The Nature of a Pirate Read online

  The little kids showed no interest in moving on. Unlike the adults, they were interested in the unfamiliar. They fiddled with the zippers on Bram’s jacket until they got them to open and close, and one of the boys found a spring-loaded ballpoint pen and got ink on both hands in an effort to mark up the leather mat they all lay on.

  Watching them was reassuring. There were times when she thought all of Stormwrack had taken a vow against intellectual curiosity.

  Garland hasn’t, she thought. He was whispering back and forth with a four-year-old, the two of them exchanging words in yet another language she didn’t know, the child erupting into giggles at Garland’s utterances. The kid had a hand laid flat on Garland’s cheek, dark fingers and pale, white nails, and she remembered Garland kissing her, up in the mountains of Issle Morta, and felt an ache, like muscles pulling deep within, a sensation that felt almost like desperation.

  The silence lengthened and the kids burrowed closer. Watts held them rapt with a long, almost tuneless song in his native language. It had lots of repetitions, meowing, too, and gestures and spitting that made it apparent, to Sophie at least, that the hero of the story was a cat. A toddler small enough to still be nursing tottered off into another circle, where his mother welcomed him with open arms.

  Within an hour it was so dark she couldn’t see the others anymore—just their shapes in the dark. Up above, the portion of the village trench that wasn’t covered in netting revealed a vivid strip of jeweled blackness, stars clear and brilliant, a sickle of moon so bright and slender it looked like a break in the sky itself.

  Sleep was a long time coming. Sophie lay among the others, warm but not drowsy, and mentally paged through the various things she had going on. If Humbrey could demonstrate dactyloscopy to a couple more Watch clerks while she and Selwig made more progress on identifying the remaining found bodies …

  When she’d opened her book of questions, she’d seen a note on the messageply, in English, from Verena. Now she read it by the fading light from her flash.

  SORRY I HAVEN’T WRITTEN. THE FELIACHILD MATRIARCH BANNED ME CONTACTING OUTLANDERS, BUT NOW YOU’RE OATHED, SYLVANNER, AND ARGUABLY THE SAVIOR OF CONSTITUTION, SHE CAN’T STOP ME.

  I AM WORKING WITH THE VERDANII EQUIVALENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, FOLLOWING UP ON STUFF YOU AND MOM LEARNED ABOUT BETTONA, LIKE THIS THEORY SHE MAY’VE TRAINED AN OUTSIDER TO ERAGLIDE.

  ANNELA HAD GIVEN BETTONA AN ALIBI, AND IT CHECKS OUT—THEY WERE WORKING WITH HALF A DOZEN CONVENORS ON SOME LEGISLATION WHEN GALE WAS ATTACKED. BUT IF SHE’S GOT AN ACCOMPLICE AND THAT ACCOMPLICE IS VERDANII … WELL, THEN WE HAVE TWO OR MORE TRAITORS ON OUR HANDS. (IF THEY’RE NOT FROM HERE, SOMEONE FROM ANOTHER NATION CAN ERAGLIDE. EITHER WAY, IT’S A POLITICAL CAN OF WORMS.)

  ON THE UPSIDE, THEY’RE NOW SATISFIED IT’S NOT ME OR MOM.

  THE GENETIC BOTTLENECK, AS YOU CALL IT, ISN’T THE ONLY QUESTION. THERE’S THE CLOCKS, TOO. THE BELIEF WAS THAT YOU NEEDED A FELIACHILD AND A BLESSED TIMEPIECE TO ERAGLIDE. WHEN I COME TO NIGHTJAR, FOR EXAMPLE, I HOME IN ON THE SOUND OF GALE’S CLOCK.

  Sophie thought about this for a minute, then wrote a reply: HAS ANYONE CHECKED ON THE ACTUAL ARTIFACTS: PHARMANN’S CLOCK, YOURS, ENNATRICE, LIKE THAT? ATTEMPTS TO STEAL GALE’S WATCH HINT THEY DO NEED THE CLOCKS.

  She added the times of the two break-ins at her parents’ house, and the information she’d gotten from Brawn about the diner in San Francisco and the gun shop.

  Thinking about Beatrice reminded her about the scrolls.

  There had been a time when she’d thought finding her birth family would offer an answer, a nice neat something that would connect her with an ordinary mother and a father. She’d imagined coming away with a firm idea: this is who I am.

