The Nature of a Pirate

by A. M. Dellamonica

  “That seventh spell is about bonding,” she said. “Beatrice thought it’d bond me to the parents so hard I wouldn’t ever even think to look for her. Instead, look at me. I’m not a committer, Bram—I’ve never been.”

  “Sofe—”

  Whatever brotherly advice he might have offered was interrupted by a knock at their cabin hatch. Sophie leaped up. Bram hurriedly tucked the scrolls away in a lockable cupboard under his lounge.

  It was Garland, and he had Septer Xianlu with him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Shepherd is bleeding.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Sophie imagined she could feel fear knotting through the people of the Fleet, stitching them together in crowds. Abovedecks on a hundred ships, worried citizens lined the rails, turned to watch the great rescue vessel, now at the rear and surrounded by smaller helper ships.

  Shepherd might not be the symbol that Temperance or Breadbasket were, but she was official. This was no kite shop or glazier.

  This was the ship that kept other ships from sinking.

  “Nobody’s downed a rep ship since the Cessation,” Garland murmured. He’d washed, at some point between the goat wrangling and getting the Mayday from Shepherd; his still-damp hair gleamed in the sun, and he exuded a faint scent that Sophie had come to associate with Fleet soaps, an oil that was neither clove nor citrus, though similar enough to evoke memories of mulled wine.

  “Nobody’s sinking one today,” snapped Xianlu.

  Their transport cleared the Fleet followers—what Sophie thought of as the suburbs of the seagoing city—and sailed into the muddle of ships. Shepherd, by far the largest, was encircled by sailing vessels big enough to hold her crew if it came to the worst.

  She wasn’t conceding to an evacuation yet.

  The transport deployed a ladder and they climbed aboard, one after another.

  “Have we found an outline of a hand?” Xianlu asked as soon as she came aboard.

  The cadet she’d spoken to shook her head. “Still searching.”

  “Maybe we can pinpoint it from outside?” Sophie asked.

  “Sollo Mykander’s mermaids are looking.”

  “I’ll get below and help.”

  “Is there a plan?” Garland asked.

  Xianlu nodded. “The first two ships were sunk before we knew about the wood frights. The creatures formed on the outer hull, creating a hole, causing the ships to take water. Kir Sophie disturbed the third, on Kitesharp, and it tore itself free.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry about that—”

  “It was a crucial discovery,” Xianlu said, doggedly on task. Her expression was that of a fighter expecting to take a blow. “The three ships were tiny; they couldn’t survive a hole as big as a person. Shepherd can, especially if the thing simply separates itself from her hull after it has taken whatever it needs to grow.”

  “So the plan is to let it be … born?”

  “Yes. Separate it from the hull, capture it, patch the leak, and pump out the water. We’ll be repaired within a week.”

  “Kir?” A shout from the waterline. A swimmer—female, dark-skinned, bald, and nude, with heavily muscled shoulders—was treading water about three yards out. The nine-foot-long expanse of her tail, a silver cord of muscle, was visible in the water below, undulating from side to side.

  “Report, Torren.”

  “It’s near the rudder, Septer. Starboard side.”

  “Mermaid,” Bram murmured. “Holy crap! Mermaid.”

  His astonishment lightened Sophie’s mood. “I know, right? I should get down there.”

  She already had her wetsuit on; now she checked her breathing rig and lowered herself into the water. The ocean was warm; its surface choppy. She turned automatically to avoid a slap of water over her face, then submerged. Once under, she took a few careful breaths, checked her watch, and turned on her light. Her mermaid escort, Torren, waited. The boy Sophie had seen transformed a few weeks earlier was with her, a flaxen-haired, quicksilver shadow.

  When she gestured that she was ready, they swam toward the rear of the vessel.

  Shepherd was a massive boat, almost two hundred feet long. Her hull was fouled, covered in barnacles and seaweed, a spongy biomass seeping redness.

  The sea was full of merpeople.

  As with the previous victims, the blood seeping from Shepherd had attracted sharks. A squad of long-tailed soldiers with tridents was keeping an eye on them, making themselves seen. The merpeople seemed practiced at it, alert and cautious, but calm, too. The sharks were keeping their distance.

