Child of a Hidden Sea (17 page)

This must be what being Queen of England is like,
she thought, fingering a dress that hung beside the pile, a formal gown ornate enough to be a wedding dress, and white to boot.
All your logistics handled for you, without you even asking.

The bed was turned down. All that was missing was a chocolate on the pillow. She climbed in wearily. It was soft and just the right degree of cool.
How do they do that? More magic?

She wondered if the annoying Captain Parrish was wallowing in similar opulence or if he'd insisted on lying in the stable, or on a bed of nails.

Gorgeous and arrogant. So many of the people here on Erinth are gorgeous, must be magic too, he's magically prettified. It's all so odd, the sailors' uniforms like something from the Napoleonic Wars, was it Admiral Nelson or Wellington, no, Wellington was the land guy, but it's that same silly hat and the Erinthians do use some Italian words. Can't be Italian unless this is Earth, right? I wish I knew more languages … Bram probably does …

The babble in her head continued, but the words were increasingly hard to make out, as if her own voice belonged to someone who was moving away from her, something about froglets with tails, and then she was dreaming about one, about chasing it, extending her hand to catch the froglets and finding ducklings under a leaf, ordinary ducklings from home. She reached, trying to catch soft gold feathers as it scrabbled and fled, and somebody sliced her wrist, cut off her hand and no, that was her, she was holding a severed hand. Gale's hairy, severed hand? There was so much blood and all the choking noises and that final snap, the neck breaking …

She woke to darkness, her mind hooked on an image that was half dream, half memory: a mezmer, with its long fingers wrapped around Parrish's throat. Its wrist was scarred, as if at some point in its life it had worn a shackle. She was momentarily convinced she could smell one of the things.

She lay still, breathing the now-stuffy air, listening until she was sure she was alone.

She got out of bed, tangled in the bed curtains as she groped for the lanterns, and ended up having to use the LED screen from her smartphone to find the matches and get the thing lit.

Still braving monsters, she circled the room, daring imaginary critters to grab her, fluffing the curtains, opening and closing the wardrobes.

Finally she drew a deep breath—in case she needed to scream—and jerked open her balcony doors.

Nothing there either. Peach light blazed over the horizon. Dawn was breaking; she'd slept the day and night through. Guards patrolled the courtyard; people bustled to and fro, carrying everything from mops to laundry to food. Sophie supposed the servants were always up well before daybreak, polishing everything and putting on breakfast.

She was staying in the palace of a Renaissance—well, Renaissance-y—royal court. A thrill of excitement went through her. “Practically time traveled,” she murmured.

Leaving the balcony open, she found a space on the enormous floor and stretched, working out the kinks in her muscles left by the previous day's hike and the odd exertions of Gale's funeral. Big muscles first, slow and easy, bend and pull, contract and extend, and as her body warmed she worked her way to smaller areas: neck, ankles, hands, and feet. As she stretched, she worked on quieting her mind, focusing solely on the movements and the sensations in her body. By the time the hum of nervous energy, residue of the nightmare, had faded, she was sheened in sweat.

Maybe Bram would want a run later. Would the Erinthians mind if they jogged up the volcano trail?

What I could really use is a swim
, she thought.
Or maybe another round with someone like Lais the promiscuous spider breeder. I wonder how he's doing?

She took a pair of clean, pressed jeans off the table, examining them for bloodstains and finding none. Her blouses had fared worse, apparently—she'd been left with almost no shirts. There was no question of putting on the over-the-top princess gown, so she tried matching her pants with a little jacket from the Erinthians' contributions. It was crimson, with slightly puffy half-sleeves, less casual than her few surviving T-shirts but comfortable and, she hoped, not entirely ridiculous.

The sitting room was empty but for the unmistakeable signs of Bram at work. He had gathered up a bunch of maps and what looked like a history of the Erinthian court, texts with familiar-looking words, Romance-language spelling. They were open and arranged in an order that would make sense to her brother; she had seen piles like this before.

