“Easy, child—it’s all bluster,” Cly purred in her ear, before she could scream. “Affect a bored aspect, if you can.”
“Why does everyone here expect me to be some kind of actress?” she said.
“The art of the bluff—”
“Come on. It’s all just willy-waving.”
“Now you’re being coarse.”
The hand pushed up, up, lifting Nightjar’s bow out of the water, a meter, then two, then five. Gale’s crew grabbed for rails and rope. The cutter looked suddenly small, frail. She felt a real surge of fear, for the people aboard and for the ship, too.
As she watched, Tonio lost his balance, falling toward the stern. The bosun’s assistant, Sweet, caught him—lassoed him, practically—with a loop from one of the buntlines.
The ice face looked at them, inquiringly. “Shall I go on?”
“Sophie,” Cly said, “can you recover the inscription without your aunt’s ship?”
“No. Of course I need Nightjar. It’s got—”
“Shh, never mind what’s aboard. Enough that something is. Are you prepared to give them what they want? No matter the cost? You cannot fail.”
“Bram’s my baby brother,” she said. “I’d give them my eyes.”
“Understood.” Raising his voice, Cly said: “Bandit, I didn’t much care for the former owner of that vessel, and truth be told I have a legitimate grudge against her captain.”
“What’s that to me? Raise up blade to him! There’s plenty in Fleet would thank you for skewering the incorrigible Garland Parrish.”
Cly tsked, sounding regretful. “Because of my position … it would look ill if I challenged him.”
“T’would be murder, I suppose, but what care I?”
“If you can shake the flailer off Nightjar, you can have him and welcome. My concern begins and ends with my family. If the boy Bram were further harmed and my daughter’s heart broken…”
He’d very neatly implied that Bram was his son, Sophie noticed, without saying so.
“A vendetta would damage your almighty position,” Coine said.
“I am old enough to retire, young enough to pursue you, and rich enough to make a good chase of it.” Cly leaned forward, smiling, looking like the prospect of such a hunt would be a delight, a lark. “I have influence, Kir. I’ve spent a lifetime accumulating favors without collecting. You, your family, your treasure hoard, your health, your happiness—they are all at risk if you anger me. I’m reckoned by some an ill-tempered and vengeful fellow.”
“A vengeful judge?”
“Ask my wife if you doubt it.”
Coine laughed.
“Kir, I’ve been reining in the swampside of my spirit in for thirty years. I beg you, give me a reason to run wild.”
Sophie shivered. Is he bluffing? If he was, she couldn’t tell: Just then Cly looked as though he’d happily slice all comers in half, just to make sure every single one of them bled red.
John Coine’s enormous, icy face twitched a grin. “You’d make a good bandit, Banning.”
“Be glad my position fetters me.”
“We ain’t gonna kill your son, if she delivers.”
“You’re accused of word breaking. We require an intermediary for the exchange, someone of impeccable reputation,” he said. “And put down Nightjar, Kir—cheap theater is worse than none at all.”
The ice hand broke into shards, allowing the smaller ship to fall back to the surface of the ocean with a slap and a splash that made Sophie wince. Sawtooth’s deck rose, riding the wave of displaced water.
“The boy shall be taken to the Fleet and put aboard Sackcloth,” Coine said, and to Sophie’s relief he sounded disgruntled, as though he were truly giving up something he hadn’t wanted to. “He will remain until Kir Hansa delivers the ransom. You trust the flailers, don’t you?”
“Who doesn’t?”
“It will be done immediately.”
“He’d be safe enough with the monks,” Cly murmured to Sophie. “Will you agree to it?”
She nodded, relieved.
“On what surety, Coine?”
The ice figure rumbled, seeming to ponder. “Shall I give you my middle name?”
“Done,” Cly said.
“It’s Raille,” he said, and spelled it. “Of course, if Kir Hansa doesn’t pay, the boy will remain in the custody of Issle Morta.”
Issle Morta was Parrish’s home nation, Sophie thought. “For how long?”
“Unto death, child.”
