A Daughter of No Nation (25 page)

Finally, get herself and her brother the hell out of here before she ran out of K bars.

Could she do all that in a few days? She'd have to try.

“Sophie?”

“Ready,” she called, running out.

 

CHAPTER    
15

The horses were waiting at the gate, and the groom didn't quite have enough time to vanish before she spotted him. He had an arm amputated just below the elbow, but Sophie managed to catch an image of him with her camera.

She climbed aboard Ballado.

The estate, otherwise, seemed deserted.

“So, daughter? You must have some ulterior motive for enduring my slaver company.”

“That's a little dramatic, don't you think?”

“Am I wrong?”

She sighed. “What did the government tell you, exactly, about Erstwhile?”

Cly nodded, as if her question confirmed something important. “You were raised in an advanced atomist culture. Your air chokes on burnt fuel and your natural legacy dies, species by species. Your devices are driven by caged oddities inscribed with petroleum, you have used up vast troves of iron, and your society lies on the edge of unimaginable desperation.”

Nothing like leading with the bad news.
She fought the urge to break in with a defense of Earth, or a list of all the good things, amazing things, that technological civilization had accomplished.

“There are billions of you, a number my mind can hardly encompass, many of whom own nothing more than hunger, and the rest equipped with weapons more potent than the steel musket John Coine brought back.”

“The pistol he almost shot you with?”

“Just so.”

“That's the official story? It's like they don't want you to visit.”

“The Fleet government is terrified that when your nations fall, your people will flee here. Your billions,” Cly said. “But that was hardly the most remarkable thing I was told. People believe the outlands are a place one sails to. But Annela tells me they are a time, a long-ago—”

“She specifically said the past? Not, say, an alternate dimension?”

“That would be one of your fine atomist distinctions,” he said. “Beyond my understanding. What I do know is they can only be accessed by wild Verdanii magic.”

“Except when pirates go there buying guns and grenades.”

“Ah.” There was no mistaking that smile. It was pride. “I wondered if you'd see the crux of the issue.”

“Tell me.”

Cly petted his horse. “The Verdanii believed the Feliachild ability to eraglide … eraglide?”

“Like they'd tell me.”

“Tsk. That the Feliachild ability was the only way to and from Erstwhile. That they form a natural choke point, a defense against the outlander hoards and their mighty devices of death. The only gateway. But if this is so, one of their kin brought those pirates to your city, Sanfrah—”

“San Francisco.”

“So either there is a traitor Feliachild—an unpalatable prospect unless it happens to be you—”

“Me? It's not me!”

“—or they don't possess this monopoly they imagine. In either case, the idea that people of Coine's quality might transit to the land of muskets and grenades … it was grenades?”

“Grenades,” she affirmed. “And rocket launchers and F16's and weaponized anthrax and mustard gas—”

“Oh,” he said, with no emotion at all, “that's easily made here. Alchemists have the formula.”

Well! There's one big tick mark in the “yes, he's a sociopath” column.

He broke off quickly. “Good afternoon, Kir Erminne. May I present my child, Kir Sophie Hansa?”

 

CHAPTER    
16

Rees Erminne was one of those people she couldn't help liking. Tanned, blocky of body and ever-so-slightly ill-kempt, with patched trousers, leech-scarred hands, and an unhurried, friendly air, he exuded a slow-moving calm that put Sophie in mind of a koala bear. He adored his horse. He listened to Sophie with care—and not only because his Fleetspeak was only just passable. It was apparent, as they all continued to ride toward the beach, that he knew every inch of wild land within this corner of Autumn District.

According to his status sash, he was legally a child, though he had to be in his late twenties.

As he led Cly and Sophie down the trail to Turtle Beach, Rees explained about the dispute with Grimreef over whether the turtles had been artificially introduced to Sylvanna.

Sophie had already read this in the court documents: Grimreef insisted the turtles always returned to the beach where they had hatched to lay their eggs. The Sylvanners, meanwhile, said the animals went to and fro between the two beaches.

