The Nature of a Pirate

by A. M. Dellamonica

  Cly let out a rush of words, and she backhanded him with shocking force. The blow brought him off his knees and tumbled him halfway down the bowl.

  “Hey!” Sophie protested.

  “Don’t interfere,” Cly ordered. He was fixed on the old lady. “We must do as they ask.”

  Not liking the looks of this, suddenly.

  The crone gestured to the child, who came and took Sophie’s hand. He pressed it to his ear.

  “Teck, teck, teck,” he whispered, in time to the shock rhythm on her skin. “Est vere. Verdanii metchen.”

  Sophie tried to memorize the words.

  The four strangers looked at one another, consulting silently. Cly rolled up onto his seat and dabbed at his mouth with a handkerchief.

  Consensus seemed to sweep through the quartet. The peach woman came and put an arm around Sophie. She smelled of freshly mown hay and flowers. Sophie found herself thinking of Garland, and not in a chaste way, as the woman drew her toward the orchard.

  “Resteh,” she said, urging Sophie to sit. She didn’t relinquish her grip … and Sophie didn’t delude herself that she’d let her go.

  She met the woman’s eyes, and the ill-timed lust got worse.

  What was the word for “dad” again? She whispered, “Patter?”

  The woman patted Sophie’s hair. “Shh.”

  At a gesture from the autumn man, Cly got to his feet and descended to the bottom of the bowl, coming to stand in the pool, his feet disappearing into a scrim of fallen needles, maple leaves, flowers, and chunks of ice. He brushed at the litter on the pond’s edge, revealing a quartet of statue hands, reaching up from underground.

  Like zombies digging their way out of the grave, Sophie thought. One of the hands was made of supple-looking greenwood. Another was thorny and dry, like blackberry cane, and a third was stone. The fourth was skeletal.

  Cly examined them all before choosing the stone hand. He took it as though he was shaking hands. It moved, clasping him in return. The summer woman chose that moment to tuck her hand into Sophie’s, making it eerily as though she was involved in all of this, somehow.

  Cly straightened, drawing the hand with him. Its stone wrist tapered to a point, and a slender stem bound it to the ground.

  The old woman muttered a few words.

  Cly looked at Sophie. “I’m directed to tell you now how I’ve failed you, as a parent.”

  His words cut through her growing sense of drowsiness and arousal. “Failed?”

  “Shh!” Peach girl’s arms tightened around her.

  Cly continued. “I failed by marrying in contravention of our beliefs, by accepting a union that could end in divorce. I failed to pursue Beatrice after she left me, and failed by letting you go to the outlands to be fostered by strangers like a raccoon in a fox den. I failed by allowing you to come to this world unprepared—”

  This all had an air of confession—confession and penance—that Sophie wasn’t liking. She tried to shake free of Summer’s iron grip. “What are you guys gonna do?”

  “Your lost name, your disconnection from your people, your lamentable beliefs—” Here, a quirk of a smile. Was he teasing?

  The old woman growled.

  “If you guys are gonna hurt him, I’d just as soon—”

  “You are into the pain, Sophie, and entirely exposed. This, too, I take upon myself,” Cly said.

  “Stop!” she said.

  The pool at his feet erupted into a geyser, a vertical thrust of water that engulfed Cly, ripping him off his feet, hurling him into the air. The only thing anchoring him to the ground was his grip on the stone hand, with its thin stem acting as a tether. Steam and ice, and the rock hand must be slippery, Sophie thought, as the tears came. She tried again to get out of the peach woman’s grip and failed.

  Her birth father was completely upside down, now, Superman in a dive, pointed down fist-first and struggling to bring his other arm down to protect his head as chunks of ice within the geyser pelted him.

  All he could do was hang on. Was that it? How long would they expect him to endure?

  The ice had given way to hunks of mud, spattering fists pounding against Cly’s body, and then, after an eternity, the water clarified and began to steam.

  Cly bared his teeth and clenched his eyes shut, turning away from the heat.

  “Stop! You’re scalding him! Stop!”

