A Daughter of No Nation

by A. M. Dellamonica

“I have been in this trap before,” he said suddenly. “Grappling with someone who could not, would not be pleased, who seemed to imagine I could simply wave my hand and change the world, who otherwise was determined to be miserable and make me so.”

  “I’m not out to make you miserable!”

  “No?” Bitterness there.

  “But slave ownership is pretty much a deal breaker.”

  “Pretty much?”

  “I’m not going to sail around Stormwrack letting people think I’m okay with owning people.”

  He sheathed the sword. “I suppose there’s no injustice in the outlands. This paradise you come from…” He mastered himself. “Forgive me—I slept poorly.”

  “Cly, I don’t want to hurt you. I am sorry. This whole … mess, it’s my fault. If I’d learned more about Sylvanna, I’d never have got your hopes up.”

  “You’re generous to say so. Were you kept from learning more?”

  “Even if I was, it’s my fault for not trying harder. Parrish encouraged me to notice. I’m supposed to be observant.”

  “Fairly spoken. For my part, I should have ensured that you knew.” He gritted the words out. “Will you honor our contract at least?”

  No, she thought. “I’ve got a day to think about it?”

  A curt nod. He looked so closed off, so armored against rejection, and she remembered the first time she’d seen him, aglow with delight at the mere fact of her existence. That bright smile, that first hug …

  Could this really be him manipulating her? Or was he hurting, as anyone would be? Her heart went out to him.

  “What can I do? Tell me, ch—Sophie.”

  “Tell me some things.”

  “Such as?”

  She thought of Parrish, trying to hint at it. He’d kept talking about the two factions within the government: the port side and starboard side. She thought back to her appearance at the Convenor, six months before. “It’s half, isn’t it? Half the nations. Not some lunatic fringe like Ualtar and the Piracy.”

  “Yes, half the nations of the Fleet are bonded.”

  “Tell me,” she said, forcing herself to walk over to the table where they’d taken coffee the day before. “I’m ready to listen.”

  Over the course of the next hour, she drew a picture of the Fleet’s constitutional history from him.

  When the Fleet had been a mere dozen ships, chasing bandits around the Nine Seas, he told her, the free nations had been willing to hold their noses and ally with anyone willing to go up against the Piracy. As it got bigger and their leadership started laying the foundation for what eventually became the international government, the issue of slavery had been a sticking point.

  By then, Cly said, a number of the smallest and most vulnerable of the free nations had all but beggared themselves to join the peacekeeping force. They’d built ships they could ill afford, contributed sailors who should have been home fishing or farming. Those destitute countries had pushed hard for a compromise. It wasn’t merely a matter of losing valuable goods and personnel on the oceans, not for the lesser nations. In many cases, stopping the raids meant their very survival.

  Sophie believed him. The first nation she’d seen upon coming to Stormwrack, Stele Island, had consisted of a few little fishing villages clinging to the side of an inhospitable rock. A raid on a place like that could reduce the number of healthy, able fishers below the level where a village could feed itself, dooming the survivors to slow death by starvation.

  The first thing they’d told her about themselves had been: “We keep our place in the Fleet.”

  After the pirates were cowed, all the seagoing nations had convened and written up a constitution. Article One had stated that every nation was sovereign and could make its own laws on its own soil and within its territorial waters.

  Making the transport of slaves outside of those waters illegal had come next. It hadn’t been a hard sell. Abducting and transporting people was the backbone of the Piracy’s economy. Even the slavers agreed they had to be stopped. So there was a human dignity and right-to-freedom clause.

  Finally, each country also got a concession—a single provision of the Fleet Compact that didn’t apply to them.

  “So the constitution says there’s no slavery, but the bonded nations use the territorial sovereignty and their concessions to ignore the right to freedom and dignity?”

  Cly nodded. “It was an ingenious suggestion. The free nations were getting a gift, and they knew it. The portside governments had to exclude Article Two, but those to starboard got to pick whatever concession benefited them most. It made the whole Compact easier to swallow. In reference to any given sticking point, negotiators could say: “Don’t like it? Let that be your concession.”

