Child of a Hidden Sea Read online

  The other was tiny, barely a mote … and they were making more or less straight for it.

  Sophie scooped up a pail that had been tucked under a bench near the rail, then tied and threw a knotted rope overboard.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I need a better look at that.”

  She let herself down the rope, enjoying the feel of the wind rushing through her hair. Winding the rope around one wrist so that she was secure, she reached out with the pail, skimming the surface of the water. Only one shot at this …

  It was all she needed. The little flicker splashed into the bucket, right on target, and she tucked the rope handle of the bucket into her elbow and hauled herself back up to Estrel, passing the pail to Lais before pulling herself up and over the rail.

  This one wasn’t a rose: Growing within the pouch of protein was a woman’s face, a flat profile much like a cameo.

  She lifted it out of the brine. The clear skin holding the crystal had the gelatinous solidity of a sea jelly. At its base was a round skirt of ruffled cellulose, the color of seaweed and the shape of a paper muffin cup, on which the spellscrip letters had been inked in gritty, crystalline ink. “You say the spellscribes make these?”

  “It’s part of their training. They form all manner of pretty things out of sea salt, and leave them to grow in the Fleet’s wake. The lights mark their passage. We’re getting close.”

  “Wow.” Sophie eased the light back into the bucket before she could damage the lettering on its base. The tiny cameo glinted, like candlelight, undulating with the movement of the ship.

  Next morning, halloos from the sailors brought them out of Lais’s cabin.

  On the horizon they could see a forest of masts and sails, more ships than Sophie had ever seen in one place, a massive expanse of seacraft. The masts bristled upward, some dwarfed by ships as colossal as aircraft carriers, others just toothpicks on beads that zipped along the water between the giants. Wheeling, manmade objects circled in the air above them: hang gliders? Further above were birds, flocks of the opportunistic gulls that followed any convoy.

  “The Fleet,” Dracy said, radiating disapproval—not at the ships, but at the sight of the two of them.

  Guess we shouldn’t have expected to fool you, huh?

  “It’s so big!” Sophie had been so interested in the flora and fauna that she hadn’t gotten around to asking much about society, civilization. She had gathered there were different island nations, about two hundred fifty of them, that the Fleet was some kind of shared defense force, a seagoing cross between NATO and the UN. But this wasn’t some convoy. It was practically a city. “I never imagined anything on this scale. How many ships are there? When will we catch up?”

  “We’re not to approach,” Dracy said. “Your people are coming to us.”

  “Says who?”

  The captain pointed out a small yacht that was making for them against the wind. “Messenger ship, Verdanii flag.”

  “Could I override that order, too?”

  “From a Convenor?” Dracy shook her head. “Pack your things, Kir.”

  Dejected, she returned to her cabin. “Dammit!”

  “I am sorry, Sophie.” That was Lais, leaning on the hatch to her cabin. One of his smaller leather valises dangled from his fingertips.

  “I have to go back to San Francisco, I do. But to go without knowing when I can return … when there’s so much here.”

  “You’re a true explorer,” he said. “It’s a crime to banished you to the outlands. The people of the Fleet could use someone with your spirit of inquiry.”

  “I don’t know why the land masses are the way they are. I was so intrigued by the magic and the spiders I didn’t ask about government and politics. Now I’ll never know.” Stupid, to be crying …

  “Here,” he said, handing her the valise. “I can get another.”

  “Thanks.” She opened it, tossing her notes in the bottom, along with the world chart and her gathered shells and bits.

  “Have a care for your Fleetspeak scrip.” He tapped the locked cabinet. “You want my spiders?”

  “Can you spare them?”

  “I’m breeding them, remember?” He handed her the frame. “What did you call that? Renewable resource.”

  “As good-bye gifts go, it’s a little weird.”

  “There’s this, too.” He pulled her close, giving her a long kiss.

  “You’ll be careful, Lais? Someone did try to kill you.”

  He shuddered. “You know I haven’t forgotten.”

  She felt a little flash back to that sensation, the grenade in her hand, and swallowed. “Watch yourself.”

