As the service droned on, she considered: What did magic mean, exactly? The ability to defy the laws of physics? To create little pockets of something—space, time, both?—where they didn’t apply? Or to access other universal rules that twenty-first century science, at home, just hadn’t touched yet?
The spiderweb sail ruffled in the breeze, gaily defying common sense and physics.
I wonder what Bram will say about this? She shouldn’t have let herself get drawn into arguing with him; it always made her miserable. But the larger question of what magic was would intrigue him. And it tied into the problem with the land masses. If this was Earth, whatever had happened to the continents almost certainly had been … unnatural.
Despite everything, she’d gathered a fair pile of observations about Stormwrack. It was random data, a clutter of facts, not enough yet to form a pattern. Krill in a net, she thought. Meanwhile Bram had focused on the geography question. That was always the way; she flitted around looking at whatever was shiniest, while he got down to work.
Well, he hasn’t solved anything yet either, she told herself. And I can focus, I can. I’m supposed to be snooping around for Gale’s sake.
The sail caught her eye again. Spider ships, spider people. She would have bet there was some kind of spider tie-in to the religious ceremony she was sitting through.
Anansi’s a spider god. Anansi’s a trickster, though. This service seemed overall too stodgy to be trickster worship. No whoopee cushions. She’d always imagined Anansi with a high-pitched giggle and a ready bag of practical jokes.
She flashed on Parrish, giggling as he traded bets with Tonio. And he hadn’t been magicked into being good-looking, either. What had Verena said Gale called him? Monstrous. Overblessed by nature. Something like that. Cute, fit, honorable, she thought.
Stuffy, bossy, infuriating.
The priest had wound one of the worshippers ’round in what almost looked like mummy wrappings, and moved on to what appeared to be a sermon, speaking charismatically—still incomprehensibly, in Ualtara—to the congregation. Everyone listened, heads bowed, patiently on their knees. A few had white cords in hand, and were knotting and unknotting them as they listened. Tonio had a glazed expression, the face of a man waiting out something incredibly unpleasant.
Okay, what did she know?
First: Gale was killed—John Coine had said as much—because of this Heart of Temperance thing. They’d decided Gale would never give it up, so they got her out of the way.
So … Temperance. A deterrent. The ship that sank pirates, back in the day, which was why the Isle of Gold guys were after it.
But these Ualtarites weren’t pirates. What did they want with the Heart?
The Ualtarites weren’t upfront and in anyone’s face about cooperating with John Coine. They were letting him do all the talking, take all the credit. They couldn’t have known that Sophie would see their embassy guy. They’d whipped up a storm when Nightjar headed south, toward their homeland, and had driven them north.
What was it Parrish had said? Temperance was a key part of their century of peace—Cessation, they called it.
A ship that could sink anyone—freighter, pleasure craft …
Don’t be silly. It’s the government—they wouldn’t sink yachts for the hell of it. Pirates, yes.
Or … warships.
What if the Ualtarites were helping the Isle of Gold because they wanted to go to war?
Okay, she thought, but I saw that Fleet. It was huge. It’s not as though Temperance is their only fighting vessel. It’s just Bad Cop. They could probably enforce their Cessation without it.
Spiders, something about spiders …
Her attention snapped back to the service as the congregation rose to its feet, reciting something in an overlapping choral drone, the men singing the two lower notes, women higher. The raised voices had a repressed energy, a sort of “nuh-nuh-nuh” that reminded her, briefly, of that feeling of the lightning moving through her during the storm, waves of power. It filled the available space around it, reverent and exotic. Faith and passion. She found herself beaming at Tonio, who’d offered her an unnecessary hand up.
The sound built, receded, built again and then broke all at once into one long collective, resonant “Ahhh!”
Like that, spider church was over. The priest sang something that seemed like a benediction and the sailors headed back to their stations without so much as a pause for chat.
Tonio let out a long breath and stretched his legs. “Can we leave now, Sophie?”
“Let’s see what happens if we just wander the decks.”
