Child of a Hidden Sea (14 page)

“Let's not turn you to hamburger, okay?”

“Don't treat me like I'm a kid,” Verena said, but there was no heat in the words.

“I'll help her.” Bram got the maid to her feet and urged her toward the kitchen. He was trying to repeat the phrase Sophie had just used: “Warm water, clean with?” His pronunciation was off, but the girl seemed to know what he wanted.

“He'll know as much Fleetspeak as me by the end of the week,” Sophie grumbled. “Verena, what are these things? Parrish called them mezmers?”

“Oddities,” she said. “They've been scripped for this.”

“Scripped.”

“Magically altered.”

“Animals … changed into killers?”

Verena shook her head. “Not animals.”

The sourness rose in her belly. “They were human?”

“Assassination requires judgment,” Verena said dully. “Strategy. Target recognition.”

“Patience and teamwork,” the guard agreed.

I cut off his hand. It's a person and I maimed him …

Bram returned with a steaming bowl; Sophie put Verena's injured hand into it. Red billowed from the punctures, tinting the water in cloudy, sea-jelly swirls. She set her watch. “Soak for ten minutes, okay?”

“You can't trust an animal intellect,” Verena said. “So you transform a person. They do the job and they can't speak, they can't tell anyone on you.”

Sophie switched to English, for Bram. “Verena says they're people.”

He nodded. “I wondered. When it scrambled my mind, I heard … gabble. Words, in this Flitspake language of yours.”

“Fleetspeak,” Verena murmured, correcting his pronunciation. “Where is Parrish?”

“You said he went to tell the palazzo.”

“This is gonna kill him,” she said. “He and Gale have been sailing together since he was eighteen.”

Time crawled. Sophie picked twenty quills out of Verena's hand, making a fairly neat job of it, before slathering the cuts with an antiseptic gel she'd brought from home.

In time, Parrish returned with an impossibly large number of people, most in uniform: guards, officers, clerks with slates and chalk. There were two white-clad women and two white-clad men, all four of them stunning beauties, all four of them moving as if they were strangely weak. This quartet seemed to be there just to stand over the body while holding lit candles, quivering with the effort of staying on their feet as they wept over Gale.

It was both grim and massively boring. There was nothing to do but watch and wait. The guards had brought a big wooden crate with them, and they dumped the monster bodies and the severed arm in it like so much trash, bearing them away. They took the surviving mezmer, the one Sophie had maimed, into custody.

“Will they autopsy the mezmers?”

“Why would they?” Parrish said. Having brought the cavalry, he'd lowered himself to the floor at Gale's head, and now was sitting crosslegged between the mourners.

“Clues? Evidence?”

“It's up to the Conto,” Verena said.

“Who?”

“The ruler of Erinth—Conto means Count.”

“I doubt they'll do any evidence-gathering as you'd consider it,” Parrish said. “They'll check the mezmers for brands, but we witnessed Gale's death. There's no question as to how she died.”

“What about corroborating evidence?” Sophie said.

He stared at her, or through her. “Our word is enough.”

A crew of workers appeared, dressed in dove gray and wielding mops and buckets. They attacked the clutter and the blood with equal fervor, setting the room to rights. They gathered the scattered contents of Sophie's duffel, separating out the bloodied things before bringing everything else inside from the hallway.

Sophie followed her stuff as they carried it into a rose-pink bedroom.

“You don't travel light, do you?” Verena was right behind her.

She bit back an retort: Verena probably needed a distraction just as badly as she did. “It's just equipment.”

Verena turned over one of the flippers. “You're a diver?”

“Videographer.”

“What is all this?”

“Wet suit. Dry suit. Mask. Rebreather. Dive computer. Tanks, with about five hours of air in them. My camera—”

“There's a camera around your wrist.”

“Video, yeah. This bigger rig is my good one. Digital SLR, you know? For stills?” She opened the case, revealing the camera body, five lenses, and a waterproof housing. The tripod was strapped beneath, next to a plastic jug of alcohol—for DNA samples—and a small crate of corkable plastic tubes.

