A Daughter of No Nation (15 page)

One of the “frights” wedged itself into the gap where
Sawtooth
's cannon had holed the hull. Its face stared out from the patch like a carved mask on a wall. Its mouth yawned open and, with convulsions that looked very much like it was vomiting, it began to heave salt water back into the ocean.

A pump?

“That's a heavy intention for such a small vessel to bear,” Cly observed, as the rest of the salt frights began to follow the drifting array of greenish, pulsing bubbles toward
Sawtooth
. “The frights are defending the ship.”

“Why bother?” Zita said. “They can't know we're understaffed. Scripped or no, six starved sailors can't hope to take on
Sawtooth.
”

“They're dead for using the heart, right?” Sophie said. She was shooting pictures even as she spoke, taking frame after frame of the figures. “And for killing those other ships' crews?”

“And frightening, too. All capital crimes.”

“What have they got to lose?”

“Run out the plank and prepare to board,” Beck ordered. Two of the cadets had raised a hatch next to the rail; instead of a way into the bowels of the ship, it had concealed a trampoline, stretched hide covered in dense, bright-red spellscrip.

“Steady, cannon one,” Cly said. “Bailor, bring me crossbows. One heavy, one light.”

One of the crew scrambled to comply.

“Zita, you know this weapon, don't you?”

“At this range, Your Honor—”

“Come, give it a try,” he said. “You're spoiled for targets.”

The girl slipped up beside him, taking up the smaller bow and straining to load it.

“There,” Cly said, picking one of the approaching salt figures. “For the eye.”

Zita swallowed, drew on the golem, and sent a bolt wide.

“Keep trying,” he said. “The rest of you, ready with blades.”

With that, he raised his own bow and took a long, slow breath. Ignoring the salt creatures, he sent a bolt directly into the throat of the bandit ship's captain.

Sophie let out a shocked yelp as the captain of the other ship went down, thrown backward by the force of the bolt, dead so instantly he didn't even twitch as he fell.

“Surrender yourselves,” Cly called to the other ship as its surviving crew—who looked young, suddenly, young and aghast and terrified—dove for cover. One tried to thin herself behind the smoking stub that was all that remained of the mainmast. One dove below. A third ducked behind a water barrel.

A blast of fire behind them made everyone jump.

It was the cannoneer up in the
Sawtooth
crow's nest. Greenish bubbles had adhered to his skin, coating him in a slick foam. He had fired a blast straight down, barely missing the trampoline. The wood deck erupted into flames.

“Fire on deck!” Beck said. “Port watch, put out that fire!”

Cly lowered his bow, making a tutting noise deep in his throat. “Sophie, can you see what that spellscribe is up to now?”

She raised the camera again. “No.”

Cly caught the other cannoneer's eye and flicked a finger at the boy hiding behind the barrel. He lobbed a stone at the barrier, shattering the wood, which began to smolder and burn.

By now Zita had got a couple crossbow bolts into the salt creatures scrabbling at the edge of
Sawtooth.
They leaked when punctured, as if they were contained in sacks. A few of the bubbles had gathered on her wrists and forearms.

The young man flung himself out from under the remains of the barrel, running for cover, and Cly shot him neatly in the chest with a crossbow bolt.

“I won't give you another chance,” Cly said reloading. His voice carried over the crackle of fire behind them. “Be reasonable. You're outmatched.”

The other cannoneer punctuated this with a twin blast to the deck, which hurled another of the bandits into the water.

That was when Zita turned on her heel, swinging her sword at Sophie.

Definitely a cutlass, she thought, as she let herself fall backward. The blade whisked overhead and then Cly was there, parrying with the crossbow, the blade meeting wood with a dull thunk.

Sophie scrambled backward, trying to take in the whole deck at once. The seaweed bubbles that had been blowing up over the
Sawtooth
decks seemed to be concentrating on this part of the ship.

Whatever the reason, they were thickening around them like a fist. Many of the recruits had bubble-shaped splashes on their flesh; they looked disoriented, and a few had begun to brawl.

