“You’re going to find the Lost Treasure of Anksari Prime before you die?” Zirkander asked.
“Seven gods, I hope so.”
“I’m happy for you, Dad. Did you want to meet my team and hear why we’re here?”
“Mom didn’t send you?”
“I don’t think Mom even knows I’m out of the country.”
“Oh. Huh.” Zirkander’s father scratched his jaw with his pen, apparently not realizing he was using the nib, because he left a black streak on his cheek. He pushed his spectacles up into his hair—the snarled tangles had no trouble supporting the frames—and considered Cas and the others.
Zirkander spread his arm toward the cave entrance. “That’s Lieutenant Duck there, the big-eared fellow ogling the women.” Duck flushed and jerked his wandering gaze away. “That’s Lieutenant Cas Ahn, best marksman on Wolf Squadron. Tolemek, a Cofah scientist who’s come over to our side.”
Tolemek tensed, watching Zirkander’s father warily, but the man’s expression didn’t change as his son ran through the introductions. If he spent his life in places like this, he might not have even heard of Tolemek; of course, Zirkander hadn’t introduced him by his infamous Deathmaker moniker, either.
Zirkander shifted his arm so that his hand extended toward Sardelle. “And this is… ah…”
Sardelle lifted her eyebrows.
“Your soul snozzle?” Tolemek suggested, his eyes glinting.
Cas hadn’t heard the term, but she got the gist and had a feeling Tolemek’s humor was piqued at the chance of embarrassing Zirkander.
“Sardelle,” Zirkander finally said, leaving off any further explanation as to what she did or what she meant to him. “Team, this is my father, Moe Zirkander.”
“You can call me Rock Cheetah.” Moe smiled, almost hopefully. “Or Rock. Or Cheetah.”
“But you don’t have to,” Zirkander said. “My father has always lamented having what he calls an ordinary name. Thus perhaps explaining his need to give me an unordinary one.”
“The women have always called me Rock Cheetah,” Moe said. “Because of my blazing mountain climbing speed. It’s less blazing than it used to be, I’ll admit, but I can still ascend a peak faster than the boy can take off in his flying contraption.”
“Mom doesn’t call you that,” Zirkander said.
“She did when we were younger.”
“She’s told me the story of how mortified her parents were when you first met and introduced yourself as Rock Cheetah.”
“Fine,” Moe said. “Other ladies, then.” He nodded toward the women in the grass skirts.
“I’ll wager twenty nucros that they call you Old White Man in their language.”
Moe put his journal away and started coiling his rope. “It’s Strange White Man, thank you.”
“Sir,” Tolemek said, stepping forward. “The reason we’re here is that Zirkander believed you’d be able to help us with… a quest.” He withdrew his roll of paper.
“A quest? I assumed this was some military mission.”
“We’re a mixed party of military and civilians,” Zirkander said. “With two missions that happen to coincide with each other. Tee has some flowers he needs identified. More specifically, we need to know where they can be found.”
While Tolemek unrolled his drawing for Moe, Zirkander joined Sardelle at the cave mouth. Her arms were folded over her chest. It was always hard to read her face, but Cas guessed she might have been peeved at not being introduced as Zirkander’s lady friend, love of his life, future wife… whatever it was they had decided they were to each other. It was none of Cas’s business, so she stepped back out into the sun to make sure nobody had approached while the team was inside.
“Sorry about that,” Zirkander murmured to Sardelle, his voice just loud enough that Cas could make out the words. “My father is more open-minded than most, not to mention oblivious to racial tensions much of the time, but I wasn’t sure I could reveal your occupation in the first two minutes he knew you.”
“It wasn’t my occupation I thought you might share with him,” Sardelle said dryly.
Zirkander paused. “Oh. Right. I mean, I thought that would be obvious from the way I gazed adoringly at you from across the cave.”
“Nice save, sir,” Duck said.
Sardelle’s snort wasn’t quite in agreement.
