The Turning Tide (9 page)

At the top of the steps, an elephant was shoving itself through the doorway. Its mouth was open and its eyes were rolling. It was desperate to get to the cool water of the lake. It didn’t care how many Company men it had to run over to get there.

Twelve frantic elephants were behind that door—and all of them were stampeding straight toward Diego and Carolina.

“B
enedict, get me out of here!” Barbara screamed, grabbing her husband’s coat and yanking him away from Carolina.

There was nowhere to go but into the harbor; the walls along the sides of the steps created a perfect bottleneck for the elephants to trample through.

Benedict’s eyes were blazing. “This isn’t over!” he shouted, pointing at Carolina and Diego. He stumbled as Barbara physically hauled him backward, dragging him toward one of the rowboats at the end of the dock. She leaped in with him right behind her. “We’ll be back! We will destroy Jack Sparrow! Nothing can stop us!” Benedict howled as Barbara grabbed the oars. Two other agents tried to leap into the boat with them, but Barbara knocked them into the water with an oar.

“There’s no room!” she yelled, although there were plenty of seats in the boat. “We have to go!” She shoved the oars into Benedict’s hands and he sat down, fuming, and began to row back to his ship.

“Carolina!” Diego cried, catching her hand.

“Up here,” she said, dragging him up the
Pearl
’s gangplank. “Hurry!”

All around them men were hurling themselves into boats, or, when there wasn’t enough space, directly into the harbor. As Carolina and Diego made it to the deck of their ship, a few agents tried to run up the gangplank behind them. Side by side, the two teenagers drove them back with their swords. Diego parried and lunged, wobbling on the slant of the gangplank. Carolina whipped her sword in sharp spirals, her gold earrings glittering as they forced the men back step by step. Finally the agents leaped into the water, and Diego and Carolina could run back on deck and pull the gangplank up out of the way.

“Look!” Diego said, pointing to the far outer wall of the island, where the hidden entrance was. Pirates were gathered at the top of the sheer stone precipice. They had dragged the curtain of moss over to this side of the wall and were standing with it raised over the only exit from the harbor.

“Agents of the East India Trading Company!” a voice bellowed from behind them. Diego and Carolina whirled to see Sri Sumbhajee standing on the top of the inner wall, flanked by Askay and Pusasn. Below him, elephants were still pushing through the door and charging down the steps. Several of them were already in the harbor, dipping their trunks in the lake and spraying cool water over their backs.

“Sri Sumbhajee demands that you retreat at once!” Askay roared. He was holding something up to his mouth that amplified his voice so it echoed across the harbor. “Or else Sri Sumbhajee will destroy you all!”

On board the
Peacock
, Benedict Huntington was hopping up and down and shaking his fists and shouting. No one could hear what he was saying. Askay continued, supremely indifferent to the agent’s rage.

“You may notice what those brave gentlemen of fortune are holding over your only exit,” he went on. “Let me assure you that it is most…flammable.”

The pirates holding the false moss curtain lifted torches alight with flames. Diego realized what they were threatening to do. If they lit the curtain on fire and dropped it into the lake, it would spread to the Company ships and set them all ablaze within minutes. The agents would be trapped between the fire and the elephants.

Then again, so would Diego and Carolina, aboard the
Pearl
.

“Why doesn’t he just do it?” Diego wondered aloud. “He could wipe out so many of their ships right here.”

Carolina nodded across the dock at the elegant ship opposite theirs. “He doesn’t want to lose the
Otter
if he can avoid it. Or clean up the mess of a hundred burned ships and a thousand drowned agents.”

“Do you think they’ll leave?” Diego said.

Carolina didn’t answer. She stared out at the Company ships with a grim expression.

“This is your last chance,” Askay called. “Leave now, or suffer a fiery, watery, or…very flat death.”

For a long moment, it looked as if the ships would refuse to go. Benedict was stamping up and down the deck of the
Peacock
, clutching his hair. Barbara calmly walked past him to the wheel. She signaled the other sailors, and they raced to their positions.

“They’re going!” Diego said.

It was true. Seeing the
Peacock
do an about-face, the other ships dragged as many men from the water as they could and followed close behind them. One by one, the Company ships sailed out of the harbor, right under the hanging curtain that the pirates held menacingly over them.