Not gas, Sophie thought. It's absorbed through the skin.

There were no bubbles on her yet.

I'm not a threat. They're massing on the people with weapons.

She had a sudden vision of Cly dicing his way through the ranks of confused teenagers.

She'd been wearing a fleece jacket when she came up on deck. She took a second to grab it, fighting her way into the sleeves and pulling the drawstrings of the hood tight over her face, covering as much skin as possible. The crossbow bolts had fallen to the deck and she scooped up a pair of them.

“Zita,” Cly ordered. “Stand down. Stand down immediately!”

The first of the salt mannequins was pulling itself up onto the fighting deck.

Nobody aboard
Sawtooth
had died yet, as far as Sophie could tell. The kid officers were brawling with each other. Cly had flung Zita across the sword-fighting ring, depriving her of her blade in the process. Now he decapitated two of the monsters with a great, salt-spraying swing of his arm. He was gripping the rail with his free hand, looking white-knuckled and a little wild-eyed. Green bubbles were breaking against him, one after another.

“Stay back, child.”

“You have to get it off your skin,” she said, pointing to the residue.

“Understood.” Instead, he stabbed another salty boarder.

If he recovers, we'll probably be okay. There aren't that many of them. If he doesn't … well, he's a killing machine. All these cadets.

Taking a deep breath, Sophie bolted toward the trampoline.

She ran a straight line toward the smaller ship—
commit, commit, commit!
—and jumped, thinking about where she wanted to land. On the deck, next to that hemispheric steering wheel.

“Flex your knees…,” but the landing was as gentle as if she'd been in an elevator.

The foam of bubbles rising from the seas around the small ship changed direction suddenly, making for her.

Spells are textual, she reminded herself. Destroy the text, destroy the spell.

She hit the deck running, skirting two cannon-blasted bodies, eyes open for spellscrip. “Text, text, text,” she was muttering under her breath.

Instead, she saw a human heart.

It was mounted within a coral structure that appeared to be the ship's wheel, a dome-shaped growth, bone white in color. Portions of it had been sanded smooth and the writing was there, deep within, protected by sharp edges and spiny growths. The heart was nestled in a carved-out chamber near the top, its arteries connected to outcroppings in the coral structure, and pumping. It was covered in slick green slime—algae
,
Sophie thought.

She drove one of the crossbow bolts into it—not cleanly, or even with special force, but the ungainly move was nevertheless enough to pierce one of the ventricles.

The timbers of the small ship groaned—screamed, really—as if giant hands were bending them. It jolted and they listed to port. She heard a series of crystalline pops and wasn't sure if that was the green bubbles or the salt monsters.

Someone grabbed her from behind.

She kicked at the guy, a little feebly. It was all a bit like her self-defense class, suddenly, except that the guy wasn't padded. He wasn't playing, either, though his intent seemed more desperate than murderous.

She tried to swing him into the coral, failed, and fumbled for her bear spray. Could she shoot him without giving herself a blast in the face?

“No!” she said. “No, no!” Her instructor would be so proud.

The man tightened his grip as the judder of the trampoline rang through the air.

Suddenly Cly was aboard. He landed beside the mainmast and cut a bloody furrow into the midsection of the surprised bandit there. He whirled as she fell, found another, kicked him flat to the deck, then stabbed him in the chest.

Then he addressed himself to the guy still grabbing for purchase at Sophie's hoodie.

“Take,” he said, “your hands off my daughter.”

The man let her go as if she were hot, turning chalk white and putting his hands in the air. He had a bloody nose.

The captain of the ship hit him, she remembered.

Cly held out a hand to Sophie, helping her up, and then retrieved a handkerchief from the deck, cleaning red blood and algae bubbles from his blade.

He looked at the guy with an air of pleasant anticipation.

“He's surrendered,” Sophie said. Her voice was shaking. “Cly, he's given up.”

The man backed up to the rail. Cly strolled after him, bringing the point of the cutlass up to his chest, then coming in close, wrapping his hand around the thin neck and beginning to squeeze.