  A second crew of mers waited starboard and to the fore of the ship; they held sacks of tools.

  Military engineers, waiting to patch the leak, Sophie surmised.

  Heavily muscled individuals with nets were waiting near the rudder.

  All the mers’ eyes reflected her light back at her, as if they were cats.

  Sophie turned her light and camera on the fouled hull. Torren pointed, and she spotted the fright—a crimson growth the size of a one-man rubber dingy. A translucent and bloody balloon, it wobbled in time with the press of the water around it, emitting enough blood to create a haze of red around itself.

  They had picked away enough of the seaweed and covering encrustations to reveal the amniotic sac. It was low on the hull and just to starboard of the rudder.

  Sophie shone her light on it. The sac was sufficiently translucent that she could see the figure within the amniotic fluid. It had formed a twiggy skeleton in there, and muscles were growing, fiber by ropy plant fiber, on its frame. It had a vitality that suggested life, rather than the cold-meat inertia of death.

  As she watched, a clot of red tissue was disgorged from the sac. It drifted beyond the protective line of mermaids and got snapped up by one of the sharks.

  Wait and watch. Adjusting her dive vest, Sophie lost herself in observation as the thing developed.

  She’d often found she did her best thinking underwater, waiting for animals to show up, or timing out her safety stops. Now, as the fright grew—and grew, and grew some more, muscling up like a bodybuilder—she wondered, Was Shepherd the target all along?

  The other ships might have been test runs. Tests for what, though?

  Terrorism, she thought, remembering the books Bram had found at Bettona’s. Sowing fear.

  If so, what could matter was that the next ship wouldn’t have Shepherd there to save it. Maybe Shepherd was the means to an end, a penultimate target.

  Who would they be after? The Piracy had gone after the Fleet’s flagship, Temperance, before. Then again, if they sank Constitution, they’d take out the government, at least symbolically.

  If Bettona was in league with terrorists, then the sinkings and Annela’s poisoning—Alleged poisoning, Sophie amended—were related.

  The creature was almost complete. Bark was forming on its muscular back and legs—skin with birchy spots—and it was beginning to move. It wiggled and fidgeted, breaking its connection to the hull of the ship. The amniotic sac shivered but showed no sign of sucking inward.

  The wood fright gave one long head-to-toe stretch, pulling itself free of Shepherd’s hull, leaving a gigantic hole as it broke away. Pieces of wood splintered in every direction. Twisting, it stuck its head in the hole it had made, kicking hard and clumsily, like a kid trying to make progress with a flutterboard.

  As its hand touched the hull, it rooted and stuck. When it pulled it away, its body language all but shouting surprise, it made the hole bigger.

  Then two brawny mers surged forward, grabbing the wooden legs. With one coordinated yank, they tore the fright clear of the ship. Two of their comrades clamped on, drawing it away.

  Sophie turned, filming the struggle. The fright was obviously strong, but it was outnumbered and out of its element. They had it bound and netted quickly enough. Its roots grew and knotted into the strands of the net, twining in fast, increasing the bulk of the tangle in which it was caught.

  Once
the fright was separated from Shepherd, the engineers swam in, efficiently wadding something that looked like putty into the gap in the hull, working it around a long pipe with a sealed opening—for a pump, Sophie guessed.

  Mission accomplished. Ship saved, Sophie thought. They all ascended to the surface. Shepherd lowered a ladder, allowing Sophie to climb aboard and shed her tanks.

  The wooden figure—it was female—stopped struggling as it was borne into the open air. It swiveled its head from side to side, as though it was seeking something.

  Xianlu said, “Have it brought aboard. Don’t let it touch the deck.”

  The crew hauled the fright up on a pulley, dangling in its bonds and net of rope.

  Xianlu gave it a careful glance.

  “Niner Rills, step forward.”

  One of the cadets, a young woman with the Bluto build of a Fleet cannoneer, stepped up.

