A Daughter of No Nation

by A. M. Dellamonica

  Here in the water it seemed, suddenly, as if all the worrying and flailing had been so much wasted energy. Tonio was right: she’d been called here.

  She had to know.

  We have to, she thought. Bram as much as me.

  That meant whatever it took—trading science favors to Annela and Cly, figuring out how to use Gale’s old watch to sneak back and forth to Stormwrack illegally—they’d have to find a way. Pretending she wasn’t going to try to stay here was … well, it was lying.

  As for Parrish and destiny and Gale being doomed, she’d have to prove to his satisfaction that the prophecy was nonsense. If he was still attracted to her after that, well …

  She broke the surface about ten feet from the rowboat. The ship was reeling them in. She could feel the water resistance against her body, her diving gear.

  Tonio was there, rowing hard in the lashing rain, no tea on offer this time.

  “Did you get it?”

  She nodded. “What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t know.” He yanked mightily on the lines.

  They scrambled back to Nightjar, climbing aboard.

  Parrish had all the crew at their stations. “Get below and warm up.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “We’ve been spotted.” He pointed into a curtain of rain, presumably to indicate someone after them. Squinting, Sophie saw nothing.

  “By which side?”

  “Unknown. But with wind and tide and a battleship out there, the route past … past Bram’s Rock of Elvis is blocked. I’m taking us through the Butcher’s Baste.”

  “Through the passage? Is that possible?”

  He nodded. “I know the intervals.”

  “In a downpour?” The wind was up to ten knots at least. Hardly gale force, but …

  “Yes.”

  “Could we be panicking? I mean, Nightjar’s inconspicuous, right? Like Gale was?”

  “Inconspicuous, not invisible.”

  Bram was hovering, eager to get his hands on the automaton. “Did you get it?”

  She handed him the net. He picked out the automaton carefully, setting it out to dry. It was still tick-tick paddling.

  “Tag it,” she said. One of the goals they’d set out for their forensic institute was to try to establish the idea of a chain of evidence and some form of continuous custody.

  “Done,” Bram said.

  “Fake it until you make it,” Verena muttered.

  “Sophie, Tonio, go warm up,” Parrish said. “I’ll need all hands.”

  She went to her cabin, stripped and dried off, and gulped tea until she stopped shivering even as she loaded up on warm-weather gear. Wool socks, base layer, jeans, sweater, Gortex raincoat overtop. It all looked faintly foreign.

  Her legs were shaky from the effort of kicking against the current: she hit the galley for two of the savory scones, just to raise her blood sugar. Then she went up top, plucking at Tonio’s sleeve.

  “How can I help?”

  “Help Sweet install the horn, then join her with the starboard crew,” he said, indicating a crew readying, even now, to lower and reef the mainsail.

  She did as ordered, helping Sweet lift and then bolt a sturdy-looking brass gadget to the rail.

  “What is this thing?”

  “Speed gauge. Usually we estimate, but for the interval navigation…”

  “Precision counts. Got it,” Sophie said. They tightened the bolts and went to their separate stations, Sophie taking a place on the starboard team, following orders, hauling ropes, belaying. Rain poured down steadily, the drops slapping coldly at the exposed skin on the backs of her hands, on her face, as the ship sailed through them. The wind was light, and the seas weren’t running all that high.

  The air was soupy, the passage full of rocks and shallows.

  By now Sweet had climbed into the rigging with a spyglass, acting as a lookout. Parrish was at the wheel again.

  “I need constant speed,” he told Tonio, who had taken a position by the gauge. “Six—keep it to six.”

  It was better to be up top and pitching in than below. They raced through the hazard-filled water in the murk, with no idea if they were truly being hunted, if their presumed adversary might catch up.

  “Hard starboard,” Parrish rapped out, as a warning, and Sophie braced along with the others on her rope crew as the ship heeled over in a sharp turn. A tower of rock slid by on the port side, maybe twenty feet away.

  Parrish fixed his gaze on the stone as they passed, reset his stopwatch to zero, and aimed Nightjar port, into the unseeable black.

