A Daughter of No Nation

by A. M. Dellamonica

Sophie leaped to her feet and trotted back the fifty or so feet to look at the vine-choked tree. The three slaves were thirty feet up its trunk now. They were looking farther into the swamp—the noise hadn’t come from them.

  Farther down the trail, Sophie thought, doing a one-eighty and hauling ass into the corridor.

  Zita had already gone that way, along the boardwalk, and as Sophie sprinted along after her, she heard a splash and another cry.

  It was Mervin—he was a few feet out into the water, flailing and apparently panicked.

  “Zita, no!” Sophie shouted, but the other girl had sheathed her sword and reached out to the boy.

  He caught her outstretched hand on the first try … and pulled.

  Zita went down, into the muck, with a huge splash.

  Slapping, this kid needs a slapping, what was the point of that? Little jerk I knew he was a nasty little jerk.… Sophie sprinted out to the spot on the boardwalk.

  Mervin was still trying it on, seeing if he could get her, too. “Cousin! We’re stuck!”

  “You deserve sticking,” Sophie told him. Zita had surfaced, sputtering. She was uninjured—the water wasn’t deep—but for some reason she was going shock white.

  Sophie knelt on the boardwalk, anchoring herself, and held out the stick she’d been using to probe the mud. Zita seized it gratefully, steadying herself as she mushed back to the walkway. It wasn’t far and the water wasn’t deep—she shouldn’t have needed much help, despite the sucking mud. But she was paler with every breath and by the time Sophie hitched her up onto the boards, she was shivering.

  “Aren’t you going to help me, cousin?”

  “Drown if you’re gonna,” Sophie told Mervin, yanking up the sleeve of Zita’s blouse. Her arm was covered in inch-long leeches the color of flame.

  She peeked under her shirt. There were hundreds of them.

  Mervin looked startled. “So many…” He stopped screwing around and waded out of the water, hefting himself onto the boardwalk.

  “Sophie?” Zita was looking drowsy.

  “I bet you kept your smokes dry, didn’t you?” Sophie snapped.

  Mervin nodded. A few leeches dropped off his throat, apparently disliking the taste of him. “I didn’t know there was a nest.”

  “Light two cigarettes.” She unbuttoned Zita’s shirt entirely and snapped her fingers as the kid dug out two hand-rolled somethings and a friction lighter and lit them.

  “You burn her, I’ll run you through with her sword,” Sophie said, hoping she sounded convincingly violent. She took the smoke and began killing the leeches on Zita’s abdomen, touching the cherry of the cigarette to one creature after another.

  Mervin, to his credit, didn’t hesitate to follow suit. The two of them worked feverishly for about five minutes, filling the air with the smell of tobacco and scorched escargot before rolling Zita over and starting on her back.

  “Mine’s done,” Mervin said.

  “Reload.” Sophie unbuckled Zita’s belt.

  “They won’t have gotten past that. Check her ankles.”

  He was right, fortunately enough. Zita’s belt was tight and her pants were tucked in at the boot.

  “Help me get her over my shoulders. Then run ahead. Get help,” Sophie said.

  “I doubt I’ll find anyone. Cousin Clydon told the bonded to stay out of your way, remember?”

  “You’d better find help,” Sophie said, heaving Zita up. “She’s one of Cly’s favorites. Can you say the same?”

  It was like firing him from a cannon: Mervin pounded off down the boardwalk as she began to make her own way back, a step at a time, with Zita in a fireman’s carry. The girl was slender but solid enough; Sophie was an athlete, but Zita was a dense bar of muscle, just about more than she could carry, and the air was thick.

  One foot at a time.

  She could feel Zita’s pulse wherever their skin met, in her belly, against her shoulder.

  Could’ve been worse. Swamp’s gotta have alligators.

  Breathe, breathe. Did she just go limp? “You with me? Zita?”

  No answer.

  She’d made it just about to the edge of the boardwalk when a party from the house met her—Mervin, his sister, the spellscribe, Autumn, and six burly-looking guys with wrist bangles holding a sheet. Sophie rolled Zita onto the sheet and they trotted her over to the nearest shade tree, a big pear.