  The creature’s reaction was instantaneous: its skin grew thorns all over, slicing into the net that held it. It opened its mouth, exhaling a green-yellow cloud of pollen as it tore free of the net. It rushed the bug-eyed woman—the bone structure of their faces was identical, Sophie realized.

  The crew rushed to intercede. The thing swept one of them up and around, slamming him to the deck and puncturing his forearm with thorns before rounding, once again, on the cadet.

  Garland Parrish slipped like oil between the fright and its target, catching its outstretched wrist easily, right where it had scraped away its own thorns, and giving it a light, almost effortless-looking flip. It rolled, its backside sending roots into the deck and then tearing the wood as it jerked itself free. Regaining its balance, still intent on the cadet, it moved again.

  Garland circled, intercepted. This time, when the thing rounded on him, he planted his feet, caught it again, and added to its momentum sufficiently to throw the wood fright overboard.

  The cadet was gasping at his feet. “Me? It was me? My name’s in the wild?”

  Xianlu gestured to a couple of uniformed cadets. “Come on, Rills. We’ll sort it out.”

  They led her away as the fright surfaced, clearly intent on swimming its way back to the ship and its target.

  “Catch it again,” Xianlu ordered to the mer leader. “We’ll have to find a dead rope to bind it.”

  “Nightjar has a length of iron chain,” Garland said.

  Xianlu grimaced. Wrackers, among their other peculiarities, had some beef against iron or anything they suspected of having been tainted by petrochemicals. Even so, she nodded.

  “It looks like you’re arresting that cannoneer,” Sophie said.

  “We have to be cautious until we know she’s not at fault. It’s likely we’ll find she had her name stolen, just like the fellow from Kitesharp. If so, we’ll order her home for a name change.”

  “The bottom of the ship is badly fouled,” Sophie said. “Seaweed, barnacles, you name it. Can the mermaids patrol the Fleet? Would they see that developing on a new target?”

  “Possibly.” Xianlu shook her head. “It’s a big Fleet and they’re a small detachment.”

  “The frightmaker isn’t choosing random targets,” Sophie said. “Focus the patrols on ships more important than Shepherd.”

  “Agreed.” Xianlu broke into a smile, suddenly, looking around the ship. “Still afloat, crew Shepherd!”

  Cheers broke out from bow to stern as she shouted it again—“Still afloat!”—and pounded Sophie genially on the back.

  Sophie gave a hearty two thumbs up, managing not to say what she was thinking: maybe they’d saved the ship, but they were no closer to preventing the next incident.

  CHAPTER 13

  By the time she had disentangled herself from the situation aboard Shepherd, caught an hour or two of much-needed sleep, and ferried herself out to the legal quarter to ask her lawyer about the finer points of hauling an OMG prisoner slash slave back to Sylvanna, it was late afternoon and she was ravenous.

  The Fleet was approaching Mensalohm’s home island, Tiladene, and he had eschewed his usual tunic and trousers for a long, loose-fitting cloak in sunflower-yellow silk. The traditional garb reminded Sophie more than a little of a bathrobe. He offered her a pressed cake of fried salted cod. She ate it, glad of the protein but thinking wistfully of hamburgers. Then he produced a -long platter of skewers—grilled peaches and dates, mostly, alternating with biscuitlike slices of chewy baked eggplant.

  “Paperwork’s in order,” he said. “You need a couple signatures and an exceptional circumstances waiver permitting you to transport a bonded individual. Also, written support from a captain willing to sail with you and Lidman.”

  “Captain Parrish of Nightjar has offered … well, insisted.”

  “The man Lidman is a violent criminal. I’d want to keep an eye on you too. The more so if I were … fond.”

  She nodded, not wanting to get diverted into the subject of Garland and his protective instincts. “My question is, what then? Having a slave for a month at sea is bad enough. I’m certainly not hanging on to him.”

  “Sell him?” Mensalohm’s expression was too innocent.

  “Yeah, that’s totally the answer.”

  “Sophie, the man seeks to avoid having Docket separate his head from his shoulders. He’s thrown himself at your feet to save his life. You’re doing him a kindness, even if you do sell him or ask your father’s estate to take him on.”

