A Daughter of No Nation (35 page)

“What are you gonna do about this mess?” Bram asked.

“No clue. Everything hinges on getting Beatrice out of jail. Verena's goodwill, Annela's willingness to let me do research—”

“Beatrice herself thawing out?”

“Fat chance of that,” she said.

Bram shrugged.

It was, more or less, true. The tangle of home versus Stormwrack hadn't gotten any looser—it was such a tight knot now she'd never pick it apart. She couldn't just be here and vanish on her parents. Yet the thought of going back to the real world forever felt heart-rippingly wrong.

“Can you love a place you barely know?”

“A place?” he said.

“This isn't just about Parrish.”

“You can love anything, can't you? Why not a world?”

“I mean
love.
Corsetta's die-without-Rashad thing.”

“That's hormones. What is she, fifteen?”

“Yeah,” she said, unconvinced.

“The little animal whisperer and Verena are both sex smitten. You know as well as I that the idea of one true love is a media package.”

“Love at first sight?” They'd had this conversation before … she could even supply his next line. “Your choice of mate will inevitably be made by powerful pre-programmed biological instincts.”

“You're the biologist, tell me I'm wrong. You know we're driven to pair up. To cheat, too.”

“I don't—”

But suddenly the hatch at their feet was opening again, and Bram interrupted. “Hey, Parrish.”

The captain nodded, quite stiffly, Sophie thought.

He said, “Everything all right?”

“Corsetta's a better escape artist than a mad bomber,” Bram said. “Her fire trap was barely smoldering. Someone would've found and doused it quickly enough.”

Parrish nodded. “Verena's sent for the brother, Rashad.”

A long silence spilled from that. To break it, Sophie said, “Do I hear thumping, down by the galley?”

Parrish put a hand on the rail, and something in his face made Sophie think about true love again. “We're rearranging some bulkheads below;
Nightjar
's fore cabins convert to an arbitration space.”

“If Verena finds a resolution here, will it keep Annela from firing her?”

“It will depend, I suppose, on the resolution.”

“I guess she's still got the magic back-and-forth power. She can get to and fro between Erstwhile and Stormwrack.”

“Would that keep the government from reducing her to just that—a letter carrier between worlds?” Bram asked.

Parrish refused to be drawn out—he just gave them a polite smile.

She didn't quite finish high school, did she? Once Gale died, she figured she was moving here, full-time. She's got nothing left at home; she'd have to finish out her senior year, start making friends.

She's spent all her life learning to fence and speak languages nobody on Earth knows.…

“What's a hormones?” Parrish asked suddenly. Changing the subject?

Bram smirked. “You're the biologist, Ducks.”

“Don't call me Ducks.” She gave Parrish a dry little lecture, starting with bees and the alarm pheromones they used to communicate, hoping to see his eyes glaze over. He hung on every word.

Jeez, you're adorable.
The thought made her feel more flustered, not less.

Boring, Sofe, be boring.
She was up to describing household traps that used gypsy moth hormones to lure them onto sticky paper, when a small ferry appeared, sailing from the direction of Tibbon's Wash. It bore three wildly well dressed figures.

Corsetta and Montaro both leaned on the rail, near the bridge, watching the ferry's approach.

“What's to keep Angelboy from flying off again?”

“Honor?” Parrish said.

If he chucked a fifteen-year-old girl off his ship, he wasn't likely to have any of that, Sophie thought.

Parrish may have read her face; he added, “The appearance of honor will matter, at this point.”

In any case, Montaro looked exhausted. The spell that transformed him would have worked better on someone jockey-slender; the wings drooping from his shoulders were massive, but everything had its limits. If he wanted to remain an aerialist, he'd never eat a decent meal again.

There was a final, percussive cluster of bumps and sliding wood, and Verena appeared at the fore of the ship. Now, as the ferry reached them she crossed her arms over her chest, in imitation of a pose of Annela's. She was clad in what must be a traditional Verdanii tunic of flowing green silk. One of her fencing blades hung from a gold scabbard. Gale's Fleet badge dangled like a big flashy pendant at her throat.