  Cly and the other adults were headed down from the big house. Cly took in the situation, leveled a look at Mervin that made the boy shrivel, and knelt beside Zita.

  She hadn’t regained consciousness.

  “She gonna die?” Sophie asked, between gulps of breath.

  Autumn flicked a look at Cly. “Is she?”

  “No,” he said. “As her mentor, I have her middle name in my keeping.”

  “We can save her, then. Mirelda, you’ll assist me.”

  “Sophie, stay with her,” Cly said, and then without bothering to see if she was going to obey, switched to Sylvanner and addressed a string of words to Mervin in that low growl of his.

  Whatever he’d said, it went through Merv and his parents like a jolt of electricity.

  “Come, girls,” Autumn said, laying Zita’s hand in Sophie’s and somehow signaling to the six men that they should start toiling up the hill to the house.

  “What’d he say?” Sophie whispered to Mirelda.

  “Merv’s to be punished,” she said.

  “Malicious little troll. Punished how? Whipped?”

  Mirelda shook her head. “He’s not a—”

  “Not now, children,” Autumn said. They had arrived in a conservatory of sorts, with windows made from panes of Erinthian lava glass and a large shelf of potted herbs in its brightest corner. Cabinets of books and scrolls lined the walls, alternating with shelves of powders kept in jars.

  A mosquito net hung over the middle of the room, draped in a dainty tent over a wide writing table. Two others hung from the ceiling, limp as shrouds.

  “Put her there,” Autumn ordered the men carrying Zita, who laid her down, sheet and all, on the floor. They arranged the mosquito nets around her.

  “Mirelda, is there a leech kit already made?”

  “No, but we have everything.”

  “I’ll want some of the leeches.”

  Mirelda promptly went to one of the cabinets, fetching out a small wooden bowl and a paddle.

  “Use whitestone,” Autumn corrected, not unkindly, and Mirelda made the switch. She slipped inside the netting around Zita and—to Sophie’s surprise—without quailing went looking for a leech that Sophie and Mervin hadn’t yet scorched.

  “Check her head,” Sophie advised. Mirelda immediately came upon one of the gastropods, blood-gorged and entangled in Zita’s hair. A second, behind her ear, was even bigger. She transferred them both to the bowl.

  Cly emerged from another part of the house with a scrap of paper. He handed it to Autumn. “Zita’s name.”

  “Anything I should know about?” the spellscribe asked.

  “She had her teeth straightened when she was nine.”

  “She can bear a major intention, then.”

  “She’s a duelist,” Cly said. “She’s young yet for such a heavy load.”

  Autumn was looking at scrolls now, examining each. “If it was just the blood loss, we might transfuse, but leech sickness, with a foreigner…”

  “We will transfuse. Just prevent the infection. And speaking of which, Mervin has forfeited his immunity to the creatures.”

  “The family spells are there.” Autumn gestured at a cabinet she’d opened earlier.

  “I’ll find it.” Sophie hopped up, trying to look nonchalant, and opened the cupboard. There were envelopes and rolled scrolls and sealed boxes, all wrapped in one way or another.

  She had imagined they would be labeled—and they were, but not in Fleet. There were spells for Mirelda and Mervin, for Fenn and her husband, even one for Beatrice, written on an ivory parasol. Cly, too—a thick a
ccordion of a spell, sealed with wax. One word on that label did look familiar: TEMPERAMENT, it said.

  “Find it?” Cly purred.

  Sophie held out two scrolls with Mervin’s name on them.

  He plucked one from her grasp. “Do you wish to come downstairs?”

  “If Autumn doesn’t mind, I’d like to stay.”

  “For Zita or to observe?”

  “Um, both.” She felt herself coloring. “If it’s okay.”

  “Autumn doesn’t notice anything when she’s working,” Mirelda said. “We could play a double-harp.”

  Cly tapped at her camera. “Don’t enpicture Zita’s full name. It’s the key to enchanting her.”

  “I remember.”

  With that, he stalked away.

  Sophie watched him go, then looked around the room. Autumn and Mirelda were focused on Zita.

  On impulse, she transferred the spell with Cly’s name on it to an unlocked drawer, farther down within the cabinet, before relocking the cabinet securely and then taking a position where she could film the inscription process.

