The Nature of a Pirate

by A. M. Dellamonica

  That was what Selwig meant when he’d mentioned Daimon’s prints, before he died. He’d been trying to tell her Daimon was an imposter. “It would have been him, then, collecting the cat claw clippings for the fright spell when we were all aboard Nightjar.”

  “Yes. The lion fright that attacked us is intended, he claims, to target slaveholders.”

  “He had access to Kev the whole time he was on Nightjar,” Sophie groaned. “No wonder Kev wasn’t worried about what I’d do with him. Daimon could just slip into his cabin, toss those red curls of his, and make all kinds of promises. ‘Oh, Kev, we’ll rescue you…’ And you know when it was that Kev got all angry and uncooperative?”

  “Right after you told him Smitt and Pree had infiltrated his group of liberation activists on behalf of the portside nations,” Garland said.

  “If we hadn’t been in the middle of trying to save Nightjar, he might’ve told me what was going on.”

  “Can you prove ill intent on Daimon’s part?” Cly asked. “He refuses to admit to espionage, or to being an agent of any government.”

  “He claims to be a true abolitionist?” Garland asked.

  Cly nodded. “He says he’s at odds with his own government. They’ve disavowed knowledge of his activities.”

  “But he admits he was on Incannis?”

  “Yes. According to Daimon, Kev was both the scheme’s mastermind and, in essence, the ship’s captain. He planned to sink the smugglers and liberate the slaves they were carrying—free them and send them to Nysa.”

  “He said Nysa?” Garland interrupted.

  “Yes,” Cly said. “Why?”

  “Nobody in league with that island would refer to it by name.”

  “Incannis was too far from Nysa in any case, wasn’t she?” Sophie said.

  Garland looked surprised. “What makes you think the distance—”

  “The questions you asked at the weather office on Ylle,” she said. “You wanted to know about winds to the far south.”

  “Incannis could not have been running freed slaves and prisoners to the uncharted seas,” Cly said. “Given where she was operating when she attacked my ship, she simply didn’t have the time.”

  “So … Daimon’s claiming allies he doesn’t even have.”

  “It’s an unconvincing lie,” Garland said.

  “Only to someone in league with said island,” Cly said drily. “The interrogation will continue. He’s been inscribed so that he doesn’t register physical distress—it’s a common spell with spies—but we will learn more.”

  Cly’s certainty, and the thought of what the Sylvanners might be doing to Daimon even now, made Sophie shudder. “Let’s pull out our bag of Forensic Institute tricks and see if we can dig some truth out of an actual crime scene.”

  “What scene?”

  “They bribed a concierge at the Black Fox, to get access to Kev,” she said.

  “Yes,” Cly said. “He’s fled.”

  “But they couldn’t have removed Kev from the hotel without us noticing,” she continued. “So I’m guessing Smitt’s got a room there.”

  They landed on the slaver hotel like a hammer. Daimon had indeed had a suite, and the desk clerk was happy to take them up.

  The space had been converted into a magical workshop.

  Cly glanced at the pots of ink, the sheets of vellum, a clay pot filled with robins’ eggs, and a flask that appeared to hold blood. There was a catalog of ingredients and a makeshift writing table crammed beside the bed.

  “Send to the Spellscrip Institute immediately,” he said to the clerk. “We need the Winter Mage or a first-tier apprentice.”

  The clerk was openmouthed. “I had no idea Master Smitt practiced inscription.”

  “He’d been here before?” Sophie asked.

  “Many times. I thought him a master cobbler.” With a bow, he left them.

  Sophie handed Cly and Garland each a pair of cotton gloves. “Go through a pile. Tell me everything you find; I’ll write it down.”

  “Red wax,” Garland replied immediately, carefully peering into the bowls. “Dried placenta, hooves, and—yes, here’s a spoonful of cats’ claws.”

  “Banana claws,” Sophie said, scribbling madly.

  “Banana?” Cly asked.

  “The shipboard cat, the one now on Sawtooth,” Garland said.

  Cly’s lip was curled into a snarl. “Daimon was the one who inscribed you, Sophie.”