“Hey—” Sophie began, but Cly put a hand on her arm.
“It’s agreed.” He turned to Sophie. “We can’t leave him with the Golden. It’s already been a day.”
“What does that mean?”
“How will Kir Hansa pay you?” Cly asked the talking iceberg.
A rowboat, also limned in ice, rose from the depths of the sea. It had a long rope coiled over its bow, and a skeleton laying across its seats. “Give Yacoura to Whitey here,” Coine said.
With that, he broke into a half dozen smaller chunks of ice. One fell to the deck of Sawtooth; the rest bobbed on the surface, a peculiar threat.
“I think we came out ahead there,” Cly said, his tone as mild as if he’d been trying to cadge a dinner reservation at an impossibly popular restaurant. “Would you like to continue your tour?”
“No!” she said. “I have to go back. Your ship’s great, Cly, and we’ll make time later, but I have to get back on task. I need to check in with Verena and Parrish.”
“I understand.” He gestured, and the sailors began signaling to each other across the water, converging so they could lay a plank between the ships again.
As she made to leave, he caught her hand.
“Sophie,” he said, “when I learned I was a father, my greatest fear was you would have been reared to reject and hate me. What Beatrice has done in hiding you; I can’t forgive it. But that she fostered you—that she left you free to make your own judgments about us both—I am grateful for that.”
“Grateful enough to not prosecute her?” She watched him closely, expecting him to waffle or make excuses: to say it was complicated, or up to the courts.
Instead, he gave her a trace of that hunter’s grin. “Not that grateful, no.”
“I guess it’s what you both do next that’s gonna matter.”
He nodded. “Your brother first. The rest of this domestic tangle can wait.”
She returned to Nightjar.
“Is the ship damaged?” she asked.
“No. How are you?” Parrish said.
Emotionally exhausted, she thought. “My brother’s kidnapped and I’m apparently evidence of fraud. And you knew.”
He nodded.
“Cly seems nice enough, for a combat lawyer.”
“I believe otherwise.”
“Did I ask?”
He didn’t reply, but of course she had.
“Did you tell him about your home nation?”
“I said I wouldn’t.”
He held out a sheet of curled paper. “I’ve tried drafting a fact sheet about the investigation into Gale’s death, one that doesn’t refer to Erstwhile or anything we can’t prove. I believe we might convince His Honor to rush it to the Fleet. That would leave us free to go directly after Yacoura.”
She looked over the series of bullet points. “On fourteen Maia, Gale Feliachild was set upon outside her sister’s home by two dagger-wielding men. The attack was interrupted by her niece, Sophie Hansa. On sixteen Maia, Lais Dariach of Tiladene survived a murder attempt which was prevented by Sophie Hansa.” She looked up. “This makes me sound…”
He raised his eyebrows, waiting.
“I’m no action hero, Parrish.”
“The facts are what they are,” he said.
“You skipped everything about Stele Island and the storm and jumped straight to the salvage ship, Estrel?”
“We believe the storm was magical; we cannot prove it.”
She read on.
“The weapon used in the attempt to murder Lais Dariach originated from the resident nation of Beatrice Feliachild, as attested by Sophie Hansa…”
“Is something else bothering you?”
“All this stuff that rests on my word,” she said. “It’s not like there’s forensics.”
“You saw Gale attacked, and you saw the grenade that almost killed Dariach. Your word as a witness is good.”
“I saw the storm.”
“You didn’t see Ascension, or any inscription related to the weather.”
“No.”
“All that matters is that Annela can deduce a link between Kir Dariach’s spider breeding, Ualtar, and the Golden’s quest for Yacoura.”
“Will this do it? It seems to me the Ualtarites have been successful in using Isle of Gold as a front … have they done anything that conclusively ties them to this? It’s all John Coine, center stage. He even gave up his middle name, just now.”
“That surprised me, too.” Parrish’s expression was grave. “The conspirators didn’t expect you to get involved. The Ualtarite and Coine attacked Gale in San Francisco because they thought that there nobody would know them. The Ascension had the lantern from Estrel, which you recognized. That connects them to Coine because Coine knows your name.”
