Deadweather and Sunrise (11 page)

I’d just gotten into bed when there was a soft knock at my door.

It was Mrs. Pembroke. She wore a long silk nightgown and held a candle in an iron holder.

“Egg… may I speak with you?” Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

“Yes.”

She came over to sit on the edge of my bed. Her hand trembled a bit, which made the candle flicker, so she set it on the nightstand.

Then she reached out and brushed a wisp of hair from my eyes. “You’re a very sweet boy, and I think the world of you.”

I was starting to well up, not just from the words, but from the gentle touch of her fingers on my forehead, when her next sentence made all the emotion stick in my throat like a rock.

“But you need to leave here. Immediately.”

She went on, her voice turning cold and pointed.

“Do you have any family besides your father and siblings?”

“No.”

“Any friends? Older ones who could take you in?”

“No.”

She drew in a deep breath, and for a moment, her eyes looked like they might take pity on me. Then she exhaled, and the coldness returned.

“Then I think what’s best… is for you to go back where you came from. I’ll make arrangements first thing in the morning.”

I opened my mouth, wanting to say something, but I couldn’t find any words. Just then, the heavy creak of the front door echoed up to us from the entrance hall downstairs. Mrs. Pembroke startled, rising quickly to her feet.

“I’m sorry, Egg. It’s what’s best for you.”

She shut the door behind her, quickly and silently, and it wasn’t until she’d been gone awhile—and the meaning of her words had settled heavily into the pit of my stomach—that I realized she’d left the candle behind.

I stared at the light until it guttered out and died. Then I lay in the darkness, and tried hard not to think or feel anything at all.

I woke up the next morning to the sound of the front door again, slamming hard like a thunderclap. I dressed slowly—I figured I’d
be leaving for good within the hour, and while the sensible thing would be to wear my old, itchy clothes from Deadweather, I put on one of the silk shirts the Pembrokes had given me instead. I wanted to feel the luxuriousness of the fabric against my skin one last time.

Then I tiptoed down to breakfast, taking the time to appreciate every detail of the grand staircase and sumptuous entrance hall. When I reached the dining room, I was surprised to find Roger Pembroke—who was usually up and out by this hour—chatting away with a big, rough-looking man who sat at Millicent’s usual place.

Seeing me, Pembroke smiled—his best, most charming smile, the one that made me feel both special and desperate to live up to whatever he expected of me.

“Morning, Egg. Come join us.” I sat down. The rough-looking man nodded at me. He didn’t look like the type to smile.

“Millicent and Edith have gone to visit some friends north of Blisstown,” Pembroke continued. “I thought this would be a good time for you to meet Mr. Birch. One of my most trusted and capable associates.”

“Hello,” I said, guessing that Mr. Birch would be taking me down to the port, and wondering if they expected me to hire my own boat back to Deadweather.

Birch nodded in reply. A butler put breakfast in front of me. Pembroke and Birch had already finished theirs. I started to eat quickly, eyes focused on my food.

“Egg, I want to apologize for my behavior yesterday.”

I’d imagined a lot of different versions of this conversation, but none of them started with an apology from Pembroke.

“You don’t need—”

“I do, actually. I think I’m perhaps a bit too used to getting my own way. So much so that I sometimes forget to see things from the point of view of others. Even those for whom I have only the best intentions.”

The special smile returned. “I understand why you couldn’t accept my offer. And the more I think about it, the more respect I have for your integrity. I remember what I was like at your age. In many ways, you’re miles ahead of where I was.”

It was cold comfort, hearing a speech like that right before I got kicked out the door. But I did appreciate that he wasn’t yelling at me.

“As you probably know, I’ve built a rather successful business organization. But its future health depends on my ability to find the right sort of men to help me run it. I know you’re quite young, but I see great promise in you. So if I can’t have you as a son… I’d like very much to recruit you as an apprentice.”

My jaw started to drop, and a mouthful of half-chewed food nearly dribbled out onto my lap before I had the presence of mind to clamp my teeth down. Which somehow caused me to start choking, and before I knew it a butler was hovering over me with a glass of water and a towel.