“Teeth!”
“The big protocol book says Ualtar is scrupulously gentle with anyone who comes aboard for church. Come aboard, attend the service, safe passage off again.”
“There might be an exception for people who take the opportunity to spy.”
“We can say I have to pee.”
“You’d be better off flashing Gale’s—I mean your—I mean Verena’s badge if you’re challenged.”
“Maybe they won’t challenge us,” she said, setting off. “Sometimes if you look like you belong, you can get away with—”
“We don’t look like we belong.” There was that edge of anger again.
“Nobody’s tried to stop us so far.” She peered over the bulwark to the lower decks. Down on the docks, the crew was unloading big spools of glistening rope, heavy cords used in rigging. Nearer to hand, she saw a collection of cases of thread, little sewing spools of lumpy or beaded strands.
“Glue,” Tonio said. “Little bubbles of it. They string them into frames and spellscribes write with them—stitch them, I think—into fishers’ spells and to scrip up sailors.”
“Scrip them for what?”
“Ropemonkeys tie their knots true, always. Rope never slips from their grasp, and they can climb rigging like monkeys. Sweet, the bosun’s helper on Nightjar, she’s a knotter. Her parents saved for three years to buy the inscription for her.”
She rolled that around in her mind: What was magic, exactly? “That’s a skill a person could just learn.”
“It’s good to have someone around with real talent. Nice to be that person, too. Kir Gale used to say that was the true power of magic, that gifts weren’t arbitrary province of Nature. She said it was good that people who truly yearned to be set apart could simply do so—chart a course for themselves and sail it. She seemed to find it a particular shame when a person wasn’t fitted to their position.”
“Like being just average smart among a family of geniuses,” Sophie said.
“I assumed she was thinking of her sister, Beatrice.”
“Did you agree with her?”
“Kir Gale was a wise woman,” he said, “She knew more than I ever will.”
“That means no, right?”
Tonio had the grace to look sheepish. “Amia madre says a person should seek their gifts within before running off to the magic shop.”
“Your mom sees magic as a shortcut. The lazy way?”
“It’s an old argument,” Tonio said. “There’s a saying: If you purchase perfection, how will you know if you could have achieved it yourself?”
“I can see how it would be a matter of ongoing debate. So, Tonio, what’s your gift?”
“Look!” He almost sounded cheerful to have a change of subject. “They’ve sent security after us.”
“Security” meant a seven-foot giant, wearing a bandolier of carved stone orbs. Cannonballs? Blond, broad-chested and clad in a simple blue tunic, the man had a longish beard that had been separated into plaits—eight of them, naturally—and hung with milky white beads.
He was, to Sophie’s surprise, beaming: “Were you enlightened by the ceremony, Kirs?”
Why did I think this was smart? Sophie managed to keep herself from grabbing for Gale’s purse, from brandishing the badge within. Instead, she groped for a suitable response. “Your people are clearly very spiritual,” she hazarded.<
br />
Bigger smile.
“Unfortunately, we don’t speak your language.”
“If we knew you were coming, we’d have got you translators,” he said, “For you and your serveling here. But our priestess wrote up short accounts in Fleetspeak and ’Rinthian for you.”
She accepted the proffered scroll. It had a somewhat lurid illustration of birds pecking out the eyes of the damned below the text, and a spidery rendering of the sun above, reaching out its eight arms to the virtuously bright and beautiful. “Thank you.”
“Grazie,” Tonio echoed her, his tone distant.
He nodded indulgently, as though he’d handed them lumps of gold or at least something as good as a doughnut. “Is there aught else, Kirs?”
“Yes,” she said, pushing the word out before Tonio could defer and get them escorted off the ship. “I’m here on business, as a matter of fact. Right, Tonio?”
“Fleet business,” he affirmed weakly.
“That so?”
“Yes. I’m … acting on behalf of a…”
“A Fleet courier,” Tonio said. “Verena Feliachild of Verdanii.”
