Child of a Hidden Sea Page 10

  “Mythology?” Now he looked baffled.

  “Hang on…” She’d just absorbed what he had said. “Inheritance law? You think I’m looking up how to hang onto all this?” She waved an arm, indicating the apartment.

  “Gale is a wealthy and important woman.”

  She laughed. “Unless she owns a natural history museum, I’m not that interested.”

  “No? Not in her fortune? Her position among the Nine Families of Verdanii? Unlimited right of passage to your home city, and a Fleet Courier badge?”

  “I didn’t set out to have the damned pouch imprint on me,” she said. “It’s a purse, not a gosling. Nobody in their right mind would expect—and, really, why does it do that anyway?”

  He frowned, apparently processing.

  “Okay. Sure, I’m human. If someone handed me a billion dollars on a silver platter, I’d take it. Anyone would. But this isn’t real. It’s not mine. What do you think I am?”

  “Who were the men who attacked Gale?” Parrish said. “How is it you were present just when she needed aid?”

  “You’re the one who’s her friend. How is it you weren’t present?” she snapped, and that hit him—she could see it. “Are you saying I set her up?”

  “Did you?”

  “Sofe?” Bram had broken out of his math fugue. “Everything okay?”

  “Accusations of duplicity aside, we’re dandy.” They had been arguing in Fleet, but now she switched to English, glaring at Parrish.

  Unlimited right of travel to and from Stormwrack does sound kinda nice, a traitorous inner voice murmured.

  Shut up, she thought at it, and she knew, knew that guilt had flickered across her face, and Parrish had seen it.

  “Your pardon, Kir,” Parrish said. “But finding out who attacked Gale is—”

  Verena interrupted them by bursting out of the bedroom, at full stomp. Gale shuffled behind her, leaning on a cane, her complexion pasty. “You’re not to duel your sister—”

  “Duel?”

  Gale saw Sophie. Typically, she looked horrified. “Oh, Verena. What have you done?”

  “I had to bring her!” Verena said. “She’s seduced your pouch. As for dueling, it’s the fastest way to clear this up. A ritual exchange of blows—”

  “I’m so not fighting anyone,” Sophie said.

  “Fake fighting,” Verena explained, between clenched teeth.

  Gale, if anything, looked more upset. “Neither of you is to go anywhere near the Dueling Deck. I forbid it. I absolutely—” She sputtered, then gave in to a coughing fit.

  “Could everyone please speak English?” Bram’s plea startled them all. Everyone turned to stare and he amended. “Assuming you can.”

  Gale drew a long whistling breath and switched. “Sophie is penniless, Verena, and arguably without country. She would qualify for a court-appointed dueling proxy.” Her accent, to Sophie’s ear, sounded faintly Germanic.

  “Gale, please.” Parrish maneuvered the older woman toward a couch. She perched with an air of reluctance, glaring from one girl to the other.

  “You promised you’d wait at home until I came for you, Sophie,” she said. “And who’ve you brought into this now?”

  “My brother, Bram. Bram, this is my birth mother’s sister, Gale Fe—”

  “You told him everything?”

  “I don’t know everything,” she said. “I hardly know anything. Maybe if you’d just explained what the big hairy problem was, I wouldn’t be blundering about offending every single person I meet and causing trouble. But I’ve got you saying I need to go and Verena saying I need to come back, and seers, apparently, saying ‘Que Sera Sera.’ Captain Tasty here’s all but accused me of having gotten you attacked to get my grubby paws on your earthly goods, which seem to consist of a law library and a gene-locked semi-sentient purse—”

  “Sofe, pause for breath,” Bram said.

  “She’s right, Gale,” Verena said. “If you and Mom had been honest with me, this could never have happened.”

  Sophie turned to her sister. “Oh, good. The person on my side is the one who wants to duel me.”

  “Dueling?” Bram said. “We’re dueling now?”

  “Fake dueling. Right? Right, Verena?”

  “Whatever it takes,” Verena said icily.

  “Silence, all of you!” Gale rose, pacing to the balcony, seeming to stare through the uniformed guard and out over the city.

