The Nature of a Pirate

by A. M. Dellamonica

  “There’s a bowl of grubs and one of berries around here somewhere—I’ll find them.” With that, he, too, made himself scarce.

  “I want to film this,” she called after him. He returned with her camera and a bowl of mealworms, then collected the cat, who yowled in protest.

  “Is there any way to know what the spell on me will do?”

  He shook his head. “Not until the intention reveals itself.”

  “This whole headache and bleeding thing. Next time I die, or what?” She meant to sound offhand. Instead, her voice quavered.

  “Once you’re into the pain, as we say, each spell’s effect is worse. The tolerance for suffering and damage varies. Some people survive an appalling magical load. Others…” He made a gesture, like a twig snapping. “Rest, neh? Captain will get your identity changed.”

  “It’s not as though I had much of one to begin with,” she grumbled.

  “Your birth inscriptions didn’t change your essential nature.”

  “Is that a scientific fact, Doc, or something you hope is true?”

  “Oh, be a good patient,” Watts told her.

  “Meaning…?”

  “Meaning shut up.”

  “That’s not rhetoric,” she yelled as he let himself out.

  Why hadn’t the intention manifested yet? The pirates wanted Lidman. Could it be a compulsion? She imagined selling him, giving him away. Neither thought triggered any overwhelming urges.

  Maybe it would only kick in if Brawn showed up.

  If it was even the pirates. Anyone could’ve done it.

  What about the eragliding? Could she hear the Worldclock more clearly?

  “Tick, tick, tick,” she muttered. Nothing.

  Cly, she thought. Maybe it’s an obedient daughter spell. It’d only be fair. Beatrice had her shot at enchanting me.

  Bettona and the Golders were the likeliest suspects. The whole point of Brawn doing her the favor was to honorably clear the decks before moving against her. It was part of the whole Isle of Gold feud tradition: where possible, lay eyes on your enemy before taking them on. John Coine had confronted her in an Erinthian market, months ago, for the same reason.

  “Sir, Sir, Sir,” she muttered, turning on her camera screen. She had taken a shot of her bulkhead, once she’d covered it in clippings. Now she zoomed in on her note from Beatrice. Two women, Bettona and a stranger, had searched Annela’s things as she slipped into a coma. The stranger had called Bettona Sir.

  Or soeur. Wasn’t that French, for “sister”?

  Brawn said bakoo, too. It meant “lots” … beaucoup? “Bakoo gold,” that was the saying. Maybe he’d said oui, too, or was she misremembering?

  A snap, from the egg. The crack was pulsing slowly, the chick within pushing on it. Up, down, up down.

  Sophie set her camera to take a shot every thirty seconds and waited, sometimes gazing out to sea, sometimes watching the egg breathe. She heard the faint ping of a second crack running through the shell, and thirty minutes after that a taloned foot shoved itself two-thirds of the way out into the air.

  Cat claws, she thought, watching the baby bird toes wave. Banana’s getting clipped.

  They had picked up the cat on a sail in the summer. It had been starving aboard the wreck of one of the ships Kev and his pals had attacked. And before that, it had been on Kev’s ship. That teenage con artist, Corsetta, had made off with it.

  ASK THE AUTUMN SPELLSCRIBE ABOUT FRIGHT SPELLS REQUIRING CATS’ CLAWS. She jotted it in her book of questions. WHAT IF KEV WORKED HIS WAY INTO THIS SITUATION JUST TO GET ABOARD NIGHTJAR TO HARVEST BANANA’S SCYTHES?

  Selwig had searched his cabin. He was under guard. Kev couldn’t be clipping Banana.

  Yet, so much of this was tied to Kev. “Slave rights activist by night, magic Ritalin dispenser by day,” she told the egg. “He writes spells to make kids behave. Then he forces those same kids to destroy their families’ slave inscriptions.”

  The egg wobbled and rolled, revealing a dime-size hole opposite the foot. Sophie saw a tiny eye and a hint of lemon plumage within.

  Over the course of another hour, the chick worked free, kicking its sticky way out of the shell and heaving itself to the side of the wicker cage. Sophie lit the candle on the heat lamp, as Watts had shown her. The chick rolled into the flow of warm air, quivering as it dried, becoming ever fluffier.

