A Daughter of No Nation (43 page)

“I was five when they told me,” Verena said. “I was going into kindergarten. My best friend from play school was moving to Australia and I was heartbroken. Mom and Gale brought me here. Forget Sally, they said. This is your sailing ship, that's her captain.…” Her voice trailed off. “My mom says I'm special. What a joke, right?”

“Verena,” Sophie said. “The siren things are messing with your head.”

“They're called bevvies.”

“They're dialing up our emotions, aren't they?” Sophie edged closer. Verena's eyes flicked to her feet.

I need to bring her toward me, not away. Make her mad, not sad.

“I knew it was pointless,” Verena said. “I've always known. But as long as Garland didn't care about anyone else, I could imagine … pretend. Now here's you: older, prettier, smarter. And a Feliachild. The whole package, practically custom-made. Bam, look at him. Smitten.”

“Not true,” Sophie said. She looked down at Parrish. He had three of the crew tied and was doing something to block their ears with cotton. “We're attracted, sure, but—”

“Gale was dead five minutes after he first laid eyes on you!”

Sophie felt the shock of the accusation—hurt, defensiveness, guilt, and all of it enhanced by the song pounding at all her membranes—before she realized it didn't make sense. “What?”

“You're the one. Fall in love and Gale meets her doom. That's what the Allmother told him.”

“You don't believe in predestination.”

Gale said, she said if I came back to Stormwrack I'd bring down doom on all my kin.…

Beatrice in jail, Gale dead. Now, thanks to the bevvies, Verena was suicidal.

She meant Cly. Gale didn't want Cly to find out about me, it wasn't some magical fate thing, it was just the law.…

“I knew she was supposed to get murdered, but I thought … you know. The other nations of the Fleet think the Verdanii are cracked when it comes to prophecy. But Annela showed me both transcripts.…”

Three of the
Nightjar
sailors stretched a ratty-looking fishing net off the starboard side.

“‘Gale will be safe until Parrish loses his heart,'” she quoted, bitterly.

The crew's trying to clear a little space in case Verena jumps, Sophie guessed. It wouldn't be enough. The bevvies were too agile.

She could easily imagine the creatures devouring Verena if she fell or jumped. The image cleared her head a little.

What would Cly say? He was always pretty infuriating. “What, precisely, is this tantrum getting you?”

Verena's head whipped round, snakelike, and her grip on the rigging tightened.

Man, yeah! Managed the patronizing tone pretty good there.
“Perhaps if you fling yourself overboard and get devoured, Garland will realize he's made a terrible mistake?”

“Shut up, Sophie.”

“Ooh! And Annela will give you a posthumous medal?”

Okay, kid, you're supposed to be running across the spar now to deck me.
She was out of mean comments. She tried to adopt Cly's puzzled,
How are you so dumb and still breathing?
expression.

For a second, Verena stood there, quivering like an electrified squirrel on a high wire. Then she whisked her sword out of its scabbard and came at her.

Oops, bad strategy, forgot the bladed weapon.

But at least Verena was off the edge of the spar now. If she fell, she'd either hit the rigging or the deck. Suboptimal, but she didn't look like she was thinking of flinging herself into the sea anymore.

“We were fine before you came,” she hissed. “Now Gale's dead and Cly Banning has Mom jailed. Garland's head over frigging heels—”

“Gale's not my fault!”

“She was safe until he fell in love.”

“He's not—”

“And for what? Garland's just another notch on your bedpost. Crook your finger, that guy Lais jumps into your pants. You just assumed you'd gotten engaged on Sylvanna—”

“Yeah, and that was such a barrel of fun.” She was getting angry. “Know any five-year-olds, Verena?”

Verena's overwide brown eyes, so like her own, were just inches away. “What?”

“Your neighborhood, in Bernal. Pretty family-oriented, right? Any little kids?”

“So?”

“Any first-grader boys you might consider dating, say in twelve years' time?”

“It's different here.”

