The Nature of a Pirate Read online

  Cly, as usual, sensed her reaction. “Rees Erminne and his mother,” he said. They were with a woman clad in white, her face covered with a wafting assortment of veils. Rees and the veiled woman wore the crimson sash of the engaged, just as Sophie and Garland did. “Fralienne found someone to marry her boy at last. Foreigner, from the look of her. Perhaps from Gellada?”

  Sophie found herself blushing. She’d gotten the idea, a few months ago, that Cly was trying to marry her to Rees. She’d tried put a pin in that by declaring, during a full-bore society event, that she was promiscuous.

  Garland saw that, she remembered.

  She said, “So it’s not on, you and Rees’s mother?”

  “Politics sailed beyond us. Sawtooth playing host to Annela Gracechild … We may have kept the Havers from firing upon Nightjar, but the forces against continued union of the Fleet have been making much of the event. I cannot afford to flout society’s conventions again—not too obviously, in any case. Fralienne and her abolitionist allies have, therefore, evolved a new strategy.”

  “She’s running for governor of Autumn, isn’t she?”

  He nodded. “And so Rees needs must marry.”

  “Politics and business,” Sophie murmured.

  “It’s past time,” Cly said. “He’s long been too old to remain childish.”

  Rees and his mother had freed all their slaves, and were land rich and cash poor as a result. Cly had been considering an alliance with them, much to his family’s distress. The Banning estate was run by unpaid laborers, slaves who maintained apiaries and picked orchards, and a dozen household servants. If he had divested …

  Cly had let Sophie think it was all for her—that he’d hook up with Fralienne and throw all his family retainers to the wind, just because Sophie was dead set against slavery.

  But was that likely?

  Before she could ask, they’d reached the hotel.

  “I need to have my stitches seen to,” Cly said. “You’ve got time to change and eat.”

  “Eat before what?”

  But he’d gone on ahead, striding through the lobby and bounding up the staircase.

  Garland helped her out of the carriage. “I’m sure he’s dying to get out of those wet breeches.”

  “Would you promise me something?”

  “Anything,” he said, without a second’s hesitation.

  She felt a little flutter. “I was just going to say that, if you’re ever facing an ordeal, don’t hide it from me.”

  “I promise.” He nodded. “You too.”

  “What would I go through? Renewing my driver’s license?”

  “Nevertheless…”

  “I promise,” she said, and the words felt weighty, more momentous than the Fleet oath. They were holding hands.

  Whatever might have happened next was interrupted by a discreet cough. Krispos was waiting at the gate to greet them.

  “Were you with Kev?” Sophie asked.

  “Yes. The pacification took hold about an hour ago. I’d got him some ostrich from the Mancellor … He nearly choked, spitting it up.”

  “He’s ill?” Garland said.

  “He can’t eat flesh anymore,” Sophie reminded him.

  “No, he’s ill,” Krispos said. “I think that Kev may be well into the pain.”

  Sophie flashed on the coppery flavor of her gums bleeding. “Has a doctor seen him?”

  “Yes, I sent for one,” Krispos said. “He may be abed a few days. It’ll get him out of scrubbing floors.”

  “I should go—” And do what? Apologize?

  “I left him sleeping,” Krispos said. “The concierge will send a messenger when he wakes.”

  Sophie sagged against the gate, letting her head fall into her hands. “He’s no better off than he was a month ago. We’re just dragging out the suffering.”

  Garland said, “We may yet find a way, once he’s free, to get Kev to refuge.”

  She shook her head, trying to extricate herself from the turmoil of guilt. Failing that, she turned back to Krispos. “Listen, I want you to go to Low Bann. The observer in the turtle case sent copies of our data there, thinking we’d be going to Cly’s. And there’s other mail. Get it, then go to the Spellscrip Institute and read the stuff Autumn Spell said she’d show us on frightmaking.”

  “Is that important now?”

  “You know, I think it is. I think the frightmaker’s … crucial to what’s happening in Fleet and what’s happening to Kev. Oh, see how that young cousin of Cly’s, Merelda, is doing as a spellscribe apprentice, too. If she’s not working out, we might scoop her for the Forensic Institute.”

