The Nature of a Pirate

by A. M. Dellamonica

  “We gotta decide, Cly,” she said. “Are we going to pile a personal disaster on top of all this … carnage?”

  “Explain.”

  “I could marry Garland tonight. I could vow—” She looked straight into Garland’s eyes. “I could vow anything. I love him. I think, if I asked, he’d go along. Our feelings … there’s plenty there. There’d be no lie.”

  That alert, steady gaze.

  “But we’re not ready, Cly. Do you get that? There is no marriage where he comes from, and on my world, we … wait.”

  “You haven’t waited on much,” Cly observed.

  “Yes! We’ve had sex. Thanks for bringing that up. And we’ll live together for a while. Raise his ship, sail around, be a couple. You can give me a passport, but that doesn’t make me Sylvanner. That’s a wish you can’t have.”

  “No,” he said at length. “I suppose not.”

  Someone’s got to get off this merry-go-round. “You know what’s been going on here. You’ve known from the beginning. I was afraid you’d torture Kev, so … I lied when I said getting married was the plan all along.”

  “You freely admit it?” Cly’s jaw clicked. “You weren’t engaged. You committed fraud in order to assert ownership rights over Lidman.”

  “Broke my almighty Fleet oath, too,” she said. “Come on, stop dancing. You knew this. The question is, what do you want to do? You can have me arrested, or deported all the way home to Erstwhile.”

  She felt a thrum in Garland at that point, a tightening of his hand around hers.

  “Is that all?” Cly asked.

  “Yeah, pretty much.” She didn’t add that Annela had been waiting for just such an opportunity; she wouldn’t use Cly’s dislike of the Verdanii to influence him. “Do what you think is best. No … wait. There is something.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’m sorry. I should’ve asked you to help me.”

  “Indeed you should.” Cly nodded. “I need to think.”

  With that, he walked away.

  “You’ve put our fate in His Honor’s hands,” Garland murmured.

  “I had to.”

  The smile he gave her was radiant. “I do understand.”

  “Even if he deports me?”

  Any answer he might have made was interrupted when Bram and Verena ran out to join them. “What’s going on?”

  “She told him,” Garland said.

  “Everything?” Bram goggled. “Sofe, what are you doing? You just handed him all the ammo—”

  “Cly doesn’t want me jailed, sued, or deported,” she said, keeping her voice low.

  “You’re the shiny new thing. I know. But what happens when he gets bored?”

  She shook her head. “There’s a master plan here. He says it’s liberating Sylvanna and preventing a Fleetwide war.”

  Verena frowned. “You believe that?”

  “It might not be all of it, but…” She shrugged. “Everything he’s done since we got to Sylvanna was about stopping this—the mess here.”

  “He’s failed,” Verena said. “We’re not going to see any relaxation of Sylvanna’s bondage laws now.”

  “Fight’s not over yet,” Sophie said. “We can prove the Piracy and the Tug Islanders were out to manipulate Sylvanna’s election.”

  “Which brings us back to Daimon…”

  “No,” Sophie said. “It brings us to his accomplice. Pree. Whatever we call her—”

  “Sophie.” Cly had returned from his amble. “Thank you for trusting me.”

  She nodded.

  “The simplest way to dissolve your engagement is for me to forbid the match.”

  “Can’t Garland just jilt me?”

  “I would feel obliged to challenge him.”

  “Oh.” She felt her face get hot. “Challenge … as in, ritual exchange of blows?”

  “Sophie.” A purr. “You know I think he’s unworthy of you.”

  He might have been joking. Who could tell?

  She looked at Garland. His expression was untroubled; if he was intimidated by the prospect of fighting the Fleet’s preeminent duelist, it didn’t show.

  “Forbidden it is, then. Garland, my pops here says I’m not supposed to see you anymore.”

  A bubble of laughter escaped Garland’s lips.

  “But, Cly … You know we’ll do what we want, right?”

  “Believe me, if there’s one thing you’ve made abundantly clear—”

  “Okay!” No point in letting him finish that sentence. “Garland, are you good with this?”

