The Expeditioners and the Secret of King Triton's Lair Page 6

  What was this place? Obviously Dad had wanted us to come here. But why? I kept looking around, shining my vestlight on the walls, then turning to the papers on the table. Most of them were scrawled maps and nautical charts of various places around the world. I recognized Dad’s handwriting in a few places, but there weren’t any notes or any obvious messages from Dad to us. Of course there wouldn’t be. If someone else found his or her way in here, Dad had to make sure they couldn’t decipher the clue he’d left for us.

  I decided to check out the books. There was a whole series of them, with volume numbers stamped in gold on the spines, and each one was filled with maps from a different region of the world. The one I was holding had dozens of maps of various African countries: a map of Johannesburg, South Africa, the countries on the continent’s east coast. There was something strange about these maps, too, but it took me a minute to figure out what it was. The wedge-shaped land of Munopia wasn’t jutting out from the southwestern coast of the continent. Where the newly discovered island nation of Deruda should have been, there was just the blue of the Indian Ocean. They were Muller Machine maps, from before the discovery of Grygia. From before the New Lands.

  I stared at the numbers on the spines. Gianni Girafalco had gone on expeditions to the Caribbean. Where were the Caribbean maps? It took a couple of minutes, but I finally found the right volume at the far end of the shelves. It was bound in white cloth like all the others, with blocky printed letters spelling out Islands of the Caribbean on the title page.

  I carried the book over to the table and set it down.

  The maps were black-and-white renderings of each of the Caribbean islands. Remembering what I’d read in Mr. Mountmorris’s book, I flipped to the maps of the northeastern islands, Antigua and Barbuda and the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

  And suddenly I was looking at a map that wasn’t anything like the others.

  This is the next piece of the puzzle, I thought.

  Even before I checked the edge of the paper and saw where it had been glued into the book instead of bound with all of the other pages, I knew this was what Dad had wanted me to find.

  The map—or nautical chart—had been drawn on a torn and water-stained piece of thick, cream-colored paper. I recognized the handwriting and knew at once that it was Dad’s. It showed a stretch of faded turquoise-blue water, with the islands of Antigua and Barbuda and Guadalupe in the bottom left-hand corner and the newly discovered St. Beatrice and Ruby Islands interrupting the blue above. A compass rose on the right-hand side of the chart showed the cardinal directions, North, South, East, and West. The calligraphic writing proclaimed Northern Caribbean Islands. St. Beatrice Island, Ruby Island, Antigua and Barbuda, and Guadalupe.

  An intricate border framed the beautiful map, a many-colored design of mermaids and seashells, fish and sea turtles, and the ocean was decorated here and there with mermaids and sea horses, each of the sea horses’ bodies curved like a little question mark. In the middle of the stretch of blue, there was a picture of a merman holding a shell and a trident. It was labeled King Triton’s Lair.

  I stared at the map. With absolute certainty, I knew that he’d put it here for us to find. It didn’t make any sense otherwise. The rest of the maps were from the Muller Machines. This one included St. Beatrice, so it was post–New Modern Age. The map of Girafalco’s Trench wasn’t the map we were supposed to follow. It was a clue leading us to this one, and his hiding place was a stroke of brilliance. Even if someone managed to get inside the room, nobody would look for his map among all these dusty old irrelevant ones, or recognize it as a clue even if they did.

  King Triton’s Lair.

  I unhooked the small paper knife from my utility tool and carefully ran the blade down the margin, removing the map and sliding it out of the bound volume. I took one last look around the secret room, trying the buttons on the Muller Machine again. Nothing. I folded the map and tucked it into the collar pocket in my vest, next to the map of Girafalco’s Trench. My mind raced as I tried to put it all together. This secret room had been Dad’s hideout, and at some point in the last few years, he must have visited the Academy to hide the key and this map for us, the next clue in the treasure hunt he’d sent us on.

  I couldn’t hear anyone outside, but as I stepped out into the dark, checking to make sure the door locked when I shut it, I was seized by the fear that they were still out there, waiting for me. I hoped the Explorer with the Clockwork Hand had made it to safety.