“And a first aid kit.”

“Diving's got its hazards. The rest is clothes: thermal socks, undies, swimsuits, jeans, shorts, sweats, skirt. Sandals, boots, running shoes. Soap.”

Verena stirred the bits and pieces, peering into one of the boxes. Sophie hadn't unwrapped the solar battery charger; it was still nestled in its original box, lovingly crated among pillows of plastic and small Styrofoam peas. Finally, she said: “Lotta baggage.”

“Cheap shot,” Sophie returned.

To her surprise, her half sister gave her a weak grin.

“Count yourself lucky.” Bram had trailed after them. “If she'd had another day there'd be an entire film crew packed in here.”

“Look who's talking!” Sophie bent, pulling out a heavy surveyor's transit. “I didn't bring this.”

“It wouldn't fit in my backpack,” Bram said.

He had that scope, too.
A thread of happiness wound its way through all the other emotion. He brought equipment. Maybe he hadn't entirely believed her, but he'd given her the benefit of the doubt.

Verena looked over the kit again, her expression sober. “I don't want to rain on your parade, guys, but the chances of Annela letting you leave here with footage of Stormwrack—she'll confiscate it all.”

“Guess we'd better stay out of Annela's way, then,” Sophie said. Bram grinned.

The volume of the sobs coming from the other room rose, drawing them back to the parlor.

Five gray-robed soldiers had brought in a long sheet of the glassy stone that seemed so ubiquitous here, an ornate panel swirled with bright colors and perforated with handholds.

Parrish knelt, sliding his arms under Gale. His handsome face was absolutely still as he lifted the body onto the bier, arranging her arms at her sides. One of the mourners handed him a small pillow. He placed it under her head.

He looks devastated.

Sophie had started to cry again. Bram took her hand, squeezing it hard.

“What of her throat, Kir?” asked a soldier. Gale's neck was marked with scratchy red weals. The knife wound in her chest had bled, too.

“We—” There were twenty or so people in the room now, and they all waited in silence for Parrish to swallow his emotions and answer, waited so long Sophie began to think they might sit there forever, waiting for the body to rot.

“The Conto gave her a shawl at his elevation. It's probably…” He gestured at a wardrobe.

Verena opened doors, digging around, coming out with a coffee-colored sheet of silk covered in small pearls.

“That's not it,” Parrish said, but he took it anyway, draping it over her neck and bloody upper body, letting the edges hang. Verena turned back to the wardrobe and produced a frock coat, black in color with silver trim, and offered it to him.

Parrish put it on, moving with the care of someone who was trying to hide the fact that he was drunk.

By now, some of the courtiers had sprinkled a path of flower petals and small beads on the floor, making a path to the door and down the front staircase.

The gabble of murmuring voices, outside the balcony, had been rising. They were obviously going to take the body out the front way and go in a procession to … the palazzo?

“There really won't there be any police?” Sophie asked again.

Parrish had taken a place at the head of the glass panel again. “Pardon?”

“Police. Forensic investigation. Isn't anyone going to try to figure out who did this?”

“Gale's Verdanii and a Fleet Courier. The Conto will look into whether any Erinthians had a hand in this. If it's an international matter, the investigation will extend beyond his…” Parrish foundered.

“Jurisdiction?” offered Bram.

“Yes, I think that's the Anglay word.”

Verena said: “It falls to Gale's heir to sort out the matter of her death and report the truth to Fleet and family.”

Sophie was shocked: “They expect you to do it? You just lost her. You're in mourning.”

“Ah, you've forgotten,” Verena said, with a glimmer of bitterness. “Gale didn't get a chance to disinherit you. This disaster is your problem, Sophie Hansa, and it'll serve you right if I go back to the outlands and let you choke on it.”

CHAPTER
11

Verena's words hung in the air like a bad smell on Sophie's shoe, ugly and inescapable.

She opened her mouth to answer—
I can't investigate a murder,
she was going to say, or
We'll get the stupid estate fixed, so just chill.
Maybe she would have just pointed out that if their mother could make Gale her proxy, then she could make Verena hers.