  They’d built their entire government on a loophole.

  No wonder everyone spends so much time bashing things out in court, Sophie thought.

  The history discussion sanded the edge off the tension between them, though Sophie continued to watch for Nightjar. It was easier than looking at Cly.

  By now they were passing ships bound out toward the Fleet and other places from Sylvanna. One came alongside to deliver a bundle of mail. When it was sorted, a cadet sailor approached. “Mail, Kir.” He handed Cly several sealed envelopes.

  “Thank you, Jonno.” Cly looked at the pages and bowed to Sophie. “We can talk later?”

  She nodded and he strode off.

  “One for you, Kir.” The boy held out one last little billet.

  The letter was from Beatrice.

  Sophie, it began, in English.

  “No ‘dearest child’ here,” she muttered.

  I’ve just learned how my cousin Annela has roped you into this scheme to get me off of Breadbasket. I suppose I ought to thank you (and I do want to go home) but I want you to know this wasn’t my idea. If they’d told me, I’d never have agreed.

  Since you’re at sea with Clydon now, I will say that you’re not in danger. You don’t need to be afraid of your father, and if you’re with him, you shouldn’t need to fear anyone else. But he wants something from you, Sophie, and whatever it is, it won’t be good.

  Break your agreement with him, if you can. Don’t worry about me. I know everyone’s whining about ugliness in the Convene and a scandal over this whole mess, but Clydon needs to be divorced, more badly than I do. He’ll concede in time.

  There it was. Sophie was off the hook if she told Cly to stuff it.

  This will blow over in time. Besides, anything you do in a well-intended attempt to help is likely to make things worse.

  Beatrice Vanko.

  “Thanks a lot,” Sophie said.

  Strangely, the letter made her more determined, rather than less, to help her birth mother.

  “Land to port!” one of the kids shouted then, and she got her first sight of Sylvanna.

  It was an emerald glimmer on the horizon, dotted with the barely visible glints of lighthouses, pinpoints of radiance that would brighten as the sun went down. Sophie could just make out a denser cluster of lamps rising from the coastline. The city Autumn?

  The sea between them was full of ships.

  “That’s the Butcher’s Baste,” said Zita, as Sophie turned to ask. “Sylvanna and Haversham lie within each other’s territorial limit.”

  Sophie busied herself with taking footage. “Looks like they’re keeping a close eye on each other.”

  “A well-lit border keeps nobody awake, the expression goes.”

  The telephoto helped separate the two islands from each other, revealing the stretch of water that separated them. A big, wind-sanded tower of rock jutted up at the entrance of the Baste. “I’m guessing the lights help prevent shipwrecks, too.”

  “It’s a dangerous passage. Mad currents, shallows, lots of rocks, and, they say, ghosts and monsters.”

  “The star-crossed butcher and his dressmaker girlfriend, I remember.”

  “The most gifted sailors in Fleet are sometimes challenged to race
its intervals. Racing the Baste, we call it.” Zita said this in a tone that suggested this particular form of attempted suicide was on her bucket list of life goals. “We’ll reach the Autumn port before dawn. What are you going to do?”

  Sophie looked at the letter from Beatrice, then at the rack of swords gleaming on deck, the marked-out boundaries of the duelists’ circle.

  Cly wants something from me. What?

  Believe me when I say I want to go home, Beatrice had said.

  She thought again: if not for her birth mother hauling her off to California, she’d own a swamp and the people in it. Even now Beatrice would rather remain under arrest than see Sophie compromise herself.

  “I’ve come this far,” she said. “It’d be wrong to turn my back.”

  CHAPTER 13

  The buildings of Autumn City were made of brick, just as they were in the painting she’d been shown, but Cly’s mother hadn’t captured the touches that made the city autumnal—the street lamps were carved in the shape of gourds, and the road cobbles were patterned to evoke interlocked red and gold leaves. All the public art was concerned, thematically, with aging—the statues depicted people at the point where midlife started to cede to old age. There were waning moons everywhere and the planters were filled with species that had lots of red chlorophyll. Everywhere she looked, she saw huge arrangements of dried flowers—red and gold petals, sunflowers.

