Child of a Hidden Sea

by A. M. Dellamonica

  Gale may have had money and houses, but if she had any treasure worth inheriting, Sophie thought, it was this—this trim, beautiful boat and the freedom to explore.

  Nightjar was fast for her size, averaging, she judged, about 250 nautical miles a day, maybe more if pushed to her limits. She had been inscribed, as Gale had, to be a bit forgettable, just a hair beneath the notice of casual observers.

  It was afternoon when they made first sighting of the Fleet, a forest of spars and sails, white and gray bristling on the horizon, with small dots wheeling above. Over the next few hours they clarified, becoming an orderly procession, a great flotilla, thousands of ships strong.

  Sophie’s previous glimpse, weeks before, hadn’t prepared her to be in and among this incredible number of ships, for the spread of the Fleet—it was as impossible to hold it all in one’s gaze as it would be to look at all of New York at once—or for the variety of ships. Most resembled, at least vaguely, old time sailing ships, craft straight out one of C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower novels, wood-hulled, stout machines built with elegance and economy of the pre-industrial age.

  But the further to the fore Nightjar sailed, making for what Sophie couldn’t help thinking of as a downtown core, the more exceptions she saw. Most remarkable may have been a low-riding gray structure, as big as an aircraft carrier, at the head of the Fleet.

  Is that Temperance? Sophie wondered. She was sailing into the pre-twilight sun; she couldn’t get a good look at her.

  They passed bigger, increasingly strange ships, craft that defied physics and common sense as the Ualtarite ship, Ascension, had, craft that had to have been worked with magic to make them seaworthy. One appeared to have a hull woven of wicker. Another had no sails, but appeared to be bound to the ocean, or drawn forward through it, by tens of thousands of blue, wire-thin threads. As Nightjar sailed past, Sophie saw one of the threads slacken momentarily. A long, eel-shaped creature broke the water. It was bound to the ship by the thread, which snapped it short like a dog who’d run out its leash.

  One ship had a long, sinuous tail and redwood cedars for masts, and was trailing a series of barges, each of which had been planted with crops. Wheat shivered golden with the wind in its wake; a woman in a long wrap waved feathers at any opportunistic gulls who looked like they might be interested in landing on it.

  “That’s the Verdanii rep ship,” Tonio said. “Breadbasket.”

  “Rep?” Sophie asked.

  “The Representative Ships are the core of the Fleet,” Parrish said.

  “Rep because each nation officially contributes one ship to the Fleet?”

  “Exactly. See, they fly the Fleet flag highest, and then, below, their national colors.”

  Symbolically putting the international community before the individual nation, Sophie thought. “I recognize Tallon’s flag, up there on Temperance.” She zoomed in on at the great gray hulk leading them. Its hull was neither wood nor metal; from a distance, it seemed to have the color and texture of sharkskin. “But it’s flying three flags, not two.”

  “The third flag designates purpose. The black cross flown by Temperance means it’s military. The black circles on Constitution—” He pointed out a vessel decked out in red curtains and hundreds of flags, powered by an enormous and improbable-looking red-painted paddlewheel. “—symbolize writing. Governance.”

  “So not all of these are … Rep ships?”

  “Only these flying the Fleet flag. In theory, the two hundred and fifty can sail together for a year or more without assistance or resupply.”

  “And in fact?”

  “They’ve accumulated a host of support vessels and other followers over the past century.” Parrish began to point out other flags, decoding their symbology: administration buildings, storage, living quarters, supply, fabrication—small seagoing factories, in other words—fishing, markets, meeting halls, schools. There were floating farms, saloons, workshops, and gambling dens.

  Tonio said: “The farther to the rear you sail, the more marginal it gets. The tail of the Fleet’s made up of scroungers and bumboats. They come and go, trading, making what they can.”

  “Getting around must be difficult.”

  “Key ships are connected by regular ferries, and there are taxis.” He pointed out a quick-darting boat, a speck next to the big ship it was passing, and then pointed upward to a flight of swirling orange hang-glider contraptions, sweeping in an intricate dance above the ships.

  “Flying rickshaws,” Sophie said.

