The Glass Galago

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  The taxikite banked as it approached Constitution, wheeling in an arc that encompassed it and two other great ships of the Fleet of Nations. Temperance led the formation, sharkskin hull slick and seawet, decks staffed by sinewy, heavily-armed veterans. Her figurehead wore a necklace of blood pearls, over a hundred of them, one red bead for every vessel she had ever sunk.

  Breadbasket, to her starboard side, was three times larger but far less martial, clad in the greenery of her abovedeck park and towing a skirt of grain barges that bobbed in the sea as their crops ripened. Her masts were living trees, sheathed in sails of spidersilk. Aft, her serpentine tail rippled sinuously, providing a boost to propulsion as well as steerage.

  Behind the triad of lead ships were hundreds more. Sails of canvas, silk, woven reed, and even fur snapped in the wind; the seagoing city was making a leisurely crossing of the southern deeps, as it did every year, before hurricane season. Ferries darted between the big vessels. Kites circled above, wheeling raptors with fares their prey.

  Their kite bounced a little, the struts of its wings flexing as the driver caught a last gust of wind, gliding down to Constitution‘s landing deck. He got the door open smartly, bowing to the young sailor seated beside Gale Feliachild.

  “Charge the Courier Service for the ride,” Gale said, giving the driver a government chit and nudging her first mate out of the taxi.

  “Fair weather, Kir,” he said, answering as if Parrish had spoken. He pocketed the chit and, by way of a complicated manipulation of the kite’s ribs, rearranged its silky orange wings into a flaccid balloon. Throwing back his head, he breathed fire into the apparatus, inflating it. He would be aloft again in minutes.

  “Been aboard her before, Mister Parrish?” Her first mate was having a look around Constitution, taking advantage of the height of the cab pad.

  “At Graduation, yes.”

  Temperance had been built to terrify, Breadbasket to comfort and nurture. Constitution, meanwhile, was dressed in the formalities of governance: white rails, gleaming decks, smartly lettered signs, and a flag for every island nation represented by the Fleet Convene. The ship was steeped in quiet importance. Its lifeblood was information, borne by the uniformed messengers trotting everywhere.

  One young officer who’d been sprinting after their cab stopped short before them. Parrish drew attention wherever he went: he had a sensual beauty that brought stares from people of every age. But this woman wasn’t flirting. If anything, she seemed shocked.

  “Fair morning, Septer Birch,” Parrish said.

  The woman pushed on, silent, her jaw set.

  “Not a friend, I take it?” Gale asked. Perhaps Parrish had broken her heart. He couldn’t be as pure as he seemed.

  “We served together, before I was discharged from the Fleet.”

  “I’d meant to get that story from you by now.” The captain of Gale’s personal sailing vessel, Nightjar, had tapped young Parrish to be his successor. She was in the first stage of getting to know him. But the seas on their last journey had been bad. Long nights at the ropes, turbulent seas, and howling winds: there had been regrettably little quiet, no time for conversation.

  “I’d meant to share it.” To her surprise, he laughed. “I’ve worked out why you were so fussy about my clothes. You want to be taken for my servant.”

  “I don’t fuss.” She’d got him several tailored outfits: doublets and breeches, black with copper embroidery at the collar. They were expensive, suggestive of wealth and power. Gale herself was clad in nondescript grey. “Besides, people stare at you however you’re dressed.”

  “And ignore you regardless.”

  That was true. In childhood, her parents had her enchanted—cursed, really—so that people found her unremarkable and hard to remember. It was the next best thing to being invisible.

  “Be grateful you’re in black, Parrish; with that lovely dark skin of yours, I considered red with gold trim.”

  “The better to sell me to a circus?”

  “Depending on price,” she said. “Do you mind?”

  “People do stare anyway.” Which wasn’t precisely an answer.

  “We could get you a cloak with a nice deep hood, some kind of mask for contagion.”

  “No.” A thread too much weight in his voice, as he refused even her whimsical suggestion of aid.

  She reached out to snag a passing messenger, a uniformed child of perhaps fourteen. “We’re looking for Convenor Gracechild.”

  “The government is in debate, Kirs; it may be an all-nighter.”

  Gale handed over her card. “When they break, give her this.” He bowed and ran off.

  “Now what?” Parrish asked.

  “Try her office, of course.” She led him belowdecks, into the bureaucratic warren of the government at sea.

  * * *

  Annela’s secretary had once commanded an ambulance crew, and Gale had never seen her flustered. But as they came in, she clapped the hatch shut behind them, her movements jerky.

  She saw Parrish, and—naturally enough—froze.

  Gale let her take a good look at him, with his handsome, sensitive face, his lush lips and good clothes. Only after the secretary had caught her breath did Gale slap down a box of wine-soaked dates from Zingoasis. The dates were one of those questionable local delicacies. They tasted all right … once you got past the smell of pickled dung.

