Annalie thought back to what she’d seen on the boat. The pirates who’d attacked them had seemed determined and disciplined, definitely not amateurs. She guessed that they’d done this many times before. She just wished she knew a bit more about how situations like this ended up.
‘What happens to people who get kidnapped by pirates, usually?’ she asked.
‘Well, that depends,’ Cherry said. ‘If you’ve got family or friends back home who can pay the ransom, I think they usually let you go.’
‘And what if you don’t?’ Annalie asked.
Cherry screwed his face up.
Annalie’s heart sank.
The pirates left them alone for some time. Eventually, food came: a small bowl of rice each with a few vegetables on top, no cutlery to eat it with, and a mug of sour-tasting tea.
‘I’ve had worse,’ Cherry confided, eating heartily. He had the look of a young man with a big appetite. His food was gone very quickly.
The sun shining through the gap in the window passed over and the room grew gloomier.
They heard more footsteps outside the door. The man who’d brought the food took the bowls away, and then Red Bandana looked in, pointed at Annalie, and with a jerk of his head indicated that she should follow him.
She looked at Cherry fearfully. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ he said reassuringly.
Red Bandana escorted Annalie down a winding corridor and into a lounge room furnished with low squashy sofas and many colourful rugs and cushions. Five lavishly-moustached Brundisan men of various ages were lounging on the sofas and talking amongst themselves; they all turned to look at her curiously when she walked in. Red Bandana left her standing in the middle of the floor and sat down between an older man and a boy.
He spoke, and the boy translated. ‘Where are you from, and what is your name?’
She could have lied to the pirates, but if they were making ransom demands, how would it help if she pretended to be someone else?
‘Annalie Wallace,’ she said. ‘I’m from Dux.’
Red Bandana and the older man spoke to one another, and the boy translated. ‘Do you have a family who want you back?’
‘Yes,’ Annalie said.
‘If they want you back, they must pay,’ the boy said.
‘My family isn’t rich,’ Annalie explained.
The men laughed when the boy translated this.
‘Everyone in Dux is rich. People in Brundisi are poor,’ the boy said.
‘I don’t have a rich family,’ Annalie said.
‘You have a boat,’ the boy said.
Annalie wondered if that meant the pirates hadn’t taken the Sunfish after all. Could the others have got away? ‘I had a boat,’ she said. ‘I don’t know who’s got it now.’
‘You have a boat, you have money,’ the boy said. ‘You can pay a ransom.’
Annalie realised the boy’s previous remark didn’t reveal anything about the current status of the Sunfish. All it showed was the assumption they’d made about her, based on the fact that she’d been taken from a privately owned boat. ‘Okay, sure,’ she said. ‘If you’ll just give me a shell I can—’
‘You don’t call,’ said the boy. ‘We call. You give us names now.’
Of course they were not going to let her make the call herself.
‘I don’t have a lot of names to give you,’ she said. She turned to Red Bandana. ‘Your people had my friends. I don’t know what happened to them after you took me off the boat.’
Red Bandana looked affronted at being addressed directly. He looked at the boy for a translation then snapped something. The boy said, ‘You don’t worry about them. You just give us names.’
‘Okay,’ Annalie said. There were only two names she could give them. She gave them Essie’s call ID first, then Spinner’s, even though she knew there was little chance of them getting through to him. She just had to hope that Essie wasn’t locked up in another room like this one—or worse.
‘What happens if you can’t get hold of them?’ she asked. ‘Or they can’t pay?’
‘You don’t leave here until someone pays,’ the boy said. ‘In the end, someone always pays.’
Doria
Will, Pod and Essie sailed with all speed for Gantua. They had good winds all the way, and saw no further signs of pirates.
Will’s first thought had been to go ashore in the busy port city of Haal, but as they approached, he spotted an Admiralty ship even larger than the one they’d seen in Dio coming in to port. He got the binoculars out and discovered that Haal was home to an Admiralty base, similar in size to the one back in his hometown of Port Fine, and it had a second Admiralty ship already at anchor. Haal was clearly not an option.
They checked the charts, looking for somewhere else to go.
‘Ooh—Doria!’ said Essie.
‘We’re not going there,’ Will said sternly.
‘Too dangerous?’ asked Pod.
‘No, it’s supposed to be beautiful,’ Essie said wistfully. ‘Me and my parents were talking about going there for a holiday next summer. Of course,’ she added wryly, ‘that was before my dad got arrested and my mum left him for a shipping magnate. I don’t suppose we’ll be going now.’
Doria was once a fabled holiday destination on the far east coast of Gantua, with clear blue waters, white sandy beaches, amazing snorkel-ling, dolphins, whales, sea turtles and fish, and a deepwater harbour that made it perfect for cruise ships. The town had hotels and resorts, clubs and restaurants, markets and palaces and temples and shopping. The Flood had washed much of it away, but Gantua was so dependent on the money that came in from Doria’s tourist trade that it was rebuilt almost as splendidly as before. And while the dolphins and sea turtles were never seen these days, the beaches had been meticulously replaced with brand new sand brought in from elsewhere, new hotels and restaurants had gone up, and Doria was almost as lively a tourist destination as it had ever been.
Spinner had always disapproved of places