Two seagulls squawked and leaped from perches high in the rocks above the cave. Cas frowned in that direction. Anything might have startled them, but now that she was out in the open, she once again had that feeling of being watched.
“Everything all right, Ahn?” Zirkander asked.
“I have a bad feeling about this island and these people,” she said.
“Will it make you feel better to learn that you’re not the only one?”
“It’ll make me feel better to leave.”
“Let’s check on that, then.”
Zirkander didn’t have to go far. Tolemek and Moe had come closer to the entrance, to look at the drawing in the sunlight slanting inside. Cas twitched when she realized the women had disappeared. The rope had been pulled up, so they must have gone across the bridge or up one of the staircases. It bothered her that she hadn’t noticed—and that there was apparently more than one way in and out of that cave. She should be watching in both directions.
“Not a very good drawing, is it?” Moe asked, his spectacles on his nose again as he studied Tolemek’s handiwork.
Tolemek stepped up to his shoulder, frowning down at him. Moe was a couple of inches shorter than he and had a smaller frame than Zirkander too. “I was drawing it from the back seat of a flier while an Iskandian pilot with the nickname Raptor bobbed and weaved through the clouds like a drunken crow in a storm.”
Cas squinted at him. “It’s not my fault there’s so much turbulence in the air off the eastern coast of Cofahre. Duck and the colonel were having just as much trouble keeping a steady course.”
Moe looked up at Tolemek, who still cut a grim figure, even if he had lost the spiked bracers and other pirate regalia he had favored when Cas first met him. He might have a handsome face, but his bare, muscular arms, battle scars, and the ropes of black hair falling about his shoulders made him look more like a warrior—or a particularly menacing hoodlum—than a scientist. “Ah, my apologies. I thought you might have purchased it in some bazaar.”
“No,” Tolemek said coolly. He pointed at the flowers. “That one is purple, that one is blue, and that one’s red.”
“Yes, I guessed that was the case. That’s a marsoothimum.”
Sardelle nodded—she had already identified that one for him.
“That one is a… oh, I don’t know the proper scientific term for it, but the natives call them blood bellies, because they’re carnivorous and eat flies and other insects. The blue one is a keshialys? I think that’s the word. They’re all over the mountain meadows above the tree line on Tsongirs Island.”
“Tsongirs Island?” Tolemek asked softly, his gaze flicking toward Cas. His face was still, but his dark eyes brimmed with tamped down emotion. “Is that where all of these flowers can be found?”
“No, the marsoothimums are farther south. And the blood bellies, where did I see those?” Moe dug out his journal again and flipped through the pages.
Cas kept her focus toward the rocks and the approach to the cave, but she glanced toward his journal and saw surprisingly good drawings, everything from maps to seeds, cones, and flowers to reproductions of hieroglyphics and rock carvings. Small but tidy script accompanied most of the images.
“Ah, here’s my sketch of the area.” Moe tilted the book toward the sunlight, revealing a map of equatorial islands not far south of Cofahre. He produced a stubby charcoal stick. “Saw the blood bellies there, the keshialys there, and the marsoothimums are all through here,” he said, touching different islands as he spoke. He drew lightly on the page, shading in areas. “Possible intersection points… Rat Island and the Bolos Keys, but none
of those volcanoes has the altitude necessary for the alpine keshialys. I should know. I would have climbed them if they did.”
“Volcanoes,” Zirkander said. “I was hoping we’d seen enough of those for a while.”
“Most of these archipelagos were formed by volcanic activity, but most of those volcanoes are also long extinct.” Moe tapped a large island in the shaded area. “I think Mount Demise is the only likely spot, here on Owanu Owanus.”
“Mount Demise?” Duck asked. “That sounds about as promising as being chased naked through the woods in winter by a starving mountain lion.”
Several sets of eyes turned toward him.
“Has that happened to you?” Zirkander asked mildly.
“Not… recently.”