  Autumn had laid out a series of herbs and begun grinding them between two black and white flecked pieces of granite. Mirelda was watching from a quiet corner, alert for orders, like a nurse assisting a surgeon.

  Sophie joined her, turning on her camera and taking footage of Zita—the leech marks, the burned leeches. Then she made a quick turn around Autumn, who was examining a pristine-looking pair of ostrich feathers, seeming to weigh which would best suit her purposes. She did indeed seem oblivious to Sophie and the camera.

  “The spell itself will be written on calfskin,” Mirelda murmured as she returned. “What is that object, cousin?”

  Sophie answered as Parrish had taught her. “Atomist gadgetry from the outlands.”

  “Oh.” Mirelda lost interest, as most people did, but she sounded a little disappointed.

  “So…” Sophie switched into interview mode. “You know a lot about scribing?”

  A mix of pride and shame crossed the teen’s face. “Mervin’s right—I don’t deserve to be taught. I’d be a waste of resources; I don’t have the makings of a scribe.”

  “Autumn seems to think differently.”

  She shook her head. “There are many ways to be of use to the institute. I’ll be an assistant.”

  It seemed harsh to deny her the chance. “But you understand the principles?”

  Autumn was mixing the ink now. Her expression was serene.

  Much of what Mirelda told her next was stuff she had already seen in action: you had to know the subject’s whole name, you had to write just the right words on the right material, using the ingredients precisely defined by the spell’s precedents and nature. They called it laying an intention on someone. Intentions had weight and one could only bear so much.

  “That’s why Autumn wanted to know what else Zita had done to her.”

  Mirelda nodded.

  “Cly’s going to tear up Mervin’s immunity to leeches … so he won’t be impervious anymore.”

  “He was a sickly child,” Mirelda said. “Mother had it done, just in case. He shouldn’t get leech sickness from the spell’s reversion.”

  “If he does, will he die?”

  “No. He’s stronger now, and he eats swamp food. It’s really just foreigners who die, those who get lots of bites.” She gestured at Zita, whose wounds were already looking festery. “I’d be surprised if he so much as fevers up. May I ask you a question, Cousin?”

  Sophie made a go-ahead gesture.

  “Beatrice is Verdanii. A Feliachild.”

  “Yep.”

  “Not you?”

  “I repudiated Verdanii citizenship.” And now I’m blowing off Sylvanna.

  “The Feliachilds are said to be one of the ancient branches of the Allmother’s line.”

  “Um. Maybe?”

  “The nine families, then, they’re a myth?”

  Gently she said, “Mirelda, all I know about the Verdanii is they’re in what used to be the grain belt and their culture is institutionally biased in favor of women. I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”

  Mirelda paused. “The nine families are said to practice an older form of magic. Wordless, irreversible, beyond inscription—and each family has its own knack.”

  “That’s news to me.” But she thought of Aunt Gale, fumbling that odd-looking brass watch just before the first time Sophie found herself in Stormwrack.

  Or Verena, with her pewter clock.

  There’s the way she always takes us from and to clocks—the great tower on Erinth, the grandfather clock at Beatrice’s San Francisco home, the one in Gale’s old cabin on Nightjar.…

  “You do know something.”

  She’d promised not to tell anyone here about Earth. “Is this something you’re thinking you could learn? Since you’ve less aptitude for…” She indicated Autumn, who was busily scribbling.

  “Would it be possible?” Hope bloomed on the girl’s face. “I’d heard abilities ran in families, through the Allmother’s blood tree. Mother to daughter. Isn’t that why Arpere permitted Cly’s marriage in the first place?”

  “Is it indeed?” Her thoughts raced. Mother to daughter, inherited magic—this is part of why everyone was so hung up on my being Gale’s heir, and it’s why they’re so freaked out about me learning too much. What if they’re afraid they can’t keep me out of Stormwrack?

  This could be why Annela jumped on the chance to have me repudiate Verdanii. And why she kept threatening me with magical amnesia.

  “Sophie?”

  “Sorry, Mirelda. Thinking hard. I wish I had answers for you.”

  And Cly. If what Mirelda just said is true … could he have chosen Beatrice because of her family connections?

