“I couldn’t say, Kir.”
“Excuse me—dueling?” Bram said.
“What about Mom?” Verena said in the same instant.
“I think you should all get below,” Parrish said.
Changing the subject. Got it in one, this all has something to do with me and the past and Beatrice. I wonder if it goes far back enough that she was still with my biological father?
“We only just saw that fog bank.” But the mist was closer, rising in little ribbons off the water around them, and the clouds she could barely see a minute ago had grown to thunderheads.
“Come on, Sofe,” Bram said.
Sophie balked. “Look, Parrish, I’ve sailed. A lot. I’ve been in storms. I can help.”
“Sailed,” he said. “In mummer ships.”
“Sorry?”
“Petroleum-fueled vessels from Erstwhile.”
“Okay, yes, they weren’t all rigs and sails and belay the afterburners, but—”
“I can’t have an unrated sailor on deck,” he said, in that clipped tone. “I’ll check you, once we’ve survived this.”
“More hands make lighter work—”
“No.”
“I thought I was in charge here.”
He drew himself up. “Go below now, Kirs, with all due respect, or I’ll have Sweet haul you down and guard you.”
With a scowl, Sophie followed Bram down the narrow staircase.
Verena seemed to consider arguing too, but then she brought up the rear.
Nightjar was, by now, riding swells big enough to make walking an exercise in lurching from one side of the corridor to the other.
“He is so infuriating! Verena, how do you stand him?”
Verena ignored this outburst, instead speaking to Bram. “Don’t worry. She’s a good ship, and he’s a brilliant sailor.”
“I’m not afraid,” he said. “I’m deciding whether it’ll save time if I throw up now.”
“You are a little green,” Sophie said.
“There’s no magic spell for preventing seasickness, is there?”
“Of course,” Verena said. “But we don’t have a scribe on Nightjar. Anyway, none of the crew’s prone to the heaves.”
“Worth asking, right?” Bram led the way to the cabin he and Sophie had been assigned. It held a pair of bunks and a tiny dressing table between them. Their things were lashed below the bunks. Bram perched on one. Then he started as a blue streak, furred and long, darted out from under the blankets.
It was a ferret, Sophie saw, or something like it. It had the basic weasel shape, the length, but running through the thin blueish fur of its coat was an intermittent glow, a glimmer like yellow light. Its tail was long and reptilian and terminated in a snake’s head. It darted to the middle of the meager floor space, looking from one of them to the other, and then clawed its way up Sophie’s jeans, curling against her belly.
“It’s harmless,” Verena said. “Parrish has a thing for rescuing animals who’ve been experimented on. The snake isn’t venomous.”
“Looks like a mud snake.” Sophie ran a finger through the fur. The glimmer was spellscrip, magical lettering that had somehow been imprinted on its flesh. The join, at the tail, between mammalian skin and scales was gradual, a speckling pattern that might have been freckles, that grew and roughened into small and eventually bigger scales.
Bram didn’t spare the animal more than a glance; the flash and shimmer of lightning, coming through the volcanic glass of the portal, had drawn his attention. “Do we need to board up the window?”
“No,” Verena said. “Nightjar’s seals are sound.”
Magical experiments, Sophie thought, spellscrip on flesh. “Was Parrish ever experimented on?”
“Parrish just likes animals,” Verena said. “He can’t be enchanted.”
“Can’t be enchanted?” Bram was breathing in and out with forced regularity—in through the nose, out through the lips. “How’s that work?”
“One of his names is lost,” Verena said.
“I’d figured him for having had one of those Erinthian beauty spells, at least,” Sophie said.
“Born that way,” Verena said, her tone wistful. “Gale used to call him monstrous. Overly blessed by nature.”
They were heaving up and down, ever more briskly. As the bunk lurched beneath them Sophie was reminded of the time she’d tried bull-riding.