“That’s the Iskandian name for the place,” Moe said, “but it’s based on the legends from the local people. There’s a relatively sophisticated native civilization that hugs the coast and has a city in the biggest harbor, but if you get even a half mile away from the beach, the jungle is extremely dense and wild and filled with deadly predators. Just getting to the mountain—which is an extinct volcano—is next to impossible by land. I believe it wasn’t until dirigibles came along that the island was fully charted and the mountain named, though even those maps are vague. There are a few waterways visible from the air, and the dense jungle canopy makes it impossible to see the ground in most places. It’s believed there are whole tribes of people back in there who have never had contact with modern civilization. Some are said to be cannibalistic. I haven’t heard of any significant archaeological finds back there.” He sniffed, as if to dismiss the entire island as unworthy of his attention.
Tolemek had a different reaction as he stared intently at the map, repeatedly mouthing, “Owanu Owanus,” as if to burn it into his mind.
“Does that mean you’re not going to volunteer to come with us, Dad?” Zirkander asked.
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly. I still have work to do here.”
“Hanging upside down and showing off your backside for the local ladies?”
Moe glanced at his butt, then waved a hand in dismissal. “Don’t be ridiculous. I know the locals aren’t excited about my presence, but I am this close to finding the coordinates to the Lost Treasure of Anksari Prime.” He pinched his fingers together in front of his son’s face. “Besides, it’s another month before the Evening Sun freighter returns to the other side of the island to pick me up, and I’m not getting in one of those airborne deathtraps with you. That’s a certainty.”
“You’ve climbed twenty-thousand-foot mountains. How can you possibly be alarmed by the idea of flying?” Judging by Zirkander’s long-suffering tone, he and his father had shared this argument before.
“Because I was attached to those mountains by ropes.” Moe twirled the end of the coil slung over his shoulder. “There’s nothing attaching your fliers to solid earth. I’m amazed you haven’t dropped right out of the sky and crashed yet.”
“That usually only happens when someone’s shooting at me.”
“You’re going to die up there one day, and your mother’s going to be all alone.”
“I don’t think it’s my company she’s always missing,” Zirkander murmured.
Tolemek cleared his throat. His face remained neutral, but Cas knew him well enough to sense the impatience in the tense way he held his shoulders. “This city on Owanu Owanus… Is there a harbor? A dock? Do ships come and go?”
Zirkander nodded at Tolemek. “Good question. Ships that travel to Cofahre perhaps? Or that are part of a mail system that might eventually get cargo to Cofahre?”
“Yes, to both,” Moe said. “It’s technically under Cofah dominion, but Owanu Owanus doesn’t have any natural resources that have been discovered, so the empire hasn’t shown any great interest in it. Right now, the only population center of any significance is run by criminals and caters to pirates.”
“Pirates?” Zirkander looked at Tolemek.
Tolemek shrugged. “I’ve never been there. The Roaming Curse operated mostly in the Northern Hemisphere and was an air-only fleet, so we didn’t often dock in harbors that didn’t offer accommodations for dirigibles. But this sounds like a place where your crates of dragon blood might have originated.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“Are the criminals accommodating to non-pirate visitors?” Cas tapped the barrel of her rifle.
“If you bring enough money, I should think so,” Moe said.
“You know much more about this place than we do,” Zirkander said. “Is there no chance that you’ll pause your work here for a time and come with us? Duck has room in his flier, and we can return you to this very beach when we’re done.”
Before he finished speaking, Moe was shaking his head. He shook it particularly vehemently at the mention of a flier ride. “Here. The island isn’t far away, nautically speaking.” He held open his book for Zirkander’s perusal. “I’ll allow you to copy the map if you’re quick about it. I need to get back to work. As I said, my time here is limited.”
Zirkander’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t try again to convince his father to come with them. He scrutinized the map for a moment, then pushed it back without writing anything down. Cas had never known him to get lost and trusted that he had memorized it sufficiently to find it from the air.