  She moved to get Zita back into the shot. The festery, red look of her weals was washing out as Autumn worked on inscribing the calfskin; they were pursing shut, like little mouths, becoming mere wrinkles on her flesh that, in their turn, also vanished.

  Autumn set down her pen. “Mirelda, go see if your uncle has summoned a blood donor.”

  The girl bowed and left.

  Sophie was still humming with that sense of discovery, of pieces snapping together. She thought of Gale’s watch, tucked away on a shelf at Bram’s place.

  Magical amnesia, she reminded herself. She would have to tread carefully.

  Cly appeared in the doorway with a big, soft-looking fellow in tow. He gestured, and the man knelt beside Zita, chafing her wrists and the insides of her elbow. Then he laid the flat of his enormous hand against her chest.

  Sophie leapt up, bringing the camera as close as she could. The man’s palm had darkened, the skin mottling to a wine-colored blush, and she could see an impression of red wetness in the join between his flesh and Zita’s, as if it was soaked there.

  “Want a look?” The man raised his palm carefully, about an inch above her skin. Rivulets of blood, thin as twigs, were twisting against Zita’s flesh. There were no visible breaks in his skin or hers, but Zita’s color was returning.

  “How do you know your blood type is compatible?”

  “It’s the family business,” he replied. “My mother’s mother’s mother was a giver, and my fathers going back six generations. I have papers from my nation, Gittamot. We provide givers to all of Stormwrack.”

  “So you know you can donate, and you only marry people who are also donors?”

  “Only bear children with them.”

  “But you don’t actually know how many blood types there are, or—”

  “There are two. Giver and not.”

  “There’s more than two,” Sophie said. But if all the givers were type O negative, they could donate to anyone, whether they were A, B, or AB, positive or negative.

  “We follow strict sanguinistic procedures. Here.”

  He extended his free hand, pointing at her with his index finger. She filmed it as a little whirl of blood extended outward fro
m the tip.

  Sophie held out her hand, palm up, in the video frame. “No guts, no glory.”

  “Marvelous sentiment,” Cly murmured.

  “Small pinch,” said the donor. She felt it, as the blood spout made contact, a quick painful jab. The little thread whirled around on her palm, which pinkened. She could just feel a sense of increased pressure there. Then the donor closed that fist, withdrawing the spout.

  There wasn’t a mark on her palm.

  “That’s incredible!”

  “I thank you, Kir.” He turned to Zita, whose color had about returned to normal. “She’s out of danger. And ready for a proper bed, I think.”

  “Sophie,” Cly said. She climbed to her feet and let him draw her off to a corner.

  “First, you deserve multiple apologies for my awful family.”

  “You’re not responsible for Mervin’s actions.”

  “I am, actually, in law. But what I wish to say is thank you. For helping Zita. You acted quickly. I so admire your cool head.”

  She couldn’t quite crush a swell of pride. “No problem.”

  “I also wondered if you might like to meet someone more … compatible with your inclinations.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Some faint proof that some of my countrymen aren’t … how did you put it? Malicious trolls?”

  “You overheard that?”

  “It had the inestimable ring of truth.”

  Note to self: keep lips buttoned, she thought.

  Then she heard Bram’s voice: Yeah, Ducks, when have you ever managed that?

  “Mirelda seems like an okay person,” she said.

  He gave her a look that seemed to say: Who?

  “There’s a fellow who’s interested in your thoughts on the turtles. I recognize it’s been a long day.…”

  It had been, hadn’t it? Perhaps more for him than her: he looked tired and strained.

  And, maybe, more likely to slip up? She hadn’t seen any behavior that absolutely argued that he was or wasn’t sociopathic.

  If she and Cly were away, Fenn and her family could lick their wounds in private for a while.

  “Should I change?” she said. “One of those sporty outfits?”

  He nodded. “That would be very … yes. Thank you. I’ll show you to your room.”

  Her room looked out over the apiaries and the hillside, a view terminating in the green jewel of a swamp. There was no lava glass here: the screen was made of a silk so sheer it was almost transparent. The breeze shivered the strands. The bed was covered in a russet, leaf-shaped blanket and the walls held more of her grandmother’s oil paintings. It had an odd atmosphere: not quite tense or impersonal, but somehow far from cozy.