Pembroke smiled indulgently at me as I tried to recover.

“Is that a yes?”

“I… did Mrs. Pembroke… say…?”

Pembroke chuckled and rolled his eyes ever so slightly. “Mrs. Pembroke’s a bit emotional. Because, to be totally frank, she’s long harbored the ambition of marrying her only daughter to a Rovian nobleman. And given the obvious mutual affection between you
and Millicent”—I got a little dizzy when he said that—“she’s rather concerned about the implications of your staying in our lives.

“Now—again, I’m speaking plainly, and apologies for that—I’ll admit that at first blush, I shared her concern. But the more that I’ve thought about it… there’s something special about you, son. You’re a rare talent. I’d be a fool to let you leave us.”

As my head spun, he took a sip of coffee. “What do you say? Will you come and work for me?”

“I’d love to, sir.” All the gloom of the past day vanished, and I almost laughed out loud from happiness.

Pembroke and Birch traded looks of satisfaction. “Excellent. I’d like to begin straightaway. Birch here will take care of you—starting with a tour of some of our local interests.”

Birch winked at me. “Eat your fill. You’ll need it.”

TWO HOURS LATER, Birch and I were on horseback, climbing one of the winding trails that led up the forested hills toward the timberline of Mount Majestic. We were farther up the slope than I’d ever been with Millicent—since our rides usually started in the afternoon, we couldn’t get this far and still be back by nightfall—and as the trail switched back on itself, I got an occasional peek through the trees at the towering pile of rock looming ahead.

Birch had barely spoken during the ride. Early on, when I realized we were headed up the mountain, I asked if we’d be seeing the silver mine.

“Eventually,” he said. “Few other stops first.”

“Is it all right if I ask where?”

“You’ll see.”

I got the point and kept my mouth shut after that, my head
swimming with fantasies that now seemed entirely realistic. There didn’t seem anything too far-fetched about Millicent marrying a young businessman with bright prospects, especially one who was a trusted associate of her father’s.

I decided that as soon as I got back to Cloud Manor, I would give up novels—silly entertainment, suitable for women and children, but of no use to a young empire builder—for the self-improvement books I’d seen in Pembroke’s library, like
Letters to a Young Tradesman
and
Rules of Gentlemanly Conduct.
I’d memorize these, following them to the letter until I became a man—not a boy, a man—of such impressive character that people who met me would be shocked to learn I was raised not on the vast estate of some Rovian duke, but as a lowly planter’s son.

I was designing the mansion Millicent and I would raise our six children in when Birch stopped at a sharp bend in the trail, where it turned away from a steep cliff on the edge of the ridge we had been following.

We were close to the timberline, and the trees were scarcer here, hard-pressed to thrive in the rocky soil. Birch dismounted, motioning for me to do the same. Then he tied both horses’ reins to a gnarled branch and stepped off the trail toward the cliff.

I followed him the thirty feet to the cliff’s edge. Above and to our left was the craggy face of Mount Majestic. From a distance, it had always looked serene and peaceful—but from this close, it looked much darker, rough and threatening. It had an almost vertical face that plummeted for a mile or more, straight down from the summit into the gorge below us.

“Take a good look. Down there.” Birch pointed past his boots, hundreds of feet down to the bottom of the gorge.

There was a tree next to me, so close to the edge I could see a cluster of stray roots sticking out into the air from the side of the cliff. I put my hand on a branch to steady myself and peered out over the side.

The bottom of the gorge was nothing but rock, a few giant boulders on a bed of shale. At the dead end where it terminated, there was a dark hole—tiny from this distance, but maybe five feet high and equally wide. Near the mouth of the hole were a wagon drawn by mules and three men—two soldiers with rifles and a man in work clothes. They were watching the entrance of the hole.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Exploring party. Looking for silver,” Birch said. “Keep watching.”

I did as I was told. In a moment, a Native came out of the hole—wearing only a ragged cloth over his midsection and carrying a bucket of earth. He dumped the bucket into a trough and disappeared again inside the hole. The man in work clothes stooped to examine the contents of the trough.