Relieved, Diego turned to hug Carolina. But she stepped out of reach of his arms and turned away.

“As soon as the elephants are calm, we had better go find Jack,” she said. “The agents will soon be back with reinforcements—and we want to be gone long before then.” Without looking at him, she hurried over to the hatch and disappeared down into the ship.

Diego’s happiness drained away. He hadn’t been able to talk to her about Marcella. He needed to convince her that Marcella had been the one who kissed
him
. But would Carolina believe him?

They’d won the battle, but Diego felt far from triumphant.

J
ack was lounging cheerfully on Sri Sumbhajee’s lion throne when the pirates started trickling back into the palace, bedraggled and exhausted.

“How’d it go?” he called as some of his crew drooped into the courtyard below him. “Pretty well, I think. Thanks to me, of course.”

“Yes, Jack,” Barbossa said sarcastically. “Thank you so much for sending a horde of stampeding elephants down on top of us.”

“You don’t look any flatter than you did before,” Jack observed. “Although your hat seems to have suffered terribly.”

Concerned, Barbossa whipped off his hat and examined it from every angle.

“No?” Jack said. “Oh, pardon me—it always looks that ridiculous.”

Barbossa scowled, slammed the hat back onto his head, and stomped off to his room to gather his things.

Carolina flew into the room and ran up to Jack. “We have to get out of here,” she said. “It isn’t safe now. They’ll be back soon!”

“On the contrary,” Jack said. “We can’t go yet. We haven’t got what we came for.”

Diego trailed into the room behind her, looking woebegone. Jack noticed the distance between he and Carolina, and was about to make a sarcastic comment about it, but Sri Sumbhajee and his aides strode through the doors at that precise moment.

Sri Sumbhajee puffed up like an angry dragon when he spotted Jack on his throne. Pusasn jumped aside before the Pirate Lord could kick him meaningfully.

“Get off of Sri Sumbhajee’s throne! This minute!” Pusasn demanded.

“Quite nice up here,” Jack remarked, glancing around. “Lovely view.”

Carolina pointed at Sri Sumbhajee. “We found your assassin for you. We saved your life. You owe us.”

Sri Sumbhajee drew himself up tall.

“May we remind you,” Askay said, “that you
also
no doubt were the ones who led the East India Trading Company right to our doorstep and nearly got
all
of us killed?”

“I say,” Jack objected. “What makes you think that?”

All three Indian pirates eyed him coldly. “It is a strange coincidence otherwise,” Pusasn pointed out. “Don’t you agree? This island has been safe for generations. Then you arrive, and one day later, chaos ensues.”

“Story of my life,” Jack said. He looked down at Carolina. “I’m afraid they do have a point, love.”

“But—” Carolina said. “But—”

“’Course,” Jack said, “it is quite odd that with your spooky supernatural powers, you had no idea this was coming, Sri Sumbhajee, my friend. Your beard really didn’t give you any hints?”

Sri Sumbhajee kicked over a flowerpot and stamped his feet in fury.

“OUT!” Askay roared. “You are no longer welcome in this palace!”

“Get out and never return!” added Pusasn.

The Pirate Lord of the Indian Ocean shoved his aides aside and stormed out of the courtyard through a door to Jack’s left, waving his hands at Askay and Pusasn to stop them from following him. They stood for a moment indecisively.

“You’d better escort these two back to their rooms to get their things,” Jack said, nodding at Diego and Carolina. “Or maybe you should be keeping an eye on the real danger around here—
him
!” He pointed dramatically at the door behind them.

Askay and Pusasn whirled around, but there was no one standing there. While their backs were turned, Jack leaped off the lion throne and sprinted after Sri Sumbhajee.

He found himself in a long, dark corridor with no other doors or windows. A single blazing torch was stuck into a sconce in the center of the right wall, next to a man-size statue of a dancing monkey.

Sri Sumbhajee had vanished into thin air.

Or had he?

For a moment Jack felt a shiver run down his spine as he wondered whether the Pirate Lord really did have supernatural powers…in which case, perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to keep mocking him. But then his sharp eyes caught a movement.

A part of the wall behind the monkey statue was
moving
.

He dashed over and saw a gap closing right before his eyes. He started forward to jump through, but the wall slammed shut in his face.