  “That’s circumstantial evidence,” she said.

  “So?”

  “So, basically, don’t kill him.”

  He pointed at a stub of burned sealing wax. “You don’t doubt it, do you?”

  “No. He’s totally the frightmaker. I’m just saying it’s not proof. Remember proof? Proof in court?”

  “Burden of proof is a Fleet custom, and naturally I hold it sacrosanct,” he said softly. “But here at home, child, I would be within my rights to have him minced.”

  She swallowed. “That’s all very well, and I’m mad at him too. But if you want to preserve the Cessation, we need to understand the master plan.”

  He seemed to weigh that: his oath, the peace of the world, or a bit of tasty revenge. “Fair point.”

  They continued to search in silence. Then Garland held up a page. “I believe this is a list of horse names.”

  “How many?”

  “Six.”

  They turned that over. Animals were easier to inscribe, for a lot of reasons. You could name them yourself, and manage their magical load. If the horses were used to incubate frights, the countryside might become overrun with slaver-hunting lions, like the one that had attacked the three of them. Meanwhile, if Daimon kept claiming to be in league with Nysa, abolitionists would be blamed for any deaths the lions caused.

  “We’ll have to have the animals destroyed,” Cly said.

  She felt a stab of something like despair. Innocent working animals, blameless pawns in a bloody political game. What a waste.

  It didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like enough.

  “Puzzle pieces,” Garland murmured, as if he’d read her mind. “Not a picture.”

  Sophie flipped through her book of questions, running her finger down the list of frightmaking ingredients stolen from the evidence lockup in Fleet. Most of the stuff was accounted for. “Any sign of a jar of salamander eggs?”

  Head shakes from both men.

  “Cly, what have you found?” He had moved on to examining a table covered in sheets of stiff-looking, unbleached cardboard. These had been meticulously folded, back and forth, into little accordions.

  “This would be where they had Lidman working,” he said. “The materials here resemble those used in the spell that induced my … you called it pyrophobia?”

  “Right. Influencing the behavior of kids is his specialty,” she said. “So. Daimon makes frights over here. Kev sits across from him, writing spells to do something to the Sylvanner kids whose names they’ve stolen. Probably his go-to: getting them to burn bondage scrolls.”

  “That’s what they wanted with him, then. To have children on the plantations unshackling their slaves while frights roamed the countryside attacking their parents.”

  “Would that start a war, Cly?”

  “Perhaps, if they killed someone prominent.”

  Her eye fell on a spyglass propped against the sill of the window overlooking the courtyard. “Meanwhile, someone’s sitting here making sure we don’t head over to the Black Fox and catch them by surprise.”

  “A third conspirator?” Cly perked up with typical predatory optimism.

  “Smitt’s partner, maybe? Pree.” She continued to examine the room. “Where do you sleep? You’re working like a crazy person on all these spells. Everyone’s jammed in here together, scribing. Kev goes back to his room at night, in case I check on him, but…” She opened a door. Inside was an alcove, with a mattress and a threadbare blanket. Bending to examine the mattress, she ran her gloved hands over it. One, tw
o, three … inch-by-inch examination … “Ha!”

  She held up a single red hair, as long as the stretch from her wrist to her elbow, and tipped in black.

  “What’s that?”

  “The messenger from Isle of Gold.” She groaned. “Oh, I’m so dumb. Golders like to face their enemies. She brought me that letter from Brawn. It started with something like ‘You see before you all I can share about our spy.’ I was reading it and looking her in the face the whole time. She’s Pree.”

  Things clicked together. Pree has Verena’s build. She could have been the one who broke into Mom and Dad’s place.

  Which means I have a photo of her thumbprint on Bram’s hard drive at home.

  Cly scanned the courtyard, using the spyglass. “So Kev’s compatriots are infiltrated by two portside intelligence operatives, one of whom is still at large—”

  “Daimon’s insisting he’s against slavery,” Garland reminded him.