Sardelle hadn’t left the cave mouth or motioned to any of them, but Zirkander looked over his shoulder, meeting her eyes for a long moment. It was almost as if they were communicating. Maybe they were. The sword could talk to people in their heads, couldn’t it? Cas shifted uneasily. She might have accepted that Sardelle was a sorceress, but she found the idea of her commander engaged in a telepathic conversation strange.
Zirkander cleared his throat. “We left our fliers unguarded, Dad. We may need to—”
A rock smashed to the ground a few feet away from him, breaking and sending stone shards flying.
“Take cover?” Tolemek asked.
Cas reacted to the attack instantly, raising her rifle and aiming for the top of the promontory. Nobody was standing up there, at least not in view. She searched for movement, the promise of a further attack. A coconut might have simply fallen from the tree branches up there, but rocks didn’t usually drop out of the sky unannounced.
The tree branches. One shivered, leaves moving against the blue sky. A monkey stood on the limb. It lifted a furry brown arm and shrieked. There wasn’t anything in its hands, but another rock lofted from atop the cliff. Cas thought about shooting it, to break it apart, but it was just as easy to avoid the head-sized projectile. Everyone skittered toward the wall for protection. The rock sounded like a cannonball when it landed.
“I can’t believe a monkey threw that,” Cas said. It must have weighed twenty pounds. That monkey didn’t look big enough to be more than thirty or forty himself.
“What?” Zirkander asked.
“I see monkeys up there, but that’s it. No people.”
Another rock sailed over the edge, this one lofted in such a way that it landed closer to the group.
“Does this happen often, Dad?” Zirkander asked.
“No.”
“Let’s get off these rocks then.”
Cas waved for the others to climb down first. If she found a target, she would shoot to cover their backs.
“Someone must be up there and out of sight,” Tolemek said as he jogged for the edge. “Monkeys don’t throw rocks at tourists.”
Sardelle and Zirkander paused at the top of the climb down, giving each other long looks.
“Owls don’t attack fliers, either,” Zirkander said, “but we’ve seen that when shamans were around.”
Sardelle said something, but the jungle erupted in noise, as if every animal in a five-mile radius had decided to shriek, roar, or caw at the top of its lungs.
“Go,” Zirkander barked, waving to all of them. He jerked his hand for Cas to come too.
She wanted to guard th
eir backs as they climbed down, but more rocks were sailing out of the jungle, some fist-sized and some head-sized. They were falling by the dozens now, and dodging them—or shooting them to break them apart—was less and less likely. Cas slung her rifle over her back on its harness and rushed after the others.
A small rock ricocheted off her shoulder, and she grunted at the sting. Getting hit by one of the big ones could bash her head in. Zirkander was right. Better to find cover before worrying about shooting attackers, especially if those were monkeys up there throwing rocks. It sounded ridiculous, but she couldn’t believe that a troop of villagers could have climbed up there without her noticing it.
She picked her way down the rock wall much more quickly than she had gone up. Rocks small and large rained down all around them. Duck cried out, then cursed.
In her haste to reach the bottom, Cas slipped, her foot flying off a ledge and her knee slamming into the boulder. She dangled there for a moment, her hand’s grip tenuous. An arm slid around her waist.
“You’re almost down,” Tolemek said in her ear.
He held her until she reestablished her grip, then climbed the rest of the way to the beach beside her.
“Thanks.” Cas ripped her rifle off her back again, glowering at the jungle. They had reached the sandy beach, but the attack hadn’t stopped. Rocks, coconuts, and sticks flew from the shadowy depths of the trees. She couldn’t see much except the occasional movement of a branch, but she fired twice into the canopy, anyway, hoping the loud noise might startle their attackers. All it did was incense the jungle—the cacophony of shrieks and screeches increased to an ear-splitting level.
Zirkander grabbed her arm and jerked his head toward the village. Cas couldn’t hear his shout of, “Let’s go,” but she read it on his lips just fine. Sardelle, Moe, and Duck were already pounding down the beach.
Cas didn’t argue. It wasn’t as if she could do anything by shooting into the jungle without a target. The crack of her rifle hadn’t done a thing to startle the creatures in there.