  Rat-a-tat. A distinct, mechanically regular series of taps, near the bow, raised the hair on her neck.

  “What was that?” a crewman asked.

  “Baste’s a-haunted,” came the reply.

  “Great,” Sophie said. “Now we have ghosts to contend with?”

  Rat-a-tat-a-tatta—

  This time it was more of a burr, a series of impacts against—the deck?—like a woodpecker’s tapping or a very small jackhammer.

  “Did anyone see?”

  “What is it? What hit us?”

  “Turning to port,” Parrish announced, as if nothing had happened. Sophie saw another islet looming at a safe distance, but only just. He was cutting it fine.

  Can he do this? she wondered. Zoom us through blind just by counting the distances between rocks?

  Tonio was absorbed with the speed gauge. She was reminded, again, of an air horn, and as he maneuvered it, it made a low humming sound.

  “It’s an exercise they gave the most talented cadets,” the crewman beside her said. “Captain learned the intervals for the Baste before he was expelled from—”

  Rat-tatta-tatta. This time it was followed by a shriek.

  “Krezzo, take the speed gauge. Call speed for Cap’n Parrish every thirty seconds.” Tonio waited until the massive cannoneer had taken over his station. Then: “Sophie, with me.”

  She followed him across the deck.

  Beal had fallen into a coil of rope. He was thrashing, obviously in pain.

  “Smashed the thing,” he managed to say. “But—ow!”

  He had been sewn to the coil of rope, fixed there with a strand of what looked like animal sinew—a trio of red stitches were looped into and through the rope and his coat. They glistened with fresh blood. The coat had been punched through, back to front, and on the way something had passed through the meat of his hip, had even nipped a little piece out of his leather belt.

  The “it” Beal had smashed lay on the deck in broken pieces. It looked like a bone needle, six inches long.

  Tonio gave Beal’s pants an unceremonious yank, exposing the twin punctures and a good deal besides. “Sophie?”

  “I think it got muscle, not organs,” she said, feeling to be sure. “Watts will know.”

  Tonio cursed. “I forgot we had a medic again.”

  “Want me back to my rope?”

  “Not until—”

  Rat-a-tatta-tatta—

  This time they saw it, a vertical whisk of bone, bouncing across the deck in a straight line …

  … like a sewing machine needle, thought Sophie … until it struck her swim fin, which was sitting, abandoned, next to the lifeboat. The needle began bouncing wildly, stitching through the rubber, balling it in sinew.

  Something above yanked it then, whisking the fin away. At the same time the thread through Beal’s hip tightened, the loops of stitching cinching his wound, clamping the coat around him, and the coil of rope. His midsection rose off the deck and Sophie half-threw herself over him so he couldn’t be yanked right off the ship.

  He groaned.

  “Sorry,” Sophie said.

  Tonio produced his glass stiletto. It wasn’t meant for sawing, but he tried to get a grip on the sinew, to slice it free of Beal’s punctured hip.

  Sophie wound a hand in what slack she could gather, amid the rope and coat, making a loop he could thread his blade through. She felt the tu
g from above. There was something aloft, well above the ship, tethered by the greasy sinew and jerking upward, like a big kite.

  She squinted at it, but rain blew into her eyes.

  Tonio got the strand cut and the sailor fell back to the deck.

  “Help Beal—I have to clear this.” With that, Tonio began chopping into the slack bits of thread that had bunched up the rope, then pulled it clear and began, painstakingly, to re-coil it.

  For an instant, Sophie felt a flash of anger at his priorities. But everything on a ship depended on its lines: if they had to loose a sail now, with its rope stapled together, they’d be dead.

  “Speed check,” Parrish called.

  “Holding six, Captain, breeze is fair,” Krezzo replied.

  “Sweet, what do you see?”

  The bosun’s voice came from well above them. “Frigate’s well to the stern, Captain.”

  “Within cannon range?”

  “No, and not currently gaining.”

  “Of which nation?”

  “Haversham.”

  Sophie returned her attention to Beal, pulling the thread of sinew. It was rubbery, with a greasy texture that made it hard to grip. The blood helped a little—it made it sticky.

