A Daughter of No Nation (23 page)

“So, a spider?”

“Want to see?”

Zita smiled and bent to peer inside.

Mervin had vanished beyond the lake, into the deeper swamp. Now he returned at the mouth of the next cut-in corridor of vegetation. “Are you coming, Kirs?”

“Are we?”

“Much as I'd like to show up the little troll, we don't have provisions for a good hike,” Sophie said.

“I'm sure His Honor didn't mean for us to disappear for hours.”

“Plenty to see right here.” She offered Zita a look at the camera, got an incurious head shake in return, and replaced the spider within its puddle. Then she took a closer look at the lake's edge. The water looked to be maybe eighteen inches in depth—she pushed her stick down. It resisted when she pulled it back. “Spongy, you see? Not sandy.”

“Who's a coward now?” Mervin shouted.

“Look,” Sophie said. She had the camera trained on the water—a school of green minnows was passing through. One blundered into a spider trap that had drifted out into the open water. The leaf rocked wildly.

Rather than try to take on a fish, the spider cut the strands of its floor loose. The leaf sprung free; the minnow shot back toward its school.

Patiently, the spider began to rebuild its home.

“Any interest in this?” Zita had found a fire salamander on a nearby leaf. It blinked at them, unconcerned.

Sophie grinned at the amphibian. “He's lovely.”

She could do this forever: sit in an abundant ecosystem, near water, and just take it in.

Rustling across the lake drew her attention next.

Her first reaction to the figures was excitement, a bursting, exuberant
Oh!

And then it was
Fauns, wow, fauns!

And then realization, like being plunged into ice water:
Oh.

If you couldn't see their legs, the three slaves did look a little like mythical Greek fauns. Stubs of horn protruded from their foreheads, and their faces were elongated into goatlike muzzles, with sharp, small, close-set teeth, optimized for cropping and grinding. But their limbs were ropey, their toes long rather than hooved, the better to climb and grip the vines and tree branches.

Goats atop, apes below, she thought.

They made their way around the edge of a pool, taking care not to wade, half-climbing the trees to keep their legs out of the water.

They clambered onto a big tree choked with the throttlevine Cly had mentioned, the kudzu variant. Methodically, they began stripping off the bark and munching. Dull brown manacles encircled their wrists.

Sophie shot a look at Zita, who was trying to master her own expression of horror.

“Oddities,” she whispered. “I had heard there was a problem with their swamps, that they'd transformed.”

“Hundreds,” Sophie said. “Cly told me there were hundreds.”

Zita's lips moved … in prayer? She tried to look away from the three malformed people, perched in a tree and eating a knotty vine of, probably, limited nutritional value, but her eyes were drawn back.

“You've never seen a slave before, either,” Sophie said.

“I'm of the Tall. But…” She meant she was from one of the free nations, Tallon, one of the few Sophie had seen with her own eyes. She seemed to be forcing the words out. “The Fleet of Nations respects the concessions of all its member states.”

Pah. You're as freaked out as I am.
“I'm sorry,” Sophie said. “I know you're pretty keen on Cly. As a mentor, I mean.”

This time, Zita did manage to gather herself. “He's a man of the Fleet. Truly, Sophie, it's not the same. You must see—”

“This is his land, Zita. He
owns
them.”

Without discussing it, they walked further, rounding the curve where Mervin had been lurking, taking themselves out of sight of the tree and its occupants.

“I'm being hypocritical, aren't I?” The words came bursting from her. “Letting Cly shoo the household servants out of sight, telling myself I'll do some minimal socializing and get Beatrice out of jail and run off without getting my hands dirty. But it's all around—landowners didn't build this boardwalk I'm walking on, or tend that fabulous horse I rode here from the dock.”

“Sophie?”

“I just. Don't. Understand.” She felt like some kind of lady with the vapors, breaking down in tears here in the wilds.

