The Nature of a Pirate

by A. M. Dellamonica

  She wriggled out of the wetsuit, fumbling for something she could use as a towel, and slid into the sports jacket, fighting to get it over her damp skin.

  Dottar. Garland had said “daughter.”

  “Done,” she said, bursting out on them, but whatever sneaky agreement they’d been coming to, it seemed to be done.

  I’m just gonna ask him what you wanted as soon as your back is turned.

  But Cly said, “We ought to leave Captain Parrish to recover, Sophie.”

  It was all sort of equally unbearable. She swept around Cly, back to the empty spot beside Garland, and took his hand, bending close. “Can I come back later?”

  “Come in the morning,” he said.

  A pang of hurt. But I deserve it. I do.

  He surprised her then with a quick kiss. “Good night.”

  Cly ushered her into the corridor. “He certainly acts as though he means to marry you.”

  “He’s not the one with commitment issues,” Sophie said. “Where am I staying?”

  “As before,” he said, leading her to the same cabin she’d occupied on her earlier visit. To his evident surprise, Kev and Krispos were within, sitting across from each other, one on the bunk and the other at the small desk. The yellow bird, Uhura, was pecking at a bowl of seeds between them. Rounding out the crowd was a Sawtooth fiver, big of muscle and of scowl, who was obviously there to protect Krispos from Kev’s murderous machinations.

  Which was almost as laughable as the fact that her tottery, fragile assistant was keeping himself positioned, ever so protectively, between the soldier and Kev himself.

  “Renly, move Kir Sophie’s memorician into the berth next door,” Cly said. “And take the—”

  “Prisoner,” Sophie said. “And if you’re about to say ‘Lock him in the brig’—”

  “Lock him in the brig, indeed. But Renly, see that everyone knows he’s Kir Sophie’s property and she means him to be treated with excessive gentility. Three square meals and a kind word whenever he wants it.”

  “It’s all right, Kir Sophie,” Kev said in his best Eeyore voice. The sangfroid he had displayed through most of their voyage was utterly gone. He was wide-eyed with shock; the skin under his eyes was blue.

  “I’ll come check on you later, okay?” Sophie said.

  Kev nodded.

  “I’ll see him properly settled,” Krispos offered. They trooped out, leaving a second sports suit and a bulky-looking gift-wrapped box behind them on the bunk.

  “What’s that?”

  “An index of moth wing diagrams,” Cly said. “I had ordered it before we…”

  Bickered? Fought? Imploded? “Before we disagreed?”

  He nodded. “Your laboratory is across the hall. I left the space untouched.”

  “Can I get the lifeboat, the wooden one, sent there? It’s Institute business.”

  “I doubt there’s room, unless we cut it into pieces. Can you examine it on deck?”

  “Sure, if it can go under a tarp or something.…”

  “Easily. Now then, we’ll bestow an additional name on you as soon as we reach Hoarfrost.”

  She nodded. Part of her wanted to reject his help, even now. Taking anything from Cly—especially something as personal as a name—seemed wrong.

  But if I’d done it a month ago, Nightjar would still be afloat. Daimon and Selwig would be alive.

  Would they? The immolator had presumably been out there, hunting them, all along. Hunting Kev.

  She sat on her bunk, at a loss for words.

  “It will come out all right, child,” Cly said, closing the hatch as he left, leaving her to dissolve into tears.

  CHAPTER 28

  Dear Mensalohm:

  I am writing today with bad news. Your clerk, Daimon Tern of Tiladene, was killed yesterday in a battle … skirmish … scrap …

  “I have no idea how to do this,” Sophie said.

  She was in the infirmary with Garland, who was drafting letters of reference for Nightjar’s six newest crew members. They were leaving his employ, seeking berths elsewhere.

  Garland glanced at her page. “The usual form is to say ‘altercation with a ship meaning to sink Nightjar.’”

  “Thanks.”

  … killed yesterday in an altercation with a ship meaning to sink Nightjar. Daimon was a great guy … nice … a smart and pleasant man who was popular with our crew. He took up the study of fingerprinting when he was with us, and seemed to enjoy it. He was kind to Kev Lidman, the man we’ve been trying to help.…

  Garland nudged her, then handed over a handkerchief.

