The Nature of a Pirate

by A. M. Dellamonica

  “I see what you mean,” Verena said. “Someone with ID.”

  Bram frowned. “Can you even buy grenades, legally, as a civilian?”

  “Seas, I hope not.” Sophie thought this over. She had wondered if someone from Earth was in on not only the existence of Stormwrack but also the conspiracy to murder Gale. Now she rearranged the papers pinned to their bulkhead, clustering the players. A mystery man from San Francisco. Convenor Brawn from Isle of Gold, orchestrating Gale’s homicide and working with Ualtar. The two Golders, Smitt and Pree, who’d infiltrated Kev’s crew. “This smells like a big operation. Lots of people, from a bunch of different countries, all working to break the Cessation.”

  “How are we supposed to run down some huge conspiracy?” Verena said. “You and I barely have investigative powers here in Stormwrack. What are we back home? A kid who can’t even drink yet and a camerawoman.”

  “Videographer,” Sophie corrected. “Anyway, Verena, you just scored big-time by catching one of the traitors. That should light a fire under the investigation.”

  “Speaking of lighting a fire, you contact Cly yet?”

  “She totally hasn’t,” Bram said.

  Sophie looked at the half-written letter to her birth father, waiting under a ballpoint pen and a stick of half-melted sealing wax. “We’re almost to Sylvanna. Three, maybe four days.”

  “So close? Is he even—”

  “Sawtooth’s supposedly in the area.”

  “You don’t know what kind of intention was laid on you?”

  “Not yet,” Sophie said.

  The bird tootled. “Fedona’s here. Maybe we can get more out of Bettona. ’Bye.”

  “Garland should hear about this,” Bram said.

  “He’s on deck. Would you go fill him in?” Sophie asked.

  As soon as Bram was gone, she beelined next door, into Garland’s cabin.

  She had been searching the ship for the hidden Beatrice scrolls, under the pretext of looking for the clipped cat claws and Watts’s sweater. The search had proved more challenging than she’d imagined. Of the crew, only Garland, Tonio, Watts, and Sweet had their own cabins; Beal and the cook shared a semiprivate compartment, and the others slept below, in a room strung with hammocks, a compartment that did double duty as mess and crew lounge.

  Garland wasn’t the sort to leave his hatches unbattened. Even in the accessible corners and crannies of the ship, things were stowed carefully and in many cases locked up.

  Sophie couldn’t pick locks, though she was beginning to think she should learn. But the real barrier was turning out to be her conscience. The better she knew the crew, the harder it was to go through their small scraps of personal space. Especially when, half the time, she’d get a compartment to herself and start prowling, only to have someone turn up and ask what she needed.

  At first glance, Garland’s cabin looked as it always did. She had seen his collection of shells and leaves, the globe that he had painted with the islands he had visited. A wooden turtle had been added to one wall—a memento of their blind run through the Butcher’s Baste in search of the clockwork turtles used to sabotage Sylvanna’s ecosystem? Or was a turtle just a turtle?

  She glanced at his leather jump rope and felt a thrill of desire.

  A fingerprint card was tucked into the corner of a shelf, near his bunk.

  Sophie glanced at it—professional curiosity—and realized that it was her thumbprint.

  There were a couple crumpled pages in a bucket in the corner.

  We’re here to look for scrolls, not to snoop, she told herself as she lifted them out of the trash.

  The first pages were a draft of the letter he had sent her, so many weeks ago, about courting. “I can’t wait to begin,” she murmured.

  There was one page that was just a line drawing, and not a bad one, of Kev Lidman’s face. The thing wasn’t written in text but in pictograms: there was a stick figure with a captain’s hat, and arrows from Kev to his head. A four-legged something was pouring things into an upturned bicorne hat. Parrish’s captain’s hat?

  Requesting information? About Kev? From someone who didn’t read? She tucked it away.

  The other page was a draft of a letter to Cly: I would urge you to act quickly to legitimize Sophie and engage in renaming—

  He went behind my back?

  It wasn’t enough that Beatrice had decided who she was going to be, that Cly had stuck her with a slave and a passport, that even Bram had confiscated the scrolls, as if she were a petulant, untrustworthy child. Now—

  He was standing behind her.