Separate from the main mass of pages and books, sitting under her camera, was the pair of sketches she'd asked for—a rendering of the weird outfit, reminiscent of medical scrubs, and that face from the crowd.

What had Verena begun to say the other day? Something about the chances Annela would confiscate all her footage.

“And that's why we make backups, right?” She pulled out her smartphone, setting it to sync with the video camera's files. “That's why we maxed the credit cards.”

Leaving the gadgetry to synchronize, she snagged one of the bready cakes from the food tray, along with a delicate flower that smelled like apple, carved from a fruit. She bit into the fruit, tasting carefully for any hint of bitterness, and swallowed one bite to see how it would settle.

She nibbled at the cake, expecting the dryness of day-old baked goods, sans preservatives, heck, maybe a weevil or two to add to the old-timey allure of it. Instead, her tongue found steam, fresh-from-the-oven heat.

Frowning, she pushed the mourning fare to the edge of the tray, lifted the cloth napkin it lay on to reveal a polished hardwood tray below. Its handles were wrapped tight with a treated cord of black leather.

Inscribed to keep food fresh? But there was no spellscrip anywhere on the tray, unless it was under the cord. She tried nudging it aside and saw a glimmer of green text.

After helping herself to another of the cakes, she slipped out into the corridor of the palazzo, and turned her back on the stairway leading out to the courtyard. Framed oil paintings, most of them portraits of expensively dressed men, lined the plaster walls; wall-mounted lanterns ensured she could admire them at her leisure.

She prowled to the corner, found another window overlooking the water, and turned up a wide, circular staircase. She had just started climbing when the
click-tick
of claws on stone startled her. Whirling, she pressed her back to the wall, bringing up her hands, drawing breath to shriek—

A lapdog came bounding after her, a long-snouted smile on its tiny face. It skidded to a stop about a yard behind her and snagged a crumb she must have dropped, without knowing it, from the cake.

Whew.

“It's mourning fare,” she told it, for no reason. It hopped up onto its hind legs and did a quick begging dance before churning past her, up the staircase. Its trunk was shorter than that of a dachshund, its coat cream-colored and silky.

The dog barked once, looking back at her with shining, shoe-button eyes.

Sophie followed it to the top of the staircase, which led, it turned out, to a rooftop garden framed by trees in pots and abundant flowers. In the middle was an elaborately carved fountain: a ship, canted upward at the bow, caught forever in the act of breaking a marble wave. Real water sprayed out over the stone, drops glistening in the dawn light.

Someone had left an overturned bucket at the edge of the fountain. The dog hopped up, raised itself to the lip of the fountain, and dropped its face into the water, drinking, tail wagging.

“I bet you think you're king of this place,” Sophie told it. The dog blinked, expression serene.

The fountain was at the center of an arrangement of cane tables and chairs. Sophie sat in one and the dog was in her lap a second later.

“Murder investigations aren't that different from any other kind of science,” she told it. “Gather evidence, form theories, test them. Right?”

She sat, letting the sun warm her, petting the dog and watching songbirds dart in and out of the garden, light in the trees, and chirp with lusty verve for the beginning of a new day.

After awhile longer, she went back downstairs to their rooms. The dog elected to abandon her almost exactly where it had picked her up, bolting down another endless corridor as fast as its short legs would carry it.

The light on her phone was blinking, indicating that it had synced successfully with the video camera. She scanned the books, finding the same protocol book they had seen at Gale's, the one with entries on Stormwrack's various nations. Bram must have set it out for her.

Mind reader
, she thought fondly, grabbing some milky white sausages for protein before sitting down with the tome.

Cool! The countries are arranged alphabetically, and the alphabet runs from A to … yep, A to Z, just as it does at home. We can add that to the list of evidence that the two worlds are connected.

