Wake of the Bloody Angel

Chapter Thirty

I wanted to read it. They wanted me to read it to them, although they hadn’t said so. It was clear in the way their gazes flicked from me to the book and back. I tried desperately to think of a legitimate reason to avoid it, though. I wanted to read it first in private. Although we had the same name, nothing had prepared me for the realization that we also shared a nationality.

I lifted the cover. This was no government document; the handwriting was a bit sloppy, but it still showed the traces of Arentian school penmanship. The first sentence beckoned me, and I saw no way around it: All this treasure-

Then Duncan saved me by asking, “What’s that out there?” He nodded out the window toward the yard opposite the one we’d crossed. Most of it was shaded by the huge tree, which kept the weeds from growing too high. The terrain sloped slightly down toward a round hole about the size of a tavern table. Directly above this, hanging from a thick tree branch, was a block and tackle. Clearly something had been lowered into, or lifted out of, the opening.

“A well?” Jane suggested.

“Wouldn’t need a well with that stream going right by the house,” I said.

“Looks like just a hole in the ground to me,” Suhonen said.

“Yes,” Clift agreed. “And we all know why pirates put holes in the ground.”

I was grateful to have something other than the journal to think about, so I led us outside to the edge of the hole. I got as close as I dared and peered down; there was nothing but darkness.

“Hey!” Jane yelled down the hole. “Black Edward! Are you down there?” There was no response. She shrugged. “Well, sometimes it’s that easy.”

“Not this time,” Clift said. He looked up; the wind was starting to pick up, and on the other side of the mountain, we saw the first dark gray hints of storm clouds. “Weather looks touchy.”

“Too touchy for me to go down and have a look?” I said.

“I’m no weather wizard. I see gray skies, I get nervous. But they might go right past us with nary a sprinkle.”

Duncan picked up a chain that lay on the ground. One end was attached to a loop driven deep into the tree trunk. The other had a heavy-duty snap that might clip on to a particularly large collar. “This must have been where those big lizards spent their time before they got loose: guarding that hole.”

I examined the snap. It was solid and intact. “They didn’t get loose, they were turned loose.”

“Here’s the rope they must’ve used for the pit,” Suhonen called. He’d found a long coil of thick line hanging from the stub of another branch. “It’s pretty stiff. Hasn’t been used in a while, but it seems strong enough.” He paused. “That pulley’s heavy-duty, too. Whatever they lowered into that hole wasn’t a feather pillow.”

“Or pulled out of it,” Jane added.

“Yeah,” Suhonen agreed.

I stepped away from the hole and examined the ground. There had once been a worn path from the house to the hole, but grass had begun to overgrow it. I saw no sign of the bare footprints we’d seen earlier.

I looked at Jane. She said, “We have to know what’s down there.”

“Or what was down there,” I added.

“Yeah,” she said. “The pile of unanswered questions just gets bigger and bigger, doesn’t it?”

“I’m the smallest,” Duncan said. “I’ll go down.”

“No, it’s not your place,” I said, and when he started to protest added, “This is my case, not yours.”

“Is your shoulder up to it?” he challenged.

“It works just fine.” I left out the part about it hurting like a bastard.

“And if there is treasure down there?” Clift said.

“Eddie will tell us,” Jane said with the kind of certainty that brooked no further questions. “And then we’ll decide what to do next.”

Duncan proved to be useful, though. He shimmied out onto the branch and threaded the rope through the block and tackle. I tied a loop in one end for my foot, and some knots to give me handholds. After the lizard fight and the climb up the steps, I didn’t want to rely on just my fading strength to keep me safe. Finally, I sat on the edge of the hole, arranged the rope, and looked back.

“Two tugs means pull me up now,” I said. “Three means I’ve hit bottom. Depending on what I find, I might tie something to the bottom of the rope and send it up first. If I do, I’ll tug four times.”

Suhonen nodded. He’d wrapped the rope around the tree’s trunk, then around himself; he would be in charge of playing it out as I needed it. “How long do we give you before we send someone else down?”

I looked at Jane. “Captain Argo will determine that. If you lose contact, she takes over for me.” I turned to Clift. “If that’s all right with you.”

“Seems my opinion and three gold pieces will buy you a nice dinner,” he snorted.

