Child of a Hidden Sea (40 page)

“Sophie, is this your brother?”

“Uh … yes. Bram, this is Clydon Banning. Cly, my brother Bramwell Hansa.”

Cly bowed. “Your sister is devoted to you. This tells me you are a man of great worth.”

“Thanks,” said Bram. He didn't quite bow back, but he bobbed his head, the way Tonio sometimes did.

“Cly, is Lais okay?” Sophie said.

“Your dissolute spider breeder? Shattered pate. I've transferred him to Allium's primary hospital ship,” he said. “If he's to live, they'll have to scrip him. Sophie, I'd like to escort you to the Fleet Graduation.”

“Uh—”

“Unless, that is, your mother would like to complete her analysis of my character.”

Whatever it was, Beatrice wasn't prepared to say it to his face.

Okay, they're under stress, it's exactly the kind of situation where people are gonna be acting like jerks. Cut them some slack.
“I can't believe you guys were ever married.”

“It was a source of wonder to two nations and all who knew us,” Cly said, with every appearance of good humor, as he offered her his arm.

“You're injured,” he said, as they made their way toward the bow.

“Pulled some muscles. It's healing.”
Constitution
was coming up behind
Temperance
, closing the distance between them.

“So that's the pirate-sinker,” she said, changing the subject. “Its hull—is that skin? It looks like there's a healed scar.”

“Very perceptive. It's sharkskin over stonewood,” Cly said. Unlike the other ships,
Temperance
had smokestacks instead of sails. It had what looked like a cannon deck, too.

“The Tallon designer who built her had lost her family and husband to the Piracy,” Cly said. “The ugliness of the ship, I've always thought, bespeaks the fundamental nature of revenge.”

“That's poetic of you.”

“What's odd is that so much good came of it.” He gestured at the Fleet. “She's a brute instrument, and yet the Cessation has been of indisputable benefit.”

The Cessation. That was what was at stake now. “A hundred years of peace, right?”

“One hundred and nine.” He nodded. “The tales from the century before describe a world at the height of savagery. Nations wiped off their home islands, populations eliminated to the last child, by better armed raiders. No ship sailing alone was safe, and when they were taken … well, anything might happen to the people aboard. The seas bear silent witness, we sometimes say.”

“All at risk, now.”

“I have faith in you, child,” he said. “In the future of the Fleet, too.”

They were looking down upon the main deck now. There were uniformed kids down there, perhaps sixty of them. The youngest was about twelve, Sophie guessed, the eldest maybe eighteen. They wore red jackets and white gloves and most of them had brought dates, some of whom were dressed in civilian clothes from, presumably, a variety of nations. The variety of clothing designs gave the sight a TV science fiction feel: as if this were
Star Trek
's idea of a senior prom in space. All that was missing was a few people with latex forehead prosthetics.

Waiters in livery moved among them; they were the oldest people there. Otherwise, the deck was entirely clear of adults. The gathering nearly sizzled with an air of anticipation. The kids kept casting looks over the bow. Sophie paused, following their gaze into blackness. Seeing nothing, she scanned the upper decks. Bram and Parrish were on a higher deck, overlooking the same scene amid a crowd of gray-haired officers.

Parrish's handsome face had that carved and closed look, as if he were more statue than man, as he took in the gathering. Then he looked out over the bow, his attention snapping forward like a cat's, watching for the same thing they were.

A burst of light. A flare, Sophie supposed at first, but it had wings and a sparking fan of a tail. Flapping upward, expanding, it cast blue-green light on a raft crowded with figures, perhaps a half kilometer away. Eight people … ten? The lightbird rose, growing ever brighter, and then shrieked as it began to fade. The cry was a signal, like a starter's pistol. The figures dove into the water.

The uniformed kids on
Constitution
's foredeck began shouting and cheering.

A race
Sophie checked her watch. If the distance was five hundred meters and
Constitution
was the finish line, they'd be at least five or six minutes.

“This is the graduating class of the Fleet Universitat,” Cly said. “The officer candidates.”