“That’s a pretty thin connection.”
He nodded.
“I’d rather have a fingerprint from that woman, Maray, and a DNA test and some incriminating e-mails.” As she said the words, the edge of an idea came to her. Evidence. A little backup. Insurance.
“Given your father’s intervention, we now have no choice but to give Ualtar the Heart. Otherwise Bram will be on Issle Morta forever,” Parrish said.
“Is it awful there?”
“Dull,” he said. “I can’t imagine someone with Bram’s gifts being content. He’d have his life, but it might not hold much value.”
“We could magic him home, right?”
“No.” He didn’t elaborate, but the word had a finality that brooked no argument.
“Well, his life’s a start. Hang on, you said we had to give the Ualtarites the ransom? It’s John Coine asking for it.”
“I believe the Golden will hand Yacoura over to the Ualtarites. That way Coine can claim it’s not in his possession. That’s where they’ll be vulnerable. If we can witness the handover, or prove it…”
“What makes you think Ualtar will take it?”
“The Piracy’s goal for over a century has been to smash the inscription. Ualtar won’t trust them to show restraint.”
“Because they have a grudge against Temperance.”
“Yes.”
“Over all those ships of theirs it sank?”
“The raiders knew they were at hazard, I suppose,” Parrish said. “But there’s more. In the late days of the Piracy, when the Fleet consisted of twenty or thirty warships from Verdanii, Sylvanna, and Tallon and the other Founder nations, it had become less of a war and more of a mop-up operation. Spies would go out seeking the names of the Piracy’s ships. The names would be sent back to the captain of Temperance…”
“Who sank them from afar. Hardly a fair fight.”
“There was no sympathy for them,” Parrish said. “They’d been sinking ships and killing people, taking slaves, stealing, torturing, maiming those aboard. Still, imagine being afloat, knowing that at any second a person across the world might destroy you with a breath…”
“Sure, terrifying. I get that,” Sophie said.
“The Fleet wasn’t unmerciful. The Piracy had been ordered to keep their ships in harbor. Anything tied up was left alone. But there was an Isle of Gold ship that set sail, late one night, bound across the Nameless Deep through Harrow’s Bay. It was on a course that would have crossed a major merchant’s route, and though it had its name painted over and its figurehead wrapped in swaddling, there was nobody afloat, they say, who couldn’t recognize Lucre on sight. The merchants spotted her, though she was trying to avoid their notice, and sent word to the Watch, who sent word to Temperance’s captain, Paola Fratti.”
“And poof?”
“More of a smash, I imagine,” Parrish said. His gaze was fixed on the horizon. “She was bound for the nation of Allium, with a skeleton crew of forty, most of them elderly sailors. The Piracy had by that time lost many of its younger seafolk to the war. The ship was crammed to the gunnels with wounded, the sick, with aged widows and widowers, and children. There were more than seventy orphans.”
“Sick people and kids?” Sophie swallowed.
“The merchants were too far away to render assistance, or so they said. Accounts differ about whether they were not near enough to have helped, or simply chose not to. Sharks set upon everyone in the water. A single lifeboat with four survivors made it to the merchant fleet.”
She made herself focus on his face. She didn’t want to imagine it: the shrieks of the dying, the churn in the water. Blood. “Couldn’t they have appealed to the Fleet for safe passage before they set out? Why didn’t they tell someone they were sending out a medical ship?”
“They did,” Parrish said. “They were flying a no-threat flag, and Captain Fratti received the application for safe passage a mere hour after sinking the ship. She resigned her commission; perhaps a year later, she hanged herself. The Piracy surrendered without condition and the Raider’s War petered out shortly thereafter.”
“Basically, public opinion shifted when a bunch of dead orphans hit the news?”
He nodded. “It was felt at that point that the Piracy was broken. Lucre was the last casualty; when she went down, the Cessation began. The deaths softened feelings on both sides. Chroniclers generally agree that guilt over the massacre hastened the Pirate nations’ being admitted to the Fleet.”