  “Why did Mom hide her away?” Verena demanded. “A first daughter of Verdanii—anyone would have been happy to raise her.”

  Gale shook her head. “There were contractual issues—”

  “You’re tiring yourself.” Parrish led her away from the balcony, but she balked after two steps.

  “Hush, Garland. This isn’t like you—why are you fussing?”

  “You’re weak.”

  “Sudden death, remember?” Something passed between them; he let his arm drop.

  “Verena, Sophie, I promise to talk to your mother. I’ll beg Beatrice to tell you everything. I’ll compel her somehow, my word on it. But right now, the important thing is to get Sophie disinherited and home, before anyone discovers—”

  A cry from the street interrupted her. She turned to the balcony again, separating the sheer curtains with a thrust of her cane.

  Parrish was already moving, but it was too late. Two hairy blurs the size of German shepherds dropped onto the balcony rail. One flung the soldier up and over the balcony rail.

  The other launched itself right at Gale, bowling her to the marble floor, as, outside, they heard the crack of the guard’s body striking the cobblestone street.

  CHAPTER 10

  The thing—the monster—attacking Gale had the lithe build of a ten-year-old and an oily-looking salt and pepper pelt. Its grizzled face was squashed flat, like a bulldog’s. Its eyes were rheumy; bits of sand, hair, and other detritus were stuck on the whites and in the wet brown slicks running down its cheeks.

  It bore Gale to the floor, wrapped long, thick-knuckled, hairy fingers around her throat, and squeezed.

  There was something clumsy and mashed-together about it, as if it had been built from parts of several different animals.

  Another one dropped to the balcony.

  “Mezmers!” Parrish had already tackled the creature that had seized Gale. He had his face turned upward, to the ceiling, as he grabbed for the creature’s fingers.

  Verena produced a long knife—or maybe it was an actual shortsword—from within her coat.

  Dueling, Sophie thought, as Verena advanced on the creatures, swinging wildly, shading her eyes.

  The monsters were fast. One sidestepped the blade, bounding aside and into the path of the maid who had brought in their tea. The girl froze, dropping her dustrag: Sophie grabbed her arm, whirling her out of reach as the thing snatched at her. The maid collapsed, dead weight in Sophie’s grip.

  “Wait!” Sophie yelled, hoping to startle or delay it. “Stop, stop, stop!”

  It gathered itself to pounce.

  The laser range finder bounced off the creature’s face. A second later, a heavy stone vase struck its chest. Bram had resorted to throwing things.

  Sophie dragged the limp servant toward the big double doors of the apartment. Lock her out in the hall, she thought, out of danger, and let those guards in …

  Her brother had the same idea. He yanked the door open for her—and then stiffened as he came nose to nose with a fourth mesmer out in the hall. It stood, naked, its bloodied hands raised as if it were making an offering. Scattered around it were Sophie’s clothes and the shreds of her duffel. Two bleeding guards and a uniformed porter lay on the floor.

  Sophie let her reflexes take over: She let the maid fall, shoved her brother aside, and pushed the double doors shut. She wasn’t quite fast enough; she caught the creature’s head between the edges of the doors. It shrieked in pain and fury, and pushed against her.

  “A little help here, Bram! Bram, what’s wrong?”<
br />
  “He must have—looked—into its eyes,” Parrish panted.

  No eye contact. Sophie turned her face from the monster, which was mewling and skittering, its feet sliding on the bloodslicked marble floor of the hall as it tried to force the doors open and thereby free itself to maul her. She put all her weight into heaving against it, keeping it pinned.

  Its breath, hot on her chest, smelled of onions and raw meat.

  “Will Bram be okay?”

  “It wears off—” Verena yelped in pain.

  “Soon? Wears off soon?”

  “Not soon enough—ow, damn!”

  Bracing her weight against the door, Sophie risked a look back into the parlor. Verena had fatally skewered one monster: her sword had run through its mouth. She and Parrish were wrestling to break the other’s grip on Gale. It wasn’t going well—Verena’s hand had been poked full of spines and was dripping blood. The group of them heaved to and fro. Gale’s eyes were bulging; she was clawing ineffectually at the hand around her neck.

  The monster at hand gave a mighty shove at the door.

