Child of a Hidden Sea

by A. M. Dellamonica

  “To be labeled a people without honor would be a devastating blow for any nation,” Tonio agreed. “At the very least, there’d be a move to stop trading with them. The risk they’re taking is immense.”

  “I’m not following you. They’re kidnappers,” Sophie said. The stings on the back of her hand were throbbing.

  Verena said: “What happened with the Tiladene fellow and the racehorse, the people booby-trapping that inscription to blow up … what was the guy’s name?”

  “Lais Dariach,” Sophie said.

  “It’s unusual. Generally speaking, if someone gets blackmailed and they pay the ransom, everything comes out okay.”

  “Verena’s right,” Tonio said. “Under normal circumstances I’d say that if we got … that certain inscription, we could swap it for Bram without much fear. But if the same people involved in this are the ones who tried to kill your Kir Dariach—”

  “It’s all connected,” Sophie said dully. She was more certain than ever. “All part of the same conspiracy.”

  “We can’t trust them to make the switch honorably.”

  It was stupid to be upset about this, Sophie knew. She’d been watching cop shows since she was a kid, and at home you could never trust kidnappers. If they hadn’t said anything, she’d probably have assumed the people who’d snatched Bram couldn’t be relied upon to let him go. Now, finding out that they should play fair but simply wouldn’t—

  Verena gave Tonio a look that probably meant: Don’t get her crying again. What she said was: “One of us has to go home, and the other has a duty to go report to Annela.”

  “They’ll never believe me,” Sophie said automatically.

  “Annela will believe Garland. Besides, you convincing Mom…”

  “Oh, good point.” She thought back to the total disaster that was her last conversation with Beatrice, and then imagined having to tell her that first, Gale was dead and second, she needed a favor.

  Verena was right. It would be easier to go with Parrish and try to sell Annela Gracechild on a big political conspiracy.

  “It’ll be quick for me to go home,” Verena said. “I can transit by myself, and I have an open travel permit. If you went back to Erstwhile, you might not be allowed to return.”

  “Screw that. I’m not leaving here without Bram.”

  “I should never have brought you guys.” Verena rubbed her face. “I’ve made a complete mess of everything.”

  “It’s my fault,” Sophie said. “I stole your purse.”

  “And now you’re going off to the Fleet to report in,” she said. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be self-centered. Of course your brother is the priority—but it’s going to cement your hold on my position.”

  “Please, forget what I said before. We’ll get the you-know-what, rescue Bram, and then you can challenge me. I’ll forfeit and if the purse doesn’t like it, we’ll tell Annela to go at its zipper with a scalpel.”

  That got her a tired chuckle.

  “Seriously. Challenge away, any time you want.”

  “I believe you.” Verena nudged her ankle with one booted foot.

  She nudged her back. “All I want is to take my brother and go home.”

  “We’ll get him back,” Tonio said.

  Verena was looking at the two welts on the back of Sophie’s hand. They had begun to ooze a thin, gold-orange fluid. Wasp venom, presumably. She had nothing to sample it with. “Do they hurt?”

  “Everything hurts,” Sophie said, but then she realized it wasn’t true … it just felt that way because of Bram. “No. They tingle a little, like licking a battery. Or … there’s a noodle house near Berkeley that makes a hot mapo tofu that sort of has this electrical burn…”

  “Shalin?”

  “Yeah.”

  Verena handed her a strip of cloth, seeming to expect Sophie to dab at the venom.

  “We can ask the doctor how sick the venom will make Parrish,” she said. “If you’re worried.”

  “He just needs to sleep it off, as Dottore said,” Tonio said.

  She felt a pang, a sense of let-down. She’d suggested it for Verena’s sake, but now she wanted to know, too. She touched her fingertips again, remembering the unnatural heat of his skin in the foaming bath. Remembered him running over the rooftops, graceful as a cheetah, bent on saving Bram.

  Tonio broke her chain of thought by adding: “Anyway, it’ll do Garland good if it’s a bit painful.”

  “Excuse me?” Verena gaped at him.

  “Flailers, you know. If it hurts enough, maybe he’ll stop beating himself for losing Gale.”

