A Daughter of No Nation

by A. M. Dellamonica

  “We warned you about Cly,” Verena grunted.

  Sophie fished through the deck. It wasn’t just ordinary—it had come from home. The box had a Las Vegas casino name on it. Setting it aside, she fished for the queen and king of hearts. “Corsetta and Rashad, obviously.” Then the joker. “Rashad’s brother, Montaro. What are the other pieces?”

  Verena took the deck. “King of clubs—the Tibbs government. And—crazy eight of diamonds—the snow vulture.”

  “Eights are wild, I like it.”

  Digging in her pocket, she came up with some of the hard Sylvanner nuts Cly had forced Mervin to harvest for her. “Ships: here’s Waveplay, Montaro’s ship.”

  “And the derelict boat…”

  “We need something for the cat,” Sophie added.

  “The cat?”

  “They’re valuable, right?” Sophie laid a gnarled nut among the cards. “You have the answer, Verena.”

  A flash of something … anger? despair? “So, what? Your dad would lay out the problem and leave you to flail?”

  “No,” Sophie said. “No leaving.”

  “I’ve been over and over this. You’re the great observer. You solve it.”

  Sophie shook her head. Her father, at this point, would have said, Quit if you want to.

  Verena sighed. “Here’s what I know. Tibbon’s Wash is all uptight about who’s who and all their social rules, but anyone can get a favor from their queen by winning whatever challenge they’ve got going. Their last snow vulture stopped laying about fifteen years ago and now that’s the challenge. But they’re hard to catch. They need someone with a gift, an affinity. So they’ve had this … plug, I guess, in their social safety valve.”

  Sophie said, “Enter Corsetta—”

  “Who schemes and scams. She’s good at escapes, possibly inscribed for it. Can she pick locks? We don’t know. But she works in Montaro’s household as a goatherd. They want to send her vulture hunting, but she’s such a handful. Nobody trusts her.”

  “And who wants a goatherd getting the big prize, am I right?”

  Verena picked up the king. “I think they threw young Rashad into her path.”

  “Seducing the scammer?”

  Verena nodded. “The Waveplay crew and the Tibbsians I met with in Fleet all say the same thing about the guy. He’s young, he’s cute, he’s maybe not so bright, but he’s a big hit with the girls. What if elder brother Montaro set the two of them on a collision course?”

  “To what end?”

  “If it was me, I’d tell younger brother to get Corsetta’s name.”

  “Oh,” Sophie said. “So they can inscribe her? That’s kind of evil, isn’t it?”

  “She falls for the cute boy and agrees to go after the bird … then something goes wrong.”

  “For who?”

  “For big brother. He doesn’t know it at first. He gets his vulture, waits until she lays an egg, throws Corsetta overboard, and makes for the Fleet.”

  “There’s his big score,” Sophie said. “Corsetta’s gone, and he gets the prize from the Queen.”

  “But she survives … why heal her?”

  Sophie kept her mouth shut. You can do this, she thought.

  Verena lashed her sword, jumping to her feet and spearing her practice dummy. “Okay. So he gets to the Fleet with the vulture, home-free, tries to sell it for a pot of money. But the bird’s moping without Corsetta. Next there’s a message from home; Rashad fell for the girl, Rashad’s suicidal.”

  “So, what? Put him on suicide watch, right? That’s what I don’t get.”

  “Oh!”

  Dropping the sword on the bed, Verena strode out of the cabin and over to Corsetta’s cabin. She unlocked and threw open the hatch. “It isn’t a suicide pact at all, is it? It’s a spell. You die, he dies? He dies, you die? As you got worse, out there in the sun, Rashad started to sicken. You’re effectively holding him hostage; they had to heal you.”

  Corsetta leapt to her feet. “Without each other, life has no meaning! We’re meant to … the longer you keep us apart…” She dissolved into tears.

  Verena looked to Sophie. Faking? she mouthed.

  Sophie shrugged and then made a little jabbing gesture, as if she were fencing. You can do this.

  Verena all but squared off against the kid. “They say there was no egg.”

  “There was, I swear!”

