Child of a Hidden Sea Read online

  “The studs of Tiladene will neigh your praises for five generations.”

  She laughed. “I haven’t succeeded yet.”

  “Remember,” Dracy murmured. “Promiscuous.”

  “I promise not to get my heart broken,” Sophie whispered back. “Have you found the sea mount, Lais?”

  “They marked it.” He pointed out a mossy hump of land, barely bigger than an SUV, pocked and covered in puddles, and covered in seabird droppings. A post had been driven into its peak, an old ship’s mast from the looks of it. A strip of red cloth fluttered from its tip.

  “The scrip is supposedly sunk and weighted about forty feet from that mount’s northern point,” Lais said.

  “What do you know about the currents around here?”

  “They can be treacherous during high tide, but that’s not for…” Dracy checked. “Six hours.”

  “Great! I’m not drowning for a horse, so if anything looks off—”

  “No, of course!” Lais nudged Dracy. “Captain?”

  With obvious reluctance, Dracy produced what looked like a miniature birdcage, covered in thick black leather. “This will help.”

  “What is it?” Sophie removed its cover, finding a shuttered, waterproof lantern inside. Something glowed within, bright enough to illuminate it, even through the shutters. A shape, inside—

  “That’s—” Sophie said. “That’s a skull.”

  “It’s my father,” Dracy said. “He had his teeth scripped to shine as the sun. The intention survived his death.”

  “Was it literally sunshine?” Sophie’s mind spun through implications. A constant flood of solar radiation in the mouth—hadn’t it burned? Could he give others sunburn, then? Did he die of cancer? Couldn’t they have just made a magic lantern? Had Dracy kept it for sentimental reasons?

  Dracy replied with a gesture that was less than a shrug, more than a twitch. Sophie was coming to realize it came standard issue among these people: It meant “Don’t know, don’t care.”

  She added magical solar radiation and Can a whole people be fundamentally incurious? to the continually growing list of things she had to find out, and then eased herself overboard. It was cool but not cold. She’d borrowed a light tunic to swim in; it stuck to her body but didn’t constrain her movements.

  It was good to be back in the sea; she dipped her head underwater, letting salt water run through her hair. The ocean felt like silk on her skin. Dipping the gelatinous mask in the water to moisten it, she laid it over her face. It had the texture of silicone, sort of. She thought briefly of breast implants and giggled.

  There was no strap, but once she had it laid over her skin, the mask clung, flesh to flesh, leaving small pockets of air in front of her eyes. The visibility was sharp; unlike a plastic mask, it seemed to have no blind spots.

  She experimented with it, adjusting the fit around her nose, figuring out how to equalize the pressure.

  “Careful with this.” Lais handed down the lantern. “It’s precious to Dracy—I had to pay extra.”

  It’s her dad’s head. Of course she charged extra.

  Tying the lantern to the float, she swam out to the sea mount. The land rose to meet her: She ended up wading more than half the way. After picking her way up the slicks of seaweed on its rocks, she stood atop its peak, leaning on the improvised flagpole and peering down. The downward slope of rock was furred in normal reef vegetation—polyps, anemones, a sea star or two.

  Glancing at her watch to confirm the time, she drew several deep breaths, purging as much carbon dioxide from her bloodstream as she could. Then she swam downward, picking her way along the descending slope of the underwater mountain. She was twenty feet below the surface in fifteen seconds. There was no sign of anything manmade in the water.

  A long stroke took her to thirty feet. It was dimmer now, the water murkier; she unshipped the lantern. In the dark, she could just see the seams of its shutters glowing. She opened one a crack and a searing shaft speared through the gloom.

  A swirl of crabs shifted as the light hit them, then went back to worrying at a carcass on the floor. Dead shark, Sophie thought, looks like a mako. An orange tentacle that had extended across the reef pulled back under a low rock shelf; from underneath it, a single octopus eye regarded her with peculiar intensity.

  Sophie checked her watch. She’d been under for one minute. There was no sign of an inscription. She swam deeper, and another minute passed.