  Krispos gave a brisk nod, noting all of it without writing it down. Then, turning pink even before he moved, he put his arms around her in a sudden, tight, and terribly awkward hug. “There’s nobody to help Kev, nobody else willing. What you are doing … You can’t even guess what the Golders might do to him. Even if he has done bad things, terrible, terrible things, he doesn’t deserve…”

  Sophie’s mouth fell open.

  Krispos’s words dried up. He pulled away, scarlet-faced, and almost tottered into Garland before fleeing in the direction of the gardens.

  “Should I go after him, do you think?”

  Garland shook his head. “Let the poor man recover his composure.”

  They arrived upstairs only steps ahead of a hot dinner—goat stew, heavy with bay leaf, with a juniper chutney on the side, and a barely fermented peach cider to drink. Cly had ordered Garland a white shirt, slacks, and a coat with tails. It was faintly like a tuxedo and went well with the crimson sash. Sophie headed into her room and found a similar outfit, fitted by Cly’s tailor, no doubt.

  She came out wearing it. “Check out the lady suit. All I need is a top hat.”

  “Mine fits quite well. His Honor has an eye for clothes.”

  “I was just calling him a fashion whore. Question is, what’s it for?”

  “Cohabitation class.” Cly appeared, washed and dressed and presumably newly restitched. He was toweling his salt-and-pepper hair briskly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I can’t fling you into marriage unprepared, can I? Custom requires that you be taught certain realities.”

  “OMG. Is this sex ed?”

  “Among other things.”

  “Cly, you already know I’m—” She ran aground on his amused expression, but bulled on. “You already know I’m sexually active. Half the damned Autumn District knows.”

  “The better half, to be sure. Marriage is about more than physical intimacy, child. But…” He leaned back in a leather chair, not quite hiding a wince. “If you’re telling me you aren’t serious about this relationship, it’s not too late to dissolve it.”

  “And be not engaged, and not an adult, and let you scoop up Kev.”

  “Whereupon I should no doubt do something terrifically sociopathic—was that the word?—to him.”

  “That is not funny.”

  “I am determined to ascertain how Kev fits into the greater scheme against the peace. To put my hand on a moving piece in this game and thereby sweep the board.”

  “I’m all for winning, but you still don’t get to torture him!”

  “You shall have to rely on your deductive faculties to stop me.”

  A glimmer of hope. “If we work it out, you’ll let me do as I please with him?”

  “Why not?”

  “Would you help us get him somewhere safe?”

  “You’d need to work something of a wonder for the Cessation if you want me to go that far.”

  She found herself grinning. “Fair enough. We’ll reassemble the crime wall here on this nice big stretch of plaster. Consider the suspects, go through their moves: murdering Gale, trying to disarm Temperance, the bandits on Incannis, this new scheme. All the stuff.”

  “No time for that now,” Cly said. “The carriage awaits. Here’s a tip for the driver.”

  “Fine.” Premarital counseling; putting pressure
on. This is a big game of chicken. She looked apologetically at Garland, who shrugged.

  “Okay, down we go.”

  The same carriage, with the voluptuous woman and the bays with their streaked manes, was waiting.

  “I am sorry about this, Garland.”

  “No, no. It’s possible I’ll learn something.”

  Was he joking?

  She leaned forward and called up to the driver. “Do you speak Fleet?”

  “Little, Kir.”

  “We need to go back to that registration office in the Institute tomorrow.”

  “Must to ask His Honor.”

  “I thought you were at our disposal.”

  “His Honor pays me.”

  “How much for a ride to the registration office?”

  “Twenty-two akro, or nine Fleet dollars.”

  She glanced at Garland.

  “My signing privileges would have been put on hold when our Watchbox sank,” he said.

  “So I not only destroyed your ship, I’ve reduced you to poverty.”

  “You mustn’t trouble yourself,” he said.

  “We could walk it, I suppose.” She remembered his feet. “No, we can’t.”