The party from Tibbon's Wash consisted of three people: a man, a woman, and a teenage boy with cherub cheeks and thick gold curls. The latter, Sophie assumed, was Rashad.

There were introductions all around. The man was an envoy from the Queen, and the woman, it turned out, was the spellscribe who'd worked both the suicide pact on the young lovebirds and the cure for Corsetta's sun exposure.

Rashad reached for Corsetta. The Crown envoy blocked him, shooing him instead toward his brother. They settled for making eyes at each other.

“Does everyone here speak Fleet?” Verena said. There was a quaver in her voice.

Nods all around.

“Follow me, please.”

They trooped down the ladder through the galley and found the two fore cabins, Verena's and Parrish's, transformed. The bulkhead between them had been pulled and packed, the bunks stowed. In their place was a conference room, formally arrayed, with a linen-covered table, pitchers of cold water, and, to Sophie's surprise, a tray of small baklava-like cakes. Red curtains imprinted with the Fleet insignia hung around the table, creating false walls that squared and enclosed the space (and hid Parrish's collection of souvenirs). Beal had donned a scribe's uniform and waited to take notes. All very official and tidy.

The formality of the surroundings had an immediate effect. The kids became drop-jawed serious. The envoy cast his eye around approvingly and took a seat midtable, gesturing for the spellscribe to stand behind him.

Montaro had to duck below the hatch to get his wings in and crouched on a low bench instead of a chair.

When everyone was settled, Verena uttered a long stream of formal-sounding Verdanii. Then she said, “We're here to consider events aboard a ship of Tibbon's Wash,
Waveplay,
five days after midsummer, in Northwater.”

“The Fleet has no interest here,” the envoy said. “This is a local matter, a family feud.”

So he's siding with Montaro, Sophie thought.

“The government's interest is, as always, justice. Kir Montaro stands accused of attempted murder in open waters.”

The boy, Rashad, went a little bug-eyed at that.

Verena laid out the story: their discovery of Corsetta half-dead in Northwater, her various misadventures in Fleet, and the flurry of accusation and counteraccusation between both parties. She detangled, in detail, the bureaucratic moves that had thwarted Montaro's and Corsetta's respective attempts to flee back to Tibbs.

Verena declined to raise the issue that might have gotten them both executed: Corsetta's assertion that Montaro was in league with the bandits.

“The great rush to get here all comes down to you, Rashad,” she concluded, gently as she could. “Your brother hopes you'll give up the inscription you made with Corsetta—the life-and-death pact. Corsetta needs you to admit your brother asked you to seduce her so she'd go on the sail with him.”

The boy looked from his brother to his girlfriend, clearly torn. “What will happen to Montaro if—”

“We'll decide that today. He might go back to Fleet, for questioning about other matters.”

“Other matters?” Rashad asked. He seemed bewildered.

If Montaro had been friends with the bandits, Sophie guessed the brother didn't know it. Montaro himself paled, becoming almost as white as his wings.

Verena looked to the envoy. “What's the penalty if he's tried at home?”

“Risking the life of a minor servant is hardly a crime,” said the envoy. “Attempting to steal the Queen's favor, on the other hand…”

Now it was Rashad who looked stricken.

“Well. As an oddity, Montaro would have his uses. He might serve the Queen as a penance for his crime.”

Montaro burst forth with a protest, in Tibbsian, clearly appealing to his brother. Corsetta shot Rashad an urgent
Shut up!
glance.

Oh, this is getting messy.

Sophie bit her lips to keep from offering her opinion, then looked to her brother. Bram was sitting back, listening to the flow of Fleetspeak and concentrating, pretty obviously, on catching what nuances he could of the argument.

Verena, too, was waiting, just taking it in. It'll fall to her, Sophie realized. She'll send Montaro home for one kind of punishment or haul him to Fleet for another. Judge and jury, with her cousin the Convenor coming down on her hard if she makes the wrong choice.

This was what you got in a court system with no standards of proof. Cly might be a slave-owning jerk wad, or worse, but he wasn't wrong about the system being hopelessly arbitrary.

