A Daughter of No Nation
Page 21
Sophie gave them an awkward smile and took one step toward the sink, but a gazelle of a woman stepped in front of her, whisking the pitcher out of her hand and handing it off to one of the others, who took it and began working the pump.
Don’t look away. Don’t refuse to see this. Sophie examined each of them in turn, meeting their solid, determinedly placid gazes. They were neither well fed nor emaciated; they had the muscles and calloused hands of people who worked hard, extremely hard—like Rees Erminne, she thought—and the eldest of them was about forty. Their skin colors varied—there was a pale, freckled blonde, whose nose and eyes were so red she must either have a cold or been crying, a woman with olive skin, and a black woman, too. No bruises on them, but their clothes were concealing. If they had whip marks on their backs …
She swallowed.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to…” she forced herself to finish the sentence “… some of the bonded. Hello.”
“Neyza dinn Fleetspak.” The woman slapped the jug into her hand with a slosh of cold water and a bright, pleasant expression.
“But—”
“Neyza dinn Fleetspak!”
“Okay. Thank you,” Sophie said, and retreated.
She crossed the dining room and then froze in the foyer—Cly was there, speaking in Sylvanner. “Pej battro tard, con nyu annit—”
He broke off—the woman he was addressing had seen her.
Sophie pushed through the door.
Her father was standing with a tall, auburn-haired matron who wore a white widow’s sash.
“Ah, Sophie. I thought perhaps one of the young cousins was—well, no matter. Child, may I present Kir Erminne?”
Another Erminne. She tried to bow without spilling the pitcher. “Pleased.”
The woman quirked her brows, amused. “What are you doing?” Her tone was kind, and she wasn’t fazed by Sophie’s outlander clothes, either, which won her points.
“Oh—my friend. Our. Zita, she needed water.”
“Erminne is Rees’s mother,” Cly said. “We won’t keep you, but I hope we’ll all have a chance to talk tonight.”
“It was lovely to meet you,” Rees’s mother said. “Don’t let us keep you from your friend.”
Dismissed. “Thanks,” she said, mulling as she walked up to Zita’s room.
Zita opened the door, still wrapped up, and took the the pitcher gratefully. “I’ll be down soon.”
Sophie went looking for Krispos. “Did you read that Sylvanner Fleet phrasebook?”
“I’m halfway through.” He held it up.
She recalled Cly’s words: “Pej battro…”
“Battro is ‘betrothal’…” He flipped ahead. “Pej is ‘late.’ Late betrothal.”
“Nyu annit?”
“‘Soon year’?” He frowned. “‘Later in the year’?”
“One or the other?”
He shrugged. “All I’m learning is vocabulary.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Betrothal. He’s talking betrothal with Rees’s mom.
She began to hyperventilate. Was Cly thinking of marrying her off?
CHAPTER 18
She retreated to her room, staring around blankly until it occurred to her that she could pack, and then went into a frenzy of shoving things into her bags, getting everything stowed so she could make her escape.
He wouldn’t, would he? I must have misunderstood.
It tracked with him hauling her out to meet Rees yesterday. Wait—she had picked the turtle case herself.
Maybe all of the lawsuits he’d given her were connected to eligible young men.
She had everything packed and repacked, the bed made, and she’d even dusted by the time Mirelda and Zita showed up, carrying a disco-era ball gown, in rich brown silk, in a paper-wrapped package.
Zita was in full dress uniform, sword and all, and her foreigner’s sash had a new pin—a carved impression of a woman’s face, bound with red ribbon.
“His Honor recalled that I’m inclined to women,” she said, when she saw Sophie looking at it. “I told him I don’t mind dancing with whoever asks, but—”
“But he got you a lesbian badge of honor anyway?”
“It was thoughtful of him, wasn’t it?” As always, there was that little bit of a pitch there: Take it easy on Cly, Zophie, Cly rocks. He’d picked her a nice friend who just happened to be head of the Team Cly cheerleading squad. If that wasn’t manipulative, what was?
“You look very dashing,” Sophie replied.
