A Daughter of No Nation Read online

  “Your mother says you’ve been taking rape classes,” he said.

  Sophie stifled an inward groan.

  Just get through the next five minutes with a bit of grace. “Gary and I are going sailing. This is the trip I’ve been planning, the one I’ve told you about—”

  “The one you’ve not told us about, to be precise. The one you’ve turned down the Scripps Institute for—”

  “I could be gone awhile,” she interrupted.

  “You’ll certainly be gone awhile.” Her father’s acidic repetition was a criticism of the vagueness. “The question is, how long?”

  “I don’t know, Dad. I’ll e-mail when I can. I’ve told you I’m going to be hard to reach.”

  “And in danger,” Mom put in.

  This was the point where a sensible person would say, No, no, it’s just a sail, it’s a sensitive research project. Blahdeeblah confidentiality, don’t worry, it’ll all be fine. Sophie could never pull that off. She could barely lie to strangers. Trying to deceive her parents would be hopeless. “I have to do this. I have to. I’d tell you more if I could, I swear.”

  “You’re not federal.” Dad was looking Garland up and down. “International Space Agency?”

  “It’s not space,” Sophie said. “And he can’t talk about it either.”

  “Let him speak for himself.”

  Parrish pulled himself up as if he were a soldier at attention. “If it is within my power to keep your daughter safe, I will. You have my word.”

  Dottar. Her father’s lips moved, committing the sound of it to memory. Mai verd.

  She was saved by the taxicab, which pulled up behind Mom’s car.

  “We gotta go,” Sophie said, tone bright despite the crushing guilt. She gave her father a hug, which he barely returned, and tried not to register how pale his face had gone. “I’m sorry, Dad, I am. I’d tell you if I could.”

  Her mom clung. “I just want to understand.” She was tearing up. “Sophie, please. Tell us something.”

  “Sorry, sorry,” she whispered, disentangling herself as gently as possible. “I’ll be in touch soon. Come on, Par—Gary.”

  She could still feel her mother’s grip on her arm as she piled into the cab and pulled Parrish in after her. Regina tried to muster a wave.

  I don’t deserve them. She was gut-achingly achurn with guilt. What to say? Could she have done that better? Looking back, she saw their faces through the cab’s back window, taut with two completely different expressions of devastation.

  “Rape classes?” Parrish inquired, as she settled against the backseat, trying to banish the memory.

  “Don’t, okay?” With that, she burst into tears.

  CHAPTER 3

  Bram was the elder statesman of a shared house occupied by a transient roster of graduate students, usually physicists and mathematicians, who were working their way through advanced degrees in the various Bay Area universities. The space was divided so that it had seven bedrooms and was known, on multiple campuses, as Dwarf House. To those in the know, Bram was, predictably, Doc.

  The top floor, a converted attic, was her brother’s domain. It had good light on clear days, wood floors, and spartan furnishings. The bed and wardrobe were tiny in comparison to the computer workstation and a big drafting table devoted to whatever research project was serving as Bram’s latest obsession.

  Her little brother was a bona-fide kid genius. He had been collecting advanced degrees like a hunter gathering game trophies, or a high-altitude climber bagging big peaks, since his early teens.

  As she and Garland disembarked from the cab, one of Bram’s roommates was just stubbing out a cigarette near the weathered fence. She got a look at Sophie’s tear-streaked face, stepped out of her way, and then did a double take as she took in Garland.

  “Can’t talk, sorry,” Sophie said, hustling past her.

  Her adopted brother and biological half-sister were waiting in his room, talking quietly next to a pile of stuff: a duffel full of unbranded, plain-Jane jeans and shirts, a plastic bag jammed with medications, and a pair of fresh diving tanks. Everything was disordered: Verena had searched it, presumably.

  Sophie had cried herself out in the cab, but at the sight of her brother she almost welled up again.

  “How’d it go with the parents?”

  “Big ugly scene.” Sniffling, she handed over his phone. “They’re freaking out, Bram.”