  Sophie almost balked when she got her first glimpse of a slave, an ordinary-looking woman bound on some kind of business, only recognizable as such because of her wrist manacles.

  But Sophie was committed. She’d finish out the trip and get Beatrice off the hook—entirely off the hook, if she could—before going back to San Francisco.

  Verena had answered her with a short note:

  Sophie: I’m really sorry. I stupidly told Annela you’d never go for a sail to a slave nation, so she explicitly forbid us to mention it. She figured once you signed a contract, you’d feel obliged. I was in trouble anyway—I guess I was too chicken to defy her.

  We’re en route. Parrish says a few days if winds are fair.

  Just FYI, the whole Fleet is in a lather: the Verdanii Allmother tried to nudge the courts into letting Mom go and Sylvanna’s allies made a big stink about Verdanii entitlement and miscarriages of justice. Things are supertense. If there’s any way you could spend a few days on the island humoring His Honor, I’d be grateful. Thanks, V.

  Bram was briefer: WHAT’S GOING ON?

  As they disembarked, Sophie was clad in her outlander outfit—as Cly put it, and to his obvious displeasure—jeans and a T-shirt. She was determined not to be taken for a landholder, as it was euphemistically called.

  He was dressed more or less as usual, in what she was beginning to think of as his Shakespeare suit—breeches, peasant shirt, rapier—but he’d donned a white sash marked with several broaches.

  “I’ve hired us a carriage,” Cly said, with a light emphasis on the word “hired.” Sophie looked over the driver anyway, checking for manacles. He had ringworm and colored his hair, which was graying, but he also had a money belt under his shirt and smooth, unadorned wrists.

  “Where are the others?”

  “Krispos and Zita will meet us at Low Bann,” Cly said. “You and I must go to the birth registry with Beatrice’s warranty of marital fidelity.”

  She clambered into the carriage, which left her facing him.

  “Why did you change your mind?”

  She read him a rough translation of Beatrice’s letter.

  He sniffed. “One might wish she’d expressed a little affection for you.”

  “She’s honest.”

  A quirked eyebrow. “Compared to whom?”

  “Is she right? Is there something you want?”

  “Your mother doesn’t know me as well as she claims,” Cly said. “I wish to become acquainted with you.”

  “I think I’m going home after this,” Sophie said.

  “To the outlands? What about your studies? The position I’ve offered you?”

  What indeed? Loss gnawed at her. She hadn’t even managed a single research dive. “I’ll have to give up on that.”

  “All because Sylvanna is bonded?” he growled, looking out the window.

  “It’s a big deal, Cly.”

  “I suppose I’ll follow you to the outlands, then.”

  She couldn’t help smiling. “What a can of worms that would be.”

  “Come, teach me a few words of Anglay.”

  “What words?” Out of my way, peasant, or I’ll cut you?

  He shrugged and they fell silent until they’d reached a columned building whose window screens were painted with autumn leaves. Despite the decorations, it had a decidedly institutional air. Cly helped her down from the carriage before a slave could offer and then opened the door to the building, too.

  Once inside, he strode up to the receptionist, exchanging a few quick words with her in Sylvanner. The woman made a gesture toward a side room that appeared to be a parlor—at least, it had tables, lamps, and books.

  It was fairly packed with bored-looking Sylvanners.

  Books, thought Sophie. Part of her was smarting from having told Cly she was packing up her toys and going home.

  Cly glanced at the waiting room, shook his head curtly, uttered a speech that included a few Fleet phrases: “—still on Maple Lane?” and “—await your pleasure.”

  Then, with a bow and a “Come, Sophie,” he swept back into the street.

  “We’re not doing the birth registry after all?” she asked.

