The Nature of a Pirate Read online

  “How many children do you want? How soon do you want to have them? How will you allocate and manage your shared property? Do you follow the same faith? What are your parents settling on you?”

  The last made her laugh. “I think I’m probably dowry free.”

  Garland smiled. “I have a claim on a grave in the capital of Issle Morta.”

  “Don’t be frivolous.” Their instructor loomed over Sophie. “Say something of import. Now.”

  Be honest on command. Great. She looked into Garland’s eyes. “I want to raise Nightjar. I want to make up for some of the damage I’ve done since—”

  His hand closed around hers. “Don’t, Sophie.”

  The sergeant smiled. “And you, flailer? What do you expect from this woman?”

  Right. This is exactly how to conduct an intimate conversation.

  “I want to set your mind at ease,” Garland said, as if baring his soul in front of strangers was the easiest thing in the universe. “About the question of destiny that bothers you so, about the intentions laid upon you.”

  Now she was almost in tears. “Beatrice made me charming. And my looks—”

  “Do you think it’s the gloss that matters?”

  She opened her mouth. What came out was a small, choked sound.

  “I know who you are, Sophie Hansa,” he said. “I know your need to understand everything you encounter. I know you’re determined to shield Kev from abuse, despite his crimes. Your courage is no work of outside magic—”

  “Stop,” she said.

  The drill sergeant said, “Reply, child!”

  She fought the urge to snap back at the facilitator, kept her eyes locked on Garland’s, groped for words … and suddenly felt something settle, within, with the solidity of good boots on bedrock. For just an instant, she was hammered by jaw-dropping, bolt-from-the-blue surprise. “Of course. Of course I know you.”

  Their instructor grunted. “Love matches,” she muttered in a weary drawl before moving on.

  It went on like that for another hour: trapped nose to nose on the cushion, interrogated about their hopes and dreams, obliged to share, while their instructors circled and eavesdropped and intervened whenever they got too shallow.

  By the time they got to stretch and eat a sandwich, Sophie was wrung out, almost physically shaky. Then their wranglers drew a curtain across the tent. “I’ll want the ladies here on this side,” said the woman. “My husband will take the gentlemen.”

  This made it six to four, since the lesbians came together.

  “What’s going on?” Sophie said.

  “I’m going to acquaint you with the basics of physical intimacy.” The woman opened a large hardbound book. The left page was an illustration of a nude woman; the right was a diagram that might have been at home in a California sex education class. “There’s no need to feel awkward, Kir Sophie.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “But your drawing’s wrong.”

  “Wrong?”

  “Well, incomplete. Her ovaries and fallopian tubes are missing, and if we’re going to talk about sex, the real organ we need in the mix is the brain.”

  The entire tent, both sides, had fallen silent.

  “Your outland notions about marital congress—”

  “They’re not notions, and I don’t need a bunch of half-baked information on sex. I’ve had sex,” she said.

  The women, but for Cleste, ootched two steps farther from her.

  “Kir!” The instructor remonstrated. “Your betrothed is mere steps away!”

  “Oh, he knows. Believe me, everyone knows.”

  “It’s true,” Garland’s voice sounded, from the other side of the curtain. “And, actually, we’ve both been—”

  “Stop!” The instructor glowered at Sophie. “We are not interested in the lewd customs of your adopted nation. You’re here as a Sylvanner. Conduct yourself accordingly.”

  “Or what? Is this class a pass/fail proposition? If we don’t pass this unit, do we get forbidden to marry?”

  The woman sputtered.

  “It is an excellent question,” Garland said. He was right on the other side of the sheet of fabric.

  I know you. At the thought, a shiver went through her.

  He added, “We’re likely to be disruptive as well as scandalous.”

  The instructor glowered. “Go, then! Take your indecent selves out and be back in ninety for dance lessons.”

  Sophie was feeling reckless and rebellious both. She took Garland’s arm and, cuddling up, attempted to flounce as they left the tent.

  “Everything you need to know about sex in ninety minutes,” she muttered. “Raging Seas.”

  It was cold out. The tents, with their warming stones, had trapped a lot of heat. But the stars above were clear, cut white diamonds set in a black marble sky. Light snowflakes were falling.