  Sophie pushed back.

  Observe, dammit! The dead mezmer was splayed on its back in a spreading pool of normal-looking red blood. It too was unclothed; its genitals lolled, moist, dirt-encrusted and obscene.

  Naked … Sophie checked her balance against the double doors, and then hefted one boot straight up between them.

  It worked: She caught soft flesh and the thing howled, pulling back involuntarily. Sophie let it slip out from between the trap of the two doors and then slammed them shut, throwing the bolt. Then, making for the dead monster on the floor, she seized the sword Verena had left in it. She pulled so hard that when it came free easily, she almost flung herself to the floor.

  A gritty crack.

  Parish had the surviving creature pinned. It still had one hand wrapped around Gale’s neck. Gale herself had lost consciousness, or …

  No, she looks dead, no, that snapping noise, no, no …

  Parrish twisted, trying to cover the mezmer’s eyes without getting his hand bitten. “Cut it off her,” he panted.

  Sophie raised the blade, forcing herself to take a second, to steady herself. She brought it down in a chop, cutting at the elbow, thinking about golf swings, tennis, follow-through. If I hurt it enough, maybe it’ll let go …

  But either the mezmers were delicate or the sword was impossibly sharp, because it cut through with only a sticky whisper of resistance, as if both flesh and bone were as soft as the flesh of a ripe pear. The severed arm fell, releasing Gale’s throat. The creature stiffened in Parrish’s arms and began to wail.

  Verena pulled Gale flat, laying her head on her chest, listening for a heartbeat before fumbling to start CPR with her uninjured hand. Her eyes were dry and incredibly wide, almost bulging.

  Parrish got to his feet, holding out his hand for the blade. Sophie handed it over mutely, expecting him to kill the thing. Instead, he cut a curtain into strips, binding the monster’s stump before it could bleed to death and then wrapping another around its disturbing, filth-encrusted eyes. He shoved it into a heavy chair and tied it quickly.

  Then he knelt beside Gale, laying a hand on her face. “Stop, Verena. Her neck’s broken.”

  Her half sister’s expression, fury and bewilderment, refusal to believe, shock, reminded Sophie that she didn’t belong here.

  Give them some space, she thought. She picked her way over the scattered furniture to Bram. The maid was stirring, shaking as if with deep cold, her teeth bared. “It’s okay,” Sophie said to her softly. “You’re okay.”

  She took Bram’s hand and sat beside him on the floor, leaning him up against her. Her pulse was hammering; she could still feel the sword slicing through the thing’s arm, see the gout of blood.

  Blood’s everywhere. A footstep-smeared slick of it lay between her and Gale.

  Verena was still trying to force life back into their aunt’s body.

  Parrish murmured: “Stop, Verena, stop. It’s over, let it be. It was always going to happen, you know that.”

  He reached for her awkwardly but Verena wormed out of the attempted embrace, her expression proud, hurt, and angry.

  “I shouldn’t have brought you,” Sophie whispered to Bram.

  Bram shivered delicately.

  Pounding at the doors and shouts in not-actually-Italian interrupted her. Parrish stumbled to the door. The two dead guards and the porter were still there, lying among Sophie’s stuff. One last man—the one who’d been at the back gate—was there, sword bloodied. At his feet, the gutted remains of the monster were soaking into Sophie’s second-best jeans.

  “Kir Feliachild’s been murdered,” Parrish told him, tone level. He stepped aside to let the guard in, then vanished down the hallway.

  “Where’s he going?”

  “To report to the palazzo, probably,” Verena said. “The Conto will want to hear it from him.”

  “Sofe?” Bram opened his eyes. He seemed perfectly alert. It was how he used to wake up as a baby, too—fast asleep one minute and apparently ready to do vector calculus the next. “Are you hurt?”

  “Not a scratch on me,” she said, fighting tears. What right did she have to cry? Verena, Parrish—they knew Gale. Who was she but an upstart, troublemaking, interloping clod?

  “I felt its thoughts,” Bram said. “They’re … telepathic?”

  “Hush,” she said.

  “I’m fine, Sofe.” He sat upright. “Optimal. Can prove it, if you want. Ask me anything.”

