“You know of no other contenders, then, child? Nobody has claimed to be your father?”
This world seriously needs DNA testing. “I only just met them.”
“Sophie was fostered in the outlands,” Cly explained.
“The assertion is a formality,” Munschler assured her, sliding a page across the table. “We need know only that nobody has told you of a competing claim.”
She thought of her dad briefly, of his tight brows and railing about imprecision and lazy thinking. “Nobody else has ever said they were my birth father.”
“Good, then, sign it.” Munschler dove back into her paperwork.
A minute later, a white-gloved girl with manacles clamped around her wrists brought a paper-wrapped packet to the table and set it before Sophie.
“What’s this?”
“Just a treat. It’s traditional,” Cly said.
A treat for the child, brought by a slave, she thought. It smelled like pork and was wrapped in a heavy-looking pastry.
Fling it away? No, the orange lady looked hungry. Sophie walked out to the street, offering it to her.
The woman reached out to take it, then drew back as if her fingers had been burned.
“It’s okay,” Sophie said. She could feel as much as see the people turning, all around the square, to watch. She’d committed a social transgression of some kind. But hey—what the hell. She was a big old outlander, right? Or at best a child. “Take it. Have a bit of protein.”
The woman bowed. “Thank you, Kir.”
She returned to the teahouse, to Cly and Munschler. The bureaucrat had turned a bright pink and was talking a bit loudly. Pretending not to have noticed anything? Cly was eyeing Sophie as if she were a horse with a thrown shoe.
The orange lady took an indelicately large bite of the bun, then another. She paused to sell an orange to an old man who gave her a bright coin. As he walked away, he shot a glare at the teahouse. He was followed by a betrothed couple who insisted on paying her for two oranges. Then another came.
Apparently Sylvanners didn’t appreciate it when you offered their beggars a bite to eat.
Over the course of the next ten minutes all the people in the square quietly bought the woman’s basket down to nothing. There was an odd tension to the ritual. They’d let her eat a few bites of the pork bun. Then a few of them would pay her—overpay, from the size of the coins—for an orange.
An air of disapproval built up, thicker than the considerable humidity within the square. When she’d finished her bun and the basket was empty, the last sodden orange sold, the uniformed man who bought it spoke a few words in the woman’s ear.
What had he said? You’re out of oranges, so push on? The woman shambled away, shoulders heaving a little. A competitor rushed to occupy her piece of shade.
“Sophie.” Cly rapped on the table. “Perhaps if you’re finished shaming all of Autumn, you’d care to witness your certification of birth.”
Munschler held out an official-looking page. “Ah. Sign here.”
Sophie looked it over. It was in Sylvanner. “All this says is I’m your daughter? I’m not agreeing to buy a bridge or join a convent?”
“Convent?”
“Never mind.” She signed it and the bureaucrat scuttled off, leaving the table in humid silence.
“I gave a hungry woman a bun. What’s the big deal?”
“It was an act of kindness,” Cly said, with apparent reluctance. “Will this happen every time one of the bonded hands you something to eat?”
“Pretty much, yeah. Or when they treat me like a six-year-old.”
He simmered across the table at her, but she held his gaze, refusing to be stared down.
Finally he summoned a waiter. “Have my carriage sent after the widow,” he said. “Tell the driver to help her harvest another basket of oranges and take her wherever she’d like to go. Buy her some eggs while you’re at it.”
With that, he began transferring some but not all of his pins from the white sash to the black one he’d taken from his bag.
“I suppose I should explain about these,” he said.
“It’s not that hard to work out,” Sophie replied. “They signify social status. Anyone can tell, at a glance, who you are and where you fit within the pecking order.”
“I suppose you know why I’m switching colors, then.”
“Your status has changed because you’ve got a kid. Your … divorce from Beatrice screwed something up, back in the day. You said your parents considered you a child? Moved you back into the nursery?”
“Indeed. I was little better than that widow. Now I’m a father,” he said. “Black sash. Automatically adult.”