A thrum ran through the ship, followed by a trio of little shocks, like the ticking of a clock.
“What’s that?”
Parrish let his eye roam over Sawtooth before answering. All seemed quiet over there, or what passed for quiet; the clash of judicial weaponry seemed to go on ceaselessly. “Come on,” he said, leading her below, descending to the very bottom of the hold.
Verena was there, holding her weird pewter pocket watch, looking put-upon—but then, when didn’t she look put upon?—and accompanied by an obviously furious Beatrice.
Their mother was clad in a pair of jeans and a sea-green cable-knit sweater, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail so tight that its few gray strands glinted like electrical wire. It enhanced her resemblance to Verena, while underlining for Sophie, once again, that her half sister was just a teen.
“Bodies are just piling up around you, aren’t they?” Beatrice wore the washed-out, puffy-eyed look of someone who had been crying hard. “I gave you a perfectly good start in life, but you just wouldn’t be satisfied.”
“I—” Sophie again felt that slap of rejection, and a surge of anger, too. “I didn’t mean to—”
“My sister’s dead!” Beatrice shouted.
“Kir,” Parrish said. “The Duelist-Adjudicator’s personal sailing vessel is a hundred feet off our starboard side.”
“Thank you for the warning, Parrish. I know you think my voice shrill, but it won’t carry quite that far.”
Verena said: “Do we have to turn Mom over to him?”
Beatrice had the opened warrant in her hand. “This rubbish document says I must present myself to the Fleet voluntarily at the first opportunity.”
“Banning is the Fleet, in a sense. But if he doesn’t know you’re aboard … may I?” Parrish read through the warrant. “I’m no lawyer, but I believe if we keep you belowdecks … I’m hoping to convince him to hurry back to Constitution to report the situation so far.”
Loopholes, Sophie thought again.
“What’s a few days in the brig?” Beatrice looked around the hold. “I detest this horrid old tub.”
“Did Verena tell you what we need?” Sophie said. “My brother, Yacoura, all that?”
&nbs
p; She slapped a small black case into Verena’s hand. “Tell your sister that what she needs is in here.”
“Uh…” Verena passed the case to Sophie. Their mother favored them both with a scorching glare.
Poor kid, Sophie thought. What a crummy position she’s in.
“So this is it, the Heart?” she said, making it a neutral comment, directed at anyone who wanted it. She realized she was a little surprised that her deduction had proved correct. The chain of logic she’d followed to the conclusion that Beatrice was hiding Yacoura had been solid enough, but some part of her had been poised, as always, for some kind of smackdown: Sloppy thinking, Sofe, shabby conclusion, failed result.
Despite everything, she felt a quiet and unexpectedly deep sense of satisfaction at having successfully girl-sleuthed part of the answer. “How’d you end up getting tapped to hide it?”
“Tapped?” Beatrice snorted. “Strong-armed, more like. The people on Tallon were afraid Gale would get captured by the pirates and tortured until she gave it up. This one”—she meant Parrish—“bullied me into letting them work the Legend on me before I went back home to San Francisco with the flute.”
Flute. Not the Heart itself then? Sophie opened her mouth to ask, but Beatrice rounded on Parrish. “This isn’t some big, soppy family reunion, Captain. Get me out of her sight, or her out of mine.” With that Beatrice swept past, clinging to Verena’s arm and thereby dragging her along.
“Talk about a grudge,” Sophie said. “She must have been in labor with me for four days.”
“I couldn’t say,” Parrish said.
“I wasn’t serious.”
He smiled weakly.
“So … you bullied her?”
“If she says so.” He shrugged. “She was the best candidate. The fact that her home was so remote … Gale’s hidden a few things in Beatrice’s basement, over the years. Are you in accord with keeping your mother hidden until she can turn herself in?”
“Of course. If it’s playing fair and all, why wouldn’t I?”
“I’ve reallocated the cabin you share with Bram to Beatrice, for discretion. I’ve moved your things to my cabin.”
“Where are you gonna sleep?”
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