  “Sorry … flailers?” Sophie said.

  “Garland was raised by monks.” Tonio made a swinging motion with his right arm, as if he were lashing himself with an invisible cat-o’-nine-tails. There was an undertone of bravado to his words; he was probably worried too. “The people of Issle Morta have worked self-blame up to one of the great crafts.”

  “You’re speaking out of turn, sailor.” The door to the treatment room opened and Parrish appeared, still looking feverish. Though he’d chastened Tonio, he didn’t seem angry. His arm was in a sling; what skin she could see was covered in bites and marked with the same seeping orange streaks as Sophie’s hand. His fingers and wrist were puffy. “It’s all right,” he said, mostly to Verena. “I can sail. Nightjar will make for the Fleet.”

  “Dottore said you should sleep.”

  “I’ve convinced him I can rest when we’re underway. Tonio, ready the ship.”

  Tonio hopped up and made for the door without any further objection.

  “You sure you’re good to go?” Sophie said.

  “Tonio’s opinion to the contrary, I’m not self-destructive. Bram’s safety is our chief concern.”

  She felt tears threaten again.

  “You don’t mind if I ask the doctor if you’re at death’s door, do you?” Verena said stiffly.

  He made a clumsy “suit yourself” gesture and she stomped off into the back room.

  Sophie let out a long breath. “They won’t kill Bram outright just for being queer, will they? The Ualtarites?”

  “How will they know?”

  She shrugged. “They knew about Tonio.”

  “They would have researched the Nightjar crew when they targeted Gale. In any case, I think the Golden will hang onto Bram. That was John Coine we saw, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. So that’s better? If Isle of Gold has him?”

  He had been leaning, ever so slightly, on the doorframe, but now he straightened, standing on his own. “They don’t share the Ualtarites’ prejudices.”

  “But?”

  “We should make for the ship.”

  “Don’t hold out on me. What are you worried about?”

  “Bram’s mind is remarkable. He’s practically an object of value in his own right. An intellect that sharp, hungry for knowledge, honed further by magic, could be turned to a thousand mischievous uses.”

  “Figures. If only I could text him. Hey, bro, act like a stupid.” As she said the words, she felt the tickle of an idea. It was followed by a surge of guilt.

  Verena returned with the doctor, clearly satisfied, or as close as she got to it. “Okay, let’s ship out.”

  “We need Sophie’s badge,” Parrish said, and Verena looked stricken.

  “Gale’s badge,” Sophie corrected. The protest rang false somehow; hadn’t she just told them all she’d cling to the job like a burr if it meant saving Bram? She pulled it out. “Why?”

  “I’ve asked the doctor’s clerk to prepare a bill for our treatment,” he said, pointing with a sausagey finger at a page. “Sophie, impress the badge into the softer paper here, and sign below.”

  “We haven’t had to do this before. Are we broke or something?”

  “I’ll explain later,” he said. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “Straight to bed. And salt bathing,” he said. “You too, young lady, if you don’t want those stings to scar.”

 
“Okay, thanks.”

  As they made their way to the wharf, walking slowly, she could hear Parrish’s breath whistling a little.

  Nightjar’s crew was readying her to weigh anchor as they arrived.

  “Okay,” Sophie said. “You, to bed.”

  “Soon,” Parrish said.

  “What was that business with the badge?” Verena asked.

  Parrish said: “Official invoices signed and stamped to Fleet Accounts are expressed out via the clarionhouse, on a priority. Once the Tall replace their sabotaged paper stores, the doctor’s fee will be one of the first things sent out. The invoice will show up on Constitution—that’s the ship that administers the government, Sophie. Nightjar’s official purchases are flagged.”

  “So?”

  “I included a short piece of code as a note, under the amount. It asks the Watch to dispatch a ship to Tallon. Verena and I told Gale’s friends here in town how things stood. They’ll pass the story along if … if we’re unable.”

  “If we get sunk, you mean? These friends won’t know to tell the Watch about the bad guys grabbing Bram.”

  “Sophie, half the town saw them take Bram. It will be reported.”

