Child of a Hidden Sea (44 page)

“Who says so?”

“Sophie Hansa, natural daughter of Beatrice Feliachild, natural niece of Gale.”

Tanta Maray rose. “Permission to address the Assembly?”

Sophie felt her breath catch.

“Granted,” said the Speaker.

“In the absence of the Ualtar representative, I must assert citizen's rights to speak for my nation.”

“You are recognized. What have you to say?”

Maray bowed. “Ualtar reserves the right to contest Kir Hansa's assertions, Speaker. It is our position that she is not unimpeachable.”

The speaker looked to Annela. “Is there nobody else to confirm the sighting of Coine and Sands, Convenor Gracechild?”

“No, Speaker.”

“Record as unproved. We'll revisit it later.”

They'll impeach Bram, too,
Sophie thought, by way of quelling another flutter of anxiety.
This is just a big game of Constitutional Chicken.

Annela continued, laying out
Nightjar
's various discoveries and conclusions, starting with Lais Dariach and his spider-breeding program, then the first attempt on his life. She told the Convene about the mezmer attack on Gale, John Coine's threats against Sophie in the market, their sail to Tallon and Bram's abduction. The dry facts of the second assault on Lais Dariach and the blockade around Tiladene were accepted on Cly's say-so.

Whenever Annela mentioned some fact or another that rested wholly on Sophie's testimony, Maray hopped up and registered another intention to challenge.

Sophie Hansa is not unimpeachable.
The words chattered around in her skull.

Finally Annela put out both arms, a gesture that looked as though she were about to draw someone into a hug, and dropped her head before saying: “This concludes my submission.”

They hadn't challenged Bram, or Parrish.

The speaker clanged the brass bell on the podium. The peals echoed in the vast chamber. His gaze swept over the galleries, coming to rest on the petitioner's loft and Tanta Maray. “Verdanii makes a highly persuasive case. What has Ualtar to say?”

Maray swept out onto the floor, taking a position in the center of the room, where the light was brightest, heightening the anticipation with a long silence. She looked supremely confident, in complete control of herself. Sophie was reminded, fleetingly, of a flamenco dancer. The tattered fringes of her golden gown trailed behind her on the floor, and her milk-white eyepatch had been polished to a high gleam: “Convenor Gracechild's chain of logic, it seems to me, is strung together by a few crucial facts, all of which are supported by a single witness. I beg the Convene's permission to examine Sophie Hansa.”

Weak link, she thinks I'm the weak link, if I choke there's gonna be a war and people will die, more people …

“Approach the lectern, Kir Hansa.”

Bram squeezed her hand.

Sophie got to her feet. She felt small as she walked to the middle of the great theater, past Maray, all the way to the lectern. Her knees were quaking. The hundreds of Convenors looked down at her, their expressions schooled to blankness.

It's truth, all I'm going to do is tell the truth. Bram knows it, Verena knows it
. She clung to the lectern for support.

The speaker addressed her: “Kir Hansa, your credibility has been challenged. Kir Maray's position is that you are mistaken or malicious. Will you recant?”

“I'm not lying,” she said.

“Speak up, girl!” An anonymous and hostile bellow, from starboard, loud and sudden enough to make her startle.

“Everything I've said is true.” Her voice was louder. It also shook.

“If you were to reconsider now, or withdraw your assertions, there would be no honor lost,” the speaker continued.

She looked across the floor at Bram.
Breathe,
he mouthed.

“Kir Hansa?”

Breathe, right.
You
stand up here.
“Kir Maray can cross-examine me to her heart's content,” she managed.

Maray didn't give her time to gather herself. “Your assertions are these: first, that one of the individuals who attacked Gale Feliachild near her sister's home twenty-nine days past was Kir Hugh Sands, whom you later learned was a member of the Ualtar diplomatic mission on Erinth. Second, that you saw a lantern belonging to Captain Layna Dracy, first aboard
Estrel
and then on
Ascension
.”