Mirelda’s dress was a more shapeless version of Sophie’s, also brown, with white gloves and shoes to match her little-girl sash. The pair of them helped Sophie into the ball gown. Zita cast a covetous eye over Sophie’s bra.
Did I really think I wanted to move to a world with Age of Sail technology?
Since her hair was short and curly anyway, all they did with it was give her a wreath of orange daisy-like flowers—osteopurnum or something like it.
The foreigner’s sash with its one adornment hung like a beauty contestant’s sash across her chest. Mirelda gathered the slack at her hip clumsily, pulling it into something like a rose.
“Your papers,” she said. The Bram pages on her desk were filling with text.
SOFE, WE HAVE DOCKED IN AUTUMN CITY AND PARRISH IS ARRANGING FOR A CARRIAGE. CLY SENT INVITES TO US ALL FOR THE BASH; THE IMPLICATION IS THE DRIVER WILL TAKE US TO YOU, WHEREVER YOU ARE. UNLESS YOU WANT TO MAKE A BREAK FOR IT…:)
Emoticons, she thought. So cute.
NO, she scrawled, also in English. IF I CAN JUST GET THROUGH TONIGHT, BEATRICE GETS HER BAIL.
“Powder?” Mirelda said. She was holding out a pot of pinkish … blush?
“What’s that for?”
“You’re quite tan. It’s not genteel.”
“No powder, then.”
“You have an answer,” Zita said.
She glanced at the reply from Bram. WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF THAT?
ME GETTING THROUGH? Sophie wrote. DIMINISHING.
New handwriting—Verena. She imagined them together in Nightjar’s galley, bent over a page. SOPHIE, BEHAVE.
TRYING, OMG, I SWEAR, TRYING.
Mirelda took a swipe at her with the blush.
Sophie gently pushed her hands away. “Listen, I’m not gonna pass for a genteel Sylvanner anything. Or a woman of the Fleet, for that matter.”
“No,” they agreed, Zita with humor, Mirelda with a touch of anxiety.
“If Cly doesn’t like the image I present, he can park me in a dark corner.”
“Nonsense.” Cly’s voice came through the door, followed by a knock.
“Come on in,” Sophie said, opening it herself.
Zita’s dress uniform was snazzy. Cly’s was just shy of outrageous. The Sylvanner sash was twinned with something that must be judicial—they wound around each other in a braid, ornamented with medallions and ribbons. His red cape, which had gold epaulets, was so impeccably brushed that it glowed.
Like Zita, he wore a sword, a wide-bladed, sharp-looking saber made of stonewood.
“I find no fault with the way you look,” he said.
Faint praise, Sophie thought, wondering suddenly if she and her father would get along.
“You look like the king of something,” she said.
“You’re too kind.”
She folded her texting papers and tucked them into her questions notebook—and saw Cly noting that she’d packed as she did.
“Girls, please wait for us on the porch,” he said, and Zita and Mirelda made themselves scarce.
“So,” she asked. “What’s the program tonight?”
He held up two new stickpins. “This is a sage designation. It represents intellectual achievement. Your … Master’s degree, you called it?” It looked vaguely like a protractor. “The second is a nonspecific indicator of dietary restrictions. You may continue your hunger strike after all, if you choose.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“The
program, as you say, is merely to mingle. This is Autumn District in the height of the summer festival—it’s not our time, so we celebrate the ascendancy of the people in the next district. We laud the summerborn and the nearly grown.”
“And other than that it’s walk around, chitchat over canapés, listen to the band, try not to get wasted.”
“Children don’t drink at functions.”
“Not a child, remember?”
“See if you can manage to get through this evening without acting like one.”
They glared at each other over the pins until he handed them over and stalked out without giving her a chance to ask if he was selling her in marital bondage to Rees Erminne.
Which was ridiculous, or even paranoid, because he wasn’t. Reassurance would have been nice, but it wasn’t necessary.
Ask him now, she told herself, following him out. But he’d vanished deeper into the house.
Mirelda was calling her. “Our carriage is here!”