  “Pucci?” I whispered, and the parrot came flapping down out of the darkness, alighting on my shoulder and clucking reassuringly in my ear before taking off again to keep watch as I walked back to campus and crawled into bed.

  Ten

  “So what’s King Triton’s Lair, anyway?” M.K. asked. “Who’s King Triton?”

  “In Greek mythology, King Triton was the messenger of the sea,” I told her, advancing on her with my wooden Grygian Longsword and looking over my shoulder to make sure no one was listening. “I think he was supposed to be the son of the God and Goddess of the Sea, Poseidon and Amphitrite. He had a big conch shell, and he blew it to summon the waves. Basically, it was the Greeks’ way of explaining storms at sea.”

  We were practicing our swordfighting skills for our Combat Traditions of Newly Discovered Lands class. I’d been telling the others about my night as we swung and ducked and watched the training fights. We still hadn’t seen any sign of Joyce, Kemal, or the other foreign students.

  The fighting rings were at the far end of the training grounds, in the shadow of Mt. Arnoz. It was one of those brilliantly sunny fall days, and after nearly an hour of the physically taxing practice, the ground was littered with Explorer’s jackets and sweaters. The ornately carved Grygian Longswords were heavy, and M.K. and I both stood panting and sweating. It wasn’t much of a match. We could barely lift them. We had heard about the Grygian tree dwellers’ ritual swordfights from Dad, and M.K. had been excited to try the legendary swords for herself. Now she looked disappointed as she leaned on the sword.

  “Okay, switch up,” Mr. Turnbull called out. M.K. and I stepped out of the fighting ring and joined Sukey and Zander over on the edge of the grounds. Two other students took our places.

  “I still can’t believe Dad had a secret hideout they never found,” Zander whispered to me, an edge of frustration in his voice. “And I can’t believe you didn’t wake me up.”

  “I almost got caught! If there had been two of us, I bet we’d be packing our trunks for home right now, or worse.”

  “Shhh,” Sukey warned me, gesturing to Turnbull and the other students.

  Zander’s blue eyes narrowed and I remembered how Dad’s eyes had always narrowed like that when he was angry. “You really think he wants us to go to this place, King Triton’s Lair?”

  “Zander, he knew I would try to figure out who Girafalco was. He knew I would keep looking until I found the book. He knew I would find the key and look for the map.” I felt so sure, but even as I said it I knew it sounded crazy. “There isn’t any message, but I think there may be some sort of code. Maybe with the drawings in the border, or the pictures of sea horses and mermaids. You know, like hieroglyphics. But I don’t know.” I was thinking out loud now. I’d spent all morning trying to think of a possible code. I’d thought about replacing all the mermaids with a’s and all the shells with b’s and so forth, but there just wasn’t enough to go on. I’d even held a lit match under the map in case Dad had used invisible ink to leave us a message.

  “I still don’t understand,” M.K. whispered, barely moving her mouth. “What is King Triton’s Lair?”

  Sukey, who was watching the sword fighting, leaned in to hear my answer.

  “I did some more reading this morning,” I told them. I was nervous about being overheard, but we were pretty far away from the rest of the class and Mr. Turnbull and everyone else were focused on the kids sparring in the rings. “St. Beatrice Island was discovered early in the New Mode
rn Age by the explorer Jefferson Robbins. Apparently, he decided to try to navigate a notoriously rough stretch of ocean northeast of Antigua to see what was there. For a long time, sailors had told each other to stay away from the area, and the old maps warned of sea serpents and enormous waves that could sink a ship.”

  I went on, summarizing what I’d read. Even before the advent of the Muller Machines and the discovery of St. Beatrice Island, ships crossing the Atlantic reported strange weather phenomena as they neared that part of the ocean. Many ships were lost, and legends and folktales on the islands told of spirits or mermaids or sea serpents drawing ships and their crews down below the waves.

  “People have always told stories about mermaids and sea serpents,” Sukey said when I’d finished. “But no one’s ever actually seen them.”

  “Pirates would wait nearby because so many ships got into trouble and they thought they could get the treasure they carried. But most of the pirates went down too,” I said.