The giant stroked the beads entangled in his beard, seeming baffled.
“We’re looking into her death. Not Verena’s, I mean. Her predecessor’s.” There she ran out of steam. “I have a badge.”
“Waaaaahl. Ain’t that unusual?” the big man said. “I’ll take you to our exec officer then, shall I?”
“Thank you,” Sophie said.
“This way.”
They followed him belowdecks, Tonio looking ever more grave. “We only have your word that the gentleman we saw on Erinth was one of the two who attacked Kir Gale,” he whispered. “These people aren’t like the Golden; they’ll take a prickly view of having their honor challenged.”
He’s right, what am I doing? “What’s that smell? Fabric dye?”
He took a big huff. “Ship stinks of magic.”
Okay, relax. Go at this sensibly. It’s a process of inquiry, same as science. She glanced at her camera … yes, it was still recording. Their enormous escort ignored it, just as everyone else had.
She had wondered if they would end up having an audience with the priest who’d conducted the ceremony, but the executive officer was perhaps fifty, motherly in appearance, and seemed unsurprised to see them.
Of course, Sophie thought—she probably sent the Friendly Giant up to get us.
She had a milky lens of glass strapped over her left eye and her white-gold hair, which fell to shoulder-length, was plaited into eight strands and bound with thin silver wires. Her office was a disaster: clutter everywhere, bits and pieces of equipment and paper strewn on every surface, floor too. It was the sort of mess one rarely saw aboard a sailing vessel—the constant rock of the ship would jumble things further. As she looked, Sophie spied a few shards of broken glass on the deck, a testament to items that had dropped off the desks and shelves and shattered.
“Tanta Maray,” the woman said, interrupting Sophie’s inspection by introducing herself. “Of this great Missionary Vessel Ascension, and privileged to sail her.”
“Sophie Hansa. I’m on a private cutter, Nightjar. This is the … my … our first mate, Antonio Capodoccio—”
He didn’t tell Maray to call him Tonio. Instead, with a not-very-deep bow: “We have been honored by your hospitality, Tanta.”
“We throw out threads to any who might strive for perfection,” she said. This last phrase, delivered in a neutral tone, somehow made it clear she thought they were unlikely candidates. “What can I do for you?”
Sophie circled the cluttered office, filming the desk with its scraps of paper, all covered in writing in what she assumed was an Ualtarite language, a scattering of pens, an ordinary-looking box of paper clips, an astrolabe, and a framed scrap of leather, written in spell scrip, that was half hidden by the paperwork. A shell, a tarantula carapace, and—
Oh. she thought. Oh, no.
“Kir Hansa?”
She had to take a second to reach for calm. “I—we—sorry. We met a man from the Isle of Gold, John Coine. He was on Erinth about a week ago. We think he’s involved with the murder of a Fleet courier, Gale Feliachild.”
“The Fleet oversees us all, like a stern and overbearing parent,” Maray said. “Little wonder that now and then her children rebel, even violently.”
“Are you saying Gale Feliachild deserved to die?”
She could almost hear the click as Tonio’s nerves ratcheted up another notch.
Maray shook her head. “The murder of any individual, believer or no, is a tragedy. I was merely observing that, in the abstract, the occasional loss to the greater body of the Fleet is to be expected. It is a living organism, like any other, and sometimes its parts—”
“Die off?” She’s amused. She thinks this is funny. It’s a game and she thinks she can outplay me, Sophie thought. “That’s pretty heartless, but we’ll let it pass. The thing is, this particular … can I call John Coine a pirate, Tonio?”
“Not to his face, Kir. Golder or Goldman.”
“This particular Goldman seemed like he might know a guy from your embassy on Erinth.”
“Embassy staffers, by virtue of their position, must be friendly with everyone,” Tanta Maray said. “In any case, it is the Ualtar way to reach out to everyone we can, however depraved.”
And that was a bit of a dig, and not at Sophie. Interesting. “Right, very nice. Save our souls and all that.”
