“Sofe, you don’t seriously expect me to buy into parallel worlds and magic scrolls on the basis of a few pictures from a crummy cell phone.”
“The pouch!” she said suddenly. “It’s magic. I can show you right now.”
“Pouch?”
She opened her camera case. “I ended up with … well, I guess I stole this purse thing from Gale. Accidentally. I’ll get it back to Beatrice; it’s got an Amex in it.”
“Sofe, maybe we should just go get the car.”
“I’m not lying. I have charts, pictures, a magic pouch and spider samples and shells. And I found Gale’s watch in the alley near Beatrice’s—she dropped it in the fight. Both times I traveled, there and back, there was a timepiece.”
“Okay, but—”
“Okay nothing. You are gonna believe me.”
“Sofe, you’ve clearly had a rough few days.”
“Shut up, Superdork.” She pulled out Gale’s pouch, laying it flat on the table. “Take a good look. Nothing up my sleeve, right?”
“Sofe.”
“Just run your finger along the zipper, Bram.”
Lips pressed together, he obeyed.
Nothing happened.
“Dammit.” That was how these things went in movies, right? You pulled out your proof with a big “Haha, now I’ll show you!” and whatever it was—talking frog, the One Ring, whatever, it just sat there and refused to perform.
“Let’s just go to impound, Sofe. You can chill, we’ll call Doctor Brown and—”
It wouldn’t matter. He wouldn’t be able to ignore the photos, or the Fleetspeak. You are gonna take me seriously.
But—just for a breath—she wondered. Pictures didn’t prove anything, and she didn’t know for a fact that any of the samples she’d brought home from Stormwrack came from species Earth didn’t have. Proving a negative was fiendishly hard. It wasn’t as though she could afford to have someone run the DNA on all those bits of shell.
Did magic even work here? “I swear, Bram, it worked, it did—”
“It’s an inanimate object.”
“No!” She touched the zipper herself, as she had all those other times. “Maybe magic doesn’t work on Earth. That might make sense, right—”
“Listen to what you’re saying, please.”
The pouch unzipped itself, flapping open with a sound like a sigh.
“Nyah nah, so there,” Sophie said, as her brother stared at it, openmouthed.
Showed you, Mister Brain, she thought, feeling strangely pleased. You three, with your advanced degrees and academic honors and me just a pretty face with some swim medals and a biologist fetish, I can’t possibly—
Bram pulled up his chair, fully absorbed with the pouch. He imitated Sophie’s gesture. Nothing happened.
“Like this,” she said, and the pouch laced itself.
He tried again, failed again. “It’s just you.”
“Huh!” She pulled up next to him. “I didn’t feel any wires, and there’s no room inside for—you know, for robotics. The fabric’s waterproof, and it’s lined, but—”
“Open it again?”
She did, and he pulled out the contents of the pouch carefully, repeating the examination she’d done days before, feeling for something, anything that might explain.
“Maybe it’s gene-locked,” he murmured.
“Or magic,” she said.
“We’ll need to get it scanned,” he said. “Run it through an X-ray, check for ferrous metal.”
“You believe me now?”
He looked askance at her. “I see why you thought…”
“Oh, don’t you dare,” she said, punching his arm.
“… why you thought you might need psych drugs, I was gonna say.”
“That’s not what you were gonna say. And I have more, remember?”
“I apologize six ways to Sunday for impugning your sanity,” he said. He was still palpating the pouch. “What else have you got?”
Hammering on the door made them both jump. “Zophie Hansa, are you there? Face me, you thieving bitch!”
“Who’s that?” Bram said.
“I’m not sure,” Sophie said, “But she’s got a wisp of a Fleetspeak accent.”
CHAPTER 8
The woman at the door was in her late teens and had Beatrice’s fox chin and dark, wide-spaced eyes. Her hair was paler—like Gale’s, Sophie thought. If it had any curl to it, you couldn’t tell: It was drawn back in a ponytail so tight it made her eyes pop. She had the body of a marathon runner, clad in a pair of jeans and a Berkelium Genius T-shirt. Her fists were clenched, so hard her knuckles were white.