“Really? It's that different?” She leaned in a little, and Verena did withdraw the blade before it could cut her. For just an instant, Sophie felt a terrible urge to give her a shove. “You sent Garland after us when Lais and I were—”

“Slutting it up?”

“You invited that woman Langda aboard
Nightjar
because you hoped I'd get jealous.”

Damn, this is dumb, it's the critters. I gotta dial this down, gotta calm us both.

She whispered through gritted teeth, “Listen. I've never managed to make a relationship work for even eighteen months.”

The change of direction caught Verena before she could reply: her mouth opened, and she looked quizzical.

“So,” Sophie finished, “chances are good you're gonna get another shot.”

An edgy laugh. Then, bursting into tears, Verena sheathed her sword.

To the stern, the school of bevvies was surfacing, one after another, wailing.

Despair rolled through her.
Gale died because Parrish fell for me? That's just—if it's true and they can predict the future then the future is fixed and I had no choice. And if it's not and it was just a coincidence, but oh jeez, what if Gale died and Parrish thought: That does it, Sophie's the one I must be in love with, and deep down he doesn't even—

Stop it, it's the bevvies, just the weird effect of the bevvies—

She reeled Verena into a hug, just in case her mood swung back to suicidal. “It's gonna be all right,” she said, and she was almost crying herself. “Somehow or another, it's all gonna be okay.”

“How?” Verena said.

She didn't know.

 

CHAPTER    
28

The bevvies followed them for a day and a half, giving the new medic, Watts, an excuse to ply the crew with a “relaxing” ginger-laced tea that Sophie suspected was a placebo—or, at best, a delivery system for nutrients. The creatures' pursuit left everyone dispirited except Bram, who just tucked his nose into his notebook, finishing their presentation.

“Why aren't they cranking you up?” Verena asked. She was red-eyed and keeping to her cabin.

“I'm more relaxed than I've ever been,” Bram said. “All this time to think without the clutter of—”

“Human contact?” Sophie suggested.

“If you're going to heckle, get out,” he said, tone amiable.

They made the rest of the sail without any more trouble, or any more dating. Verena's disclosure about Gale's death had left Sophie confused and raw.

It didn't help that the whole crew had been on deck, that Verena's shouted declarations, about prophecies and fate and Garland being a notch on Sophie's bedpost, meant all of them, Parrish included, had heard every word.

As they neared the Butcher's Baste, they laid all their data out on the galley table, once again turning the dining room into a shared workspace as they set out everything from a chart of the currents to Rees Erminne's migration graph, the calendar he used for setting gambling odds on when the turtles would arrive.

“We've missed the first night Kir Erminne listed as a possibility,” Parrish began.

“Not a good one,” Bram put in.

“The currents at this time of year make it likely the auto—atom—”

“Automatons,” Sophie said. “Mindless gadgets with no volition of their own, sowing destruction wherever they wash up.”

Bram gave her a slight frown.

“Automatons.” Parrish savored the cadences of the English as he repeated the word, then marked a position on the chart. “They should go into the water near here. There's a strong current; it would carry almost anything to Sylvanna in a matter of hours.”

“That means there will be a Haversham ship in the area. Since we don't want to be seen, the optimal location for a dive would be about—”

“How about here?” Sophie said, tapping the page. “It's about midway between both nations. Maybe this big islet will offer
Nightjar
some shelter?”

“You would be hard put to resist the current,” Parrish said.

“I'll say.” Bram had been doing figures on the table, converting the Fleet units to numbers the Americans would understand. “It's about six miles an hour, Sofe.”

“So I wash up on the lowlands.” She spoke with more boldness than she felt. Thoughts of soot vipers and quicksand—
oh, and let's not forget the fire leeches
—ran through her mind. “Turtle Beach is close to Low Bann. If worst came to worst, I could walk up to Cly's house.”

Parrish shook his head. “There will be people on the beach: guards, and someone to time the turtles' arrival for the betting pool—”

“Rees,” Sophie said.