“And the swimmers?”

“The ten of them out there, racing to
Constitution
, are at the top of the class. The tradition is to finish out the year with this race, and a dance. Then they're each posted to a ship.”

“If it's a graduation, shouldn't their instructors be down there?”

“Officially, the Slosh—the race—isn't allowed. Now and then someone does drown,” Cly said. “Any instructor on deck would be obliged to forbid it.”

Another faintly uncivilized custom,
she thought. They were casual about death here in a way she just couldn't like.

Her thoughts turned to Beatrice's unfinished statement about Cly. What if she'd discovered her father was an executioner, she'd asked. The Judiciary was where the Fleet kept its … what? Warriors?

“Adults only step on deck after it's too late to prevent the race. Which is now. Shall we?” He offered her his arm, nodded to a guard, and escorted her past the rope.

“I'm not dressed for a ball, Cly,” she said, thinking momentarily of the white gown the Conto had given her, and the use she'd been putting it to.

“No one will care unless you do.”

She concentrated on not falling down and, when they reached the bottom of the staircase, she glanced back up at Bram. He conferred with Parrish briefly, then set off down the stairs on his own.

“Parrish won the Slosh in his year, back when he was a rising star,” Cly said.

“Your Honor, Your Honor!” Dazzled-looking graduates were bowing at them as they progressed through the throng.

He replied with affable greetings and handshakes: “Congratulations! Well done. Good for you, Kir.” He seemed to know all their names.

It was oddly like going out with a celebrity, to a movie premiere or some other grand Hollywood event.

“Do you dance, Sophie?” He indicated a quartet of musicians with string instruments, who were setting up on a small bandstand.

“That depends,” she said.

“On?”

“If it's something waltzy or more
Pride and Prejudice
.”

He smiled. “I don't know what that means.”

“I can fake a waltz. If it's two lines of people passing each other back and forth—” She pantomimed what she imagined was a Regency dance move.

“The first dance usually takes that form.”

“I've never done that … but I'm good at picking things up. If I watched for a few minutes I'd probably be okay.” She hesitated, and her imagination helpfully supplied footage of the two of them dancing, birth father and daughter. A swell of difficult-to-identify emotions assailed her. Was this sadness? Relief? Gratitude?

If Cly saw her struggling, he didn't acknowledge it. “If you'd grown up at home, as you should, you'd have had a dancing instructor.”

She clung to a little thread of outrage and used it to pull herself free of the morass. “And someone to teach me pianoforte? And embroidery?”

He frowned at her crutch. “Fencing, in any case.”

“I don't think a bit of sword instruction could have prevented this.”

“There's more to fighting spirit than knowing how to slap a weapon about.”

“I don't want to learn fighting spirit. Knifing that sea monster was way up there on the list of yuck experiences of my life.”

“You have a compassionate heart,” he said. “The oddity would have drowned you.”

“Well,” she said, trying to lighten the mood, “dancing's probably out, at least for now.”

“No matter. What I truly wanted was privacy, or what passes for it,” he said. “I've been looking into the matter of your inheritance. You should consider claiming it.”

“It's not mine, it's Verena's.”

He waved off this statement, as though it were a gnat. “Your mother was the one who inherited the courier position and the material wealth of her mother line. Gale Feliachild was merely her designated agent. There's no reason why Verena cannot be yours.”

“Why would I do that?” She pushed away the thought of
Nightjar
, the prospect of sailing her anywhere.

“For the sake of the daughters you may have one day.”

“I've known you a week and you're lobbying for grandchildren? Holy crap, Cly—”

“Mind your language,” he said.

“You are
so
getting ahead of yourself.”

He flashed that wolfish grin. “Quite right, my dear. Focus on the discussion at hand. The Feliachild estate.”

“Me snatching the inheritance would be a slap in Verena's face, Cly. Gale didn't want that, Beatrice doesn't want it. And you're just advising me to hand it over to her anyway, so what's the difference?”

