“Up until then, all this had been a wee brewpot of a problem within the Judiciary, no matter for gossip. But then the marriage! Sylvanner and a Verdanii, and a Feliachild at that! A future matriarch of one of the nine families, high in the line to be Allmother, and they said she wanted to study magic at Sylvanna’s institute. Suddenly this was no quiet little power wrangle over whether Clydon Banning had a future on the dueling deck. Everyone in Fleet was watching. Poor little BeeBee Feliachild had never had so much attention.”
“And?” Parrish said.
“Marks contrived a last round of hurdles for young Banning to jump—a series of fights. It was a final attempt to wound him so badly he’d end up battling a desk.”
“Trying to clip his wings, we’d say,” Sophie said.
“Yes indeed. She set her chief dueling trainer on him.”
“Hamish Cordero?” Parrish was leaning forward, caught up in the story despite himself.
A nod. “Hamish was Havershamite, too, like Fae; he and Her Honor Marks were close as littermates. And he’d got into trouble—gossip had it he was involved in some scheme against the Sylvanner Spellscrip Institute.
“Those two islands, they scrap back and forth. Well, you know…”
“Right,” Sophie said. Cly had told her some of this, hadn’t he? “Is this about the throttlevine? It keeps coming back to the throttlevine. He said it was why he joined the Judiciary.”
Or did his family just send him to Fleet because he set fires and liked to fight? Were they afraid of what he’d become if he stayed home?
“Did he indeed?” The old man was checking the densely printed text on the back of his hand. “Cordero challenged the moment the case was filed. Before he could be compelled to answer questions or swear his innocence, you understand. It would be a real fight. Most people who challenge the Court, they lose. And Cordero was the Court.”
“But he lost?” That was Parrish. It wasn’t really a question.
“His Honor—the current His Honor—gave him plenty of chances to surrender. Wounded him in three places, never fatally. It was quite the risk to take. Even hurt, Cordero was a lethally dangerous man. Unbeaten, and big as a battleship.” Letters glimmered on the old bureaucrat’s onionskin flesh.
“You saw the fight?”
“Everyone went. Martial’s viewing deck was jammed so tight the crowd was just about knocking each other pregnant. We were standing in their blood. Cordero was cut a-wrist, a deep one in the leg, and there was a delicate little slash above his eye. Banning had just missed having his throat cut—his shirt was in tatters—and he’d got his guts pricked. They were both so fine and terrible. It’s what war must have been like.”
“Yeah, ’cause war’s so romantic and fabulous,” Sophie said.
Parrish put a hand on hers, a not-so-subtle cue to shut up. Their lunch companion cackled, and Parrish pulled away abruptly.
“Cordero was weakening. He was elder and had bled more, and by then he knew he was the slower. Banning, unbelievable as it seems, had kept a rug thrown over how very talented he was at swordplay. All those fights he’d barely won—he’d been toying with his food. Her Honor the Duelist-Advocate had underestimated him.
“So Cordero threw himself at Banning. His sword was a blur. He couldn’t see out of the bloodied eye, and he was roaring.
“‘Dirty lickspittle slaver!’ I can hear him bellowing it even now.” The onionskin man’s expression said he was far away. “He was a huge fellow, a bull to Banning’s stallion, and he’d clearly decided to put all the viva he had left into overbearing him, hammering through his defenses, making him afraid and then chopping through his sword, and cloth and skin, to his bone. Live or die, Cordero wouldn’t concede.”
“He backed Banning to the very edge of the dueling deck. I saw your father consider—I think he truly regretted it. But live or die? He had to choose. He stepped sideways, fast, so fast—and sliced his blade across Cordero’s neck.
“The old bull died right there. The thud, as he hit the deck … he was just meat. Already gone.”
The old clerk took a long, delicate sip of his pureed soup and dabbed his lips.
“Why was any of this scandalous?” Sophie asked.
“Court etiquette. Banning should have refused to fight. The disagreement touched upon his family lands.”
