Free The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles) by Brian Eames Page B

the mother, weeping over her child. It made her think of her own mother who must be somewhere very far away feeling sad for Ontoquas. She knew she would never see her mother again. The white soldiers had made sure of that. They burned the village, stole the horses, and sold them all off to different slave traders, splitting mothers and grandmothers from their children, sisters from brothers—unless the brothers were old enough; those were taken away and never heard from again.
    “Yes, wear it.” Kitto said. “It is yours.” Ontoquas handed the necklace to Kitto and bowed her head low. It took him a moment to realize that she meant for him to put it around her neck. He did so, feeling all thumbs.She raised her head and placed her palm at her chest over the cross.
    “Remember,” Kitto said. “ ’Tis a secret. Keep it hidden.”
    “The barrels, too? They are secret?”
    “No. That we can tell them about. We should tell them now.”

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CHAPTER 8:
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Pirates
THREE WEEKS ON THE ISLAND
    “Y our mother can barely keep from crying when she looks out to sea,” Van said. He and Kitto leaned back against the trunk of a palm tree, taking a break from the hot sun. Kitto whittled at a stick with his dagger, appreciating how easily the patterned Damascus steel stripped the bark away. The last hour he and Van had devoted to shooting practice on the beach, as they had done every day since Kitto had been able to limp to the beach with his new crutch.
    “I know it,” Kitto said. “She worries for Duck.” They were quiet a moment, each considering the chances that the squirrely six-year-old would have been able to keep himself hidden on a ship overtaken by killers. Neither spoke his thoughts. Kitto flicked a few nicks of wood from the stick onto the matted leaves beneath them.
    Van shrugged. “She is a strong one, that mother of yours. We’ll break before she does.” Van had never meta woman like Sarah, never knew that a person could be both gentle and loving and yet strong as steel.
    A cooling breeze stirred the leaves of the little glade. Kitto stabbed at one and speared it with the dagger. He lifted the leaf up to inspect it absently.
    “I wish my father would have told me,” Kitto said.
    “Told you what?”
    “About my past. His past. My uncle. My mother. Any of it if not all.”
    “He never did?” Van said. Kitto shook his head.
    “Hardly. I knew I lived in Jamaica when I was very young. And I knew my mother died, though not the real reason why. He let me go on not even knowing my real name.”
    “Maybe he was just trying to protect you.” Van tossed a stick out onto the sand.
    “I am sure that’s what he told himself,” Kitto said. “But look at what my life was.” Kitto pointed the dagger tip toward the wrapped stump of his leg, tracing the point in the air as if outlining the clubfoot that was no longer there. “A cripple, an eyesore everywhere I went. A shame. Would have been something to know I had a mum who loved me but was murdered, or that I had somehow been involved in ripping off the great Henry Morgan.” His lips curled into an ironic smile. He tore the leaf from the dagger’s blade and flipped it aside. “And I wonder who this Henry Morgan is?” He shook his head in wonder. “Everyone seems so afraid of him. My uncle told me he almost drowned me when I was very young.”
    Van’s eyes darted to Kitto for a moment, then looked away. Kitto did not notice. There was something Van had overheard about Henry Morgan—and about Kitto—back in Falmouth, from William Quick’s lips. But he must have heard it wrong. It could not be possible.
    “He’s a very powerful man,” Van said.
    “Powerful . . . and evil,” Kitto said. “And before all is said and done I believe I will come face to face with him.”
    Again Van fought the urge to tell him what he had heard. Should I? he thought. No. Of course not. He decided to change the subject.
    “Too bad your mum never taught you how to