  She wiped her streaming eyes. “I suck at this.”

  “It’s an area where it’s hard to excel. Just don’t mention that he wasn’t studying very hard for his exams. Did he sleep with Bram?”

  “What?”

  “Tiladenes value sexual prowess. If the two of them formed a connection, Mensalohm might like to pass that along to his parents.”

  “Um.…” She wrote:

  At the time that we were attacked, I think he’d been having a very satisfying fling with someone on board.

  “Excellent,” Garland said approvingly.

  Mensalohm, I am so, so sorry this happened. We are all saddened by his death. Can you send me his family contact information, so I can write to them, too?

  She set the draft aside. “I’ll rewrite it after I do Selwig’s letter. And I have to tell Bram about Daimon, too. I guess that’ll give Tonio another shot.”

  Garland bit down on a chuckle. “I’m not sure that’s funny.”

  “None of this is funny,” she said. “What are you up to?”

  “Sweet and Watts have asked to remain aboard Sawtooth, with the cat, until the spring. They’ll take the opportunity to train up—she’s a much bigger vessel, and His Honor’s doctor is a combat physician. I am writing Captain Lena Beck to document the loan of personnel.”

  “They’ll come back to Nightjar when we raise it?”

  His jaw clenched slightly, but he nodded. “Tonio and the rest I’m sending to Erinth, to see if we can hire a ship from the Conto’s merchant fleet. Our cook intends to sail home until I reestablish myself.”

  Someone rapped on the door. “Coming into port, Kirs.”

  She left Garland, climbing up to the quarterdeck as they came into dock in the Winter District.

  Nightjar’s initial course would have brought them into the city of Autumn. But, in their flight from the immolator, they’d caught a fast wind around the tip of Haversham, Sylvanna’s closest neighbor and bitter enemy. Cly had opted to take them around Haversham and into the nation’s capital.

  Her birth father’s nation was divided into four administrative districts—provinces, essentially—each named for a season. Sophie had seen the Autumn capital and Cly’s estate there.

  The city of Hoarfrost was not the winter wonderland its name implied. Autumn had been decorated in red leaves and harvest motifs; it looked a bit as though it had rolled wholesale off some set designer’s drafting table. Hoarfrost was older and looked more like a city that had grown normally, in bits and pieces, over centuries.

  Its predominant color was the blue-green of spruce needles; the wood, along with slate and blue marble, was the primary building material of its biggest structures. The buildings were stark, windburned. There was little adornment of any kind.

  Sylvanna lay at about thirty-six degrees north, as it would have been reckoned on Earth, near Tennessee. Sophie hadn’t expected much in the way of winter cold. But this side of the island was more much mountainous than the swampland on its eastern shore. Hoarfrost’s port was at sea level, but much of the city climbed up into higher elevations.

  With the winter solstice about a week away, it was cool enough that people were wearing wool coats and even, in a few cases, fur stoles. Many of the coats were colored like blue spruce too, and all of them were tailored to leave space for the identity blazers worn by everyone—beauty-queen sashes covered in brooches th
at spelled out the social pecking order in incredible detail. Landholder, Fleet personnel, single, married, professional, clerk, private employee, civil servant … A glance at someone’s chest took all the guesswork out of social interaction.

  Cly wafted up beside her. “I’ve taken rooms at a hotel called the Mancellor, in the city. There will be room for the two of us, Parrish, and your memorician.”

  Sophie had other plans for Krispos, but first she wanted to discuss them with him. “What kind of hotel?”

  “It caters to foreigners from the starboard side.” He held out a small wrapped parcel. Cly seemed constitutionally unable to keep from giving her gifts.

  “Does that mean the staff are paid employees?”

  “I remember well the hunger strike you threw to protest the labor practices on Low Bann.” That was a dare: Go ahead; upbraid me about slavery. “There’s room for Bram and Verena, should they turn up.”

  “What about Kev?”

  “There’s a secure lockup at the Institute.”

