The Adventurer's Guide to Treasure (and How to Steal It) Read online

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Wade Albert White

  Illustrations copyright © 2019 by Mariano Epelbaum

  Spot art here © photocell/Shutterstock.com

  Cover art copyright © 2019 by Mariano Epelbaum. Cover design by Karina Granda. Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  Visit us at LBYR.com

  First Edition: January 2019

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: White, Wade Albert, author. | Epelbaum, Mariano, 1975– illustrator.

  Title: The adventurer’s guide to treasure (and how to steal it) / Wade Albert White ; illustrations by Mariano Epelbaum.

  Description: First edition. | New York ; Boston : Little, Brown and Company, 2019. | Series: Adventurer’s guide ; 3 | Summary: “Anne, Penelope, and Hiro are tasked once again with an impossible quest to save the world, leading them on a mission to defeat the supreme leader of pirates, rescue dear friends, and solve the riddle of Anne’s mysterious heritage.” —Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018009912| ISBN 9780316518444 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316518451 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316518482 (library edition ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Pirates—Fiction. | Identity—Fiction. | Doppelgèangers—Fiction. | Magic—Fiction. | Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | Humorous stories.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.W448 Adx 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018009912

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-51844-4 (hardcover), 978-0-316-51845-1 (ebook)

  E3-20181127-JV-NF-ORI

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  ARRR, ’TIS A PROLOGUE

  1: First Day

  2: The Battle of Saint Lupin’s

  3: Marauders, Raiders, and Buccaneers

  4: The Gold Medallion

  5: Flight from the Council

  6: The Pirate Haven

  7: The Cylinder Seal

  8: Flint, Parchment, Knife

  9: The Castle High

  10: The Rose That Never Bloomed

  INTERLUDE

  11: The Other Side

  12: Construct and Chaos

  13: The Leaky Mermaid

  14: Secrets of the Wizards’ Council

  15: The Inn of Sensible Names

  16: The Broken Gauntlet

  17: The Two-Plus-One Towers

  18: The Battle of the Five Armies

  19: The Legend and the Lady

  20: The Rogue Keeper

  AVAST, HERE BE AN EPILOGUE

  SUPPLEMENT TO THE SUPPLEMENTARY READING LIST FOR WOULD-BE ADVENTURERS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  BY WADE ALBERT WHITE

  This book is dedicated to Dr. Henry von Klickenbeard III, Esq., a mad scientist I made up just now, because even fictional people deserve to have a book dedicated to them every once in a while.

  Arrr, ’Tis a Prologue

  At Saint Lupin’s Completely Ordinary School Where Nothing Unusual Ever Happens, Most Especially Not Illegal Quests That Destroy Famous Landmarks and Get Your Questing License Suspended, no students are taught about pirates. They are not taught how to identify pirate clothing, how to eat pirate food, or how to talk like a pirate. They do not bathe themselves by dangling from the mast during a thundershower, and they do not learn how to tie unnecessarily complicated knots. They also never have long philosophical discussions with their parrots. This lack of education, incidentally, is not at all consistent with the advice given in the popular educational manual How to Prepare Your Students to Detect and Repel an Imminent Pirate Attack.

  Understandably then, this leaves the school wide open to invasion. And in that spirit, it is widely recognized that there are three ways for pirates to raid an institute of higher learning:

  1. Simply walk in through the front gates (it’s not like anyone’s guarding them).

  2. Try bribing any zombie sharks that might be in the moat (this rarely works, however, since the sharks don’t understand how bribes work; they’re zombie sharks, not loan sharks).

  3. Disguise your pirate ship as one of the monthly supply ships, forge the necessary permits to get past any security checkpoints, drop off half the crew at the docks so they can infiltrate the academy on the ground, and then attack from the air. This is needlessly complicated but also a lot more fun.

  P.S. Make sure you have a plan to deal with the school dragon.

  First Day

  Anne was leaving Saint Lupin’s.

  Leaving it in the hands of other people, that is. She was temporarily stepping down from her position as Rightful Heir of Saint Lupin’s and starting her life as a full-time student. After months of renovations, the school was finally up to code and ready to open its doors. Despite the suspension of the school’s questing license, there was still a full slate of subjects to choose from, albeit with some changes. For example, Old World Mythology had been crossed out in the student handbook, and someone had carefully written “Survey of Everything Not Related to Quests” in fancy script in the margin. “Fighting Styles of Forest Rodents” had been changed to “Rock Painting 101,” and “Modern History of Ancient Dragons” was now listed as the “Fine Art of Holding Your Breath.” These changes were in compliance with special orders from the Wizards’ Council forbidding the school from teaching its students anything whatsoever to do with adventuring.

  There was only one problem: There were no students.

