Child of a Hidden Sea (11 page)

“And, finally, you bore the pouch from Stormwrack to Erstwhile—to here.”

“What's the problem? You can take the pouch back right now.”

“The problem is I'm meant to hold Gale's position, not you. But now you've usurped it. The idiotic thing thinks you're her heir.” Verena poked the flaccid lips of the pouch, then hurled it. Sophie caught it left-handed and it promptly zipped itself shut.

“The ugly purse has opinions?” Bram asked. “It … imprints?”

“This is a bad joke,” Sophie said. “My birth mother can't stand the sight of me, the aunt says I'm a danger to everyone, little sis is all “you're a thief” and ragging on me about an inheritance—”

“But hey, the handbag likes you.” Bram leaned against the back of the couch. His eyes crinkled.

Oh, no,
she thought,
We're going to have a laughing fit and this poor kid's going to explode on us.

She looked at the pictures on the mantle, Mom and Dad, steadying herself by thinking about how much this would upset them. Imagining Dad's face, cinching tight, hurt, had its usual steadying effect.

Say anything.
“When did you find out about me?”

Verena's eyes flicked in the direction of the clock. “I had no clue until … about two hours ago.”

“And what did Beatrice say? Do we have the same father?”

Verena shook her head. “Mom said you were a half sister. From an earlier relationship.”

“With?”

“Not with my dad, is all. That's everything I got out of her, okay? Having you just turn up, and then Gale's attacked … she's freaking out.”

“Yeah. Listen, I see why she's upset, and why you are.”

“Upset?” Verena's voice rose. “You haven't begun to see upset.”

Bram's expression clouded, but Sophie shot him a warning glance, before he could get overprotective again.
She's a kid,
Sophie thought.
A teenager whose world has been flipped upside down. Cut her a break, Bramble.

Instead of lecturing her about her manners, he said: “Why don't you help yourself to some curry?”

“Yeah,” added Sophie. “We'll eat, and you can tell us how I can go about putting this inheritance mess right.”

Verena shifted sideways, a movement that reminded Sophie of a cat with an angry, lashing tail. With a huff, she took the offered seat.

“I'm not sure,” she said. “Either Gale or Mom, or maybe both, will probably have to disinherit you.”

“As opposed to just throwing me away?”

“If that's not enough, the Allmother, on Verdanii, might have to repudiate you. Or you her.”

“Verdanii?” asked Bram.

“One of the bigger islands, right?” Sophie said. She pulled the kiddie map across the table and nudged it over to Verena. After a second, her sister tapped the biggest of the land masses, drawn smack in the middle of the map's northern hemisphere.

Bram took up a pen and promptly wrote the island's name on the map. “I don't know, Sofe. Should you be agreeing to get excommunicated from a whole country?”

“She asked what she might have to do,” Verena said. “Does she want to make this right or not?”

“Listen! I don't want Gale's—you're talking about wealth, right? Money, material stuff?”

“And position,” Verena said.

“I don't care about stuff or position. I just wanted to meet my…” Her gaze slid to Bram. “… my genetic relations. I didn't set out to usurp anything. Magic, paperwork, whatever the process is, we can do that.”

“We'll have to ask Gale about the inheritance laws.”

“Not your—our—Beatrice?”

A dismissive head shake. “She's still hysterical.”

“So,” Sophie said, trying to hide triumph. “We go to … Erinth? It was Erinth that they took Gale to?”

Verena tapped another island, well west of Verdanii, closer to the equator, one of a chain of islands that bounded a circular-looking sea. “Yes.”

“Hold on, Sofe.” Bram wrote “Erinth” on the smaller island. “Verena, Gale told Sophie it would cause problems if she didn't stay away from Stormwrack.”

“Ha! You believe me now?”

“I believe the part about you causing trouble.”

“She's already caused a ton of trouble,” Verena said. “My mom has been drinking since last night. She didn't tell Dad about you either, and … it didn't go down well. And this issue with the courier pouch may seem trivial to you, but I've been working toward filling Gale's shoes my whole life. You can't just stumble in off Nob Hill and become a Fleet courier.”

