Child of a Hidden Sea

by A. M. Dellamonica

  “Come on,” Bram said. “Let’s get you off that leg and we can tell each other everything.”

  A bit of prowling revealed that Constitution had a mess aft, a fancy dining lounge. They ate toasted muffins and poached heron eggs off china, and watched from cushy chairs as Cly’s sail got bigger and bigger. The ship had a flag out to signal for a ride—as soon as they were close, three of the little ferries started zooming toward them, racing one other for the fare.

  Sophie said. “Let’s see if Beatrice and Cly managed to sail to Tiladene and warn Lais Dariach without killing each other.”

  Using the telephoto on her camera, she could see her mother and Verena catching the ferry, making for Constitution at full sail. Sawtooth went on to take a position among an array of vessels all flying the Judiciary flag. Ascension, since she wasn’t a Rep ship, sailed to a rendezvous farther back, midway through the Fleet.

  Annela and Parrish turned up on the elevator platform at about the same time as Sophie and Bram. Beatrice spilled out first, more or less collapsing into Annela’s arms with a wail.

  “What kept you?” Annela said, over her shoulder, as she patted her … cousin? “Sophie said you set out for the Fleet days ago.”

  “Tiladene is under blockade,” Verena said. “They wounded that friend of Sophie’s.”

  “Lais?”

  “We smuggled him aboard Sawtooth and then Cly bullied his way past an Ualtarite ship’s captain who tried to stop us—”

  “Is the Tiladene badly hurt?” Annela asked.

  “Yeah. Cly has an amazing doctor aboard his yacht, because of the dueling. But he says it’ll take magic to save him.”

  “Oh, dry your eyes, Beatrice—it’s unseemly.”

  “You pack away the stiff upper lip bull, Annie,” Beatrice said. “Or I will howl down this deck.”

  Annela sighed. “All of you, follow me.”

  She led them down to the lower decks, to a black-painted hallway and an unmarked door. Before opening it, she added, in a whisper to Sophie, “Don’t babble at him, child. It’ll confuse matters.”

  Sophie stared at her, rattled. “Babble? I don’t think ‘babble’ is fair—”

  “Answer yes or no if you’re spoken to, and otherwise let me do the talking,” she snapped.

  “Let her be,” Beatrice said. “You’re not the Allmother yet.”

  Annela straightened to her full, regal height and swept into a room so simple that, after the dramatics in the corridor, it seemed a bit of a letdown. The room resembled a Puritan one-room schoolhouse, or maybe a prison lecture hall: hard wooden chairs facing a lectern, no ornamentation at all. A single individual sat at a long desk. He had Asian features, long black hair, a black robe, and a grim expression that seemed at one with the decor.

  “What trouble have you brought the Watch now, Convenor Gracechild?” He droned the words.

  Annela gestured at the hard chairs and, when everyone was seated, approached the lectern. “I bring the courier from Erstwhile and various members and servants of my family, Kir, to report on a situation that endangers the Cessation.”

  “What a relief,” he said. “I thought you’d merely come to squabble beyond my door.”

  Sophie couldn’t help it; she chortled. The man harpooned her with a look.

  “Go ahead, Convenor.”

  Speaking quickly, Annela filled him in on everything, the attack on Gale, the storms, the threats on Erinth, the events on Tallon and after.

  The black-garbed man made notes and didn’t quite yawn, and when Annela finished he said, “Matters affecting the Cessation of Hostilities require a hearing before a section of the Convene. I shall prepare summons. Can anyone vouch for the honor of the two outlanders?”

  Parrish rose. “Both of the Kirs Hansa can be trusted to tell the truth.”

  A snort. “A recommendation from you, Parrish, can hardly be acceptable. Does nobody know them better?”

  Silence.

  Bram elbowed Verena, but she looked away.

  The man let out a wet, congested snort, as if this was a conspiracy, drummed up to add to the pile on his desk. “Do the outlanders at least comprehend that no mention of Erstwhile will be tolerated in Committee?”

  Parrish looked at Sophie, who nodded. Bram followed her lead. “They do, Kir.”