  He rubbed his chin—three days of spun gold stubble—over hers. “I’ll go straight home and bury myself in a haystack.”

  “Kir Sophie,” someone called. “Your transport’s here.”

  Feeling more than usually like an orphan from a Dickens novel, she climbed to the deck and exchanged stiff good-byes with Dracy, then shouldered her camera case and clambered down to the waiting yacht.

  She barely had her feet on the deck when a uniformed boy was leading her below, to a windowless cabin.

  The woman waiting within was tall, curvy, and copper-skinned. She bore herself like a queen. She said nothing until the messenger had closed them in the room together. Then she said, “You’re Beatrice’s daughter, all right. I see it in the eyes.”

  “Who are you?” She was getting mad now; it felt better than weepy.

  “A cousin,” the older woman said. “Annela Gracechild, of Verdanii.”

  “Do you know if Gale is okay?”

  The older woman waved a sheet of yellow paper. “She’s alive, apparently thanks to you. Captain Parrish sends that he’s taking her to Erinth. She will recover.”

  She had promised herself she wouldn’t beg, but … “Listen, I know Gale wants me gone, and Beatrice thought nothing of me, but do I have to go? I’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s here. I want to have a look around, and I won’t make trouble, and I don’t even have to say I know them, Gale and those guys. You can call me Jane Doe or something. If I saved her life—doesn’t that get me a tour of the Fleet, at least?”

  Annela held up a hand. “Bringing you so close was enough of a risk. I’m sorry, but—”

  “Why? Nobody will tell me what I’ve done. I’m not useless. Why does everyone…” She made herself finish. “My entire birth family seems to hate me. What is the deal?”

  “You’ve done nothing, child. It’s difficult, I know, unfair. But you must return to your adopted kin on Erstwhile and keep silence. Forget about Stormwrack, Sophie.”

  “And if I can’t?” It was a bluff. What had Gale said? She’d bring down ruin on them all.

  “You have little choice,” Annela said kindly. “If you won’t seek your peace, we’ll scrip you forgetful.”

  “You’d … give me amnesia?”

  “It’s not what I want. We are kinswomen. But you seem possessed of a truly all-devouring curiosity—”

  “That’s not a disease!” The words came out sounding braver than she felt. If they could teach her Fleetspeak in a matter of hours, they could certainly wipe her memories.

  “Those who question find the ill in everything,” Annela said, in a tone that hinted it was a common saying.

  The wrongheadedness of that took Sophie’s breath away. She sank onto a chair. “When are you going to pack me off?”

  Satisfied, Annela handed her an official looking bundle of onionskin papers. “This is a travel visa for the time you’ve spent here already. It authorizes one visit, one week, here and back. I need you to sign it.”

  “Closing the barn after the horse escaped, aren’t you?”

  “Legalities must be observed.”

  She scrawled her name across it, deliberately misspelling Hansa, just to be peevish. “Now what?”

  “Bettona?” Annela summoned an aide, who pulled out a small pocket watch, gold in color, scratched wit
h magical, glowing letters. She lay a hand on Sophie’s arm.

  Gale had a watch when we came here. Sophie half jumped to her feet. “I’m going now? Wait—”

  It was too late. The watch tick-tick-ticked and the sheaf of paper fell out of her lap, in slow-mo, to the deck of the cabin and then, as it landed, she heard one last ringing, hollow tock! With that, Sophie found herself on her butt in an alley, about a block and a half from where she’d left her car.

  CHAPTER 7

  Bram was waiting by the time she got back to their parents’ place.

  The car had been towed, of course, with her wallet and BART pass and all her stakeout stuff inside. She had to walk more than twenty blocks before she found a cabbie willing to take her home.

  As they pulled up in front of her parents’ post-war bungalow, her brother was pacing on the front porch with a phone to his ear. He snapped it shut and darted across the lawn. “Sofe. What’s happened?”

  “You didn’t call Mom and Dad, did you?”

  “Not yet. Until an hour ago I thought you’d gone diving with one of your hairball friends.”

  The cab driver honked.