  She wasn’t sure if she was going to cry or yell, so she just stared at him, wide-eyed, and waited for him to explain himself.

  Garland stepped fully inside, closing the hatch, and she saw a hint of his dimple.

  “You think this is funny?” she said.

  He shook his head.

  She waved the letter. “‘I write Your Honor in the hope of finding that our thoughts will blow in a common direction as regards Sophie Hansa and the matter of her name having fallen into the wild.…’ Garland, you know how I feel about Cly.”

  “Do you know how you feel about Cly?” he said.

  She tossed a stick of sealing wax at him. “Don’t muddy the waters. I can understand, me falling sick was … oh, a bit of a stressor for everyone.”

  “You understate—”

  “And we don’t know what they did to me. I know I should just cave and contact him myself. But Garland, it’s up to me, and I’m just not ready.”

  “No.”

  “You had no right!”

  The ghost of a dimple again. Laughing?

  Maybe because I’m standing in his cabin with my hand in his wastebasket, lecturing him about right and wrong …

  “I’m really mad at you,” she said. “Like, five mad. Seven, even.”

  “Understood.”

  “Stop that!”

  He tilted his head, waiting. For her to say what he should stop?

  “I didn’t send the letter to your father,” he said.

  She felt a rush of both relief and disappointment. “Where did Bram hide my scrolls?”

  The change of direction didn’t, as she’d hoped, catch him off guard. “They are safe.”

  So much for my elite interrogation skills. “Aha! So you admit you know where they are?”

  “They’re aboard my ship. Of course I know.”

  She dropped the drafts on his writing desk. “Where are my scrolls, Garland?”

  “Bram says you’re not to have them.”

  “So you flirted with writing Cly, decided in the end to respect my wishes, but—”

  “I came to an agreement with your brother about the scrolls. Yes.”

  She balled her fists, trying to stare him down. Damn it, now I’m the one who wants to laugh.…

  Nothing for it but to try to flounce past him.

  He caught her by the arm.

  “Sophie.”

  “What, Garland? What?” She turned, closing the space between them. Gonna pause? Gonna chicken out or back off?

  No. He kissed her.

  His arm circled her shoulders, and her knees came within a hair of buckling as she kissed him back, letting a happy little growl work its way up through her throat. She gave his full, plummy, ridiculously gorgeous bottom lip a bite, and then he was crushing her against the bulkhead, and she felt all the reasons why she shouldn’t, they shouldn’t, all blow away in a gust, straw in the wind. She put a hand in his hair, sinking her fingers deep into the lambswool curls, crazy thick hair and heat baking off him.

  Don’t think, not thinking, too damn much thinking going on. She started to work on the button of his shirt with her free hand. That made him growl, which made her giggle a little. They were breathless, and she let go of his hair and gave his cheek a stroke.

  Something tugged there, a residual stickiness on her skin, wax from his papers adhering to a curl, not quite strong enough to pull his hair. S
he arched her back a little, making room for that wandering hand of his as it navigated ever closer to her breast.

  Red splodge, wax in hair. Just a bit of sealing wax on the side of her hand. But the wax on his desk was blue, wasn’t it?

  Who cares? She tugged open the button at the top of his shirt and put her lips on the hollow between his collarbones as his hands closed over her breast and she groaned.

  Red splodge. Wax. Hand.

  “Sophie?”

  It was a jolt, a flash of nightmare, a half-remembered sense of kneeling at dawn this morning on cold decking. One hand out, the other tracing around it.

  “What is it? What’s wrong? Are we—” He swallowed. “If I’ve presumed—”

  She felt the first tear working its way down her cheek. “I know what the spell did.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Sophie,

  I appreciate the good wishes you sent with your Institute apprentice, Humbrey. Thank you. I am much recovered and have returned to work.

  Given that I now no longer have an assistant, I have had little time to devote to the fifty or so questions you sent about the implications of a conspiracy, operating between Erstwhile and Stormwrack, to undermine the stability of the government. You’ve asked about ways and means of identifying Erstwhilers involved in buying musketry and insinuated (none too subtly, I might add) that any such individuals must have some tie to Beatrice’s Erstwhile family.

