Child of a Hidden Sea

by A. M. Dellamonica

  If Cly saw her struggling, he didn’t acknowledge it. “If you’d grown up at home, as you should, you’d have had a dancing instructor.”

  She clung to a little thread of outrage and used it to pull herself free of the morass. “And someone to teach me pianoforte? And embroidery?”

  He frowned at her crutch. “Fencing, in any case.”

  “I don’t think a bit of sword instruction could have prevented this.”

  “There’s more to fighting spirit than knowing how to slap a weapon about.”

  “I don’t want to learn fighting spirit. Knifing that sea monster was way up there on the list of yuck experiences of my life.”

  “You have a compassionate heart,” he said. “The oddity would have drowned you.”

  “Well,” she said, trying to lighten the mood, “dancing’s probably out, at least for now.”

  “No matter. What I truly wanted was privacy, or what passes for it,” he said. “I’ve been looking into the matter of your inheritance. You should consider claiming it.”

  “It’s not mine, it’s Verena’s.”

  He waved off this statement, as though it were a gnat. “Your mother was the one who inherited the courier position and the material wealth of her mother line. Gale Feliachild was merely her designated agent. There’s no reason why Verena cannot be yours.”

  “Why would I do that?” She pushed away the thought of Nightjar, the prospect of sailing her anywhere.

  “For the sake of the daughters you may have one day.”

  “I’ve known you a week and you’re lobbying for grandchildren? Holy crap, Cly—”

  “Mind your language,” he said.

  “You are so getting ahead of yourself.”

  He flashed that wolfish grin. “Quite right, my dear. Focus on the discussion at hand. The Feliachild estate.”

  “Me snatching the inheritance would be a slap in Verena’s face, Cly. Gale didn’t want that, Beatrice doesn’t want it. And you’re just advising me to hand it over to her anyway, so what’s the difference?”

  “You might yet become a woman of Verdanii. That’s a significant position in this society. Vastly more important than their trinket of a government job or that appalling scow Nightjar.”

  “Hey!” she objected.

  “After all you’ve you’ve done for the Cessation these past weeks, you’re entitled to something.”

  “I’m not entitled to Verena’s life.”

  “It’s not right. You shouldn’t be nobody.”

  “I’m not nobody!”

  Like that, the hint of fury vanished. “No, of course not. Forgive me.”

  She wobbled on her unsteady leg so that she was facing him, balancing by leaning on his upper arms, almost a dance position after all. “Listen, Cly. I don’t know the Verdanii, but what I’ve observed about their society, so far, makes it seem kind of … bizarrely screwed up.”

  He pealed laughter, startled.

  “This primogeniture thing is a case in point. And the whole tough woman thing … Annela reamed Beatrice out for crying over Gale, and they apparently treat their men badly. But that’s a side issue. I’m just not gonna do it. There may be all kinds of advantages and I understand that Beatrice broke the law, and that what she did to you was very hurtful—”

  “What she did to us.” That steel and coldness again.

  “Yeah. If she’d made different choices, everything would be different. But we can’t punish Verena for that. I’m not ripping her life out from under her, I’m just not. Get it?”

  He was statue-still for a painfully long stretch of time. His smile, when it came, was tight. “You have an admirable sense of honor.”

  She could feel an answering smile breaking over her face. “I’ll take that over pianoforte and fighting spirit any day.”

  “I respect your position,” he said. “But it is a shame. It would give your assertions more weight in Convene if you weren’t an outlander.”

  A flutter of nerves. “What about your nation? Can’t I say I’m yours?”

  “Oh, Sophie Hansa.” He wrapped her in a sudden hug, an almost shocking burst of warmth. “I will be honored to claim you as a child of Sylvanna, but that can’t be done overnight. There’s a paternity assertion, a formality, obviously—”

  “Hang on. Sylvanna? You’re Sylvanner? Isn’t that the big pharma island?”

  “The … Big Farm?”

  “Sorry. The Stele Islanders told me that Sylvanners are … well, patent thieves, I guess.”