  “Oh no. I don’t want him jailed where I can’t protect him.”

  He conceded so quickly, she thought perhaps he had expected the objection. “You’ll need rooms at a second hotel, in that case. One that will accommodate your slave.”

  “Prisoner.”

  “There’s a place directly beside the Mancellor. I’ll get you a room. What are those papers?”

  She showed him the drafts of the letters—to Mensalohm, about Daimon; to the Watch commander and Humbrey, about Selwig.

  “Condolence letters are a bane. I’m very sorry you’ve had to … Well, may I make some suggestions?”

  She nodded gratefully and he jotted a few notes.

  Once they were docked, Cly sent Kev ahead, under guard, with instructions: “Check him in with the staff manager at the Black Fox Inn, and book Kir Sophie a room. Then confirm our family suite at the Mancellor.”

  “I’ll come see you as soon as I can, Kev,” Sophie said.

  He nodded, expression locked, breathing slowly and steadily in a way that made her think of Selwig, when he was coaching him through that earlier panic attack.

  Poor Selwig.

  They spent an hour in thank-yous, farewells, and good-byes with the Nightjar and Sawtooth crews before Cly ushered her to an empty carriage hung with Fleet and judiciary flags.

  She scanned the dock. “Where’s Garland?”

  “Sending dispatches. He’ll meet us at the Mancellor as soon as he’s disposed of his crew and been to the clarionhouse,” Cly said, climbing in across from her.

  The ride to the hotel was oppressively quiet. She looked out the windows, searching for new wildlife species and feeling the loss of her camera like a missing limb. When the urban development got dense enough to make nature studies impossible, she opened the latest gift box. It contained a supply of messageply.

  Her breath caught. It was a costly gift.

  He was watching her over his case file.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Practical gifts show thin affection, we say here. I’d rather traffic in luxuries. But you need it. Ah!” They wheeled into a long carriageway, circling a grand lawn and ending up in front of four majestic columns. Uniformed porters trotted out; a moment later, Sophie felt the weight of the carriage shift as their bags—Cly’s luggage, mostly, as she’d been reduced to a mere handful of things—were unloaded.

  She followed her birth father upstairs.

  Cly’s idea of a cozy family suite was typically palatial. A young man was busily engaged in the dining room, laying out cold meats and fruit for a self-serve lunch. Beyond him, she spied what looked suspiciously like a real bathroom.

  “Does that have running water?”

  “Of course, Kir. Cold and hot,” the young man said.

  “Sold!” She all but ran inside, taking advantage of the shower to freshen up—and to get a little distance from Cly.

  Once she was clean, dry, and again dressed in the sport suit, she shook away the urge to hide. “Bull by the horns, face the music, run into the guns … whatever it is they say in these situations,” she muttered to a steam-hazed mirror reflection that reminded her a little of the wood fright.

  Emerging, she found her birth father in a small parlor, ramrod-straight in a chair and thumbing through a thick hardcover with an unreadable title. He had a small contraption arranged between his right hand and the reading table and was pressing it up and down in a complicated series of slow motions. The device offered resistance, stretching one finger after another and kneading the muscles of his hand. Some kind of physiotherapy gadget, Sophie deduced.

  He switched it to the other hand. “Feeling refreshed?”

  Sophie nodded, casting about for a neutral topic. “This place must have ten bedrooms.”

  “I will be obliged to invite my awful cousin Fenn and her family,” he said.

  “Why?”

  He glimmered at her.

  “For the wedding, I imagine.” Garland appeared at the door, back on his feet, trailing a porter clutching an anemic-looking carpet bag.

  Sophie blushed and discovered a sudden need to serve herself a plate of peaches. “Are your feet all right?”

  “Scorched,” he said. “Sore.”

  “Get off them, Parrish,” Cly said. “As for my family, I doubt the Fenns will come to your bonding, but social niceties require that I’m waiting with open arms.”

  Of course. Cly would march them right up to the altar—assuming there was an altar—just for the pleasure of seeing her admit the engagement had been a bluff.

  She had to get Kev freed and get them out of here.