“So it’s better for a Sylvanner to have a child than not? A kid can offset the social disadvantage of being divorced and childless.”
“Widowed and childless, yes. My situation has ever been exceptional.”
“And the pins’ specific meanings?” She didn’t much feel like talking, but silence, she sensed, might be worse.
“Clasped hands—wedded. Sailing vessel—bound to Fleet. Peach blossom—parent. Crossed swords—duelist.” His clipped tone showed he wasn’t feeling all that impressed with her, either. “House—head of household.”
“You didn’t have that one on your white sash.”
“Childless, unmarried adults are rarely considered fit to administer an estate. My awful cousin Fren has been running Low Bann. Let’s go demote her, shall we?”
“Gee, that sounds fun.”
“We’ll be riding now.”
“Horses?”
“What else?” he said. “You’ve obliged me to give the carriage away for the afternoon.”
“Whatever,” Sophie said, suspecting she sounded like the child she kept insisting she wasn’t, but unable to rise, entirely, above the tension.
She hadn’t ridden all that much in the grand scheme of things, though as a kid she’d been to camp once or twice. They’d probably give her a little-girl horse so her legs would dangle. At least she could shoot pictures in the open air rather than through some smeary volcanic-glass carriage window.
“Here’s yours.” Cly handed her a black sash with a single pin, adorned with a piece of white quartz cut in facets. It reminded her a little of a crystal doorknob.
“What’s this one mean?”
“Foreign adult, as per the contract.”
“Thanks.” She put it on.
Getting horses consisted of walking to the stables and demanding them. As seemed to be his wont, Cly strolled past the first mounts offered without even looking, instead selecting a pair of massive black horses who looked like they might be Percherons. He had them loaded with flasks of water, appropriated a pair of linen sun hats, told the stable keeper to charge it all to Low Bann, and led her out to a paddock while they were saddled.
Sylvanner saddles were more British in style than Western—no pommel—but the bridle, reins, and stirrups all served the usual functions. Sophie’s mount, Ballado, was a huge step up and wide across. Once she was astride him, she took him in a circle, once and then twice around the paddock. The groom watched attentively, then nodded.
“All right?” Cly asked. It clearly hadn’t occurred to him that she might not ride.
She checked her seat, then arranged her cameras so they were within easy reach. “Yes.”
“Let’s go.” He gave his mount the barest of nudges and they clopped out into the city.
They set out on the main road with its interlocking-leaf pattern, then veered into a residential neighborhood. The residents seemed affluent at first, at least to judge by the stand-alone houses and their trappings, but over time the houses shrank, the yards got smaller, and the trimmings fell into disrepair. Their doors bore wooden equivalents to the status sashes. Covered strips of varnished wood hung diagonally above the doors, pegged with the various symbols—the hands, the homes.
Who you are matters terribly here, Sophie concluded.
As
they left the town behind and moved along the orchards, there was plenty to observe and to film. Fields of familiar crops—apricot, plum, peach, nectarine, apple, and pear—alternated with some that were unmistakably new. She saw big cherries, so purple they might have been blue, and a red-skinned citrus she’d seen, on Erinth, when she visited before.
Half a dozen canines, too small and dark-furred to be coyotes, followed them for half a mile or so as they moved past the boundary of the city. Less because they thought they could take down a horse and rider, Sophie thought, than because they had nothing better to do.
Out of the city, it was even hotter. The air felt wet, like someone’s breath on the back of her neck.
She looked ahead at the figure of Cly, riding and self-contained. No divorce on this island, so they labeled him a childless widower. That’s obviously not good, if that old lady’s any example. Now he’s got a kid, he’s better off.
Cly’s original sash hadn’t had head of household on it. Sophie had signed her birth certificate and now Cly had been bumped up his family’s chain of precedence. They were on their way to dislodge a cousin, he’d said. Someone else who’d been running the family home.
