The Nature of a Pirate Read online

  “What are you saying?”

  “Kev was done with Daimon, once he realized he was a spy. But Daimon trailed him here, to the Black Fox, and persuaded him to write those compulsion spells. Why’d Kev agree?”

  Garland said, “Daimon blackmailed him?”

  “Threatened. He’d have said … oh, let’s see. That if Kev kept his mouth shut, and wrote the inscriptions they wanted on the kids, they’d rip up the spell that’s making him fatten up.” Sophie’s heart was pounding. “Guys, that cat monster tore the horse to shreds from the inside.”

  Bram was already on his feet, attracting glares from their near neighbors. “Cly, where will the guards take him? Which route, do you know?”

  “There’s a secure floor.” Cly rose, triggering more scowls and a few disapproving clucks, and ignoring it entirely as they all got moving.

  CHAPTER 36

  They hurried through the park at the Institute’s ground level, skirting a botanical garden and a spectacular zoo—cage after cage filled with creatures as exotic as lemurs and as ordinary as sheepdogs; bright, sun-filled chambers with daisies as big as Sophie’s head; and a guarded plot of bristling, thorny poppies.

  Maybe I’m wrong, Sophie thought. “Maybe I’m wrong.”

  “Does that happen often?” Cly inquired.

  “The doubting, or the actually being wrong?” Bram said.

  “Don’t help him, Bramble.”

  Up ahead—a cry for help.

  She broke into a run, outpacing everyone but Verena, and came upon the two guards. They were on their knees, dragging something out of a swampy, moss-lined pool.

  Not something. Him.

  Water flowed into the pool from a crack in the blue stone retaining wall; the pool was one of five in a row, each containing a slightly different species of lesser bulrush. Kev had pitched into the first of these pools—face-first, from the look of it—and they were muscling him out. His cheeks were smeared with mud, and he was gurgling.

  “Kev!” The belly of his white shift had split its seam. Flesh pulsed through the ripped fabric, straining against the tears like rising bread. The skin had a bubbly look to it, as if marbles lay beneath.

  Sophie knelt, touching them. “Hot.”

  The others had caught up by now. Cly handed Sophie a small stonewood dagger. “He’s unconscious. He won’t feel it.”

  Small poke. She fought back an almost hysterical titter and made a small incision, digging a bead out of Kev’s hip.

  It was an amphibian egg, a red-tinged capsule of gel, long as her little finger. Inside was a tiny homunculus. As they watched, it grew larger.

  A second egg dropped from the cut she’d made, falling into the mud. And another. Garland caught the next with a cupped hand. The ones that had fallen right into the wet were growing faster than the others; it, and the little man-shaped forms within, were suddenly as big as a fist.

  “They need the water,” Sophie said.

  Cly took Kev’s feet and hauled him uphill, away from the pond. Gooey amphibian eggs poured from his mouth and from the widening tear in his hip, leaving a glistening trail. They shivered and wiggled, straining toward the pond.

  Kev let out an agonized groan, slitting his eyes. His watery gaze met hers.

  “Kev,” Sophie said. “Kev, can we stop this?”

  He gurgled, spitting eggs, clearly terrified, then let out a low, miserable wail.

  “It’s all right. Lidman, you’re all right. Try to breathe. Through your nose now. One, two.” Cly had him on the driest point in the trail now. He rolled Kev onto his side as the man continued to moan, flailing, but only feebly. Kev’s body was softening, his flesh loosening, like a balloon losing air. Amphibian eggs were pushing their way out to the ground from under the bloody trapdoors of his toenails.

  “Close your eyes, Kir.” Cly brought a knee down, sharply, across Kev’s neck. There was a terrible snap. Kev jolted, right down to his swollen toes.

  Oh Seas, holy shit! But what else could Cly do? He was dead. It was obvious he was dying in agony.

  Kev let out a long, relieved-sounding exhalation. What was left of him went limp. Eggs began to slide out from under his eyelids, gooey tears with red, man-shaped nuclei.

  “Contain the oddities!” Cly said. “They’re of water; we’ll need fire.”

  “I’ll get oil.” Verena sprinted off.