The sky was turning darker behind the mountain. The storm could pass us by as Clift said, but I didn’t have that kind of luck. I took a deep breath, peered down into the blackness, and yelled, “Anyone down there, don’t panic. I’m coming down, and I just want to talk.”

“Would you believe that if you were down there?” Clift asked Duncan.

Duncan, self-conscious at being so casually addressed by the captain, merely shrugged.

I kicked off the lip, then braced my feet against the edge of the shaft. If I straightened my knees, my back pressed against the opposite wall, which made stopping very easy.

The sides of the shaft had once been shored up with wooden planks. Many had fallen, and roots poked through the dirt. Insects and other vermin clung to the walls near the surface, but as I descended into the darkness, they grew fewer and fewer.

“See anything?” Jane called down.

“Bugs and tree roots,” I answered. “If I run across Miles, I’ll give him your regards.”

Her laugh echoed in the shaft.

Close spaces didn’t typically bother me, but something about this one did. The tropical heat and humidity had me sweating, but some of the perspiration was ice cold. It wasn’t just the physical narrowness, it was the same dread I’d experienced going in the opposite direction to question Rody Hawk. I’d had just enough contact with the supposedly unreal to let my imagination conjure all sorts of things below. After all, I’d encountered ghosts within the safety of the Red Cow; anything could be at the bottom of this hole.

The bugs didn’t help. I couldn’t see them, but I felt them as my hands brushed the sides of the shaft. There was no wooden shoring here, and whatever lived this deep crawled with impunity until I shook them off. Ordinarily bugs didn’t bother me either, but this wasn’t an ordinary situation, and I kept anticipating painful bites that thankfully never came.

As the circle of light above grew smaller, I saw a dim pinpoint far beneath me. And when I was equidistant between the two, I felt a light breeze rising through the shaft. It grew stronger as I descended, until it was whistling around me.

“Seems to be open at the bottom,” I called up. “There’s light and wind.” I waited, but no one replied. I might have been too far down to hear it, or something might’ve happened to them. I tried mightily to believe the former.

Then I was there at the bottom, my feet hanging into open space. Diffuse sunlight shone on a flat patch of rock. Planks and dirt that had fallen from the shaft still lay piled there. I braced my legs and back against the shaft’s bottom lip and waited. Beyond the wind, I heard the sound of waves and running water. When I looked up, I could not see the top of the shaft.

I took a deep breath, bent my knees, and let myself drop through the hole. I hoped Suhonen was ready to take my whole weight. I felt the jerk as the rope snapped tight, and my cut shoulder protested. I spun in place, quickly at first and then more slowly. The cooler air felt wonderful. Finally, I was lowered through the open space toward the ground twenty feet below.

It was a sea-cut cave, big enough to hold a dozen ships. Along one wall was a huge, jagged horizontal gap through which I saw the gray overcast sky. Outside, birds hovered in the wind, and I heard that same faint squawking we’d all mistaken for a party. Rubble beneath this crack showed where the outer wall had collapsed to form the opening-quite recently, if the debris was any indication.

A dark pool took up a third of the cave floor, the water deep beneath the still, glassy surface. One section of the wall was huge and smooth, and the image of a ship had been painted on it as part of a mural. I couldn’t make out the details as I slowly corkscrewed my way to the ground.

At last, I touched bottom and took my foot out of the loop. I gave the rope three hard tugs and hoped Suhonen remembered our cues. Then I tied it to the base of a stalactite so that it couldn’t be pulled up. That wouldn’t stop anyone at the top from throwing down their end, but I had no control over that.

I put my hands on my knees and took several deep breaths. I hadn’t realized how truly creepy the shaft was until now, and my chest hurt from breathing shallowly on the way down. My shoulder throbbed from my neck to my fingertips. Here the air smelled of salt and damp, and the wind swirled in and out of the cave like water. There was another smell, vaguely familiar, but for the moment I couldn’t place it.

When my head was back to normal, I looked at the mural. It depicted a ship on the bottom of the ocean, skeletons half buried in the sand around it. I recognized the same hand that had painted the hut’s interior and the cover of the mysterious book. Along the bottom were the words THE FATE OF THE BLOODY ANGEL, and beneath it a list of names. The postscript read, SENT TO

THEIR DEATHS BY THE TREACHERY OF BLACK EDWARD TEW.