Beatrice thinks he wants something. Maybe it’s just control over his estate? It would be worth it to figure it out, since she was here anyway.
There was a profusion of red birds, each as small as her thumb, in a bush near the road. Some had blue eyes, the others gray. The former would be one sex, the gray the other.
She reined in, steadied Ballado, and shot thirty seconds of video. They seemed fearless, and as she continued to observe, she saw a gray snake, the same color as the tree trunk, winding up the branch hoping to catch one.
She zoomed in, forgeting everything. The snake was perhaps eighteen inches long. Against the ash-colored trunk of the bush, it was very nearly invisible. It glided up, edging closer to the branches where the birds were hopping to and fro. Patiently, it folded itself to strike.
Sophie lost herself in the shot, zooming in on the snake and the branch, that little bird landing platform in the frame. The horse moved under her. “Shush shush,” she told him absently.
A bird dropped to the branch. The snake snapped out, jaws extended. There was a miss, a red blur, and all the little spoonfuls of red feather burst from the bush at once, peeping madly as they shot past Sophie. The snake opened and shut its cotton-candy mouth once or twice—Sophie almost imagined it smacking its lips—and then stretched itself out to wait for their return.
“Missed, did he?” Cly had reined in beside her.
“The predator can’t always win, can it? I don’t know this species.”
“Soot viper,” he said. “They’re drawn to cooling campfires sometimes. These orchards are fenced against them.”
“They’re poisonous?”
He nodded.
“He’s not advertising. No red and black markings.”
“Why would such a creature make itself conspicuous?” Cly asked.
“To warn off predators.”
“Dust vipers are less hunted than hunting.”
“Sneaks, in other words.”
“Nothing wrong with a well-laid ambush in the cause of supper.” He sidestepped his horse closer to the bush, lashing out with a hunting knife she hadn’t known he was carrying and beheading it with a swift whisk of his arm.
“Hey!” Sophie objected. “Was that necessary?”
The pieces had landed at the base of the tree.
Killing animals, she thought. Sign of sociopathy?
“They kill fruit pickers. The suffering the bites cause is terrible. There must be a break in the snake fencing; we’ll watch for it.”
Sophie reined Ballado, leapt down, and picked up the snake’s body pieces. Farmers killed pests, that was the way of things. And Cly claimed he was protecting others.
“What are you doing?” She felt almost dissected by the gaze he’d turned on her: it was like being scanned for something.
“No reason to let a perfectly good sample go to waste.” She wrapped it in a handkerchief, tucking it into one of the saddlebags.
At her answer, he seemed to relax. Sophie raised her eyebrows in a silent question.
“I’m relieved,” he said. “I’d wondered how far your soft-heartedness might extend.”
She was astounded. Here she’d been wondering if he had the emotional makeup of a serial killer, and he was simultaneously trying to figure out … what? If she was some kind of total vegan pacifist? “Killing a pest that might hurt a fruit picker, or even performing a dissection … it’s a little different from chopping up an unarmed bandit who’s surrendering, don’t you think?”
It took a moment before he answered with a mild, “Just so.”
Then he turned his horse, riding away in silence.
Sophie remounted and followed, leaving the little red birds to reclaim their bush in safety.
CHAPTER 14
Low Bann was about a ninety-minute ride, or it would have been if Sophie hadn’t stopped twice more to take shots of unfamiliar species—a tree in one case and a peculiar, green-toned millipede.
Cly’s childhood home was built into a hillside that rose up from marshy saltwater flats and extended beyond them in every direction. Up on the terraces of the hill was an orchard filled with bluish cherry plants and nearly ripe plums and fences lined with honeysuckle.
The countryside was alive with bees—the trellises were crawling with workers in pursuit of pollen. Apiaries hunched along a fence near a biggish bird coop.