  He fixed them with a hostile gaze. “If you are asked about any matter touching upon your homeland, your response is to be ‘I cannot say.’”

  “One other thing,” Annela said.

  “Yes, Convenor?”

  “It’s my understanding that the girl’s full name is known to people of the nations so accused. And Kir Bramwell Hansa was in the hands of the Golden for a time.”

  “So you say.”

  “You better not say he’s lying,” Sophie said, grabbing Bram’s hand and holding it up, to show off the pearl embedded under his thumb.

  This earned another snort. “You’re speaking out of turn, girl.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him how much she cared about that, but Annela thundered: “Sit down now, Sophie!”

  Bram pulled his hand loose and gave her a tug. She wobbled back into her seat.

  Annela continued: “I want a writ saying that should any contributing witness to these events suffer critical harm or be rendered speechless, their assertions will be read into the record as fact, unchallenged.”

  “Agreed. I’ll inform the requisite parties when I make up the summons.” His tone made it clear they were dismissed.

  “Gee, thanks for sticking up for us,” Bram said to Verena as the hatch slammed shut behind them.

  “Couldn’t,” she said. “If he’d grilled me about how I knew I could trust Sophie, or how I got to know her at all, I’d have had to tell him about Gale’s purse and the inheritance mess. It’d make her look worse—dishonorable, you know.”

  That damned purse. Sophie fought an urge to point out, again, that she hadn’t known the thing would imprint on her like some kind of gosling. “So what happens now?”

  “They’ll summon a handful of Convenors,” Annela said. “The group of you must convince them that there’s a tie between the Golden and the Ualtarites, that the Ualtarites put this scheme together and are probably in possession of Yacoura.”

  “Won’t that essentially accomplish what the Ualtarites want?” Sophie said. “They want the Fleet to know they’ve got the Heart—they want to threaten to break it, and Temperance, so they can roll over the Tiladenes.”

  “They need deniability,” Annela said. “It’s a tangle of law and honor, and I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “Yeah. Complicated stuff like that is just beyond me.” Having Bram back, knowing that Verena was safe, had made the threat of war seem vastly less important.

  Annela ignored her remark. “Isle of Gold has a claim of sorts on the Heart, because of the sinking of Lucre. They’ve pursued it openly for many years. They can argue that their search for it is a matter of honor. Ualtar has no such claim; if they sought Yacoura, their only reason could be to break the peace, and…”

  “And that just makes them look bad?”

  “Don’t act superior. Beatrice tells me that public opinion drives policy in the outlands, too,” Annela said.

  “The two nations need each other, but they won’t want to admit it,” Bram said. “Like a secret marriage.”

  “Yes,” Annela said. “The Golden also won’t wish to concede that they needed help to get the Heart … We might use their pride against them.”

  “So how many people are we going to be addressing?” Sophie said.

  “The minimum for an emergency Convene is twelve representatives. According to tradition, we need equal representation from the port and starboard sides of the government,” Annela said.

  Twelve people. That didn’t sound so bad. Sophie stepped out onto the maindeck of Constitution, taking in a deep breath of the clean, cold air. “We can do that.”

  Annela gave her a look that bespoke grave doubts.<
br />
  “It’s session break.” Beatrice spoke for the first time. “Won’t they be hard put to scrape up a dozen Convenors?”

  “Normally, yes. But it’s graduation.”

  “Is it?” Something complicated passed over Parrish’s face. Unhappiness?

  Ten or twelve people.

  It’s time I got over the weird stage fright, Sophie told herself. If I can do this, going home and defending my thesis should be easy.

  Bram squeezed her hand, as if he knew what she was thinking.

  “I’ll do what I can to prepare you,” Annela said. “But first, I’ve got to see who I can find for a session. Stay on Constitution. Parrish, keep them in order, will you?”

  With that, she vanished back down into the bowels of the ship, leaving Sophie with Bram, Parrish, Beatrice, and Verena.

  Verena elbowed their mother, who gritted her teeth.

  Then she asked: “Sophie. Why are you limping?”

  “I had some trouble retrieving the Heart. And … your octopus died. I’m sorry.” She fumbled in her things, coming up with the flute, offering it back.