  The body was losing coherence, turning to a spilled-custard mass of bloody, mobile amphibians—soap-slippery, hard to catch, the smallest of them as fine as foam. She, Bram, Garland, and Cly scraped at them in a mad fury, trying to block their access to the water, the pools of cattails.

  It was impossible to catch them all. The water was roiling, splashing. The stems of the bulrushes vibrated as if in a stiff wind.

  “Here.” Verena came bolting up with two cruets of oil and a moon torch—to judge from its ribbons. She poured the fluid over the biggest pile of eggs, and Cly touched the flame to its heart. There was a frying sound, a stench of cooked egg. Flames licked with weak enthusiasm at the pile of biomatter.

  “Institute security’s bringing more,” Verena said.

  Bram was stamping cherry-size tadpoles and retching. A few were as big as pugs now, and were growing arms. They scrabbled away, trying to escape.

  “Moon salamanders,” Cly said. “They lay their eggs in the body of a dead fish or reptile. They hatch in the dead of winter. Tug Island was nearly overrun, sixty years ago, by a mob of ten thousand men with frog eyes. It was that incident that led to the ban on frightmaking.”

  Sophie said, “Salt! Amphibians have delicate skins. Maybe—”

  “Over there.” Garland pointed at the crest of the hill, along the line of cattails. A few of the things were struggling uphill, out of the other side of the pond, on spindly legs. They were coming to look, more or less, like men.

  “They’re headed that—”

  Bram was interrupted by a surge of energy from the torch they were using to scorch the oiled eggs. A sizzle went through the air. Sophie felt her arms break out in gooseflesh, and her whole body itched, just for a second.

  “Teeth! What now?”

  “That was spell reversion,” Garland said.

  They looked around, hoping to see the mini Kevs turning—back into Kev? No such luck.

  Taking the torch from Cly, Sophie doused it in the bulrush pond. Then she pulled it up, peering into the fork of its branches. “There’s an inscription in here.”

  “Is it hemp paper?” Cly leaned close. “This will be somebody’s obedience scrip, I’m betting.”

  “A handmade torch with a bondage scrip in it,” she said.

  “Seems to be.”

  “Who makes the torches?”

  “Children. For the moon pyres. It’s a festival activity.”

  And it was kids Kev had been forced to inscribe. “What’s up that way, where you got this, Verena?”

  “The children’s vigil.”

  The rustlings among the bulrushes were getting louder, more frantic, as the frights absorbed the pondwater and continued to grow. Boy-size frights continued to tramp their way out of the muck.

  Guards Verena had summoned were rushing down to join them now, each carrying heavy urns of oil and, acting on Bram’s mimed instructions, using them to spread the fire across the remainder of still-squirming fright eggs.

  Cly turned to one of the original pair of guards, a twentysomething woman who looked a bit small for her uniform. Her hands were splashed with slime and gore from destroyed eggs, and her eyes were overly wide, unblinking. “Contain as many of these as you can, do you understand?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “The rest of you, come with me.”

  They dashed back uphill, toward the vigil.

  How was this meant to play? Sophie mulled it over as she kept pace with Cly’s long strides.

  Kev compels the children of slaveholders to start burning the bondage inscriptions. Then, tonight, a bunch of slaves go berserk at the I
nstitute.

  Ten thousand rampaging frights at the Institute. A mob like that would do a lot of damage. Add to that an intention laid on your children, slaves at home who’ve suddenly had their free will returned …

  Cly paused at the crest of the hill. Below them stretched a grassy plain, encircled by moon pyres.

  It was suddenly a good thing that “children,” on Sylvanna, merely meant single people. It meant that, although there were lots of actual children, tiny kids as young as three, on the green, there also were cohorts of teens and young adults, hanging out, trying not to seem too bored.

  The toddlers and little kids danced around the fires, throwing in torches, balls of paper, dried flowers, crumpled hemp accordions—anything flammable that might raise the flames high enough to reach the moon-shaped wooden frames. Burning the winter moon.

  Spell reversion energy sizzled whenever one of the bondage inscriptions burned.

  “Uh—” Bram pointed back toward the bulrush pools.

