* * *
The Pie
The map was very old and inexpertly drawn. In the water swam busty mermaids and serpentine sea creatures, and on land stalked beasts that might have been meant to look like tigers but had come out a bit more like stripy dachshunds. Forests of little lines and mountain ranges of upside-down V’s gave contour to the page, and at every turn lurked stick-figure dangers. Skulls and crossbones were a major theme. The artist seemed to have tucked one in anywhere he had a spare inch of parchment. The words Captain Farrell’s Treasure were written in a swooping cursive in the top left, and in the lower right a monogram read B.D.
“This looks like it was drawn by an eight-year-old,” I said.
“Never underestimate the wisdom and intuition of children.”
“This bit here looks like a duck with pointy teeth.”
Jackaby leaned in over my shoulder. “Charts are never purely literal. Cartography relies heavily on symbolism and suggestion.”
“What even is this? Is this a radish wearing a top hat?”
“I believe it’s a rutabaga, and that’s clearly a bowler. Perhaps I should be in charge of navigation.” Jackaby made a grab for the map, but I pulled it away and surveyed the landscape around me.
We stood at the top of a tall hill overlooking a fertile valley. Below us a stream curled away into the trees, and behind us the branches of a huge, old beech tree formed a nearly perfect dome. A little black-and-white bird flitted onto a nearby branch to stare at us. There were no roads or trails, no signs of civilization.
“Lovely bit of countryside,” Jackaby remarked. “Definitely New England. North of New Fiddleham? Possibly south?”
“You don’t even know where you’ve taken us?”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Why, you’re right—we’re hopelessly lost! If only we had a map!” he intoned in mock distress.
“Do you really want to try to navigate an amateur scribble toward some unlikely treasure? It’s probably nothing more than the fancy of a long-forgotten schoolboy. Who is Captain Farrell, anyway? I’ve never heard of any dread pirate Farrell.”
“Not a pirate, a British official,” Jackaby answered. “You’ve never heard the story? Farrell was a captain of the guard, charged with distributing wages to the British soldiers in Ireland in the mid-seventeenth century. His caravan was robbed by a single audacious highwayman who made off with the entire payroll without firing a single shot. A silver tongue can be even more effective than lead rounds. The man called himself the Bold Deceiver.”
“The Bold Deceiver? Wait, are you talking about ‘Whiskey in the Jar’? That’s not a true story; that’s a pub song!”
“Tell that to Patrick Fleming.”
“Who?”
“The man they hanged for the crime in 1650. Captain Farrell got his man, following the advice of a disloyal lady and a nosy barkeep, but he never did retrieve the money. The Bold Deceiver hid his stolen loot before Farrell’s men closed in. It’s still out there, somewhere.”
I looked at the faded, dirty paper, and back to Jackaby. My employer waggled his eyebrows at me. I contained a grin, not wanting to encourage his insufferable enthusiasm. “Just because a treasure exists doesn’t mean this will lead us to it. Even if it is authentic, and I’m not saying it is, who’s to say the money hasn’t already been recovered?”
“Only one way to find out.” The eyebrows bounced again, wiggling that silly knit cap up and down with them, and I let a smile crack the surface.
“If you can just pop a party favor to take us wherever you want, why do we need to follow this at all? Why not just zip to the end?”
“Because, Miss Rook, that isn’t how this sort of thing works. I know you’re still fairly new to this, so trust me when I say that there is a right way and a wrong way to go about an adventure. One does not free the prince without kissing the frog, and there are consequences for cutting corners. The map goes out of its way to touch seven points before completion. Sevens are good. We start with number one.”
I scanned the map and found the start of the path. It was, in fact, at a depiction of a round tree beside a curvy line that could be the nearby stream. “I guess we’re right here . . . ,” I started.
“Now you’re cracking.”
“. . . but that would put us directly atop a giant pie with a key sticking out of it.” I held up the map so that Jackaby could see the drawing. “I don’t see any giant pastries about, do you?”
“Miss Rook, you deeply disappoint me. Come now, your keen eye for detail proved invaluable during our last case—well, somewhat valuable. Not entirely unhelpful. What would you look for if this were a crime scene?”
I thought for a moment. I would look for something out of place, something that didn’t belong.
“The bird,” I said at last, gesturing to the shape flitting about the beech tree. “That’s a magpie. I’ve seen them in Europe, but they’re not native to New England.”
Jackaby applauded. “Outstanding! I hadn’t even noticed the little fellow. I was hoping you might have spotted the bright, supernatural glow emanating from the nest, but I suppose pulsing golden light is a bit too obvious? You managed it your own way, all the same.”
“There is no golden light, Mr. Jackaby. Not for normal people.” Jackaby’s gift as a seer allows him to penetrate magical concealments, make impossible connections, and recognize the auras surrounding objects and people, particularly those with magical significance. I have the rather less unique ability to see the world the way it actually appears.
“No?” Jackaby tilted his head in mock sympathy. “It must be so dismal being you.”
“Only in present company,” I teased back. I tucked the map in the sash of my skirt and began looking for a branch or foothold. The tree was old, easily twenty feet around at the base, and the lowest limbs nearly as wide as I was, but I managed to hoist myself up onto the first branch and then the second.
“So, finding things by aura isn’t cutting corners?” I asked. “If we’re supposed to be doing this thing properly, then I imagine we were meant to figure out the map’s riddles. ‘Pie’ and ‘magpie’ are pretty obvious, now that I think about it.” I had nearly reached the nest. The little bird hopped around ahead of me, chattering and squawking, but it kept its distance.
“It isn’t cheating. It’s just using one’s eyes,” Jackaby called up. “But that’s rather good, about the pie. Fitting first task for the Bold Deceiver’s quest, the magpie.”
“How’s that?” I called down, being careful not to shift the branches too much as I positioned myself closer. Already the messy cluster of sticks was beginning to look rather shaken.
“Kleptoparasitism!” Jackaby hollered cheerfully. “Magpies are known for it. Other birds can be thieves as well, of course, but magpies have a reputation for admiring shiny trinkets. Not an unfit totem for a highwayman. If that’s our pie, what do you suppose the key signifies? The next clue? Perhaps a means to solve the subsequent clues, as in the key to the map?”
“That makes sense,” I said. I felt inside the nest. At the center, thin twigs and bits of straw wove a finely knit bowl, and my fingers closed around cold metal. “Or,” I said, tossing it down, “it means a key.”