“It's all rather ‘Does not, does too!'” Erminne acknowledged. “Like many of these affairs: hard to prove and not quite worth dueling over.”

“Sylvanna seems to have a fair number of those,” Sophie said.

“The Spellscrip Institute is aggressive in pursuing new inscriptions. It leads them down legally complex paths. I'd be grateful for any solution you may propose.”

Sophie handed him one of the turtle shells Cly had given her, pointing out the notches she'd cut into its cervical scute. “You can make marks safely here and here, without hurting the animal.”

Erminne fingered the shell with interest. “And then?”

“The rest is basic observation and recording. Form a team. Some from Sylvanna, some from Grimreef, maybe a court observer or some other neutral party?” It all seemed straightforward, obvious, but Rees was spellbound, listening as though the idea were revolutionary. “You start notching the Sylvanna turtles when they return to the beach, after they lay. You notch a number of the hatchlings, too, when they emerge every spring. Do the same, using different markings, on Grimreef.”

“Oh! One notch for Turtle Beach in Sylvanna, two for Goldensands in Grimreef, that sort of thing?”

Sophie nodded. “At that point, it simply becomes a matter of observation and bookkeeping. Each year when they arrive on the beach, you do a count and mark a few more animals.”

Erminne thought it through and then nodded. “We'd have to hurry to organize it for this year. The lay is soon.”

“As a secondary strategy we—I mean
you
—could also try relocating a clutch of eggs to a new beach,” Sophie said. “If the Grimreefers are right, you'll be able to establish them elsewhere.”

“They're not!” He feigned affront, puffing out his chest. It was a bit adorable.

“It's not a good idea to go introducing new animals into other microclimates anyway. But if Sylvanna's in the right, the babies hatched on Turtle Beach will turn up on Grimreef … how long does it take them to mature?”

“I wouldn't know. How does one work out such things, as a … was it a Fornsich?”

“Forensic. It means—”

“Forensic practitioner,” Cly interrupted. “The science of proof in court.”

Guess we've got that branded, then. Call the trademark office!

They were on the beach now, having ridden out of the marshy lowlands and up an outcropping of stone that extended a long finger into the ocean. The water caressed a wide strip of coarse-grained sand, reddish in color, rather like crushed brick, she thought. Stubby breakers of the red rock had been arranged about fifty feet out into the shallows, forming a dotted line around the beach.

Beyond them, she could see the shallow expanse of water that separated Sylvanna from Haversham. A stout-looking, armored ship patrolled in the distance. The passage was broken by craggy islets and piles of boulders that looked man-made, a hazardous obstacle course guarded by fast-looking warships.

Turning in a circle, she looked up and down the spit of land, spying a platform just up the rise with a view of the Butcher's Baste. Guard tower? A lighthouse? Probably both.

“The turtles don't need much help, but this calms the waters a little,” Erminne explained, drawing her attention back to the circle of wave-breakers at the beach's edge. “Sometimes it can keep the late autumn storms from laying waste to a whole year's hatchlings. The institute will send apprentices to rake the sand in about two weeks. Makes it easier for them to dig.”

“The beach is entirely managed?”

“Yes.”

It made sense, if the turtles were a precious resource. She asked a bunch of questions: How many turtles did the institute harvest each year, and what kind of predation did the young turtles face? How precisely could they predict the dates for migration to the beach and for hatching?

By way of answering the last, Rees took her to the base of the guard tower. A large rock there had dates of past migrations scratched into its surface. A scrap of repurposed sail canvas hung above this. It was a poster, and chalked on it were gambling odds on two-hour periods over a four-night window due to start in a few weeks.

“You run a betting pool on when the migration will begin?”

“Don't laugh,” Rees said. “It's one of my primary sources of income.”

