The Nature of a Pirate

by A. M. Dellamonica

  “Heave, heave, heave!” The ship’s timbers creaked slightly and the deck tilted in a course correction. Sails up. They were running for the Sylvanner shipping lanes.

  “Let me know if you come up with anything,” she told them, turning on her heel and making her way back to the forward cabin.

  Garland and Bram were climbing down as she arrived. Bram was saying, “The guys who got copied aboard the first two ships … were they killed?”

  “Shepherd rescued the crews and the ships sank. Nobody knew the frights were there, and they couldn’t have kept pace with the Fleet, swimming.”

  “So there are doppelgangers of those early victims floating around in the open ocean? Bobbing around, wanting to kill their templates?”

  “Hypothetically,” Garland said. “Some frights continue to grow in size until they find their targets.”

  “Grow … as in, giant-sized?”

  “I doubt they’d last long in salt water.”

  “Could one catch up with Sophie if she were in a lifeboat?”

  “It’s not coming to lifeboats,” Sophie said, startling them both.

  Garland gave her a bleak look.

  “Seriously. What are our options?”

  “Find and tear up the scroll, obviously, before the fright separates from our hull.”

  “Any chance Kev knows something?” Bram asked.

  She shook her head. “He practically had a stroke when I told him his so-called pals were conning him. Could we send an SOS to your abolitionist friends, Garland? You have contact with them, don’t you?”

  “He does?” Bram said.

  “Sophie found a note I sent them, asking about Kev.”

  “We’re sure it’s not them?” Bram asked.

  “The liberated wouldn’t bother with subterfuge or magic. They count several stunningly powerful oddities among their number.” Garland shook his head. “They could sink us and take Kev without effort.”

  “Could they help us now?”

  “They wouldn’t come this close to Sylvanna unless they were ready for a real fight.” Garland reached for her hand. “Sophie, will you write your father? Sawtooth might be near enough to assist.”

  “I’m on it. I just need our position and heading.”

  He recited the numbers calmly.

  She went into her cabin. She had one last sheet of messageply, the other half of which belonged to Cly. It was blank and pristine. As if by mutual agreement, neither had touched it.

  Now she didn’t hesitate.

  CLY,

  NIGHTJAR’S IN TROUBLE. SOMEONE CAST AN INTENTION ON ME AND I’VE SABOTAGED THE SHIP WITH A WOOD FRIGHT. WE’RE GOING TO SINK WITHIN, AT MOST, FORTY-EIGHT HOURS.

  Here she paused to check the time and write it in, along with their location, heading, and speed.

  THE WEATHER OFFICE SAID YOU’RE IN THE AREA. CAN YOU ASSIST?

  She hesitated a mere second before signing it SOPHIE.

  Not “Sincerely.” Not “Love.” Argh.

  There was no immediate reply. She turned her attention to the bird, Uhura. “Verena. You there?”

  Silence.

  “Strike two,” she muttered.

  Okay. They were going to save the ship. They were. But somehow that didn’t keep her from bagging her camera and other electronics and leaving them out on the bed where she could get to them quickly. Then, folding the messageply into her book, she took it up on deck.

  The crew had raised every sail and was making for Sylvanna at top speed. Everyone not actively engaged in sailing was involved in a complex stuff-shifting operation, moving barrels, crates, you name it.

  “What’s happening?” Sophie demanded.

  “Sweet and Bram have a plan to keep Nightjar afloat,” Tonio said.

  “Tell me how to help.”

  She didn’t bother to ask what the plan was, but as she joined the crew in lifting and toting, the general outline of the scheme became obvious.

  The compartment Sophie had chosen for the wood fright was big. Big enough that, were it to flood, the ship would take on too much water to stay afloat.

  Bram’s scheme was to simply reduce the size of the compartment by packing it with empty, watertight vessels—basically, reducing the volume of space available to be flooded. If it was sealed and they pumped like mad—and if the fright didn’t rip the ship in half, as it had Kitesharp—they should be able to stay above the waterline.