  Instead, she seemed to have created an endless pattern of bifurcation. Every discovery led to more questions, new doubts. She felt further from knowing herself—whatever that meant—not closer.

  The whirl of thought brushed against one topic, then another, until—sometime after the moon had vanished from the narrow view of the sky—she finally slept.

  * * *

  She opened her eyes the next morning, still in darkness, to see that an empty corral she had spotted the night before was full of a species of penguin, each about as big as a nine-month-old child and clearly drowsing. They had come in through a vent in the ice and were generating enough heat, as they slept, to steam up the curved ceiling of their chamber.

  She took a long look around the village, failing to see any penguin skins in evidence, or any obvious bones or beaks. What are they using them for?

  As she scanned, she saw that she and Garland had rolled closer in the night.

  The kids had chosen to clump on the two of them. Maybe he was the warmest? Whatever the attraction, Garland had a toddler on his chest, and the eldest boy snugged against his farther shoulder. A little girl lay in the narrow groove between Garland and Sophie. Her tiny hand was atop theirs; they had found each other in the night.

  Holding hands. She felt a silly, pointless thrill of something that ran deeper than lust.

  There was no extricating herself without waking both man and child. She fumbled out her camera with her free hand and took a picture. His looks were ridiculous, breathtaking.

  Pull it together, she told herself. You need to stay on task. Get Humbrey back to Fleet and work out what you’re going to say to Lidman.

  In time, Sledge and the village came to life, the penguins erupting into noisy chattering. Garland’s eyes opened. He took in Sophie and the pile of kids and broke out his best smile.

  “We appear to be trapped.” His lips moved, the words reaching her ear. Yet his voice was so soft the kids didn’t even twitch.

  “Nothing you can do,” she agreed.

  “Helpless,” he said. Then he sprang to his feet, holding one of the kids out and away from him. She yawned and kicked—Put me down, she meant. Then she walked away.

  “Diaper,” he said, by way of explaining why he’d suddenly decided to move her.

  An elder bustled up, pulling the other kids out of the puppy pile. Bram sat, instantly awake, as always. Watts burrowed under the remaining blankets, muttering what sounded like a protest.

  “Specter people,” an Yller muttered. “Lazy.”

  Over at the penguin corral, a teenager was lifting the birds up to the vent in the ice, setting them on a slide, presumably to the open ocean. Two, though, she first held to a vessel shaped more or less like a chick. The birds calmly regurgitated half-digested fish into the vessel.

  “Ugh. If that’s breakfast, I’m going vegan.”

  “I believe they use it for an inscription,” Garland said.

  As they packed up, their guide returned.

  “Crank light,” she reminded Sophie as they climbed out of the trench, and from there to the edge of Sledge.

  Nightjar had been frozen into an ice floe from the rails down.

  It was a pristine chunk of ice, glass-clear, ship shaped, and several feet thick, and the cutter was trapped within it. Above the rails, the deck, rigging, and sails, even the wheel, were an inch thick in frost crystals, dense and sharp as pine needles. Glimmering crystals winked, throwing reflections of the scarce light of Ylle’s illuminated ice floes.

  Sophie cried out—she’d felt a little as if someone had jabbed her with something sharp.

  Garland put a hand on her arm. “It’s a cleansing technique. The ice kills the growths on the ship’s outer hull—parasites, shellfish, weeds. When it breaks away, the floe riders salvage anything of use within it. See there? We’d picked up a few barnacles. They’ll go. The scouring lessens how much life we carry from one sea to the other.”

  “Where’s the crew?”

  “Below, I imagine.”

  As if summoned, Tonio lifted a hatch, coming up on deck and placing his feet carefully. Sweet followed, eyes searching the party. She lit up when she spotted Watts. The doctor waved at her with full-bore, bandy-armed enthusiasm.

  I wonder if
I look like that? Sophie forced herself not to glance at Garland. Instead, she looked to Tonio, who was busy not looking at Bram. Her brother was, as often happened these days, admiring Daimon the fake fiancé and his pre-Raphaelite hair.

  Sorry, Tonio, she thought. I was pulling for you.

  She’d seen this happen before, on sails on research vessels, everyone pairing up and getting besotted. It had never been more than a casual hookup for her.

  Emotions churned: desire, confusion, a sense of nostalgia for those earlier relationships whose complications were lost to time and memory.