  “Why not sell it? It was worth a bundle. And they’re trying to keep you here, in Fleet, far away from their precious son.”

  “I’m not good enough for them.”

  “They don’t want you going home,” Verena said. “Don’t want you claiming the Queen’s favor, but it’s not just that, is it?”

  Sophie fisted her hands against the urge to pile in.

  “There’s something else. Something they’re afraid you’ll tell.”

  “There’s no secret,” Corsetta said. “You’re on the wrong course. My beloved’s family hates me!”

  “What secret could only matter at home?”

  “Nothing!” Corsetta said. “Please, Kirs, take me to my beloved.”

  Verena circled, her eyes glazed as if she were far away. “Oh,” she said. “I see, I totally see. I do have all the info.”

  Corsetta paled. “Kir.”

  “It’s not that whatever you two are hiding doesn’t matter in Fleet. It’s that neither of you can reveal it in Fleet without being arrested. Whichever of you gets home first, inside that cozy sovereign limit where the Watch can’t arrest you…”

  By now the girl was all but shock white.

  Verena sat. She was ramrod straight, so tense, and Sophie was struck by her and Corsetta’s youth. They should be acting out cop and criminal in a school play. But this was a real interrogation.

  “Look,” Verena said. “My aunt was a big deal in the Watch. I’m cousin to Annela Gracechild. I’m new at this, I know, but I can tell them right now that you and Montaro are in a race to get home. We know you were aboard the derelict ship, the first victim of those raiders.”

  A single fat tear rolled down Corsetta’s cheek.

  “They helped us,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “We met the raiders, the crew sailing Incannis. They had just attacked that ship, maybe a day before. They were on their way back, and they were waiting to offload their cargo.”

  “The crew had fought—the ship was damaged. They had a drape over her name but we saw it: Incannis. I saw it. We should have run, sent a message. But Montaro talked to her captain. I overheard—”

  “You overheard?” Verena said skeptically.

  “You were aboard,” Sophie said suddenly. “You took it into your head to steal the raiders’ cat.”

  Verena looked at her.

  “I meant to tell you,” she said. “They had cat stuff—dishes for food, toys—but it hadn’t been used for weeks. Banana came from the raiders’ ship.”

  “He was a gift for Rashad.” Corsetta’s lip curled. “For his fishing boat.”

  “So you went to bag Banana and ended up eavesdropping on Montaro?”

  She nodded. “They gave us—him—something. A cask. Money, I assumed, or goods. And they told us where to find the derelict. It helps, when you’re trying to tame a snow vulture. It needs somewhere to land. But I think—”

  “Yes?” Verena said.

  “I think Montaro meant to meet them all along. I think—it’s death, isn’t it? Aiding and abetting banditry? And if I’m executed, Rashad dies, too.”

  “Did you find out what was in the cask?”

  Corsetta reached into her voluminous dreadlocks and produced a smooth piece of amber with a single grain of something about the size of a chunk of black pepper within it.

  “How big a cask?”

  Corsetta held out her hands, miming a box about the size of a French loaf.

  “So if you got home, would you have turned Montaro in? Or just blackmailed him to leave you alone?”

  Corsetta looked
down, expression miserable. “I have to get back to Rashad, Kirs.”

  “Okay,” Verena said. “Sit tight, Corsetta. I’ll see what I can do for you.”

  The girl nodded, looking wrung out. As they closed the hatch and locked it again, they could hear her sobbing into a pillow.

  Sophie asked: “What kind of spells does amber go into?”

  “There’s a range.” Verena was lost in thought. “I need to talk to Annela.”

  “Hey,” Sophie said. “You got a confession out of the little schemer!”

  Verena flushed and almost smiled. For a second Sophie thought she might even reach out for a hug. Then she ducked her head before striding away.

  CHAPTER 21

  By dawn, the fog was thick as curtains but the Fleet carried on, twinkling in the murk, the sailors occasionally calling out halloos to each other to reassure themselves that everyone was where they should be. The taxikites were grounded, but small ferries plied a careful trade between the big ships, appearing out of nowhere to take on passengers, then gliding off out of sight.