The object pulling up to the gate, horse-drawn, of course, had to be a low wagon, but it was decked out like a parade float. A flowing fabric cover, pink and ruffled, concealed a little ramp up to the wagon in back. A half-dozen dressed-up Sylvanners and a mandolin player were already aboard.
“Let’s go,” Mirelda said, tugging Sophie along. Mervin and his parents were making their way toward the float.
Sophie balked. “Just us?”
“Cousin Clydon and Tenner Zita ride on the Fleet display.”
One last hoop to jump. Sophie thought of her bags, packed and ready to go so that all anyone … any slave would have to do was haul the stuff onto whatever ride brought her back to Nightjar.
The thought of the ship worked its usual magic; she felt her spirits lifting. “Okay, let’s do this.”
They rushed down Low Bann’s long drive and—Mirelda took her hand—up to the float. It smelled of roses and the horses pulling it were a creamy white color. Lippizaners? Sophie wondered: Could a show breed have survived, if the two worlds were somehow the same?
Annela had told Cly that Stormwrack was a future version of Erstwhile. Which implied something would happen to turn her world into this one.
Then she was on a platform with Cousin Fenn and her family. There were six or so neighbors from someplace called Low Frake.
“This is Clydon’s daughter,” Cousin Fenn told them. “The outlander.”
“But Verdanii?” one of them asked.
“No,” Sophie said. “Total savage.”
Okay, Sofe, you promised to try for Beatrice’s sake.
What do I owe Beatrice again? I’m doing this for Verena.
Not to impress a certain someone else?
Shut up, random voice.
The float was part of a real parade—as they rode east, toward Turtle Beach and Erminne’s estate, the slaves came out to line the road and quietly wave at the landowners, who were throwing small coins to them.
They passed three of the women whom Sophie had encountered in the kitchen on the way to get Zita her water. The blonde who’d been crying was there, staring defiantly. She locked eyes with Mirelda.
Sophie felt curiosity stir. Then she saw kids, eight of them, little ones with tiny bangles on their wrists, and she forgot everything except I’m going to be sick.
“Sit,” Fenn said, pushing her toward a bench. “Breathe.”
Sophie raised her head and glowered.
“I know our ways must seem—”
“I’m so totally sure you don’t want to finish that sentence,” Sophie said.
“Beatrice felt as you did,” Fenn said. “I think she loved Cly sincerely enough until they came home.”
She imagined Beatrice in the middle of one of her epic freak-outs, shrieking about the slaves. Somehow it seemed perfectly appropriate.
Fenn shrugged. “Well, we’re on Erminne land now. They’re radicals.”
“They don’t—?”
“Erminne’s father freed them all on his marrying day—it’s an old custom. The estate’s gone to ruin since. Why do you think they need their art collection so badly?”
“Radicals. Abolitionists?”
“Sophie, you must see that if you pull your father in that direction, it will ruin us all.”
“Like Cly would ever consider ditching his vine-munching goat transforms, let alone whoever dumps his chamberpot.”
“Does he care if we’re reduced to poverty? He lives asea—he’s got a Fleet pension. And any alliance with the Erminne … well, Fralienne would insist.” She brightened. “But you’ve got a point. As long as the lowlands are infested with throttlevine, the government would forbid his divesting.”
“You’re serious.” Sophie gaped at Fenn. “You think he’s gonna set up an engagement, and then … no more slaves on Low Bann?”
He had asked: What would you have me do?
“There are many reasons why expanding Low Bann eastward would be beneficial, I grant you. The Erminne estate is a desirable property.”
“But not without an unpaid workforce, am I right?”
“Precisely.” A puzzled half smile from Fenn.
“So he marries me to Rees Erminne and frees all the people on Low Bann and throws your lives into upheaval … for what? So I can get along with him? Could he want my approval that badly? He can’t think getting me hitched is the way.”
Fenn had listened to all of this with a tiny frown. Now she said, “Your approval would hardly be an issue. Our young do as they’re told or they’re scripped to obey.”