“Cly, stop! What's wrong with you? He surrendered!” She grabbed for his arm, which was iron.

He turned, regarding her as if from far away. The expression—or lack of one—on his face raised the hairs on her neck.

They froze there, the three of them, the bandit thrashing and gasping, Cly looking at her like a scientist staring down a microscope, Sophie bone-chilled and realizing: Oh! Oh! This is what the Verdanii wouldn't say.

Except her birth mother
had
tried to tell her:
What if you'd found Cly,
Beatrice had said,
and his title was Lord High Executioner? What if he was the guy who pressed the button on the gas chamber?

“Please,” Sophie said. “Don't kill him. Please, Cly.”

He opened his hand and let the man fall. “As you wish, daughter. Kir, consider yourself impressed to the Judiciary.”

The man gasped at her feet.

Cly surveyed the scene then, both ships smoldering, four bodies on the deck in spreading pools of blood and a fifth in the water, and the clusters of salt dissolving in the sea. He smiled very slightly.

“You saved us, Sophie.” He put his arm out but she slipped out of reach.

“Don't.” She was seriously considering whether she might throw up.

“You're shaken; it's understandable. We'll get you back aboard
Sawtooth.
”

“Thank you,” she said.

Before he could say more, she began a slow circuit of the deck, putting what space she could between them.

It wasn't much. The ship was small, barely twenty feet long, and quarters were cramped. A sheet of sail hung over an improvised hammock, hinting that there wasn't room below for even a crew of six to sleep comfortably. There was a pair of shallow bowls beneath a bench, one empty but for a dessicated twist of what looked like sardine, the other with a residual ring of mineral on the bottom. A water dish, but one that had fallen out of use.

The hemisphere of coral at the center of the ship did indeed seem to serve as its wheel: it was mounted on a tilting plate and had two smooth branches that allowed one to steer it to and fro. Within the center of the blood-spattered branches was the ship's full name,
Rettegrad Salla Incannis.
Magical lettering was laid down in lines of seeds that had been stuck into place. Sophie remembered kindergarden art projects: writing her name in glue and then scattering glitter overtop.

She scratched off a small sample: they might have been anything, these small dots, but they reminded her of poppy seeds.

She could feel Cly's eyes on her. She pocketed the sample of coral and seed and moved on.

Near the stern of the ship were two wooden folding chairs, ratty and heavily used but otherwise no different from beach chairs she'd find at home. Next to one of these she found a sack of short, somewhat coarse hair and a spinner. The individual strands were multicolored: gray, brown, white, even apricot. Together they made a muddy gray-brown yarn with the bristly texture of coarse wool.

She fingered the bag, letting herself think about it, letting the process of consideration calm her, as far as that was possible. Her mind offered up random conclusions:
cats are rare, the bandit captain hit our prisoner, this whole ship was built to make … salt frights, they called them.

By now Captain Beck had put two boats in the water, crewed by teens who were rowing mightily. Eager to survey the scene of their victory?

Cly, meanwhile, had searched his prisoner—coming up with a jar of poppy seeds and an awl—and bound his hands. “Is this your brainchild, spellscribe? Are you a frightmaker?”

He shook his head violently.

“Your life's already forfeit, if we prove banditry. There's no harm in admitting it.”

“No. The ship makes the frights, when properly…” He swallowed. “Primed.”

“With a human heart, mmm?”

“Please,” he said. “I didn't inscribe the ship.”

“Tell me your name. Are you of Haversham?”

“Nobody, Kir, of no nation whatever.”

“It's Your Honor, not Kir. Well, someone will claim you.”

Sophie raised the hatch, peering below. The little ship was taking water, though slowly. The crew had come close enough to the islet that the ship was all but resting on the bottom; she could feel the occasional wave raising and shifting them, then the bump as they touched down again. Sunlight shot through the blasted-out hole where the magical cannonfire had struck it. The gap was big enough, possibly, for a small person to escape through.

Had any of them gotten away? If so, there was no sign of them. She wasn't about to suggest that Cly hunt them down.