  He nodded. “I suspect it’s what His Honor would like to do anyway.”

  “I cannot help my nature.” He held out a hand, unleashing one of those irresistible thousand-watt smiles. “I suspect I’d have enjoyed fighting you, Parrish. But it’s allies for now, alas.”

  “Indeed,” Garland said, clasping his hand. “What a … shame?”

  “Can we go looking for Pree now?” Sophie asked.

  “Yes, we really ought. Where do you want to start?”

  “Where are the marriages happening?”

  Cly inclined his head—Follow me, he meant—and led them around the children’s park, past a band shell that had been packed with another hundred captured Kev frights, and into a spiral staircase leading up and through the mountain.

  They came out on a cloud.

  It wasn’t really, of course; they must be using magic or dry ice or some type of fog machine. But the illusion was perfect: stepping out onto something rock solid, only to find her feet swirling in mist, dimly illuminated, as if by the slightest tinge of moonlight on a black sky.

  The about-to-be-married couples were lined up along the length of the cloud floor, facing each other at a distance of about a yard—just a hair too far to reach across the gulf and touch fingertips. At the front of the line, a pair of young men stood before a floating disk that looked like a tabletop made of moon. It had no physical substance, just a lambent, silvery glow. Behind it stood an impossibly tall individual in a sash whose sole ornament was a glimmering pin representing marriage—the clasped hands that Cly had worn on his sash, briefly, before his official divorce.

  The nearest handful of bystanders, Sophie guessed, was the family of the groom and groom. The table was throwing so much light that the tops of their faces were in shadow—they were just bodies and chins.

  The two men clasped hands as the officiator murmured words in Sylvanner. The family members repeated the words, then the couple did. It was a little singsong; it rose and fell, passing from the officiator to the relatives and then to the couple themselves.

  Sophie felt an unexpected stab of regret.

  The officiator took the clasped hands of the two young men and pressed them against the moon table. It was liquid, as it turned out. Their hands were submerged in what looked very much like moonlight. There was a reverent pause, and then the couple raised their hands again, still clasped, dripping with the light of the moon. Each laid his hands on the other’s heart, and the illumination soaked in. For a second they were young moon men, lit from within. Through their exposed skin, Sophie saw the shape of the bones in their hands, rib cages shining within their clothes, and shadow-organs nestled in perfect order within. Their hearts were beating in sync.

  The light faded and they embraced, quickly, before they turned into the warmth and congratulations of their jubilant relatives.

  The officiator swirled his fingers in the lunar surface, rippling its waters. As the next couple and their witnesses stepped up, the fluid settled to stillness.

  “Sofe, why are we here?” Bram asked.

  “Rees Erminne,” Sophie said. “Rees and his veil-wearing foreign girl, Cleste. She was the one who told me we could bring Kev here to free him.”

  Cly spun on his heel, searching the crowd, then chose a direction, making for the edge of the clouded floor. There was an impressively huge contingent of people waiting quietly in the darkness, clustered around expectant pairs of engaged Sy
lvanners.

  “Liquid moonlight,” Garland murmured. “Did you see?”

  “Cool, huh?”

  Cly was whispering with one or two of the waiting family members. Then, putting a hand on Sophie’s arm, he led them, a little human chain, to an almost pitch-black corner behind the crowd.

  It turned out there were walls here after all—her hand encountered a curtain. Cly drew it aside and they filed into an anteroom filled with newlyweds and their kin. Their hands were sprinkled with luminescent glitter—moon dust, Sophie thought. She was reminded again of graduation ceremonies, the clutches of people gathered afterward. A hundred individual celebrations within a greater crowd.

  Rees Erminne was off to one side, all alone, arguing with a uniformed official in whispered Sylvanner.

  “Rees?”

  The guard made a shooing gesture, but a word from Cly stood him down.

  “What gives?” Sophie said.

  Rees said, “Cleste is missing.”

  Not a big shock. She cast about, looking for a sensitive way to break the news.