  The difficulty was that watertight barrels tended to be full of useful stuff—potable water, wine, food—even the weird combustible sand the cannoneer, Krezzo, used to make fireballs.

  The crew was draining the water supply into as many canteens, cups, and bowls as they could free up, drinking as much as they could stand, and pouring out the rest.

  They poured out barrels of water and wine, and a cask of live butterfish. The cook was madly baking dry rations, packaging them in linen sacks, and loading them into the lifeboats.

  “None of this will make any difference if that thing rips its way out of the compartment and into the rest of the ship,” Sophie pointed out.

  “We have to separate it from the ship,” Bram agreed. “Make sure it goes out to the ocean, not into the hold.”

  “How do we make it do that? It took six mermaids to peel it off Shepherd.”

  Bram grimaced. “We use you as bait.”

  “Of course!” A rush of relief. She’d caused this, but now she could do something. “Me. In the diving rig. Outside the ship.”

  “Then we have to catch it and destroy it.”

  “We can’t risk Sophie,” Garland objected.

  “It’s me or all of us,” Sophie said.

  He didn’t argue with that.

  By nightfall they had stacked thirty barrels, sealed with a hot rubbery something, and had bound them to the compartment bulkheads so they couldn’t bob around when the water came in. Bram was looking over the remaining area, calculating.

  “Is it enough?”

  “I’d be happier if we could force another forty cubic feet of air into the compartment. Isn’t there anything else?”

  Garland shook his head.

  “Wasn’t there a big black trunk in the hold?” Bram said.

  “Watchboxes are a variation on followbox enchantments—an embroidery of that child’s spell you’ve mastered, Bram,” Parrish said. “They go to the bottom when we sink, and can only be retrieved by Watch officers who hold their keys. It would drag us down, or hole the hull itself.”

  “Are we bleeding yet?”

  “No.”

  “Trailing sharks?”

  Garland shook his head. “Not in these waters, not in winter.”

  “Those spongy flotation devices don’t absorb water, do they?” Sophie asked.

  “Not quickly.”

  “Can I have a look?” Bram asked. Garland nodded, and Tonio headed off to get them.

  “What if we made balloons? Salvage floats, out of sail? If we sealed the seams with that rubbery goo.…”

  “They wouldn’t dry soon enough be watertight.”

  “We have time, we have time.” They gazed around the empty space within the compartment. Thinking, wishing it smaller.

  I picked the worst possible spot, she thought glumly.

  The bird, one deck above them, suddenly said in Verena’s voice, “So, I’m back.”

  “OMG!” Sophie lunged for the ladder, stumbling in her climb and almost smashing her chin against one of the rungs. “Stay on the line, stay on the line! Can you hear me?”

  “Yeah, I hear you. As they say at home, chill!”

  “Verena, Nightjar’s sinking. Can you get to a kayaking store? And then back here?”

  “You absolutely cannot ask Verena to join us,” Garland said.

  “Don’t be an idiot, Garland,” the bird said. “Sophie, it’ll take maybe two or three hours. Tell me what you need, exactly.”

  “They’re floats—urethane balloons. You put them in a boat to take up space that’ll otherwis
e fill up with water.” She gave Verena the name and address of a kayaking store in San Francisco.

  “I’d rather have industrial salvage balloons,” Bram said.

  “We’d need a pressure pump to fill them,” Sophie told him. “And I have no idea where to buy them or what they cost. Verena, if they don’t have … say … ten sets of the floats, just buy a bunch of self-inflating lifeboats, okay?”

  “Okay. Hang on guys. Help’s on the way. And Sophie—”

  “Yeah?”

  “I can’t get there unless you wind, set, and start Gale’s clock.” Uhura whistled then, indicating that Verena had signed off.

  Up top, the crew continued to load lifeboats. The cook’s cakes had come out of the oven, and there were supplies of water and dried fish aboard each craft, as well as blankets for sun protection. Watts was kitting out a boat for Banana. Cats had to be aboard a seagoing vessel at all times; there was a spell, or curse, that kept them from invading other island ecosystems.