  “Theoretically, once he’s—” She choked on the word “mine.” “Once he’s bonded to me, I can do what I want?”

  Mensalohm, who had until then seemed unflappable, nearly spat out half a roasted peach. “You can’t be proposing to free him? He participated in banditry. He murdered those ship crews.”

  “Seas, I know. But…”

  “But what?”

  “What if he was kind of a freedom fighter?”

  The lawyer blinked. “Explain.”

  “The ships they sank were smugglers. Lidman says the crews were smuggling more than amber and maddenflur. ‘Soft cargo,’ was the euphemism.”

  “Slaves.”

  “What if they were freeing people?”

  “I can claim to have ridden the great stud Tamulay in a world-famed horse race and then bedded her owner,” Mensalohm said. “That doesn’t make it true.”

  Sophie felt tears threaten. “This is a dream come true for Cly. To stick me with a Sylvanner passport and a slave I can’t get rid of and then to go all Ha-ha. Get off the moral high ground, daughter. Screw that. I’m not owning Lidman for one minute more than I have to.”

  Mensalohm handed her a handkerchief. “There are regulations with criminal enslavement. His will must be shackled.”

  “Shackled?”

  “Magically. You might not have to entirely break him to service—total obedience is a hard inscription to pull off, even if the subject has no previous intentional load. But if you were to free Lidman, I think the very least the law requires is that he be inscribed so he’s incapable of killing … anything. He’d never eat animal flesh again. If someone attacked him, he’d not fight back. It’s called a pacification spell.”

  “He’d have to give me his name, wouldn’t he?”

  “The bonded are renamed.”

  “By their owners?”

  “They are slaves, after all.”

  “Pacification, huh?” Stripping someone’s free will didn’t sit well with her. But if the alternative was giving Lidman to Low Bann—to Cly—she wasn’t sure she had a choice.

  “There’s something else you haven’t considered.”

  “What’s that?” Sophie said.

  Mensalohm gave her a sympathetic pat. “You’re unmarried, aren’t you?”

  Yeah, so what? died on her lips. “Teeth.”

  “On Sylvanna, being single makes you a child. Decisions about Lidman, once you’re there, would fall to the head of your family.”

  “To Cly.”

  Cursing in Fleet wouldn’t do, now. She switched to English and let go with
every foul word she knew. Maybe this had been Cly’s plan all along. To get his hands on Lidman.

  Which led her back to: What did everyone want with him?

  She leaned back in the chair, letting her eyes unfocus, and tried to breathe.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I read somewhere that if you let yourself feel something for two minutes, the emotion changes.”

  “Is it working?”

  “It’s been, like, ten seconds.”

  “So you’re … angry?”

  She waved her book of questions. “All the things I want to do here. I keep getting dragged away from learning about … well, about the world.”

  “I’d have thought this whole process offered a certain amount of education.”

  She said, “You’re a legal wizard, right? Am I stuck in this or is there a way out?”

  “Send the execution forward.”

  “Yeah, let’s have a guy beheaded for freeing a bunch of the bonded. Cly would love that.”

  “Sophie,” Mensalohm said. “You need to detach yourself from this concern about your father’s wants.”

  “Could you let the guy get beheaded?”

  “I regret to say I could. I might not sleep well afterward, but a pirate’s a pirate.”

  And pirates did just try to help your near neighbor invade your homeland, didn’t they?

  “Yeah,” she said, “but if Lidman’s on the block for trying to help people escape bondage…”

  “Hmm.” Mensalohm slid a peach off the skewer, contemplating the orange flesh and the caramelized edges of its outer skin. “There’s one way.”

  “Tell me.”

  CHAPTER 14

  After her meeting with Mensalohm, Sophie found she wasn’t quite ready to face either Bram or Garland. She caught a ferry to the courthouse, instead, showing the receptionist her bundle of papers from the Watch. She felt a little like she’d gotten away with something when they assigned her a clerk who was only too happy to fetch her the trial minutes—as they called them—of Kev’s case. The document only came to twenty or so pages.

  She was about to photograph them, page by page, when it occurred to her to ask, “Can you copy this to my assistant?”