  There. Ten feet farther down she saw a jagged hole, an opening in the rock.

  Her heart had begun to thump, protesting the lack of air. But she done some breath holds since yesterday, watching her stopwatch, checking her capacity: She still had time.

  She swam closer, poked the lantern into the hole, and took a good look. The extortionists had wedged a tube—it looked to have been made of their hard-as-metal wooden substance—into a cave about the size of a walk-in closet.

  Sophie untied her ankle, looping the end of the rope around a rock outcropping near the cave entrance. Then she pointed herself upward. Rising calmly, she closed the lantern hood and surfaced, gulping air and treading.

  Lais had, by now, rowed out to the sea mount in a dinghy. “Find it?”

  “Yes. I should be able to get it in another breath. Be easier if someone else held Dracy’s lamp. You up for a swim?”

  He nodded, peeled off his shirt and unlaced his boots.

  “Pass me another length of rope,” she said. This time she tethered him—to the dingy. “Do you know any diving signs? Up? Down? I’m in trouble?”

  “I think I understand.” He imitated her moves. “Up. Down. Help.”

  “I’d rather grope my way to the surface than have to save you, so if you get lightheaded, come up. But if all goes well, we should be up again pretty quick with your watchamacallit.”

  “Inscription,” he said, easing into the water. His legs were well formed and a bit thick at the thigh: Rider’s muscles, Sophie thought, enjoying the view. He had tied back his hair to keep it out of the way. She watched him tread for a minute. He seemed comfortable enough in the water—no nerves, and they weren’t going very deep.

  By now, she’d caught her breath. “Okay, you’re attached to the boat. The line attached to the float leads to where we’re going. Don’t get the two tangled, okay?”

  He nodded. She half raised herself to the dingy, grabbing for a thirty-pound weight she’d borrowed from the ship. With her other hand, she groped for Lais.

  “Big breath!”

  The weight pulled them straight down. Lais deployed the light. They hadn’t really needed the float line—the cave entrance was visible—but she wanted to save every second she could.

  Okay, no problem, just a little hole. She took a second to show Lais where she wanted the light focused, and then wiggled through the gap in the rock. It was easier than it would have been if she’d been wearing tanks.

  The case had been wedged under a couple big rocks, loose, flat stones that were easily pushed aside. It popped up like a cork, bouncing off the ceiling of the cave, but she grabbed it on the second bounce; she’d always had good reflexes. Then it was just a matter of pretzeling herself around so she could come out of the cave head first.

  She had just reached the entrance when her light went—Lais must be out of air. She checked her watch: She’d been down for two minutes, forty-five seconds.

  Time always goes faster. Feeling her way, she found the float rope and detached it from the rock, looping it back around her ankle out of habit as she kicked up.

  The light returned: Lais, coming back down, half blinded her.

  Snugging the casket under her arm, she made a sign: UP! Lais churned water as he changed directions. Sophie kept ascending, taking it slow now, lots of time, all the air in the world was up there, waiting, waiting.

  The surface felt closer than it was. Her head broke the water and she gasped.

  “I dunno—how pearl divers—did it,” she said.

  Lai
s just sputtered.

  They climbed back into the dingy, lying against each other until they had their breath again, their bodies warming where they touched. Then they rowed back to the Estrel. Dracy leaned out, reaching for the skull, reclaiming Daddy.

  “Please tell me this is it,” Sophie said, holding out the stumpy tube to Lais.

  He produced a small key that hung from a chain around his neck. “This is the key the extortionists sent,” he said. He searched the outer edge of the case until he found a lock. He jiggled it. There was a click.

  “Hooray for that,” Sophie said.

  He unscrewed the cap and, peered inside, reaching with a finger and tugging. “There’s a plug.”

  Tug. Tug. The “plug” popped out with a thump.

  Sophie felt a kick go through her whole body, a jolt of terror.

  “Is that … a metal?” Dracy asked.