Zita had a glance down the next corridor for Mervin and then said, quietly, “Before the Compact was signed, a little over a hundred years ago, the Piracy had free rein to prey on the lesser nations. They'd sail someplace weak, like Redcap Island, and scoop up whole villages. They'd kill as they pleased and carry prisoners back through the archipelagos of the Bonded Isles, selling them at market. The free nations made attempts, now and then, to stop them, but …

“In time they started to form up in a larger fleet. Even the bonded nations could see value in stopping the raids on their shipping and their cargo vessels. The pirates place great value on reputation—whenever one of them was trying to make a name, often as not they'd kidnap someone rich from a great nation and subject them to horrors before ransoming them.”

Horrors. Bram had been grabbed by pirates. They'd used a needle to force a pearl under his thumbnail.

“It's what happened here—they grabbed an estate holder and her seamstress and tortured them to death in the Butcher's Baste. It's why Sylvanna and the Verdanii agreed to commission the building of
Temperance.
”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You want to understand, don't you?”

She rubbed at her eyes and nodded.

Zita continued, “When the preeminent nations from both sides agreed to stop the Piracy, others joined up fast. Sylvanna convinced their sister nations on the port side that the only way to truly stop the raiders was to outlaw the transport of slaves. My gran says the free nations told themselves that without shipping, without new…”

“Bodies? Raw materials?”

Zita didn't argue with her word choice. “They were naive. Some thought that over time, conscience would take hold among the slavers. Others believed that if the raids on lesser nations stopped, the bonded nations would start running out of slaves. But breeding and smuggling … and even under Fleet law, if you commit a serious crime, you can choose bondage over execution. So there are as many bonded as ever.”

Sophie stared at her dully. “You buy their goods. Ualtar … Tallon buys their spidersilk rope for shipbuilding spells.”

“What would you have the free do, Sophie?” Zita spoke gently. “The Fleet shields the lesser nations. The Convene has spent a century trying to come to an agreement on slavery that would alter the balance and satisfy everyone, but each side has their concessions and nobody's giving them up.”

“You could help people escape.”

“There are many who do so. Why do you think the Butcher's Baste is so heavily defended?”

“And encourage rebellions?”

“Of course. But who do you think gets killed when there's an uprising?”

“The slaves.” Sophie sighed. “Naturally.”

“My gran says it'll come to war, maybe soon. That the free and the bonded can't ignore their differences forever, and the Cessation will break.” Zita looked up suddenly. “What was that?”

“That” had been a cry of sorts, a quiet one.

Sophie leaped to her feet and trotted back the fifty or so feet to look at the vine-choked tree. The three slaves were thirty feet up its trunk now. They were looking farther into the swamp—the noise hadn't come from them.

Farther down the trail,
Sophie thought, doing a one-eighty and hauling ass into the corridor.

Zita had already gone that way, along the boardwalk, and as Sophie sprinted along after her, she heard a splash and another cry.

It was Mervin—he was a few feet out into the water, flailing and apparently panicked.

“Zita, no!” Sophie shouted, but the other girl had sheathed her sword and reached out to the boy.

He caught her outstretched hand on the first try … and pulled.

Zita went down, into the muck, with a huge splash.

Slapping, this kid needs a slapping, what was the point of that? Little jerk I knew he was a nasty little jerk.…
Sophie sprinted out to the spot on the boardwalk.

Mervin was still trying it on, seeing if he could get her, too. “Cousin! We're stuck!”

“You deserve sticking,” Sophie told him. Zita had surfaced, sputtering. She was uninjured—the water wasn't deep—but for some reason she was going shock white.

Sophie knelt on the boardwalk, anchoring herself, and held out the stick she'd been using to probe the mud. Zita seized it gratefully, steadying herself as she mushed back to the walkway. It wasn't far and the water wasn't deep—she shouldn't have needed much help, despite the sucking mud. But she was paler with every breath and by the time Sophie hitched her up onto the boards, she was shivering.

“Aren't you going to help me, cousin?”

“Drown if you're gonna,” Sophie told Mervin, yanking up the sleeve of Zita's blouse. Her arm was covered in inch-long leeches the color of flame.

She peeked under her shirt. There were hundreds of them.

Mervin looked startled. “So many…” He stopped screwing around and waded out of the water, hefting himself onto the boardwalk.