Shouts and running feet rumbled above. It was easy to imagine the crew running to and fro, tying off rigging and hauling sails as the fabric rent, to imagine people being washed overboard, drowning, and wouldn’t that be her fault too?
There was a groan—beams straining.
“Sitting this out seems so wrong,” Sophie said.
“Parrish can’t know you won’t get blown off deck,” Verena said.
“I suppose not.” Arrogant bastard, she thought.
“He should know I would be fine,” her sister added.
“Guys,” Bram said. “How is bitching about it helping?”
He was right, of course, but sitting around like little kids, waiting to drown, or hopefully not …
“Sent to our room.” She sighed again.
“Ducks here would offer to fly the plane if we were on a bumpy flight overseas,” Bram said to Verena.
“Don’t call me Ducks. You’re just trying to start a scrap to distract yourself from the nausea,” she said.
“I wouldn’t have to distract myself if you’d pitch in,” he said. “Make yourself useful.”
“Useful how?” she echoed. “We can’t solve the murder from here. Not enough info.”
“We don’t have enough to sort out the Earth–not-Earth thing either,” he said.
She unfolded her page of questions, passing it across the bunk to him.
“You Hansa kids have a dull idea of fun,” Verena said.
“This is interesting,” they replied simultaneously, and she laughed.
“Tell us about you,” Sophie said.
Verena’s smile vanished; she was, suddenly, as alert and wary as the mutated ferret clinging to Sophie’s lap. “Me?”
“Yeah. Were you born in San Francisco? Or, you know, here?”
“Why?”
“We’re sisters. Do I need a better reason to ask?”
She sucked at her teeth, considering. “I was born in San Francisco. But, on paper, here too. Mom took me to her childhood home when I was young and presented me to the Allmother. Officially, that makes me a true child of Verdanii.”
“Like Gale and our mother and Annela Gracechild?” Sophie asked.
Verena nodded.
“Allmother,” Bram said. “Women run the show on Verdanni? It’s matriarchal?”
“A person’s status there is largely dependent on their genetic relationship to the Allmother.”
“Who is what? The Queen?”
“Basically. She’s head of the Consensus of Mothers—the national government.”
“So,” Sophie said. “Do they own slaves?”
“Actually—” A little tartness now. “Verdanni is considered the voice of the Free faction. They—we—are against bondage.”
“Peace, love, and motherhood, then,” Sophie said.
“Don’t oversimplify. We’re not saints,” Verena said.
“And what about men?” Bram asked.
“Guys have been allowed to sit in the Consensus for a couple generations. I think there’s maybe four out of the ninety-nine.”
We’ve drifted off the topic of Verena herself, Sophie thought. She dangled cultural bait and we took it.
“What about you?” she said. “You had that Berkelium shirt. Are you in college already?”
“I’m graduating high school in the spring,” she said. Sure enough, they were back to the short answers as soon as they started talking about her. “I had applied for early admission to Berkeley, but—”
“To study what?”
“Economics and international development.”
“What?” Verena said.
The ship was lurching now, up and down, side to side. They were hanging onto the bunks to stay in place. The ferret’s little claws were dug into Sophie’s jeans.
“You were applying to Berkeley, but…” Bram managed.
“I’ll have to give that up,” she said. “To take Gale’s position.”
“Just like that—your life in San Francisco’s over? You’re here in the Age of Sail forever?” Bram looked aghast. Maybe it was just the nausea.
Verena shrugged. “It was always the plan.”
“Oh crap,” Bram groaned. “This needs to stop.”
Sophie swapped bunks—the ferret clung to her jeans like dead weight—and wrapped her arms around him; he wouldn’t need her to tell him the storm might go on for days. “It’s okay,” she said. “We’ll be all right, promise. Solid ship, good sailors.”
She peered out through the portal at the monstrous black swells. The clouds, above, rolled like great crushing boulders, illuminated by a steady fusillade of electrical flashes.