  After it worked out how to sit upright, it consented to eat first a mealworm and then a berry. It quickly graduated to standing and pecking its own meal out of the bowls. By afternoon, it was molting, transitioning from gawky, wide-eyed adolescence as it came rapidly into its adult plumage.

  It wasn’t any species Sophie was familiar with. It had a distinctly corvid shape, though it was smaller, and the butter-yellow on lemon-yellow markings, subtle though they were, had the pattern of a magpie’s black and white markings.

  “Canola crow.” Watts had turned up with a tray of soup and bread. “How’s your stomach?”

  “Sore,” she said.

  “Fire or cavern?”

  “What?”

  “Acid sore or empty sore?”

  “Empty, I think.”

  “Start with the bread. If it sits, drink a little of the soup.”

  She nibbled a mouse-size corner off of a bun, thinking about anise biscuits.

  The bird shifted and muttered at Watts. “I smell of cat,” he apologized.

  “I think it’s Kev clipping Banana’s claws,” she said. “For spells, maybe?”

  He frowned. “I’m missing a sweater.”

  “Made of cat hair?”

  “Of course. But Selwig looked for it.”

  “They were collecting cat hair on Incannis.” And there’d been a braid somewhere … She searched her memory. In the basket of frightmaker evidence, back at the courts. It and the horsehair had been cut to half their length. There had also been a small box … Could those have been cats’ claws?

  It was another connection to the frightmaker and the sinkings. Bettona’s accomplice had been on Incannis. And if Kev was right, she was a Golder.

  “We’ll have to search the ship. Maybe there’ll be a stash of claws we can fingerprint. Would you tell Garland?”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you staying here? I could go back to my cabin for the night.”

  “I want you here tonight, near all this.…” He gestured at his vials and pots. “I’ll bunk with Sweet.”

  “Go you,” she said, feeling something of a pang. Being sick and abed had given her a faint craving for female company.

  He sat, feeling her forehead, taking her pulse. “You’ll have to name that bird, when it’s bigger. Don’t let it steal your bread.”

  “Okay.” She nibbled her way through the roll, then sampled the contents of the bowl, which contained a light chowder, mingled fish and roasted corn. The heat of it and the rocking of the ship lulled her into a doze.

  * * *

  She woke slowly, to find the bird fidgeting on its perch, looking at her as if it expected something.

  Names. Polly?

  “Uhura,” she said aloud. “What do you think, little guy? Want to be Uhura? ‘Hailing frequencies open,’ all that?”

  The bird dipped its head and let out a guttural croak. The feathers at the tips of its wings and tail changed color, brightening into a hint of crimson. Full adult plumage.

  “Uhura it is,” Sophie said.

  It flapped twice and then said, in a thin approximation of her half sister’s voice, “I knew you’d give it some nerd name.”

  She felt herself misting up a bit—whether it was the bizarre miracle of it or just hearing from someone new, after all this time asea, she wasn’t sure—and fought to keep her voice steady. “‘Uhura’ means ‘peace,’ Verena. Or ‘freedom.’ Or something. Everyone loves Star Trek. What’d you name yours?”

  “Speakerphone.”

  “Seriously?”

  There was a pause. “Well. PeekyPo for short.”
/>   “Okay, wouldn’t have guessed that. Have you seen Annela?”

  “Mom says she’s sharper than ever. Now they’ve inscribed her, I mean. Super memory, even more charisma.”

  “Any sign of Bettona?”

  “Her watch is silent and nobody’s seen her. Where are you guys? Your clock’s silent, too.”

  “Did you try to come through?”

  “No. I’m still knee-deep in Verdanii politics. Nobody will give me any dirt on Nightjar.”

  Sophie filled her in on everything: Lidman, the fake engagement, the trip to Sylvanna, and her recent migraine-by-inscription.

  “You’re into the pain? After two inscriptions?”

  “Beatrice gave me a bunch of going-away magic before she adopted me off to the Hansas. Smarts and good luck and fertility.”

  “All the hits.” And then, slightly pleased, “Oh.”