  “The wealthy and industrious are always envied by the less fortunate,” he said. “But—”

  “Swimmers ahoy!” shouted several of the kids.

  The musicians struck up a suspenseful riff, the low strings of their instruments humming like something from a horror movie sound track.

  “Here they come,” Cly said.

  The dance dissolved as the young officers rushed to the rail to cheer their classmates.

  “This is the part where we elders look officially disapproving,” Cly said. A dimple quivered in his cheek.

  “Elders. I’m elder?”

  “Just don’t cheer.”

  The students hurled a sturdy net over the rail, transforming it into an improvised rope ladder. Shouting cadets obscured it, leaning over, shouting in a dozen languages, who knew how many variations on “Go!” and “Swim!”

  “There’s a woman I’ve requested for the Judiciary,” Cly said. “I’m hoping she … ah, no such luck.”

  A young man, lithe, muscled and shivering, hurled himself onto the deck.

  “One!” roared the cadets.

  A teenaged girl—the one Cly had been rooting for, from his expression—was perhaps five seconds behind.

  “Two!”

  Maybe half a minute later: “Three!” The bronze went to a magically altered, moon-pale cadet with fish scales and fins, who had climbed the rope ladder—and had presumably swum—with a net full of stones tied to its belt.

  Sophie said, “So your girl came second?”

  “The odds that she’d beat Fessler were never that good,” Cly replied. He waved the young woman over. She came, wrapped in a heavy towel, and bowed deeply.

  “Nicely done, Kir Zita,” Cly said.

  “Thank you, Your Honor!” She was shivering, but his praise clearly meant the world.

  “Four! Five!” The cadets shouted, as two more of their classmates came over the side.

  “May I present my daughter? Kir Sophie Hansa.”

  The young woman—Zita—waited a beat, as if she expected something more, one more bit of information, before dipping her head again. “Honored, Kir.”

  “Um, likewise, Kir.” Where I’m from. It should have been Sophie Hansa of somewhere. That’s what he means by position. “You made good time,” she added.

  “The Slosh isn’t much of a race in weather like this,” Zita said.

  “Count yourself lucky, child,” Cly said. He had somehow made one of the waitstaff appear with a hot bready thing and a tray of what smelled like brandies. “You’ll have plenty of chances to risk yourself if you’re called to the bar.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Six!”

  The music began anew.

  “Please, join your friends,” Cly said. “I’ll make an opportunity to talk with you later.”

  Zita bowed, towelling her hair briskly, and trotted over to a waiting girl in a garment like a sari, kissing her roundly on the lips before pulling her out onto the dance floor.

  No “don’t ask, don’t tell” here, Sophie thought, pleased. And Cly likes her, so he’s not some bigtime homophobe. She scanned the crowd for Bram. He was doing the same math as her, for once—he tipped her a pleased-looking salute. The cadets and their dates began the dance, the youngest of them looking adorable and oh-so-young in their grown-up clothes.

  Socializing and chit-chat. This was what Beatrice couldn’t handle, if Cly was telling the truth: night after night of polite, shallow conversation.
She leaned on the rail. The strained muscles in her thigh twinged.

  Dancing’s definitely out, she thought. And I need to sneak away and look up Sylvanna in the big book of Stormwrack nations, too … oh, it’s still on Nightjar, well, I guess I can ask Beatrice and Verena …

  Yeah, because they won’t be biased.

  “Seven!” Some of the swimmers were still coming in.

  A few cries of consternation. Was someone hurt?

  “Sofe, watch out!”

  That was Bram.

  She didn’t have time to absorb his words. Cly thrust her behind him, practically tossed her, a shove so abrupt she fell on her butt on the deck. His sword whisked out of its scabbard with a rasp. Its cutting edge seemed to be made of a slick, blood-colored stone, and there were bone-white letters, in spellscrip, on its haft.

  He squared off against two men, both dressed as waiters. One, Sophie saw with an ugly jolt, was John Coine. He looked worn out, older than she remembered; there were dark circles under his eyes and age spots on his hands. His hair had a dried-out, burnt look to it.