  Verena took one to Constitution before breakfast. “I sent a message to a reporter friend of Gale’s,” she said to Sophie before she left. “Maybe she’ll know about this duel between Hamish Cordero and your father.”

  “Okay. Thank you, Verena.”

  Her sister shifted from foot to foot for a second, looking as though she wanted to say something more, then abruptly turned and transferred to the ferry.

  Sophie stood at the rail, watching the small boat disappear into the murk. It seemed ludicrous that so much responsibility should be dumped on Verena’s shoulders. Okay, people were considered adults here at an earlier age—and she jumped on anyone who tried to treat her like a kid.

  She heard herself telling Cly: Don’t call me “child.”

  Okay, but there was a difference between seventeen and twenty-five.

  And just now, that guilty expression on her face: like a kid who’d been caught joyriding or maybe drinking …

  “What are you doing?” Parrish said.

  “Verena said she’d asked someone to come help with the … with learning about Cly and Cordero.”

  His eyebrows rose: this was clearly news to him. “It may take a while for anyone to arrive in this fog.”

  “We’ll just do some science, then, while we wait.”

  He nodded, not bothering to make a pretense of stopping her. “I’ll be aft; we’re mending some of the old sails today.”

  Bram had drawn out another world map, this one sized to match the framed version in Sweet’s cabin, and in much the same style. He laid it out now with a sheet of tissue paper over it.

  “That’s not magic paper, is it?”

  He shook his head. “Tonio took me to that market you mentioned.”

  She’d borrowed a little bit of resinous gum from the galley; using it, they tacked the pages down. With the two layers fixed to each other, they found Moscasipay on Verdanii and drew a longitudinal line through it. “Zero. World Clock.”

  “And mid–North America. Saskatchewan.” He began to sketch latitudinal lines: the Arctic Circle, the 49th parallel, and eyeballed the eastern and western boundaries of North America.

  They spent an hour comparing the two—figuring out that cities like New York and Washington, DC, were underwater, if they had existed here at all.

  Stormwrack had so little landmass; the archipelagos looked minuscule when set against the continents of home.

  Sophie ran a hand over the biggest of the landless waterways. “Asia’s basically gone.” The island furthest east within what should be Europe was about where the Dardanelles would be.

  “We can calculate the total landmass above water. And if we identify a high point—I was hoping Everest, but … anyway, we’ll be able to calculate the amount of water on the planet now.”

  “The ocean rise.” She looked over the map, looking for mountains she knew.

  “Mont Blanc should be around here.” She tapped the map not far from Erinth. “Or … look! There are a bunch of islands in the Pacific Northwest. Mount Rainier’s here. We could use that.”

  “Or Hood.”

  “Rainier’s, what … fourteen thousand feet?”

  “If it hasn’t gone the way of Mount Saint Helens.” He poked an archipelago northeast of the Pacific islands. “So these were the Rockies?”

  “Maybe.” She nodded. “You still thinking a comet strike did this?”

  “There’s nothing yet to rule it out,” Bram said. “A comet would bring in more water, pulverizing the landscape.”

  “Wipe out Asia?”

  He paused. Asia was so big, and the Himalayas being gone—it was unthinkable. “Multiple comet strikes?”

  “How does anything survive that?”

  “We gather evidence. We find out.”

  They shared a grin.

  “Evidence of comets,” she said. “What would that be?”

  “We need real maps of the islands. Detailed topography. There could be evidence of impacts, craters.”

  “And you say we can calculate the global volume of water?”

  “Yeah.”

  She chewed that over. “Gravity would increase, right, if the comets brought in mass?”

  “Possibly. If we had a scale and something with a fixed weight—”

  “My tanks,” she said. “They probably have scales aboard—we just have to figure out the units and how to convert back to pounds or kilograms.”

  They were hard at work when a private ferry hailed them. Inside was an extraordinary-looking woman: seven feet tall, with caramel skin and a veritable lion’s mane for hair.

  She swaggered aboard Nightjar, exchanging a few words in Erinthian with Tonio. She took Parrish’s arm—he had a strange, strangled look on his face—and snuggled in before nodding to Bram and Sophie.