  “Sorry about this,” she said, thinking, suddenly, of the transfusion specialist on Sylvanna. Wish we had one of those.

  “I’m inscribed to heal fast, Kir,” Beal assured her. “Just get this witch stitchery out of me.”

  The ship turned close round another islet and a bell began to toll.

  “Losing speed,” the canonneer bellowed. “Get that sail up.”

  Another burr. A third bone needle tatted across the deck, seeking whatever it could puncture. Sophie saw it flash past, bouncing up a spar and striking a sail, then frenzying as it lashed big, looping random-looking stitches into the fabric.

  There was a yank and the whole ship shuddered. The sail puckered, bunched, and she heard a ripping sound.

  Cursing in Erinthian, Tonio darted after the thread.

  “One of those things hits the captain, we’re on the rocks for sure,” Beal muttered. Pouring rain had diffused his blood across the deck.

  And the more of those strings we end up dragging, the harder it is to maintain speed. Could Parrish recalculate his time intervals on the fly if they decelerated?

  All they could do was put up more sail, giving the needles ever more cloth to sabotage.

  Watts came spidering across the deck just then, trying to keep his long body low. “Sorry,” he whispered. “Hatch got jammed by one of those things.”

  Sophie showed him Beal’s wound, which had indeed stopped bleeding, then took a moment to scan the deck.

  Her thoughts had slowed, as they tended to in emergencies. The cold air, whipping over her wet face, clarified things further. Tonio almost had the fouled sail straightened. An ugly triangular rip hung loose, but it was mostly intact. She wasn’t needed there.

  The source of the needles was above them.

  “Turning port!”

  Parrish brought the ship around in another sharp correction. He looked terribly exposed up at the wheel.

  Sophie was barely able to make out the shadow of the islet he was using as a marker, a spire of rubble, human-made. But then the rock lit up, spearing them with incandescence, revealing them to their hunters … and also revealing two more sinewy threads, bound to Nightjar like bloody kite strings.

  Above them, maybe a hundred feet above the water …

  It was big, maybe fifteen or eighteen feet from toe to crown. It had the face of a porcelain doll and was clad in a billowing dress whose shape reminded Sophie of christening gowns. Black in color, ornately pleated, it was tattered at the hem. Measuring cords dangled around its neck, and its mouth held bone needles and sharp stickpins.

  The thing held a live pincushion, a wriggling lamb with bloodied wool.

  The floating figure tugged on the two lines it already had in Nightjar, then pulled a bone needle from between its lips and stitched it through the bleating, struggling lamb. The needle went into the lamb attached to nothing and came out drawing one of the sinewy threads. The monster then tossed the needle at the ship, at Sophie, with a motion reminiscent of a dart player.

  Verena stepped into view just then, stomping the needle’s trailing, sinewy thread. Her boot slowed the needle just enough for Sophie to grab up Beal’s mallet and bring it down, with a slam, onto the thing. The bone shattered.

  “If they get Garland,” Verena said. She was carrying her practice dummy under one arm.

  “Yeah.”

  Parrish was haloed in the beam from the receding rock pillar. They’d be shooting for him, wouldn’t they? He was standing confidently at the wheel, hand resting lightly on Nightjar, head cocked as if he were listening for the rocks rather than looking for them.

  “Go protect him,” Sophie said.

  Verena handed her a serrated knife made, like Tonio’s, of Erinthian glass. “Keep ’em from fouling the rigs.”

  “Kir, we’re down to five and a half,” Krezzo shouted.

  Krezzo’s the cannoneer. He should be firing at that thing. But someone’s gotta watch our speed, too—doesn’t anyone else know how to read the speed horn?

  Sophie kept her eye on the sewing monster, up above. It flung another needle, then another. She pressed herself against the deck as one bounced past, then sliced the sinew of another that had punched its way into another coil of rope.

  A cry.

  Tonio.

  She looked up. He was halfway to the top of the mainmast, ill balanced and caught on a sinew.

  Sticking the cold, heavy weight of the glass knife in her mouth—very piratical of me, she thought absently, Sophie began to climb.