  The other fake waiter was a stranger, a shortish man, square of face, and faintly swollen-looking. He had a sword out, too, clutched in a hand whose thumb was tightly bandaged.

  If Cly stepped back, he’d trample her. Sophie slid backward, clearing some space, and looked ’round for something blunt she could swing, if needed.

  In his left hand, Coine held a tray of canapes, shrimp on crackers.

  In his right was a pistol—big, modern and black.

  Tech from home, like the grenade that almost killed Lais, thought Sophie.

  The cadets on deck had cleared away from the stand-off. Some looked curious, as though they thought this was some bit of performance art in honor of their graduation. Others, including the boy who’d won the Slosh, were casting about for weapons. A gray-haired waiter with the bearing of an admiral was directing the celebrants and their civilian escorts up to a higher deck, sending the youngest up first. The circle around Cly, Sophie, Coine, and the fourth man was getting bigger.

  “Nobody need die here,” Cly said. “You can’t hope to achieve your goal now that you’ve been spotted.”

  Coine looked past Cly to Sophie. “What about this? She agrees to keep her silence, Kir, or I’ll blast out your heart.”

  “I will not be used in such a way,” Cly said, tone careless. “Fire the musket, Kir.”

  “Very brave.”

  “Cly,” Sophie objected. “Unless you’re bulletproof—”

  “My child will not give in to blackmail.” Cly’s words rang like hammer blows; the man with the cutlass stepped back.

  John Coine wasn’t as easily impressed. “She did before, didn’t she?”

  “Shoot, Coine, if you must. Bramwell, collect your sister and return her to your family.” Cly took two steps forward, stepping so close to Coine that the gun was mere inches from his chest. He knocked the canape tray away. “Go ahead. Assassinate me. See what becomes of you.”

  “No!” Sophie shouted. Bram was at her side now, helping her regain her feet.

  “Sofe—”

  “He’ll get shot!”

  “This is all about stopping you from talking to the Convene,” he said. “Cly’s right. If you’re gone, their threat won’t—”

  A blur, from above. Coine had been about to say something and then he was—what had happened? Clumsiness and her injury slowed Sophie as she wrestled Bram, fighting to see.

  It was Parrish. He’d leapt on John Coine from the upper deck, or the sail—

  Was he hurt?

  No, the gun hadn’t gone off. He had the pistol, in fact, and was wrestling Coine.

  The guy with the cutlass had taken two healthy steps back from Cly, toward the rail. His expression and body language said he was terrified … and yet he didn’t drop the weapon.

  Cly advanced, sweeping his arm up and around, seeming to try to catch the other blade, to disarm his opponent.

  The guy screamed … but then parried the swing easily. He stared at Cly across the X of their crossed weapons, and his expression was one of sheer surprise.

  “Interesting,” Cly murmured. He thrust again, and was again blocked. The swordsman was sweating heavily; his face was greasy, but the color of his skin, which was ruddy, did not change in the slightest.

  “John Coine,” Parrish said, voice carrying over the clash of swords, “you will be confined by the Watch and examined by same, on my authority as a—”

  A cacophony of shouts interrupted him. Warnings, Sophie thought. Warning who?

  “Sofe, we’re going. You’re not safe,” Bram repeated.

  “Stop!” someone yelled. One of the graduates?

  “Stay there!”

  “Wait, just wait—ah, no!”

  A young officer candidate in wet breeches climbed up on deck, more or less stumbling right into the swordfight.

  “Nine,” he called, surveying the scene in confusion. “What’s going on?”

  The swordsman lunged for the kid. To use him as a human shield?

  He didn’t make it that far. Cly attacked again. As the swordsman came ’round to block the swing, he slipped in close, caught his opponent’s wrist, and snapped the whole of his arm, elbow first, down against Constitution’s rail.

  The shock of the crunch, as the arm broke backward at the elbow, was so intense that Sophie felt the impact through the deck.

  With a moan, the man dropped his weapon and curled up at Cly’s feet.

  By now, Parrish had John Coine bound and was searching his pockets.

