A Daughter of No Nation (36 page)

Slut in the barn.
The phrase speared Sophie's ballooning urge to laugh, all at once. She thought of Cly, coming back to Low Bann, late at night, and her stomach did an uneasy flip and roll as she remembered the slave, crying in the kitchen the next morning. The little slave kids on the parade route …

It's not proof, not proof, I could be wrong about him, I was wrong, so wrong about him arranging a betrothal.…

The envoy gritted his teeth, making a gristling sound that brought Sophie back to the present. “Clemency for Montaro depends on the Fleet waiving its right to try him for attempted murder asea. We remain beyond Tibbon's wash's territorial limit.”

All eyes turned to Verena.

We should ask him about the bandits, Sophie thought, and that got her thinking about Cly again, about how he'd shot the bandit captain in the throat, about how all of that ship's crew would be dead, if not for the fluke of her having gotten between him and the last guy.

There's a connection there, something I haven't seen yet.

“Verena—” she began.

Her sister made a furious
Shut up!
gesture and spoke, loudly: “If I take Montaro back to Fleet, you kids can use the royal favor to get married. He might as easily be a messenger there.”

“I won't testify against him,” Corsetta said.

“Nor I,” said Rashad.

“How would the attempted murder be proved?” Corsetta said.

Verena replied, “Is this truly what you want, Corsetta?”

“I must sail my soul's wind.” The girl nodded. “Montaro is my beloved's family, and this is a Tibbs matter.”

Verena let out a long sigh. “Fine. Go, all of you.”

The envoy turned to the spellscribe. “Take them above, and for Lady's sake, keep them separated.” When they were gone, he turned to Verena. “She's trouble, that one. You sure you don't want her back? She must have broken a few laws in Fleet.”

“None Montaro didn't break, too.”

“What a shame. Well, you've done us a favor. I'll be sure to send my appreciation to … Convener Gracechild?”

Verena blinked. “Thanks. I'll—can I see you to your ferry?”

“With pleasure.” He bowed impressively and they, too, vanished out between the velvet curtains. That left Sophie and her brother alone with Parrish, who hadn't said a word the whole time.

“Is there a … ‘pheromone' for forgiving your enemies?” Parrish murmured. “Corsetta showed extraordinary generosity in sparing Montaro.”

“Or she's being practical,” Sophie said. “How long will Rashad keep up the ‘oh my love, my only love' riff if she gets his brother hanged?”

“Keep up the … riff?”

“They're kids,” Bram agreed. “They've got decades to get tired of each other.”

“I thought you valued the evidence of your own eyes.”

“You saw true love, did you?” Bram said. He gave them another of his snotty-brat looks and sauntered out.

Oh. No way was she staying to discuss the nature of romantic love with Parrish. She scrambled after Bram.

They found Verena on deck, still in her green wrap, waving good-bye to the delegation.

“Hey!” Sophie said. “You did it!”

“Mostly,” Verena replied. For no reason Sophie could see, she was looking stung.

“Come on, give yourself the win. True love, clean living, and you.”

“Did I ask for a cheerleader?”

“Verena—”

“Why can't you just go home?”

Sophie's mouth fell open as she strode away, all but tangling with Parrish as he climbed the ladder from the galley.

It was Tonio who broke the silence. “Set course for Issle Morta? Captain?”

“Yes,” Parrish said, in a tone so colorless the word might as well have been typed on the clouds rather than spoken aloud.

 

CHAPTER    
23

“‘Dearest Sophie,'” Sophie read to Bram. “‘I have been much occupied with thoughts of our recent time together, what went wrong and how matters between us might be amended.

“‘I think you know I had no idea of your being ignorant of the fact that Sylvanna is a bonded nation. Had I realized, I would have told you. It is the way of us, in fleet, to talk around the subject, always. I suppose I should have guessed, rather than choosing to believe you had reconciled yourself to it, as your mother attempted to do.'”

“Subtle dig there,” said Bram. “Beatrice was okay with it.”

