“Neel’s distracted,” Andras loudly explained. “He keeps thinking about—”
“Nothing!” Neel fastened the rope into place. “Andras, will you switch jobs with me?”
There was a pause.
“Please?” Neel begged.
Andras began climbing up the Jacob’s ladder. When he reached the platform, he took over Neel’s rope with a chuckle.
Neel said sourly, “For someone so old, your sense of needling others is right spry.”
He flew down the ladder before Andras could laugh at him again.
• • •
“OH.” The blond boy’s face hardened. “You.”
Neel noted with satisfaction that the Bohemian was already burned by the sun. “That’s right, Pinky. Looking red as a bloody dawn, you are. But a whole lot less prettier.”
“I’m not talking to you. Get me somebody else.”
“Is our prisoner making demands? You’ll talk to who you can get, and be glad for it.”
There was a pause. “I want to ask some questions.”
“Get on with it, then.”
“Yesterday, you said this ship is sailing for Morocco.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Where you’re going to sell me.”
“Yep.”
“If I’m a prisoner, why did somebody let me out of my cage?”
“You mean the brig? That was Andras’s idea. He talked Treb into it. Said you’d do no harm on deck during the day with the crew to keep an eye on you. Plus, we don’t want you looking all pasty and sickly-like for the auction,” Neel continued, ignoring the boy’s staggered look. “That’d bring down your price. But we’ll lock you up nice and tight each nightfall.”
The Bohemian closed his eyes. “When will we reach Sallay?”
“A few days. Depending on the wind.”
The boy’s jewel-blue eyes flew open. “How is that possible? Yesterday I was in Bohemia. No boat can sail from Bohemia to Morocco in a matter of days. Of course, no boat could ever sail anywhere from Bohemia because we have no seas!”
“Well, that’s what you get when you walk through a Loophole.”
“Loophole?”
Neel studied him. “You really don’t know how you ended up on that beach, do you?”
“A friend of mine’s missing, in trouble.”
“Looks like your pal ain’t the only one.”
“I tried searching the forest, but all I found was four headless monsters.”
“Monsters? Are you telling tales?”
“Why would I lie? I mean, aside from the fact that you’re a kidnapper who has ruined my life and definitely doesn’t deserve the truth.”
“Huh. Monsters.”
“Gray, scaly, and clawed.”
Neel filed that information away to tell Treb. Slowly, he replied, “Look, I don’t know anything about your beasties. But a Loophole’s like . . . a shortcut. A way of hopping from one place to another. One minute you’re in a Bohemian forest, the next you’re off the northern coast of Portugal, not far away from North Africa, on a speedy ship like the Pacolet. There are Loopholes all over the world, but they’re hard to find. Going through one’s like threading a needle blind. You can’t miss it by even a hair. My people happened upon your Loophole by accident, ages ago. We’re a roaming sort, so we’ve discovered a couple of other shortcuts like this. It’s rare for a fellow to just stumble through a Loophole, like you did. Guess you got lucky.” Neel smirked.
A small, black-haired girl ran up the deck and dashed between them. Laughing, she raced along the bow and turned around to sprint to the other end of the ship. She pattered away.
Neel felt suddenly somber. “Are we done playing ask-and-answer? I’ve got work.”
“One more thing . . . ” The gadje gazed after the girl. “Why are there children on this boat? Babies, even? That girl’s no more than three years old. I’ve seen old people on this ship, families . . . they can’t be sailors. Don’t they get in your way?”
“They do. But that ain’t the point.”
“So Sea-Gypsies always travel with their families?”
“Most of them aren’t our relations. Look, Pinky”—Neel’s voice sharpened—“there’s plenty in this world you don’t know a bit about. Your precious, white, mighty prince—”
The gadje raised his hand. “I hate his guts.”
“Oh. Good. Because that sunken wreck of a human took it into his head to lock all us Roma up and swallow the key. Happened real sudden. Not a lot we could do about it, but we did what we could. The Maraki—the Roma tribe you so sweetly call ‘Sea-Gypsies’—sent word for the free Roma in Bohemia to slip through the Loophole to the beach and gather there. The families on board had to leave behind their wagons and horses and I don’t know what all.” His throat tightened. He cleared it. “Treb and I had just loaded the last of ’em onto the Pacolet and rowed back to the beach in the launch to clean up. Wanted to hide any trace of campsites. No need for the Portuguese to notice something special about that stretch of sand. That beach is our secret. We were ready to leave when you turned up, and if you’d stepped through that Loophole fifteen minutes later, you and I never would have laid eyes on each other.”
There was a pause. “Like you said,” murmured the gadje, “I guess I was just lucky.”
7
Madinia and Margaret
PLIP. PLIP. PLIP.
Petra opened her eyes, which were gummy from long sleep.
She felt something squirming on her neck. At first she thought it was Astrophil, but the sensation felt nothing like the cold prickle of his legs. It felt . . . fleshy.
Petra’s brain seemed to be trying to tell her that the plip-plip sound had something to do with whatever was crawling on her neck—and, she realized, on her arm. She glanced down and gasped.
Fat black leeches teemed over her left arm. As she stared, one of them wriggled and dropped off, falling into a bowl placed next to the bed. Plip.
Petra reached to crush the insects, but someone caught her hand. A short, gray-haired man shook his head at her. Then he pointed to the leeches and smiled.
“What are you doing to me?” Petra shouted. “Get them off!”