  “He needs money.” Sophie sighed.

  “Sit, before you fall,” Bram ordered, pointing at the porch swing and reaching for his wallet.

  Her brother was usually turned out as neatly as a pin, with preppy overtones: pressed slacks, nice shirts, sweaters over top. Today he’d thrown on a pair of jeans and an Invader Zim T-shirt, and he hadn’t put his contacts in either. He had a terrible fear of looking like a nerd; on a normal day you wouldn’t catch him in anything so casual. His chestnut hair was fluffed every which way—he must have rushed over to the house in an all-fired hurry.

  What got his wind up?

  Sophie took his advice and collapsed on the porch steps, setting down Lais’s valise and the camera case and letting her emotions crash in on her in waves: great swells of dejection, rejection, humiliation, sprays of fury. A mother who didn’t want her, all the tantalizing biodiversity of that other world, and magic, too. A huge sandbox she wasn’t allowed to play in. By the time her brother had gotten rid of the cabbie and come up to sit beside her, she was bawling.

  Bram put an arm around her and waited it out, giving a passing neighbor the stink-eye when she paused to stare.

  “You smell like a week at sea,” he said eventually.

  “I’ll avail myself of the all-holy hot running water soon,” she said, sniffing.

  “Better not say you missed the amenities more than me.”

  “You were the only thing I did miss.”

  “Chill, Ducks, or I will call the parents.”

  “No! It’s better that they’re gone. And don’t call me—” A hiccup broke up her words. “Ducks.”

  “Sofe, you’re scaring me a little.”

  “Sorry, Bramble.” She pulled herself up, feeling heavy-limbed, and hauled her stuff into the house. She pulled out her camera, popped her battery into a charger and the chip into the laptop computer that lived by the kitchen island. Then she opened the fridge. The yogurt was green and the only thing that looked edible was an apple.

  Haven’t had fresh fruit in a week, she thought. Yet what I want is pizza.

  “Sofe.”

  “I know, I know.” With a sigh, she pointed at a snowdrift of papers, bank statements from their mother’s office. “I went through the parents’ files.”

  “I figured as much. Looking for your birth family again?”

  “I found them.”

  “What?”

  “There was a receipt for a safe deposit box, not the usual bank. I had a dig around for the key, then went in and forged Mom’s signature.”

  “Jesus, Sophie. That’s serious fraud.”

  “I know, but look.” The computer had booted; Sophie clicked into her online documents and pulled up a file. “I found the adoption agreement.”

  “And photographed it, I see.”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  Bram clicked through, speed-reading. “Private adoption. It doesn’t look like they paid for you, just promised no contact with the birth family. Ever. No surprise there—we figured as much.”

  Sophie tapped the screen. “Here’s her name. Beatrice Feliachild. It’s Vanko now: she’s married. I traced her to Bernal.” Sophie opened the folder for her camera chip and pulled up a shot of her birth mother. “She lives a twenty minute drive from here.”

  Bram leaned in, fascinated, and began clicking through the images. “Bizarre … I see the resemblance. That curly hair of yours. At that length, it’s rather pre-Raphaelite.”

  “The eyes—I have her eyes.”

  “Anime eyes.” He nodded. “I can’t believe you found her.”

  “Neither could she,” Sophie said.

  “She’s been in San Francisco all this time?”

  “Looks that way. She runs a center for sick kids and their families—kids having surgery.”

  “So she’s a saint?”

  “She’s a wingnut.”

  “And is her husband your biodad?”

  “I’m pretty sure not. Asking about my father was like setting off a bomb in her face.” Bomb. Her mind wandered, briefly, to Lais, and the grenade. Someone was trying to kill him. Would he be okay?

  “I take it the mother-daughter reunion was suboptimal?”

  She found herself welling up again. “She called me a viper, Bram.”

  “I’m sorry, Sofe.”

  “Stupid. It was stupid even to try.”

  “I hate it when you say that. I don’t think you’re stupid.”

  “What do you know?”

  “I know it all,” he said, putting on an air of serenity. “I am supergenius.”