“I don't want to, I promise. I just wanted to know you guys. Did Beatrice tell you anything about my birth father?”

“Mom won't talk about that.” Verena reached back, finding the base of her ponytail and cinching it even tighter, her jaw working. “Look, Verdanii women are meant to be tough and talented. The expectations are high. From what Gale's told me, my … our … Mom could never quite measure up to being a Feliachild. She had some meltdown twenty-five years ago.”

“Twenty-five,” Bram said.

And I'm twenty-four. Great, I've already caused a nervous breakdown and a fisher-killing storm.

“Mom came here—had Sophie, I guess—and vested her courier post in Gale.”

Bram smoothed out the map. “She ran to San Francisco?”

“Mom hates Stormwrack. She's been here ever since. But on paper, the courier position passes to her first daughter.”

“So she loaned the job to Gale and it's supposed to go back to you.”

Verena glowered. “I'm the second daughter now.”

“If worst comes to worst, can't I just ‘vest' it back to you?” Sophie asked.

“Oh, gee, that's generous.”

“Focus, guys,” Bram interrupted. “Verena, if we're going to go to some Oldee Englishee Island and strip Sophie of rights she didn't even know she had—”

“Because she
doesn't
.”

“Your aunt said it would mean trouble, or danger. For all of you, not just Sophie. Isn't it in your interest to consider the faint chance that Gale knows what she's talking about?”

“Bram's right,” Sophie said.
Big surprise there,
she thought. “You gotta at least check that I'm not gonna cause a hurricane or a plague.”

“A plague? Really?”

“Gale said there'd be trouble.”

“Why does it fall to me to check? Sophie's the one who's created the problem.”

“And you're the one who wants it solved, aren't you?” Bram said.

Sophie asked, “Do you even know what she meant? Couldn't the problem she referred to be this whole inheritance thing?”

“Probably.” Verena said. “Supposedly there are prophecies, about Gale—”

“Prophecies?” Bram couldn't help it, he laughed. “Suddenly I see why you're not worried.”

“You don't believe in predestination, do you?” Sophie asked.

“If anyone could predict the future, it's the Verdanii.”

“That's not an answer,” Bram said.

Verena shrugged. “I want to believe we choose what happens to us. Otherwise, we're…”

“Fate's sock puppets?” Sophie suggested.

“Yeah.”

“But you still don't know why they packed Sophie off,” Bram said. “Not for sure.”

Verena shook her head.

“Could you just go see what you can find out? We need time to pack anyway,” Sophie said. She could see her brother stifling a groan.

So much for playing it cool,
she thought, but for Bram's sake she tried not to grin.

CHAPTER
9

After Verena left, Sophie and Bram went to retrieve her car. She spent the next four hours dragging Bram around electronics and camera stores, acquiring equipment she could use for data collection, all geared for exploring a world with no Internet or electricity.

“Small stuff,” she told him. “Portable items with little batteries.”

“You're keeping the receipts, right?”

“Just check the user reviews.”

She found a decent solar battery charger and a new video camera. It was consumer-grade, not pro, but it had a good lens, memory to burn, and the salesman had thrown in the waterproof housing.

She topped off the spree by getting an upgraded phone that was nearly as powerful as her laptop. It would sync with both cameras on Bluetooth, providing a backup for everything she shot.

Once she had the tech organized and tested, she dropped their parents an e-mail saying the two of them were going sailing.

Verena returned the next morning. She was clad in a silky-looking tunic and calfskin pants, and she had two pages, in an unfamiliar language, that she said were invitations—travel visas—to visit Erinth.

“These came from Annela?” Sophie said. They were short, compared to the pages she'd been given before.

“No, the Erinthian travel office,” Verena said. “I'm covering my backside a little.”

“Did you find out anything?”

“Gale's big issues seem to be the inheritance, which is already messed up, and Mom freaking out, which has already happened.”

“You spoke to her?”

