Missing

Uru walked to the shore to meet Amaal. It was their habit to take a boat together out to the Phoenix to spend the night in the safety of the ship. She waited for a while and decided that maybe Amaal had gone ahead, or maybe she was still talking with the Scribe she’d seen her with earlier in the evening. Uru took the next boat and boarded the Phoenix. An hour later, after she had run out of excuses for why Amaal still hadn’t appeared, she went to Kalev and with simple signs—a flute, a shrug—communicated to him that Amaal was missing. Kalev told her not to worry, give it time, but when another half hour went by and still there was no sign of her, he agreed to ferry Uru to shore.

            She tracked down Hannu, and together they found Ta’am and told him Amaal was missing. The scribe reasoned that he might have been the last to see her and joined them in a search through town. The island was small, so it didn’t take long to ascertain that no one had seen the girl with the silver flute. They proceeded to the house where the royals were staying. The Lieutenant answered the door.

            “It’s late,” he grumbled.

            “It’s Amaal,” Hannu insisted. “She’s missing. We’ve looked everywhere for her, and…”

            The Lieutenant replied with a dubious look. “And…?”

            “We need help finding her, obviously.”

            “Come back in the morning,” he said, closing the door.

            “Idiot,” Hannu muttered. He pulled a torch from its sconce at the front of the house and said, “Come on, let’s go back to the place where you last saw her.”

            Ta’am led them to the spot where he and Amaal had watched the sunset. Uru asked, “When you left her, which way did she go?”

            “That way, toward the shore boats.”

            They walked along, searching for clues. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until Uru called out that she had found something odd clinging to a bush: a loose bundle of herbs hanging from a piece of red twine.

            “I recognize those! I gave them to her!” Ta’am said.

            Hannu pushed through the shrubs and discovered the goat path on the other side. His eye followed the path to the water’s edge and, beyond that, to Tondo’s ship anchored in the distance at the far side of the lagoon.

            “Ba’al help us,” he said.

            “What is it?” Ta’am said.

            “Tondo’s pirates…they’ve taken her.”

            A look of horror came across Uru’s face. She gestured frantically.

            “Exactly,” Hannu said.

            “What?” Ta’am asked.

            “They think she’s the Queen.”

← Chapter 35 | Chapter 37 →