  Parrish was counting sails. “I don’t see Sawtooth.”

  “Nobody would dare sink Cly Banning,” Tonio said quickly. “Don’t worry, Sophie. Your family is safe enough.”

  Family, she thought. The word, applied to the trio of Beatrice, Verena, and Cly, had a chewy, indigestible feeling, like gristle. “Where’s the ship they stuck Bram on? Where’s Sackcloth?”

  Parrish pointed out a dowdy-looking brigantine that looked as though its masts were overgrown by moss. Its designation flag was a red cross.

  “Is it medical?”

  “That is the ancient healer’s flag, yes.”

  That was another little tie to Earth tradition, then.

  “Sackcloth is the funeral ship. They burn, compost, or bury at sea, as dictated by culture of the deceased.”

  “Service to the dead seems to be what the flailers do—sorry, is it okay to call them flailers?”

  “Everyone does,” Parrish said.

  Which doesn’t mean yes, she thought. “What I don’t get is how hostage handovers fit in.”

  “Issle Morta has a special dispensation—it’s called a Concession—to act as a sort of sanctuary for kidnap victims and refugees from justice.”

  “But we delivered. Bram’s free to go. I want to see him.”

  “I’ll arrange for Bram to meet us.”

  “Why? Where are we going?”

  Parrish said, “We need to talk to Annela Gracechild on Constitution as soon as possible.”

  “What if they won’t let him go?”

  “You kept your part of the bargain,” Parrish said. “The monks have no agenda beyond protecting the pawns in these exchanges from torture and homicide.”

  “Protecting? They’d have kept Bram forever, if I’d failed or cheated them.”

  “Yes. At last count, I believe there are three hostages to fortune resident on the island. One has been there more than forty years.”

  There was more weight in his voice than she would have thought this bit of trivia warranted.

  “John Coine’s pet monster tried to take Yacoura from me at the sea raft—they don’t want Bram returned.”

  “Bram’s out of his reach. Truly, Sophie, it’s all right,” Tonio said.

  She felt a pang of homesickness. What mattered now was Bram. Getting Bram, getting this whole mess sorted and getting away, back to San Francisco, before their parents got home and found out the two of them had run off.

  Constitution’s paddlewheel was grinding through the sea, tossing water in a cheery, rainbow-making spray off her stern. She was enormous, and Sophie couldn’t help being reminded of the floating casino-hotels that plied the Mississippi. It was the rails and dowels and hardwood floors.

  And the flags and bunting. Plus the uniformed pages running everywhere. They have a bellhoppy look to them.

  When a small ferry pulled alongside Nightjar, Sophie, with Parrish’s help, crutched aboard. She watched the little ship recede from view as they zipped to Constitution.

  As the wicker ship came between them and Nightjar, blocking her view, she thought: I might never see her again. Her leg throbbed, the ache seeming to echo the knotty tangle of loss and regret.

  At Constitution, the two of them transferred to a contraption that was essentially a seagoing elevator: a sealed car on pulleys that raised them from sea level to the main deck of the ship.

  As the elevator snugged into place level with the main deck, Sophie saw Annela Gracechild. She had
her arms crossed under her ample breasts and a bright but somehow unfriendly smile fixed on her face. “I could have you arrested,” the woman murmured, as soon as she saw her. “You violated the terms of your transit visa and told someone about Stormwrack after explicitly promising not to.”

  “I’m sorry about Gale,” Sophie said, instead of defending herself.

  “It’s an incalculable loss,” Annela said, but the fixed, professional smile did not change. “Where is your sister?”

  “Chaperoning Cly Banning and Beatrice Vanko,” Parrish said.

  “Teeth, Parrish! You let Banning take Beatrice?”

  “Circumstances made it expedient. There’s trouble brewing—serious trouble, if Sophie is correct.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Annela said. “Ualtar has recalled its entire missionary fleet and posted it in their local waters. Their neighbors are demanding we sail out to investigate. And I have Golden, of all people, making sly hints to the Convene that the Fleet ought to just stay out of this one.”