  Sophie opened the book of questions again. The sheet of messageply had a one-word reply from Cly: COMING.

  “Sawtooth’s on its way,” she said. “Hopefully, we won’t have to do this.”

  Tonio had been allocating lifeboats. “We need one for your diving tanks,” he said. “And whatever we’re going to use to catch the wood fright after it tears away—after it comes after you. We gave Xianlu our steel Erstwhile chain.”

  Garland winced delicately at the word “tears.”

  “You have to have Kev with you, and Selwig says that means you have to have him, too.”

  “Prisoner security is my duty,” Selwig said. “But who’s going to help catch the creature?”

  “Me,” Garland said.

  “Your lifeboat’s full then,” Tonio said.

  “Bram…” She paused. If Verena comes, she can evacuate him to San Francisco.

  Hours passed. The moon rose, and water began coming in through the compartment. They took turns cranking the pump, keeping the hold empty. They couldn’t put in the floats unless there was room for them.

  They were staying ahead of it.

  We just need one lucky break, Sophie thought, and she was suddenly grateful for Beatrice, for the luck inscription she’d worked on her at birth. Was that hypocritical?

  Who cares? she answered her own question. Then she begged the forces of magical fortune, Scrolls, or whatever, don’t fail me now.

  CHAPTER 25

  They worked feverishly through the night, pumping out the chamber as it filled and refilled, waiting on Verena, tying down everything that could be tied.

  “You should put the fingerprint files in the Watchbox,” Garland said, late, as they were feverishly packing. He jerked open a large black trunk. It was lined with cream-colored leather that had been inscribed with light amber letters. The writing was raised and looked a little like dried maple syrup. It had a glint to it, almost like embers.

  Within the trunk were a few sets of notes—and Sophie’s scrolls.

  She couldn’t help herself. She took them out, unfurling them one by one.

  “Leave them,” Garland said. “They’ll be safer there than anywhere else.”

  She fingered them, feeling that deep-seated heartache, the loss of something. Her own sense of self? Sentimental, unscientific nonsense. Almost as stupid as the idea of true love.

  I wonder if Garland will cling to the idea of true love always, once his ship’s gone down.

  “He’s right. Don’t take the scrolls anywhere near Cly,” Bram said. Even as he spoke, he was multitasking, memorizing the spellscrip letters covering the interior of the Watchbox.

  “Anything could happen to the scrolls on a lifeboat,” Garland said.

  Sophie tried to summon the anger from earlier, that willingness to tear into the inscriptions and scatter the shreds to the winds. But who gives up good luck when they’re on a sinking boat?

  Who gives up good looks and brainy superpowers?

  “Such as they are,” she said to herself. Rolling the scrolls together, she tucked them back into the Watchbox, then turned to the others. “We’re planning to not sink anyway, right?”

  Bram nodded. Garland gave her a faint, bleak smile that meant, she suspected, that he was waiting for another shoe to drop.

  Before she could interrogate him, Uhura stopped preening her wings and said, “Coming through.”

  They had left the clock in Gale’s old cabin, under guard. Now Garland locked the Watchbox and led the three of them there.

  Verena was clad in jeans and a blue jacket. She had cut her hair, to Sophie’s surprise: she had always kept it cinched in a super tight ponytail that pulled her eyes open wider. Now it was shaved to a half inch. She had bulked up a little, too.

  She had two duffels with her.

  “Here,” she said. “Twenty canoe floats and a steel air pump. Who wants ’em?”

  “Me,” Bram said, hefting the sack and calling for Sweet as he headed below.

  Verena straightened up, giving Garland a steady smile. “Hello, Garland.”

  “Verena,” he said gravely.

  They held each other’s gaze—she perhaps showing that she’d come to her senses; he simply acknowledging. He reached past her, stilling the clock again, and nodded to the crewman who had been guarding it.

  “I brought two inflatable life rafts as well as the floats,” Verena said. She looked at Sophie, managed a grin, and then gave her an awkward hug.

  “You’re not on the lam?” Sophie asked.

  “Nope. I am free and in the clear, and so is Mom. I left PeekyPo with her.”