As I watched him, from the corner of my eye I saw Birch step backward. He moved casually enough, but in the last half second before he disappeared from my field of vision, he started to shift his weight lower, bending his knees slightly.

I knew that motion. It was the beginning of the crouch Adonis used to go into before he attacked.

Without thinking, I dropped to my knees, grabbing at the tree trunk for support as the full weight of Birch’s body hit me from behind. I didn’t have time to get my arms solidly around the tree, but going to my knees left me low enough that he couldn’t push me clean out into the air, which would have meant certain death.

He had to hit me two more times to knock me over the edge, and by the time I went over, I’d managed to claw my fingers into the tree roots sticking out of the cliff. I almost lost my grip when the weight of my body swung down under me, but the momentum of his last blow had almost taken Birch over the side himself, and I had a moment to firm up my hold while he recovered his balance.

I kicked my legs in front of me, searching for a toehold, but found only air—we seemed to be on a thin overhang that jutted out some distance from the body of the cliff.

As the toes of Birch’s boots appeared in front of my eyes, I flailed my legs desperately, bringing my knees up until I hit something—not wide and flat like the lip of the cliff, but tangled and uneven.

It was the tree’s roots. From what I could feel with my legs, there was a thick mass of them under there—the lip of the cliff must have been so skinny that they grew out from the soil into thin air. As I started to probe them with my feet, looking for support, I saw Birch’s foot draw back to kick me in the face.

“NO, MR. BIRCH, PLEASE!” I didn’t expect mercy. I just needed an extra second. And begging had always bought me time with Adonis, because he loved hearing it so much. It might work with Birch, too, if he liked his cruelty the way my brother did.

Birch’s foot stopped moving, the toes settling back onto the ground. I couldn’t see his face, but I was sure he was smiling. He was the type who liked it.

I lowered my voice to a whimper. “Please, sir, please… oh, please, don’t…”

My left leg was in the guts of the root system now, pushing
through clods of dirt as it worked its way into the stiff, thick roots. Almost up to the knee.

“Sorry, son. Boss’s orders.”

Birch’s foot rose again, first drawing back, then moving in a swift arc toward my head. I let go, pushing off with both hands, and blue sky swooped into view, then a blur of forest and rock, and then the horizon was upside down and I felt blood rushing into my head.

I was hanging from the underside of the cliff by one leg, tangled in a knot of roots. Somewhere above me, Birch was cursing.

I managed to pull myself up far enough to grab a fistful of roots with my left hand. I was bringing my right arm up when I felt something brush against it. I should have drawn it back, into my body, but at first I was confused, thinking I’d hit part of the root.

It was Birch’s hand. He got me by the wrist and began to pull me away from the tree roots.

For a long, panicky second, I fought a losing battle to keep my grip. I could feel my leg beginning to slip back through the tangle of roots when everything—me, Birch, the tree roots, the cliff—suddenly lurched downward.

Birch let go, his arm disappearing, and I felt him fall backward, away from the edge, cursing again as we both realized what was happening. The cliff was threatening to give way under our weight.

It was quiet for a moment. As I carefully readjusted my hold, digging in tightly with my arms and working my second leg into the roots, I felt the shudder of Birch’s feet, walking back from the cliff toward the horses.

I was searching the underside of the cliff for some way to
escape that wasn’t directly overhead when I felt him return. There were a few little tremors as he adjusted his position.

His hand reappeared with a knife. He slashed at me, blind but vicious, drawing a thin cut across one forearm and missing my head by an inch as I flattened myself against the roots.

He withdrew his hand. As I watched the blood run in little crooked lines down my arm to drip from my elbow into the empty sky, I felt him readjust, moving carefully so as not to bring the whole cliff down with him.

He’d be farther out now—close enough this time for the knife to do its job. I knew if I didn’t do something fast, I was going to die.

I shifted my weight as far to one side as I could, tensing my body backward into a crouch. The knife reappeared, slashing out, missing me by a hair with the first strike. As Birch drew it back, I let go of the roots and grabbed his forearm with both hands, yanking it straight down as hard as I could. I hung on until I felt his body tumble past me, threatening to take me with him.