The electricity seemed to pool where her vision had settled, becoming ever more dense, and then a bolt of lightning poured down from the sky, connecting with the ocean like a whickering, jittering cable. Instead of flashing out, it thickened and maintained, sweeping closer, its color changing from electrical white to the pale rose of grapefruit flesh. The ship rolled, rising at the bow and throwing Sophie against the portal. She steadied herself by slapping her palm against the obsidian window … and as they peaked, high on the crest of an enormous wave, she thought she saw the silhouette of a ship, far off, the shape of a hull and a weird, splayed mast, shaped like a Y with lightning flickering within.
As her skin made contact with the volcanic glass, the whip of ropy lightning out on the water sought out Sophie’s hand.
She recoiled. The power followed her through the bulkhead, flickering coolly against her palm.
She felt her hair shifting and moving as static electricity raised it.
“There’s a pull, like a kite string,” she said, marveling at the bright jolts. Lightning, in the palm of her hand …
“Sofe—” Bram said. The starched white curtain had burst into flame, and the bulkhead, where the cord of power cut through it, was smoking.
She had to get up on deck before the whole ship burst into flame.
“Ferret!” She turned halfway so Verena could pry the panicked animal free, then made for the upper decks at a run. The bolt of power came along with her, like a string dangling from the sky. It spread down her hand to her wrist, a jagged, flickering sleeve. The skin of her arm tingled, heating up. The muscles of her forearm prickled, as though they’d been asleep.
Find us Temperance, Outlander, a voice crisped into her ear. We’ll give thee thy heart’s desire.
“Shut up!” She made it to the upper hatch without cutting the ship in half. As she reached for the handle of the hatch, there was a surge of white sparks; the boards blew to splinters.
She burst onto the deck into a torrent of chilly rain. The sleeve of electrical energy jolted on her skin, fizzing against the raindrops. The power snaked down to her elbow, stretching up beyond her fingertips into the sky. It reminded her, again, of a kite string. One of the ship’s booms passed through the bolt and it sliced the ropes and sails as neatly as a saw, leaving a burn mark on the spar itself.
Sophie ducked as the boom swung. The ship heaved violently and the sail flapped, untethered, slack and useless, its bottom edge crisping and sparking before rain doused it. Her electrified hand set the water on the deck rail to steaming.
Despite the chaos of the storm, she heard shouts of dismay from the crew. Above that, Parrish shouted orders.
She hurled herself at the port rail, holding her arm up, trying to keep the lightning clear of the rigging.
The greatest boom yet of thunder accompanied a strobe-burst of electrical activity from above. Spots swam in front of her, coalescing into a shape: an octopus?
Okay, she thought, what are my options? She couldn’t work her way aft without cutting more ropes, more sails. What if this unnatural bolt of energy hit a crew member?
Heart for a heart, the voice said again. It was John Coine’s voice, she was sure of it. Are we agreed?
“I’ll throw myself overboard!” She threw the words into the wind, teeth bared in a feral grin. “Where will you be then?”
A gust bowled her to the deck; she writhed, bracing herself and trying to keep the cord of lightning from doing more damage to the ship.
Metal. The handle of the hatch had been made of iron. It had looked manufactured—Parrish or Gale must have imported it from home. And hadn’t she seen…?
The ship tilted, climbing another wave, and she took the opportunity to skirt the rail, contorting in a weird limbo to try to keep the bolt of lightning over the edge, working her way toward the cutter’s stern. She heard someone—Tonio?—calling her name, but she kept going, finally hurling herself in a baseball slide, hands out, reaching for the only piece of metal she could find …
… the anchor chain.
Electrical power poured through her, into the anchor mechanism. Now she felt it, waves of current, roiling, thrum, thrum and then with a last thrash the connection broke, fizzling. The cord of lightning lashed upward and then slurped back up into the angry sky.
“Burned my hand,” she said, falling to the deck. The anchor steamed.