  His eyes searched the deck for her. “You’re all right, Sophie?”

  “Not a scratch on me.”

  Bram gave up tugging her arm. He pointed at the shaking, disabled swordsman. “That’s the guy you saw on Erinth.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Sophie said.

  “It—” he frowned, looking again. “It looks like him.”

  “I’m the one who broke his nose back home, and I say it’s not.”

  “His nose is recently broken,” Parrish observed.

  “Is that why his face looks puffy?”

  Sophie shook off Bram’s grip, picked a linen napkin off the deck, and limped to Cly’s side.

  “What is it, child?”

  “Cly, please stop calling me child. I’m checking for concealer. Makeup.” She reached for the man’s face, then balked when he whimpered. “Sorry, I’m sorry, but—”

  Cly whisked the napkin out of her hand and rubbed it over the oily-looking skin of his nose, none too gently. The bound man wailed.

  “Stop, it’s hurting him!”

  “You’re right,” Cly said. Pinkish smears covered the cloth, and now the bruising on the swordsman’s nose was obvious.

  “See? Bram said. “It is him. It’s the other guy who attacked Gale.”

  “It’s not,” Sophie said.

  Parrish interrupted. “Let’s discuss it somewhere secure. You’re too exposed here.”

  “He’s right,” Cly began, but before they could bundle her away, John Coine and the other man both coughed once, in peculiar unison. As one, they let out a long breath, a shaking hack of air torn from raw throats.

  Their bodies went rigid, spines curving like bows. The skin of Coine’s forearms bulged against the neat loops of ropes Parrish had tied around them. The swordsman’s eyes streamed tears, further streaking his greasepaint, cutting tracks across his cheeks and revealing more bruised flesh.

  Their eyes rolled up in their skulls, and then their bodies went slack as they died.

  CHAPTER 25

  “Okay, I know this is an obvious question and I’m only asking because I’m hoping to be wrong so wrong, but did those two guys just drop…”

  “Dead? Yes.” Cly scanned the dance floor, then reached out to draw Parrish back to Sophie’s side, sandwiching her between him and Bram.

  “How? I mean, they just keeled!” How many people had died since she had been here? The innocent fishers
on Stele Island, the Estrel crew …

  “They’ve been scripped to death,” Parrish said. “To keep them from talking, one assumes.”

  “Return Sophie to Convenor Gracechild, Bramwell,” Cly said. “Now, please.”

  “Okay. Come on, Sofe.”

  “You can just do that, just write a spell and make someone die? You, Verena, anyone, they can just … Bram, you said you didn’t give them your middle name, right?”

  “It’s you whose name is out there, remember?” Bram and Parrish were obeying Cly, half supporting her weight as they dragged her back amidships.

  “Deathscrips are rarities, Sophie, if it helps,” Parrish said. “Writing one is a capital offense.”

  “Why would that make it any better? This is a terrible, stupid, horrible place! And anyway, why come after me at this Slosh-thing if they could just zap me remotely?”

  “The Watch might find and destroy the inscription, for one thing.”

  “Pardon?” she stopped in her tracks, sending jolts of pain shooting from her injured leg.

  “What you saw works like any other inscription. If it were to be destroyed, Coine would revert.”

  “Revert. Be alive again. Poof!”

  “Yes.”

  “So then he and the other guy they sent to attack me—”

  “Sands,” Bram said.

  “It wasn’t Sands,” Sophie and Parrish said simultaneously.

  Cly, who had caught up with them by now, frowned.

  “Nobody’s going to turn the Fleet inside out looking for deathscrips for two would-be murderers,” Parrish said.

  “No? They threatened Cly. He’s a big shot, isn’t he? Couldn’t we call it an assassination attempt and get this supposedly all-powerful Watch off its butt—”

  “Mind your tongue,” Cly said, and it was obvious he was biting off another “child.”

  She planted her feet against the three men’s apparently relentless urge to haul her off to an armored panic room. “You see my point, though, don’t you? If ripping up the inscriptions that killed them would bring John Coine and the other guy back, we could get them to tell the Convene what they know.”