  The amphibians who’d survived the fire were gathering in a crowd maybe fifty strong. They had Kev’s face but were considerably more muscle-bound. Flaps of dried amphibian egg clung to their shoulders and hips, in some cases forming reasonable facsimiles of togas or robes. Others were nude, or clad in patchy tatters of egg skin.

  Fake slaves for a fake rebellion.

  With a little smoke and confusion, they certainly could be taken for a revolutionary horde. They were making for the hill.

  Cly bellowed, “Fleet recruits! All Fleet recruits!”

  Two dozen of the elder “children” separated themselves from the pack immediately, running to rank up in perfect formation.

  “Anyone in service, up the hill—there’s going to be a fight. The rest of you, gather up the younger children and take them to the central tower.”

  The cadets arrayed themselves as indicated, facing off against the approaching Kev clones. Cly plucked the stonewood dagger from Sophie’s hand and gave it to the most strapping of them.

  Garland had a knife, too, it turned out. He handed it to another of the recruits. Verena drew her sword.

  “They’re unarmed. We should be able to keep them from harming the younger children until Institute security mobilizes,” Cly said.

  This doesn’t have to be so bad, Sophie thought. We got a lot of them while they were still eggs. This is dozens—it would’ve been thousands.

  Thousands of Kevs and Kev is dead and Cly broke his neck and what could he do? He had to, he had to.…

  “Use these as clubs.” Cly gave her a hunk of smoothed wood—a torch handle—and handed a second to Bram.

  The bunch of Kevs advanced uphill, pushing over the moon pyres in a sort of slow-motion calm, finding torches abandoned by the children and taking them up, putting them to the flame.

  The first of them reached the top of the hill.

  Cly stepped out, blade-first. “Stop!”

  The fright paused at the tip of Cly’s sword, looking mildly curious, like a dog that isn’t sure if it has done something wrong. It tried to take another step, testing the press of the point, and let out a faint, dismayed croak.

  Behind it, the other Kevs were fanning out, trying to just muddle their way past the gathered line of defense. One bumped up against an eighteen-year-old Sylvanner boy who, with a shudder of disgust, hauled off and punched it.

  That Kev fright fell backwards against a couple of its fellows, its mouth bleeding clear jelly. It gabbled—meek, wide-eyed, and wounded looking. Everyone gaped at each other, the identically muscled frights with Kev’s face, the hodgepodge of young Fleet recruits, and the remnant of Nightjar’s people.

  The Sylvanner cadet let out a bellow and launched himself at the Kev he’d hit, ripping it out of its buddies’ arms, shaking it, and then pounding it.

  The pacification spell.

  “He can’t fight,” Sophie murmured.

  By now, one of the Kevs had turned to flee. He was chased down by another of the teens, the one with the knife.

  “They can’t fight!” she shouted. “Stop! They’re harmless! Their template was pacified—the copies are too!”

  That’s why Daimon had tried to sink Nightjar, she thought. He’d been perfectly happy to let Sophie transport Kev to Sylvanna, until he realized she was going to make his army of frights harmless.

  My migraine began just hours after he found out I meant to pacify Kev.

  It was a stroke of good fortune, but it might not be enough to prevent a riot. Everyone was in motion. Cly had sheathed his sword and was trying to force his way over to the berserking Sylvanner cadet. A few others had followed the lead of that first boy and were celebrating solstice by beating on the apparently helpless frights. More of the Kev frights were fleeing down the hill, toward a marching squad of well-armed Sylvanner constables, twenty strong. Some of the others were trying to get around the fight, to keep on bumbling toward the smaller kids.

  Garland was moving, swiftly, liquidly, sweeping his leg out to trip three of the Kevs at a shot, just enough to knock them off their legs. They goggled at him with hurt expressions; he mimed for them to sit, head down, hands up.

  They obeyed.

  Bram, after a second, copied him, giving the nearest Kev a gentle shove and then pointing at his seated pals.

  They’re as tame as puppies. Sophie hiked her sodden skirt to her hips and sprinted toward the squad of constables.