Most of the entries were illustrated, but only a few had what she was looking for: sketches of people in traditional costume. Others had ships, flags, animals, or maps of the nations' territory. She tried flipping, forcing herself to stay on task. Each page held some tantalizing fact or another; details about terrain, things about history, and a surprising amount about the animals and plants native to each island …

Just look for the clothes, Sophie. Ignore the animals and all these notes on wildlife … oh! The natural resource base in each microclimate affects the spells they can do …

The realization had a weight to it, a sense of significance. She remembered the kid from Stele Island, telling her Sylvanners liked to develop spells using other islands' resources. Then there'd been Lais, with his spidersilk—

She wondered what it would take to get a copy of this book for herself.

A tap at the door broke her train of thought. A servant appeared. “Do you need anything, Kir?”

“I think I'm okay.” He moved through the room soundlessly, lighting more lanterns and then pausing as he noticed she had pulled the food off the tray.

“Perhaps some coffee, Kir, or tea? His Grace says your nation's customs don't require that you fast after a loss…”

“We'd love some coffee,” she said, for Bram's sake. “Listen—what's your name?”

“Steward will do, Kir.”

“Uh, okay. So, Steward, the outfit in this picture. Do you know it?”

He raised the scribe's sketch to the light. “It might be a worker from Isle of Gold. The clothes would be considered nondescript, for clerical work or messenger tasks perhaps. The Golden are strangely modest at times, for all that they're so wealthy.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, Kir.” He shrugged delicately. “There are so many nations. Ask a launderer, or the Contessa's seamstress.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“I'll bring the coffee,” he said, whisking away the magic food tray.

“Isle of Gold,” Sophie murmured, paging through the protocol book. There were about two dozen “Illo,” “Isle of,” “Issle,” and “Islandia” entries.

Bram emerged from his room, looking rumpled and wholly alert. “Someone mentioned my favorite alkaloid.”

“Your caffeine delivery system's coming. And the steward thinks the guy who attacked Gale might be from a place called Isle of Gold.”

“What are you wearing?”

“Conto gave me some stuff. It's probably polite to wear it, right?”

“It's optimal if you're hoping to look like casual Friday in
Alice in Wonderland
.”

“If I wanted a lecture from Fashion Cop, I'd have brought Fashion Cop.”

“I'm a first-rate multitasker.”

They fell silent as the steward slipped in, bearing a silver tray that smelled of French roast, a pot and two cups.

Sophie bounded to her feet, giving her brother a hug. “Admit it—aren't you glad you came?”

“Glad you're not delusional, anyway.”

“Don't be a jerk, Bramble or I'll stick my tongue in your coffee.”

“You're not the boss of me, Ducks.”

“Don't call me Ducks.” In the normal course of things she'd flounce over to a couch now, feigning offense, and bury her nose back in the protocol book. Unfortunately, the thing weighed about as much as a desktop computer. She sat gingerly, balanced it on her knees, and resumed paging through.

“Here we go,” she said. “Isle of Gold.”

“What's it say?” Bram asked. He had picked up her video camera and was using it to shoot all the opened books he'd set out.

She translated: “Isle of Gold is one of five nations formerly known as the Piracy—”

“Of course. They would have pirates here.”

“—A barren rock unfit for agriculture and without much of a fishery, its difficult-to-navigate coastal waters and dense military fortifications led to its becoming the treasury of a shifting alliance of thieves, smugglers, and raiders during the decades of warfare that plagued the seas. Okay, from the looks of it, a bunch of countries put together a fleet—”

“
The
Fleet, presumably.”

“Yeah. Which battered the pirates into submission. Now the former bad guys have gone legit, just barely.”

“So what are they doing now?”

“Since the days of the Fleet Compact, Isle of Gold has specialized in trading rare goods, spell ingredients, and … oh, holy crap!”

“What?” Bram paused with his cup halfway to his mouth.

“Slaves.” She was scanning ahead.

“Slaves?”

“It's just dropped in there, oh by the way we have slaves, la di dah. We own people. People for sale!”

“Sofe. Don't go on a rant. It's early, and you don't know who might overhear.”

“I don't give a bleeding cowflop if the Conto himself kicks us into the harbor with a steel-toed boot. Slaves, Bram!”