  Then it was slush, creeping up around his hand, which was still impossibly clenched—

  Clenched in hers, and ice cold. She felt ice crystallizing around her wrist and lower palm, and the grip of his fingers around hers, warm and impossibly strong. She closed her eyes, breathing, imagining being on a rock face and holding a rope, just keeping her grip.

  She closed out everything but that sense of hanging on. Her hand and arm ached; her shoulder felt as though it might pull out of its socket.

  Words thrummed through the clearing: “Zophie Opal Meliadottar Hansa—”

  The crone’s voice filled her ears, and then, impossibly, she was kneeling at the edge of the pool and Cly was within, sputtering. Drowning?

  They were holding hands.

  She got to her feet, braced, and pulled him up and out. He was soaked to the skin, shivering. A bruise was coming out on his cheek.

  “Don’t fret, child,” he said, in a voice far too thready to allay her distress.

  “You didn’t say there’d be an ordeal!”

  “What difference would it have made?” he asked. “But that I should have had to drag you up that incline by force?”

  She had no answer for that.

  He sat heavily on the leaf litter and peeled off his shirt, rolling the fabric tight to wring it out.

  “Where’s that handkerchief?” He handed her the sodden square of fabric. “I’ve broken some stitches on my shoulder. Would you?”

  “Sure.” She found the water feeding from the hot spring, cleared the floating refuse, and soaked and heated the handkerchief. Then she pressed it to the gash. “Dueling wound?”

  He nodded, rolling the shirt out and beginning to pick bits of spruce off of it. “Next time we do this, I shall bring a change of clothes.”

  “Let’s not have a next time.”

  “Agreed. How’s the ticking? Gone?”

  “Uh…” She stretched out her free hand. “Fainter. Further away. Maybe we left whoever-it-is behind, or maybe they weren’t following us.”

  “Perhaps your betrothed turned them back.”

  Garland. She swallowed. It was odd and overwhelming, Cly half-clothed and all his many scars on display.

  “How’s the bleeding?”

  Right. Stay on task. She glanced under the handkerchief. “Not much. It was mostly healed.”

  “Tsk,” he said, looking regretfully at the shirt before shrugging free of her and working his way into the garment.

  He did look a mess, there was no denying it.

  “I didn’t know you’d have to go through that.”

  “It might have been worse,” he said, cheerfully. “I’d heard rumors of an ordeal involving open flame.”

  “You’re pyrophobic?”

  “Psychoanalysis. Pyrophobic.” A weary grin. “These atomist words of yours.”

  “It just means afraid of fire.”

  “I’m going to regret telling you that, one day,” he predicted.

  She found herself smiling, and then froze up, remembering the reasons why relaxing around Cly was a bad idea.

  “Why did you? Tell me?”

  “Why should you not know?” he said. “You’re a good person, Sophie. I have no reason to fear you.”

  She rolled that over, thinking she shouldn’t have mixed feelings about it. “Is it tied to the spell your parents had worked on you? The one to stop you setting fires?”

  “Create the fear, stop the behavior.” His lip curled. “Same type of magic your Kev used to practice. Caging the mind, limiting one’s ability to choose…”

  As I just did with Kev himself
, she thought uncomfortably. “Are you ready to go?”

  “Not quite now; I’m yet a little shaken.” Cly flexed his knees. Then he added, “I wish you would explain what it is that has so marred your trust in me.”

  “Cly—” She felt a stronger than usual compulsion to answer him.

  “On my oath, Sophie, I will answer any question you put to me. This is a holy place. Nobody would dare lie here.”

  “Really? Anything?”

  He would get her talking, and then he’d ask her something … and she had secrets, too.

  “I got myself soaked and encrusted in filth for you,” he said. “What’s an interrogation to that?”

  “You are such a fashion victim,” she said.

  He gave her a faint grin as he tried to comb out his hair.

  Manipulative. He knows you feel bad about the ordeal and he’s trying to work his way into your good graces.

  Wise or not, the temptation to know overcame her, as it always did. “Was it you who told Kev he could ask me to claim him?”

