Child of a Hidden Sea

by A. M. Dellamonica

  Of course, she’d always been able to rationalize that they had Bram, safe and brainy at home with his laptop and his incomprehensible math.

  “Also, you’re not a cop,” Bram put in.

  “These people could use a few real cops.”

  “Which you aren’t, no offense.”

  She couldn’t help feeling insulted. “Running wouldn’t solve anything. That Ualtarite or whatever followed Gale to San Francisco. If they attacked us at home, what could we do?”

  “But—”

  “And he has my name, remember: They might not even have to follow me home to … I dunno.” She gestured at the ferret Chimera, with its snake’s tail.

  Bram closed the trunk. “You’re rationalizing. You want to be here.”

  “What if I do?”

  “Is it worth dying for?”

  “They didn’t sink us, okay? They could have, but they didn’t. It was just a scare tactic.”

  “And you don’t have the sense to be scared?”

  “See, you are calling me stupid.”

  “I’m not—”

  “I’m staying,” she said, feeling mulish now.

  “What could make it worth the risk?”

  “I think this whole ‘stay-away-from-the-Dueling Court’ thing has something to do with my birth parents. I think Gale knew if I went there, I’d find out…”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I got into this to find out about my…” She stumbled, unwilling to say “family” or “real family.” “… my background, okay? And I know, I know that Gale and Parrish are hiding something. And it’s to do with Beatrice and dueling.”

  “You know.”

  “You just said I’m good at people. When we get to the Fleet, I’m gonna find out more about my past.”

  “Like what? How?”

  “They’re lawsuit-happy. Maybe I’m named in some other case, or Beatrice is. Or it has something to do with this slavery stuff. Beatrice is Verdanii, and you heard Verena—they’re supposedly the head of the anti-slavery faction. Maybe the shameful thing she’s so upset about is she helped someone escape, or had an affair with a slave.”

  “That’s not a theory, Sofe; it’s something out of a fairy tale.”

  “Hello, there’s magic here.”

  “That doesn’t make this Gone with the Wind romantic. Magic aside, if we assess the situation, apply a little scientific rigor—”

  “That’s not my strong suit, what with being the intellectual lightweight of the family and all—”

  “I’m not saying that.”

  And he wasn’t, but she was mad now.

  So was he: “You sure you don’t just like this feeling of being…”

  “What?”

  “Chosen.”

  She laughed. “Princess dresses and magic purses? What am I, Cinderella? One day my real parents will come and whisk me off to a palace?”

  He folded his arms. “Well?”

  “It doesn’t make any difference, Bram. In the end, they still aren’t gonna want me.”

  He shut one of the toppled books, looked her in the eye, and said, “Then why bother?”

  “I have to know. I wish I didn’t. I don’t want to hurt you or Mom and Dad, or even Verena and Beatrice but—”

  “You’re curious, it’s natural, but—”

  “It’s not curiosity,” she said, and now her voice was rising. “It’s not brain stuff at all. It’s a hole, a hunger, or … I can’t explain it and I feel terrible about wanting it. The way Mom and Dad looked all heart-punched on my eleventh birthday when I asked about my birth family, or the time I made that crack about my real parents…”

  “You were little.”

  “I might as well have kicked Mom in the teeth. You think I don’t remember exactly how hurt she looked? It’s right here, high res.” She tapped her forehead. “It ungrateful and wrong and it feels mean that I can’t just walk away from this and accept my wonderful, wonderful luck. But you know what? It also hurts that I had to wait for Mom and Dad to take off for Sicily to go rooting through their stuff for the truth. Something’s missing, and it’s not about me liking Verena better than you—”

  “You know I’m not that insecure.”

  “—or preferring Beatrice to the parents. I need to do this, Bram.”

  “Mom and Dad deserve better than to have the two of us disappear without a trace.”

  “Get Verena to take you back,” she said. “I’m not going home until I get some answers or they kick me the hell out.”