  “Yeah,” Verena said. “It was a pretty brazen grab.”

  “Audacious,” Parrish agreed. “Even by the Piracy’s standards, is extraordinary.”

  “They’re trying to draw attention away from the Ualtarites,” Sophie said.

  “Pardon?”

  “We aren’t meant to know they’re in this together, remember? They don’t want us to know the whole point is them killing Lais and invading Tiladene,” she said, thinking: Doesn’t this follow? Maybe I’m wrong. What do I really know about this place?

  Besides that it’s a terrible, stupid, crazy, savage, awful place? I should never have come.

  But Parrish nodded. “Perhaps. Though I can’t see why Ualtarites would consider reclaiming the Heart an advantage.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Sophie said.

  They looked at her as though she were half crazed.

  “They … well, I mean, what I was thinking is they aren’t actually gonna let the Golden smash the Heart of Temperance. What would that get them?”

  “A pissed-off Fleet, unified and fully capable of flattening them when they launch their wannabe war with Tiladene,” Verena said.

  “Yeah. It’s not like they’d be sinking Temperance, right? Just making it impossible for her to remote-sink their warships. And the Fleet must have other combat vessels.”

  “What, then?” Parrish said.

  “Don’t you think it’s possible—I mean, maybe I’m wrong, oh, I guess perhaps this is stupid. I just thought they’d hold it hostage instead. It’s a big symbol. If they threaten to bust it, get everyone all up in arms about whether to call their bluff or not—”

  Parrish blinked. “A deterrent?”

  “It just seems that it’s what you all do here. I thought I could imagine that Tanta Moray woman saying ‘Hey, Fleet? You ignore our little raid on the slutty spider breeding heathens, or we’ll squash your bigtime symbol of the super truce.’”

  “Cessation,” Parrish corrected.

  “Wow,” Verena said. “Wow. If it worked, if the government backed down, Ualtar and Isle of Gold could pretty much do whatever they pleased until someone got up the nerve to steal it back.”

  Relief—at being on the right track after all—flooded through Sophie. “Or calls their bluff.”

  “It would be nearly impossible to get the Convene to agree to sacrifice Temperance, especially if the crisis develops quickly,” Parrish said. “You’re right, Sophie. That’s why they sabotaged the clarionhouse—to buy themselves enough time to get positioned. They don’t have Yacoura yet.”

  “We have to get moving,” Verena said. It was as though Sophie’s words had dialed up some inner tension in all three of them—Tonio and Parrish, too.

  Because it’s war, she guessed. A hundred years of peace and now someone’s trying to throw it in the furnace.

  “I’ll head home at dawn to talk to Mom. Garland, you promised that doctor you’d sleep, and Sophie…”

  “What?”

  “I dunno. You got wasp-bit, too, didn’t you?”

  “Resting would be wise. Who knows when the next crisis will arise? Kirs, good night,” Parrish said, offering them a bow. He went forward, conferred briefly with Tonio, then vanished into his cabin.

  Sophie stayed where she was, standing against the rail, letting the cool night air glide over her arms, a silky, comforting caress. The stings on her hand twanged faintly with every shift of the breeze; it felt as though there were little pins embedded in her skin.

  Parrish must’ve been bitten fifty times.

  He had certainly done everything he could to save Bram.

  She thought of what Tonio had said, about him being a flailer. Was he in his cabin right now feeling guilty about having failed?

  There was plenty of guilt to go around, wasn’t there?

  The crew moved around her, quietly putting out sail under Tonio’s direction. The ship was running fast; the breeze was light, but they were making the most of it.

  Yet it would take days to get anywhere. She’d always thought of herself as someone who wasn’t wired right into the Internet, but like everyone else she fired e-mails around the world in mere blinks, hearing back within the hour. Now there was nothing she could do, not one person she could contact. They were in this terrible all-fired rush, Bram was in danger, and if they screwed up or got delayed, a war might break out.

  Even sailing at the best speed they could make, they might not reach the Fleet for a week.