  “I’ll do what I can.” Parental inquisitions never bothered him; he’d been fighting with Dad since he was ten.

  “We need to get going,” Verena said. She was ratcheted tight with tension—no hug on offer there. “Last chance to come along, Bram.”

  “Tempting, but we can’t both disappear at once.” He shook his head. “I’ve got things going on here.”

  “Okay. We’ll check in with you. Sophie, are you carrying any electronics?”

  Sophie handed Bram her phone. “Want to pat me down?”

  Verena looked like she was considering it.

  Be that way. Sophie bent to repack her bags, putting her back between herself and her half-sister as she sorted through the collection of generic casual wear: hardy, easy to wash, suitable for hiking and camping.

  As she zipped the bags shut, she glanced around Bram’s room, checking for anything that might expose their research into Stormwrack.

  For the past six months, Bram’s worktable had been devoted to the world where Sophie’s birth parents had been born. They had reconstructed a map of the world, using information gleaned on their last visit to lay out its enormous oceans and the tiny archipelagos that were its only landmasses. He’d told his roommates he was designing a map for a gaming project. He was a polymath; they just accepted that he’d take it into his head to design an MMORPG in his copious spare time.

  Now the incriminating evidence—all their notes and speculations—had been packed away. Bram’d flipped the map to face the wall, instead displaying a photo Sophie had taken in Africa, impala grazing under the watchful gaze of a pride of lions. The broken pieces of Aunt Gale’s brass watch were out of sight, too, probably hidden under his model of the TARDIS from Doctor Who. There was no visible sign that either of them had given Stormwrack much thought.

  “Stop fussing with your stuff.” Bram took her by the shoulders. “Be safe, Ducks.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she said, bumping her forehead against his. Best you stay here. Safe and out of trouble.

  One last hug. “You better come back.”

  “I’m not on a one-way shuttle to Saturn.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He had that pale look, the one he got when he was trying to be brave. Like Dad, she thought, and guilt surged again. “Find some way to keep in touch.”

  Verena pulled a palm-size pewter clock from a satchel and drew first Parrish and then Sophie to within touching distance of both her and the stack of luggage. They fell silent, and the ticking of the timepiece took over. Sophie’s vision swam, the temperature dropped, and there was a wobble that felt like her ankles giving. But it was the deck of a ship, suddenly underfoot and rocking with the rhythm of the sea.

  Nightjar was a seventy-two-foot cutter with a crew of twenty-five. It had been enchanted so that it was ever-so-slightly inconspicuous, easily overlooked by casual observers.

  They were out on the oceans of Stormwrack, the world whose existence she’d promised to keep from her parents—from everyone on Earth.

  Excitement burned through her, banishing the physical fatigue from self-defense class, frying even the guilt over the scene with Mom and Dad. This entire world, unexplored, was filled with mysteries and new species. Its very existence raised questions about the nature of the universe. She and Bram were going to unlock them.…

  “What’s our position?” Sophie said. She had expected they’d be in or near the Fleet, the massive seagoing city that was the world’s capital, but there were no other ships in sight.

  “Northwater,” Parrish said.

  Vere
na shot him a look that seemed to say, pretty clearly, Shut up. What she said was: “We can catch the Fleet in a couple days.”

  Verena was seventeen, eight years younger than Sophie and, as far as anyone had known until recently, the only child of their mother, Beatrice Vanko. Beatrice had given Sophie up at birth, to the Hansas.

  Sophie had only just met the two women, mother and sister, six months ago. They all three had dark brown eyes that seemed just a little big and widely spaced—Bram called them anime eyes—but Verena’s face was more angular than Sophie’s, her nose a bit sharper, her chin a fox tip. She wore her hair pulled back in a screamingly tight ponytail that made the eyes seem even bigger.

  She packed away the pewter clock and turned to Sophie with an air of bracing herself for a disagreement.

  “What’s up?”