  She stomped back out on deck. The storm clouds had broken into low cumulous clusters, gull-gray, dotting a shockingly blue sky. The crew was working to replace the ropes that had been cut by the strand of lightning. The wind was from the south and they were skimming along, still northbound, at a good clip.

  Verena and Parrish were about twenty feet up the rigging on the mainmast, untangling a singed rope.

  “Are we very far off course?” Sophie asked.

  Parrish pointed at a faint scrim of land on the horizon. “They’ve driven us closer to Tallon. By design, I suspect.”

  “Design?”

  “Temperance—the ship that Isle of Gold is fixated on—is Tallon’s representative to the Fleet. The Tall are a nation of shipbuilders. And the last time anyone saw Yacoura—”

  “The Heart is lost,” Verena said, as though she was explaining, but she’d said that last time, too.

  Part of a spell, maybe?

  “It was last seen there,” Parrish said.

  “They don’t want us getting too far from the Heart.”

  “Which suggests they’re in a hurry.” Parrish climbed down to the deck, raising her wrist so he could look at the electrical burn on her palm, which was tingling as the ointment soaked in.

  “It’s not serious,” she told him.

  He nodded but didn’t let go. “We cannot give them what they want.”

  “No negotiating with terrorists?”

  “Yes. Nicely put.”

  “We could let Coine think we’re looking, couldn’t we? If we had a legitimate reason to go Tallon; if there was some point?”

  A gleam of something … was that approval? “Such as?”

  “Well … we need to repair, right?”

  “No, damage to Nightjar is minimal.”

  “But Tallon … they’re shipbuilders? Lots of international trade? Lots of people passing through? Lots of gossip?”

  “Totally,” Verena said. There was a chilly edge in her voice: Sophie extricated her arm from Parrish’s grip.

  “We were looking for someone who’d tell us what was up with the Ualtarites. A busy port…” She faltered. Why did all of her ideas sound so much better before she gave them voice?

  You’re not a cop, Bram had said.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Is this stupid?”

  “It’s quite sound,” Parrish said. “Let them think we’re concerned enough to consider seeking the Heart.”

  “We are concerned,” Bram said, coming up on deck. “We’re super concerned.”

  Sophie pretended she hadn’t heard. “Okay. We’ll play-act at looking for the Heart and snoop around trying to figure out why the Ualtarites are helping John Coine.”

  Where Erinth had the air of a Tuscan city in the midst of the Renaissance, Tallon was more of a navy town. Its wharf was long and businesslike; the locals were almost all in uniform. As foreigners, in civilian garb, they would be conspicuous.

  The shore had weathered the same storm that blew Nightjar into Tallon’s waters, but if anything had been blown out of place it had already been lashed back down, and possibly scrubbed for good measure. The place was all whitewash and chalky stone.

  From the look of the harbor, Nightjar wasn’t the only ship making for land in the wake of the storm: A number of sailing vessels, most of them small and many looking the worse for wear, were arriving. Sophie had a good look up and down the wharf, looking for the Isle of Gold ship, Barabash, that had been an
chored in the Erinthian port. No sign of it. She looked up the Isle of Gold flag in Gale’s protocol book—it was a gold triangle on a bloodred background—and searched again. Nothing.

  A large vessel with a peculiar, Y-shaped mast caught her eye instead.

  “Gale had friends here,” Parrish said, interrupting her. “Now we’re in port, I’ll go tell them about her death in person.”

  “Do I have to come?” Sophie asked.

  He shook his head. “I’ll see if we can get a meeting with the intelligence office, in case the Tall know what’s going on.”

  “Will they tell us?”

  “Gale hid Yacoura for them, remember?”

  Calling in a dead woman’s favors, Sophie thought uneasily. It felt like spending money that belonged to her sister. “How will they feel about us looking for the Heart?”

  “They’ll understand that we’re making a pretense of it. In the meantime, I’m not sure there’s much for you to do.” He seemed to weigh his next words. “Bram, the cartography office on the Hilltop Academy is one of the finest on Stormwrack. If you are still trying to understand our geological history—” He waved at the seacharts, the rings of islands.

  “Thanks.”