  “Clever girl. I arranged for someone on Docket to tell him.”

  “Why?”

  “Buying him at auction would have been prohibitive, even if he hadn’t opted to take the blade.”

  “Seriously.”

  “I believe as you do. The voyage of the Incannis was part of some greater scheme against the Cessation. Kev is a piece in a political gambit whose endgame is the breaking of the Fleet. If we can hold him for a time, and truly see his nature, we can bring this plan to light.”

  “Why not ask me to help, instead of being all Machiavellian?”

  “Ah. That brings us back nicely to the issue of the discord between us.”

  Us. And maybe there was a spell in play here, or his suggesting it had some kind of psychosomatic effect, but it felt wrong not to clear the air. “Okay, here it is. Do you fuck your slaves?”

  Cly froze, with his fingers in his hair. It was the move of a stalking cat who’d heard a noise and stopped to threat-assess. He turned to face her squarely, swallowed, and said, softly, dangerously, “I hadn’t thought your opinion of me was quite that bad.”

  She stood her ground. He’d gone out late one night, she knew that, and one of the kitchen slaves had been in hysterics the next day. And there had to be owners—her stomach turned as she remembered that category included herself now—who did it. “You’re saying no?”

  “Part of me is tempted to reply as you did when I learned about your sordid liaison with that Tiladene: ‘Who I sleep with is none of your business.’”

  “Not the same thing. Are you raping your slaves, Cly? Yes or no?”

  If he was faking his hurt, someone should put him onstage. “No. I find the idea repugnant.”

  She believed him. There was no great reason to, sacred grove or not, but a surge of relief overtook her. “Okay. So, no then. Um, thank you.”

  “I have nothing to hide.”

  But she did, didn’t she? And she was bad enough at lying as it was.

  Fortunately, Cly still had father-daughter relations on his mind. “You’d cooled to me before we got to Low Bann. When did you take to wondering—” His face twisted in disgust. “There’s something else.”

  She thought for a second. “There’s no question I can ask about the other thing.”

  “There is ‘another thing,’ though?”

  “I can try to explain, but it’ll take a while,” she said. “How about on the walk back? You’re getting cold, and we have to get down those steps.”

  “Agreed.” He opened and closed his hand around the pommel of his sword, checking his grip. “After you.”

  She looked at the snow and ice. “We can’t take one of the other ways down?”

  “They lead to the other Spellscrip Institutes,” he said. “Far from Winter.”

  Wow. Teleportation? You go in there and come out near Low Bann?

  Why not? Verena can travel in time, or between dimensions. All those timepieces containing slivers of the Worldclock; she just bops between them.

  “Okay,” she said. They crunched through the snow—Cly actually picked up a handful and let his hand cool in it. “So, pyrophobia—”

  “Fear of fire.”

  “It’s an example of a kind of … mental disorder. Very minor.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. And then, doing the math: “You fear I’m mad?”

  She gave him a sideways glance. “There’s a condition. At home, we call it sociopathy. People with it are disconnected from a lot of their emotions. They aren’t good at empathy. Do you know what empathy is?”

  “Understanding and sharing the feelings of others.”

  “Sociopaths take advantage of people, and often they’re quite charming…”

  “Social grace as a sign of madness.” He rolled that over. “You’re saying I playact some of my feelings?”

  Seas, he was quick! “A lot of sociopaths are scam artists. Some make out all right in corporate environments, where ruthlessness pays.”

  “I’m not sure I appreciate being lumped in with criminals and devious pencil pushers.”

  She drew a big breath. In a way, it was harder to say because he seemed so incredibly unconcerned. “Some are homicidal. Some are … you’d say monstrous.”

  He burst out laughing. “Ah, I see. I kill a few bandits on Incannis and you decide I’m not only unbalanced but intractably wicked.”

  “That’s just it. You’re laughing off killing.”

  “They endangered my ship, my cadets, and my only child.” He shrugged. “Does defending my ground make me a … sociopath?”

