A Daughter of No Nation (14 page)

“I think you have it in you to revolutionize the way we practice law within the Fleet,” he said. “Your improvised interrogation of the doctor during your testimonial to the Convene, last time you were here—”

Sophie had realized the gathering—of most of the international government, as it turned out—was gearing up to accuse her of lying, fraud, and possibly even murder. To defend herself, she'd obliged a doctor to point out a few basic details about the body of a murdered man.

“That was just a bit of forensics, Cly. Not exactly my area, but not rocket science, either, if you know a little biology and chemistry.”

“
Forehhhn sik,
” he said, rolling it on his tongue with satisfaction. “Yes. This is an Anglay word?”

“‘Forensic.'”

“It will do nicely as the name for a branch of study. If forensic study could gain acceptance within the court system, it could become a sanctioned branch of knowledge within the Judiciary. That'd give temperamentalism a good stab to the left lung, wouldn't it?” His wolfish grin widened.

Sophie stared at her birth father in open-mouthed astonishment. “You want me to—”

“To compose or compile a reliable body of work that can be applied to court cases here in the Fleet, to call it forensic, to train adherents.”

“It's not a religion.”

“Yes, yes.” An infuriating, dismissive flick of his fingers. “The point, child, is you could pursue your investigations into the nature of the world in a way that would substantially benefit the Fleet of Nations. This, in turn, should spill the wind from your cousin Annela's passion to contain and silence you. If you're usefully employed, Sylvanner, and sworn to serve the Fleet, there's no reason for her to bind your sails.”

“Cly—”

“Are you all right?”

“This is … it's pretty much a job offer.”

“Yes, indeed.”

“A huge job offer.”
Stormwrack CSI,
she thought, and she couldn't quite keep back a giggle.

“What kind of parent would I be if I didn't have an eye to your future?”

Her mind began to crank through possible approaches. “I thought you weren't going to take me seriously.”

“It's a habitual pattern of thought with you.”

“Thanks a lot, Cly.”

“I speak as I observe. Someone's done you a disservice, no doubt by consistently underrating you.”

“Okay! And when I want psychoanalysis…”

She paused because he was mouthing the word “psychoanalysis” with a look of delight at the sound. It was endearing, taking the sting out of his observation.

Parrish does that, too, she thought, grooves on unfamiliar words.

Inventing forensics from the ground up. Challenging a whole world's backward approach to science. A license to freely study Stormwrack, figuring out where it had come from and whether it represented some kind of threat to home. It was a dizzying prospect.

“What do you think?”

She reined in her imagination, considering the practicalities. “A lot of what I know of forensics—the theory, I mean—is basic science. There's lots of chemistry involved. I could learn to apply some of it pretty fast.”

“And the practice?”

“Well, I've watched a lot of cop shows.”

He gave her a polite smile, clearly unsure what that meant.

“At home relying on televised info, on stories, would be disastrous, but as we're getting started—we're inventing the procedures from whole cloth, right? We'd need rules about chain of evidence to ensure that somebody responsible had custody of experiments or samples or whatever.”

“A sworn keeper of exhibits?”

“Yes. And specialists, carefully trained, to work in…” What would they need? Not so much fiber analysis or tire tracks but fingerprinting, for sure. “It would all have to work in an oceangoing city. And there are the technological limitations. No DNA sequencing here.”

“Is psychoanalysis another science?”

“Sort of.” She wasn't getting into hard versus squishy science with him today.

Cly was beaming. “Already hard at work, I see.”

“You've given me a lot to think about.”

“Excellent!”

“I'm pondering where to start.”

“With court cases, presumably.” The tea tray came and he began to pour. “I've asked Krispos to read up on a half-dozen hard lumps that have been crammed in the gizzard of the court system for years. Cases that could potentially hinge on matters of fact.”

“As opposed to what?”

“Testimony. Opinion. Combat.”

“Can you do that as a judge? Involve yourself?”

“Normally, no. I have a personal stake in these.” He seemed pleased that she'd thought of it. “I'm already banned from involving myself officially. The irony is that means I'm permitted to influence them.”