  He turned to Sophie. “The academy also possesses a natural history collection.”

  “Where?”

  He pointed straight up one of the tidy little streets to a stone building with immaculately groomed parade grounds. “Perhaps Tonio can take you?”

  Instead of agreeing, she turned to Verena. “What about you? Another duel?”

  Verena shook her head.

  “She should go with you, Parrish,” Sophie said. “You’re meeting up with important spy types who knew Gale, right? Verena should get to know them, for when she gets the pouch imprinted.”

  Parrish inclined his head, assenting.

  They broke into parties, Parrish and Verena making for the residential district, Tonio leading them up the hill toward the academy, a brick building whose pilasters and cornices made it seem faintly Georgian. It was a short walk, but an awkward one—Bram was silent—still angry, Sophie thought. It was a relief when Tonio introduced him to a cartographer and the pair of them vanished up one of the academy’s staircases.

  “Aren’t you going along to translate?”

  “Kir Bram can make do in Fleet,” Tonio said. “He’s picked up a lot of the language—and they’re just looking at maps, after all.”

  “He’s a supergenius.”

  “Garland—the captain, that is—ordered me to stay with you. I believe the natural history laboratory is this way.”

  “We’re not going.”

  “No?”

  “I’d be glad to, normally, but I have other things on my mind.”

  Tonio looked uneasy. “Such as?”

  She grinned. “Playing cop.”

  “Captain said—”

  “Captain Parrish isn’t in charge, is he?” She led him back to the wharf, past a small squad of teens in red dress uniforms, kids from a rainbow of ethnic backgrounds, and then through a small park where old men and women were playing some variant on croquet.

  “Garland should be in charge,” Tonio said. “Until certain matters are smoothed out.”

  “Tonio, you seem like a smart guy.”

  Good manners obliged him to answer. “Thank you.”

  “So tell me. That storm, it could’ve drowned us all, right? We could have drowned. You, me, Parrish, both my siblings?”

  “That’s life on the Watch, Kir.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Nightjar’s crew is often at hazard. We keep our heads down as we can, but Kir Gale was in a dangerous business.”

  “Until I offload all this onto Verena, my life’s at hazard too.”

  “That’s true.”

  “So we’re already living dangerously. Why waste time?”

  “Captain Parrish would take it amiss to lose two employers in a single week,” Tonio protested.

  “Give me a break. He’d barely notice I was gone.”

  He stopped dead, gaping at her. “Kir—”

  “Sophie.”

  “Surely you’ve noticed…”

  “Okay, never mind, I’m sorry. That was unfair. He’d notice, obviously. I’m not saying he’s heartless.”

  “Heartless,” he repeated.

  “He just lost his best friend, right? Or his partner in crime? He’s in mourning. It’s obvious he’s shattered. I’m not on his radar.”

  “I don’t know radar, Kir—I mean Sophie, your pardon—”

  She could feel her face turning red. “Why are we even talking about this? How Garland feels about me doesn’t matter.”

  The words seemed to open a little hollow in her gut, though. How I feel about him doesn’t matter either, she told it. It’s all a big side issue. A distraction.

  “That’s not—” Tonio swallowed, seeming to consider his words. “All right. Consider this: If you get killed, it might make the situation, with the Verdanii succession, worse.”

  “Now that is a fair point.” They had reached a boardwalk that fronted the wharf, a stretch of restaurants and supply houses, orderly people conducting business in an orderly way. “What are the chances we can find a lawyer type?”

  “Lawyer?”

  “If I wanted to make a will, leaving all my alleged stuff on Stormwrack to Verena and everything else to Bram, would that be binding? Would the magic purse care?”

  “You should be able to make a Fleet-valid will here,” Tonio said, brightening at the prospect of a safe bureaucratic errand.

  “Genius!” she said. She had something else in mind, but there was a little time to kill. “Can you do that thing where you say ‘Charge it to Nightjar’ and they go for it?”

  “I’m the first mate.” This apparently meant yes: He found her a small law office and authorized the payment. It didn’t take long to spell out what she wanted.