  Disembarking was no less a muddle than usual. Sophie had to get the crank light for their guide, and teach her to use it, and accept a bag of husky dog teeth—for Bram’s home protection spell—in turn. After a dozen similar exchanges, they were finally under way.

  The pilot from Sledge stood on the hollow deck of the ship of ice that had swallowed Nightjar, miming with his arms a swimming motion reminiscent of the butterfly stroke. Suddenly they were moving at quite a solid clip, gliding between the icebergs that were the floe riders’ fields, villages, and outlying outposts, their bird nesting areas and seal rests and the like. It was a tight fit, and Nightjar’s ice sleeve rasped as they squeezed through, scraping away and lowering them ever closer to the sea. Ice melted from the rigging, pattering down in a surprisingly warm rain. Everything smelled clean and a little like thunderstorm.

  With a last turn to port, the pilot made a parting-the-Red-Sea motion atop the prow of ice. It split down the middle, each side cleaving away and then sticking to a smaller nearby floe. The pieces floated, glistening with recoverable bits of shellfish, seaweed, and other flotsam as Nightjar, freed of the ice maze and all its encrustations, glided, clean and steaming, into the open seas and a late dawn.

  CHAPTER 20

  Gracious Kir Sophie thank you for your message. I think you are very kind to ask after me and my beloved Rashad. His family keeps us at a distance, so far as they can. We will marry tho, soon as we get the means. Love blow down the walls, we say.

  You sent word asking if I can tell somewhat of the bandits who sailed Retrograd Incannis when I slipped aboard to free the cat. How is the cat anyway? But I have to tell you I did not see anyone. If I’ve seen them, they’ve seen me, you understand? Bad for business!

  I did hear a woman and man speaking, in the language of the Golders.

  Also you ask what our captain, my beloved’s brother Montaro, wanted of the Incannis crew and they of him. They helped us in our quest for a snow vulture as you know, and Montaro I think gave them spellscribing materials; we had beeswax, spruce needles, and sealing wax from Mossma aboard and after that I saw them no more.

  If you find use for one such as me in your service of forensic truthmaking, I would be happy to serve. Or could you try to get me into Fleet? It would help us marry, me and Rashad.

  Yours,

  Corsetta di Gatto, Tibbon’s Wash

  The next morning, Garland asked the cook to lay out an extra-massive breakfast: shrimp and eggs, small bread rolls, pan-fried green mangoes, and fried shredded potatoes. The last was a new dish for the cook, something he was learning from Bram.

  Sophie had fetched Lidman, along with his now one-man escort of a Watch clerk, Sixer Selwig.

  “Oh!” Lidman had eyes only for the food. He began piling a plate high.

  “There’ll be time to go for seconds,” Selwig told him. He looked tired; with Humbrey gone, he’d been bunking outside Kev’s door. Tedious, lonely duty. Sophie had taken a few watches for the big soldier, out of a sense of duty. He couldn’t be on watch night and day, after all. Part of her felt, though, that it sort of served him right. He was a slaver; who else should watch Kev?

  Of course, the obvious answer to that was His owner, duh!

  “Making up for lost meals. I’ve been hungry ever since we put to sea in Incannis,” Kev said. He had continued to put on weight, at least around the belly, since they’d taken him off Docket.

  “Didn’t the ships you raided have food stores?” asked Selwig.

  “We gave everything to the people we liberated.”

  That much was probably true. He had been a rack of bones when he grabbed Sophie.

  “Sit,” Selwig ordered, taking a more modest portion of the fare.

  “Sit, please,” Sophie amended, and the young sixer flushed red.

  Before that could turn into any kind of discussion about the care and feeding of her personal pet convicted murderer, Garland turned up. “Shall we begin?”

  “Begin what?” Kev asked.

  Sophie grabbed a serving of the mango and one of the egg and shrimp, taking a seat. “Kev, I need to decide what to do with you.”

  Kev shrugged. “Your false engagement means you mean to free me.”

  The smart thing to do would be to play it cool—dangle the possibility of freedom without making promises. Bram—where was Bram?—had told her to do just that. But no. “I’m not selling you or turning you over to the duelist adjudicator’s family. And I won’t own you for a second longer than I have to.”

  He was infuriatingly placid. “What remains to be said?”

