New Lands (THE CHRONICLES OF EGG) (18 page)

And if it does exist, I’ve got no business going near it.

I don’t want that kind of power.

I just want a sandwich.

And some jelly bread.

Starving…

And the only people I care about have turned on me.

Millicent’s furious.

Worse than that—she’s in love with someone else.

Why I ever thought she and I…

I’m a fool.

And Guts attacked me! My ear’s so swollen from his fist I can feel it throb without even touching it.

They’re the whole reason I’m here.

I could’ve gone down to the Barkers. I would’ve been safe there.

But I came here. I didn’t want to let them down.

And they turned on me.

And Kira…She doesn’t care a thing for me. All I am to her is the map.

She
’d probably kill me as quick as Pembroke’s men if it got her what she wanted.

I don’t even want the stupid map.

I’d trade the whole thing for a sandwich.

I’d give it away if I could. It’s nothing but trouble.

I don’t want any more trouble.

I just want a sandwich.

And some jelly bread…

I was half asleep on my feet, dreaming about jelly bread, when we came upon the sheep. There was a flock of a hundred or more, tended by a few shirtless young boys with long sticks.

The boys gawked at us as we passed.

“It’s not polite to stare,” Millicent told one of them.

When she spoke, he flinched in surprise and skittered backward. But he didn’t stop staring.

We left the little shepherds and their flock behind and started up a wide, easy hill. At the top of it, we came upon a village of a few dozen thatched huts, bustling with people.

The Flut warrior led us through the settlement, past women
who gossiped with each other as they ground corn in giant bowls; stone-eyed men who smoked long clay pipes and whittled blocks of wood with Continental-made knives; and packs of noisy, happy kids who darted among the huts, trailed by barking dogs so skinny you could count their ribs.

As we went by, everyone stopped to stare at us, and not in a friendly way. A couple of the men made a point of reaching their hands out to rest on the rifles they had lying nearby.

In the center of the village, a ring of huts circled a small commons with a fire pit in the middle of it. The Flut warrior motioned for us to wait in the commons, spoke a few sentences of Cartager to the girls, then disappeared into a hut that was twice the size of the others.

“Let me do the talking,” Millicent said to Kira.

Kira’s lip curled in a snarl. “You know nothing of these people.”

“I’ve seen enough to know they’re not keen on you.”

Kira shrugged. “Flut and Okalu are not allies. My people used to rule these lands.”

“And this bunch doesn’t seem to have forgotten it.”

Just then, an older man—broad-shouldered but paunchy, his face wrinkled and his long hair more gray than black—stepped out of the big hut. He was followed by the warrior who’d led us to the village and a third, much younger Flut.

When the three Flut approached, Millicent stepped forward. So did Kira.

They both bowed deep to the elder Flut. Guts and I did the same.

The elder spoke a few sentences in Cartager.

Millicent and Kira both tried to answer at once.

He raised a hand to silence them. Then he looked past the girls to me and Guts, addressing us directly.

Millicent said something in Cartager. The Flut elder ignored her, looking me in the eye as he spoke again.

I didn’t understand a word.

Millicent turned her head to look back at us. “They only want to talk to men,” she said. She was careful to keep the annoyance out of her voice, but she rolled her eyes—which, since her head was turned away from them, the Flut couldn’t see.

“Do they speak Rovian?” I asked.

“Of course not. They barely speak Cartager.”

“I talk Cartager,” Guts offered.

“Only swear words,” I said.

“Stuff it!” Guts growled at me.

“If you want this to go well, you’ll let me do the talking,” said Millicent firmly.

The Flut were starting to look impatient. The elder addressed me and Guts again.

“What do we tell him?” I asked Millicent.

“Nothing. Just shrug your shoulders and look stupid.”

I did as I was told.

“Both of you,” she muttered, glaring at Guts.

He scowled and twitched, but offered a halfhearted shrug as he stared at the ground.

The elder looked annoyed. But when Millicent offered an explanation in her softest, most soothing voice, and added another deep bow on top of it, he grudgingly began a dialogue with her.

Kira tried to break in at first, but the hostile stares of all three
Flut persuaded her to keep her mouth shut and let Millicent handle things.

The conversation went on for some time. The Flut elder kept asking questions, and Millicent kept answering them.

His tone occasionally turned sharp, but even when it did, she kept her voice calm and steady. At one point, she lowered it nearly to a whisper, and it quavered with emotion.

I couldn’t tell whether the emotion was real or just an act. But either way, it worked its magic on her audience. The Flut elder’s brow knitted with concern, and although the other two Flut stayed motionless and square-shouldered, the eyes of the younger one seemed to melt into puddles as he stared at Millicent.

At first, I felt a pang of jealousy. But as I thought about it some more, I started to wonder whether I shouldn’t try to warn the poor Flut warrior—who by now was looking positively moony as he listened to Millicent spin her tale—that she was nothing but trouble and he shouldn’t get his hopes up.

I was still thinking about it when Millicent turned to Kira and asked in an undertone, “How much money do you have?”

“About two hundred,” Kira replied.

“Gold or silver?”

“Neither. Shells.”

“
Shells?
That’s absurd!”

“Not to a Flut. They’re more valuable than silver. Should I get the bag out?”

“Not until we’ve set a price.”

Millicent went back to talking with the elder, and the tone of the conversation shifted—the back-and-forth got much faster, and Millicent’s sentences turned short and businesslike.

I wasn’t sure what they were haggling over, but I hoped it was food.

Finally, she sighed, gave a deep bow, and turned away from the Flut.

