A Daughter of No Nation (32 page)

When they climbed aboard, though, he was waiting. “It's
ginagina
sunburn. Corsetta.”

“She's here? Didn't someone tell us they'd caught her again?”

“She persuaded her guard to bring her.” He pointed at a massive, uniformed Fleet sailor.

“What does she want with us?”

“She won't tell me.” Tonio spread his hands in an extravagant gesture. “A mere ship's mate? Never!”

“Verena?” Parrish said.

“She's thrown in the towel. She said to wait for the … I think she called you a ‘brain trust,' Sophie.”

“Are you sure she didn't mean Bram?”

Tonio shook his head. “Bram's over there holding his belly, poor man.”

“I'll talk to her,” Parrish said.

Bram was aft, wrapped in rain gear, fighting nausea by taking huge gulps of air. Sophie put her arms around him and just leaned.

“What's going on with Verena?” he asked, quietly, as Sophie's sister emerged from belowdecks and conferred with Parrish.

“She's not Gale.”

“Someone expects her to be?”

“Her? Annela?” Sophie shrugged. “I think we can deduce that the Verdanii are insanely hard on their daughters.”

The rocking motion of the ship was invigorating. Bram got queasy; she had always thrived on having a little physical discomfort. Something to push against, she'd sometimes thought. Her parents had made the mistake of taking them camping once, when she was little. She'd begged and begged them to take her again.

She hadn't understood that they all hated it. Dad making fires and cutting wood and trying to find ample light so he could lose himself in the Romantic poets. Mom cooking canned spaghetti on the campfire. Being out in the sound of wind rushing through leaves, the babble of water in a river—Sophie had been the only one to thrive in that environment.

My poor bookish folks, she thought, grinning fondly and feeling simultaneously homesick.

The air was surprisingly warm, considering how far north they were. The wind was cool but had no real bite, and the occasional spatters of raindrops were barely below lukewarm. It was still summer, she thought, for a while yet.

Sweet brought blankets and coffee and they sat comfortably, watching the seas.

Tonio was on hand with a crew on the sails, ready to adjust their course if the wind changed. All the sailing ships of the Fleet were similarly livened, decks at the ready with snugly dressed sailors poised for any shift in the weather. As it continued to darken, fog crept up from the surface of the water.

The Fleet disappeared into curtains of mist—one minute they were at the heart of the great floating city, the next they might have been in the middle of nowhere, unremarked and alone.

Bram's expression tightened. Sophie guessed he was trying to calculate how many of the Fleet's hundreds of ships might collide in the murk.

Before she could come up with a reassurance, there was a rush of noise, reminiscent of chirping crickets. A whirl of glowing motes drifted back from the fore of the Fleet. Some clung to the rigging and sail of
Nightjar,
outlining the ship in little winking lights. Others passed to the rear, lighting up the ships nearest them.

The lights put her in mind of stars. “If we had a nice accurate shot of the night sky, and an astronomer, we could calculate how many years have passed between 2015 and now.”

“Easier if you're right and it has been millions of years,” Bram said. “If the stars have had time to move significant distances.”

“My theory is it has been millions,” she said. “Divergence in animal species—evolution takes time, even under pressure.”

“They could have been magically altered.”

“Maybe. But magic depends on animals and plants: inks from one species, writing surfaces from another. We'll have to check it out, but I'm thinking if you need a perfect pink tree frog from the Isle of Bambo for a given spell, you can't use magic to create the frog and then use it to do the spell. It's recursive.”

“Millions of years doesn't explain why there are still modern humans,” he said.

“Maybe that's where the magic comes in. Or the Noah's Ark legends aren't about people waiting out the disaster in flood shelters. Maybe they fled to the future.”

She saw him mulling it over.

“It's easier for one species to be the exception, especially if that species is us.”

They had no way of knowing if this was their world or a parallel maybe-future, but if it was the same, they knew that time travel existed.

So … a disaster, at home, within the next five thousand or at most ten thousand years. If there was time to evacuate, that meant either it unfolded slowly or they saw it coming.

