Child of a Hidden Sea (10 page)

“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.”

“Sofe, you don't seriously expect me to buy into parallel worlds and magic scrolls on the basis of a few pictures from a crummy cell phone.”

“The pouch!” she said suddenly. “It's magic. I can show you right now.”

“Pouch?”

She opened her camera case. “I ended up with … well, I guess I stole this purse thing from Gale. Accidentally. I'll get it back to Beatrice; it's got an Amex in it.”

“Sofe, maybe we should just go get the car.”

“I'm not lying. I have charts, pictures, a magic pouch and spider samples and shells. And I found Gale's watch in the alley near Beatrice's—she dropped it in the fight. Both times I traveled, there and back, there was a timepiece.”

“Okay, but—”

“Okay nothing. You are gonna believe me.”

“Sofe, you've clearly had a rough few days.”

“Shut up, Superdork.” She pulled out Gale's pouch, laying it flat on the table. “Take a good look. Nothing up my sleeve, right?”

“Sofe.”

“Just run your finger along the zipper, Bram.”

Lips pressed together, he obeyed.

Nothing happened.

“Dammit.” That was how these things went in movies, right? You pulled out your proof with a big “Haha, now I'll show you!” and whatever it was—talking frog, the One Ring, whatever, it just sat there and refused to perform.

“Let's just go to impound, Sofe. You can chill, we'll call Doctor Brown and—”

It wouldn't matter. He wouldn't be able to ignore the photos, or the Fleetspeak.
You are gonna take me seriously.

But—just for a breath—she wondered. Pictures didn't prove anything, and she didn't know for a fact that any of the samples she'd brought home from Stormwrack came from species Earth didn't have. Proving a negative was fiendishly hard. It wasn't as though she could afford to have someone run the DNA on all those bits of shell.

Did magic even work here? “I swear, Bram, it worked, it did—”

“It's an inanimate object.”

“No!” She touched the zipper herself, as she had all those other times. “Maybe magic doesn't work on Earth. That might make sense, right—”

“Listen to what you're saying, please.”

The pouch unzipped itself, flapping open with a sound like a sigh.

“Nyah nah, so there,” Sophie said, as her brother stared at it, openmouthed.

Showed you, Mister Brain,
she thought, feeling strangely pleased.
You three, with your advanced degrees and academic honors and me just a pretty face with some swim medals and a biologist fetish, I can't possibly—

Bram pulled up his chair, fully absorbed with the pouch. He imitated Sophie's gesture. Nothing happened.

“Like this,” she said, and the pouch laced itself.

He tried again, failed again. “It's just you.”

“Huh!” She pulled up next to him. “I didn't feel any wires, and there's no room inside for—you know, for robotics. The fabric's waterproof, and it's lined, but—”

“Open it again?”

She did, and he pulled out the contents of the pouch carefully, repeating the examination she'd done days before, feeling for something, anything that might explain.

“Maybe it's gene-locked,” he murmured.

“Or magic,” she said.

“We'll need to get it scanned,” he said. “Run it through an X-ray, check for ferrous metal.”

“You believe me now?”

He looked askance at her. “I see why you thought…”

“Oh, don't you dare,” she said, punching his arm.

“… why you thought you might need psych drugs, I was gonna say.”

“That's not what you were gonna say. And I have more, remember?”

“I apologize six ways to Sunday for impugning your sanity,” he said. He was still palpating the pouch. “What else have you got?”

Hammering on the door made them both jump. “Zophie Hansa, are you there? Face me, you thieving bitch!”

“Who's that?” Bram said.

“I'm not sure,” Sophie said, “But she's got a wisp of a Fleetspeak accent.”

CHAPTER
8

The woman at the door was in her late teens and had Beatrice's fox chin and dark, wide-spaced eyes. Her hair was paler—
like Gale's
, Sophie thought. If it had any curl to it, you couldn't tell: It was drawn back in a ponytail so tight it made her eyes pop. She had the body of a marathon runner, clad in a pair of jeans and a Berkelium Genius T-shirt. Her fists were clenched, so hard her knuckles were white.

When she saw Sophie, her furious expression congealed into sick surprise. “It's true? You're who they say?”