  “A blockade? Sawtooth went to Tiladene,” Sophie said.

  “The Piracy and Ualtar are in possession of the Heart of Temperance,” Parrish said in the same breath.

  Annela seemed to hear and absorb both statements, jumbled though they were.

  “It’s why Gale was murdered,” Sophie added, through a tight throat, into the silence that followed.

  Annela raised a hand for silence, scanned the deck, and then gestured for them to follow her below, to a suite of rooms that seemed to be equal parts office and parlor. She called for her assistant, and settled into a huge, overstuffed chair. Servants bustled in with tea and a plate of cheese and cookies, and then vanished again. One of them left Annela a bowl of orange globes, about three inches in diameter, and a paring knife.

  Annela took up the knife and cut into one of the fruits. The orange exterior was a husk—as she stripped it off, it revealed a light-colored fruit that exuded coconut perfume.

  “All right, tell me everything,” Annela said, continuing to strip the fruit.

  Sophie felt her throat tightening, just a little. She forced the words out: “I guess the first thing was that when Gale was attacked—the two guys, they were there, right? In San Francisco—”

  “In the outlands,” Annela said. “Always say outlands.”

  “Right, okay. Sorry.” The sharp tone rattled her. “One of them, the two guys, is from Isle of Gold. His name’s John Coine. The other is this Ualtarite—”

  “You know this how?”

  “What? Oh. Tonio recognized him on Erinth…”

  “Tonio?”

  “Antonio Capodoccio, Nightjar’s first mate,” Parrish said.

  “Your scamp of a shopkeeper’s son? Is he reliable?”

  “Of course.”

  Annela had extracted the fruit by now, setting aside the husk and rolling it in her palm before closing her hand around it and squeezing. “Go on.”

  Putting her conclusions into words made them sound flimsier than they were. And Annela had dropped her smiling public persona: Her fierce cross-examination made even the truth seem ludicrous. “Um. So, where was I?”

  “A pirate and an Ualtarite. Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.”

  “Heh. No. He’s on Erinth…”

  “Who?”

  “The guy from Ualtar. Tonio said he was a diplomat.”

  “Parrish, why don’t you lay out the facts?” The fruit yielded to Annela’s squeezing, with a snap. She poured an ounce of what looked like coconut milk into a waiting cup.

  He frowned. “Kir Hansa made most of the observations.”

  “It’s okay,” Sophie said, stung but also relieved. “Tell her everything.”

  Parrish looked as though he might object, but then, looking from one woman to the other, simply said, “As you wish.”

  He cleared his throat, but then there was a tap at the door.

  A page trotted in, stiffening to attention. “Honors to the Fleet! Kirs! I have a Bramwell Hansa arriving on the taxi deck!”

  Sophie leaped up, forgetting her leg, and pitched halfway into Parrish’s lap. He caught her easily, setting her upright, and then handed her the crutch.

  “Where are you going?” Annela said.

  “You just ordered Parrish to lay out the facts, didn’t you?” She hopped after the page as fast as she could. It was all she could do to make orderly progress up the steps of the great staircase with the long lines of bureaucrats and visitors. “Make way!” she wanted to shout. She imagined sweeping them out of the way with her the crutch.

  One of the taxi kites was landing atop the ship when she got there.

  “Bram!”

  He was wearing a monk’s robe; he might have been a Franciscan friar, although his hair wasn’t shaved or anything. Neither was his face, for that matter—

  She hopped over and wrapped her arms around him. “I’ve never seen you with a beard,” she said, into his shoulder.

  “Mmmf mmm you too,” he said. “What the hell, Sofe? Is that leg broken?”

  “No, I’m fine. Are you fine? Did they hurt you?”

  “Get off the pad, Kirs,” said the kite driver.

  “Bram—” She planted herself—they weren’t gonna push her down the steps, not with an injured leg. “Did they?”

  “I got a few wasp stings and the crap scared out of me,” he said. “And this.”

  He held out his hand, palm down. There was a small black mark in the center of his thumbnail … under the nail?

  “It’s a very small pearl,” he said. “Apparently they mark anything they take.”