When she saw Sophie, her furious expression congealed into sick surprise. “It’s true? You’re who they say?”
“I’m Sophie.” This was obviously another female relation. They were coming to her now; maybe it wasn’t all over.
She can help me convince Bram!
“You’re the girl from Gale’s photograph,” Sophie said.
“You’re a sister?” the girl demanded.
“If Beatrice Vanko is your mom. Gale said I had a sister, so—”
“Thieving, secretive, conniving sister—and elder? You’re elder?”
“Hello? Thieving?”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-four. You want to come in?”
“No.” Bram startled them both. “If she can’t calm down, she can’t come in.”
“Bram…”
The girl looked past her. “Who are you?”
“A brother,” he said. “Younger. Do you have a name?”
Sophie heard her teeth grind.
“Verena,” she said at last. “Feliachild.”
“Here’s the thing, Verena,” he said. “Sophie’s a lovely, obliging person and as far as I can tell, she’s taken nothing but abuse from you people.”
“Nobody asked her to come looking for us!”
“We’re full up here on bellowing.” With that, he closed the door in her face.
“Bram!” Sophie protested.
“Shh. She’ll knock again when she chills.”
“I want her to come in. She can fill in the gaps about all this stuff.” She waved at her collection of souvenirs from Stormwrack.
“Sofe, you can’t let these people walk all over you.”
“These people? Bram, are you having trouble handling this? Me having…”
“Having what? Family?” His voice could have shaved steel.
“Bramble—”
“Promise me, Sofe. You’ll show some spine here.”
“Okay. Sure, yes. Anything you want.”
“What’d I tell you?” he muttered. “Sweet and obliging.”
A brisk little tap-tap at the door.
I should’ve thought about this being hard for him, Sophie thought. “Just a second!”
She enfolded her brother in a hug before he could fend her off, and said, in an exaggerated, little-kid voice: “Make ya a trade.”
“Trade what?” His face was still closed.
“Grouchy sis is here to take me back to Stormwrack, I know it.”
“So?”
She couldn’t help bouncing. “Come with! Please, Bram, please?”
“Sofe…”
“Seriously, Bram, why’d I send you fifty raving text messages? I needed you out there!”
“She’s not taking you back,” he said. “There’s nowhere to take back to.”
“You promise to come, I promise to have a backbone.”
“Doom will befall the whole Feliawhatever clan if you go back, remember?”
“You don’t believe in fate. Anyway, if we aren’t going, promising costs you nothing.”
He rolled his eyes. “Fine. Let me go.”
Sophie scrambled to the door, throwing it wide.
Verena was waiting, stiffly, almost at attention. “Kir Zophie, would you kindly admit me to your home?” She said it in Fleetspeak, with only a trace of sarcasm.
Sophi
e tried not to beam. “Come on in.”
She stepped inside awkwardly, taking in the Thai food boxes, the comfortable furnishings, the framed family portraits. Her eye fell on the table: the chart, Lais’s spider case, the shells and bits of sample. At the sight of the magic pouch, her teeth scritched together.
“How’s Gale doing?” Sophie asked.
“They took her to Erinth. She’ll recover.”
“If she doesn’t, will they use magic?”
“No. She’s been scripped a fair number of times already.”
Sophie shot Bram a triumphant look. “That’s right—there’s a limit, right?”
“Of course.” Verena was still glowering at the pouch.
“On magic? A limit on magic?”
“Of course on magic,” she snapped.
“See?” Sophie stuck her tongue out at Bram. “Mmmmmmmmagic.”
He was rising above. “Why don’t you tell us what brought you here, Verena?”
Verena took the pouch from the table. She peered inside, seeming to inventory the items, the coins, the flower, the badge—
“I used most of the battery charge on her phone,” Sophie said, apologetically. “I was gonna get everything back to Beatrice.”
“Sure you were.”