  Beatrice took it, looking it over with a fond eye. “I expect if I called, we’d rustle up another one.”

  “Is that what’ll happen, if we get Yacoura back? You’ll call another octopus and it’ll make off with it again?”

  “No, probably not. The Legend about its disappearance came to a natural close when you retrieved it. The Fleet will take custody.”

  Sophie bit her lip. “Listen, I’m sorry about the … about the whole legal mess.”

  “About my being arrested?” A bitter half-smile. “Verena’s been trying to convince me I made my own bed there. She says you’re fundamentally softhearted, that if I’d told you my neck was on the line instead of ‘screeching like a banshee…’—that is how you put it?”

  Verena stared at the floor, clearly embarrassed at being quoted.

  “She says you’d have left well enough alone.”

  “Uh…” She was at once grateful for Verena’s support and unsure that it was true that she could have been dissuaded so easily from looking into her background. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you and Cly talked out your issues?”

  At the mention of Cly’s name, Beatrice stiffened.

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  “How would you have felt,” Beatrice asked, “if you’d found your parents in … back in the outlands, and your father had turned out to be the guy who pushes the button in the gas chamber?”

  “I—” He’s a lawyer. A judge, Sophie thought, but she remembered again, his voice: Do you fight? And there was what he’d said to the pirate, too: I’m reckoned by some ill-tempered.

  What did you say to that?

  Beatrice continued: “What if his title was Lord High Executioner, rather than Duelist-Adjudicator? Wouldn’t that bring you up short? Give you a bit of a chill?”

  “This is … a different place,” Sophie said. “I don’t know if that’s a fair comparison.”

  “The Dueling Deck is where the Fleet shunts its—” Beatrice broke off abruptly, her gaze drawn over Sophie’s shoulder.

  Cly was there, standing in a shaft of moonlight, beaming at Sophie.

  Its what? Its fighters? Its killers?

  Beatrice turned away.

  “Sophie, is this your brother?”

  “Uh … yes. Bram, this is Clydon Banning. Cly, my brother Bramwell Hansa.”

  Cly bowed. “Your sister is devoted to you. This tells me you are a man of great worth.”

  “Thanks,” said Bram. He didn’t quite bow back, but he bobbed his head, the way Tonio sometimes did.

  “Cly, is Lais okay?” Sophie said.

  “Your dissolute spider breeder? Shattered pate. I’ve transferred him to Allium’s primary hospital ship,” he said. “If he’s to live, they’ll have to scrip him. Sophie, I’d like to escort you to the Fleet Graduation.”

  “Uh—”

  “Unless, that is, your mother would like to complete her analysis of my character.”

  Whatever it was, Beatrice wasn’t prepared to say it to his face.

  Okay, they’re under stress, it’s exactly the kind of situation where people are gonna be acting like jerks. Cut them some slack. “I can’t believe you guys were ever married.”

  “It was a source of wonder to two nations and all who knew us,” Cly said, with every appearance of good humor, as he offered her his arm.

  “You’re injured,” he said, as they made their way toward the bow.

  “Pulled some muscles. It’s healing.” Constitution was coming up behind Temperance, closing the distance between them.

  “So that’s the pirate-sinker,” she said, changing the subject. “Its hull—is that skin? It looks like there’s a healed scar.”

  “Very perceptive. It’s sharkskin over stonewood,” Cly said. Unlike the other ships, Temperance had smokestacks instead of sails. It had what looked like a cannon deck, too.

  “The Tallon designer who built her had lost her family and husband to the Piracy,” Cly said. “The ugliness of the ship, I’ve always thought, bespeaks the fundamental nature of revenge.”

  “That’s poetic of you.”

  “What’s odd is that so much good came of it.” He gestured at the Fleet. “She’s a brute instrument, and yet the Cessation has been of indisputable benefit.”

  The Cessation. That was what was at stake now. “A hundred years of peace, right?”

  “One hundred and nine.” He nodded. “The tales from the century before describe a world at the height of savagery. Nations wiped off their home islands, populations eliminated to the last child, by better armed raiders. No ship sailing alone was safe, and when they were taken … well, anything might happen to the people aboard. The seas bear silent witness, we sometimes say.”