Sophie drew a long, slow breath, stunned. She’d expected Fenn to agree with her, to say an arranged marriage was impossible.
“He knows your name, does he not?”
“No.” Sophie’s voice was small. “Cly’s not stupid. Anyway, he wants me to be—”
“To be what? Half Feliachild? Potentially useful, I’d agree, if you hadn’t thrown that bit of your heritage on the midden. A temperamente spell wouldn’t damage your outlander education, if that’s what he’s looking to exploit. If you were bound to Rees he could leave him here, charged, I suppose, with running both estates into poverty. He could take you and—”
She remembered Beatrice’s letter: He wants something, and it won’t be good.
“He wouldn’t,” she said again. There was something she’d missed here.
“There’s nothing he wouldn’t do. Getting his way is what he does. Convince him an alliance won’t work, Sophie. Failing that, convince the Erminnes.” With that, Fenn stepped back to the edge of the float, drawing a confused-looking Mirelda with her.
Sophie reached for the calm she felt on dives or when climbing, when things went wrong. That focus that made the difference between getting everyone back safe or coming home broken … or not at all.
Nothing. Her mind churned. Bram, you’d better get here quick.
They’d arrived at the Erminne estate, and Rees and his mother were climbing aboard the float now. Their house did look ramshackle. Wet climate, constant maintenance, Sophie thought. The roof was patched; the paving stones were uneven.
“It’s nice to see you again,” Rees said. He’d combed his hair; the outfit he wore, unlike the one she’d seen earlier, was in good shape—minimally worn, without visible repairs.
She shook her head, trying to provide a polite answer but too freaked out to muster any courtesy. He took the hint, moving to the edge of the float. He and his mother had coins to throw but there was nobody lining this stretch of road.
Curiosity, ever the traitor, stirred. What was it like to be an abolitionist here?
She took a close look at Fralienne Erminne. She looked about thirty-five—which must be affected by magic, Sophie supposed. Curl your hair, straighten your hair, hide a few wrinkles. This evening, as this morning, she was heavily powdered.
Tanning’s not genteel, she remembered.
She wore gloves, as Mirelda did, but they were longer, and as Sophie watched she saw Fralienne tug at them, fiddling.
She was fitter than Fenn—she had real shoulders and gave no impression of softness. Unlike her son, who emanated a sort of smart but pleasant harmlessness, she was visibly worn.
They rode past two more “normal” estates and the others went back to flinging coins at the slaves who lined the roads, Fenn and some of the others casting disapproving glances at the small copper coins tossed by the Erminnes. All they can afford, Sophie deduced.
Starting up a series of switchbacks, they merged into a longer line of floats, all flower-covered and impressively ornate. There were fake, petal-clad trees, a giant, nesting flamingo, a sperm whale, a representation of the setting sun, and more than one sailing vessel.
Aboard the floats were more families, women dressed in flared skirts and fitted tops, all wearing the colors of fall leaves and harvest. The floats bearing betrothed couples were the most elaborate, the engaged kids themselves all dressed in summer green and garlands of flowers.
As the floats converged, the musicians aboard began playing the same song, a gentle thing Sophie might have characterized as a reel. People bobbed in time and clapped. Everyone seemed in good spirits.
They reached the top of the hill, a flattened mountaintop, the sort of thing the ancients would have used as the base for a series of temples. Instead Sophie saw low-slung brick structures, two and three stories high, each of them windowless and round as globes, lying like marbles on a green that was, effectively, a botanical garden and a zoo—trails wound between the buildings, garden beds, and habitats for various animals.
The central building of the Spellscrip Institute was the biggest sphere of the bunch, and its brickwork glittered with hints of shine, silvery black in color, that Sophie suspected was hematite.
Autumn Spell was standing atop this, clad in what looked like a gold and red body stocking, with long swirls of scarf flowing around her, borne on invisible breezes. She looked down at Sophie; their eyes met and her mouth moved.
“Welcome, honored guest.” The words sounded in her ear as if Autumn were standing right beside her.
“Thank you,” Sophie managed.