  As the aroma worked its way through the outer office, Gale could see the secretary go through the usual reactions: surging revulsion, first, then an effort to cover disgust. Gale could almost hear her thinking: These again, why me, why does everyone keep giving me these revolting confections? Well, maybe it isn’t everyone, just our one horrid kinswoman …

  Being unmemorable forced you to get inventive.

  “Kir Feliachild!” the secretary said, falsely bright as she made the connection.

  “It’s Gale, Bettona—”

  Clattering interrupted her.

  Something shiny dropped from a curtained portal to the desk, wrestling the wax seals on the box.

  “Is that a galago?” Gale asked. It was a small primate, with tiny hands and big eyes. But it had been enchanted: its skin was leathery but transparent, its fur composed of clear shards. Within, where its organs should have been, she could see dense blobs of colored light. Its brain shimmered pink-gray through the hard glass of its skull; a crimson glow throbbed in its chest.

  “Careful, it’s wild—” the secretary said, but Parrish had taken the dates. He held out his hand, rock steady. The animal climbed on him, cooing hopefully.

  “May I?” Parrish asked, flipping open the box and intensifying the smell of camel wa
ste. The thing chirped.

  “Small pieces, no pits,” Bettona instructed. “Its teeth are delicate.”

  “Since when does Annela keep oddities?” Gale asked.

  The secretary shook her attention off of Parrish, who had smeared date onto his index finger. The galago licked it off; once in its mouth, the fruit vaporized into caramel-colored smoke and moved foggily toward its gut.

  “The glass galago’s tied to the current debate in the Convene. There’s a woman from the Patents Office in the same condition.”

  “A woman, turned to glass?”

  Bettona nodded. “The inscription’s been stolen; there’s no way to restore her. She may die.”

  “Would there be a briefing in Annela’s inner office, by any chance?”

  Bettona nodded. “She had me prepare it yesterday.”

  Gale led the way into her kinswoman’s sanctum, finding the report atop her papers.

  “There’s a hairline crack between its toes.” Parrish sat on a low couch, mashing more date for the galago. It nibbled, wide-eyed, seeming every bit as enchanted with her first mate as everyone else.

  “It’s not magic, is it, Parrish?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Your stunning good looks.”

  “No, I’m not scripped.” He stroked the creature behind its ear. So young: she felt her doubts about him swelling. Could she hand her ship and the safety of her people over to a boy? “The crack’s small, but it will spread. And here’s another.”

  “Living beings aren’t meant to be turned to glass. Does that surprise you?” She paged through the report. “This is all happening as the Convene debates whether Patents needs to be more heavily regulated.”

  “If magical inscriptions can simply go missing, maybe they do need more regulation.”

  “Don’t be naïve, Parrish—the issue might be debatable, but the situation with the glass woman has been contrived to force the vote.”

  “Understood.” The galago had apparently eaten enough: it was playing with Parrish’s buttons. “Who benefits from more rules?”

  She flipped pages. “Anyone with a body of well-established spells and a fat treasury. Patents is already a difficult and expensive process. Increased regulation will make it harder on small suppliers and innovators.”

  “Says Kir Gracechild?”

  “Do you have another expert in your pocket?” Gale said.

  “I meant no disrespect.”

  “But you dislike politicians on principle.” She’d figured out that much about him.

  “You’d like me to withhold judgment until I meet her?”

  “Seems fair, doesn’t it?”

  The concession was good-natured. “Yes.”

  “Nella says this particular wrangle will pit big island interests against little ones, hurting those still working to build up their magical economies.”

  “She wants you to find the inscription?”

  “I’d say it’s the obvious place to start.”

  * * *

  After Parrish had caged the galago for the beleaguered secretary, they went to have a nose around the Patents office. They had barely left when Gale saw they were being followed.

  “This’d be your fault, Parrish.” She pointed out their shadow.

  He smiled—he knew she wasn’t serious. “What do you want to do?”

  “She can’t follow us both. I’ll loop to starboard, pretend I’m off to check on the Convene. How about you find some excuse to loiter up there, by the Virtue of Cooperation?” She indicated the statue with the barest flick of an eyebrow. “I’ll come up behind her.”

  “What if she goes after you?”

  “Same game, different leader.”

  He nodded assent—reluctantly, she thought.

  “Relax, cub, nobody’s going to be knives-out on Constitution.” With a servant’s bow, she peeled off.

  She knew what was eating at Parrish. The reason her parents had Gale scripped as unmemorable in the first place was that prophets, back home, had predicted she would one day be murdered.

  But the person skulking along after them was no killer. Her relaxed posture said civilian: her coat was expensive but tattered. She had no idea Gale had fallen behind.

  Constitution‘s decks were busy; Gale bulled her way through the throng as Parrish paused to study the statue.

  The stranger reached into her coat, striding to catch up. Like that, Parrish caught her by the wrist.

  “Careful, Kir,” he said.

  “Steady, beautiful—I just want to show you my press tag.” She pulled it out, a thin curl of mother of pearl, cut into a stylized horn.