  Sophie knew what was going on there. Verena had been nursing something of an inferiority complex ever since they’d met. Knowing that Sophie’s best qualities all had a magical source must have felt pretty sweet.

  “What about you?” Sophie asked.

  “Your tip about the clocks bore fruit. Great-Uncle Pharmann’s clock has been tampered with. Its second hand is missing. The hands are the key element in the watches. They’re slivers of the Worldclock, and they help us eraglide to specific locales.”

  “So there’s an eragliding timepiece out there that doesn’t belong to the Feliachilds. And the pieces came from…” She squinted, remembering what she’d picked up. “Bettona’s father?”

  “Yes,” Verena said.

  “Did your mom tell you about Bettona talking to a woman who called her Sir?”

  “Yeah. As in, ‘Yes, Sir, Cap’n, Sir!’”

  “What if it was more French? Soeur?”

  “So?”

  “Could Pharmann have had a fling with a Golder?”

  Quick, shocked laughter. “If so, he’s lucky he’s dead.”

  “What if Bettona’s got a Feliachild sister whose mother was Golder? They got a kid with the right genes, they got the Worldclock slivers from Pharmann’s clock, and they convinced Bettona to figure out how to prime and train a rogue eraglider?”

  “Prime how?”

  With a sigh, Sophie told Verena about the ticking noise, about how it had begun a day after her meeting with Annela, about the anise and apricot biscuits. “It’s Beatrice’s idea. What if the whole ‘break bread with the Allmother’ thing is, I dunno—”

  “Blessed flour,” Verena said. “Important Verdanii who live away from home will sometimes have a sack of sacred flour for ceremonial baking. I wouldn’t have thought that would do it, but—”

  “But nobody’s ever done any serious experimentation on how eragliders are made.”

  “Why would Bettona want you to eraglide?”

  “So I can be the fall guy, and thereby obscure the fact that she’s got a sibling? If I can do it, there are people who won’t look any further.”

  “True. So our spy is, in a sense, a Feliachild.”

  “Feliachild and yet foreign, same as me. At least it suggests the Piracy isn’t making teleporters left, right, and center and sending them home to buy bazookas.”

  “Yeah, that’s an upside,” Verena said. “Anything else?”

  “One thing. Pree—the eraglider, I mean—was aboard Incannis and escaped with the frightmaker.”

  “Okay, I’ll follow up and call when I know what’s happening.”

  “If you go to San Francisco, can you discreetly check on my parents?”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s nice to sort of—you know … to hear your voice.”

  “Yeah. Hey, Sophie.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’ll do it, won’t you? Swallow your pride and suck up to Cly to change your name?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Because you’re all outraged about him. But you have no choice.”

  “Yeah,” Sophie agreed. “I know. I will.”

  “Okay. I’ll call as soon as I get back.”

  She was getting drowsy again. Setting Uhura’s cage on the windowsill, she let herself drift off to sleep.

  CHAPTER 23

  To: Sophie Hansa Banning, Institute of Forensics

  From: Autumn y Spell, Sylvanna Spellscrip Institute

  Further to your request for information on homicidal doppelgangers, vengeance sprites, forest guardians, and salt avatars (hereafter collectively known as frights) and the attempt to eradicate the creation and misuse of same, the Institute can confirm the existence of documentation regarding the practice, constituent materials, and philosophy of frightmaking. These have been kept on behalf of the Fleet of Nations by the Institute. These materials are classified government documents and reside within the great vault at the Autumn Institute campus. Properly certified Forensic Institute staff who have taken the Fleet Oath of Service will permitted to access the vault on-site.

  Eradication Treaty 1712.4 forbids shipping, transport, or copying of these materials. You or your representative will have to come to Sylvanna; if you do, everything we have will be available to you.

  Two days—six long watches—passed. Everyone on Nightjar held their breath, waiting for Sophie to grow a second head or to come after them in the night with an ax. Garland and Tonio debated turning into the storm front, to see whether they could make more direct progress to Sylvanna, but playing with a hurricane would put them at more risk than continuing to go around.

  Bram holed up with Kev and Krispos, trying to work out the nuances of the Beatrice scrolls and, simultaneously, to discover whether their prisoner was any great shakes as a scribe.

