A Daughter of No Nation (27 page)

 … inscribe text on the flesh of a calf, stillborn in the month of Maiia and the first born by its mother. Ink to use portion of blood from the leeches themselves, a drop of fine whiskey not under five years aged …

And so on. She filmed a thirty-page sample of the book. It had spells for managing beehive infestations, something for taming and training alligators. It had instructions for creating something called a follow-box whose ingredient list was much like the package she'd bought, back in the Fleet, containing the passenger-pigeon skin. There was even a boutique section: perm your hair, straighten your hair, brighten your eyes. She flipped through the whole thing, took a shot of the title—
Common Spells of the Autumn District
—and looked for the transformation spell that had turned those slaves into oddities.

Nothing; this book, at least, had no slavery-related spells.

She flipped back to the leech cure and put the book back where she found it. Then, creeping downstairs, she went to sit with Zita for a couple of hours, using the dark and quiet to order her thoughts. This Highsummer festival was the last hoop she would have to jump. Beatrice could get her bail. As for whether she got convicted or successfully divorced Cly, that was out of Sophie's hands now.

Or was it? There was this throttlevine case. Cly was clearly invested. Maybe he would still go for the upsell if she learned something that would help with that.

Wait, stop! I have to get home. I have to stop luring Bram here.

She remembered, six months earlier, diving the floating conglomeration of wreckage and driftwood, constructed by a species of otter, and the diversity of life that raft had drawn—fish, weeds, sea worms, barnacles below the water, and plants, bugs, and birds above.

And what about this whole wild Verdanii magic thing? If Sophie could learn to transfer back and forth between the worlds as Verena did, she wouldn't necessarily need government permission to go diving.

It was a defiant thought, but it lacked conviction. Was she really going to sneak in and out of Stormwrack illegally? Even if she did, how would she hire a ship to take her out to the otters?

She'd burned her chance at Verdanii citizenship without a thought …

 … and against Cly's advice, she remembered, a bit ruefully.

And now she couldn't become Sylvanner.

Give it up, give it up, give it, oh, can I, I can't I can't I can't. There has to be a way. Maybe—

But it was late. Instead of offering up a tidy solution to her bizarre immigration woes, her mind served up an image of Parrish, half a dream, in that bomber jacket of Bram's, smelling of leather.

She shook the image away.

Annela Gracechild's the key, she thought. She's the one handing out travel permits and ordering Verena to keep my nose out of the world's business. Maybe Parrish can tell me how to—no, Verena, maybe Verena can help.

It wouldn't hurt to ask Parrish, too.

Okay, if all she could do was default to thinking about Parrish, then she needed to turn in. She made her way back to the bedroom. Just as she got there, she heard the main doors of the house closing. Someone coming in? Going out?

She hurried into her room and peered through the silk window, checking the yard. Nobody. From the position of the moon, which was one day short of full, it was late. Two, maybe, or three o'clock.

She stood stock still, listening for footsteps.

They came. Confident, quiet, neither stomping nor tiptoeing. Mervin scuttled, and Mirelda dragged her feet. The steps came right to her door, paused.

One of the adults, then. Cly?

Checking on me?
She flashed on memories of her father, peering in through a crack in the bedroom door at night, making sure she was still breathing. Emotion tightened her chest.

She hadn't gotten into this for weird worlds and magic and otters who farmed, after all—she'd just wanted, in the beginning, to understand who'd made her. To lay eyes on her birth parents. To be able to say: This is where I came from.

If he cracks the door, he's gonna see me standing here, fully dressed, eyes wide open. He'll wonder what I've been up to.

So? What's he doing out at this hour?

God, I hope he didn't go out to hunter-gather me an alligator or something.

Oh no, now I'm gonna laugh.

A creak—the steps resuming. Cly, if it was Cly, went upstairs.

She buried her face in her leaf-shaped pillow, giggled until her ears were ringing, and then pulled off her pants and climbed into bed.

One more day, she thought. Do a little dance, fake a little nice, get the hell out and sail somewhere sane.