  She looked across the table at Garland. He gave the porter a coin, closing the door behind him. Then he walked—his gait was off, almost mincing—to the lunch table and sat. Helping himself to a slice of smoked fish, he ate with every appearance of serenity. Was he angry about this situation? There was no sign.

  “We have a good deal to accomplish in a short space of days,” Cly said. “Your renaming—”

  “Kev’s too,” she said.

  Cly looked surprised.

  “I need to talk to some spellscribes,” she said. “Beatrice cast a whole bunch of spells on me at birth, and she doesn’t even know what one of them does.”

  “Sophie is already into the pain,” Garland added.

  “Damn Beatrice and her impulsive heart,” Cly said, sliding his physiotherapy gadget into a velvet bag. “It’s a full day’s work, then. Will you dine?”

  She shook her head.

  “We’ll leave once you’ve eaten, Parrish.”

  “First things first. I have to go bully Kev,” Sophie said.

  “I’ll enjoy witnessing that,” Cly said.

  “You’re not invited.”

  “You don’t know where he is,” Cly said, bowing and opening the door for her.

  “You won’t tell me?”

  He made for the stairwell. “Washing dishes in the hotel across the yard.”

  “At … you said the Black Fox?”

  “This, the Mancellor, is a hotel for foreigners and abolitionists. It excludes the bonded and derives no benefit from free labor,” he said. “You’re not permitted to keep Lidman at the Mancellor, so you also have rooms, and quarters for your property, across the courtyard.”

  It was a short walk around a keyhole-shaped courtyard, but Sophie was brought up short by the sign, which had a black fox and a familiar-looking symbol—the paw print from her mystery scroll.

  “Is that a fox paw?” she said, trying to be casual.

  “Black foxes,” he said. “Unusual creatures. The mothers will sometimes feed or even suckle an orphaned raccoon or, more commonly, a weasel. The creature thus sheltered becomes a member of their family group. Raccoons, you know—those hands.”

  “They take slaves,” she said, her mind chasing this in four directions at once.

  Cly shrugged and continued toward the hotel.

  They found Kev scrubbing flo
ors under the supervision of a female staffer who seemed to be specifically designated as a sort of domestic overseer. Seeing Sophie, Kev stood and attempted a brave smile. “It’s not so bad, Kir.”

  There was something in his attitude, a shift, that brought the hairs up on her arms. He’d been afraid, before she took custody of him—desperate to avoid execution. Aboard Nightjar, when he’d believed his pals would free him, he’d seemed relaxed, almost happy. When she told him they’d been ringers, he’d freaked out.

  Now … what was this?

  “You said a big lizard man attacked you, Kev, when you were all hiding under the lifeboat?”

  “It had a blade,” he said. “It pulled Daimon away, down—fast. Then it came for me, but Selwig … Selwig wouldn’t let it.”

  “Tell me about the blade.”

  “Metal. Silver in color, or near it.” He shuddered. “Horribly sharp. Like nothing I’ve seen.”

  She changed direction, watching him closely. “I’m filing papers or whatever to rename you today.” Here we are, stuck between the train and Superman, she thought. “You want to suggest a new name, you better do it now.”

  “What was it you suggested? Bambi McThumper? It doesn’t matter.”

  “I’ve got to have you pacified,” she said. “It’s the only way to legally release you.”

  “It’s all right.” The desperation she’d seen before seemed to be gone. “I don’t want to hurt…”

  “Kev?”

  “Hurt anyone. Anyone else, Selwig would have said.”

  A definite note of guilt there, and one she did believe. But he was hiding something, too.…

  She rocked back on her heels, taking him in. There was little to see. In his smock and the horrible pewter-colored bangle that marked him as property, her property, he was stripped of all context.

  What did she know? He’d come from Haversham, Sylvanna’s big rival, but had gone to study on Tug Island. He’d been the magical equivalent of a child psychologist, someone who’d written spells to amend the behavior of disturbed kids.

  He and his buddies had forced some of his patients to find and destroy shackling scrolls, and then helped the slaves thus freed.

  He’d put to sea in that ship, Incannis, that made salt frights. He’d done it for friendship as much as idealism.