“Like a mess of bad lies? Lucky for you”—the man sighed, as if he had been handed one more worry on top of others—“I believe what you say.”
The boy patted Tomik’s sides, looking for a purse or weapon. Tomik cringed in distaste.
“He’s got a jewel, Treb!” The boy had plucked the Glowstone from Tomik’s pocket.
Treb glanced dismissively at the crystal. “I’m not sure, little cousin. Looks like glass to me.”
“It is.” Tomik strained away from the knife and tried to grab the Glowstone. The boy jerked it out of reach. “It’s just glass with some lead in it. Give it back.”
The boy began to juggle the crystal, watching it flash in the sunlight.
“Stop that!” shouted Tomik. “You’ll drop it! You’ll break it!”
The juggler snorted. “Not likely.”
“Give it back, you filthy little Gyp!”
The man slapped Tomik’s cheek with the flat of his knife. Treb said menacingly, “Let me make something as clear as that shiny rock of yours that you’re never going to see again. Since you seem to be somebody who’d like to keep all his ears and fingers and toes, I’ll clue you in: Gypsy and Gyp aren’t the friendliest words. We’re Roma, and that’s what you’d better call us. Now, why would I bother teaching you this small, but limb-preserving, lesson?”
“You tell me,” Tomik said through gritted teeth.
“I will indeed. Let’s take a stroll.”
Tomik was pushed in the direction of the small boat he had noticed too late.
“That’s ours.” Treb nodded at the launch when they reached it. “And now let me introduce you to someone very dear to my heart.” He pointed to the large, anchored ship with its layers of sails. “That’s the Pacolet, as swift a brigantine ship as you’ll ever see. You’ll take care to treat her with respect, for she’ll be your home.”
“My home?”
“Oh, only for a short while,” said Treb, but the reassurance in his voice was mocking. “Only until we reach Sallay, a Moroccan port town stuffed with lowlifes like us. Then we’ll sell you. We’ll get a fair price for a young slave such as yourself.”
“What?” Tomik shoved against the man, but was quickly seized by him and the boy. He bit, elbowed, and kicked. But as the Gypsies wrangled his arms to his sides, Tomik realized that Treb must be telling the truth about their plans. They were not hitting back. They were trying to subdue him without leaving any marks. They didn’t want to damage their new property.
The boy pulled a length of rope out of the launch and bound Tomik’s hands behind his back.
“You hypocrites!” Tomik spat. “You think I’m at fault for calling you what you are, when you’re going to sell me? I have a life in Bohemia, and a family, and friends! I have—”
“A loud mouth.” The man winced. “Pipe down, gadje, or I’ll gag you.”
“Truth be told,” said the boy, “the word gadje ain’t always polite, either. Depending on how you put it.” He said something to the man in their language and they snickered.
“I think it’s time we were off, little cousin, don’t you?”
The boy nodded.
Treb prodded Tomik’s shoulder with one finger. “Get in the boat.”
6
Ask-and-Answer
THE CAPTAIN of the Pacolet frowned as he watched one of his sailors teach the gadje how to tie knots. Treb was farsighted, so even at a distance he could see that the boy was quick to learn. This didn’t improve the man’s mood.
“Someone’s been fiddling with the Loophole,” Treb grumbled to his young cousin. He shoved tobacco in a pipe with his thumb, then clamped the stem between his teeth. “It makes me jumpy, thinking that somebody else knows about our window into Bohemia. Somebody’s widened the opening and, blast him, has turned that window into an open door.”
“Troublesome,” the wiry boy agreed. He leaned against the rope ladder running to the top of the main mast. “Not much we can do about it, though.”
Treb scratched a match into a tiny flame and lit his pipe, puffing. “Do you think he”—he flicked his gaze meaningfully at the Bohemian boy—“knows why our secret seacoast now stretches right up to the doorstep of that village?”
“Guess you’d have to ask him. He seemed pretty clueless, though—wandering around on the hot sand dressed for winter, squinting at the sky like a rabbit coming out of its hole. My money says he didn’t know what he was doing or where he was.”
“How unusual for a gadje,” Treb sneered. “But what if whoever widened that Loophole has his hands on the Celestial Globe? That seacoast’s hardly common knowledge.”
The boy shrugged. “Can’t be the world’s deepest, darkest secret either. Our people found it by accident. Sure as the sun rises, somebody’s got that globe. Don’t matter to me much, though, whether that somebody’s the fellow who ripped open the Loophole or the emperor in his satin shoes or your pet parakeet.”
“I don’t have a parakeet, coz.”
“Darn right you don’t. Stupid birds. But you get my point.”
Treb exhaled a cloud of smoke. “I certainly hope that the emperor doesn’t have his old, dried-up fingers on the Celestial Globe. That’d make our job a lot harder.”
“We’ll find out soon enough who’s got our toy. That’s why I’m here, ain’t it?”
“Right enough,” Treb said. He ruffled the boy’s hair and was rewarded with a grimace. “And I’m glad for it.”
Treb’s cousin stared up at the flag snapping in the wind and sighed.
“Something on your mind?” Treb asked. “Still upset we couldn’t pay a call on your friend? I don’t care how close she lives to the Loophole. Our mission’s a secret one. You knew that when you came aboard. Anyway, she’d probably run screaming from the sight of a fierce crew of salty Gypsies.”
“Not her.”
“So that is what’s got your rope twisted.”
“Not exactly.” The boy glanced at the starboard side of the ship, where Andras was smiling encouragingly as the gadje produced a perfect slipknot. “I’ll be straight with you, Treb. I don’t like the idea of selling that Bohemian at a slave market.”