“Walk with me,” she told us. “Don’t look back.”

She started off in the direction we’d come from, and the three of us had to scurry to fall in line behind her.

Kira was aghast. “Are you mad?”

“I’m negotiating. Keep your voice down,” Millicent said, without turning her head or slowing down.

“We can’t walk away! We’re starving!”

“I’d rather starve than pay those prices,” Millicent declared.

We’d almost reached the far edge of the commons. “Please don’t walk away from food,” I begged her.

“Should have thought about that before you tossed away all our silver.”

“You were going to drown!”

“And now we’re going to starve if we don’t get the price down.”

Fortunately, just then we heard the elder’s voice, calling Millicent back. She returned, and within a minute, they’d come to some kind of agreement.

As Kira pulled out her sack of shells and counted out a handful to give to the Flut, Millicent explained the situation to me and Guts.

“They’re going to feed us,” she said, “then show us the best route across the valley and vouch for us with the other villages. We can buy the food we need along the way, and they’ll keep an eye out for the men from the boat.”

Almost as soon as the elder had his shells in hand, three
tribeswomen appeared with a bowl of corn pancakes, a pitcher of goat’s milk, and—I almost passed out from happiness at the sight—a long skewer with two full racks of cooked mutton.

They spread the food out on a blanket next to the fire pit. Then the Flut retreated to the porch in front of the main hut, leaving us to dine by ourselves. Only Millicent’s warning that we should eat politely kept us from attacking the food like starving dogs. Even so, we tore through it with fierce speed.

The last of the mutton ribs had been spoken for and we were down to our final two pancakes before anyone stopped chewing long enough to talk.

“Is it true, what you said?” Kira asked Millicent.

Millicent didn’t answer.

“How much of what you told them—”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Millicent said sharply.

“But are the slavers—”

“Use that word in front of me, there’s going to be trouble,” Millicent warned her.

A tense silence followed. Millicent’s eyes stayed fixed on the mutton rib she was gnawing. Kira’s nostrils flared as she studied her own food.

Guts and I traded puzzled glances. I had no idea what the girls were talking about, but it seemed like a bad idea to ask.

Kira took a bite of mutton. Chewed it slowly. Swallowed. Then tried again.

“Why did you say—”

“I said what I said to get us what we needed,” Millicent snapped. “And so help me—if you so much as move your tongue to slander my father, I’ll cut it from your mouth.”

Kira looked too shocked to answer. Millicent tossed the rib bone into the fire pit and stood up, flicking her fingers clean.

“I’m going to see about getting a bath. Sick to death of being filthy.”

Millicent strode across the commons to speak with the Flut. We all watched as she bowed low to the Flut elder, sitting on a woven chair in front of his hut. He nodded and smiled, clearly won over by her.

“I don’t understand your friend,” Kira said.

“What did she say to them?” I asked.

“That Rovian soldiers are coming to invade the New Lands and make slaves of us all. And the four of us are on a mission to stop them.” Kira turned to look at me. “Is it true? Or was she lying?”

“I have no idea,” was all I could think to say.

M
y stomach was full for the first time in days, and for the moment we seemed safe from Pembroke’s slavers. But now I had something new to worry about.

Why would Rovian soldiers invade the New Lands?

Rovia and Cartage were enemies, but not like the Moku and Okalu. They weren’t dead set on wiping each other out. They only fought occasionally, and the Barker War five years back had seemed to settle things between them, at least as far as the New Lands went. When it was over, Cartage controlled the mainland, and Rovia ruled the islands. And that was that.

Or so I thought.

And this business about making slaves of everyone—how could that be? Rovia wasn’t in the slave trade. The king had outlawed it. Roger Pembroke was a slaver, and a Rovian…but the only soldiers he had any control over were the hundred or so in
the garrison on Sunrise, and that was just because according to Millicent, he paid their salaries.

Surely you couldn’t invade a whole continent with a hundred soldiers. You’d need thousands. And warships, too. Roger Pembroke didn’t have that kind of power.

Or did he?

I watched Millicent walk back to us from the elder’s hut.

“What’s this about Rovian soldiers invading the New Lands?” I asked her.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, shaking her head.

“How can it not matter?!”

“There’s a stream nearby,” she said, ignoring the question. “They’ll take us there if we want to wash up. Three shells a person, and they’ll wash our clothes. I recommend it—you look like a pack of animals, and you smell even worse.”

Two teenage Flut girls were approaching. One of them called out in Cartager, and Millicent turned to greet them.

“Fine,” I said. “But what about the soldiers—”

She talked over me, directing a comment to Kira in Cartager. Then she and Kira began to follow the two Flut girls.

“Go with the boys when they show up,” Millicent said over her shoulder as she walked off. “And don’t waste time. We’ve got a long walk ahead of us.”

“What about the soldiers?!” I called out, exasperated.

She didn’t even turn around.

“Girlie ain’t changed a bit,” Guts muttered as he watched her go. “Still a
pudda saca.
”

“Don’t call her that.”

“Pudo la,
ye
billi glulo porsamora.”

“You sure you’re saying it right?”

“Shut up.”

A moment later, two boys a few years younger than us arrived
and led us to a secluded spot on the bank of a slow-moving stream. They motioned for us to give them our clothes. We stripped down, and they began to rinse the clothes as we plunked ourselves down in the stream.

The water was chilly, but I forced myself to stay in it until I’d scrubbed myself clean, especially my hair. Then I sat down on the riverbank, shivering and wet, and watched the boys beat our clothes against some rocks. It was late morning, the sun was hot, and pretty quickly I stopped shivering.