“Does Krispos have the hard copies?” Playing Q-and-A with the memorician was useful only once she knew what she was looking for.

“Of course. They're about animals and plants; I knew that much of your specialty, anyway. Sylvanna's rather plagued by such suits.”

So there's a big potential benefit to you, back home, if you get me established in the court system.
“I'll look at them right away,” she said, rising.

He toasted her with his teacup and she found her way down to the hold. Krispos was murmuring over one of the transcripts; she picked up another, one he'd already read, and pretended to ignore his glower as she left with it.

Then, before heading back up, she ducked into her cabin, writing a quick note on the messageply:
CLY IS SUGGESTING I START UP A STORMWRACK CSI UNIT IN FLEET.

She was putting the page away when text appeared, so neatly lettered it might have been machine printed:
To do what?

Sophie scratched out:
REVERSE-ENGINEER FORENSICS, TRAIN EXPERT WITNESSES, PUT HARD EVIDENCE BEFORE PERSONAL TESTIMONY, THAT KIND OF THING.

She was putting the page away when more text appeared:
HOW DOES THAT GET YOU BACK OUT TO DOING PRIMARY RESEARCH? OR FIGURING OUT WHAT/WHEN STORMWRACK IS, NOT TO MENTION WHETHER HOME'S GONNA GO KABLOOEY?

Sophie:
JOB = SALARY + PERMISSION TO SAIL PLACES/STUDY THINGS WITHOUT GETTING STOMPED BY GOVERNMENT OR ACCUSED OF SPYING.

Bram:
YOU'VE BEEN ACCUSED OF SPYING????

Sophie:
NO.

NOT YET, ANYWAY.
She added:
THINK: IF WE HAVE HELP GATHERING HARD INFO RE STORMWRACK, IT'LL HELP US INVESTIGATE THE LINK BETWEEN HERE AND HOME. BETTER THAN GRABBING WHATEVER FACTS SLIDE PAST US.

Bram:
YOU'D HAVE MINIONS?

Sophie:
WOULD HAVE TO, I THINK.

Bram:
THAT WOULD HELP. THIS IS COOL, SOFE—CONGRATS.

Sophie drew a little happy face on the sheet of magical paper:
C GAVE ME CASE FILES. I'LL UPDATE YOU SOON.

Bram:
KTHXBAI.

She laid a hand on the page: the illusion of texting made home and her brother seem very close by. Then, when no new words appeared, she picked up her transcript and headed back for the ladder up to the main deck.

 

CHAPTER    
9

There was something like cheating in the way they spent the next few hours creeping up on the little sailing ship, using the illusion provided by the convex to keep it from realizing they were closing the gap. It was like watching a cat hunt an unsuspecting bird, the slow predatory creep upon an entirely helpless target.

Still, these people were suspected of killing the crews of half a dozen ships.

As the chase stretched, Captain Beck busied herself with preparing to board and search the target, talking the teenage sailors through a maneuver that would bring the ship into a sweep alongside the other craft.
Sawtooth
had two older cannoneers, taciturn men as muscled as
Nightjar
's Krezzo, tasked with firing at the ship once they were within range.

Cly, meanwhile, drilled his half-dozen young duelists on boarding tactics.

If either Cly or Beck was concerned about taking on a ship that was allegedly full of murderers, using a crew of young recruits, it didn't show.
Sawtooth
was massive compared to the ship they were pursuing; she had numbers on her side, even if those numbers were largely inexperienced.

Zita was up drilling with the other duelists, so there was nobody but Krispos to talk to Sophie. Together they made a study of their target—she was maybe twenty feet long, with patched, greasy-looking sails. Looking through her telephoto as they got closer, Sophie counted six crew. Unless there was someone below, there were only four guys and two women aboard, all busily engaged in catching every breath of wind. They might not know
Sawtooth
was closing on them, but they wanted to leave her behind.

The ship was riding high in the water—whatever she had been stealing from the ships she'd sunk, she wasn't carrying any heavy cargo at the moment, Sophie deduced. The crew looked weary, unhealthy, even starved. If these were pirates, they weren't successful ones.