“You might yet become a woman of Verdanii. That's a significant position in this society. Vastly more important than their trinket of a government job or that appalling scow
Nightjar
.”

“Hey!” she objected.

“After all you've you've done for the Cessation these past weeks, you're entitled to something.”

“I'm not entitled to Verena's life.”

“It's not right. You shouldn't be nobody.”

“I'm not nobody!”

Like that, the hint of fury vanished. “No, of course not. Forgive me.”

She wobbled on her unsteady leg so that she was facing him, balancing by leaning on his upper arms, almost a dance position after all. “Listen, Cly. I don't know the Verdanii, but what I've observed about their society, so far, makes it seem kind of … bizarrely screwed up.”

He pealed laughter, startled.

“This primogeniture thing is a case in point. And the whole tough woman thing … Annela reamed Beatrice out for crying over Gale, and they apparently treat their men badly. But that's a side issue. I'm just not gonna do it. There may be all kinds of advantages and I understand that Beatrice broke the law, and that what she did to you was very hurtful—”

“What she did to us.” That steel and coldness again.

“Yeah. If she'd made different choices, everything would be different. But we can't punish Verena for that. I'm not ripping her life out from under her, I'm just not. Get it?”

He was statue-still for a painfully long stretch of time. His smile, when it came, was tight. “You have an admirable sense of honor.”

She could feel an answering smile breaking over her face. “I'll take that over pianoforte and fighting spirit any day.”

“I respect your position,” he said. “But it is a shame. It would give your assertions more weight in Convene if you weren't an outlander.”

A flutter of nerves. “What about your nation? Can't I say I'm yours?”

“Oh, Sophie Hansa.” He wrapped her in a sudden hug, an almost shocking burst of warmth. “I will be honored to claim you as a child of Sylvanna, but that can't be done overnight. There's a paternity assertion, a formality, obviously—”

“Hang on. Sylvanna? You're Sylvanner? Isn't that the big pharma island?”

“The … Big Farm?”

“Sorry. The Stele Islanders told me that Sylvanners are … well, patent thieves, I guess.”

“The wealthy and industrious are always envied by the less fortunate,” he said. “But—”

“Swimmers ahoy!” shouted several of the kids.

The musicians struck up a suspenseful riff, the low strings of their instruments humming like something from a horror movie sound track.

“Here they come,” Cly said.

The dance dissolved as the young officers rushed to the rail to cheer their classmates.

“This is the part where we elders look officially disapproving,” Cly said. A dimple quivered in his cheek.

“Elders. I'm elder?”

“Just don't cheer.”

The students hurled a sturdy net over the rail, transforming it into an improvised rope ladder. Shouting cadets obscured it, leaning over, shouting in a dozen languages, who knew how many variations on “Go!” and “Swim!”

“There's a woman I've requested for the Judiciary,” Cly said. “I'm hoping she … ah, no such luck.”

A young man, lithe, muscled and shivering, hurled himself onto the deck.

“One!” roared the cadets.

A teenaged girl—the one Cly had been rooting for, from his expression—was perhaps five seconds behind.

“Two!”

Maybe half a minute later: “Three!” The bronze went to a magically altered, moon-pale cadet with fish scales and fins, who had climbed the rope ladder—and had presumably swum—with a net full of stones tied to its belt.

Sophie said, “So your girl came second?”

“The odds that she'd beat Fessler were never that good,” Cly replied. He waved the young woman over. She came, wrapped in a heavy towel, and bowed deeply.

“Nicely done, Kir Zita,” Cly said.

“Thank you, Your Honor!” She was shivering, but his praise clearly meant the world.

“Four! Five!” The cadets shouted, as two more of their classmates came over the side.

“May I present my daughter? Kir Sophie Hansa.”

The young woman—Zita—waited a beat, as if she expected something more, one more bit of information, before dipping her head again. “Honored, Kir.”

“Um, likewise, Kir.”
Where I'm from. It should have been Sophie Hansa of somewhere. That's what he means by position.
“You made good time,” she added.