THE FLASK was full of water. Sun managed to press himself against the bars so he could reach far enough for me to drink, since, with my hands tied, I couldn’t hold it myself. I was parched. Never in my life had tinny, lukewarm backwash tasted so sweet.
“What was that about? Why was it so important to him that the guns were lost?” I asked Sun after we’d emptied the flask. He shook his head, looking at the deck with thoughtful concentration.
I knew who and what Sun was, so Weasel’s little revelation about his escapee-prizefighter status hadn’t come as much of a surprise. There were more important things I wanted answers to. I spoke Sun’s name softly until he looked at me and I could hold his eyes with my own as I asked the next question.
“My crew, Sun. I saw them in the cave. How did they die?”
“All gone.” He looked away. “Dead.” A muscle twitched in his jaw as he waited for my reaction.
“Yes. How?” It seemed like too much of a breach for me to ask him directly. Pardon me, gent, by the way, do you murder defenseless men?
He turned around, and I found myself facing the livid bruises on his bloody back as he spoke. When he switched to Portuguese, the language he hated, I knew it was important to him that I understand what he had to say.
“The north shoal founders ships in a storm, sometimes.” He spoke slowly, his voice distant, but steady. “I go there to watch. It was too dark. I did not see your ship, but I heard the crack of wood and stone. When the sea calmed, I dove. I looked for what your ship had held.”
“You found the guns?”
“Já, and boxes, many boxes. Some were broken, and I could feel what was inside.”
“How did you move all those boxes from the bottom of the sea, Sun? No one could do that without a winch.” Not even my amazing Sun.
“They were in the forecastle, and scattered on the shoal and sandbar. It is very shallow there, for a man on foot with a raft, not so erfitt. I lifted them onto the raft and took them away in twos and threes.”
“But I would have seen you. I saw the forecastle on the sandbar.” Even so, what Sun was describing would have taken considerable strength and single-minded focus—both of which I knew he had.
“I moved them the day you walked around the island. Once you passed the northern shore, I knew you would make the circuit. Walking around a thing makes it smaller. Everyone who comes here does the same. So I took the chance to raft the boxes away then. It is not my custom to waste what washes ashore on my island.”
I shook my head. Clever, so clever. But if he was set on not being seen, and he knew I was the only one around to see him….
“And my crew?” I asked.
Sun was silent for so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer. “Washed up, on the shore.”
“Like me.”
“Benjamin.” He stopped speaking, gathering his strength. His hands curled into fists. “I dream every night. Every night Martio comes in my dream. He finds my island. He takes me back. He makes me….” Sun shuddered and stopped talking.
“Go on.” I worked hard to keep my voice level.
“I did not want him to find me, Benjamin.” His voice thickened. “I could not risk anyone telling him about this place.”
I felt the skin on the back of my neck prickle. “You’ve killed everyone who has come to your island?”
Sun nodded. “I could not bury your crew, or burn them. I am sorry. Someone would see the smoke and come.”
There wasn’t anything I could say to that, so I clenched my teeth. Sun had single-handedly created the superstition of Dread Island. “Go on.”
“Through the night, I found your men, one by one, as they came onto the beach.” His voice grew quieter as he spoke. “I made it quick. I dragged men away, one at a time. I did it all night, through the storm, so the rain would take the blood away.”
And I thought I was a walking miracle for surviving the storm and the shipwreck. What had been waiting for me on the shore was just as merciless.
“Some still walked the next day, so I hunted them.” He paused, and I could tell he was sparing me some gory details. At least now I knew what had been the source of the pool of blood that had so haunted me. I wondered who it had been. “You were the last one. You came ashore farther away from the others.”
“Why was that, do you think?” I said, to say something, anything. My voice was so faint even I could barely hear it.
He shrugged, then made a pained sound. I didn’t feel sorry for him. “You are young. Strong. You swim farther. I do not know.”
“So why isn’t my body lying in the cave?”
He took a few deep breaths. “I watched you explore, fetch parts of your ship from the sea.” He shook his head. “I tried, but I could not hunt you. I did not want to. A man like you was… kind to me once.” He looked down, studied the bottom of the cage. “I was alone for a long time. I liked watching you.”
“Why didn’t you come out?” I whispered.
“I did not know what to do. I wanted you to die, but I did not want to kill you myself. You were too smart. You ate leaves, grass. You stayed alive. You wandered. I watched.”
“Until I couldn’t walk anymore.” I finished for him.
“Já. Then I came to finish you quickly, as I should have in the beginning, but I took you to the fire cave instead.” He put his face in his hands.
It seemed like another man’s memories, remembering waking up in Sun’s cave that first morning. I couldn’t absorb what he told me. I couldn’t understand the twists of fate that had kept me alive this long, from shipwreck to murderer’s island to pirate ship’s hold. The King of Terrors was apparently trying to make up his mind when to claim my soul.
“I knew, even as I fed you, kept you, that you would bring Martio. Somehow, by allowing myself to keep you, he would come.” Sun turned around. He glanced at me, but I found I couldn’t look him in the eye. It wasn’t being spoken about like a stray dog that bothered me. Sun had murdered people—people I knew. People I’d shared grog with, and laughter and cards and sweat-blooming hard work. My crew.
“Now I have killed us both. He will kill us both.” His voice broke, and he covered his face with his hands again. I don’t know how long I waited in numb silence, staring. I barely registered when Sun sank to his knees and curled into an unresponsive ball on the bottom of the cage.
I’d thought him a young castaway-turned-savage. At worse, I’d thought him an ill-used slave. But these deaths weren’t because he was forced to fight for survival. He’d come in the night and killed helpless men, my friends, and dumped their bodies in an open communal grave. He was absolutely ruthless. He was a murderer.
He also happened to be the man I loved.