  Then Cly bulled in. “Your intended is an international agitator. She’s been coordinating the unsanctioned inscription of several children and the debonding of their family slaves.”

  Rees buried his face in his hands.

  “We haven’t time for your emotions, child,” Cly said. “When did you last see her?”

  “She slipped away after the banquet.”

  She might be anywhere. Sophie wormed in between Cly and Rees, took Rees’s hand, got his attention. “Rees, tell us about her.”

  “Ah … she claimed she was born on Gellada, the daughter of a merchant family. A mutual acquaintance, a shoemaker from Tug, set it up. The Gelladans marry out—they like to raise children with doubled national ties, to calm the seas for trade. Cleste was going to bring in money so that Mother could hire people to work our orchards. It was meant to help us recover from…”

  “From freeing all your slaves, yeah?” Sophie said.

  Rees nodded, looking plaintive. “Is this about the election?”

  “Partly.” Poor guy. That feeling returned: slow-burning desire to scorch the conspiracy—all the conspiracies—to their roots.

  “The question,” Verena said, “is where’s Cleste now?”

  Sophie said, “Krispos told me that once pirates set a course, it’s a point of honor to never deviate from it.”

  “Her course is to cause chaos here,” Cly said. “Release the frights and set them rampaging through the Institute. To sow murder and destruction at the heart of our most cherished cultural symbol.”

  “The rampage is more or less thwarted,” Bram said. “Can she regroup?”

  Sophie scratched her head. “The stuff in the hotel room, the stuff that belonged to her, it was thief stuff. Climbing equipment, that crowbar … Is there something she could break into, or steal?”

  “There’s a great deal here,” Cly said.

  “Something upsetting,” Sophie said. “Something to drag Sylvanna further from any kind of liberal agenda. Something to make Rees look horrible and tank his mother’s bid to govern the Autumn District. Something to send every Sylvanner here home in a Crack the whip and crush the opposition frame of mind.”

  “Trouble is, it’s a target-rich environment. The whole Institute is full of treasure, isn’t it?” Bram said. “Spells, components, relics?”

  “Rees,” Sophie said, trying to ignore the way Cly and Parrish were both turning over the phrase “target-rich environment,” soundlessly, with disturbingly similar expressions of linguistic pleasure. “You spent time with her.”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Verena said.

  “We can’t guess wrong,” Sophie countered. “Think, Rees. Every conversation she started. Every time she led you in some direction. What was she most interested in?”

  “It was this: the wedding; being here,” He closed his eyes. “Where will the banquet be held, where will Kev Lidman be taken after he’s freed, will we see the children burning the moon, where do we promenade afterward, how old are the banquet hall pithoi…”

  “Is there anything important in the pithoi?”

  Cly shook his head.

  “She asked who would conduct the ceremony—” Rees suddenly paled.

  “What is it, child?” Cly demanded.

  “The officiator,” he said. “They had a long conversation—Cleste is very charming. She asked about the carving of the Institute.”

  Cly’s hand dropped to the haft of his sword. “Nials isn’t a fool.”

  “He told her no more than what everyone knows,” Rees said, and then realized the foreigners probably didn’t. “The first Winter Mage wrote a mining inscription to dig out the core of the mountain, then used the stone to build the Winter capital.”

  “You’re sure that was what she was asking about?”

  “No. There were so many people…” Rees swallowed. “She cannot know where Hoarfrost is entombed?”

  “What if she does?” Sophie said.

  “We should evacuate the Institute,” Rees said.

  “What do you mean?” Sophie said.

  “You have two minutes to reach minimum safe distance,” Bram said, in his movie-quoting voice.

  She rounded on him with a glower.

  “Inappropriate humor moment,” he apologized. “But if they destroy the inscription that dug this facility, the rock used to dig out this complex will return, won’t it? From the city?”

  “Yes,” Cly said.

  “Hundreds of tons of rock,” Bram said.

  “Indeed. The core of the city will collapse, and all the stone used in the buildings’ construction will resume its original position within the mountain. We’ll be crushed.”