  “Don’t want proof.”

  “They were on the roof, waiting for their chance. Waiting for days,” he said. “This isn’t about you. It’s probably tied to that other attack on Gale, in San Francisco.”

  “We’re supposed to be coy about San Francisco.”

  “Sofe, this isn’t your fault.”

  The surviving guard took a position beside the tied-up monster. Verena was still kneeling by Gale’s body. After the flurry of the fight, now there was nothing to do but sit and wait for … who? Cops?

  No point in being completely useless. She went out into the hall, stepping over the bodies with a little moan, and popped the lock on her trunk. She flung it open, dug until she found the first aid kit, then returned to the …

  The crime scene, she thought, and her stomach heaved once.

  “Show me that hand.”

  Verena held it out without arguing. Sophie took a look. Then she bent, making herself examine the monster arm she’d severed. The quills were shorter than a porcupine’s, small tapering pins that bristled with little barbs. Yanking them would make the injury worse.

  “Can anyone help, Kir?” The guard’s tone was sharp; he seemed to want the maid to get moving.

  “Um … I could use a basin of clean water.”

  “Just pull them,” Verena said.

  “Is this your dominant hand?”

  A slow nod. She was in shock, probably. Why shouldn’t she be? They were two feet from the murdered body of her aunt.

  “Let’s not turn you to hamburger, okay?”

  “Don’t treat me like I’m a kid,” Verena said, but there was no heat in the words.

  “I’ll help her.” Bram got the maid to her feet and urged her toward the kitchen. He was trying to repeat the phrase Sophie had just used: “Warm water, clean with?” His pronunciation was off, but the girl seemed to know what he wanted.

  “He’ll know as much Fleetspeak as me by the end of the week,” Sophie grumbled. “Verena, what are these things? Parrish called them mezmers?”

  “Oddities,” she said. “They’ve been scripped for this.”

  “Scripped.”

  “Magically altered.”

  “Animals … changed into killers?”

  Verena shook her head. “Not animals.”

  The sourness rose in her belly. “They were human?”

  “Assassination requires judgment,” Verena said dully. “Strategy. Target recognition.”r />
  “Patience and teamwork,” the guard agreed.

  I cut off his hand. It’s a person and I maimed him …

  Bram returned with a steaming bowl; Sophie put Verena’s injured hand into it. Red billowed from the punctures, tinting the water in cloudy, sea-jelly swirls. She set her watch. “Soak for ten minutes, okay?”

  “You can’t trust an animal intellect,” Verena said. “So you transform a person. They do the job and they can’t speak, they can’t tell anyone on you.”

  Sophie switched to English, for Bram. “Verena says they’re people.”

  He nodded. “I wondered. When it scrambled my mind, I heard … gabble. Words, in this Flitspake language of yours.”

  “Fleetspeak,” Verena murmured, correcting his pronunciation. “Where is Parrish?”

  “You said he went to tell the palazzo.”

  “This is gonna kill him,” she said. “He and Gale have been sailing together since he was eighteen.”

  Time crawled. Sophie picked twenty quills out of Verena’s hand, making a fairly neat job of it, before slathering the cuts with an antiseptic gel she’d brought from home.

  In time, Parrish returned with an impossibly large number of people, most in uniform: guards, officers, clerks with slates and chalk. There were two white-clad women and two white-clad men, all four of them stunning beauties, all four of them moving as if they were strangely weak. This quartet seemed to be there just to stand over the body while holding lit candles, quivering with the effort of staying on their feet as they wept over Gale.

  It was both grim and massively boring. There was nothing to do but watch and wait. The guards had brought a big wooden crate with them, and they dumped the monster bodies and the severed arm in it like so much trash, bearing them away. They took the surviving mezmer, the one Sophie had maimed, into custody.

  “Will they autopsy the mezmers?”

  “Why would they?” Parrish said. Having brought the cavalry, he’d lowered himself to the floor at Gale’s head, and now was sitting crosslegged between the mourners.

  “Clues? Evidence?”

  “It’s up to the Conto,” Verena said.

  “Who?”

  “The ruler of Erinth—Conto means Count.”