  According to Kev, the luck spell was the strongest of the intentions. It tipped random events in Sophie’s favor, made her less likely to suffer what he called “mistakes of inattention” or to miss opportunities. The looks, fertility, intelligence, and charm intentions he referred to as natal polishing inscriptions. These, he claimed, merely maximized what was already there—they hadn’t changed her much more than would optimal prenatal nutrition and superb childhood care.

  He meant to be comforting, but to Sophie it seemed a little hairsplitty.

  As for the bonding spell, the one that was supposed to have kept her from looking for her birth family, he claimed the two misshapen sigils within its text—a paw-print shape and an ivy leaf—had him stumped.

  All Kev could say was that the mystery spell’s phrasing reminded him of inscriptions used to curb wildly disobedient children, to force them into a state of unswerving love and loyalty, which sounded a little like a variation on slavery.

  They all knew spells with mistakes in them didn’t take. But the text of this spell, sigils included, glowed, indicating active magic.

  To pass the time, she kept working. She and Selwig—along with Daimon, whenever he felt like volunteering—had identified another batch of “found sailors.” Sophie also began showing Selwig how to lift latent fingerprints from crime scenes. The active work interested him more than the laborious process of comparison, and despite his size—she was always tempted to think of him as someone who lumbered—he was proving adept at finding and lifting usable latents.

  Verena called, using the canola crow, three days after what everyone was calling “Sophie’s migraine,” catching the group in the forward cabin that had belonged to Gale. “You want the good news first, or the bad?” she asked.

  “Bad,” Sophie said, even as Bram said, “Good.”

  “I brought a couple Verdanii intelligence operatives to Erstwhile. We went to the café and the gun shop. The waitstaff and the store owner identified John Coine from Sophie’s pictures. I had Fedona go in and show them pictures of me, Mom, Sophie, and Bettona, mixed in with a few others, as you suggested. All they’d say was the woman who’d been with John Coine might have resembled Bettona but was more like me physically.”

  More athletic, in other words, Sophie thought.

  �
�They’d been to a bookstore, too. The gun store guy saw the bag.”

  “Really? Weird that Convenor Brawn would leave that out.”

  “It’s sort of a survivalist bookstore. It must be where Things That Go Boom! and the other book we found at Bettona’s came from.”

  “And they didn’t expect us to find those. Okay, mystery solved.”

  “There was a young guy with them who did most of the talking.”

  “Did he have an accent?” Bram asked.

  “Nope. American.”

  “Dead end there,” Sophie said. “I hope that was the bad news.”

  “Yes, it was,” Verena said, and there was no mistaking the satisfaction—smugness, almost—in her voice.

  “We’re on the edge of our seats,” Bram promised. “What’d you do?”

  “I was setting up to pull us home,” Verena said. “I mean, back to the Worldclock. I had tuned in, and the angles were good, and suddenly I could hear Bettona’s watch.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I grabbed Fedona and her partner, and instead of making for Verdanii, I glided there.”

  Sophie sat upright. “There where?”

  “A bandit vessel somewhere in the northern hemisphere. I have a phone pic of the stars, so you can try to narrow it down, but it’s pretty crummy resolution.”

  “Whoa. A bandit?” Sophie said.

  “Serious pirate warship: a ship burner. Immolators, they call them. Its common name was Hawkwasp.”

  “You boarded a pirate ship?” Bram sounded appalled.

  “Pretty Gale of me, huh?”

  Sophie couldn’t help smiling. “Very Gale. Did you find her? Bettona?”

  “Yep. Fedona grabbed her before she could screech or jerk away and we glided back to Verdanii, neat as paint.”

  “So … you have her?”

  “We have her. She’s lawyered up, as we’d say at home. But she’s under arrest and, sooner or later, we’ll get her to tell us about the rogue eraglider and the other coconspirators.”

  “This local person, from Erstwhile—how does he fit in?” Bram asked.

  “Someone who speaks the language would be handy,” Sophie said. “I mean, how does John Coine buy a gun? You have to give a driver’s license—and a thumbprint, I think.”