If
Nightjar
docks in the morning, maybe Parrish can come to the festival.

OMG, Sophie, forget Parrish!

It went like that for what felt like another hour before the cicadas finally drove her mind off the one track and into sleep.

She woke early and had a long stretch in the cool of the morning. It would be another hot day.

Throwing on her last clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt, she went and tapped on Zita's door. She called through, “How are you feeling?”

“Better, thank you. His Honor didn't kill the boy, did he?”

“You are joking, right?” Sophie's blood ran cold all the same.

“Of course.”

She shuddered. “Mervin was sulking his way through dinner last night. And you are a good person for caring.”

“Maybe I just want to bloody his nose myself.” Zita stuck her head out into the hall, grinning. She had a towel wrapped around her and was covered in soap. “I'm out of water. Can you—”

“No problem.” Sophie took the offered pitcher. It was glazed red clay and weighed a ton. She went downstairs. There'd be a pump in the kitchen, wherever that was.…

“Probably near the dining room,” she murmured. There'd been a little door behind Fenn's chair. Sure enough, there was a drab, low-ceilinged hallway there that led into a world of restaurant smells. Baking bread and cooking eggs—her mouth watered.

The hall ended in a room where six women were engaged in various stages of making what looked like a mountain of pastries, all wearing the not-quite-ornamental shackle on their left wrists. They had been engaged in conversation but when Sophie came in, they fell silent.

Sophie gave them an awkward smile and took one step toward the sink, but a gazelle of a woman stepped in front of her, whisking the pitcher out of her hand and handing it off to one of the others, who took it and began working the pump.

Don't look away. Don't refuse to see this.
Sophie examined each of them in turn, meeting their solid, determinedly placid gazes. They were neither well fed nor emaciated; they had the muscles and calloused hands of people who worked hard, extremely hard—like Rees Erminne, she thought—and the eldest of them was about forty. Their skin colors varied—there was a pale, freckled blonde, whose nose and eyes were so red she must either have a cold or been crying, a woman with olive skin, and a black woman, too. No bruises on them, but their clothes were concealing. If they had whip marks on their backs …

She swallowed.

“I've been wanting to talk to…” she forced herself to finish the sentence “… some of the bonded. Hello.”

“Neyza dinn Fleetspak.” The woman slapped the jug into her hand with a slosh of cold water and a bright, pleasant expression.

“But—”

“Neyza dinn Fleetspak!”

“Okay. Thank you,” Sophie said, and retreated.

She crossed the dining room and then froze in the foyer—Cly was there, speaking in Sylvanner.
“Pej battro tard, con nyu annit—”

He broke off—the woman he was addressing had seen her.

Sophie pushed through the door.

Her father was standing with a tall, auburn-haired matron who wore a white widow's sash.

“Ah, Sophie. I thought perhaps one of the young cousins was—well, no matter. Child, may I present Kir Erminne?”

Another Erminne. She tried to bow without spilling the pitcher. “Pleased.”

The woman quirked her brows, amused. “What are you doing?” Her tone was kind, and she wasn't fazed by Sophie's outlander clothes, either, which won her points.

“Oh—my friend.
Our.
Zita, she needed water.”

“Erminne is Rees's mother,” Cly said. “We won't keep you, but I hope we'll all have a chance to talk tonight.”

“It was lovely to meet you,” Rees's mother said. “Don't let us keep you from your friend.”

Dismissed. “Thanks,” she said, mulling as she walked up to Zita's room.

Zita opened the door, still wrapped up, and took the the pitcher gratefully. “I'll be down soon.”

Sophie went looking for Krispos. “Did you read that Sylvanner Fleet phrasebook?”

“I'm halfway through.” He held it up.

She recalled Cly's words: “
Pej battro…”

“
Battro
is ‘betrothal'…” He flipped ahead. “
Pej
is ‘late.' Late betrothal.”

“
Nyu annit
?”

“‘Soon year'?” He frowned. “‘Later in the year'?”

“One or the other?”

He shrugged. “All I'm learning is vocabulary.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Betrothal. He's talking betrothal with Rees's mom.