But the tiniest wince from Bram brought her back to the here and now: the body on the bier of heavy volcanic glass. “What does Gale need from us now?”

“She's ready to go to the palazzo,” Parrish said, face as expressionless as if it were carved. “Bring her pouch.”

She and Verena reached for it simultaneously.

Sophie drew back. “You do it.”

Her sister shoved it across the table. “Put it on.”

The mourners arranged themselves around the obsidian bier, Sophie and Verena behind Gale and the pallbearers, Bram a step behind. Parrish buttoned up the frock coat Verena had given him. Its buttons appeared to be made of curled seed cones. His eyes met hers; they gave back nothing but blackness.

He fitted a gloved hand to a lower corner of the bier, raising Gale to his shoulder, in perfect sync with the five soldiers. The fragile mourners in their gray robes led the way out the front door.

It was slow going on a hot evening. The crowd had swelled, but it parted as they emerged. People were sobbing, and Sophie heard whispers spreading:
Justo!
And
En Haggio!
Instead of asking for a translation, she kept her head down and her lips zipped as the group inched through the piazza.

Her thoughts were anything but slow.
Investigating a murder. That's probably not impossible, as long as I can get Verena to pitch in. Parrish, too. Gotta sort out this inheritance thing … will there even be a will? Do they do wills here or is it just a done deal? At least if it takes a while, I'll get a good look around Stormwrack. Oh, I'm awful, what an opportunist, stop it, Sophie, she's dead, murdered, and this isn't a research expedition anymore.

Parrish's head came up once, his gaze seeking the harbor. Gale's cutter had replaced its sails with loose black drapes. They flapped uselessly from its yards, giving the ship a forlorn, mournful appearance.

The crew knows, then. But how?
She added the question to the list of things she'd ask when they could all speak again.

They walked directly up to the palazzo, no discreet back path this time. The solemn parade seemed to go on forever. They passed a bird that resembled a lark but sounded more like a shrike, passed a strange assembly of frail, lovely, oddly similar-looking young women dressed in umber togas and leaning on walkers. Old people in plain smocks approached the bier and laid various objects on Gale's body: flowers, small bound sheaves of wheat, and little wooden tools.

A flyaway bit of one sheaf blew away and stuck to Sophie's shirt. She tucked it into her pocket, unable to repress the urge to keep it as a sample.

Verena said they won't let me bring anything back.

We'll see about that.

She thought briefly of Gale's pocket watch; she'd found it behind a Dumpster in the alley where she'd been attacked. Even now it was sitting in their parents' house, next to their desktop computer.

Inside the courtyard, Parrish and the others approached a set of posts that had been erected, like tall table legs, in front of an ornate fountain. A man in a gold-colored topcoat awaited them.

She had an inappropriate humor moment:
He looks like that actor from
Robin Hood.
No, damn, I'm going to laugh.

The man—the Conto, she assumed—was holding a wreath woven of leaves and small citrusy fruits, red in hue and about as big as ping-pong balls. As Parrish and the others lowered the bier onto the six posts, he laid the wreath on Gale's chest, taking the time to whisper something in her ear and then leave a kiss on her lips. The crowd loved it. A scandalized murmur spilled out from the plaza.

A finely dressed woman paid court to Gale next, miming an odd gesture—scratching at her eyes? She was followed by a teenaged boy and then a girl who merely air-kissed Gale's cheek.

Finally, the gold-robed man gestured to Verena and retreated into the palazzo.

“Come on,” Verena whispered. They left Parrish at the head of the bier, following the man and his entourage indoors, into a slightly overheated parlor that overlooked the plaza and the sea. The crowd was filing past the body.

The Conto said something in the Italian dialect, as Sophie had dubbed it, breaking the silence.

“My sister speaks only Fleet,” Verena said.

Sophie glanced at Bram.

“Translate what you can,” he murmured.

“I said the day has finally come,” said the Conto. “After a lifetime of courting death, Sturma has been murdered. Verena, my deepest sympathies. My guard is at your disposal.”

“Finally, someone's talking cops!” she said to Bram.