  “You swear you didn’t smuggle in any scientific equipment? Cameras, electronic measuring devices like that laser range finder Bram brought last time…”

  “You’ve searched my bags. Anyway, the cameras are here; you confiscated them.” Sophie wasn’t offended; she was too happy to be here again, here in this puzzle of a world. “Are they aboard?”

  “No,” Verena replied. “And I’m to ask you to promise you won’t do any research while you’re here.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Sophie said. “I’m not promising anything.”

  “I told Annela you’d say that.” Verena cast a last glance at the bags. “In that case, she says, we have to limit your access to information.”

  “Information about what?”

  “About anything. About everything.”

  Verena was far too serious for seventeen. Today she wore a tunic that left her arms free for sword fighting. It hung to her thighs, over tight-fitting ankle-length breeches. Would that make it a kirtle? None of it was green in color, but Sophie found herself reminded of Peter Pan.

  “That is just—are you going to bag my head, then? What does Annela think I’m going to do?”

  “Find out a bunch of stuff about Stormwrack and then text it to the White House? Then a bunch of aircraft carriers will get in and wreak havoc—”

  “Until you sink them using magic. Which would take about five minutes, right?”

  Verena shrugged. “The government regards you as unreliable, Sophie. The few people who know about Erstwhile pretty much see us as an armed barbarian hoard, gnawing on the gates of civilization.”

  “If I’m so dangerous, why let me back in now?”

  Verena gave the plastic bag of painkillers and sunscreen one last, sour look. “Court stuff. The case with Mom.”

  Sophie’s birth parents had married against their family’s wishes. Stormwrack had a lot of countries, all of them islands, all tiny by Earth standards—and when Beatrice Feliachild of Verdanii had married Clydon Banning of Sylvanna, their prenup had been as complex as an international treaty. It had allowed divorce but only until the marriage produced kids.

  Beatrice wanted out of the marriage, badly enough to give up her firstborn, to hide her in San Francisco. When Sophie found her way to Stormwrack, the deception had blown up in her birth mother’s face. She’d been charged with fraud, breach of contract, and bigamy.

  “Basically, Mom’s been denied bail,” Verena said. “She’s confined to the Verdanii sailing vessel Breadbasket—”

  “Until her trial?”

  “That’s just it. The case is deadlocked. She’s stuck here and my dad”—by this she meant Beatrice’s second husband, in San Francisco—“he’s losing his mind.”

  “What am I supposed to do about it?”

  “It may be,” Parrish said, “that your father, Sophie, could exert his influence to speed the judicial process.”

  “Ah ha. You’re hoping I’ll talk him into mellowing.”

  “His Honor did seem taken with you. With the idea of having a child.”

  “Why shouldn’t he?”

  Parrish smiled. “I’m sure anyone would be pleased.”

  Sophie found herself momentarily flustered.

  Verena coughed. “There’ve been unofficial hints that if he could see you again, it might loosen the red tape.”

  “Of course I’ll talk to him,” Sophie said. “I got into all this to meet my birth relations, remember? I want to know Cly better.”

  Parrish and Verena shared a look: Beatrice’s side of Sophie’s newfound family seemed to have an extremely bad opinion of Cly Banning. But any reply either of them might have made was interrupted by a cry from the fore of the ship: “Coming up on the wreck, Captain!”

  They rushed to the bow.

  The derelict was sun-bleached, riding high in the water, and listing slightly. Its main deck was scorched and its hatches had been torn from their hinges. Salt, or what looked like salt, was sprayed across its boards. Bird droppings fouled the decks and the rails; the water around it had an oily look.

  “Whitebirds. There must have been shellfish aboard,” said someone behind her.

  Sophie cried out, happy to have been startled. “Tonio!” She practically pirouetted into a hug.

  “Ah, ginagina, it’s good to see you!”

  The ship’s first mate was a compact and clever-looking man in his early twenties, relentlessly cheery and utterly loyal to Parrish. When Sophie had seen him last, he’d been carrying a weight of grief—they all had—over the murder of the Nightjar’s owner, Gale Feliachild, Sophie and Verena’s aunt. Now that some time had passed, she could see more spark in him, a zest that had been dampened before.