“In your office,” she said.

“Third, that the
Estrel
crew and no others knew your identity, and that on Erinth John Coine revealed that he knew your full name. From this, you conclude that Coine and I were involved in the accident which befell
Estrel.
”

She met Maray's cold, one-eyed gaze. “That's about the size of it.”

“This is the entirety of your evidence of collusion between my people and the Isle of Gold?”

It sounded like so little. Sophie wanted to protest that there was more, that she knew
lots
of other things, but of course Annela had stripped out the rest. The fact that Lais had almost met his death by grenade couldn't go into the record because her home was a secret …

… and Coine had a gun last night. He'd all but flaunted it …

That seemed important somehow.

“Is that a question?” Sophie said, to buy herself time.

Why
had
they attacked her? And why make such a public display of it?

“I'm asking you to confirm that these are your assertions.”

She nodded. “The spellscribe on Stele Island also knew my name, as did Lais Dariach. Otherwise … yes, that's all true.”

“You're certain it was Hugh Sands that you saw … where was it?”

“Near Beatrice Feliachild's home,” she said, as Annela had instructed her.

“Which is where?”

“I can't say, Kir. What matters is I'm sure it was him.”

“The lantern: You examined it closely on both occasions?”

“I used it on a dive,” she said. “I held it. I'd never seen anything like it before, so I took a good look.”

“Isn't it true that Gale Feliachild asked the Conto of Erinth to claim you as an illegitimate child, to give you a false position as an Erinthian?”

“What?” Jolted by the change in direction, Sophie had to take a second to search her memories. “Yes, I think so. I mean, the Conto told me they'd discussed something like that.”

“A small fraud, perhaps, but a telling one,” Maray said. “Who must you be if the prospect of posing as an Erinthian bastard is considered a better identity?”

She could hear the Convenors whispering. “I can't talk about my background.”

“If I call upon John Coine to relate the details of your conversation on Erinth, what will he say?”

Another change of direction.
She's trying to rattle me by jumping around.
“John Coine's dead.”

Gasps ran up and down the galleries.

Maray affected shock. “Dead, Kir Hansa?”

“Yeah, right. Tell me, honestly, you didn't know?”

“You're the one under question.” Maray glided past her, more shark than spider. “Coine told the Watch, yesterday, that you begged him to help supplant your half sister Thorna Feliachild, in the matter of a certain inheritance.”

“That's not true!” Sophie said. The response sounded, to her ears, forceless. But part of her was stirring. This wasn't going to be some matter of defending her interpretation of the facts. This wasn't about her being wrong, or coming to the wrong conclusions.

She'd thought they would say she'd misinterpreted, that her chain of logic was erroneous, that her analysis was lacking. That she wasn't bright enough, or good enough. That she'd been a sloppy thinker.

But they were just going to lie.

Maray's taking me seriously, even if nobody else is.

She bit her lip, suppressing a giggle. Was it wrong that somehow that made it all a bit easier?

The speaker interrupted. “Can you produce any witnesses to this conversation, Tanta?”

“There is a shell vendor from Erinth about three days' sail away,” Maray said.

“Three days. By then those ships of yours will have rolled right over Tiladene, am I right?” Sophie demanded.

Maray whipped around, turning so sharply that for a moment the dragging train of her robe looked like it might entangle her legs. She kicked it aside with practiced grace, and Sophie saw a speck of bone-white within the sun-colored tatters at its hem. “It is only you, Kir Hansa, who says we mean to engage in hostilities.”

“So? You've got me saying one thing and John Coine saying another. He says I'm lying, I say he is. It's my word versus his.”

“Not exactly.” Maray gave her an almost pitying smile. “The assertions of John Coine cannot be contested now that he's dead.”

Her mind whirled. “So he … he attacks me last night, and he dies, and then his saying I tried to rip off Verena goes into the record?”

“Oh! He died in an altercation with you?”