“It’s why he came to the Judiciary,” Sophie repeated. “The throttlevine case. He said it brought him into the law.”
“Well, Her Honor Fae Marks had dropped anchor on herself. She assigned the fight. Banning should have recused, but when he didn’t, she declined to disqualify him. Responsibility gravitates upwards.”
“It was obvious she’d hoped he’d die?” Parrish asked.
“Everyone wanted that troublesome little Sylvanner dead: the duelists, his Verdanii in-laws, maybe even his own kin on Low Bann. Instead he hopped about three rungs up the Judiciary promotion ladder. Four, really, after Marks retired in disgrace.”
“Did Cordero have family?” Parrish asked.
“Wife and son, yes. They’re aboard Blister. Now—” His eyes brightened. “Coin for coin, Kirs. You’re the Verdanii’s niece, but … not of the Allmother, I understand?”
Sophie entertained him for the remainder of the meal with an edited version of what had happened when she’d first come to Stormwrack. The old man was a bit bloodthirsty, for all he was made of paper—he grilled her extensively for every detail of the inscription deaths of the two pirates who’d attacked her six months ago, and then about the mezmer attack on Gale. She was acutely conscious of Parrish at her side as she answered the clerk’s questions about Parrish’s good friend’s murder.
He sipped barley tea and acted perfectly calm … at least, he did until the old man said, “Sturma’s murder was always foretold, was it not so?”
“Foretold? Are you kidding?” She couldn’t quite keep from snorting.
Parrish had overslurped and burned himself. “Yes,” he said, with obvious reluctance. “Gale’s eventual death by homicide was predicted on the day of her birth.”
“Why would anyone do that?” Sophie said.
“You’d have to ask the Allmother,” Parrish said, and she could feel, suddenly, an ache blowing off him like a strong wind.
The bureaucrat cackled. “She’s as odd as they say, then? You’ve met her?”
“Excuse me.” Parrish got up, bowed, and walked away. His face had locked into grief: she remembered the expression from just after Gale died.
Sophie shrugged apologetically. “They were close.”
“Lost a few of those myself. All you do, you get this old, is lose friends. It’s all right, girl. Go after your man. Visit me some other time. I’m due another nap anyway.”
“He’s not my—” But the old fellow was creaking to his feet, taking both his tea and his soup cup with him as he shuffled off.
Left alone at the table, Sophie took a second to gather her thoughts.
Predestination. Is there anything they don’t believe here?
Was it possible? Was she going to have to give credence to every crazy fairy tale thing she’d ever heard?
No. She brightened. They believe in aetherism and astrology and phrenology and voodoo, too. So Gale’s murder was foretold. It’s just a coincidence that it came true. Or self-fulfilling prophecy—what if they planned for her to be a spy from day one?
Buoyed by this idea, she set about getting back to Nightjar.
CHAPTER 20
The rising weather wasn’t a storm yet, just a patch of choppy sea, heavy winds, and miserable, chilly rain. They were silent on the ferry ride back to Nightjar, Parrish locked in his own thoughts or maybe just freshly grieving Gale, with the scab ripped off.
Sophie had all but forgotten that Tonio had hung a “situation” signal from the topsail.
When they climbed aboard, though, he was waiting. “It’s ginagina sunburn. Corsetta.”
“She’s here? Didn’t someone tell us they’d caught her ag
ain?”
“She persuaded her guard to bring her.” He pointed at a massive, uniformed Fleet sailor.
“What does she want with us?”
“She won’t tell me.” Tonio spread his hands in an extravagant gesture. “A mere ship’s mate? Never!”
“Verena?” Parrish said.
“She’s thrown in the towel. She said to wait for the … I think she called you a ‘brain trust,’ Sophie.”
“Are you sure she didn’t mean Bram?”
Tonio shook his head. “Bram’s over there holding his belly, poor man.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Parrish said.
Bram was aft, wrapped in rain gear, fighting nausea by taking huge gulps of air. Sophie put her arms around him and just leaned.