  (I should have referred your questions to Beatrice, if not for that, if only to get her out from underfoot.)

  A Verdanii intelligence officer, Fedona Robinsdotter, has been conducting that portion of the investigation. Her Anglay is all right and improving but she doesn’t know your home nation well. Verena is assisting her, but I need Verena here. Is there any chance you might send Bram to help?

  It is only natural that you would want to know what we of the Fleet might do with an Erstwhiler who was interfering in our political affairs. There is no current legislation that blows on such matters. The Watch would, therefore, do as it judged necessary. You may ask Erefin Salk for more information, but I imagine that in some cases a person might be brought here, marooned and set to fend in our society, with no permission to return to the outlands. Or, had we their full name, they might be inscribed to forget.

  Maintaining secrecy about the existence of Erstwhile and limiting unnecessary transit between the worlds remains a significant government priority … and it is obvious our seals are not tight. Do not hesitate to ask for resources if you can turn this inquiry in useful directions.

  Convenor Annela Gracechild

  The outline of Sophie’s hand was in the aft hold, near the ship’s rudder, five fingers spread like a sea star. The ship wasn’t leaking yet, but the wood was beaded with tiny drops of condensation—evidence that it was colder than the rest of the boards.

  “Crap.” She was still crying. She had known what they would find, but seeing it made her flesh crawl. “I’m so sorry. I’m so—”

  “Sofe, this isn’t your fault.”

  She ignored Bram.

  Garland looked like someone had kneecapped him with a sledgehammer.

  “Garland,” she said.

  Two sledgehammers. Both kneecaps.

  “Bram’s correct. You aren’t to blame.” His voice was controlled and faintly hushed, the tone she’d expect to hear at a deathbed.

  Tonio, at his side, was ashen. “This will be an attempt to abduct Kev, no?”

  What can I do? Nightjar’s gonna sink. Sink! It’s all he’s got and it’s my fault.

  “The first thing is to not touch it,” Sophie said. “The one I poked tore Kitesharp in half.”

  Garland nodded. “It needs time to mature. It was about a day? After the ships started to—to bleed? And take water?”

  “Twenty-four to twenty-eight hours.”

  “We’re not bleeding yet.”

  There were five of them in the compartment: Sophie, Bram, Garland, Tonio, and Sweet.

  “Could we seal off this part of the hold?” Bram murmured to Sweet.

  “It’s a big compartment,” she replied. “If she floods, we’ll take a lot of water. Staying afloat at that point…”

  “Difficult, yeah,” Bram said, but they looked thoughtful.

  If the ship could be saved, the two of them would do it. Sophie turned to Garland and Tonio. “Do we tell the crew?”

  “We must,” Garland said. “Our best chance is to make for a Sylvanner shipping lane at top speed. The lifeboats will have an excellent prospect of rescue.”

  “It won’t come to that,” Sophie said. “We’ve got a lot of information on frights now. Maybe we missed something. Perhaps we can slow its growth.”

  They left Bram and Sweet in the hold, strategizing, and climbed to the galley.

  “Tonio, get the crew on deck,” Garland said. “Sophie, talk to your people, will you?”

  Her people: Daimon, Krispos, and Kev. He probably didn’t want her front and center when he told his crew she’d destroyed their livelihood.

  Wrestling guilt, she splashed icy water from the galley basin onto her face, then groped for a towel to dry herself. “Be the boss,” she said, twice, gripping the counter. The second time, she almost sounded normal.

  She headed aft, through the galley, to Kev’s cell. Selwig was bent over the fingerprinting cards; Daimon was in the cabin, once again ignoring his law books in favor of keeping the prisoner company. She felt a sting of gratitude for this guy who’d come along to playact Kev out of his predicament.

  Selwig took one look at her and reached for the hatch to Kev’s cabin, clearly intending to shut it. “What’s wrong?”

  She caught the hatch before he could lock it, leading him into the cabin. Kev immediately pulled the blanket from his bunk up in front of him, hiding his face.