  “Langda Pyke,” Gale read. “From Foghorn, no less. Well, Langda, this is a novelty, if not an honor. What is it you hoped to glean by following us?”

  She threw a grin to Parrish, looking for the answering gleam of good humor she was coming to expect. But the boy had set his face into an emotionless mask.

  It’s as though he vanishes, she thought. Dies, almost.

  And Langda was speaking to him, not her: “You’ve come up in the world, Kir, since you left the Fleet.”

  “Is that a question?”

  “You’re visiting Convenor Gracechild?”

  “We’ve never met,” Parrish said. “I work for her kinswoman.”

  “Her … who?”

  “Kir Gale Feliachild,” Parrish said.

  Langda looked blank.

  “He means me,” Gale said.

  She peered into Gale’s face. Still blank.

  “This Patents debate must be getting nasty if you’re digging for smut about Annela,” she said.

  Langda dismissed her. “Kir Parrish. You were with Convener Fells when he committed suicide, weren’t you?”

  “I was.”

  Teeth! I really should have gotten that story, Gale thought.

  “Tell me what happened; give me your side of the tale.”

  “I’m afraid I must decline.”

  “There are those who say you killed him.”

  “Are there?” By now, Parrish might as well have been the brass statue towering over them all.

  Gale cleared her throat. “Run along, Pyke. There must be a deficit of nuisance somewhere in the Fleet.”

  The reporter stared at Parrish hungrily, as people did. Then she threw up her hands, rejoining the surging throng on the walkway.

  “You all right, Parrish?”

  He looked at her sidelong, expressionless. Angry? “I haven’t murdered anyone.”

  “I believe you.” She didn’t add that her own life held enough ambiguities that, if he had, it might not matter to her. “Maybe while we’re here, there’s some sorting I can do. Salvage your reputation?”

  “No,” he said, locked within himself, seeping only a trace of misery. They continued on to Patents without another word.

  * * *

  Every island nation that had signed onto the Fleet Convene was legally entitled to do as it pleased within its borders and territorial waters. They could work any spell, make any law. But to use an inscription elsewhere, they had to get it certified. In the case of a scrip that affected a person, that meant working it on a willing volunteer so its effects could be studied and documented.

  The glassine woman, Rasa, was abed reading stories to her daughter. Doctors hovered uselessly in her berth. Like the galago, she had hairline cracks in several of her joints.

  They only caught a glimpse of her; as soon as she realized Gale had come from Annela’s office, Rasa had them ejected.

  “I guess she favors increasing Patents regulation,” Gale said as the hatch slammed behind them.

  “Now what?” Parrish asked.

  “Find the scribe who wrote the spell.” Gale waved Annela’s briefing. “He’s sailing in the Wake.”

  They caught a dinner ferry to the rear of the Fleet, splitting a fist of bread and a large bowl of chowder as they rode back to the residential ships in mid-Fleet. In the forty-five minutes they were aboard, three sail
ors sent Parrish drinks, which he declined. Two others bumbled their way through attempted pick-ups, which he gently rebuffed. People stared and murmured.

  A trio of officers, one of them the woman they’d encountered earlier—Septer Birch—glared at them from a corner booth.

  If Parrish’s mood had been cheerier, Gale might have teased him about all the attention. As it was, their silence held until they found the spellscribe.

  He was at a public concert, seeming not to hear the string quintet as they sawed through a concerto. He had that tear-soaked look that Gale associated with grief or prolonged stress. Hunched forward, hands locked, he rocked out of time to the music.

  She sat beside him. “Kir Bosh?”

  “I have nothing to say to the press.”

  “I’m a cousin of Convenor Gracechild’s,” she said. “I’m looking for the stolen inscription.”

  “The Watch is on that.”

  “They haven’t succeeded, have they?”

  “How could anyone find something so small in this…” He swept out an arm, a gesture meant to encompass the whole of the Fleet and its followers. Lanterns glowed from the rigging of hundreds of ships, steady gold interspersed with the multicoloured firelight flicker of enchanted scrip on sails and prows. The sun was setting behind them, so the rearmost ships were silhouetted against the darkening ribbon where sea met sky.

  “You’re not a resident, I take it?” Gale said. “You’re visiting, working the spell through Patents?”

  “I developed the spell, but I’m not licensed to practice at sea. A Patents scribe performed the glassine inscription on Rasa.”

  “Were you present?” Parrish asked.

  “Of course I oversaw the Patents scribe. It’s required.”

  Gale said: “What happened to the inscription?”

  “Rasa locked it in her personal safe at Patents. A week later, when the spell was approved, she tried to retrieve it … the safe was empty.”

  “When was that?”

  “Two days after she was inscribed.” His eyes welled. “We followed the rules. I don’t know how it was stolen, but creating new regulations … that’s not going to change anything.”

  Gale considered explaining that politics and reality were, at best, distant cousins. But cynicism wouldn’t comfort him.