  Daimon hadn’t turned up yet, so she looked to Garland. “Do you remember the relevant statute?”

  He nodded. “As a citizen who committed heinous crimes asea, you can never be entirely at liberty. Sophie’s options are to sell you, carry out the execution, or lay a behavior compulsion on you.”

  Kev choked on a bit of egg.

  “It means—”

  “I’m a scribe, remember?” He looked at Sophie accusingly. “You’d leash my will?”

  “Kev, come on. Nobody’s going to let me turn you loose if you’re just going to run back to sinking ships and making more homicidal frights.”

  “I’m not the frightmaker!” If he was faking the outrage, he deserved an Oscar. He wiped his chin. “I helped people. I curbed naughty children.”

  “So when you talk about stripping people of free will, you know all about it,” Sophie said.

  “They’re children.”

  “As opposed to what, animals?”

  He was spitting mad now. “You can forget about me giving you my name if you’re going to break—”

  Garland interrupted. “Once we reach Sylvanna and you are ceremonially bound, you will have no name besides that which Sophie gives you.”

  Sidelong glance. For the first time since he’d heard of her fake engagement to Daimon, Kev looked uneasy.

  “She could compel you to reveal everything: where the escapees went, who you’re conspiring with, how the ships you and your friends attacked may be tied to the recent sinkings in Fleet.”

  Sophie tried to interrupt, but Garland had apparently decided to run with playing bad cop. “You escaped the ax by imposing on Kir Sophie’s kindness, but you cannot continue to take advantage.”

  “Stop it!” Sophie said. “You’re being a bully! Kev, if I want to release you, there’s a thing called pacification.”

  “Pacification?” His eyebrows rose. “A mosquito could bite me, or a dog, and I’d not raise a hand to defend myself? That sort of spell?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Pacified.” He looked, to her surprise, almost awestruck. “Whatever happened, I could do no harm.”

  “No further harm,” Selwig corrected.

  Kev picked up a bun, slathered it with butter, and took a healthy bite, considering as he chewed. By the time he’d swallowed, he was nodding. “I freely give you leave to do this.”

  “Swell!” She felt a wash of gratitude and saw Garland trying to give her a warning look. What was he trying to tell her? Don’t hug him; he’s the villain?

  Right. Interrogation. She cleared her throat. “While you’re cooperating, you want to tell me why the Golders offered to buy you? Are they after your friends?”

  “They’re all dead at your father’s hand,” he said.

  “You mean the rest of the Incannis crew? Who were they?”
<
br />   “Abolitionist friends of Eame’s. Six of us had been spiriting people away from Tug for years.”

  “Spiriting how?” Garland asked.

  “We used the names of children I’d worked with in the past. I’d redrafted a compulsion spell.” He swelled a little, with obvious professional pride. “The variation compelled the children to seek out and burn scrolls that imprisoned their family slaves.”

  “Obedience inscriptions,” Garland said.

  “Yes.” Kev nodded. “Once their will was restored, Eame could approach them about escaping. Else they’d have turned him in.”

  Sophie found herself wishing she knew more about economics. Slavery in America, back in the day, must have required a lot of infrastructure—safeguards, basically, against escapes and revolts. Being able to limit a slave’s capacity for rebellion was a disturbing game changer.

  “The logistics are very delicate,” Kev said. “Once the compulsion spell is destroyed, there’s a tiny window of opportunity. Eame had to approach the person, secure their agreement, and get them away.”

  “And from there you’d have to make them citizens of some allied nation and rename them,” Garland said. “Otherwise, their owners could inscribe them again—to obedience, even to death.”

  “There’s nothing I can tell you about that,” Kev said.

  “Indeed. It’s probably better if you don’t.”

  Dangerous and difficult. Sophie’s mind turned to the notes on Kev’s trial. Medical records from Sylvanna, with kids’ names, had been seized from Incannis. “There was a list of Sylvanner kids aboard the ship when it was taken.”

  Kev picked at a slice of mango. “That would have been our next project. Swing ’round there, get the children to burn their slaves’ inhibit scrips, and get as many as we could across the Butcher’s Baste.”

  This rang true. Sawtooth had been on her way to Sylvanna when they ran into the bandit ship. Incannis could have been bound for Autumn, same as them.

  “Would the Havers shelter them?” said Garland.

  “Two of the crew, Pree and Smitt, seemed to think they could be convinced.”