Sri Sumbhajee had opened a hidden door and gone through this wall. But how?

Jack stepped back and looked around. Now he saw that there was another sconce for a torch on the other side of the monkey statue, but this one was empty. He picked up the remaining torch, but nothing happened. Carefully, Jack ran his hands over the wall, pressing and poking the sandstone bricks. Still nothing happened.

He turned his attention to the monkey statue.

Now he could hear Askay and Pusasn shouting for him in the throne room. They would probably check the other exits first, but soon enough they’d come in here and find him—and they’d definitely try to stop whatever he was doing.

He imitated a monkey’s face as he poked at the statue’s nose and eyes and ears. He tugged on its paws and stepped on its feet. He walked in a circle around it, jabbing at everything. Frustrated, he rested one hand on the tail and leaned up to peer at the monkey’s head.

The tail dropped under his hand like a lever. Jack jumped back as a door swung open in the wall beside him, revealing a spiral staircase going up. Glancing back at the sunlight spilling in from the throne room, he darted through the opening, holding the torch high. The door slid shut behind him with an ominous thud.

Jack padded quietly up the stairs, listening for the sound of Sri Sumbhajee above him. There was nowhere else the Pirate Lord could have gone. The stairs went up and up and up endlessly. Jack’s legs started to hurt and his breath came in short gasps. Forget supernatural powers—Jack was more impressed by Sri Sumbhajee’s stamina!

Suddenly he spotted a light above him, and as he came around the last bend, he found himself climbing up into a small, circular marble room lined with enormous open windows facing in all directions. Jack made the mistake of looking out and down, and he had to close his eyes for a moment, his head reeling.

When he opened them again, he realized where he was: inside the tall white spire that towered over the dome of Sri Sumbhajee’s palace. It was astonishingly high; from up here, the view stretched all the way to Bombay and out into the ocean. You could see for miles and miles and miles.

Which was precisely what Sri Sumbhajee was doing at that very moment. He was standing with his back to Jack, his eye pressed to a telescope mounted exactly at his height, staring out to sea. Jack followed his gaze and saw the East India Trading Company ships sailing back to Bombay.

“Aha!” Jack said. “So
that’s
how you do it!”

Sri Sumbhajee whirled around, his face contorting with shock.

Jack waved his hand at the spyglass and the surrounding ocean. “You’ve got a nice, little secret setup up here. That’s how you can see anyone coming—for instance, my ship. Pity you didn’t stop by here earlier this morning, isn’t it?”

Sri Sumbhajee’s glare could have melted bronze.

“And what’s over here?” Jack went on, pointing to a row of little cones set up on the floor. Tubes ran from each one into the wall.

Jack picked up the first cone and held it to his ear.

He heard: “But Lakshmi, I don’t want to leave you here.” It was Jean’s voice!

“I can’t go with you,” Lakshmi answered. “But I will tell everyone what you told me about the Shadow Lord. I’ll make sure Sri Sumbhajee fights against the Shadow Army when it rises. Or if he won’t, I’ll lead the battle myself. And then I’ll be free, Jean. Completely free! If we both survive—will you come back for me?”

“I will.”

Jack put the cone down hurriedly. He didn’t need to hear any smooching noises.

“You’re spying on your own courtiers,” Jack observed, grinning at Sri Sumbhajee. “Classy. So much for those ‘supernatural powers’ of yours.”

“I told you to get out of my court!” Sri Sumbhajee barked. Jack reeled back in surprise. The Pirate Lord’s voice was high and squeaky.

Like a four year-old girl’s. It wasn’t ominous or commanding; nothing like any other Pirate Lord’s voice. No wonder he only spoke through his aides!

Jack made a few peculiar faces, trying to hide his grin.

“As you command,” he said with a little bow. “But I have a proposal for you first.
I
won’t tell the world about the secret behind your supernatural powers—or your little-girl voice. In exchange,
you
give me the vial of Shadow Gold you received not too long ago.” He held up his thumb and forefinger. “It’s about yea big and has shiny, glowy stuff inside. You can hand that over now, and then we’ll be on our merry way. Savvy?”

Sri Sumbhajee glowered at him. “I do have supernatural powers,” he squeaked. “I just use this room for backup.”