“Whenever possible.”
What would a cop say? “What if this member of the Ualtarite diplomatic mission had been seen, by a … by a witness? If he’d been involved in an earlier attempt on the courier’s life?”
“I’d say the witness was mistaken.” Maray’s eyes narrowed, and suddenly the air she’d had, of a cat batting at a small mouse, was gone. “Has this diplomat been questioned?”
“The Erinthians are looking into that end of it,” Sophie said. “Since it’s all political, and on their turf.”
Tanta Maray nodded, acknowledging this. “Kir Hansa, I assure you there will be no tie found, on Erinth or elsewhere, between the Ualtar theocracy and the murder you’re investigating. We are innocent. It would be unwise to suggest otherwise. It sounds as though your evidentiary thread—”
“Wow. All of a sudden you sound like a lawyer.”
“I have many talents. It hardly takes a legal expert to point out that if all you have in terms of evidence is a single sighting of an Ualtarite citizen—”
“Government officer.”
“—with this John Coine—”
“They weren’t discussing the weather or trade negotiations or whatever international business you guys might have with each other. The guys were knives out, stabbing my aunt!”
“So you are the witness?” Maray looked at Sophie more closely, seeming to weigh her. Her air of concern vanished. “Well, people make mistakes.”
Dismissed again. Sophie mastered her feelings enough to look Maray in the eye. “I saw him.”
“Kir, I can only protest Ualtar’s innocence,” Her tone was casual, but she had stiffened. “I suggest you pursue some other avenue of investigation.”
Anger made her reckless. “Okay, another avenue it is. This ship’s purpose is religious? It’s a missionary vessel, you said?”
“Yes.”
“Why’s it delivering cobwebs?”
Tonio coughed—no doubt trying to shut her up.
“Practicality and spirituality need not be mutually exclusive,” Tanta Maray said. “Common sense and conservation of resources are aspects of perfection, too.”
“And there’s a magical … factory? Workshop? Aboard?”
“We do many things.”
“Would you be able to create mezmers here?”
“I know little about the inscription. But we aren’t making mezmers here, Kir Hansa; it’s a vulgar spell, one that sinks its victims and its perpetrators further from the ideal. You have
my word that this ship hasn’t been near Erinth in six months. We can copy our ship’s logs to the Watch, if you like.”
“Yes,” she said. “That would be great.”
Maray’s lips thinned.
Oh, Sophie thought. Didn’t you expect me to say yes?
“I’ll have to lodge a protest, of course, at your refusal to accept our word.”
“Thank you for your—” Tonio began, but Sophie interrupted.
“Lodge away. But just so you know, I do believe you when you say you weren’t near Erinth. I’m thinking … maybe you were sailing the Zunbrit Passage?”
Maray’s face revealed nothing, but the tension within the cluttered room intensified.
“There was a little salvage vessel called Estrel,” Sophie said. “Small crew … nice people. Captain name of Dracy. Perhaps you know her?”
She could see the woman considering her response. “I do know that ship.”
“I figured you had,” she said, looking directly for the first time at the lantern, the one holding Dracy’s father’s glowing skull.
“We did not, alas, reach out to the Estrel for spiritual reasons. That ship sank in a storm. It was a rescue attempt.”
“Bet it was a sudden storm,” she said. “And maybe a bit localized?”
“Quite sudden, yes.” Maray’s teeth clicked. “By the time we arrived, all we could do was pick up the pieces.”
“Survivors?”
“Regrettably, there are none.”
“There wouldn’t be, would there?”
Now Tonio put his hand on her arm. “You’ve been most helpful, Kir Tanta.”
“Tanta’s my title, boy,” she said. “Maray’s my name.”
“We should go,” he said. “Sophie? The Tanta is a busy woman.”
She shook off his arm. “Were there bodies? The Estrel crew, did you recover any bodies?”
“Taken by the sea, Kir, like the ship itself.”
“Sophie…”
“It’s okay, Tonio,” she said. “The people who killed…”
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