“You don’t know me,” Sophie said. She’d promised Bram, after all. “Stop accusing me of theft.”
“It’s not an accusation to say you told the Stele Islanders you were holding Gale’s pouch,” Verena tried to zip the bag, sighing when nothing happened.
Sophie racked her memories. “I was literally holding it at the time—”
“I know you told some salvage captain you could order her to Zunbrit Passage.”
“I wouldn’t say it exactly played out like that—”
“You negotiated services for that Tiladene gambler so he’d buy food for the people on Stele.”
“He’s a biologist, actually, and I’m so not apologizing for helping get food to those people. Gale said the storm was our fault.”
“And, finally, you bore the pouch from Stormwrack to Erstwhile—to here.”
“What’s the problem? You can take the pouch back right now.”
“The problem is I’m meant to hold Gale’s position, not you. But now you’ve usurped it. The idiotic thing thinks you’re her heir.” Verena poked the flaccid lips of the pouch, then hurled it. Sophie caught it left-handed and it promptly zipped itself shut.
“The ugly purse has opinions?” Bram asked. “It … imprints?”
“This is a bad joke,” Sophie said. “My birth mother can’t stand the sight of me, the aunt says I’m a danger to everyone, little sis is all “you’re a thief” and ragging on me about an inheritance—”
“But hey, the handbag likes you.” Bram leaned against the back of the couch. His eyes crinkled.
Oh, no, she thought, We’re going to have a laughing fit and this poor kid’s going to explode on us.
She looked at the pictures on the mantle, Mom and Dad, steadying herself by thinking about how much this would upset them. Imagining Dad’s face, cinching tight, hurt, had its usual steadying effect.
Say anything. “When did you find out about me?”
Verena’s eyes flicked in the direction of the clock. “I had no clue until … about two hours ago.”
“And what did Beatrice say? Do we have the same father?”
Verena shook her head. “Mom said you were a half sister. From an earlier relationship.”
“With?”
“Not with my dad, is all. That’s everything I got out of her, okay? Having you just turn up, and then Gale’s attacked … she’s freaking out.”
“Yeah. Listen, I see why she’s upset, and why you are.”
“Upset?” Verena’s voice rose. “You haven’t begun to see upset.”
Bram’s expression clouded, but Sophie shot him a warning glance, before he could get overprotective again. She’s a kid, Sophie thought. A teenager whose world has been flipped upside down. Cut her a break, Bramble.
Instead of lecturing her about her manners, he said: “Why don’t you help yourself to some curry?”
“Yeah,” added Sophie. “We’ll eat, and you can tell us how I can go about putting this inheritance mess right.”
Verena shifted sideways, a movement that reminded Sophie of a cat with an angry, lashing tail. With a huff, she took the offered seat.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Either Gale or Mom, or maybe both, will probably have to disinherit you.”
“As opposed to just throwing me away?”
“If that’s not enough, the Allmother, on Verdanii, might have to repudiate you. Or you her.”
“Verdanii?” asked Bram.
“One of the bigger islands, right?” Sophie said. She pulled the kiddie map across the table and nudged it over to Verena. After a second, her sister tapped the biggest of the land masses, drawn smack in the middle of the map’s northern hemisphere.
Bram took up a pen and promptly wrote the island’s name on the map. “I don’t know, Sofe. Should you be agreeing to get excommunicated from a whole country?”
“She asked what she might have to do,” Verena said. “Does she want to make this right or not?”
“Listen! I don’t want Gale’s—you’re talking about wealth, right? Money, material stuff?”
“And position,” Verena said.
“I don’t care about stuff or position. I just wanted to meet my…” Her gaze slid to Bram. “… my genetic relations. I didn’t set out to usurp anything. Magic, paperwork, whatever the process is, we can do that.”
“We’ll have to ask Gale about the inheritance laws.”
“Not your—our—Beatrice?”
A dismissive head shake. “She’s still hysterical.”
“So,” Sophie said, trying to hide triumph. “We go to … Erinth? It was Erinth that they took Gale to?”