  Or more accurately, there were no new students, because in addition to restricting the subjects that could be taught, the council had also frozen enrollment.

  Anne walked along the twisting corridors of the Manor toward her first class, flipping through her handbook as she went. She was familiar with the Saint Lupin’s campus, of course, having grown up there. But for most of her life it had been an orphanage, and on a scale of one to ten—ten being beyond fabulous and one being the worst place imaginable to live, even worse than places that served boiled cabbage and stale pine cones every night for dinner—she would have rated it a negative eighty-seven. So despite the restrictions that had been placed on the school, she was still excited for the start of term. This would be her first time in a proper classroom. In preparation for the big day, Anne had braided her hair and donned her favorite yellow tunic, because it seemed to make her brown skin glow and it matched her bright yellow eyes.

  Anne was t
he only person she knew of who had yellow eyes. She’d never known her family and never had a place to call home. It had long been her hope that becoming an adventurer would help her discover her true origins. So far she had managed to uncover two important clues: On her first quest she had learned that she was connected to something called Project A.N.V.I.L., and on her second quest she had been told to find someone called the Lady of Glass, who apparently could reveal everything to her. Although helping with the school’s renovations had kept Anne occupied these past several months, she remained determined to discover the truth about who she really was and where she came from.

  Walking beside Anne were the two other students at Saint Lupin’s. Penelope Shatterblade was a large girl with pale white skin, long red hair, and blue eyes. She and Anne had grown up together at the orphanage. Penelope wanted to be an adventurer, too, but had been rejected by every single quest academy. When she was only two years old, her parents had led a quest that went tragically wrong, resulting in their own deaths as well as the deaths of several others. Now her family name was considered a curse. The other student was Hiro Darkflame, an average-sized boy with beige skin, brown eyes, and long black hair tied back in a ponytail. The ponytail covered a tattoo on the back of his neck of a serpent swallowing its own tail. It was the symbol of the secret branch of the Wizards’ Council where his parents worked, and it indicated he was expected to follow in their footsteps. He was a brilliant student and aspiring wizard, but unfortunately his magick spells always had unintended consequences that usually resulted in something blowing up.

  Since the council had confiscated their quest academy cloaks with the words CAUTION: STUDENT ADVENTURER printed on the back in bold black letters, the three of them wore patchwork cloaks made from the purple, yellow, and black curtains taken from several empty dormitory rooms. Their handiwork left something to be desired, but with the school also in financial straits after their last quest, they had been unable to afford official replacements.

  Hovering along behind the three students was a black fire lizard named Dog. He was two feet long from tail to snout and had black scales and wings and bright green eyes. Usually he spent his days curled up in a basket in the corner of the main office, but the teachers had requested that Anne bring him along as an unofficial fourth student to boost class enrollment.

  Hiro was reading a letter as they walked along the corridor.

  Penelope yawned and rubbed her eyes. “Why do classes have to begin so early?”

  “Early? It’s eight o’clock in the morning,” said Hiro, not looking up from his letter. “If they had let me make the schedule, we could have started classes by seven. Maybe even six.”

  “Be thankful they didn’t let you, then,” said Penelope. “Because if it was six o’clock right now, I’d have to thump you just on principle.” She glared at Anne and Hiro. “And what is it with you two and the whole reading-while-walking thing?”

  Anne lowered her handbook. “Sorry. I was trying to see what classes are available.”

  Hiro held up his letter. “And this just arrived this morning. It’s a letter from my mother. She wants me to attend Take Your Student to Work Day tomorrow. She and my father are keen to get me working for the Wizards’ Council as soon as possible.” He didn’t seem overly thrilled at the prospect.

  “Hey, maybe your mother will take you into the council archives and show you all kinds of classified material,” said Penelope.

  Hiro rolled his eyes. “Knowing my mother, she definitely will.”

  Anne noticed a second, lighter piece of paper sticking out beneath the letter. “What’s that?”

  Hiro shrugged. “I haven’t bothered to look at it yet. It’s just another newspaper clipping. She’s constantly sending me articles that allude to missions she and my father have been involved with. The articles never mention the two of them directly, of course, but I’m expected to read between the lines.”

  “You shouldn’t ignore your mother,” said Penelope, and she snatched the clipping out of his hand.

  “Hey, give that back!” said Hiro.

  He made a grab for the paper, but Penelope held it away from him and started reading the article aloud. “Wow, listen to this: ‘Yesterday morning a quest medallion was stolen from the Pyrate Museum. The medallion in question is none other than the famous Darkflame Medallion, acquired following the Battle of the Great Rift.’”

  “What?!” exclaimed Anne and Hiro together.

  “I didn’t know your family owned a quest medallion,” said Anne.

  Hiro frowned. “Neither did I.”

