.” He passed the telescope back. “I fix it.”

“It’s not broken.”

“I make better,” Tomik insisted, and wished that he knew Romany well enough to explain how.

The captain smiled, and for a moment Tomik thought Treb wouldn’t ask the questions he dreaded.

“I’d like to show you another, more important treasure,” Treb said, “but first you have to tell me something. How did those Bohemian sailors know that we carried the Terrestrial Globe? Did you somehow make a Bohemian friend in Sallay? It looks suspicious, see, that the ship that attacked us was sailed by your countrymen.”

Tomik was silent.

“Now, I’m not blaming you. Not necessarily. Maybe somebody else had a big mouth. Somebody who also speaks Czech. I know that somebody wasn’t me. But perhaps . . . oh, I don’t know, let’s say my cousin dropped a word or two he shouldn’t have. Know anything about that?”

It would be so easy for Tomik to accuse Neel. But then Tomik thought about Petra, and what she would do in a situation like this. He imagined her silver eyes blazing. She would say, “Don’t you dare, Tomik. You owe him.”

So Tomik pressed his lips firmly together.

“I’ll feed you to the little fishies,” Treb warned.

Tomik shook his head. “You will not.”

Treb stood, and grabbed Tomik by his collar. “What,” he snarled, “don’t I scare you?”

“If you want to kill me, I am already dead.”

“True.” Treb released Tomik’s shirt. “But I’ve got more than half a mind to throw you in the brig and keep you there morning, noon, and night. You wouldn’t like that, would you?”

“No.”

“So you’ll tell me?”

“No.”

Treb chuckled. “Then it’s a good thing I know the answer already. And it’s a good thing for you, lad, that you can keep a secret.”

Treb opened a trapdoor that had been so well disguised, Tomik
hadn’t been able to tell the difference between it and the wooden planks of the rest of the floor. Treb hauled up a leather chest, which he unlocked, then he lifted out a round bundle of cloth about two feet in diameter. Cradling it in his arms, he stepped in front of Tomik and set it on the table. He unwrapped the cloth.

Tomik’s eyes widened in wonder.

He had seen maps before. Maps of his country, even of Europe. But he had never seen his whole world arranged across the surface of a large sphere.

He saw his home, crowded by neighboring countries. Bohemia was so small.

He saw Morocco, guessed the
Pacolet
’s location on the ocean, and was amazed at how far he had traveled. He found the island of England with its squiggled shape, and knew how far he had to go.

Tomik reached out and spun the sphere. The brown of the continents and the blue of the water blurred together. With a finger, he stopped the globe. His skin prickled. He lifted his hand away, and saw a red spark. It was in Bohemia and, he guessed, was the general location of a Loophole. There were red points of light all over the globe.

Tomik remembered his own words to Neel in Sallay:
You would be able to wage war.

Treb noticed the worry that crossed the boy’s features. “This globe isn’t much use without its twin, but whoever possesses both Mercator Globes will wield a great deal of power,” he admitted. “They could be dangerous in the wrong hands.”

“Destroy this one, then,” Tomik said in Czech. What he had to say was too important to be misunderstood.

“Oh, no.” Treb wagged his finger. “Don’t be so noble, Tom. It’s drastic, and dumb. The globes belong to the Roma.”

After many years of being friends with Petra, Tomik recognized
unreasonable stubbornness when he saw it. He looked away from Treb, and back at the globe. He noticed the lines that crossed the sphere and cut it into squares. He had seen latitude and longitude lines before on the flat surface of maps, and knew that they were used for judging distance and travel. But they seemed different on a round shape.

“It looks as if someone has thrown a net over the world,” he said.

“Now all we have to do is haul it in.”

W
HEN
T
OMIK AND
T
REB
emerged from the captain’s quarters, the sails lay flat. There was no wind. Treb turned in a circle, looking at the sky from every direction. “Stow the sails!” he suddenly shouted up at the Maraki in the rigging. “Do it now!”

“Why?” Tomik asked.

“Because if we don’t they’ll be ripped to shreds,” Treb muttered. He strode up to Andras. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

“I wasn’t sure—”

“You don’t have to be sure! If you can’t figure out how to prepare for a tempest, then at least give me fair warning when one is squalling up, and leave the thinking to me! Tell Garil and Marko to lash the lifeboats to their skids. Get below deck and bring Nadia, Kiran, and Ashe with you. Take him, too.” He nudged Tomik forward. “Have them latch any portholes shut and reinforce them with wooden planks. Batten all the hatches. We can’t take on any water.”

Tomik was so preoccupied with the fact that he had just been treated like a member of the crew that he didn’t think about being worried. After all, the
Pacolet
had sailed through storms before. But then Tomik spotted the dread in Andras’s eyes, and realized
that whatever was coming, it was no ordinary storm. The sea was still. The wind was dead, the horizon dark, and the sky tinged with green. An eerie quiet surrounded the
Pacolet
.