  “They mark? Oh, Bram—”

  “Don’t go redzone on me, Ducks. It’s been a crummy couple of days.”

  “Off the platform, Kirs, or I’ll have ye carried,” bawled the kite man.

  “Don’t call me Ducks.” She welled up, fumbling for the rail.

  Bram got her moving. “It’s not infected, or—”

  “Or booby-trapped?”

  “Nope. The Issle Morta monks promised, no poison. If I want, I should be able to get a plastic surgeon to cut off the nail and fish it out when we get home.”

  “If you want? Unless you want to start painting your nails, people will ask about it.”

  He shrugged. “It’s a badge of toughness. Taken by pirates, lived to tell the tale. You didn’t lose my notes, did you? Where’s Verena?”

  “With my birth parents.”

  “Parents? Plural?”

  “They’re on their way,” she said. “The monks took okay care of you?”

  He nodded. “They have a Noah’s ark legend, too, about the formation of the island nations. An ancient culture whose big sin appears to have been waste, wiped out by plagues of quakes, rain, floods—you didn’t manage to pick up the story I was going to collect on Tallon, were you?”

  “I was busy having the mother of all tantrums because my baby brother had gotten grabbed.”

  “Sofe, I’m fine.”

  “This had to hurt,” she said, grabbing his hand and lifting it so she could see the pad of his thumb. There was a pink scab dead center. “They shoved it in with a needle or something?”

  By way of answer, he gave her crutch a shake. “What happened to your leg?”

  They had reached Constitution’s aft deck. She rebalanced with a hop, leaned against the rail, and tucked the sprained leg against the good one. They glared at each other.

  Then Bram snorted. “Come on. Who you mad at? Me?”

  “Oh, I’m real mad at someone,” she said, but then she giggled.

  “What happened to your leg?”

  “It was a big reptilian sea monster, magicked out of a slave. Like the mezmers. It killed Beatrice’s pet octopus.”

  “Better the cephalopod than you,” he said.

  “The leg’s not broken. And my birth father found me, and the reason everyone’s been freaking out and trying to send us home is basically that Beatrice having a baby violated her prenup, if you ca
n believe it. Breach of contract, which is apparently more important here than keeping your flesh and blood.”

  He spent a second absorbing that. “So it’s not some big fate thing after all? The trouble you were supposed to cause by coming back?”

  “No. And hurrah to that.”

  “Free will triumphs,” he said. “Details later?”

  “As many as you want. Your turn.”

  He opened and closed the hand. “They wanted my middle name.”

  “You give it to them?”

  He shook his head. “They don’t ask, the first day. ‘The first sting’s for nothing,’ is how Coine put it.”

  “Because they mark their property.”

  “They’re all about tradition. So he did this, to the thumb. And yes, it did hurt, all the way up to the elbow. Couldn’t use the hand all day, couldn’t move the arm. ‘We’ll do the other thumb tomorrow,’ said Coine, ‘Less you give us your name.’ They do one a day, under the nail, until you talk. It’s like a game.” He ran a hand through his hair and let out a shaky laugh. “Almost a religious ritual.”

  “I’ve decided we need to get our parents to adopt another kid.” She fought to keep her tone light. “One with an interest in anthropology or sociology—”

  “Well, Verena’s into soft science,” he said. “What’s she studying? International relations? Sofe, stop crying, will you? I’m here; everything’s trending back to optimal.”

  She wiped at her face. “I’m just relieved. But—your hand, Bram.”

  “Apparently there’s one person in all the world who resisted until the Golden had done all ten fingers—then he broke when they did the big toe. I was out of my mind scared, I won’t pretend. Then all of a sudden morning came and instead of more…”

  “Abuse? Torture?”

  “Instead of more, they packed me up and sent me off to the penitent monks.”

  “That was my father,” she said. “He made them—oh! There’s his sail!”

  “What?”

  She pointed toward the horizon. “Sawtooth’s coming. And—damn, three points off her stern—I think that’s Ascension.”

  She was right. Once she’d used her camera to bring it into focus, the Y-shaped mast with its spiderweb sail was as unmistakeable as it was improbable.