Why were they raiding ships at all? And how?

Violence again, she thought. Parrish had said life in the Fleet was safe, but here she was on the periphery of another fight.

It's not as though anyone expects me to participate.
The thought wasn't as reassuring as she would have hoped; from time to time, she found herself checking her pocket for her key ring and the little canister of bear spray.

As the hours crawled by, the skinny captain got visibly edgy about his failure to lose
Sawtooth.
He and one of the others had an argument, gesturing over a bundle on deck. The crewman protested, furiously … right up until the captain smacked him. Shoulders sagging, he took out a long knife, opened the sacking, and cut out—

“Oh God, that's a heart, a human heart.” Her gorge rose even as she took the shot.

Cly said, “Are you certain?”

She nodded and showed him the frame.

“How soon can we close?” he asked Beck.

“Not long,” the captain said, considering it. “That's their lives, then.”

“What?” Sophie said.

“Using human remains in an inscription is a capital crime, unless the subjects volunteered for use,” Cly explained.

“How do you know they're using the heart for magic?”

“Why else would they be mutilating a body? They plan to work an intention against us.”

“You mean the heart will be some kind of battle thing?”

“Attack or defense, yes.”

“Why are they running if they can sink ships?”

“Their first two victims were barely bigger than bumboats, and the captain of
Drifter,
the derelict you found, was known to be a drunkard,” Cly said. “She'll show her teeth, all right—she's desperate. We'll knock them out, no fear.”

“I don't know that I am afraid,” Sophie replied.

“Nobody thinks you're a coward,” Cly said. “You keep your head in a crisis.”

With that, he returned to his duelists.

Feeling nettled, Sophie continued to scan the boat. Small ship, small crew, no booty to speak of—well, they could be stealing something light but valuable, like diamonds—and they had a spellscribe.

What had the targeted ships been carrying?

“They're making for the islet,” cried a crewman from the crow's nest.

The other ship wasn't just making for the peaked scrap of land, it was all but running itself aground on its shores.

“Ah.” Beck grinned. “Hoping to abandon ship and vanish into the forest? Why not? We're hours behind, aren't we?”

“Send them into a panic,” Cly said, with perceptible satisfaction. “Drop convex.”

The shimmer surrounding Sawtooth turned to steam; the bow of the ship sliced through. Sophie felt a warm kiss of sauna against her cheeks.

Shouts of consternation arose from the small crew of the bandit. They threw themselves into furious action. The captain ran the length of the deck, scattering something grainy into the water. The ship itself began to thump, as if it were a drum. The rhythm was a pulse:
ba-dum, ba-dum.
Fist-size bubbles the bright green color of algae rose from the ocean around the ship, thousands of them. They pulsed, ever so slightly, in time to the beat as they drifted toward
Sawtooth.

“Does anyone recognize this intention?” Beck asked.

A chorus of “No, Captain!”

She looked to Cly, who shook his head.

“Finish this before the foam accumulates,” he said.

Beck nodded. “Cannons one and two, fire!”

The cannoneers had been forming sandspheres; by now, they each had a tidy stockpile. Sophie was reminded, again, of kids building up to a snowball fight. The taller of the two hurled blasts of fire at the ship's mainmast. One found its mark, exploding the wood to matchsticks. The other cannoneer punched two tidy holes in the hull, right at the point where her hull met the waterline.

She began to take water.

The
ba-dum, ba-dum
got faster; the greenish bubbles foamed like a pot aboil. The two ships were now perhaps fifty meters apart.

“Surrender and prepare to be boarded.” Beck's words boomed out over the water.

“What do you think?” Zita had come up on deck next to Sophie. She held a flat, wide sword—would that be a cutlass?—whose blade appeared to be made of a wafer of inscribed bone or tusk.

“Looks like a last stand to me,” Sophie said.

The water around the sinking ship began to heave. Figures belched up from it: human shaped, white in color, with no features except bloodred eyes. Were they made of sea salt? They looked a little like department store mannequins.

“Salt frights!” someone shouted.