And all this was written in Arentian.

I drew my sword. The strange man in Blefuscola assured me I’d find my quarry alive, and I didn’t want to do it just before he drove a knife in my back.

“Black Edward Tew!” I called. My voice sounded thin and distant over the ever-present wind. “Angelina Dirnay sent me to find you! I don’t want your money, she just wants to know what happened to you.”

I waited. Except for the wind, there was nothing. The clouds outside grew thicker, which dimmed the light in the cave. It was so eerie that if Dorsal and his little girlfriend had stepped out of the shadows, they would not have seemed out of place.

A man-made divider of stacked rocks stuck out from the wall at a ninety-degree angle and hid one corner of the cave from view. I moved toward it carefully, making as little sound as possible. It was ten feet high, and the end reached nearly to the pool, with just a narrow space to squeeze around. There was nothing alive in the water: no algae, no fish, no small crustaceans along the edge. I picked my way around, trying to watch every direction at once, including up.

On the other side of the wall, in the shadows, I saw the opening of a small sub-cave. I stayed by the edge of the pool and waited for my eyes to adjust to the comparative dimness. After weeks on the Cow going from deck to hold and back, it didn’t take long.

This secondary cave was closed off with iron bars. Thick as my arm, they were stuck deep into the uneven floor and the smaller cave’s ceiling. I couldn’t see past the bars into the shadowy interior, but what they guarded wasn’t much of a mystery.

An iron wall sconce held an old torch. I turned my back to the wind and struck flints until it lit. I waited for the flame to settle. When it did, I knew I was in the right place.

Behind the bars, the cave held a pile of treasure as big as my bedroom. Maybe larger: I had no idea how far back it extended. Wooden chests were stacked to the ceiling; those closest stood open, the torch light sparkling off the gold and jewels within them. No dust could fully hide that kind of glimmer. I couldn’t conceive of how much this would be worth. More, certainly, than the whole national treasury of a backwater kingdom like Neceda. More than my old family fortune back in Arentia. More than I’d ever earn as a sword jockey in a dozen lifetimes.

I’m a little bit ashamed to say I was so dazzled by this that I didn’t notice the other thing behind the bars. On the floor, one hand in an open chest, lay a dead body. He was facedown, and had the same distinctive black hair as Duncan.

“Hello, Edward,” I said softly, the disappointment so heavy, I could hardly stand upright. I made a mental note to slap the guy in Blefuscola if I crossed paths with him again. I leaned my forehead against the bars. “Looks like Jane was right. Let’s keep that between us, okay? She’s insufferable enough.”

Then the body moved.

This was the second time, after Rody Hawk, I’d thought someone dead who wasn’t, and I almost let out a shriek like a startled girl. But when he rolled onto his back, I saw that his cheeks were hollow from starvation, and his eyes sunken into dark pits. They were open, though, and despite their milky glaze, they slowly moved to look at me.

I wasn’t sure he could hear me over the pounding of my heart. “You

… you’re Black Edward Tew.”

He nodded. I swear I heard his bones creak. One thin hand raised itself imploringly in my direction. Around his arm-so loose, it dangled to his elbow-was a golden bracelet. I saw the angel wings engraved in the band.

His jaw worked, but no sound came out. His lips were thin, and his gums had drawn back from his teeth. Then the hand fell limp to the floor and the head lolled to one side. His eyes closed. This time I knew he was truly dead. Both Jane and the crazy old man had been right.

There was a door as well, with a heavy lock mechanism and a socket for a lone key. I tried it; it was shut tight.

Fate gave me little time to mourn my loss or Tew’s death. Something bubbled, and it took me a moment to wrench myself back to the present and look around for the source. The middle of the dark pool churned and roiled, and waves rolled out and slapped against the flat rocks. The water rose so that it swamped the narrow path around the end of the divider. It surged toward me and I backed up to the bars. I returned the torch to the sconce to leave my hands free.

And then the source of the disturbance appeared.

“Shit!” I yelled. I’d walked right into the same goddamned trap again. On the plus side, I had learned where Wendell Marteen got the idea. So I wasn’t a total failure as a sword jockey.

Maybe instead of Clift’s noble quote, that would be my epitaph: Not a total failure.