  “And the nice antiabolitionist from the Autumn District, and a guy from Haversham, will be to blame,” Sophie said. “Terror accomplished. Where’s the inscription?”

  “Come with me,” Cly said, already leading them away.

  They left Rees sitting in the anteroom, slumped against a wall, a lone, forlorn figure in a room full of newly married adults and their happy parents.

  CHAPTER 38

  Cly headed for a necropolis deep within the mountain, shortcutting along a corridor radiating into the core of the Institute. Its stone walls, magically wrought, were as smooth as if they had been machined and buffed. The ceilings were high, and the walls met at perfect right angles, but it was all of a piece: varnished blue-tinged rock above, below, and to either side. There wasn’t a smudge or a cobweb to be seen. The unmoving air smelled of soap and something like freshly mown clover.

  Recesses in the wall, cut at ten-foot intervals, held glowing colonies of softly humming bioluminescent insects. The tombs gave off an air that seemed less sepulchral and more like that of a university building—one of those big monoliths of learning, with endless rows of faculty offices.

  They didn’t even try to be stealthy as they trotted after Cly, rushing past door after door. Each door bore a plate, set at eye level, on which was carved a cluster of names, and birth and death dates. They were further adorned by some of the same symbols live Sylvanners wore on their status sashes.

  “Why does the magical institute have a crypt?” Sophie asked, mostly to remind herself to write it down later, when they weren’t midway through trying to prevent a disaster.

  “Some of us leave our bodies to the Institute for research purposes,” Cly said. “Magic, using human remains … as you’ve seen, it can be very potent.”

  “So the big cheese founder of the Institute is down this way?”

  “Hoarfrost, yes. In the furthest tomb.”

  The first Winter Mage, as he’d initially been known, was one of an early group of brilliant spellscribes who revolutionized Sylvanna’s economy by developing unheard-of inscriptions for sale on the international market.

  To hear Cly tell it, the Winter Mage was a mash-up of Leonardo da Vinci and Merlin.

  When the revenue star
ted coming in and Sylvanna grew in power, her government and the scribes knew they were, in essence, building themselves up as a great big target for raiders. The fastest way for an enemy nation—Haversham was the big worry, but any aggressive country with a big navy might be tempted—to put an end to Sylvanna’s upstart tendencies would be to destroy the Institute and plunder its intellectual treasures.

  So the Winter Mage, who had taken the name Hoarfrost and who was by then pretty ancient, ordered the building of great magical fortresses in each quadrant of the nation.

  “As I understand it, the digging out of this complex wasn’t an overly complex spell; it was merely a matter of scaling up a precision mining inscription. It is written on the inside of—” Cly froze just shy of the entrance to a big subterranean atrium, putting up a hand.

  Garland drew Sophie against the wall, gesturing to Bram to retreat into a corner.

  Footsteps.

  Six Kev doppelgangers shuffled into view, grown eight feet tall, their muscles straining under the weight of a rock-encased conker. The burden was fully one and a half times the size of a normal coffin, but they bore it, naturally, without complaining.

  A quartet of grenades was duct-taped to the top of the sarcophagus. Their pins were strung to a chain that led to an iron manacle held by the woman in white.

  She had shed her skirts and stood before them, masked, in what would have looked like a Hollywood thief’s catsuit if not for its pristine white color.

  Her instincts were only a hair less sharp than Cly’s. She uttered one word, bringing the Kevs to a halt, and drew her sword, while still clasping the iron bangle with her gloved right hand.

  Cly, too, had drawn his blade.

  “Perhaps the outlanders can tell you what will happen to the sarcophagus if you run me through,” she said.

  Cly understood grenades well enough—he’d had Sophie explain them. Yet he pretended ignorance. “Bramwell? What are those objects?”

  Stalling, Sophie thought.

  “She drops the ring, the pins in the grenades are dragged out by its weight, and boom,” Bram said. “They’re more of an antipersonnel device than a real bomb, though. Shrapnel. We’d die, but I’m not sure they’d put much of a dent in that stonewood sarcophagus.”