  Sophie took a step, realized there was no space in which to pace, and instead shut the door to the little sleeping alcove for slaves. “What if the various hawky nations have caught wind of this plan where Cly and his quasiliberal Sylvanner friends are working with Verdanii to upset the balance in the Convene? To really put a pin in the war they’ve been all but begging for?”

  Cly didn’t seem to react. He leaned against the windowsill, posed as casually as a magazine model showing off the crease of his well-cut slacks. He ran a thumb over the pommel of his sword, thinking.

  “The raids on the slaver ships created controversy within Fleet,” Garland said.

  “Who cares about a bunch of smugglers?” Sophie said. “Nobody—it’s not enough. So they go for a second set of sinkings, targeting portside merchants, within Fleet, where people can see it happening. Higher profile, plus honest merchants make better victims. All so they can build up to sinking Constitution.”

  “All of the injured parties on the portside,” Cly said.

  “Then you just need someone to do the injuring,” Sophie said. “Antibondage agitators from the starboard side. Like Kev Lidman, who Daimon’s claiming is their mastermind.”

  “Yes!” Garland said. “That’s why they entangled him.”

  “Are you saying Kev’s primary value is merely that he’s a Haver?” Cly asked.

  “As everyone’s been telling me from day one, where you’re from matters a lot here. Kev’s no idealistic kid from Tug Island. He’s from across the Baste, a citizen of Sylvanna’s hated enemy. He really was freeing people … and now, thanks to me, he’s here on Sylvanna and lion frights are roaming the hills.”

  “It’s not your—”

  “No, but it’ll play,” Sophie said. “Daimon’s claiming Kev was the boss of them. He’s convicted of sinking slavers. They’ll say he got me to bring him here so he could force the local kids to burn their families’ slave inscriptions.”

  “If the Piracy wanted Lidman here,” Cly said, “why did Brawn offer to buy him from you?”

  “Theater,” she said. “They knew I’d say no.”

  “Knew?”

  “It’s my nature, isn’t that what you’d say? Willful? Uncooperative?”

  “Yes,” Cly agreed, but he smiled a little. “Speaking of willful and uncooperative, I suppose you’re going to insist on going through with freeing Kev?”

  “I have to,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “If I don’t, you’ve already got the right to ‘mince’ him, don’t you? At least if I free him he’s entitled to due process.”

  “The result of such an exercise in jurisprudence will merely be another guilty verdict.”

  “Maybe it shouldn’t matter, but even if the difference is he gets another trial, that’s a big deal to me. Proof in court and all that.”

  “It’s not the only difference.”

  “No?”

  “If I simply killed him, you’d be due some financial compensation for property loss.”

  “Teeth! Yes, Cly, we’re totally freeing him.”

  Cly let out the gleamiest yet of his gleaming, sharklike grins. “In that case, dear Sophie, you must go have a fitting for your wedding dress.”

  Momentum got her moving toward the door before the words sank in. “Wait. I have a wedding dress?”

  CHAPTER 35

  It wasn’t that Sophie hadn’t tried to get Cly to tell her how the mass wedding would go.

  Oh, she had asked. Repeatedly. At meals, during all the riding to and fro, even first thing on the previous morning, in case there was a chance she’d catch him groggy or off guard. The first couple of times, he’d diverted her with questions about the Kev situation.

  The third, he’d flat-out said, “I shouldn’t like to spoil the surprise.”

  Which meant, Why help you wriggle out of the trap?

  Would they be back at the couples counseling park? In a town hall, or in the equivalent of the high school gymnasium, like a graduation? Was there a temple, a ballroom? He wouldn’t say.

  The attack by the lion fright, and Daimon’s capture right afterward, triggered a whirlwind of police activity. Local investigators had found the body of Cly’s carriage driver, Latasha; she’d been poisoned at home and buried in her backyard. Her replacement, the man who’d picked them up after marriage class and drove the inscribed mare to her death, was still at large. A full-fledged manhunt was on to find both him and the junior concierge who’d sneaked Kev upstairs to work in Daimon’s rented room.