  “Hey, you captured Bettona!” Sophie put her hand up for a high five, and Verena clapped it happily.

  “I totally want to hear details, and follow up, but…”

  “But the ship’s sinking. Yeah. What can I do?”

  “Take Bram home?”

  “Not you?”

  Sophie shook her head. “The wood fright might freak out. Break away from the ship early, and then—”

  “Tear Nightjar apart.”

  “What about the crew, Garland? Can we evacuate them to San Francisco?”

  “No. We’re sworn to—”

  It was as far as he got before a cry from the main deck brought them all outside. “Sail!”

  Cly?

  Sophie felt a mix of relief and dread as she led the charge up to the main deck to see.

  It wasn’t Cly. It was a cutter, longer than Nightjar, with one more mast. Her sails were red and leathery and her hull appeared to be smoking. She was moving fast, against the wind.

  “Immolator,” Garland said.

  “Pirates?”

  “Unofficially.” He nodded, looking numb.

  “That’s Hawkwasp,” Verena said. “The ship Bettona was hiding on.”

  “I should’ve guessed.” Sophie sighed. “Did you, Garland?”

  He nodded. “There would be little point in sinking us if they didn’t have a pickup planned.”

  “Pickup?” Verena asked.

  Sophie nodded. “Theory is they’re after Kev. Garland, how long until they’re here?”

  “Twenty? Twenty-five minutes? We’ll have to abandon ship and scatter.”

  “They’ll pick the lifeboats off, one by one,” Verena said.

  “Nightjar can’t hope to fight them, and taking water as we are, we can’t outrun them.” Garland shook his head. “The ship’s lost, Verena.”

  He turned to Tonio. “Get the doctor’s boat into the water first. Watts, keep Nightjar between you and that immolator.”

  Watts said, “I’m not going anywhere without Sweet.”

  “I’ll get her.”

  They bolted down to the hold, where the drawn outline of the hand had expanded into an outline of all of Sophie’s body, with her facial features. Its eyes were closed.

  Creepy!

  Bram, Tonio, and Sweet were pumping up the inflatable floats, working to fit them into the spaces and cracks within the compartment, />
  “Stop working,” Garland said. “Sweet, up top. We’re abandoning ship.”

  “What the hell?” Bram said.

  “It’s an immolator.”

  Bram blinked. “Verena. Hi.”

  Sophie bulled in. “Bram, you and Verena have to go to San Francisco.”

  “Without you?”

  “I’m wood fright bait, remember?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “We are saving the damned ship,” she said, furious. “I don’t care if everyone on the planet attacks us.”

  “Sophie, we’re grossly outnumbered.”

  She wasn’t leaving Nightjar to burn or get ripped in half and everyone to get picked off. “Not in IQ points. Shut up and help.”

  Bram looked around. “How?”

  “You’re the engineer. We need to keep them from incinerating the ship, right? Immolator. That’s not just a pretty name, is it?”

  “No,” Garland said. He laid a hand on the hull. “They’ll burn her.”

  “Stop mourning, right now. You’re not losing anything else because of me.”

  “Sophie—”

  “You’re not damn well losing her! Come on, Bram. Do that thing of yours.”

  He thought it over. “We sink Nightjar.”

  “What?”

  “Excuse me?” Verena said.

  Bram was already deflating the floats. “If she’s underwater, she won’t burn. Everything’s packed up and battened down and ready to evacuate, right? We scuttle her now and…”

  “And salvage her later?” Sophie said.

  “Nice in theory, but—” Verena began.

  “You can do that?” Garland said. “Raise a ship?”

  Yes. Yes, this would work. Sophie swallowed. “I promise, Garland. We’ll get her back up.”

  “Okay, water’s already coming in at the bow. We want to open the other forward compartment. Get those barrels open—we need to offset the buoyancy.”

  “Aunt Gale’s ship—” Verena said, her voice breaking.

  “It’s the only choice, Verena,” Tonio said. “If we try to fight an immolator, we will burn.”

  Verena started opening barrels.

  “Garland?” Sophie said.