As they rode up to the house, two slaves opened the double doors and a quartet of richly dressed redheads emerged, almost mincing to stay within the shadow of parasols upheld by still more slaves clustered around them. They were led by a woman of about thirty-five years; behind her were a man the same age and two children who looked to be fifteen, the latter nearly identical except that one was a girl and the other a boy.
“So it’s true,” the man breathed. He had a squarish, fireplug build and the pins on his sash seemed to indicate he’d been assigned, at one time, to the Fleet. “Beatrice has returned from the outlands.”
The woman snorted. “That’s not Beatrice. It’s a child.”
“My child, as it happens. Kir Sophie Hansa.” Cly swung down from the horse, utterly in control of himself and wearing the sharkiest of his grins. “Sophie, my cousin Fenn and her husband, Ilden. Their twins, Mirelda and Mervin.”
Sophie slid off her horse and gave her best approximation of Parrish’s little bow. Then she turned back to her mount. A slave was already leading it and Cly’s horse away.
Her father caught her arm before she could go after them. “Stay. Nobody bonded will lift a finger to do anything more for you. My word on it.”
She remembered Parrish suddenly, telling her parents that she’d be safe here. Saying “my word,” in English, while her father tried to place his accent.
Okay, I can do this.
“Hi, everyone,” she said, edging away from the group before one of the entourage could put a parasol over her.
Fenn was studying the two of them minutely. She didn’t have much of a poker face—whatever she saw made her furious. With teeth gritted, she said, “Welcome home, cousins.”
“How long will you be here?” asked the man. His hostility was tempered with resignation. “You must have cases to adjudicate.”
“Neneh, I’m on leave from the Judiciary.” Cly ambled across the porch, ignoring—or enjoying—their rising distress as he unpinned the head of household icon from Fenn’s sash. He tucked it into his pocket. She flushed red and her eyes flicked to his sword. “I might stay a day, or a month, or forever.”
“The country life—you?” The man barked laughter.
I wonder how long they’re planning to sit out here fencing? Sophie considered following the horses to the stables after all—she should rub down her own mount.
The Sylvanners’ weird shaming of the widow rose, unbidden, in her mind
. If she did some slave’s job, would the slave be punished?
Cly wouldn’t dare, she thought. He’s been holding his temper all this time because … why? What’s he want from me? Is it this?
Deciding to give the awkward family scene five more minutes, she turned her attention to the kids.
Up close, they were less perfectly identical: Mervin was more muscular, and Mirelda had a milk-pale complexion and a faint whistle in her breath. Asthma? Caused by anxiety, or was it the undoubtedly high pollen count? She was standing too straight, as though she was uncomfortable. Sophie looked for a cause. There—her feet were all but popping out of the petite and pointy white shoes they’d been jammed into.
Looks like they’d fit her mother.
Mirelda’s coils of hair were perfect, nothing out of place. All this was a big show for Cly’s arrival. He must have sent a message ahead to announce himself; or maybe Fenn had spies in town.
There was a yellow stain on the boy’s hand. A smoker? Kid, you’re fifteen—but once Sophie saw it, there was no denying that his overall fidgety air looked remarkably like he was having a nicotine fit.
He caught Sophie’s eye and raised his brows, making a face: Isn’t this all so dumb?
Sophie replied with a quick, noncommittal smile.
Cly had caught the exchange. “Where are my manners? Come in, all of you.”
With a grand gesture, he ushered everyone inside, as though he’d been here all along and the rest of them had just showed up for Thanksgiving. Deftly taking the door, he swung it wide, murmuring a few words to the manacled woman who’d been holding it.
The slaves folded their parasols and made themselves scarce.
“Dear Sophie,” he continued, “I don’t mean to involve you in the dull business of auditing the household books. Would you wish to explore the estate with your cousins?”
She nodded and he said, “Children, show Sophie the grounds.”
With that, their elders vanished deeper into the house.
It was a relief to be away from Cly for a while. Sophie smiled at the girl and gestured at her shoes. “Do you want to get those off?”
The girl grimaced. “I can barely walk.”
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