  They filled the remaining time until solstice with a peculiar mix of legitimate investigation and wedding preparations. The horses Daimon had inscribed had to be found and euthanized. Letters were prepared for everyone at Cly’s estate and for all his acquaintances, announcing the blessed event. A second batch of notes went out to Erefin Salk and the Watch, inquiring about the true identity of Pree, in her guise as a Fleet page. Sophie had to go to a government-sponsored lecture on her responsibilities as a soon to be newly minted legal adult of Sylvanna and a voter. Then she had to attend a second session on the political landscape of Autumn District.

  On the day of the solstice itself, it turned out the Institute had, as a courtesy to Cly, offered one of its own carriages and teams to fetch the Banning party. It was oversize and very round, putting Sophie in mind of the pumpkin carriage from Cinderella.

  Her birth father had remanded her that afternoon to the custody of a pair of hotel maids for coiffing and dressing, before announcing that he needed to grab a quick nap—he had been up all night, and then through the morning, once again overseeing Daimon’s interrogation.

  She tried to ask the hotel’s in-house lady’s maid about the wedding ceremony, but she didn’t (or wouldn’t) speak Fleet and was far too busy clucking over Sophie’s short curls and wayward eyebrows—not to mention her refusal to wear body powder—to play pantomime.

  All I have to do is admit we’re not really engaged, she thought, with every bite of brush and tweezers.

  Once she was coiffed, plucked, begowned, and released, she’d been sent to collect Kev, who was waiting in the Black Fox, under guard, clad in an apparently ceremonial toga. His wrists were, once again, loosely bound by Selwig’s white ribbon.

  “Last chance, Kev,” she said. “Anything you want to say to me? Anything I can do to help you?”

  He shook his head, making a point of tucking himself behind her so he could do an ostentatiously servile perp walk to the pumpkin carriage. The sight of Cly made Kev shrink a little; he wedged himself as far from the judge and his sword as he could, and fished in his robe for a cracker. Crumbs spilled onto the starched-white drape of cotton over his chest as he munched, squirrel style, with his hands bound together. He wore a weary, faraway look.

  “You aren’t in pain, are you?” Sophie asked.

  Long-suffering sigh. “I got into this to free a woman, you know.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “She belonged to one of my mentors on Tug. Jalea, her name was. For her, I created the bondburning spe
ll. Creating an intention … it was the pinnacle of my spellcrafting career. I could have sought a place in Fleet as an apprentice spell developer. Instead I found Eame and his group, and we hatched a plan. But Eame said, How can we free one person and ignore the rest?”

  Sophie nodded.

  “They handled the actual escapes. Getting people away, putting them aboard boats … I never knew who was renaming them. Months passed, and I finished school. I’d gone home to Haversham and Eame kept sending me children’s names. For years, I helped from a distance, far from any consequences.”

  “Did it work? Did … Jalea escape?” Garland asked.

  Ghost of a smile. “Her. Perhaps twenty others.”

  “It was a good thing,” Sophie said, shooting Cly a look, before he could make one of his disparaging gestures.

  Instead Cly said, “It is often a personal tie that sets us against the currents of family and nation.”

  Once they were under way, it was clear from the direction they took that the High Winter Festival, like the summer event she’d attended six months before, would be held at the Spellscrip Institute.

  The Institute carriage bypassed much of the traffic, and soon they were being conducted into a banquet hall within the cored-out mountain. It was an open and perfectly circular chamber, with balconies extended into the Institute’s parklands, on one side, and toward the ocean, on the other. The incoming tide roared, pounding black boulders and tidal pools twenty feet below, flinging little drabs of sea foam over the lip of the circle.

  Moving inward, under the lip of rock that served as the roof of the chamber, banquet guests found themselves sandwiched between two disks, a floor and ceiling of creamy alabaster, supported by what looked to be enormous pithoi—the big urns used in the ancient world, back home, for shipping goods. Curvy as ancient goddess totems, the urns were decorated in images that celebrated the iconography of winter: bare trees, thin figures, hibernating animals in burrows, travelers in heavy garb, and ships navigating ice-strewn waterways.

  “What do you think?” Cly asked as she looked around.