“You're gonna make it out that I had him … what was it? Deathscripped?”

“Did you, by chance, know his full name?”

“Yes, he gave it to Cly, but—”

Oh! They killed him on purpose, had him feed the Watch a pack of lies and he went to his death, must have been in on it, would someone die just to make me look bad? Sure he would, people sacrifice themselves for their countries all the time, and he was getting so ragged from all the magic they worked on him anyway …

“Given that you held his name,” Maray continued, “it would have been easy enough to hire someone to inscribe his death, using the ill-gotten resources of your estate.”

“I wouldn't know how,” Sophie said. Her voice rose, despite her attempt to keep it even. She was becoming furious.

“You had another motive. Coine abducted your brother, didn't he? And tortured him?”

Across the chamber, Bram was tapping the rail of the petitioner's loft with his finger, a signal. Meaning what?

Get back on point,
she thought. It was a good reminder. “Coine wasn't acting alone.”

“Ah yes, that brings us handily back to your insistence that it was also Hugh Sands who attacked your aunt.” Maray gestured, and the great doors creaked open—only to bang against the piles of stored crates. Two guards hurriedly rearranged the piles of nets so they could be swung wide.

Eight brown-robed men who could only be monks bore in two draped stretchers, and carried them past Maray amid a rising murmur from the Convenors. They laid them on either side of the podium, on the floor, and pulled back the shrouds, revealing the bodies of John Coine and the terrified swordsman from the night before.

For the barest of moments Sophie braced to see the contorted expressions the men had worn just before they died, but the bodies were still, calm. The concealing makeup had been wiped from the swordsman's face, revealing livid bruising.

Sophie looked from the bodies to the Convene, scanning first the portside, then the starboard. The assembly was rapt; people leaned forward in their seats, as if they were afraid they might miss a whisper. Did they expect her to swoon at the sight of the bodies?

Instead, she took the opportunity to look at them closely.
Now I know why they attacked Graduation last night. They wanted Coine's accusations about me wanting help to steal Verena's estate to be ironclad. They'd made sure I had Coine's name. But the other guy … why's he here?

Calm descended. Suddenly she might have been fifty feet underwater with a failing tank. She looked back at the bodies, at Maray.

Maray gestured. “This is John Coine, who you say attacked Gale Feliachild twenty-nine days past?”

“It sure is.”

“This other gentleman?”

“I don't know him.”

“His name is Arlo Shank, also of Isle of Gold.”

“Okay.”

“Do you recognize Kir Shank?”

“He attacked me last night.”

“Is he not the other gentleman who attacked your aunt?”

“No.”

Of course. That's why he'd been busted in the face.

Theater
, she thought.
Make up the lie and then sell, sell, sell it.

“Are you certain, Kir Hansa?”

“I'm positive.”

“Would you agree that he bears a strong resemblance to the diplomat you saw on Erinth?”

“He does,” Sophie said, “But he's not the man I saw in Bernal.”

“You contend you struck your aunt's attacker in the face? This man—”

“He's not the one. It's not him.”

“Last night, during the altercation, your brother was overheard saying he
was
that man.”

“My brother wasn't around when Gale was attacked.”

“Still, there's disagreement?”

“Bram never saw him. I did.”

“Once again we come to the question of your reliability. Who are you, Sophie Hansa? Of what people?”

“Does that really matter?”

“Why is it nobody can vouch for you?”

“My lack of … social connections, I guess?… shouldn't have any bearing on your assessment of my honesty.”

“You're not merely ill-connected. You were discarded by your blood relations at birth, were you not?”

“Discarded…” The Convenors' eyes were pitiless, and everyone was staring. Sophie knew that, within the tight sleeve of the white dress, she was red right down to her cleavage. “Yes. I was adopted.”

“By whom?”

“What matters is they want me.” She looked at Bram.

“While that's touching, I take it to mean your adopted kin can't lend weight to your assertions, either. I put it to you again: How can this gathering accept your word?”