Blue Sea Burning Read online

  ALSO BY GEOFF RODKEY

  The Chronicles of Egg, Book One:

  Deadweather and Sunrise

  The Chronicles of Egg, Book Two:

  New Lands

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia

  New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  Copyright © 2014 by Geoff Rodkey.

  Map illustration copyright © 2014 by Russell R. Charpentier.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rodkey, Geoff, 1970–

  Blue sea burning / Geoff Rodkey.

  pages cm.—(The chronicles of Egg ; book 3)

  Summary: “In this final installment to the Chronicles of Egg trilogy, Egg and his friends must defeat the ruthless slave trader Roger Pembroke”—Provided by publisher.

  [1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Buried treasure—Fiction. 3. Good and evil—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.R61585Bl 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2013025515

  ISBN 978-0-698-14959-5.

  Version_1

  For Rahm

  Contents

  Also by Geoff Rodkey

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Three Problems

  BURN HEALY’S PIRATE SHIP was sinking. And we were on it.

  Cannon fire had torn a hole in the lower hull during the invasion of Pella Nonna. Healy’s men had patched it, but there hadn’t been time for a full repair before they set sail with me, Guts, Kira, and my brother, Adonis, on board—and as soon as the Grift hit top speed, the patch had split open. Now seawater was gushing into the hold as fast as the pirates could pump it out, and we were limping across the Blue Sea, trying to reach Deadweather Island for repairs.

  But Deadweather was four days’ sail away, and if the half-busted patch got any worse, we weren’t going to make it.

  So that was a problem.

  But there was a bigger one.

  A convoy of warships was somewhere over the horizon, determined to blow us out of the water.

  The convoy was led by Cartage’s colonial viceroy, Li Homaya, and his temporary ally, the brutal pirate Ripper Jones. Between them, they had at least three ships, including two massive Cartager men-of-war with more than fifty guns each.

  Jones and Li Homaya were unlikely partners. The only thing they had in common, other than their tiny Cartager ears, was a blood lust for Burn Healy. They’d been roaming the Blue Sea for weeks now, trying to hunt him down, and if they crossed our path before the crippled Grift made port, we were doomed.

  So that was another problem.

  But there was a third one.

  And at the moment, it was even bigger than the other two.

  The third problem was this: the crew of the Grift wanted us dead.

  “DEAD?! WHAT THE PUDDA — blun are you talking about?” Guts twitched as he cursed at me in two languages at once. Guts had one hand, a foul temper, and an even fouler mouth. And he was my best friend in the world.

  He’d sacked out right after we left Pella and was only just waking up from a much-needed nap. So were Kira and Adonis—the three of them were folding up the hammocks they’d strung under the beams in the aft corner of the Grift’s gun deck.

  “Just look at them,” I said, motioning toward the gun crews behind me. “Do you see the way they’re staring at us?”

  Guts, Kira, and Adonis peered over my shoulder at the hundred-plus pirates clustered in tight, watchful groups around the two dozen cannon that ran down either side of the deck.

  One by one, my friends’ eyes widened.

  “They are definitely angry,” said Kira. She nodded slowly, more thoughtful than scared. Kira didn’t scare easily.

  Guts twitched again. “One in the striped shirt looks like he wants to — my glulo in the pudda —.”

  Kira wrinkled her nose at Guts. “That’s disgusting.”

  “True, tho’,” said Guts, scratching his nose with the stump at the end of his left wrist. “Look at ’im. And them ones on the chain pump are really givin’ us the stink-eye.”

  Halfway down the deck in front of the mainmast column, four sweat-drenched pirates were heaving their shoulders in time as they worked the big circular crank of the chain pump that drew water up from the flooded hold.

  I glanced back at them and caught a look of pure hate that turned my insides to water.

  Adonis snorted in disgust. “Stuff it, Egbert! Yer just bein’ a girlie wimp!”

  Kira’s dark eyes flashed as she turned her head to him. “Did you say girlie?”

  Adonis shrank back in an instant. Like most bullies, my older brother went to pieces when somebody tougher than he was challenged him. Kira was a head shorter and a hundred pounds lighter than Adonis, but she was tougher by a mile.

  And I suspected, even though I hadn’t seen it happen, that the greenish-black bruise my brother was sporting under his left eye had been Kira’s doing.

  “No!” Adonis sputtered. “I said-said-said”—he scrunched up his face in the pained look he got whenever he tried to think—“ . . . gurgly.”

  Kira ignored him, turning back to me. “Egg, the ship is sinking, and we might be attacked at any minute. That is reason enough for the crew to be angry. Why do you think this is about us?”