  “I could manage, Sophie. We’d want to go early—the line.”

  “No barging the line without help from the big Fleet judge.” That would take a big chunk of time. An hour for the walk, then the waiting, and paper pushing.

  An ugly thought occurred to her. She tapped on the driver’s window again. “Does it cost anything to free a slave?”

  The driver’s attitude softened noticeably. “Six years on since I was freed, and it was three hundred akro I had to pay. Average gone up since then.”

  She fell back in her seat. “Teeth.”

  The carriage pulled up at a walled park, and an interminable stop-and-start took hold as they edged through a bottleneck at the gate. Uniformed guards were letting crimson-sashed young people, some as many as ten years younger than Sophie, out of the carriages. Beyond them, in a lantern-lit copse of birch trees, silk tents stretched along a promenade strewn with tiny white flowers.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a conjugal traffic jam. They’re registering—I see a registration table. It’s like a convention of…”

  “Of the engaged,” Garland said.

  They shared an uneasy glance.

  Sophie tapped the window again. “Driver?”

  “Hes, Kir?”

  “Everyone in Sylvanna gets engaged in the summer, is that right?”

  “Hes.”

  “So…” She swallowed, and heard that ticking in her ears. In her current state of mind, it made her think of a time bomb. “How long are they engaged for?”

  “Until solstice, Kir.”

  “Everyone marries on the solstice?” Garland asked.

  “You didn’t know?” the driver asked.

  Garland shook his head. “Sophie…”

  “I know. I know. Oh—” A mild Fleet epithet wouldn’t cover this. “Shit.”

  Solstice was three days away.

  CHAPTER 29

  Three days. Three days to free Kev and get him off Sylvanna without a ship. Three days to come up with hundreds of akro for the fee.

  She and Garland registered for marriage counseling in a shared state of shock and were directed to a tent near the rear of the assembly, designated for foreigners and abolitionists—troublemakers, in other words. Inside was a table set with steaming teacups and a circle of low love seats, each big enough for a couple. Two other pairs of young people dressed in suits were drinking tea and sitting across from each other. One was two women, which left Sophie to wonder whether, despite Cly having assured her that gay people had equal rights here, the same-sex couples automatically ended up in the outsider tent. The other couple was straight, a Sylvanner boy of sixteen and a girl with mint-green spots on her face and a Fleet uniform.

  Is that chlorophyll? Sophie wondered, once again reaching for the camera that had sunk with Nightjar, and finding instead a satchel crammed with things she hoped might prove useful: the book of questions and some other papers, pens, a few envelopes for biosamples, and—for no good reason except that she couldn’t make herself leave it behind—her latent fingerprinting kit.

  Their classmates had the bored air of kids in detention. They didn’t mingle but murmured quietly, just waiting.

  As Sophie poured herself a cup of the steaming, lemon-scented tea, the tent flap opened again and Rees Erminne stepped inside with the veiled woman. The pins on her sash seemed to indicate she had been retired from service within the Fleet.

  “Rees!” Sophie was half delighted and half horrified.

  Rees had tried his utmost to keep her from bellowing “I’m a slut!” at the top of her lungs at the Highsummer Festival. But—

  Embarrassment be damned. This was an opportunity.

  He bowed. “Kir Sophie.”

  “Hi. Can we talk a sec?”

  “I’m here with Cleste, my betrothed.” Rees was more than usually kempt. When she’d met him, he’d reminded her of a good-natured giant koala bear. Now his beard had been trimmed and the suit, though patched in spots, was impeccably turned out.

  “Hi … Cleste? And congrats. Rees, it doesn’t have to be a private convo.” Come on, persuasive spell.

  Maybe it was the magic, or just the fact that he was trapped, but his shoulders slumped.

  The fiancée patted his shoulder. “All’s well, Rees.”

  Before anyone had a chance to rethink, Sophie yanked Kev’s emancipation papers out of her satchel. “I’m trying to free a guy. I can’t explain how I ended up with him—”

  “All of Winter knows about your murderer.” His voice was neutral. “That he’s a Haver spellscribe. Who it was he killed. The reason Incannis targeted the ships it sank.”