  I picked up a stick and drew a little map in the dirt. I drew a circle around the small, crescent-shaped island north and a little bit east of Antigua that was like a little moon above the ridge of the Lesser Antilles. “That’s St. Beatrice Island,” I said. Southeast of St. Beatrice, I drew Ruby Island, another newly discovered island that, from what I could tell, was mostly used as a seal-hunting station.

  “Right here,” I went on, making a mark in the dirt next to Sukey’s foot, “is an area of the ocean known locally as King Triton’s Lair. Over the years, lots and lots of ships have sunk there. Including”—I lowered my voice—“Gianni Girafalco’s.” I rubbed out the map with the toe of my boot.

  “Mr. West,” Turnbull called, beckoning to Zander to enter one of the rings. “Your turn.” Zander ran over and picked up the Longsword as though it weighed nothing. He swung it back and forth in the air over his head a few times and then got into fighting stance. His knees slightly bent, his body leaned forward, the sword held high over his head. “And—Mr. Nackley, I think.”

  Lazlo Nackley ran forward from the other side of the field and picked up the other Longsword. He looked excited, swinging it around the way Zander had and then getting into fighting stance opposite him.

  “He’d better be careful,” Sukey whispered to me. “Lazlo isn’t very happy with you Wests right now.”

  “And. . . fight!” Mr. Turnbull shouted, bringing his arm down and stepping out of the ring. Now everyone’s attention was on Lazlo and Zander.

  Zander waited for his opponent to make the first move, stepping easily around Lazlo’s overhead swing and getting in one of his own that almost made Lazlo drop his sword. Lazlo seemed angry and came back with a powerful downward chop that made Zander hop back.

  Zander’s sword made a wide arc in the air over his head, and then he quickly stepped back and to the side to avoid Lazlo’s next attempt.

  “Wow,” Sukey whispered next to me. “He’s good. When did he get so good?”

  I looked up to see Agent DeRosa coming toward us, leading his German shepherd around the training grounds on a long black leash. DeRosa and the dog passed us, but then they both turned back to study us. The dog sniffed the air, and I had a terrifying thought: Could it remember my scent from the night before?

  They walked slowly past the crowd of spectators. DeRosa, seeing that everyone was intently watching the fencing match between Zander and Lazlo, stopped to watch.

  Lazlo had forced Zander into a corner of the ring, and he appeared to sense that winning was within his power. He suddenly seemed to gain new strength, slashing the heavy sword from side to side, clashing it against Zander’s with a dull clang that rang out against the mountain and echoed across campus. Mr. Turnbull was so excited he couldn’t keep still, dancing around and bobbing his head along with the action.

  The swords slammed against each other, Zander sidestepping along the perimeter and retreating farther and farther into the corners of the ring.

  “Come on, Zander,” Sukey said. “Come on.”

  “Get him,” M.K. whispered.

  And then Lazlo raised his sword and brought it down heavily. Zander raised his own sword to protect himself, and Lazlo caught Zander’s sword on the hilt, hard, and then Zander was falling, dropping his sword, kneeling down in defeat in the corner of the ring.

  Lazlo hoisted his sword in the air, and everyone burst into applause.

  “That, ladies and gentlemen—that is how it’s done,” Mr. Turnbull said. “Well done, you two. Very well done!”

  Zander got up, picked up his sword, shook Lazlo’s hand, and came over to stand with us and applaud as Lazlo accepted congratulations from students and Mr. Turnbull.

  He was breathing hard, a film of sweat on his brow, the armpits of his khaki field shirt stained dark. In the slanting light, I could see golden stubble along his jaw. When had he started shaving? How had I not noticed that my brother could grow a beard? We all applauded halfheartedly, but Zander made a big show of pointing to Lazlo and clapping his hands above his head.

  Sukey watched him for a moment. “You let him win, didn’t you?”

  Zander winked at her. “Maybe I did, but don’t tell Lazlo. I figure keeping him happy for a few days might give us a chance to do some sleuthing.” He grinned and reached up to rub a scratch along his jawline. “It’s tougher than it looks, losing on purpose. I can’t tell you how much I wanted to bring that sword down on his head.”