She took a photograph of the rock and the poster. “So … you think the third day?” She tried converting the information to normal dates from the Fleet calendar. About a month, then—mid-August.

By then I'll be home.
“Do you use the land for anything else?”

“Spring picnics,” Erminne said, his fondness for the place obvious in his smile.

While they talked, Cly had dismounted, rolled up his trouser legs and shed his boots, and waded into the shallows with a foxy expression on his face and a net in his hand. He made a few scoops at something—once she even saw it, a slick gray shape leaping out of the net's embrace—but came up empty.

“If this works, you'll have done the institute and my family a great favor,” Erminne said.

I'm always doing science favors for people here, she thought. It was a pleasing idea, in its way. “Your family?”

“My great-great-grandfather painted this beach, over a century ago, turtles and all. The pictures have been locked up in court for decades—the Grimreefers say we forged them, but nobody can prove it.”

She remembered seeing this in the documents. “Cly says my grandmother painted.”

“It's a common pastime among the idle landowners,” he said, and suddenly his tone was a little careful. Excluding himself from that category, somehow? He certainly didn't have the pampered look of Cly's cousins; looking at him, it was obvious he worked hard at something.

So he's land rich but otherwise poor—which is probably why he's not married. Turtle gambling must not yield that much income.

“I'll be interested to hear how the case turns out,” she said.

“I'll write you,” he replied. “Care of His Honor, as is proper.”

That torn feeling again.
What am I going to do?

She couldn't stay, she told herself. Bram coming after her was the last straw. She couldn't let her obsession with Stormwrack deprive their parents of both children.

“Have you made any progress with the throttlevine infestation? I know that must be as dear to your heart as to—” Erminne broke off, clearly noting that Sophie had stiffened. Cly turned his back, taking a futile swipe at the fish he was pursuing. “I've said something amiss.”

“Sophie and I have been grappling with our cultural differences,” Cly said, his voice carrying over the water. “No harm done.”

Sophie was trying to swallow. The image of those altered goat-people in the marsh had seized her imagination again, and she was flailing in a sea of guilt. To feel regret of any kind for a backward asshole place where one person could do that to another …

She made herself speak. “It's okay, Kir Erminne. You couldn't know.”

She unshipped her camera and took footage of the beach, walking off in the direction of the water, examining shells and a feather, coral in color, that had fallen on a dry patch of sand. She stared at the sea, longing for the comfort and clarity afforded by a good swim.

All this time here and I've barely been in the water.

Just then Cly folded his net, wrung out the water, and came in. “Shall we?”

They waited as he rolled down his pants legs, then mounted up and headed back.

She was starting to feel the effects of a day spent on horseback, an ache in her thighs and knees.

“This is my path.” Erminne reached over and seized her hand. “We will see you, won't we, at the festival? If you're to save my grandfather's paintings and restore the honor of our family beach, I wish to introduce you to my mother.”

“I've given my word that I'll go,” she said, dully.

It wasn't quite the answer he was expecting, but he rallied. “Tomorrow, then.” He flourished without bowing, turned his horse, bent to kiss its neck and speak a few words in its ear. It was only too happy to break into a canter, no doubt in the direction of its bed and the rest of its herd.

By contrast their mounts, hers and Cly's, were deeply unimpressed when they took the road to Low Bann rather than turning toward town.

They rode in crushing silence for a while, and then Cly reined in near one of the citrus plants, an obvious volunteer tree, and began loading that net of his with red fruit.

“Cly—”

“It's wild,” he said, holding out one of the fruit. “I must keep you fed, mustn't I?”

Part of her wanted to be stubborn, to tell him that all economic and ecological systems were bound and connected, that for all she knew someone else was counting on this tree. But, in the end, she held out a hand, accepting the fruit.

He's trying so damned hard.
Was he just playing her?

“Wouldn't do to get scurvy,” she said.
Peace offering.

“No,” he agreed. “You must eat at least a few bites at the festival or you'll offend our hosts.”