  “Because this whole mess is my fault,” I said.

  And it was true. The only reason the Grift had set sail from Pella in such a hurry was because Burn Healy had to rescue me from a public hanging. Which didn’t go over well with the man who was trying to hang me.

  The man who’d recently crowned himself the new governor of Pella Nonna.

  The man who was trying to take over the whole continent of the New Lands and make slaves of everyone who lived there.

  The man who’d killed my fa
ther.

  “It is not your fault, Egg,” Kira insisted. “It is Roger Pembroke’s.”

  Her lip curled in a snarl as she spoke his name, and I remembered he’d ordered her own father’s death as well, for trying to stop Pembroke from using Kira’s tribe, the Okalu, as slaves in the silver mine back on Sunrise Island.

  “Bunch of nonsense,” Adonis growled again. “Ain’t nobody on this ship gonna kill me. My uncle’s the captain!”

  “He’s my uncle, too,” I said. “And I’m plenty worried.” I was still getting used to the idea that I was Burn Healy’s nephew—which I’d only just learned that morning as I stood on a gallows with a noose around my neck.

  It had been an awfully strange day. And it wasn’t even time for dinner yet.

  “Yer just worried ’cause yer a gir—” Adonis stopped himself, with a sideways glance at Kira. “Gurgly wimp.”

  “Thought you were going to start treating me right,” I reminded him. A few hours back, after he’d gone to pieces over our father’s death and spilled out all his fears for the future, I’d promised Adonis that I’d stick by him, but only as long as he quit being a bully and a thug.

  “I am! Ain’t slugged you today, have I?”

  “It’s more than just not slugging me. Quit calling me names! Especially ones that don’t mean anything. I mean, what on earth is a ‘gurgly wimp’?”

  It was quiet for a moment as Adonis scrunched up his face, trying to work out what he’d meant by that.

  Guts broke the silence. “Don’t matter who they blame for this mess,” he said. “They ain’t killin’ any of us. Not just ’cause the captain’s yer uncle. ’Cause of the Code.”

  The Code was the set of rules that Burn Healy’s pirates had all sworn to live by. And we knew from experience that the Code guaranteed the safety of children.

  Or did it?

  “Doesn’t the Code say children should be treated with mercy?” I asked.

  Guts gave a twitchy nod. “Right.”

  “Well, what if that just means they’ll give us a merciful death?”

  That stumped him.

  Nobody said much of anything for a long time after that. We just huddled in the corner of the gun deck, averting our eyes whenever one of the pirates shot a murderous glance in our direction. Between the gushing leak in the hold and the state of alert over a possible attack, the mood was tense all around, and we didn’t want to move around the ship for fear of getting in the crew’s way.

  I thought about searching out my uncle to ask him if there was any chance his men might kill us. But the last time I’d seen him, he was holding a grave and serious-sounding conference with his officers up on the main deck, of the sort that seemed like a very bad idea to interrupt.

  And anyway, if I went looking for him—or went anywhere, for that matter—I’d have to walk past a hundred seething pirates. So I stayed put and tried not to think about the fact that I had to pee.

  Instead, I thought about Millicent.

  Millicent, who was smart and funny and had long, honey-gold hair that shone in the sun like a treasure.

  Millicent, whose deep brown eyes had a fire burning fierce inside them.

  Millicent, whose smile was warm and mysterious and made life worth living whenever she turned it on me.

  Millicent, whose father was Roger Pembroke. The most evil man in the world.

  It wasn’t her fault. You can’t choose your parents.

  And she knew it now, all of it, the full horror of what he’d done, and she was as determined as Kira and I were to stop him before he could expand his slave trade from Sunrise Island to the whole of the New Lands.

  I hadn’t seen Millicent since that awful morning—less than a week ago, but it felt like a year—in the shadow of Mata Kalun, when my father lay dead on the steps of the temple and our desperate, half-baked plan had fallen apart. Pembroke had split us up, sending Millicent back to her mother on Sunrise Island.

  Where was she now? Still on Sunrise, probably. Living at Cloud Manor, waiting for a ship to take her across the Great Maw to Rovia and some boarding school for rich girls.

  How could I get to her? Sunrise was Pembroke’s island, full of Rovian soldiers who did his bidding. But maybe I could—

  “I want some o’ that food.”

  Adonis’s voice cut through my thoughts. I looked up to see that the gun crews were eating dinner. A man from each crew had brought up a bucket of rations from the galley down on the lower deck, and they were all seated around their cannon, digging into biscuits and salted chops.

  Watching the pirates eat, my mouth started to water. It had been a long time since breakfast.

  Adonis got to his feet. “Gonna get us a bucket.”

