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practically smothered me with it.
    I got myself back under control.
    â€œThank you,” I said again, as soon as I could talk.
    He grimaced. “Son, as the Savior is my witness, I don’t want your thanks. I only brought up the ten million . . .”
    He put a hand on my shoulder.
    â€œ. . . because I want you to be worth it.”

CHAPTER 6
    Ten Million Worth of Good
    â€œSTATIONS!”
    The cry rang out from the top of the companionway. Within seconds, the gun deck had filled with a ship-rattling
thrum
as a hundred pirates flooded past us to man the cannon. Half a minute more, and there was a full crew in place around every one, all of them loaded and ready to fire.
    The four of us just kept turning the stupid crank of the chain pump, sweat running down our faces like water.
    If there’s a worse job on earth, I never want to find out what it is. We’d been stuck on that pump twelve hours a day for three full days, in six-hour shifts that left us flat on our backs when they ended, and so sore we could barely raise our arms over our heads when it was time to start up again.
    But we’d kept at it without complaint, because it was a matter of life and death. The leak in the hold was only getting worse—a carpenter might have been able to shore it up, but Healy had lost his to a musket ball during the invasion of Pella, and for all their skills, none of his crew had the proper training to fix the ruptured patch.
    Our only good fortune was that
Li Homaya
and Ripper Jones hadn’t found us yet.
    This was the third time the
Grift
’s gun crews had gone on alert. The first two times had been triggered by the sight of sails on the horizon. In each case, the ships turned out to be merchantmen who fled at the sight of Burn Healy’s ship—and must have been astonished at their luck when they weren’t run down and plundered.
    Now it was dawn on our fourth day at sea, my friends and I had just started our morning shift at the pump, and I was praying this would be another false alarm. I’d only just decided how to make myself worthy of the ten million gold Healy had paid for my life, and I didn’t want to die in a sea battle before I could get started on it.
    It was pretty simple, really: all I had to do was destroy Roger Pembroke.
    Simple, but not easy.
    And it had taken most of those three days to work out the logic of it. When I first started thinking it over—as much as it was possible to think while turning a heavy crank for six hours straight—I figured Healy’s alliance with Pembroke made destroying him a nonstarter in terms of paying my debt to my uncle.
    None of my friends suggested it, either. They all had their own ideas.
    â€œYou can find the Fist of Ka—” Kira paused to suck in a lungful of air on the crank’s downstroke “—and restore it to my people.”
    â€œThat’s good for the Okalu,” I huffed between my own gulps of breath. “But how’s it worth ten million to Healy?”
    â€œRest of the Fire King’s treasure . . . might be worth ten
pudda
million,” Guts panted. One of the crew had helped him wrap a cloth over the stump of his hand so he’d have some cushion when he pushed down on the pump handle, but it was still much tougher going for him than for the rest of us. “Find the treasure . . . ye can pay him back from your share.”
    That seemed logical. But something about it didn’t quite fit, and it took me until the beginning of the next shift to put my finger on why.
    â€œI don’t think he actually wants me to pay him back,” I said. “Burn Healy doesn’t care about money.”
    â€œ
Blun
to that! He’s a — pirate!”
    â€œBut if money’s so important to him,” I pointed out, “why’d he give up so much of it for me? For that matter . . . why save me in the first place? If his crew