  “There are … signs.” It sounded ridiculous. It sounded like pseudoscience. “Those fires you set as a kid—”

  “Oh, Sophie,” he said. “This is an outlander superstition, and you’ll have to look past it. I am a warrior born. It’s my nature. I use it for the good of my nation and the Fleet. I keep the peace, child!”

  “You’re not taking me seriously.”

  “No,” he agreed. “Frankly, I’m relieved. And speaking of manipulative, you’ve managed to get us out of the sacred grove before I could ask if you truly mean to marry that man Parrish.”

  “We’ve had enough truth for one afternoon.”

  “Perhaps,” he agreed, in infuriating good humor now.

  Their progress down the stone steps was slow; Cly was bruised, moving slowly. Sophie glanced at the angle of the sun. They’d kept Garland waiting for over two hours.

  He seemed content enough, breaking into a dazzling smile as they descended, and she saw he had been collecting what he could—he had a little pile of insect casings, yellow flower petals, and one small black pebble for her.

  “It’s not much,” he said, holding it out. “But this wing is interesting.”

  She kissed him. For Cly, she told herself. For show. Seas, it felt good. “You see anyone while you waited?”

  “I heard someone further down,” he said. “Light-footed and nimble, from the sound of their steps. They took another path.”

  “Come, children,” Cly said airily. “Let’s get you home. Lots of figures to dance before your big day.”

  They hiked back into the Winter Spellscrip Institute, this time coming out within a structure whose interior walls were plated in white stone—quartz?—worked to resemble ice crystals, snowflakes, and blooms of frost. There, Sophie left a query about fright inscriptions and anything employing cats’ claws.

  “If you’ll both wait here,” Cly said, vanishing down a corridor.

  “It ended up being Meliadottar,” she murmured in Garland’s ear, while they were waiting.

  He nodded. “Understood.”

  His own middle name had been lost at birth. Sophie had yet to get the whole story on that, but Tonio had unearthed the name recently and had shared it with Sophie. Burdened her, was how he had put it, and he’d sworn her to secrecy.

  Garland hadn’t had so much as a tooth-straightening spell.

  “What is it?�
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  “Just thinking—you’re all you. You’re untouched.”

  He shook his head. “Our elders lay intentions on us in all sorts of ways. What we make of their gifts, whether we can cut ourselves free of their wishes and intentions … some say it depends entirely on circumstance, nature, and our own choices.”

  “Some?”

  “I fear, in some ways, it’s an impossible task.”

  How can I know my nature when I’ve been molded from the start? He’d have an answer to that, too, but it wouldn’t help, and she was too emotionally exhausted to put the question to him.

  She felt herself droop a little, and then, before he could be concerned or comforting, she turned it into a stretch, bending, taking a couple of deep breaths. It was calming … for all of a second. Then the earworm started up again: tick, tick, tick.

  “Sophie?”

  “Someone’s here,” she said. “The other eraglider.”

  “Pree?”

  She nodded. “The clock sounds tiny, like a wristwatch. Someone made off with a few slivers of the Worldclock.”

  “This person is nearby?”

  “Within a couple miles.”

  Garland looked around. “There must be thousands of people in this complex.”

  Cly turned up then, in a cloak that somewhat concealed his bedraggled state. “The carriage is here,” he said. “The scribes will contact us when they’ve looked over the papers and completed the work.”

  They passed through a corridor lit by spectacular chandeliers of quartz and candlelight, coming out into a lane where the carriage, with its blue-maned bay horses, was indeed waiting.

  A twenty-minute ride took them into the city. Sophie looked over the series of samples Garland had given her. He was right about the patch of wing. There was also a scale—from a reptile, she assumed, but the scale was large. If it was a snake, it was a big one.

  Did they have dragons here on Stormwrack? They had harpies of sorts, altered humans with wings long enough to carry them aloft. And those mermaids …

  As she considered the possibilities, she continued to scan the streets and pathways, looking for Verdanii eragliders. Instead, she saw someone familiar disembarking from a carriage ahead of them.