“It wouldn't be flash-bang gone,” Bram said. “And they'd have to know Stormwrack existed.”

“Ha. That's what I was thinking.”

They shared a grin.

“You know, Cly said the government is afraid that we'll have a disaster and try to evacuate here. But he meant—when he talked about the disaster, he sounded like he meant climate change stuff.”

Bram was looking less green.

“An archaeologist would help,” she said. “If people just cropped up here, after centuries of being extinct, there'd be evidence. Stuff to find.”

“But where to dig?”

She flipped through her notes. “Verdanii. Biggest landmass, and the matriarchs apparently took it over from some ancient civilization that practiced an older form of magic.”

“You're not allowed on Verdanii.” When she'd repudiated citizenship, she'd agreed to stay away.

“So? I'm also not an archaeologist. We'd have to get one. Or train one.”

Bram shifted on the bench. “It might not be our world anyway. More likely a parallel.”

“Couldn't parallel worlds suffer parallel disasters?”

“Good point,” he said. “But if we're talking about a ten-thousand-year window on whatever it is—that's huge.”

“Right,” she said. “So it's not like doom's gonna befall Erstwhile tomorrow. Right?”

“Let's change the subject before we freak ourselves out,” Bram said.

“To what?”

Her brother's gaze wandered over the deck to Parrish, who was just emerging from below. The dimple in Bram's cheek appeared, then vanished; he was fighting a smile.

“No.” Sophie said.

“Sophie and Garland, sitting in a tree, Kay-Eye-Ess-Ess—”

“I will throw you overboard, Bramwell,” she said.

He subsided with a squelched interior chuckle—she felt it, his ribs to hers.

“I think he believes in predestination,” she said, breaking her own declared resolution not to discuss Parrish.

Bram made a dismissive noise. “They also believe that if you're born during the first hours of daylight, you'll have a more pleasant disposition.”

Parrish crossed the deck to where they sat.

“How's it going with Verena and Corsetta?” Sophie asked.

“Verena interviewed a number of people while you were gone,” he said. “The Tibbsians, you remember, have been trying to acquire snow vulture eggs. Part of the trick of … what did you call it? Bird whispering?”

Sophie nodded.

“Part of the trick is, essentially, convincing the bird to give up a certain number of eggs in exchange for having the rest of her chicks reared in a protected environment. Corsetta says she'd done so and the bird was laying when she was thrown overboard. The captain of
Waveplay,
Montaro, says there were no eggs, that Corsetta tried to rob the crew and fled.

“Do we buy that?” Sophie said.

“We believe she's sincerely fond of the boy, Rashad, back on Tibbon's Wash. We believe she's fearful that he'll come to harm if she doesn't return home. As for who's in the wrong in this conflict with Rashad's brother or who healed her when she was dying…” He shook his head.

“The Tibbs government has thrown its support behind Rashad's brother and is requesting that he be freed to return home. There's something neither party will tell us.”

She squinted at Parrish. “Did you really get rid of Gale's encyclopedia of all the island nations?”

He raised his nose. “It's easily replaced.”

She let the pieces of the puzzle churn for a second, trying to fit them together.

Bram murmured, “Verena needs the win here, remember?”

Right.
She had promised to keep her mouth shut and let Verena work on it all.

She looked up at Parrish. He had been dampened by the rain, and a thread was dangling from his coat sleeve. One of his cuffs' buttons was loose. She tugged it before it could fall, handing it to him. His skin was warm.

“Thank you, Sophie,” he said gravely.

She was suddenly, acutely aware of Bram, sitting there observing, drawing silly conclusions and gathering ammo for another round of teasing. There was no reason to help him, was there?

“No problem,” she said lightly, going belowdecks and tapping on Verena's hatch.

Her sister was sitting on Gale's old bunk, toying with her sword and glowering at a practice dummy. Her nose was red.

I forget she's a teenager.
Sophie poked her head through the hatch. “Can I come in?”

“I suppose you've got it all solved already,” she said, then blushed. “Sorry. I mean … I don't know.”