  “And what’s the Battle of the Great Rift?”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Well, as long as the thief who stole the medallion doesn’t bring it anywhere near Saint Lupin’s, we should be fine,” said Penelope, handing the article back to Hiro.

  Anne, Penelope, and Hiro had already gotten caught up in two quests that year, and as much as Anne liked adventures, she was perfectly happy not going on another one until they had received a lot more training.

  “It wouldn’t matter anyway,” said Hiro, scanning the clipping. “The article says the quest was attempted over a century and a half ago. The medallion’s made of gold, though, so they think the thieves probably just want to sell it or something. There’s even a picture of it here at the bottom.” He showed them the picture, but it was too grainy to make out in any detail. The medallion was sitting in its own case among several other cases displaying other artifacts.

  Hiro tucked the papers into his cloak. “I’ll have to ask my mother about the article. I’m surprised she didn’t say anything about it in her letter.”

  They continued on their way.

  Anne flipped to the back of her student handbook and checked the printed schedule. “Do either of you know what our first class actually is? My handbook only lists a time and room number.”

  Hiro shrugged. “When I checked last night, the professors were still working out the final details. I think the Wizards’ Council dropped some last-minute regulations on them.”

  “More regulations?” said Penelope. “Pretty soon they’re going to require students to attend a class on council regulations just to understand them all.”

  Hiro flipped through his copy of the handbook. “That might actually have been one of the regulations.”

  They arrived at the assigned room, a large ballroom at the end of a seldom-used corridor with piles of dusty furniture stacked along one side. Prior to becoming an orphanage and then a quest academy, the school had been a private estate. That meant the campus had all sorts of interesting spaces, such as the vast library Anne used to sneak into, to “borrow” books for herself and Penelope.

  Dog zipped through the large double doors ahead of them. Two chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and seven tall windows lined the back wall. Anne followed him in and stopped short. Two people were already inside.

  The first was an old man with a long, wispy beard. He was standing behind a podium, but he appeared to be fast asleep. His light brown skin had a wood-grain pattern, and he wore faded yellow and brown robes. This was Sassafras, the school’s professor of magick. Curiously, there was a platypus poking out of the sleeve of his robe where a left arm should be.

  The second person was a girl Anne didn’t recognize. She had yellowish-tan skin and bright pink hair down to her jawline. The dark wooden chair in which she was seated had two large wheels attached at the back with two smaller wheels in the front. Two heavy iron rings hung from the arm of the chair that was facing them, and Anne suspected the other arm had a matching set. What they were for, however, she couldn’t begin to guess. The girl’s feet rested on footboards, and her legs were wrapped in a dark green blanket. A leather pack rested on her lap. The girl was staring intently at the ceiling and didn’t notice them. Dog glided over to her.

  “Do you know that you have a habit of stopping in doorways?” Penelope said behind Anne.

  The girl flinched at th
e sound of Penelope’s voice and turned in their direction. Anne stepped into the room followed by Penelope and Hiro.

  “Sorry if we startled you,” said Anne. “We weren’t expecting anyone else to be here yet.”

  The girl smiled shyly. “That’s okay. I got distracted admiring the architecture. This is a beautiful campus.”

  Anne glanced up at the ceiling. She’d never paid much attention to it over the years, probably because for most of her life she’d had to focus her energy on simply making it through the day. Now that she looked, she had to agree the scrollwork was impressive. The morning sun pouring in through the windows was certainly picturesque, if a little bright.

  Dog nuzzled against the girl’s arm, and she patted his head obligingly.

  “Who are you?” Penelope asked, somewhat abruptly.

  “My name is Marri Blackwood,” the girl replied. “I’m a new student. In fact, I was beginning to worry I might be the only student.”

  Penelope folded her arms across her chest. “Are you a dragon?”

  Anne understood why Penelope would ask such a question. The last new student slated to attend the school, a boy named Valerian, had turned out to be a half-dragon and not entirely trustworthy at first, although they had eventually become friends and worked together.

  Marri’s eyes widened. “A d-dragon?”

  “Because if you are, you might as well tell us now,” Penelope continued. “We’re good at figuring that stuff out. For example, I see that Dog is quite interested in you, and he’s not interested in anybody. It makes a person suspicious as to why.”

  Marri reached into her pack and brought out two biscuits. “He probably just smelled these. They’re leftovers from my breakfast.” She offered one to Dog, and he snatched it out of her hand and gulped it down in one swallow.

  “Are you here to steal Anne’s gauntlet, then?” asked Hiro.

  Anne owned a special gauntlet that marked her as a Keeper of the Sparrow. When she wore the gauntlet and inserted a prophecy medallion into the slot on the cuff, it would activate a quest that she and her adventuring group were obligated to undertake. On both of their previous quests, people had tried to take the gauntlet away from Anne.