Verena tapped another island, well west of Verdanii, closer to the equator, one of a chain of islands that bounded a circular-looking sea. “Yes.”
“Hold on, Sofe.” Bram wrote “Erinth” on the smaller island. “Verena, Gale told Sophie it would cause problems if she didn’t stay away from Stormwrack.”
“Ha! You believe me now?”
“I believe the part about you causing trouble.”
“She’s already caused a ton of trouble,” Verena said. “My mom has been drinking since last night. She didn’t tell Dad about you either, and … it didn’t go down well. And this issue with the courier pouch may seem trivial to you, but I’ve been working toward filling Gale’s shoes my whole life. You can’t just stumble in off Nob Hill and become a Fleet courier.”
“I don’t want to, I promise. I just wanted to know you guys. Did Beatrice tell you anything about my birth father?”
“Mom won’t talk about that.” Verena reached back, finding the base of her ponytail and cinching it even tighter, her jaw working. “Look, Verdanii women are meant to be tough and talented. The expectations are high. From what Gale’s told me, my … our … Mom could never quite measure up to being a Feliachild. She had some meltdown twenty-five years ago.”
“Twenty-five,” Bram said.
And I’m twenty-four. Great, I’ve already caused a nervous breakdown and a fisher-killing storm.
“Mom came here—had Sophie, I guess—and vested her courier post in Gale.”
Bram smoothed out the map. “She ran to San Francisco?”
“Mom hates Stormwrack. She’s been here ever since. But on paper, the courier position passes to her first daughter.”
“So she loaned the job to Gale and it’s supposed to go back to you.”
Verena glowered. “I’m the second daughter now.”
“If worst comes to worst, can’t I just ‘vest’ it back to you?” Sophie asked.
“Oh, gee, that’s generous.”
“Focus, guys,” Bram interrupted. “Verena, if we’re going to go to some Oldee Englishee Island and strip Sop
hie of rights she didn’t even know she had—”
“Because she doesn’t.”
“Your aunt said it would mean trouble, or danger. For all of you, not just Sophie. Isn’t it in your interest to consider the faint chance that Gale knows what she’s talking about?”
“Bram’s right,” Sophie said. Big surprise there, she thought. “You gotta at least check that I’m not gonna cause a hurricane or a plague.”
“A plague? Really?”
“Gale said there’d be trouble.”
“Why does it fall to me to check? Sophie’s the one who’s created the problem.”
“And you’re the one who wants it solved, aren’t you?” Bram said.
Sophie asked, “Do you even know what she meant? Couldn’t the problem she referred to be this whole inheritance thing?”
“Probably.” Verena said. “Supposedly there are prophecies, about Gale—”
“Prophecies?” Bram couldn’t help it, he laughed. “Suddenly I see why you’re not worried.”
“You don’t believe in predestination, do you?” Sophie asked.
“If anyone could predict the future, it’s the Verdanii.”
“That’s not an answer,” Bram said.
Verena shrugged. “I want to believe we choose what happens to us. Otherwise, we’re…”
“Fate’s sock puppets?” Sophie suggested.
“Yeah.”
“But you still don’t know why they packed Sophie off,” Bram said. “Not for sure.”
Verena shook her head.
“Could you just go see what you can find out? We need time to pack anyway,” Sophie said. She could see her brother stifling a groan.
So much for playing it cool, she thought, but for Bram’s sake she tried not to grin.
CHAPTER 9
After Verena left, Sophie and Bram went to retrieve her car. She spent the next four hours dragging Bram around electronics and camera stores, acquiring equipment she could use for data collection, all geared for exploring a world with no Internet or electricity.
“Small stuff,” she told him. “Portable items with little batteries.”
“You’re keeping the receipts, right?”
“Just check the user reviews.”
She found a decent solar battery charger and a new video camera. It was consumer-grade, not pro, but it had a good lens, memory to burn, and the salesman had thrown in the waterproof housing.
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