  “You are superdork.”

  “I know you’ve looked at the fridge three times since you got home. Hungry?”

  She nodded. Crying exhausted her, and she’d been wound pretty tight even before Annela Gracechild had zapped her off home without so much as a thanks for flying, buh bye.

  “Go have a shower. I’ll burn your clothes and call the Thai place. They’ll bring food, you can tell me everything and then we’ll swing by impound and pick up your car.”

  “You know about the car?”

  “Told you, I know everything.”

  “Don’t be a jerk, Bramble.”

  He held up an envelope. “City mailed out a notice.”

  “Don’t burn the shirt,” she said. “It’s a sample.”

  “Of what, the power of reek? If I’d been driving that cab, you’d still be on the hoof home.”

  Like most of Bram’s ideas, the shower was an inspiration. She soaped up, luxuriating in the feel of a week’s mung coming off, of working real shampoo through her curls. She turned up the water until it was as hot as she could endure and cried some more. She came out scalded pink, feeling scraped and empty.

  By the time she’d put on a clean pair of jeans, a tank top and her favorite chenille sweater, the smell of red curry and coconut milk was drifting upstairs.

  No more fish broth, anyway.

  Bram had opened a bottle of Pinot Noir and cleared the table, stacking their parents’ documents tidily on the counter. He had opened up the cartons and laid out two plates, cloth napkins, and some lacquered chopsticks Mom had brought back from a dig in Vietnam.

  “This is going to sound wild,” she said. “Keep an open mind, okay?”

  He nodded.

  Okay. Take the plunge. Glossing over her three days of stalking Beatrice, she began by telling him about seeing Gale being attacked by the two men in the weird scrubs. Then—before he could whip out his phone and call his therapist for some kind of emergency trauma session—she jumped right into the impossible stuff. Ending up in an ocean, in Stormwrack.

  “I can document this,” she told him. “Some of it, anyway.”

  Bram was trying mightily not to look worried. “You can document lost time and teleportation?”

  She reached for the laptop
, accessing her e-mail account. Gale’s phone had dutifully forwarded the pictures Sophie had been taking. She selected a message at random, opening it. The image was of Lais, on the deck of Estrel.

  “That’s not magic, Sophie, that’s Conan the Barbarian.”

  “They grow the men cute there,” she said, her mind’s eye offering up the memory of the gorgeous man in the rowboat, the one they’d said was captain of Gale’s ship. What had his name been? She opened the next e-mail attachment: the sea mount with its improvised flag. Nothing special there. A third, and there it was: the wide shot of the ships and masts and sails, the city at sea.

  Bram kept his tone neutral. “Kind of blurry, but it looks like a tall ship convention.”

  “It’s the Fleet,” she said. “Stormwrack’s capital seems to be this big convoy of—oh! And the Fleet has its own language, which I learned overnight, by magic. If need be I’ll find a linguist—they can tell you it’s a real language.”

  “Ohhh kaaaaay.”

  “I’m not delusional, Bram. You know I’m not delusional.”

  He produced his own phone, reading: “Losing my mind. Send doctors with Haldol. Sofe.”

  “What?” Oh—the texts she’d composed on Gale’s phone. “Come on, I was kidding.”

  “How about this? Bram: Sank a fishing boat and 3ppl drowned. Turns out bad weather is my fault.”

  “It’s what Gale said. Someone was trying to do her in and the storm … oh.”

  “What now?”

  “Just … it’s strange. The only two people I got to know there were both attacked. That’s an odd coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “It would be,” Bram said carefully. “If it wasn’t something that—”

  “That what? Was all in my mind?”

  “Bramble: just used a skull with glow-in-the-dark teeth as a dive lamp.”

  “I did use a skull—”

  He set the borrowed cell phone aside. “There’s a lot of death and guilt and creepiness in these messages. I’m thinking that finding your birth family, defying Mom and Dad, breaking their contract with your birth mother…”

  “I feel guilty and it’s made me all morbid and delusional?”

  “Do you feel guilty?”

  “No! Whatever agreement they all made, I never signed on.”