  “But you didn’t,” Sukey said, smiling. I felt a sudden surge of jealousy. She had never smiled at me like that.

  “But I didn’t.” He turned to me and smiled a smile that I knew to be an attempt to make peace. “Now let’s figure out what Dad wanted us to do.”

  Eleven

  We were halfway through The History of Exploration that afternoon when Kemal and Maria Montoya came in and sat down in the back. A few minutes later, Joyce followed them, her Kenyan Snake Falcon on her shoulder. Mr. Wooley nodded and Lazlo turned in his chair to give Kemal a nasty look. We had been studying Harrison Arnoz’s discovery of Grygia, and Mr. Wooley went over the conditions that existed at the time Arnoz stumbled upon the unexplored mountain valley.

  “It’s probably hard for you to imagine the world that the enterprising biologist and explorer Harrison Arnoz left behind when, after nearly a year of living in the mountains, he ventured into that remote valley on the cusp of the Indorustan Empire only a year after the failure of all of the computer networks. His mother was Czech, and he had taken advantage of the confusion in the aftermath of the failures to make his way to Eastern Europe to study the bears of the Carpathian Mountains. Remember that there was very little fuel and very little opportunity to travel. Only a few ships made their way around the world, and Arnoz had to hitch rides on those ships and then walk across Europe to reach the Carpathian forest, where he was living when he made his great discovery. It’s an incredible story of bravery and exploration. Now, Kemal, do you remember why Arnoz ventured into the Grygian Valley in the first place?” He gave Kemal an encouraging smile.

  I think Mr. Wooley was trying to be kind, welcoming Kemal back and telling him that everything was okay. But I knew that Kemal was nervous speaking in public, and as he stood up and cleared his throat, I wondered if he would rather have been left alone. “Uh, well, he had been studying bear populations, and he wondered whether they had established . . .” He hesitated. “Range, I think it was. He wondered whether they had established a wider area or something that they hunted in, and when he checked the maps, he discovered that they didn’t, well . . . they didn’t work. The measurements were off.” He looked shaken, rumpled, and worn out, as though he hadn’t slept.

  “Can someone elaborate?” Mr. Wooley asked.

  I raised my hand, but he had already called on Joyce. Unlike Kemal, she didn’t seem nervous at all. You’d never know she’d spent the night being interrogated. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t anything Joyce wasn’t good at. She’d beaten almost everyone at the simulations. A week ago, i
n Mountaineering and Ice Climbing Clinic, I’d watched her free-climb a rock wall that no one else in the class could scale. Zander had come close, but he’d fallen ten feet short of the summit. Luckily, unlike Joyce, he’d been wearing a harness. I’d heard stories about how she’d managed to lasso a charging rhino on her Final Exam Expedition the year before.

  As if that wasn’t enough, Joyce seemed to know everything in every class she was in. Her brown eyes always seemed curious. Her hair was cropped close to her head, showing off her high cheekbones and heart-shaped face. Joyce wore a dark-brown alligator-hide jacket embedded with all the gadgets she used for sailing and exploring, and Njamba was always perched on her shoulder or flying overhead. I’d never heard anybody say a bad word about her—that she was arrogant, or that she tried to use her status with the teachers to get special treatment.

  It was kind of annoying, how perfect she was. But today, I found myself filled with admiration for her.

  “Joyce, what were the irregularities to which Kemal is referring?” Mr. Wooley asked.

  She stood up and shrugged Njamba off her shoulder. The big golden-and-black bird hopped on her desk and cocked her head as Joyce said easily, “Well, the Muller Machines made digital maps based on the data that cartographers entered into them. That’s what Arnoz had. Old Muller Machine maps that he’d printed before the machines crashed because he was interested in the bear populations. People really weren’t allowed to explore very much. We didn’t have the technology that we have nowadays, no SteamCycles or IronSteeds or anything. Kemal’s right. Arnoz got there, and he noticed tracks leading out of the area that the bears were supposed to be living and breeding in. It took him a month of walking to follow the tracks all the way through the mountain range. He thought he’d discovered a new habitat for the bears. There had been a major drought the year before, and people say now that it must have been the drought that made the bears go beyond their range.”