  He started off down the deck with his usual swagger—the kind that made even strangers want to give him a hard kick in the pants. Guts, Kira, and I watched the pirates stare daggers at him as he passed.

  “Think he’s going to get himself in trouble?” I asked the others.

  Kira sighed. “I am sure he will.” She stood up. “We should follow him.”

  Unfortunately, I had to agree.

  CHAPTER 2

  Stick’s Complaint

  WE CAUGHT UP with Adonis on the lower deck. As we headed for the short line of pirates waiting for food outside the galley, we passed the companionway leading down to the hold—and even before we got close enough to peer down the stairs, I could hear the slap of water sloshing against the walls below.

  Just from the sound, I knew it was bad. But the sight of the water lapping at a step halfway up the stairs nearly took my breath away. I could hear voices somewhere down there, splashing around, and I prayed they were fixing the patch, because if that water level kept rising, the Grift wasn’t going to be afloat much longer.

  As we reached the back of the food line, Adonis took a hard shoulder from a pirate who was walking off with a bucket of rations. Fortunately, my brother had just enough sense to swallow his tongue, and we waited in silence while a grizzled, one-legged cook passed out buckets to the three pirates in front of us.

  Then it was our turn. Adonis stepped to the galley door.

  The cook didn’t even give him a chance to speak.

  “Clear off!” he barked, gesturing for us to go back the way we came.

  That was good enough for Guts, Kira, and me. But not Adonis. The rest of us were turning to leave when he opened his mouth.

  What came out of it reminded me of a bad novel I read once, Orphan Dora. It’s one of those books where the pitiful-but-plucky main character goes through so many heart-wrenching episodes you’d swear the author’s whole purpose was to make whoever reads it cry like a baby.

  In the final sequence, little Dora escapes from a chain gang in a coal mine and walks fifty miles through a driving snowstorm to get to the door of a widowed baker whose only daughter had perished in a subplot so boring that I’d skipped six chapters of it. When the baker answers the door, Dora says, in an adorable-even-though-she’s-about-to-faint-from-starvation voice, “Please, sir, if I might just have a bite of something old and stale . . .”

  And of course the baker’s heart breaks for her, and once he’s finished bursting into tears, he not only feeds Dora a fresh loaf from the oven, but adopts her and they live happily ever after.

  What Adonis said to the cook was very similar, except it wasn’t adorable, he didn’t say please, and instead of bursting into tears and adopting him, the cook growled, “Eat this,” and punched Adonis in the mouth.

  It was quite a punch, especially for a one-legged man who you wouldn’t think could lay much weight behind his swing. It knocked Adonis off his feet, and he tumbled past us to land in a heap in front of my uncle, who’d just appeared out of nowhere with a handful of his officers.

  Burn Healy looked down at my brother with gray-flecked blue eyes that showed a
bit of curiosity, but not much more.

  Adonis opened his own eyes, saw our uncle the pirate captain staring down at him, and made a noise through his bleeding mouth that sounded like “shgrf.”

  As my brother staggered to his feet, Healy turned his gaze to the cook.

  “What happened here, Stick?” he asked in a mild voice.

  But its meaning wasn’t mild at all. Healy had the unsettling ability to give even the most pleasant-seeming question an undercurrent of mortal threat—so in this case, everyone within earshot understood that what he really meant wasn’t just what happened here? but your life depends on how you answer.

  The cook couldn’t bear to look Healy in the eye. He stared at the deck as he answered.

  “Lost me temper, Cap,” he said quietly.

  “It happens,” said Healy, with a thoughtful nod.

  For a moment, the tension crackling in the air began to subside.

  “Even so . . .”

  Instantly, the tension spiked again. I heard a little gasp as someone sucked in their breath in fright—and then I realized, to my embarrassment, that it was me.

  “Two articles of the code come to mind,” Healy told the cook. “No fighting among the crew . . . and mercy toward children.”

  Everyone looked to the cook for his reply. The skin around his eyes was leathery and wrinkled—but when his gaze rose to meet Healy’s, his eyes grew so wide that the wrinkles nearly vanished.

  I followed his frightened stare to the pistol that had appeared in Healy’s hand.

  “What do you say to that, Stick?” he asked.

  It was silent except for the slap of seawater in the hold below our feet.

  When the cook finally spoke, his voice was heavy and slow.

  “Beggin’ pardon, Cap . . . and with all due respect”—he jerked his head toward Adonis—“that one ain’t crew . . . and he ain’t no child, neither.”

  Everyone turned to stare at the captain. He was motionless as a stone, his gaze steady on the cook.

  Then Healy began to raise the pistol.