  She began to giggle as soon as they were clear of the tent. “Talk about dodging a bullet. Sorry if that embarrassed you.”

  “I didn’t wish to sit through a description of intimacy mechanics.”

  “Was getting away worth the risk of hypothermia?”

  “Let’s see if we can avoid that, too.”

  “And get you off those burnt feet.”

  “They’re much better.” Garland led her to the rear corner of the park, to a darkened tent. Peering inside, they found staging materials for the seminar—more tea on trays, cushions, and llama skin blankets.

  “Over here,” he said, nudging three of the cushions together and pulling her close.

  His lips met hers, and it was as if they hadn’t been interrupted, all those weeks ago, in his cabin. His hands gently tugged her shirt out of the lady suit trousers and his fingers ran up her rib cage, pausing at the foreign structure of her bra.

  “There’s a fastener on the back,” she said, sliding her hands down to his pants buttons. Then, rather than rushing things, she laid her head against his chest for a moment. “What are we going to do?”

  “Free Kev and flee before the wedding.”

  “Cly’s gonna be expecting that.”

  “He did essentially say that, if we can expose the conspiracy, he’ll release us from this deception.”

  “If not?”

  “We outmaneuver him.”

  “What if we fail?”

  He brought his nose close to hers again. “If we were force-marched to the altar, Sophie, and they asked if I wanted to marry you—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “I would never trap you in an alliance you didn’t want. I merely wish…”

  “What?”

  “Perhaps … that we’d known each other longer.”

  She ran her hands down his hips, marveling at the statue smoothness of him, the welcome warmth of his skin. She wasn’t sure she’d ever waited this long, with anyone, but she wasn’t about to say so. She wasn’t going to say anything that might change his mind, or even slow him down.

  Soon there was nothing between them—no fabric, no belts. They kicked off their boots at the same moment.

  “I wish I could see you,” she said.

  “Me too.” He kissed her, lips eager and edging to roughness, and she thought about the things they should talk about, all the unresolved stuff. But he’d been right, all those months ago, when he wrote to her. They could work it out.

  He knows me. A flood of relief. She’d been swimming against the current of something that, unscientific as it was, nevertheless had to be.

  “I’m eager to begin,” she whispered, quoting that letter, and he got it. He laughed breathlessly and eased the whole of his body against hers, forehead to toes, and all that heat in the middle. It was a jolt. She curled her hand into his hair and met him, reaching, kissing, trying to hold all of him at once.

  Then they were joined, moving together, the waves of sensation so intense she found tears running down her face even as she laughed. The two of them were like a live wire, voltage boiling through a cable, and it was all she could
do to hold in the sound, to keep from shouting or sobbing or laughing this whole sleepy park full of virgins awake.

  She shuddered to a final, electric, head-to-toes jolt, pressing her head against his shoulder, and as they relaxed, breathing shallowly, he ran a finger down her cheek, wiping the tears there.

  “It’s you,” she whispered in the dark, before she could rethink it, before he could get the wrong idea.

  “You’re crying.” She couldn’t tell what was in his voice.

  She caught his face in his hands, kissed him long and hard, and said it properly. “I love you.”

  “My heart is yours,” he replied. And then, a shift. “We should—I hear people. Someone’s coming. We might be missed.”

  “Oop!” So much for holding on to the moment. She wriggled back into her bra, grabbed a shirt, felt for the top collar and the inner seams, and began buttoning.

  They scrambled to get dressed in the pitch blackness, occasionally pausing to kiss again.

  She had never felt this before, this particular sense of happiness, of having eaten so much of a meal that she was bursting; it almost hurt.

  They muddled through the darkness, fumbling their way to the tent flap and snaking out, straightening each other’s tuxedos in the dim lantern light of the park.

  “Sophie,” Garland said. “Does … is romantic love not much valued on Erstwhile?”

  She broke into a smile. “Ha! I’m gonna read you Pride and Prejudice.”

  He seemed to understand her meaning. “We should seek our classmates.”

  “Guess we passed the intimacy exam, huh?”