Sophie looked around the room. She hadn't gotten a good look at the cabin when it was Gale's, but her sense was that it was more spartan now. At length, she spotted an ordinary deck of cards on a shelf and picked it up, joining Verena on the bed.

“My dad…” She refrained from specifying,
not Cly.
“He's big on English literature—not a jock, not all that science-y. For kids he got me and Baby Einstein up there. He used to sit us down with our schoolwork, really tough stuff, and we'd ask him to help. I would, more often than Bram. And he'd say, ‘I don't have the answers. You want the answers, you make it happen. Find the answers.'”

“Sink or swim. He'd make a good Verdanii.”

“In the last few weeks I've upgraded my definition of jerky dad behavior.”

“We warned you about Cly,” Verena grunted.

Sophie fished through the deck. It wasn't just ordinary—it had come from home. The box had a Las Vegas casino name on it. Setting it aside, she fished for the queen and king of hearts. “Corsetta and Rashad, obviously.” Then the joker. “Rashad's brother, Montaro. What are the other pieces?”

Verena took the deck. “King of clubs—the Tibbs government. And—crazy eight of diamonds—the snow vulture.”

“Eights are wild, I like it.”

Digging in her pocket, she came up with some of the hard Sylvanner nuts Cly had forced Mervin to harvest for her. “Ships: here's
Waveplay,
Montaro's ship.”

“And the derelict boat…”

“We need something for the cat,” Sophie added.

“The cat?”

“They're valuable, right?” Sophie laid a gnarled nut among the cards. “You have the answer, Verena.”

A flash of something … anger? despair? “So, what? Your dad would lay out the problem and leave you to flail?”

“No,” Sophie said. “No leaving.”

“I've been over and over this. You're the great observer. You solve it.”

Sophie shook her head. Her father, at this point, would have said,
Quit if you want to.

Verena sighed. “Here's what I know. Tibbon's Wash is all uptight about who's who and all their social rules, but anyone can get a favor from their queen by winning whatever challenge they've got going. Their last snow vulture stopped laying about fifteen years ago and now that's the challenge. But they're hard to catch. They need someone with a gift, an affinity. So they've had this … plug, I guess, in their social safety valve.”

Sophie said, “Enter Corsetta—”

“Who schemes and scams. She's good at escapes, possibly inscribed for it. Can she pick locks? We don't know. But she works in Montaro's household as a goatherd. They want to send her vulture hunting, but she's such a handful. Nobody trusts her.”

“And who wants a goatherd getting the big prize, am I right?”

Verena picked up the king. “I think they threw young Rashad into her path.”

“Seducing the scammer?”

Verena nodded. “The
Waveplay
crew and the Tibbsians I met with in Fleet all say the same thing about the guy. He's young, he's cute, he's maybe not so bright, but he's a big hit with the girls. What if elder brother Montaro set the two of them on a collision course?”

“To what end?”

“If it was me, I'd tell younger brother to get Corsetta's name.”

“Oh,” Sophie said. “So they can inscribe her? That's kind of evil, isn't it?”

“She falls for the cute boy and agrees to go after the bird … then something goes wrong.”

“For who?”

“For big brother. He doesn't know it at first. He gets his vulture, waits until she lays an egg, throws Corsetta overboard, and makes for the Fleet.”

“There's his big score,” Sophie said. “Corsetta's gone, and he gets the prize from the Queen.”

“But she survives … why heal her?”

Sophie kept her mouth shut. You can do this, she thought.

Verena lashed her sword, jumping to her feet and spearing her practice dummy. “Okay. So he gets to the Fleet with the vulture, home-free, tries to sell it for a pot of money. But the bird's moping without Corsetta. Next there's a message from home; Rashad fell for the girl, Rashad's suicidal.”

“So, what? Put him on suicide watch, right? That's what I don't get.”

“Oh!”

Dropping the sword on the bed, Verena strode out of the cabin and over to Corsetta's cabin. She unlocked and threw open the hatch. “It isn't a suicide pact at all, is it? It's a spell. You die, he dies? He dies, you die? As you got worse, out there in the sun, Rashad started to sicken. You're effectively holding him hostage; they had to heal you.”