  “The registrar can find us,” he said. “I see no reason to sit in a dingy administrative parlor waiting on the convenience of a minor bureaucrat.”

  He ushered her down a lane lined with peach trees, heavy with green-gold underripe fruit, and then up onto the porch of a big building whose open door exhaled the scent of baking bread and fresh-brewed tea. Striding past the hostess, he chose a beautifully positioned table that offered a view of the town square and the registry.

  “Sit,” he said, taking the other chair.

  Sophie wasn’t about to turn down the chance to have a good look at Autumn City. She took in the square, the winding paths paved in interlocked stones, and then at the homes. They had the spread and columns of big Georgian courthouses—she was reminded of the White House—but the columns themselves weren’t stone as far as she could tell, but looked instead to be some kind of wide-bore bamboo plant.

  Judging from the size of the downtown core and the density of the people, she guessed that the city had, perhaps, a population of a hundred thousand. They were dressed for the most part in a unisex version of the sports jumper Cly had had made for her—the pants that came to just below the knee, the loose shirt beneath a vest with open arms.

  Everyone but the youngest children and the slaves wore a sash like the one Cly had put on himself.

  Social coding, Sophie guessed. Cly’s sash was white, but most of those worn by the adults were black. Kids and young adults wore crimson. The sashes were adorned with ladder-like arrangements of stick pins with emblems on them.

  The first pin, atop each black sash, resting more or less where the collarbone would be, usually depicted two hands clasped together. Cly’s, on the white, was an open hand. The second, in most cases, showed a stylized house. Cly didn’t have that one.

  So a quick look at a person’s chest tells you who they are, whether they’re … married, maybe? And a slaveowner. What’s the symbol for that—a boot on a neck?

  There were a dozen or so young couples, all but one of them heterosexual, parading about. They had flowers—real, perishable ones—pinned to their red sashes. They were being accorded an elaborate, almost ritual respect, and served first at the cafés.

  “Betrothed,” Cly explained as a pair came in and claimed a tray of tea that had been headed toward the two of them. The waiter shot Cly an apologetic look and got the hand flick in reply as he rushed off to get anoth
er.

  “All these couples are engaged?”

  “It’s the season.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Midsummer is when families solidify unions. These children”—flick at the tea poachers—“have been accorded an opportunity to practice the privileges and responsibilities of adulthood until they actually wed.”

  “That’s right, you said marriages were arranged.”

  “Usually. It’s quite the celebration. Houses merge, favored slaves are freed, there’s gift-giving and music. The festivals…” As he spoke, he removed two new sashes from his case—one black, one red, and got to his feet. A slender woman with a burgeoning leather case was rushing across the table to them.

  “Kir Banning,” she said, bowing, and then came a rush of words, some of which Sophie caught: “waiting,” “honored,” “paperwork.”

  Overlapping vocabulary. The Sylvanner language must have been the basis for Fleet, or related to it.

  “My daughter speaks only Fleet,” said Cly.

  “Forgive me,” she said more slowly. “I am Munschler from the Registrations Office. It is … Zophie?”

  Sophie nodded.

  “I have your Assertions and Rights of Claim.”

  “Sit,” Cly ordered. Soon he and the woman were deep in the bureaucratic tangle. They seemed to require little from her.

  Sophie stared out the window, taking in the betrothed couples, a bricklayer mortaring a low wall, a small flock of ordinary-looking brown pigeons circling the skies above one of the older buildings.

  Her gaze fell on a perfectly coiffed woman with a patched dress and a white sash topped by an empty-hand pin, just like Cly’s. A widow? She was standing beside a stone bench, selling oranges from a basket to the passersby. Most of the people heading past avoided her gaze, as they would that of a panhandler at home. One snarky-looking betrothed boy demanded an orange from her and did not pay.

  Munschler coughed, drawing her attention back to the table. “Know you anything that would oppose the idea that this man is your father?”

  Sophie shook her head. “He and Beatrice were married.”

  “Are married,” Cly corrected. “Beatrice broke contract and thereby annulled our divorce.”