  “I’m sure if we consulted them, they’d find fault with our technique.”

  “Well, we can practice.”

  “Indeed we can.” He offered her his arm and they went back to the troublemaker version of the couples class, their skin cooling in the winter air.

  CHAPTER 30

  SOFE,

  YES, I’M OKAY. I LIKED DAIMON A LOT, AND OBVIOUSLY I’M SHOCKED AND UPSET THAT HE’S DEAD. BUT I’M NOT INCAPACITATED, SO TRY NOT TO WORRY.

  I THINK I HAVE ID’D THE ERSTWHILER WHO HELPED JOHN COINE. HE’S A FRIEND OF BEATRICE’S STEPSON … HE CAME THROUGH HER HOSPICE WITH MENINGIOMA WHEN HE WAS 12 AND HAD A MIRACULOUS TURNAROUND—MAGIC, I’M THINKING. THEN HE POPPED UP A COUPLE YEARS LATER AND BEFRIENDED SHAD.

  DO WE TELL VERENA’S COP FRIEND, FEDONA? IT MIGHT BE BAD FOR BEATRICE, IF SHE’S BEEN CURING HOSPICE KIDS MAGICALLY. AND WE DON’T KNOW WHAT THE WRACKERS WILL DO TO HIM.

  PS—GOT FEDONA’S FINGERPRINT, AS REQUESTED. 80% SURE SHE WASN’T THE ONE WHO BROKE INTO MOM AND DAD’S.

  PSS—SPELL ON PARENTS’ PLACE USING LEGAL DESCRIPTION DID, IN FACT, WORK.

  PSSS—THAT POLICE DETECTIVE, BETTEL, CALLED AGAIN AND ASKED ME WHERE YOU’D GOT TO NOW.

  BTW MISS YOU 5

  BRAM

  They returned to class and discovered that after sex ed had come dance lessons, a welcome shift to physical activity, conducted in a large communal tent with all the other couples. They crept in, hoping to avoid notice, and found their peers mincing to the music of a quintet of flute players and percussionists. Everyone was clad in white suits the same as those Cly had procured for Sophie and Garland—snow-white slacks, vests, and dress shirts adorned with the crimson beauty queen sashes that proclaimed them engaged.

  The uniformity of the outfits gave the dance a military feel, and although Sophie’s shirt kept bunching distractingly at the back, the steps weren’t hard to pick up. They were happy to let Garland take lots of breaks, for his feet. It was a definite improvement over being hectored into sharing by the drill sergeant and her mate.

  Cly met them afterward and gave them a single hair-raising look.

  He can’t know, Sophie thought, but all he said was, “I’ve heard from your half sister, via that bird. She’s sailing here with your first mate, the fellow from Erinth. They met a vessel. Capo. It’s possible she’ll make the wedding, if winds are fair.”

  “Heading here?” Garland raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps Bettona confessed—exposed her coconspirators.”

  “If so, why not tell us?”

  Cly nodded. “Garland, you’re a man of the Fleet, in your heart if not in name—”

  “I’ll marry him,” Sophie blurted. “If you march us to the altar, I will totally vow—”

  “While that’s a lovely sentiment,” Cly said, “I was not about to appeal to your lover to break your engagement.”

  Lover? Seas, he does know. How does he know?

  Garland, far from being chagrined, lit up.

  “I truly despair of you both.” Cly strode up to a driver with a team of tubby and tired-looking palomino mares and a sagging carriage that bore, Sophie saw, the Fleet judiciary drapes. “Where is my driver? Where’s Latasha?”

  “Family emergency, Your Honor.”

  “This is the best you can muster?”

  The coachman waved at the crush of coach-and-fours. “Short supply tonight.”

  “We’re bound for Innobel.”

  “Kir? Did you say—”

  “Get on with it! Take the civil access lane and turn left at the park exit; I expect you to bypass the usual impromptu parade.” With a huff, Cly yanked open the door.

  They piled inside. Garland took the rear-facing seat and Sophie moved to follow, but Cly caught her arm, directing her to the seat across. She resisted, as a matter of course, and so he outmaneuvered her, planting himself next to Garland and leaving her across from them both.