  “Down, get down!” Sophie snatched the grenade—grenade, dammit grenade, don’t go off!—from the deck and hurled it as far from the Estrel as she could.

  “Teeth, Sophie, what are—”

  She grabbed Lais by the ankle and flipped him on his back.

  There was a bang. A tremor thrummed through the ship: shock and a chattering as shrapnel and water clattered off the starboard hull.

  The birds, as one, took off, shrieking reproachfully.

  Bet there’s some petrel feathers in the water now, Sophie thought, a little stunned. I could grab ’em for DNA.

  “Is everyone all right?”

  She could see they were. Dracy had curled protectively around her lantern; a piece of flying metal had winged her arm, opening a gash.

  Sophie climbed to her feet—her knees were shaking, and tears were running down her face—and pressed her hand over Dracy’s wound, slowing the flow of blood.

  “How did you know?” Lais said.

  “How did I know?” she repeated. Her ears were ringing. “Was that the only one?”

  He looked into the case. “All that’s left in here is the scrip. What in the name of Temperance was that thing?”

  This is what it takes to make you people curious about technology? She found herself wondering if she could imitate the dunno, don’t care shrug.

  “Steel,” Dracy said. “That was steel.”

  “Teeth!” Lais said.

  A crewman was running up with bandages now, to patch up the captain.

  “Seriously?” Sophie heard an angry edge—hysteria, almost—in her own voice. “You don’t have grenades here?”

  Blank expressions greeted her.

  I suppose it’s only fair, she thought, clutching the rail to steady herself. I don’t know magic, they don’t know modern weaponry.

  “I think someone wants you dead, Lais.”

  CHAPTER 6

  “Horse racing must be pretty cutthroat if someone’s willing to blow you up over a foal,” Sophie observed a couple hours later.

  She and Lais were topside, drinking a thin, yeasty ale and looking at the stars, familiar constellations that suggested that, missing continents or not, this was Earth.

  He waved his glass. “My family’s passion is racing, but I’m something of an oddity.”

  “I know how that feels.”

  “I’ve been trying to justify my peculiarities by expanding our business into other areas.”

  “Touchy areas?”

  “You might say that.” He looked at her speculatively, then said, “Come to my cabin.”

  She followed him below, to a cabin that was only slightly larger than hers. A big leather portfolio lay open on its bunk; tied into it were leather-bound books, an array of what looked like magnifying lenses, and a loom. He unlocked a small cupboard, the twin to the one in her quarters, and drew out a small wooden case. Within were strung strands of fine thread, each next to a pinned and labeled specimen of a spider.

  “Mmm, sciencey.” The case had wooden hinges and a wooden latch, she noticed: iron was apparently scarce here. “So?”

  “Spidersilk is a key component in shipbuilding scrips,” Lais said, indicating the threads. “The best silk fetches an incredibly high price. People weave sheets of fabric for the magical texts.”

  “All of this magic is tongue of newt, eye of bat stuff? You write these things on specific substances, using inks brewed from rigidly set out recipes?”

  “And using specialized tools, depending on the intention.”

  She remembered Bastien, scratching words into the conch shell with what looked like an ivory dentist’s pick. “And when the text is destroyed, the magic goes too.”

  “I cannot understand how this is unknown to you.”

  “You’ve never seen a hand grenade.”

  “No end of wonders in this world,” he said; from his tone it was something people said often. “I’d never have guessed there was a lady anywhere who knew nothing of inscription.”

  “I grew up in a land of gunpowder and cold steel. Tell me about your specimens. These look like they’re all females?”

  “You have a good eye.” He touched one of the spiders. “These are lesser chindrella. Their silk’s decent, but not top of the line. I’ve been working to raise one that produces better thread.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “I’m getting close.”

  “You’ve moved from horse breeding to spider breeding. You’re a genetic engineer.” No wonder she got along with him: Sophie and scientists, her mother was fond of saying, like a house afire. “Would anyone kill you for building a better spider?”