  “No Bram?” he asked, kissing her cheek. “What a shame.”

  “Not this time,” she replied. They all look better. Verena looked drawn, after Gale’s murder, and Parrish …

  Well, with Parrish it was impossible to tell. The last time she’d seen him, she’d been flirting with a man she’d met at sea, and the good captain had taken it upon himself to get all flustered and run off—

  “What’s with this, Tonio?” Verena said.

  “We spotted the wreck about two hours ago,” he said. “After you and Captain went … you know, to find Sophie.”

  “Doesn’t look like there’s anyone aboard.”

  “No. She appears to have been attacked and abandoned. There’ve been rumors of raids. But the birds—there must have been something for them to eat aboard after she was set adrift, or it wouldn’t be such a mess.”

  Sophie felt a little chill. “Not a body?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. But look for yourself.”

  She did. There were mussel shells aplenty, mixed in with the piles of salt, but nothing that hinted at human remains: no bones, no clothes.

  “Why not burn it?” Verena said. “If someone raided it?”

  “Looks like they tried.” Sophie pointed at the wheel, which was blackened and scorched. A burned-out bucket sat beside it.

  “Maybe it rained,” Tonio said.

  Sophie’s attention had been drawn past the ship. “There’s someone out there.”

  Tonio squinted, reaching for a spyglass at his hip. “Are you sure?”

  Verena pointed. “There!”

  He or she was about a hundred yards off, draped over a hunk of log, and for all they were moving, they might have been dead.

  “Helm, come about!” Tonio ordered.

  The figure’s head came up, as if it had heard, and its log rolled. Distant arms flailed to maintain a grip.

  Sophie didn’t hesitate. She skinned off her jacket and jeans and leapt to the ship’s rail, diving into the water. There was an exhilarating rush of air as she fell, then the silken, chilly kiss of the sea rippling through her T-shirt.

  She came up, checked her direction, and swam for all she was worth, distantly registering a splash that meant someone had followed her. Parrish?

  Don’t go under, she thought at the drifting figure.

  For six months, all those long days when she’d been awaiting a chance to return to Stormwrack, Sophie had trained. She’d upped her endurance training,
going for a long run or a swim daily, and hit the gym hard, too, building her core strength. She’d defended her master’s thesis in biology, renewed her first aid certifications, and got some extra coaching from a diving instructor.

  She’d also gotten serious about meditation. She couldn’t tell a therapist where she’d been or that she’d witnessed a murder. Meditating seemed the best way to deal with the nightmares and anxiety created by the violence she’d encountered here on her earlier visit.

  The physical preparation, at least, was paying off. A satisfying bounty of healthy energy sang through every muscle as she cut through the water.

  The figure in the water was a woman—no, a girl. She had lost her precarious grip on the log and was batting feebly at the surface of the sea. Her face was grotesquely sunburned.

  “Stay calm,” Sophie shouted in her most authoritative voice—and then, as she realized she’d said it in English, she switched to Fleet and yelled again.

  She caught the girl by the arm, alert for panic—if she freaked out, they might both drown. Instead she coughed and obligingly went limp.

  “You must save him,” she begged.

  “You’re okay, you’re all right.” The girl had a huge bruise behind her left ear. Had someone hit her?

  Sophie secured a rescue grip, confirmed that there was no “him” immediately handy to save, and saw Verena about ten yards behind her, swimming with a lozenge-shaped flotation device and trailing a rope. The crew had brought Nightjar around in a gentle curve that had halved the distance between them.

  “Here.” Verena tossed the float ahead and swam to catch up. Treading, they worked together to tie the girl to the float. Verena signaled the crew and they began to reel her in.

  “She says there’s someone else.”

  “Nobody in sight,” Verena said, between breaths. They treaded and turned, in opposite directions, double-checking. “Maybe on the derelict?”