“I’m sure you do,” Jack said, holding out his hand. “Vial, please.”

“I
knew
you were here for something,” Sri Sumbhajee growled. “Jack Sparrow is out for himself and no one else.”

Jack sighed. “Pi-rate. Getting tired of explaining that, mate. I’d have thought
you’d
understand. Oh, and it’s
Captain
Jack Sparrow, by the way.”

Scowling, Sri Sumbhajee reached up and plucked a vial out from one of the folds of his turban. He held it in his hand for a moment, watching the shimmering liquid slide slowly up and down.

“What is it?” he asked. “What’s it for?”

“Fighting evil,” Jack said blithely, lifting it out of Sri Sumbhajee’s hand. “Saving the world. Something along those lines. It’ll all be much clearer when the Shadow Lord tries to kill us all.” He tucked the vial into his vest pocket. “My thanks, good sir,” he said, flourishing his hat with a deep bow.

Sri Sumbhajee moved to shove Jack out one of the windows. But Jack was used to leaping out of harm’s way.

“Tut, tut!” Jack said, smiling as he made a hasty exit.

Jack found his crew gathered in the outer gardens, ready to leave.

“Did you get the vial?” Carolina said. She was back in her pirate clothes again. Jack held up the shadow gold proudly. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Did you have to duel him for it, like Mistress Ching?”

“Er—sure,” Jack said. “It was very dangerous and frightening. Not only does his beard tell all, it has a mind of its own. It grew an extra ten meters and wrapped itself around me. I struggled, but to no avail. Eventually, I was able to slice away at it—pray you never hear a beard scream in agony, makes a mate never want to shave or get another haircut—at which point I reached out and grabbed for the Shadow Gold. But just as I had my fingers wrapped tightly around it, the notorious Sri sliced my hand clear from my wrist. I raised my arm, sprayed the Pirate Lord with the blood that was pulsing from my wrist, grabbed the Shadow Gold, stowed it, grabbed my severed hand, reattached it with the help of a healing potion reserved for severed digits, appendages, and limbs, and, well, here we are!”

“Finally we can get out of this cursed place,” Barbossa growled, touching his stomach gingerly and, like the rest of the crew, ignoring Jack’s tall tale. “A pox on this entire court!”

“Someone ate too many mangoes,” Billy whispered to Jack.

“
I
liked it here,” Marcella announced. “It’s pretty, and there are lots of jewels, and even though it’s full of nasty pirates, it’s not nearly as dirty as a ship.”

“You’re welcome to stay,” Jack suggested. “Nay, I’d say,
encouraged
to stay.”

Marcella stuck out her tongue at him. She tried to take Diego’s arm, but he moved away from her, casting a glance at Carolina, who was ignoring them both.

Jean, meanwhile, was saying good-bye to Lakshmi. The warrior girl had taken off her mask and was holding his hands in hers.

“Don’t forget,” she said.

“I won’t,” Jean said. “I’ll come back for you.”

“Mysterious,” Jack muttered. A girl falling for Jean instead of Jack? What was the world coming to?

Barbossa was already stamping across the grass toward the harbor and the safety of the
Black Pearl
. The crew followed him. Jack stopped to cast a longing glance back at the temple, rising up through the trees.

“No, Jack,” Carolina said, steering him around. “We have what we need. Leave the ruby alone.”

“I suppose it’ll still be here next time I’m sailing around the world,” Jack said with a shrug.

“I’m sure it’ll be much harder to get in to Suvarnadurg next time,” Diego said. “I heard the pirates planning new strategies of defense already. They were talking about walling up the harbor and building an entirely new one on the other side of the island.”

Jack shook his head as they walked down the stairs. He gazed lovingly at the
Black Pearl
, bobbing quietly in the water ahead of them. “Having a palace and a fort isn’t how a real pirate should live. A real pirate needs the smell of the sea and the feel of the wind in his hair. He needs to move quickly and take his world with him wherever he goes. He has everything he wants right there in the boards and beams of his ship.”

Carolina smiled at Jack. “That’s the kind of pirate I want to be,” she said. “As soon as we’re done with this quest and have defeated the Shadow Lord.”

Jack patted the vial, safe in the pocket of his vest.

“Three down,” he said to himself. “Three more to go.”