She began to hyperventilate. Was Cly thinking of marrying her off?

 

CHAPTER    
18

She retreated to her room, staring around blankly until it occurred to her that she could pack, and then went into a frenzy of shoving things into her bags, getting everything stowed so she could make her escape.

He wouldn't, would he? I must have misunderstood.

It tracked with him hauling her out to meet Rees yesterday. Wait—she had picked the turtle case herself.

Maybe all of the lawsuits he'd given her were connected to eligible young men.

She had everything packed and repacked, the bed made, and she'd even dusted by the time Mirelda and Zita showed up, carrying a disco-era ball gown, in rich brown silk, in a paper-wrapped package.

Zita was in full dress uniform, sword and all, and her foreigner's sash had a new pin—a carved impression of a woman's face, bound with red ribbon.

“His Honor recalled that I'm inclined to women,” she said, when she saw Sophie looking at it. “I told him I don't mind dancing with whoever asks, but—”

“But he got you a lesbian badge of honor anyway?”

“It was thoughtful of him, wasn't it?” As always, there was that little bit of a pitch there:
Take it easy on Cly, Zophie, Cly rocks.
He'd picked her a nice friend who just happened to be head of the Team Cly cheerleading squad. If that wasn't manipulative, what was?

“You look very dashing,” Sophie replied.

Mirelda's dress was a more shapeless version of Sophie's, also brown, with white gloves and shoes to match her little-girl sash. The pair of them helped Sophie into the ball gown. Zita cast a covetous eye over Sophie's bra.

Did I really think I wanted to move to a world with Age of Sail technology?

Since her hair was short and curly anyway, all they did with it was give her a wreath of orange daisy-like flowers—osteopurnum or something like it.

The foreigner's sash with its one adornment hung like a beauty contestant's sash across her chest. Mirelda gathered the slack at her hip clumsily, pulling it into something like a rose.

“Your papers,” she said. The Bram pages on her desk were filling with text.

SOFE, WE HAVE DOCKED IN AUTUMN CITY AND PARRISH IS ARRANGING FOR A CARRIAGE. CLY SENT INVITES TO US ALL FOR THE BASH; THE IMPLICATION IS THE DRIVER WILL TAKE US TO YOU, WHEREVER YOU ARE. UNLESS YOU WANT TO MAKE A BREAK FOR IT…:)

Emoticons, she thought. So cute.

NO,
she scrawled, also in English.
IF I CAN JUST GET THROUGH TONIGHT, BEATRICE GETS HER BAIL.

“Powder?” Mirelda said. She was holding out a pot of pinkish … blush?

“What's that for?”

“You're quite tan. It's not genteel.”

“No powder, then.”

“You have an answer,” Zita said.

She glanced at the reply from Bram.
WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF THAT?

ME GETTING THROUGH?
Sophie wrote.
DIMINISHING.

New handwriting—Verena. She imagined them together in
Nightjar
's galley, bent over a page.
SOPHIE, BEHAVE.

TRYING, OMG, I SWEAR, TRYING.

Mirelda took a swipe at her with the blush.

Sophie gently pushed her hands away. “Listen, I'm not gonna pass for a genteel Sylvanner anything. Or a woman of the Fleet, for that matter.”

“No,” they agreed, Zita with humor, Mirelda with a touch of anxiety.

“If Cly doesn't like the image I present, he can park me in a dark corner.”

“Nonsense.” Cly's voice came through the door, followed by a knock.

“Come on in,” Sophie said, opening it herself.

Zita's dress uniform was snazzy. Cly's was just shy of outrageous. The Sylvanner sash was twinned with something that must be judicial—they wound around each other in a braid, ornamented with medallions and ribbons. His red cape, which had gold epaulets, was so impeccably brushed that it glowed.

Like Zita, he wore a sword, a wide-bladed, sharp-looking saber made of stonewood.

“I find no fault with the way you look,” he said.

Faint praise, Sophie thought, wondering suddenly if she and her father would get along.

“You look like the king of something,” she said.

“You're too kind.”