“She's still unconscious. I talked to some people she's close to in the Erinthian court.”

“And the prophecy thing?” Sophie said.

“What do we care?” Verena said. “We all agreed we don't believe in foretelling.”

“No. But if Gale does, it explains why I got the boot.”

“Gale's house has the prophecy—well, a transcript.” Verena shook her head. “You're not mentioned.”

“What
does
it say?”

She shook her head. “It's secret.”

“Doesn't matter.” Bram shook his head dismissively.

“He's right,” Sophie said. “We're back to sorting out how to make you Gale's … apprentice?”

Verena nodded.

“So let's go already!” In addition to the cameras, Sophie had a trunk full of diving equipment and a duffel bursting with clothes, antibiotics, a first aid kit, and instant food: protein bars, instant soup, dark chocolate, banana chips and a pound of trail mix. If she ended up among starvelings again, everyone was getting a big calorie fix.

“Stand by me,” Verena said. She produced a heavy, lead-colored clock, laying it flat on her palm like a metallic pancake or a tiny serving tray.

“Gale had a pocket watch,” Sophie murmured to Bram. “She fumbled it when those guys attacked her and splash, we were in the ocean. The woman who sent me back used a watch, too.”

It was bait, of sorts, and he couldn't resist. “Timepieces. Does that imply Stormwrack's another time?”

“Oh!” she said. “They call this place Erstwhile.”

“Implying our world is a past Earth?”

“But how could the land masses be so different? Even millions of years—”

Verena interrupted them. “I'm trying to concentrate here.”

The clock ticked, metallic clinks that tapped on Sophie's consciousness like icy raindrops against warm flesh. Her vision blurred, as if her eyes were suddenly swimming in tears. Blackness roiled in, but without faintness.

When the murk cleared, they were standing in a dim, round chamber walled in black bricks and lit by torches. High above them, something was beating out seconds in sync with Verena's clock. Weights, big ones, hung above, strung on massive chains whose links appeared to be carved from wood.

“This is the grand clock tower on Erinth, behind the palazzo,” Verena said.

Made it, made it back …
Sophie thought gleefully. She put out a hand to her brother and another to her luggage, reassuring herself that both Bram and her equipment had come through.

“Teleportation,” Bram breathed. “I don't believe it.”

“Teleportation or time travel. Magic. Told ya.”

“I am going to find physics that explains this. Somewhere within M-theory is—”

That scritching-teeth sound, from Verena. “Do you guys ever stop?”

“Come on,” Sophie protested. “I know this is old news to you, but even so, you must see that it's incredible.”

If Verena agreed, it didn't show on her face.

Bram, however, was practically crackling. “Can we go out? Can we see?”

“We're not staying here. You can leave the bags.”

Bram had brought a single mid-sized backpack, about a fifth as large of Sophie's duffel. It probably contained two outfits and a bunch of tools. It was dark leather and brown canvas, high-end, masculine but not macho. He was out of the nerdwear today, dressed for a hike: boots, light water-resistant jacket, fisherman's sweater over his shirt, and dark pants.

He shouldered the pack, declining to ditch it, as they filed up a spiral staircase, through a heavy wooden door and out into a wide, manicured garden that ornamented the courtyard of a grand villa made of black stone. Below the villa, a city spread down a coastal hillside, overlooking a big port filled with sailing ships at anchor.

Sophie pointed out a sail: “Bram. That's Gale's ship.”

“The one with the tasty captain?”

Verena shot her a startled look. “Pardon?”

“It's just I forgot his name,” Sophie explained, blushing.
Spectacularly tasty,
she thought.

“It's Parrish,” Verena said. She flagged down a boy in plain blue livery, speaking a few quick sentences. The cadence of her speech had a familiar rhythm, but the words—

“What's she saying?” Bram murmured.

“Dunno,” Sophie said. “They taught me the Fleet language, but the islands seem to have their own dialects.”

“Latinate—sounds like a romance language,” he said.

“
Passegiare,
” she agreed, repeating the one word she'd caught. “That means walk, I think … in Italian?”