“‘As for the misunderstanding regarding Rees Erminne and his mother, I assure you I am not one to throw a child into marriage with someone they've known but an hour.'”

“Given that he's a lawyer, I feel I should say this doesn't mean he wouldn't throw you into some other marriage, if he could.”

“Or maybe we're being unfair.”

“What else does he say?”

She read on: “‘You ask what it would take for me to intercede with the Court on behalf of Beatrice. You use the phrase “let her go,” though I assure you it's not so simple.

“‘I continue to see no reason why I, as the party defrauded, denied my parental rights and now facing a socially complex divorce, with a daughter who would under other circumstances have been proud heiress of Low Bann, should attempt to make things easier for the author of my misery.

“‘Beatrice has set her sails; let her ride the winds.

“‘Ever your loving father, Clydon Banning.'” With that, she handed the page over, as though she thought Bram would see something in it she hadn't. Bram read it, slowly, familiarizing himself with the spelling and grammar of the Fleet words.

“You didn't ask if he was sleeping with the slaves?”

“In a letter?” She shook her head. “I chickened out. I don't have any decent evidence, and after how badly I misjudged the betrothal thing…”

He nodded, reaching the end, and folding it. “There's no admission of fault in this. Sociopaths don't.”

She nodded, agreeing but not entirely sure what to do with the bundle of issues that was Cly. He'd been a fire-setter as a child and the Bannings had magically tempered him. Killing was part of his day job. Even if she had no proof that he forced his slaves to sleep with him, just thinking about that filled her with rage and despair.

And they were his, weren't they? His responsibility?

If so, by extension they were hers, too. She thought again of the goat-people, of that stomach-turning moment when she realized they weren't fauns.

Despite everything, part of her hungered to believe in the Cly who'd seemed so vibrantly alive. The delight he seemed to take in everything, his excitement when he'd learned of her existence. Even the hurt he'd expressed when he'd talked about trying—and failing—to make Beatrice happy.

Did that make her a bad person?

“Was it all just an act? Could he really be so awful?”

Her brother rolled his head side to side. “Pretty seamless act, if it is. Hey—totally other topic—there's Mount Rainier.”

It was a transparent offer to move on to less painful terrain, and she was only too happy to take it. She turned, taking in the familiar cone, a dark blue shape etched on a fog-gray horizon, less a sighting of land than an implication of one.

Over the next few hours, the mountain and the rest of Issle Morta came into focus. The clouds at its peak separated, revealing a flatter top. Even here, it dominated the landscape. Rainier's slopes were clad in green and blue, the cedar-spruce-dogwood-and-fog palette of the Pacific Northwest.

“It's smoking,” Bram said as they approached. “It's active.”

Sophie glanced at him carefully. There'd been an active volcano in Erinth, too, and he'd been less than thrilled to be near it.

“It seems apparent that Stormwrack's a lot more active, geologically, than Erstwhile.”

Bram nodded agreement.

As the day wore on, they saw the approach to the island had been made into an obstacle course: massive stone skulls, not quite human, with exaggerated canines, rose from the surface of the water. Barnacles encircled their high waterline, and each had a single redwood tree planted within the bowl of its stone head. The cawing from above and the lime below indicated there was an enormous murder of crows living within the canopy of the artificial forest.

Parrish took the helm himself as they approached, wheeling them between the skulls on an apparently random route. He had a stopwatch out and was timing the gaps between skulls as they traveled; his face was set.

“What's he doing?” Bram asked.

“It's called interval navigation,” Tonio said. “A lot of islands built hazards, before the Cessation, into their vulnerable shore approaches. They salted them with shallows and shipwreckers. These”—he waved at the skulls—“date back to when Issle Morta was part of the Piracy. If you know the waters well enough and you fix your speed, you can time your passage of any landmark and then steer into the harbor blind, or in fog, just by counting.”

Sophie was filming the skulls themselves. “They look like cat skulls.”

“Specters,” Tonio said, just as they broke out of the hazard and into open water, a small port facing a drab village, walled, consisting of cedar A-frames built up around a square whose centerpiece was a long, square pit. A sculptural representation of an open grave?