“What’s going on with Verena?” he asked, quietly, as Sophie’s sister emerged from belowdecks and conferred with Parrish.
“She’s not Gale.”
“Someone expects her to be?”
“Her? Annela?” Sophie shrugged. “I think we can deduce that the Verdanii are insanely hard on their daughters.”
The rocking motion of the ship was invigorating. Bram got queasy; she had always thrived on having a little physical discomfort. Something to push against, she’d sometimes thought. Her parents had made the mistake of taking them camping once, when she was little. She’d begged and begged them to take her again.
She hadn’t understood that they all hated it. Dad making fires and cutting wood and trying to find ample light so he could lose himself in the Romantic poets. Mom cooking canned spaghetti on the campfire. Being out in the sound of wind rushing through leaves, the babble of water in a river—Sophie had been the only one to thrive in that environment.
My poor bookish folks, she thought, grinning fondly and feeling simultaneously homesick.
The air was surprisingly warm, considering how far north they were. The wind was cool but had no real bite, and the occasional spatters of raindrops were barely below lukewarm. It was still summer, she thought, for a while yet.
Sweet brought blankets and coffee and they sat comfortably, watching the seas.
Tonio was on hand with a crew on the sails, ready to adjust their course if the wind changed. All the sailing ships of the Fleet were similarly livened, decks at the ready with snugly dressed sailors poised for any shift in the weather. As it continued to darken, fog crept up from the surface of the water.
The Fleet disappeared into curtains of mist—one minute they were at the heart of the great floating city, the next they might have been in the middle of nowhere, unremarked and alone.
Bram’s expression tightened. Sophie guessed he was trying to calculate how many of the Fleet’s hundreds of ships might collide in the murk.
Before she could come up with a reassurance, there was a rush of noise, reminiscent of chirping crickets. A whirl of glowing motes drifted back from the fore of the Fleet. Some clung to the rigging and sail of Nightjar, outlining the ship in little winking lights. Others passed to the rear, lighting up the ships nearest them.
The lights put her in mind of stars. “If we had a nice accurate shot of the night sky, and an astronomer, we could calculate how many years have passed between 2015 and now.”
“Easier if you’re right and it has been millions of years,” Bram said. “If the stars have had time to move significant distances.”
“My theory is it has been millions,” she said. “Divergence in animal species—evolution takes time, even under pressure.”
“They could have been magically altered.”
“Maybe. But magic depends on animals and plants: inks from one species, writing surfaces from another. We’ll have to check it out, but I’m thinking if you need a perfect pink tree frog from the Isle of Bambo for a given spell, you can’t use magic to create the frog and then use it to do the spell. It’s recursive.”
“Millions of years doesn’t explain why there are still modern humans,” he said.
“Maybe that’s where the magic comes in. Or the Noah’s Ark legends aren’t about people waiting out the disaster in flood shelters. Maybe they fled to the future.”
She saw him mulling it over.
“It’s easier for one species to be the exception, especially if that species is us.”
They had no way of knowing if this was their world or a parallel maybe-future, but if it was the same, they knew that time travel existed.
So … a disaster, at home, within the next five thousand or at most ten thousand years. If there was time to evacuate, that meant either it unfolded slowly or they saw it coming.
“It wouldn’t be flash-bang gone,” Bram said. “And they’d have to know Stormwrack existed.”
“Ha. That’s what I was thinking.”
They shared a grin.
“You know, Cly said the government is afraid that we’ll have a disaster and try to evacuate here. But he meant—when he talked about the disaster, he sounded like he meant climate change stuff.”
Bram was looking less green.
“An archaeologist would help,” she said. “If people just cropped up here, after centuries of being extinct, there’d be evidence. Stuff to find.”
“But where to dig?”
She flipped through her notes. “Verdanii. Biggest landmass, and the matriarchs apparently took it over from some ancient civilization that practiced an older form of magic.”
“You’re not allowed on Verdanii.” When she’d repudiated citizenship, she’d agreed to stay away.