  She couldn’t help herself: She groped through her things for her phone and texted her brother:

  Sorry. I’m so sorry. Don’t get hurt. Don’t let them know how smart you are. Don’t tell them your middle name.

  Message will be sent when we return to the service area.

  A splash, fifty feet off the bow. Sophie tensed, bracing for another magical assault, or perhaps something worse: a submarine attack, flying monkeys with swords, who knew? But it was a bottle-nosed dolphin, skimming along the same course as Nightjar, zooming along the ocean and it wasn’t alone. Suddenly they were at the center of a pod of at least two hundred striped dolphins, stenella coeruleoalba, in the moonlight, chasing along the ship for the fun of it, chattering and squeaking a bit as they did. The whole ocean stretching endlessly to the sky, the familiar stars above, and despite everything, despite Bram being in danger and all this complicated incomprehensible legal stupidity, despite Gale being dead and Parrish having his arm all ballooned up and Bram being gone … how could she think of anything but Bram being gone?

  All these smart smart dolphins, frisking at sea, chasing them for the fun of it, and her the only one with leisure to watch and marvel. Sophie caressed her camera but didn’t try: it was too dark—she didn’t have the right equipment. You had to know when to take your shot and when to just stop and drink in the beauty.

  She stayed out on deck, watching them, until she was chilled to shivering and the pod had moved on.

  CHAPTER 19

  She woke to a predawn tap of a sailor on her cabin door. “It’s Sweet, Kir Sophie. Breakfast in thirty minutes.”

  “Thanks.”

  She got up, stretched, and made herself meditate, once again forcing her mind to stillness before she contemplated her hodge-podge of outfits from home and Erinth.

  Brother kidnapped, a war to stop, and I have absolutely nothing to wear.

  The formal dress was hanging, inside out, from a corner of the hammock, an impractical frippery. She fingered its petticoats, examining the cushy, quilted material, the weight and construction of them. “Little pockets,” she murmured, tearing a line in the fabric and teasing out the quilting of one, which turned out to be a soft, precisely cut rectangle of sponge, the color of coffee with cream.

  “You can always squeeze something out of a sponge,” she murmure
d, taking a bit of shell—one of her samples—and sliding it into the hole she’d made in the petticoat. It disappeared neatly. She scooped up her filthy jeans next, scraping two crushed wasps off of the blue cotton, dropping them into one of her plastic test tubes. She filled these with alcohol, corked them, and hid them in the petticoat, too.

  She still had the button she’d pulled off Parrish’s dress coat. She looked from it to the petticoat, but instead of concealing it in her skirt, she hung onto it as she turned her attention to the real task at hand—not saving her bits and pieces of Stormwrack samples, but getting dressed for the day.

  I wonder if Parrish will actually soak that arm of his?

  The Conto had given her a long-sleeved white shirt. She put it on, drawing the cuff over the bites on her own hand. They had mutated into pinkish boils with little crisped-looking curls of dead skin at their peaks. When she flexed her fingers, stretching the skin, she felt a tightness that wasn’t quite pain.

  She put on the white shirt with a belt—it was long enough to pass for a dress—and a pair of spandex leggings beneath.

  “It’s not like Fashion Cop’s here to complain,” she said to the snake-tailed ferret as she tucked Parrish’s coat button into her waistband. The ferret made a sort of chirruping noise, rubbing at her hand affectionately and apparently hoping to get picked up.

  “Are you adopting me?” She set it on her dressing table so it could lap a bit of her water. In the morning dimness, the spellscrip branded onto its skin glowed, the letters clear though their meaning was incomprehensible. It wound and unwound itself on the dressing table. The snake head lashed back and forth, blinking.

  If you’d sit still, I could take a shot of that text on your flanks.

  Instead, she pulled out all the tech in her travel chest, synchronizing the phone and the digital video camera again, cramming the smartphone’s memory with video files.

  That’s what I bought you for, she thought. That’s why I charged up the credit card.

  She’d spent every cent she could scrape together when Verena said she’d take them to Stormwrack. Buying toys and urging Bram to come keep me company. And even now, with Bram in danger, what am I doing? Preserving data when I’ll probably never be able to explain where I got it?