“And you organized a scientific experiment, didn't you? To settle another of the lawsuits. So … observers?”

“Okay,” Sophie said. “No washing ashore.”

“I'm serious,” Parrish said.

“You're always serious. I'll have to take a tether, that's all.”

“I'll run her out in a rowboat,” Tonio said. “Same as when she went diving for the Heart of
Temperance
.”

Late that night, they sailed into the Baste.

She had heard that the Baste was tricky sailing—the passage had dangerous shallows and was filled with real and man-made islets. As he had on the approach to Issle Morta, Parrish took the wheel, paying close heed to a stopwatch as he took them around three of the islets before weighing anchor near a ponderous hump of rock that Bram, for some reason, had named Elvis.

By night, Sophie could see evidence of border security—a line of watchtowers along the Sylvanner lowland shore, their tops ablaze, drenching the beaches with light. Escapees fleeing to the beach would be hard put to get to the water.

The Haversham navy had responded in kind: brilliantly illuminated warships patroled the waters to the northwest.

Sophie got her gear on and, with Tonio's assistance, launched a small rowboat into the heart of the shorebound current. The boat was tethered to
Nightjar;
Sophie had an additional hundred meters of rope tied to the smaller craft.

“Ready to go?” Tonio asked.

She nodded.

“What about these?” He indicated her tanks and regulator.

“Not until I find the turtles,” she said, dropping into the sea.

Diving, finally. She spent a moment getting used to the water, which was chillier than she'd expected. Summer was waning, but who knew what was normal at this time of year?

She'd been on shoots where they'd set up and then been forced to wait for weeks for the animals to show, and one where they'd never put in an appearance at all. Here, she was relying on Rees's gambling odds and on Parrish's knowledge of the currents. Plus a bit of luck.

Concentrate.
She adjusted her snorkeling mask—as she'd told Tonio, she couldn't afford to use the air tanks until she absolutely needed them—and set about getting to know the water. She had a good LED dive light and her camera, and as she sank below she turned into the current, submerging her lantern and looking for the turtles, looking for anything.

Staying even with the current was a significant effort. She fell into a rhythm: submerge, search, kick back to the rowboat, submerge again. Her light was faltering and she was exhausted when Tonio indicated it was time to give up for the night.

She climbed into the rowboat. He immediately gave her a flask of hot tea. Feeling chilled and disappointed, she helped him row back to
Nightjar.

“You rarely score the first time out,” she said, as cheerily as she could. Parrish took them around Elvis and out to open sea. She spent the next day recharging her lamp and her camera batteries using the solar panels, and sleeping off the night's search.

The second night was a repeat of the first except that they had to break off a little earlier, when one of the Haver navy vessels seemed to be heading their way. Had they been spotted? Nobody was sure.

On the third afternoon, a chilly rain began to fall, cool wet drops with a hint of autumn in them. They went over the tide charts again.

“It seems to me the rain offers a chance to get closer to one nation or the other,” Parrish said. “Visibility will be poorer, and with the clouds there will be no moon or starlight.”

“If we aren't tucked in behind Elvis, aren't we more likely to be seen?” It turned out Bram had so named the islet because it was located about where Memphis should be at home.

“I can find a similar berth.” Parrish shook his head. “The question is: Closer to Sylvanna, where Sophie might be taken for an escaped slave or someone trying to aid same? Or closer to Haversham, where they could try to sink us to hide what they're doing?”

“Haversham,” Sophie said. “More chance we can catch them if we find the ship doing the dumping.”

“Sylvanna,” Verena said at the same time. “Sophie's sort of one of them. If they don't kill her immediately, she can drop Cly's name. And we can show we're acting in their interests.”

Bram squinted at the chart. “You picked a good spot here, Parrish. The turtles will show. Let's not increase the risk.”

They were evenly divided.

Tonio said, “I guess you're deciding, Garland.”

He looked at the chart, assessed the rain and wind, and thought it over. “We'll defer to Verena's expertise.”