  “They might,” he said seriously. “But their method was peculiar. If you’d never seen a … grenade?”

  “Definitely a grenade. And just so you know, I’m hoping to never see one close-up again.”

  “Dracy and I would have let it burst at our feet.” He leaned past her, closing the case and sliding it back into the cupboard. The move put him within inches of her. She felt a sudden urge to run her hand through those golden locks of his. Seriously, this guy belongs in a Hercules costume.

  “I owe you two debts now, Kir,” Lais said.

  “Give the Stele Islanders whatever food you can scare up.”

  “My family will repay the debt to our business, of course. But I can’t repay Stele for my life.”

  “I’m just passing through,” she said. “There’s nothing you can do for me.”

  “No?” His hand eased around the small of her back. Pressure, but not a pull.

  “You know,” she said, letting him draw her closer, “Dracy seems to think you’re an incredible cad.”

  “They take their sacred matrimony seriously where she’s from,” he said. His hand was tracing a circle around the base of her spine. “What about you? What does the land of cold steel say about such things?”

  “It says if I’m being packed off home, I might as well have some fun beforehand.”

  With that, she kissed him, tasting apricots and just a hint of the ale, running her fingers up the nape of his neck as his arms closed around her.

  Sophie had had a couple of shipboard romances over the years—one with a Canadian grad student on a narwal-filming jaunt to the Arctic, another with a German who was the world’s foremost expert on forest carbon budgets as well as a fanatic about meditation. She tended to enjoy the affairs in the moment and overthink them afterward, but it worked all right as long as she knew she wouldn’t see the guy again.

  With Lais, she was something of a mess. The first night, after sex, the weird anger she’d felt over the grenade resurfaced. She’d burst into hysterical tears, ranting: How could you not know what a grenade was and where the hell am I and what kind of people are you all anyway?

  He’d hadn’t been put off; to her surprise, he all but cried along. Nearly getting blown up had shaken him deeply, and he wasn’t too macho to admit it.

  They’d spent a couple freaked out hours churning through it: the ransom demand, the grenade, the blast itself. Her mind kept latching onto the idea of it blowing up in h
er hand, of her fingers being blown off.

  She wasn’t even sure when they segued from processing their trauma to resuming the lovemaking.

  To spare Captain Dracy’s sensibilities, she and Lais tried to keep the fact that they were sleeping together under wraps. By day, they spent their time on on deck, acting chaste and talking about spidersilk, about magic, weapons, and science.

  Lais was a treasure trove of information about Stormwrack, patiently answering question after question. His own bafflement about her ignorance never seemed to resurface. A week was seven days, he told her, a month was five weeks plus a day, a year ten months. He knew some English words: called them Anglay and had an atrocious accent, but he understood “table” and “clock” and, most important, “faster.”

  He’d never heard of Earth; even after she’d explained, he seemed to believe she was an overly sheltered person from some very remote island.

  Lais was able to put names to the various species of sea life she’d collected, to tell her a bit about the local ecosystem. There were things he didn’t know. His home, and thus his area of expertise, was farther south. But he understood the basics of wildlife management.

  It made sense. Stormers would be keen to preserve animal and plant species—even if an organism had no magical use that they knew of, there was always a chance they’d discover an inscription that made use of it.

  She asked questions, took notes, told him tall tales about San Francisco. At night, they had whispery, athletic, enthusiastic hammock sex.

  On the second evening aboard they were all sitting out on deck when Dracy raised her head, squinting. “Wakelight,” she said, pointing to a faint glimmer, barely visible against the fading light of sunset.

  As they neared the glimmer, it brightened to a candle flicker. It was a floating balloon, about the size of a bathtub; it had the texture of a jellyfish body, and within was an intricate, crystalline blossom, pinkish in color—a wild rose, Sophie thought. The flower glowed within its protein float, as if there was a flame within it, as it rose and fell on the waves.

  “Apprentice spellscribes practice making them,” Lais said, behind her. “Look, there’s another.”