The deck beneath her heaved as a swell pushed her to starboard. Sophie slid, stunned, coughing, as water sluiced over her.
Is it coming back?
It would be better to go into the drink than to become a tool for slicing the ship to bits. Bram, Verena, the ship’s crew … if Coine was after her, he could have her.
She gathered herself to spring.
Someone caught her by the scruff of her jacket when she was halfway to the rail.
Parrish, of course.
Instead of going out in a glorious dive, her feet slipped out from beneath her and she landed on her butt.
He knelt beside her. “All right?”
Sophie sputtered like a drowned kitten, trying to draw breath to tell him to let her go. I’m trying to do the noble thing here and I’m about to lose my nerve …
“It’s all right,” he said, as if she’d voiced the thought after all. “It’s over.”
It was true. With one final mumble of thunder, the clouds split, revealing a perfect circle of blue sky that spread like oil across the gray plate of clouds.
“The storm—”
“Going as fast as it came,” he said. “Magic, remember?”
She blinked. She was still seeing spots. Or, rather, that cephalopod shape again, bullet body and tentacles.
“When you put yourself at risk, the weather lightened. They don’t want you dead.”
“Bluff and deterrents,” she sputtered.
“Someone’s trying to scare you,” he said.
“Goody. I can’t wait to see what happens if they ever get truly homicidal,” she said, extracting herself from his grip and making a vain attempt to brush herself off. Her jeans were lacquered against her legs, pulling on her skin, wrenching her knees and ankles.
“Indeed,” Parrish agreed. The seas were calming. He gave her one last, assessing glance and went to help the crew secure the runaway boom.
CHAPTER 16
She went below, peeled out of her wet clothes and dried off as quickly as she could before opening her trunk. Setting aside the ridiculous white ball gown the Conto had given her, she dug for something dry and practical from among the Erinthian contributions to her wardrobe. She came up with a set of black breeches and a pale green blouse. Bram had to help her with the buttons on the blouse—the burns on her hand were superficial, but the lightning strike had left her feeling oddly stiff.
“Where’d Verena go?” she asked as he smeared some of her first aid gel on her palms.
He shrugged. “Sofe. I’ve been thinking. You need to bail on all this before things get worse.”
“You want to just run home?”
He tucked the tube of gel back into her first aid kit, repacking it within the pile of equipment of her trunk, his expression neutral.
“What about Gale’s murder? The whole inheritance mess?”
“What about people chasing you with frigging typhoons?”
“Us. Chasing us.” She sat on her bunk and let him see her considering it, being reasonable, weighing the options. It was a trick she’d adopted to placate their father: make a show of thinking it through, so he couldn’t accuse her of grasping for an easy or shallow answer. She counted to twenty, and then said: “It’s only my responsibility if I take it on, is that what you’re thinking?”
“Exactly,” he said. “They can’t make you do Gale’s old job, and there has to be some way for Verena to win over the magic purse without you putting your neck on the line. As for all this intrigue—who’s running the court of Erinth, whether anyone can sink or find or destroy this heart of Temperance … how is that our concern?”
“It is a little like we’re playing with someone else’s international politics.”
He chuckled. “Breaking the Prime Directive.”
“Who am I to do that, right?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. If anyone was going to poke her nose in, Sofe, it should be you.”
“Right.”
“Don’t start with the ‘I’m stupid’ stuff. You’re quick, and when you take the time to look at them, you understand people really well. You’re not corrupt.”
“Yet you’re telling me to just cut and run.”
“Yeah! ’Cause think: What’ll it do to Mom and Dad if we just vanish?”
It should have been a powerful argument, but she had struggled with this for ages, ever since she’d begged for permission to go skydiving for her sixteenth birthday, and seen her father fighting to smother his anxiety as he put her on the plane. They never said a word, Mom and Dad; they encouraged her to do exactly what she wanted. There was guilt, sure, but she lived with it.
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