“I'm Sophie.” This was obviously another female relation. They were coming to
her
now; maybe it wasn't all over.

She can help me convince Bram!

“You're the girl from Gale's photograph,” Sophie said.

“You're a sister?” the girl demanded.

“If Beatrice Vanko is your mom. Gale said I had a sister, so—”

“Thieving, secretive, conniving sister—and elder? You're elder?”

“Hello? Thieving?”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-four. You want to come in?”

“No.” Bram startled them both. “If she can't calm down, she can't come in.”

“Bram…”

The girl looked past her. “Who are you?”

“A brother,” he said. “Younger. Do you have a name?”

Sophie heard her teeth grind.

“Verena,” she said at last. “Feliachild.”

“Here's the thing, Verena,” he said. “Sophie's a lovely, obliging person and as far as I can tell, she's taken nothing but abuse from you people.”

“Nobody asked her to come looking for us!”

“We're full up here on bellowing.” With that, he closed the door in her face.

“Bram!” Sophie protested.

“Shh. She'll knock again when she chills.”

“I want her to come in. She can fill in the gaps about all this stuff.” She waved at her collection of souvenirs from Stormwrack.

“Sofe, you can't let these people walk all over you.”

“These people? Bram, are you having trouble handling this? Me having…”

“Having what? Family?” His voice could have shaved steel.

“Bramble—”

“Promise me, Sofe. You'll show some spine here.”

“Okay. Sure, yes. Anything you want.”

“What'd I tell you?” he muttered. “Sweet and obliging.”

A brisk little tap-tap at the door.

I should've thought about this being hard for him,
Sophie thought. “Just a second!”

She enfolded her brother in a hug before he could fend her off, and said, in an exaggerated, little-kid voice: “Make ya a trade.”

“Trade what?” His face was still closed.

“Grouchy sis is here to take me back to Stormwrack, I know it.”

“So?”

She couldn't help bouncing. “Come with! Please, Bram, please?”

“Sofe…”

“Seriously, Bram, why'd I send you fifty raving text messages? I needed you out there!”

“She's not taking you back,” he said. “There's nowhere to take back to.”

“You promise to come, I promise to have a backbone.”

“Doom will befall the whole Feliawhatever clan if you go back, remember?”

“You don't believe in fate. Anyway, if we aren't going, promising costs you nothing.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine. Let me go.”

Sophie scrambled to the door, throwing it wide.

Verena was waiting, stiffly, almost at attention. “Kir Zophie, would you kindly admit me to your home?” She said it in Fleetspeak, with only a trace of sarcasm.

Sophie tried not to beam. “Come on in.”

She stepped inside awkwardly, taking in the Thai food boxes, the comfortable furnishings, the framed family portraits. Her eye fell on the table: the chart, Lais's spider case, the shells and bits of sample. At the sight of the magic pouch, her teeth scritched together.

“How's Gale doing?” Sophie asked.

“They took her to Erinth. She'll recover.”

“If she doesn't, will they use magic?”

“No. She's been scripped a fair number of times already.”

Sophie shot Bram a triumphant look. “That's right—there's a limit, right?”

“Of course.” Verena was still glowering at the pouch.

“On magic? A limit on magic?”

“Of course on magic,” she snapped.

“See?” Sophie stuck her tongue out at Bram. “Mmmmmmmmagic.”

He was rising above. “Why don't you tell us what brought you here, Verena?”

Verena took the pouch from the table. She peered inside, seeming to inventory the items, the coins, the flower, the badge—

“I used most of the battery charge on her phone,” Sophie said, apologetically. “I was gonna get everything back to Beatrice.”

“Sure you were.”

“You don't know me,” Sophie said. She'd promised Bram, after all. “Stop accusing me of theft.”

“It's not an accusation to say you told the Stele Islanders you were holding Gale's pouch,” Verena tried to zip the bag, sighing when nothing happened.

Sophie racked her memories. “I was literally holding it at the time—”

“I know you told some salvage captain you could order her to Zunbrit Passage.”

“I wouldn't say it exactly played out like that—”

“You negotiated services for that Tiladene gambler so he'd buy food for the people on Stele.”

“He's a biologist, actually, and I'm so not apologizing for helping get food to those people. Gale said the storm was our fault.”