“Sophie?” Zita was looking drowsy.

“I bet you kept your smokes dry, didn't you?” Sophie snapped.

Mervin nodded. A few leeches dropped off his throat, apparently disliking the taste of him. “I didn't know there was a nest.”

“Light two cigarettes.” She unbuttoned Zita's shirt entirely and snapped her fingers as the kid dug out two hand-rolled somethings and a friction lighter and lit them.

“You burn her, I'll run you through with her sword,” Sophie said, hoping she sounded convincingly violent. She took the smoke and began killing the leeches on Zita's abdomen, touching the cherry of the cigarette to one creature after another.

Mervin, to his credit, didn't hesitate to follow suit. The two of them worked feverishly for about five minutes, filling the air with the smell of tobacco and scorched escargot before rolling Zita over and starting on her back.

“Mine's done,” Mervin said.

“Reload.” Sophie unbuckled Zita's belt.

“They won't have gotten past that. Check her ankles.”

He was right, fortunately enough. Zita's belt was tight and her pants were tucked in at the boot.

“Help me get her over my shoulders. Then run ahead. Get help,” Sophie said.

“I doubt I'll find anyone. Cousin Clydon told the bonded to stay out of your way, remember?”

“You'd better find help,” Sophie said, heaving Zita up. “She's one of Cly's favorites. Can you say the same?”

It was like firing him from a cannon: Mervin pounded off down the boardwalk as she began to make her own way back, a step at a time, with Zita in a fireman's carry. The girl was slender but solid enough; Sophie was an athlete, but Zita was a dense bar of muscle, just about more than she could carry, and the air was thick.

One foot at a time.

She could feel Zita's pulse wherever their skin met, in her belly, against her shoulder.

Could've been worse. Swamp's gotta have alligators.

Breathe, breathe. Did she just go limp?
“You with me? Zita?”

No answer.

She'd made it just about to the edge of the boardwalk when a party from the house met her—Mervin, his sister, the spellscribe, Autumn, and six burly-looking guys with wrist bangles holding a sheet. Sophie rolled Zita onto the sheet and they trotted her over to the nearest shade tree, a big pear.

Cly and the other adults were headed down from the big house. Cly took in the situation, leveled a look at Mervin that made the boy shrivel, and knelt beside Zita.

She hadn't regained consciousness.

“She gonna die?” Sophie asked, between gulps of breath.

Autumn flicked a look at Cly. “Is she?”

“No,” he said. “As her mentor, I have her middle name in my keeping.”

“We can save her, then. Mirelda, you'll assist me.”

“Sophie, stay with her,” Cly said, and then without bothering to see if she was going to obey, switched to Sylvanner and addressed a string of words to Mervin in that low growl of his.

Whatever he'd said, it went through Merv and his parents like a jolt of electricity.

“Come, girls,” Autumn said, laying Zita's hand in Sophie's and somehow signaling to the six men that they should start toiling up the hill to the house.

“What'd he say?” Sophie whispered to Mirelda.

“Merv's to be punished,” she said.

“Malicious little troll. Punished how? Whipped?”

Mirelda shook her head. “He's not a—”

“Not now, children,” Autumn said. They had arrived in a conservatory of sorts, with windows made from panes of Erinthian lava glass and a large shelf of potted herbs in its brightest corner. Cabinets of books and scrolls lined the walls, alternating with shelves of powders kept in jars.

A mosquito net hung over the middle of the room, draped in a dainty tent over a wide writing table. Two others hung from the ceiling, limp as shrouds.

“Put her there,” Autumn ordered the men carrying Zita, who laid her down, sheet and all, on the floor. They arranged the mosquito nets around her.

“Mirelda, is there a leech kit already made?”

“No, but we have everything.”

“I'll want some of the leeches.”

Mirelda promptly went to one of the cabinets, fetching out a small wooden bowl and a paddle.

“Use whitestone,” Autumn corrected, not unkindly, and Mirelda made the switch. She slipped inside the netting around Zita and—to Sophie's surprise—without quailing went looking for a leech that Sophie and Mervin hadn't yet scorched.