  “He agreed to a pacification spell,” Sophie explained. “But this paperwork, to free him … I don’t read Sylvanner and Cly won’t help. Do you see anything about a fee?”

  He scanned down. “Ten thousand akro.”

  She sucked wind for the second time that night.

  “Ten thousand?” Garland said incredulously.

  “Fees are at the discretion of the bonding office,” Rees said.

  “I don’t suppose you have ten grand lying around that I could borrow?”

  That got a glimmer of warmth from him. “I’m poor, remember?”

  She turned to Garland. “They don’t have credit cards here, do they?”

  “There is another way,” Rees’s fiancée said.

  “Yeah?” Sophie perked up.

  “I’ve been rude, haven’t I?” Rees said. “Cleste, meet Sophie Banning and Captain Garland Parrish.”

  Cleste bowed, sidestepped a couple who’d taken the opportunity to try to dive between them—when the group huddled around the slavery paperwork, they had inadvertently blocked the tea table—and made a Come here gesture to regroup them off to the side.

  Rees added, “We’ve— You might guess that our political inclinations are aligned.”

  Meaning Cleste was opposed to slavery. As usual, nobody was supposed to say so aloud.

  “Avoiding the fee?” Garland prompted.

  “Oui,” Cleste said. “The fee is a barrier to the bonded. They have to reimburse their owners and the government to buy their freedom … They are, in effect, double charged. It’s not meant to penalize landowners. You can free anyone with a simple declaration, on a holiday. It’s what Rees’s father did.”

  Sophie said, “That sounds too good to be true.”

  “When’s the next eligible holiday?” Garland asked.

  “Solstice, at the feast before the wedding.”

  “Does the feast happen long before the ceremony?”

  “We eat. The toasts and declarations of liberation are then made. After that, we wed.”

  Garland winced, ever so slightly.

  “In the morning, having been made adults,” Rees added, “new ma
rried couples go to vote for the first time.”

  “Teeth,” Sophie said. “So if we want to free Kev, we have to show up for the wedding?”

  “Why wouldn’t you show up—” Rees was interrupted by a pair of drill sergeant types, one male, one female, marching through the tent flap, pushing one last couple before them, and barking out orders.

  “Sit, children, sit!”

  Garland chose a blue love seat across from the entrance, drawing Sophie after him. It was a snug squeeze.

  “This is marriage!” the woman bellowed. “Two beings crammed in the same boat, rowing to common purpose.”

  Their instructors were a married pair of retired Fleet officers—she from Sylvanna, he from Tonio’s home nation, Erinth. They opened with some patter about the glories of the Fleet in bringing together diverse peoples. Then the woman broke into a fire-and-brimstone speech about the sanctity of Sylvanner marriage and their total ban on divorce.

  I bet they don’t have annulment, either, Sophie thought. Cly had to have himself declared dead to legally detangle himself from Beatrice.

  The woman went on in mind-numbing detail: marriage was a partnership, building a life together a sacred duty. Across the circle of cushions, Rees wore a pained expression.

  Garland listened to every word as though it was at least as interesting as the time Sophie had told him about insect pheromones.

  So we stay right up to the last minute, free Kev, and make a dash for it … to where? And with what ship?

  The earworm lay beneath it all. Tick, tick, tick. Somewhere in this dense Sylvanner city, fairly close, there was a sliver of the Worldclock, a timepiece. An eraglider. The sister Bettona had primed with those apricot and anise biscuits.

  The sensation faded as Sophie focused on it.

  “Kir Hansa!” The drill sergeant gave her a warning glower, and Sophie tried to look engaged.

  After the lecture on the sanctity of marriage, the instructors went around the circle, directing the foreigners to talk briefly about customs in their homelands.

  “Where I was raised, we have divorce,” was Sophie’s contribution.

  Garland’s was “Marriage does not serve the dead.”

  Then they were required to look each other in the eyes, sitting nose to nose in the too-small love seats, and talk about their hopes for the future.