Verena stood, drawing everyone's attention. “Rashad,” she said, and she was doing her utmost to seem impressive. “This is not a situation which requires you to choose between your girlfriend—”

“My beloved!”

“—and your brother. Your loyalties are irrelevant. All we require from you is the truth.”

The kid's breath hitched. Once. Twice. “Montaro asked me to get to know her.”

The brother's wings drooped slightly. Corsetta made a small noise.

“He'd seen she had a way with wild things. The goats, of course, but birds, rabbits, cats. And—” Now he looked angry. “He thought at sea she'd grow to like him.”

“But once I knew her, my feelings changed. Corsetta is the finest, most beautiful, the smartest—”

Devious, light-fingered…, Sophie thought.

The government envoy couldn't contain himself. “Silence, boy! You're embarrassing yourself. She's a goatherd.”

“She's a goddess!”

The spellscribe was trying not to laugh.

Rashad went on, “I asked her to marry me, if we could get the Queen's permission. But we didn't trust Montaro—”

“Whose idea was it to have the life-binding done?”

“Mine,” Corsetta inserted.

Something passed between them. “I needed assurances,” she said. “It was me who didn't trust Montaro, not Rashad.”

Getting their stories straight, right in front of us.

“This is why cops interview witnesses separately at home,” Sophie muttered to Bram.

The envoy looked from one to the other. “At any point, Rashad, did your brother reveal an intention to betray Corsetta, once the snow vulture was secured?”

Rashad squirmed.

Oh! The little poet boy was in on the plan to kill her, at least at first.
And Corsetta, poor Corsetta, she had guessed it. She was covering for him.

“Just the truth, Kir,” Verena repeated.

“He knew nothing!” Corsetta protested. “The spell was my idea.”

The kid let out a long breath. “Only one person can claim the Queen's favor. If Corsetta did not return, Montaro could claim the prize.”

“That's premeditated murder,” Bram said.

The envoy, hearing Bram's accent, raised his eyebrows. Before he could ask who the wacky foreign observers were, though, Rashad went on: “We sought the life-binding as protection. And I told Montaro. I told him, if she doesn't return, I will die.”

Everyone looked to the tattered figure of Montaro, crouched miserably on his bench. He barked, laughing in a way that sounded painful. “I thought he was being poetic.”

“So they did tell him,” Bram whispered. “He just didn't listen to little brother. Tsk.”

Sophie elbowed him in the ribs.

The envoy looked with distaste at all three of them. “The goatherd would appear to be relatively blameless. There is no doubt that she cozzled the bird, or that it has chosen her as its protector. The Queen's favor and the proceeds of sale will go to her.”

Eyes huge, Rashad asked, “And Montaro?”

“If he goes to the Fleet, he'll be prosecuted for trying to murder Corsetta,” Verena said. “If he goes home—”

“Charged with stealing the Queen's favor,” the envoy confirmed.

Rashad leapt to his feet, clutching his heart. “Brother! The truth has condemned you!”

All that's missing is a ‘Zounds!'
Sophie looked at Bram, which was a mistake … he was repeating what Rashad had said, translating, and any second now they were both going to lose it to a fit of the giggles.

“I know what we can do!” Corsetta reached for Rashad and the envoy slapped her hand, hard. She ignored him, twining their fingers. “We can ask for clemency for Montaro. As our favor. He won't face execution. You said he can go in service to the Crown if the Queen forgives him?”

“Without her favor, you can't wed,” the envoy said. Then he brightened, probably realizing that he liked Montaro and was against the wedding anyway.

“Does this mean you've forgiven me?” Rashad blinked tears off his cherub cheeks and wrapped his arms around Corsetta.

Jeez, stop, where did they get this guy?

Bram broke eye contact with her. He was staring at the ugly, wounded, chicken-skin flesh of Montaro's collarbones, using it to fight off the attack of inappropriate funnies.

The envoy pried the kids apart before they could start working on their firstborn. He repeated, “Without the Queen's favor, you can't wed.”

Corsetta twinkled at him. “Well, there's always the next challenge, isn't there? In the meantime, Rashad won't be the first landowner to keep a goat slut in his barn.”