Read Online Firespark by Julie Bertagna - Free Book Online

“Something’s happening.”
    Tuck gives a small, hard laugh. “It already
happened
.”
    Pendicle’s eyes are on his home-boat, one of the Prenders’ fleet of masted megayachts, anchored alongsidethe family’s market gondolas on the lagoon. A group of people, their windwraps bearing the Prender emblem, are gathered on its deck. Men and women flock to Pendicle’s home-boat from grand yachts and schooners all around the lagoon. Their windwraps are emblazoned with the various emblems of Pomperoy’s oil families. Tuck realizes the reason for Pendicle’s self-important tone. It’s not an everyday family meeting, but an extraordinary summit of the powerful families that rule Pomperoy.
    Pendicle shoves something into a pocket of Tuck’s windwrap. Tuck hears the rattle of pearls.
    â€œEnough to get you bed and board somewhere, get you sorted,” says Pendicle. “I’d better go.”
    Once upon a time, Pendicle would have taken him back to his boat for a hot meal and a bunk. But he’s changing, Tuck senses, from his old mate Pendicle into a fully fledged Prender, becoming part of the powerful engine of the oil families, no longer the carefree wildhead he used to be. Even if Pendicle would harbor Tuck, his ma won’t. She’s the kind of woman you cross once if you dare; never twice. That’s how the Prenders got to be who they are. She’ll be heart-sorry about what’s happened to his ma, she’ll even put Tuck in her prayers to The Man, but she’ll never have him near her precious boat again.
    Tuck watches Pendicle walk around the lagoon to his yacht, tall and proud, with his beautiful windwrap flapping in the wind. It’s the walk of a Prender man. Tuck looks down at his own faded blue windwrap, a worn cast-off of his da’s. His hair whips across his face, as light and unkempt as Pendicle’s is sleekly plaited and dark.
    Their differences never mattered when Da was alive.
    It’s only once Pendicle has gone that Tuck remembers the tattered object he has been carrying about in a pocketof his windwrap—something he stole from a shelf in Pendicle’s yacht a while ago. He’s been meaning to give it back as a peace offering. It’s no use to him anyway. He took the thing all around the market with the rest of his loot, but all it earned him was shrugs. At last he came across an old scavenger in a leaky gondola that looked close to sinking under the weight of its sea spoils. The scavenger was so weathered he seemed to be made out of one of his rescued leather boots. He squinted sunken eyes at the stained and tatty object Tuck handed him and gave it back, saying his eyes were no good for books now. He didn’t know anyone else who had any use for a such a thing; he was one of the last who still knew how to read words.
    So Tuck’s still got the book. He should run after Pendicle and give it back. But Pendicle’s already gone, his dark head and windwrap merged with the other Prenders on the boat.
    Pendicle’s left him with a pocketful of pearls, the hard tears of the ocean, and it’s Tuck’s own fault.

CITY OF A THOUSAND SAILS

    Already the city is knitting back together. The great tear made by the
Arkiel
is disappearing fast. Tuck stands on a bridge and stares at the spot where his home used to be.
    The air rings and clatters with the noise of boat chains and hammers. Wood and metal strain, mixed with human groans, as the boats and bridges are heaved into a new pattern and chained together again.
    By sundown the city is mended. It’s as if all the sunken boats and bridgeways were never there.
    Tuck can’t bear it. They should have left the hole in the city. There should be some mark, some scar of what’s happened. Urth knows how many people are drowned, Ma among them, yet already Pomperoy seems to want to heal the awful scar and get on with the usual business of life. Ma will hardly have