  “All at risk, now.”

  “I have faith in you, child,” he said. “In the future of the Fleet, too.”

  They were looking down upon the main deck now. There were uniformed kids down there, perhaps sixty of them. The youngest was about twelve, Sophie guessed, the eldest maybe eighteen. They wore red jackets and white gloves and most of them had brought dates, some of whom were dressed in civilian clothes from, presumably, a variety of nations. The variety of clothing designs gave the sight a TV science fiction feel: as if this were Star Trek’s idea of a senior prom in space. All that was missing was a few people with latex forehead prosthetics.

  Waiters in livery moved among them; they were the oldest people there. Otherwise, the deck was entirely clear of adults. The gathering nearly sizzled with an air of anticipation. The kids kept casting looks over the bow. Sophie paused, following their gaze into blackness. Seeing nothing, she scanned the upper decks. Bram and Parrish were on a higher deck, overlooking the same scene amid a crowd of gray-haired officers.

  Parrish’s handsome face had that carved and closed look, as if he were more statue than man, as he took in the gathering. Then he looked out over the bow, his attention snapping forward like a cat’s, watching for the same thing they were.

  A burst of light. A flare, Sophie supposed at first, but it had wings and a sparking fan of a tail. Flapping upward, expanding, it cast blue-green light on a raft crowded with figures, perhaps a half kilometer away. Eight people … ten? The lightbird rose, growing ever brighter, and then shrieked as it began to fade. The cry was a signal, like a starter’s pistol. The figures dove into the water.

  The uniformed kids on Constitution’s foredeck began shouting and cheering.

  A race Sophie checked her watch. If the distance was five hundred meters and Constitution was the finish line, they’d be at least five or six minutes.

  “This is the graduating class of the Fleet Universitat,” Cly said. “The officer candidates.”

  “And the swimmers?”

  “The ten of them out there, racing to Constitution, are at the top of the class. The tradition is to finish out the year with this race, and
a dance. Then they’re each posted to a ship.”

  “If it’s a graduation, shouldn’t their instructors be down there?”

  “Officially, the Slosh—the race—isn’t allowed. Now and then someone does drown,” Cly said. “Any instructor on deck would be obliged to forbid it.”

  Another faintly uncivilized custom, she thought. They were casual about death here in a way she just couldn’t like.

  Her thoughts turned to Beatrice’s unfinished statement about Cly. What if she’d discovered her father was an executioner, she’d asked. The Judiciary was where the Fleet kept its … what? Warriors?

  “Adults only step on deck after it’s too late to prevent the race. Which is now. Shall we?” He offered her his arm, nodded to a guard, and escorted her past the rope.

  “I’m not dressed for a ball, Cly,” she said, thinking momentarily of the white gown the Conto had given her, and the use she’d been putting it to.

  “No one will care unless you do.”

  She concentrated on not falling down and, when they reached the bottom of the staircase, she glanced back up at Bram. He conferred with Parrish briefly, then set off down the stairs on his own.

  “Parrish won the Slosh in his year, back when he was a rising star,” Cly said.

  “Your Honor, Your Honor!” Dazzled-looking graduates were bowing at them as they progressed through the throng.

  He replied with affable greetings and handshakes: “Congratulations! Well done. Good for you, Kir.” He seemed to know all their names.

  It was oddly like going out with a celebrity, to a movie premiere or some other grand Hollywood event.

  “Do you dance, Sophie?” He indicated a quartet of musicians with string instruments, who were setting up on a small bandstand.

  “That depends,” she said.

  “On?”

  “If it’s something waltzy or more Pride and Prejudice.”

  He smiled. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “I can fake a waltz. If it’s two lines of people passing each other back and forth—” She pantomimed what she imagined was a Regency dance move.

  “The first dance usually takes that form.”

  “I’ve never done that … but I’m good at picking things up. If I watched for a few minutes I’d probably be okay.” She hesitated, and her imagination helpfully supplied footage of the two of them dancing, birth father and daughter. A swell of difficult-to-identify emotions assailed her. Was this sadness? Relief? Gratitude?