  “Langda Pyke,” she said, before Parrish could introduce them. “From the journal Foghorn.”

  “Hi,” Sophie said.

  “Verena didn’t tell us you were coming,” Parrish said.

  “She’s a dear girl, isn’t she? But you … is it Zophie?”

  “Sophie,” she corrected.

  “Rumor has it you’re looking to blackmail His Honor the Duelist-Advocate. No, don’t look shocked—I’d never print something so scandalous. Even if the censors would allow it, which they wouldn’t, I’d lose my sources in the Judiciary.”

  “Great.” She was … glossy, that was the word, and her grip on Parrish had a proprietary air that Sophie didn’t care for. “Why help us?”

  “What woman can say no to an old flame?”

  Parrish stood a little straighter, attempting to disentangle himself from her clutches and failing. Sophie felt her jaw set.

  Which was silly. He was allowed to have exes, and she had no particular claim on him anyway.

  Is this who I am now? Little Miss Jealous Person? Snapped at Lais about Annela, and now I’m all bristly just because Parrish has former lovers? Tall, exotic, gorgeous, pushy former lovers—

  “I wanted a look at you,” Langda was saying. “If you’re going to be the breaking of the Fleet—”

  “I’m not!”

  “You, boy, get me a brew. Don’t care what, as long as it’s hot.”

  Rather than tell her he wasn’t part of the crew, Bram ambled off toward the galley.

  “This way,” Parrish said, leading her out of the damp. “Our current line of inquiry concerns Hamish Cordero.”

  Pyke stretched like a cat, waving her luxurious hair as she took a seat, “Ah, Cordero. Old fool. He could have surrendered to Banning. Instead, he all but forced your father to kill him.”

  Which takes us back to the throttlevine, Sophie thought, but gives us nothing.

  “Oh, relax, little Kir, I’m not done. Two days before the duel, there was a murder. An atomist constructor, a Sylvanner who’d defected. He was scripped to death. He’d been on Haversham for years. He defected right before the throttlevine started
taking root on Low Bann. And he was living in Cordero’s family home.”

  “Cordero and a Sylvanna defector?” That was Bram, coming back laden with a big tray of steaming mugs. He set them down and sat beside Sophie.

  “Delicious, don’t you think? The unofficial story is this: Cordero let the atomist, a gentleman named Highfelling, stay at his home, where he somehow created or facilitated the throttlevine infestation. Years later, the Bannings sent their pet boy-killer—no offense, Kir Sophie—to Fleet to join the duelists and see what he could learn. When he got close to exposing Cordero’s involvement, his co-conspirators killed the atomist.”

  “Why scrip him to death? Why not use some other means of assassination?” Parrish asked.

  “Highfelling saw it coming—he’d fled and gone into hiding. Magic was the only way to get to him.” She all but purred the words. “Are you still ticklish, Garland?”

  “I assume so.” He had recovered from the surprise of her arrival, Sophie deduced—the question didn’t faze him. “You were saying?”

  “Cordero, when he was caught, threw himself into an all-or-nothing duel with Banning. He couldn’t win, so he committed suicide by combat.”

  Sophie said, “How does any of this help us?”

  “Ah, because I know a secret. The scrip that killed the atomist turned up about six years ago. It’s with his body, the case evidence, and all his portable goods.” Pyke was examining Parrish, gauging the effect of her words. When nobody replied, she added, “Perhaps, as I hear you’re outlanders—”

  “We understand what you’re saying,” Bram said. “People who get magicked to death end up in the care of the monks on Issle Morta.”

  With the monks who’d raised Parrish, in other words.

  If the scroll or whatever—it was sure to be written on dead-yak dung or something equally appalling, Sophie thought—was on Issle Morta, they could tear it up. They could make the Sylvanner live again.

  The idea of it, of resurrecting someone—and he’d been dead how many decades?

  Pyke was watching Parrish with the canny gaze of a hunter. “How long has it been since you were home?”

  He spoke with that perfection of diction that, Sophie was beginning to realize, accompanied discomfort. “Gale Feliachild and I were there ten years ago.”