“The town is called Lamentation,” Tonio murmured.

“How very consistent they are with their branding,” Bram said, an edge in his voice. When they were last in Stormwrack, he had been grabbed by the Isle of Gold, taken hostage. Golders tortured their hostages as a matter of course. But Cly had intervened, arranging for them to hand Bram over to Issle Morta until Sophie paid the ransom.

Holding hostages, acting as go-betweens was one of the things the monks of Issle Morta did. They ensured that kidnap victims weren't hurt or killed … but if a ransom deal with the kidnappers went south, honor forced them to use their own particular twist on legal slavery to keep the hostage. Forever.

Bram had almost ended up spending his life in this desolate, backwater place.

She groped for his hand.

Tonio had changed out of his sailor's clothes into a plain brown cloak and boots.

Parrish frowned. “Tonio?”

“Believe it or not, Garland, I have business with the dead.”

Lamentation was apparently where you moved if you wanted to live in grim seclusion, especially if you had a loved one in the monastery, someone you wanted to end up buried with, or someone who'd been scripped to death.

“No kids,” Sophie observed quietly as they came ashore.

“There might be five or six,” Parrish said. “But the residents tend to be widows and widowers. They come here later in life, when their children are grown. The forests have their hazards; this is no place for the young.”

“Lamentation's where you come to be clinically depressed?” Bram said.

“Many Lamenters sail on after they've taken time to mourn. It's a good place for it. Quiet. And the brothers help.”

Sophie thought about that. The idea of withdrawing from life until you were stronger, of just going somewhere where everyone understood and nobody expected much from you. Not having to try just to get through the days, to go back to work, whatever. “I can see how it'd be restful, or healing, or whatever. But I'd go nuts.”

He gave her a closed look and she remembered, once again, that he'd been superclose to Gale and she'd only been gone … seven months now?

She turned away, examining the town, trying to think of something kinder to say. What came out was: “That guy looks ready to leave.”

Parrish followed her gaze. There was a shockingly tall man standing on the dock. He was knobby-limbed and covered in bug bites. He also had a hole in his left calf big enough to see through.

“We're not a passenger ship, Sophie,” Tonio said.

“Look at that cross on the pottery jug beside him,” Sophie said. She had the advantage over them, because her camera's telephoto brought the man into view so much more clearly than their spyglasses. “The symbol on it means he's into medicine, doesn't it? And the herbs he's poking into that jug are willow leaves—he's making a painkiller.”

Parrish took the camera from her and peered through. “A medic? What makes you think he wants to leave Lamentation?”

“Who wouldn't want to leave?” Bram said. Sophie elbowed him in the ribs.

“That spot where he's perched: he's dug out a little seat in the sand, sized for his body. It's his spot. And look at the placement.”

Parrish nodded. “To maximize his view of incoming ships. He's watching people come in.”

He considered it. Then: “I have to arrange for supplies before we go up to Ossuary. Would you talk to him, Tonio?”

“Of course, Garland.”

They loaded up some baskets of salted fish and pickles before disembarking. Parrish hired donkeys in town: one to carry the provisions and another to bear blankets, bedrolls, and a sheaf of short, wicked-looking javelins that appeared to be carved from whalebone. The donkeys came with a handler, a spry man of about fifty, Hispanic in appearance and armed with a stout staff.

By the time he'd made the arrangements, Tonio had rejoined them. “Sophie's right—he's a medic,” he said. “Name of Watts. He's gone aboard
Nightjar
to meet Banana. If that works out, he'll join us.”

“Huh?” Bram said.

“He's from Ehrenmord,” Tonio said.

“And again: huh?”

“Oh, they're cat worshipers. He's been stuck here waiting for a ship with a resident cat.”

The morning passed quietly. Verena and Parrish led the procession, talking softly and urgently in Verdanii—they might, almost, have been arguing. Tonio had fallen into conversation with the donkey handler, and Bram was deploying his magnetometer.