“What do we do?” Tomik asked Ashe as they went below deck. Ashe entered the rope room, and passed Tomik short lengths of cord knotted loosely into slings. He copied what she did, and slipped the rope over his head so that the slings crossed his chest, running from his left shoulder to his right hip.

“You heard the captain,” she replied. “We close the hatches, we—”

“No, after that.”

“This is a tempest, Tom. If we had the drogue we’d set it up to slow us down as we hit the waves. But it’s gone. The only thing we can do is lock everything tight, tie down anything loose, blow out the lamps, stay below deck, and hope we don’t get smashed to pieces.” She grinned at him nervously. “Whatever you do, don’t stand too close to me. With the waves, you’ll probably puke.”

Even below deck, Tomik could hear the wind begin to wail. They went into the pantry and starting using the rope to secure casks of food and water.

Suddenly the ship tilted. Ashe and Tomik tumbled into each other. A small barrel fell and split, showering raisins across the room. Then, with a wooden scream, the ship leaned in the other direction. Tomik slipped across the floor and hit a cask. It cracked, springing fresh water.

“No!” Ashe dropped to her knees and pressed her hands against the leak. “Get some pitch, Tom! We need to seal this up!”

But then the
Pacolet
hit a giant wave. The ship shuddered, and the oil lamp hanging from the ceiling fell to the pantry floor. The lamp burst into a fireball.

Tomik crawled toward Ashe, pulled her hands away from the
cask, and smashed his fist against the leak. The wood shattered, water gushing across the floor and over the fire.

The room plunged into darkness.

“Why did you do that?” Ashe wailed.

“There are other water casks,” he reminded her.

“But we don’t know how much we’ll need after the tempest, or even where we’ll end up! We could be blown halfway to America! Fresh water is the difference between life and death on the sea!”

“So is fire,” Tomik pointed out.

Ashe couldn’t argue with that. If the
Pacolet
caught fire, it wouldn’t matter how many casks of water they had.

Tomik heard her scramble to her feet. She cursed. “My matches are wet.”

Tomik reached into his pocket and pulled out the Glowstone. He squeezed, and pale blue light filled the room.

Ashe squinted at him. “Aren’t you full of surprises.” The corner of her mouth lifted, and some of the anxiety left her face as she tugged him to his feet. “Come on. Let’s finish before things really get bad.”

By the time they reached the mess hall, where the Maraki had agreed to wait out the storm, almost all of the sailors were huddled together. They had already blown out the lamps, and they sat in the dark as the
Pacolet
rolled back and forth on the waves.

Trying hard to walk steadily, Tomik stared at the floor in the light of the Glowstone. He didn’t see the looks of amazement.

“What is that?” breathed Klara.

“I made it,” Tomik said. He passed the Glowstone to her. He was wobbling on his feet, and desperately wanted to hang on to something. He grabbed the edge of the table and sank down onto the bench.

“I’m glad we didn’t sell you.” Nicolas clapped Tomik on the shoulder.

Tomik gulped. He leaned over and vomited.

“I take that back.” Nicolas stepped away.

“Here.” Someone shoved a pail under Tomik’s chin and he threw up again.

“Better?” Ashe asked.

Tomik nodded, red with shame.

“I doubt you’ll be the only one using this bucket,” Stevo comforted. “The tempest won’t stop anytime soon.”

“Where are the others?” Ashe looked around the room.

“Treb, Andras, Kiran, Tas, and Oti are still on deck, stowing the sails.”

“Still?” Ashe’s voice rose.

“We can’t let the wind tear up our sails, or we’ll be stranded out here.”

Tomik glanced up. “Where is Neel?”

“Who knows.” Nadia rolled her eyes. “He’s probably holed up somewhere feeling sorry for himself. Treb raked him over the coals today.”

“That was supposed to be a private conversation,” Klara said.

“Like you can hide anything on this ship!” Nadia flung up her hands. “What am I supposed to do, pretend I didn’t hear about it?”

“Yes,” Klara replied.

The
Pacolet
slammed into a wave and several sailors were thrown to the floor.

Brishen stood up. “We have to look for Neel.”

Just then, the Maraki who had stayed on deck walked into the room, soaked with rain and sea spray.

“The sails?” Brishen asked.

Treb scowled.

“We had to leave some of them,” Andras said. “The tempest was too wild. We got below deck a while ago. We’ve been in the hold, making sure the
Pacolet
’s not taking on seawater.”

“Did you see Neel?” Brishen asked.

Tas frowned. “No. Why?”

Treb scanned the room for his cousin. He swore. “That lad is more trouble than he’s worth.”