  It was a position that combined the worst aspects of a job interview, a visit to the principal’s office, and a blind date.

  “So!” she blurted, before anyone else could introduce some fun topic of conversation, like premarital sex. “We uncover Kev’s scheme and Cly gives up the project of claiming him for torture. That’s the deal, right?”

  Cly nodded curtly. “Parrish, you understand the politics in play here. The frightmaker and his cronies are involved with Lidman, yes? What might they be trying to accomplish here on Sylvanna?”

  “Causing trouble internationally,” Sophie said. “Causing incidents that will lead to conflict.”

  “There are those who believe the Cessation is doomed,” Garland said, running a finger inside his shirt collar to settle it, stretching his neck. “That sooner or later the port and starboard sides of the government will break, probably over slavery, and there will be a resumption of hostilities over the question of bondage.”

  The tension eased as they once again ran through the pas de deux of international incidents so far. Kev and his friends raiding and sinking slaver ships in an apparent strike against the bonded nations. Aunt Gale’s murder, before that—a blow to the Verdanii, intensified now that the Allmother was ill.

  None of that seemed sufficiently incendiary.

  Sophie said. “It takes drama to start a war. Theater.”

  “Agreed. And so they moved on to sinking Constitution.” Cly gave her a pleased look, almost as though he’d invented her. “Several times now, the parties who desire war have been balked by your intervention in their intrigues. You solved the murder of your aunt, then disrupted the attempt to disarm Temperance and spark conflict between Ualtar and Tiladene.”

  “Bully for me, but now they’re on to plan C. How does Kev figure in?”

  “He murdered slavers and is now himself a slave. I suppose one might make of him … something in the way of a martyr,” Cly said.

  “He knows his so-called allies were undercover spies. Why is he still cooperating with them?”

  “He’s under threat,” Garland said promptly. “He is demonstrably more afraid of what they can do to him than he is of you … either of you, Your Honor.”

  “Well, if they’ve got the stick,” Sophie said, “we’ll have to be the carrot.”

  Cly looked baffled.

  “In order to get Kev to tell us what’s up, we have to convince him we can protect him. Not only free him, you see? We have to get him some
where beyond the conspirators’ reach.”

  Cly said, “Where could a man like that go?”

  “You’re the locals. You tell me.”

  “Parrish?” Cly said. “Perhaps a certain island locale…”

  Garland looked wary. “It would be entirely wrong to claim such a place existed, particularly in the presence of someone such as Your Honor.”

  “Sophie’s taken the Oath as well, remember. But if Lidman is to disappear beyond the reach of the conspirators, I fear we must speak of Nysa.”

  “Nysa is a myth,” Garland said.

  Sophie added this up. “You’re telling me there’s an island inhabited by escaped slaves.”

  “There’s a story of such a place,” Cly corrected.

  “Right, right. Because it would be wrong for us oathy types to admit to knowing of its existence.” It had been a long night, but the doublethink didn’t seem as onerous as it usually did. Brimming as she was with happiness, it almost felt like play.

  The men kept fencing, Garland making noises about how hard it might be to get someone like Kev to the fabled haven—the challenge of finding a ship willing to bear him, the risk to that ship and its crew from the immolator.

  “But surely, you, Parrish— Ah. Forgive me. I forgot momentarily that your Nightjar was lost.”

  Sophie squeezed Garland’s hand. “I’m guessing the islanders, if they did in fact exist, wouldn’t want anyone following Kev to their location anyway.”

  “Good point,” said Cly. “Simply discovering Nysa might bring us closer to war, unless…”

  “Unless?”

  “Unless something convinces the portside that it cannot prevail in a battle.”

  Sophie blinked. “Did I hear that right?”

  “If the nations of the Fleet remain on the edge of war for long enough,” Cly said, “some pretext for hostilities will inevitably be found.”

  “True,” Garland agreed. “If the Cessation does break, we will return to an age of raiding and small alliances. The seas won’t be safe, and the little nations … it’s not exaggerating to say many would be annihilated. It’s why Gale dedicated her life to the peace.”

  “Dumping water on sparks,” Cly said. “As Sophie has been, since she arrived.”