  “Come back in a few hours to sign the documents,” the clerk said.

  A couple hours.

  Sophie felt an itch of pure cultural displacement; if she’d been home, she would have texted Bram now to see how he was doing.

  What the hell. She pulled out her phone, texting:

  I was a jerk. Sorry.

  It gave her the usual reply:

  Message will be sent when we return to service area.

  “What are you doing?”

  “It’s a custom … like…” She twitched the ragged black scarf hanging at his hip, a memento for Gale. “I’m trying to make myself feel better about something.”

  “Ah. You know, Kir, that taxidermy museum has a fine collection. Your Erstwhile recording device…”

  “No! No, no, no.” She dragged the reluctant Tonio down the wharf, toward the ship she’d seen earlier. It had, as she’d hoped, come into port while she was pushing legal paper. “See that ship? Ascension? There’s the flag of Ualtar.”

  He looked at it with obvious distaste. “I’m surprised you recognized it.”

  “I looked it up,” she said. “So … they don’t seem damaged. They didn’t come here because the storm hit them.”

  “They could be bringing spidersilk to the Tall,” Tonio said. “The silk is used in inscriptions for shipbuilding.”

  “It doesn’t look like a freighter.” It was a massive ship, one that must have been put together with some kind of magic, because it didn’t look remotely seaworthy. Its single mainmast towered above the deck, disproportionately tall, and it split into two arms, forming a Y. The rigging of its sails was segmented in a way that seemed familiar.

  “Kir—Sophie, why are we—”

  “Ualtarites do church,” she said. “I read it in Gale’s protocol book. Every day, church at high noon, everybody welcome. They’re the ‘anyone can perfect themselves’ people, remember?”

  He was aghast. “You can’t mean to board her?”

  “You bet I mean to,” she said. “I’ve had a genetic fam
ily for all of a week. And then these people killed the one relative who’d give me the time of day.”

  “I won’t allow it.”

  “Ha. I’m in charge, remember? Come or don’t; I know they’re not your favorite people ever. I’m going.” Setting her camera to record, she paused at the gangplank, accepting a long veil from a surprised-looking girl before marching aboard.

  A brief struggle played itself out on Tonio’s face before he followed.

  The Ualtarites were already gathered, kneeling on the foredeck in neat rows. Sophie took a spot at the back, shadowed by Tonio—who shot her a surprisingly angry glance as he folded himself into position.

  A tall woman in a silvery cloak stepped out in front of the gathering, commencing the service. She spoke a language Sophie not only didn’t know but didn’t find familiar at all.

  She propped her camera between her knees and imitated the listening pose of the true believers arrayed before her.

  Observations, she told herself. The Ualtarites were Caucasian, mostly, like the Tall. They were fair-skinned, but a few had epicanthic folds on their eyes … which was noteworthy, but probably irrelevant. Those congregants whose arms were bare had scars—patterned scars, so the injuries were made deliberately. Ritual scarring, maybe, to do with the faith?

  The ship was clean, very white, nothing out of place. And there was a recurring design motif … spiders. All their bolts and buttons had stylized spiders on them. The pattern on the priest’s vest was a web.

  Come to think of it, that’s what the rigging in that Y-shaped mast looks like: a loose spiderweb.

  Sophie had seen a shape like this during the storm, had glimpsed a ship out in all that blackness and thunder, a hull with an electrified branching Y reaching skyward.

  She turned her wrist, filming the deck, pausing to record the unusual design of the ship against the background of the busy wharf. The Y-shaped mainmast, with the rigging between its arms. Its mainsail was woven in as a spider might weave a web into a break in the branches of a tree. There was a looseness to the cords; when the wind blew, she imagined, the sails would bell out extravagantly, more like a hot air balloon than a traditional rig.

  She remembered the Verdanii ship they’d seen on Erinth, the one that seemed to have live trees as masts. It, like this split-mast ship, probably couldn’t be sailed safely at home. No, the strain on the arms of the Y would be too much, and how could they navigate? Could it tack?