  “Hard to port,” Parrish warned, and as the ship tilted she was suddenly skimming over the water. Tonio was no longer above her so much as he was out in front, higher on the sail as the masts dipped toward the sea.

  The ship came out of the turn; the mast rose skyward again.

  Hang on, she thought. She couldn’t say it with the knife in her mouth.

  Good advice for them both. The ropes were wet, rough to the touch, and her hands were cold. She could make out that shape in the sky, bound to them, hitching a ride even as it crippled the ship. And was that another ship, sailing to their rear?

  Tonio had gotten stitched, just near his collar, to one of the mast’s rings. On its return trip, the needle had pierced the web of flesh between his finger and thumb. He’d caught it with his fingertips and was holding it off with the punctured, blood-slicked hand—the grip was precarious—while clinging to the rigging with one arm, hugging the rope as the sewing monster yanked, yanked. The vibrations, as she pulled, could be felt through the whole of the mast.

  Sophie mirrored Tonio’s position, climbing as close as she could, winding her own arms into the rigging so that she was holding on to the ropes with her elbows and thereby freeing her hands so she could get the knife out of her mouth.

  “It feels alive,” Tonio said, disgusted. The needle was flexing in his uncertain, blood-soaked grip. Its point was all but scratching at his throat.

  “Sophie,” he said. “That burden I mentioned.”

  “Don’t,” she said. “I’ve got this.” The trouble was that if he let go of the needle so she could cut the sinew, the point would pierce his throat.

  “Garland’s middle name was hidden before he was born—hidden from everyone, on Issle Morta. It’s why he can’t be enchanted. A number of years ago, I found out—”

  “Don’t go all drama queen on me, you’re gonna be fine.”

  The needle jerked hard, fighting the awkward grip of Tonio’s fingers and scoring a shallow cut into his neck.

  Commit, commit. Sophie pushed her own hand between the point of the needle and his neck, scraping her palm and protecting his jugular, then folded her fingers over his, pressing the needle back against the mast. She slid the obsidian knife point into the needle’s eye, pi
nning it to the mast. She’d hoped that would cut the sinew, but no. The needle wiggled, fighting imprisonment—now it was Sophie who couldn’t move.

  “You should be able to let go now,” she said.

  Tonio sighed, flexed his hand, then drew it backward, letting the gory thread pull through the puncture in his hand but taking time to shake out the cramp. Moving carefully, he found his stiletto, sawed off the thread, then cut it free of the mast ring.

  The needle went limp, as if it had died.

  There was an enraged shriek from above … and behind. The sewing monster was falling behind them.

  “Someone must have cut her other strings.” Sophie shifted, taking a better grip on the wet ropes. She could feel the ship accelerating.

  Tonio surprised her by pulling her close.

  “Kerlin,” he breathed into her ear, before she could object. “If it’s ever life or death—no other reason. Garland Kerlin Parrish. Don’t tell anyone you know. Don’t tell him. Now let’s get down, before we both get sewn to the mast.”

  “Hard to starboard now, now!”

  They stayed where they were through the turn, waiting out the tilt of the mast. The sewing monster tossed away its lamb in a gesture reminiscent of a tantruming child and finally began flinging threadless pins, little missiles that rattled across the deck randomly. One punched through the mainsail, leaving a pinhole a foot from Sophie’s head. Another, she thought, struck Sweet—at least, she heard a curse from that direction.

  There was a loud cracking sound, as of rock on rock. The ship turned sharply. Below them, on the deck, Watts and Beal slid in a slick of blood and water. Sophie and Tonio hung together up top, clinging.

  She turned to look down at the wheel. Parrish was safe. Verena stood on his port side, brandishing the practice dummy. Bram was starboard, with a cooking pot. Parrish’s bicorne hat had been stitched to the jib.

  “Climb down now!” Tonio hissed. “Slow and careful.”

  She obeyed, matching his pace in case his injured hand cramped or his grip slipped.

  “What’s our speed?” Parrish said. “Our speed, Krezzo!”

  “Kir, I don’t—I’m not sure. Five, last count. We lost the horn to that thing up there.”