  Drama queen, she thought, irritated, and then became even more irritated when Selwig gave her a look that clearly meant You don’t have to put up with this kind of insubordination.

  She spelled out the situation as fast as she could. Above them, on deck, they could hear the crew reacting as Parrish broke the news. Beal’s voice rose above the babble, talking a mile a minute.

  Sophie said, “There’s no Shepherd to bail us out of this mess, so we need to figure out what we can do about the fright before it holes our hull.”

  “There’s little I can add to what we know,” Krispos said. “The Spellscrip Institute said we can’t read their archive on frightmaking until we arrive on Sylvanna.”

  “Kev? Any thoughts?”

  “No.” His voice, behind the blanket, was small.

  “Maybe you still think your chums from Incannis are going to come get you,” Sophie said.

  “Chums?” Daimon said.

  “Turns out two of the Incannis crew got away from Cly,” Sophie said. “A guy from Tug Island and a woman from Isle of Gold.”

  “Kev told you this?”

  Selwig snorted. “Why do you think he’s hiding his face? He thinks Kir Sophie witched the information from him.”

  Sophie gave the foot of the blanket a yank. “You paying attention back there, Kev? I’ve got some bad news for you: Tug Boy and Golder Girl, they weren’t on your side. You sank those human smugglers, but wherever Pree took your escapees when she vanished with them, it wasn’t to a land of peace and freedom. They probably went straight back into shackles.”

  “Oh!” Daimon said. “Surely not—”

  “They were running some big spy con on you, Kev, to figure out who your allies were. Now they’ve set a fright on the ship, and when they get their hands on you—”

  “Hold a moment,” Selwig said. Kev was clutching his gut, emitting little gasps of anxiety.

  Oops. Went too far.

  “Lie down,” Selwig said, putting his enormous hand behind Kev’s head and lowering him to the bunk, then applying gentle, steady pressure to his forehead and upper chest.

  “Listen to me, Lidman. Accouteh!” Selwig boomed the la
st word, and Kev’s half-closed eyes sprang open. “We are engaged to transport and protect you. We will not see you come to harm. Now. Draw breath. Count to five as you let it out.” His voice was loud but not cruel; it brooked no disobedience. “Again.”

  “One, two, three…” Tears were running down Kev’s face, and his arms were jammed straight down by his sides, fleshy posts terminating in white-knuckled fists. After a dozen or so five counts, his fingers loosened.

  “Do you need the doctor?” Selwig asked.

  He shook his head. “May I be alone, please?”

  Daimon threaded himself around Selwig, laying a hand on Kev’s shoulder. “Sophie and I do mean to free you,” he said. “Try to stay calm.”

  Kev jerked away as if burned. “I said alone!”

  “I’ll be on the other side of that door,” Selwig said, gesturing to the others, Get! “Breathe. Two, three, four, five.”

  “Five,” Kev mumbled, snuffling. “One…”

  Sophie and Daimon cleared out.

  “That poor man,” Daimon said, seeming preoccupied. Sophie nodded.

  “Can you pack up the fingerprint stuff?”

  “I’ll do it.” Selwig stepped out of the guest cabin, ducking low to avoid hitting his head on the hatch.

  “He any better?”

  “Anxious,” Selwig said. “The revelation was clearly a shock.”

  “Thank you for … you know, helping him through it,” Sophie said.

  He nodded. “He’ll cooperate now. Once it sinks in that these supposed friends aren’t coming to save him.”

  Krispos coughed. “Speaking of sinking…”

  Right. Fending off a wood fright. Keeping Nightjar afloat. Sophie said, “Did you go through our notes?”

  “There are a few dozen variations on a wood fright. Originally they were used to create benevolent spirits aboard ship—His Honor’s ship, Sawtooth, has a talking masthead named Eugenia, remember?”

  “Yes. And they guard forests.”

  “We believe this spell is an embroidery on a forest guardian spell from Mossma,” Krispos told Daimon.

  “It’s not originally meant to sink ships—it’s a murder spell.” Sophie shuddered. Even now, a copy of her was feeding off of Nightjar. Whoever had inscribed her meant for it to sink them all, but as far as the thing on their hull knew, it simply needed her dead.