  Getting ahead of the muddled Kev frights wasn’t hard, mostly. They were mobbing down the hill, unclear about the danger they were in. She skidded through a little slick of mud just as the leader of the constables was slicing through one of the frights’ necks, beheading the lead Kev, who’d beelined for the path down toward the pond.

  It was a terrible sight, the sword chopping into the body, the spray of pinkish blood, the awful collapse, and the sound—imagined, she knew—of the head bouncing on the ground.

  Big breath. “Stop!” Sophie shouted as loudly as she could. “Stop, stop, stop!”

  The squad leader gave her a withering look.

  Sophie hurled herself in front of a fleeing Kev who was about to meet up with a sword-wielding soldier. When the Kev tried to gently push past her, she slapped its face as hard as she could.

  It froze in its tracks, looking at her with huge, hurt, froglike eyes. Then it wilted, like a plant denied sun.

  “See?” She shouldn’t be crying. It would keep her from bellowing, and she needed to bellow. She marched up—No time, no time; the others are coming—and pushed the squad leader’s sword down. “They’re harmless, they’re pacified, they’re no damned threat. Just round them up!”

  No reaction.

  “Doesn’t any of you speak Fleet?” Her throat was raw. “Tell them to put their swords down! Please!”

  A breath later, two voices rose at once, calling out in Sylvanner.

  Another of the Kevs was getting close, and she bolted toward it, tackling him before he could get within beheading distance.

  They’re never going to listen. Who the hell am I?

  But the leader was ordering his team to put away their blades. There was a whisk of blades into sheaths and they came up bare-fisted. They spread out, slapping the Kevs—some with more enthusiasm than others—and then began herding them to a nearby corner of the zoo, penning them in a corral with a pair of anxious-looking, braying zebras.

  Sophie stepped around the gelatinous, rapidly decaying body of the first Kev.

  I brought him here, she thought. I brought him to this.

  But no. He’d gotten into something bigger than either of them, long ago. She’d just been a pawn in someone else’s big spy game. Again.

  I’m gonna find every last one of them and take their toys away, she vowed. Every spell, every slave, every stupid murderous spy plot.

  Garland came loping downhill to her. “The frights are under control,” he said. “There are children burning inscriptions, here and there, but the adults are confiscating torches. His Honor says t
here’ll be trouble tomorrow, when everyone goes home. Everyone will have to check whether their slaves remain under compulsion.”

  “Tension, bad press, crackdowns,” she muttered.

  “Seems likely.”

  “Can he find a way to spin it all so it isn’t as bad as all that?”

  “If we can prove foreign tampering.” He scanned the field. “It would have been thousands of them, Sophie.”

  “And they weren’t meant to be harmless.”

  “If nothing else, this must have disrupted the festival,” Garland said.

  “Not at all.” Cly strolled up, a big grin on his face and his hand on the pommel of his sword. “We’re a carry on, carry on kind of people.”

  “Meaning?” Sophie said, though she already knew the answer.

  “Are you ready to get married, children?”

  CHAPTER 37

  Of course, Sophie thought. Cly wouldn’t give up on a good game of chicken just because of a little bloodbath.

  She stood between her birth father and Garland, feeling almost weak-kneed. The sensation reminded her of the watery exhaustion that followed a long swim, that sense of being barely able to carry the weight of consciousness, never mind holding up tissue and bone. Mixed sadness and horror rolled through her, and she felt an intense longing for America, for Mom and Dad and a society without random, arbitrary rules and horrible magic and all the rest.

  Nightjar was sunk. Everything Garland had in the world was underwater.

  She reached for Cly’s hand, and then, with her other, grasped Garland’s. “Come here, both of you.”

  “Sophie—”

  “No, Garland,” she said. “Shush.”

  She aimed for a quiet spot on the trampled meadow, near one of the unlit moon pyres, a delicate arrangement of wood and straw that hadn’t been touched by the chaos. The meadow looked out over the cliffs and the sea, the star-studded velvet of the long solstice night.

  The sky that her dress, now muddied and covered in swamp and monster blood, was meant to evoke.

  She took in the sight, breathing it in, trying to clear away the awful memories of the past few minutes.