“So? I’m also not an archaeologist. We’d have to get one. Or train one.”
Bram shifted on the bench. “It might not be our world anyway. More likely a parallel.”
“Couldn’t parallel worlds suffer parallel disasters?”
“Good point,” he said. “But if we’re talking about a ten-thousand-year window on whatever it is—that’s huge.”
“Right,” she said. “So it’s not like doom’s gonna befall Erstwhile tomorrow. Right?”
“Let’s change the subject before we freak ourselves out,” Bram said.
“To what?”
Her brother’s gaze wandered over the deck to Parrish, who was just emerging from below. The dimple in Bram’s cheek appeared, then vanished; he was fighting a smile.
“No.” Sophie said.
“Sophie and Garland, sitting in a tree, Kay-Eye-Ess-Ess—”
“I will throw you overboard, Bramwell,” she said.
He subsided with a squelched interior chuckle—she felt it, his ribs to hers.
“I think he believes in predestination,” she said, breaking her own declared resolution not to discuss Parrish.
Bram made a dismissive noise. “They also believe that if you’re born during the first hours of daylight, you’ll have a more pleasant disposition.”
Parrish crossed the deck to where they sat.
“How’s it going with Verena and Corsetta?” Sophie asked.
“Verena interviewed a number of people while you were gone,” he said. “The Tibbsians, you remember, have been trying to acquire snow vulture eggs. Part of the trick of … what did you call it? Bird whispering?”
Sophie nodded.
“Part of the trick is, essentially, convincing the bird to give up a certain number of eggs in exchange for having the rest of her chicks reared in a protected environment. Corsetta says she’d done so and the bird was laying when she was thrown overboard. The captain of Waveplay, Montaro, says there were no eggs, that Corsetta tried to rob the crew and fled.
“Do we buy that?” Sophie said.
“We believe she’s sincerely fond of the boy, Rashad, back on Tibbon’s Wash. We believe she’s fearful that he’ll come to harm if she doesn’t return home. As for who’s in the wrong in this conflict with Rashad’s brother or who healed her when she was dying…” He shook his head.
“The Tibbs government has thrown its support behind Rashad’s brother and is requesting that he be freed to return home. There’s something n
either party will tell us.”
She squinted at Parrish. “Did you really get rid of Gale’s encyclopedia of all the island nations?”
He raised his nose. “It’s easily replaced.”
She let the pieces of the puzzle churn for a second, trying to fit them together.
Bram murmured, “Verena needs the win here, remember?”
Right. She had promised to keep her mouth shut and let Verena work on it all.
She looked up at Parrish. He had been dampened by the rain, and a thread was dangling from his coat sleeve. One of his cuffs’ buttons was loose. She tugged it before it could fall, handing it to him. His skin was warm.
“Thank you, Sophie,” he said gravely.
She was suddenly, acutely aware of Bram, sitting there observing, drawing silly conclusions and gathering ammo for another round of teasing. There was no reason to help him, was there?
“No problem,” she said lightly, going belowdecks and tapping on Verena’s hatch.
Her sister was sitting on Gale’s old bunk, toying with her sword and glowering at a practice dummy. Her nose was red.
I forget she’s a teenager. Sophie poked her head through the hatch. “Can I come in?”
“I suppose you’ve got it all solved already,” she said, then blushed. “Sorry. I mean … I don’t know.”
Sophie looked around the room. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the cabin when it was Gale’s, but her sense was that it was more spartan now. At length, she spotted an ordinary deck of cards on a shelf and picked it up, joining Verena on the bed.
“My dad…” She refrained from specifying, not Cly. “He’s big on English literature—not a jock, not all that science-y. For kids he got me and Baby Einstein up there. He used to sit us down with our schoolwork, really tough stuff, and we’d ask him to help. I would, more often than Bram. And he’d say, ‘I don’t have the answers. You want the answers, you make it happen. Find the answers.’”
“Sink or swim. He’d make a good Verdanii.”
“In the last few weeks I’ve upgraded my definition of jerky dad behavior.”
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