A Daughter of No Nation (44 page)

“More risk—” Bram objected.

But Sophie was already looking at the line of the beach, the marked currents. “It gets shallow here, right?”

Parrish nodded. “We'll be gone long before low tide.”

“Are you sure?” Bram said.

If they were southeast of the deeper part of the Baste, the outgoing tide would lower its depth by—what? Twenty or thirty feet?

You will bring doom on all your family,
Gale had said.

Shut up. I don't believe in predestination.

“I studied the Butcher's Baste extensively when I was younger,” Parrish said to Bram.

“You know, it looks like it might get choppy.” Sophie spoke without premeditation. “What if Verena ran you home tonight?”

Everyone looked at her as though she'd grown a second nose.

“Excuse me?” Bram said.

Sophie persisted. “Why not? You've made up the model turtle, and you're finished with the evidence we're going to present. You're obviously nervous about the Butcher's Baste and there's no reason to spend the night puking your guts out if the wind comes up.”

“You're saying you don't need me now, so I should take my toys and go home?”

“Come on, Bram. You hate the cold, you hate being damp, you know you're gonna get nauseated—”

“I hated the cold when I was
four
and my gut has been improving.”

“It'd give you a chance to reassure the parents. We'll have this wrapped up in another week, maybe? Then—”

“Then what? Are we back to the ‘I'll come home to Earth for good?' thing?” he demanded. “Because I don't think any of us believes that.”

They were glaring at each other when Verena spoke. “She's not wrong, Bram. I don't appreciate being treated like a taxi service, but this might get hair-raising.”

Bram rose. He closed his eyes and took one of those long breaths that, had he still been a toddler, would have preceded a sustained and piercing shriek of rage. Instead he said, “Surrounded by idiots,” and slammed his way off to his cabin.

They retreated to the corners of the ship, waiting for nightfall—it was already plenty dark. Parrish took them into the passage, despite the downpour, steering the ship with his watch once again.

The distance from where they had been diving the previous two nights was less than five miles, but Sophie could feel the difference as soon as she got in the water. The current was stronger. It felt as though it wanted to suck her right down to the bottom.

Should've gone up toward Haversham after all, she thought, but she was here now and tethered to the rowboat, where Tonio waited.

“Okay, Sophie?”

“Keep your eyes peeled,” she said.

“In this?” Water was falling in great sheets.

She shrugged.

“Don't worry about Bram,” Tonio said.

She groaned. “I should've kept my mouth shut. I should've known I'd just set him off.”

He shrugged. “Nobody at home wanted me to go to sea, you know. They saw that I had to—had to go with Garland and Kir Gale.”

“This was your preadolescent career change?”

“Only time and proof stopped
amia madre
and my sister from trying to reshape me into a bookkeeper.”

“Meaning?”

“I was a sailor. It was inconvenient—painful. But
Nightjar
called me. Your life, Sophie, it's here now.”

“That simple, is it?”

“Verena, I think, needs you. As for Bram, that's not up to you.”

She felt a sting of actual anger, had to fight an urge to make an obscene gesture at him as she slipped below. But she took the higher ground: she waited until she was underwater, well out of sight, before giving him the finger.

Glowering down into the black, she saw the turtles.

There were thousands of them, shadows in the dark, invisible but for the shine of her lantern off their shells. They were swimming at a depth of maybe twenty feet, an easy distance.

She kicked up, breaking the surface.

“Your light!” Tonio clapped a hand over the LEDs before they could advertise their presence.

“Sorry,” she said, shutting it off. “Got that net?”

“They're down there?”

“They so are.” She switched her snorkel for her regulator and tanks, took two knotted net bags from Tonio, and double-checked her safety line.

“Good luck.” He was shivering today—it was warmer in the ocean than on the surface in the rain and breeze.

“Thanks.” She submerged again, checked her breathing and the tanks, reminding herself not to rush. Bram's analysis of the automaton design indicated the decoys would be near the top of the dule, riding the current above them. She kicked slowly, maintaining a depth of fifteen feet, shining the light in the direction they were coming from.

Just observe, she told herself, taking easy breaths. All the time in the world.

When the automaton came, she almost had to chase it—the mechanism was imperfectly balanced. It was high in the dule but paddling sidewise, belly pointed left, shell to the right. She had to dive quickly, scoop at it with the net.

She half-caught it—and caught a live turtle, too. And then she had to grab as the automaton, with a surprisingly powerful
tick-tick-tick
of legs, almost came free of the net. Her light went flying, out to the edge of its safety line. She got the automaton, plunged it into the sack of net, and set herself to kicking against the current and reeling the light in before detangling the live turtle.

Sorry, she thought at it. Go lay your eggs.

The animal resumed its swim, seeming undisturbed. Drawn on to the beach, by instinct's irresistible pull.

Another turtle swam into her with a brisk
bonk
—the current was pulling her toward Sylvanna and down toward the bottom and the dule.

Okay, that's one.
But even as she contemplated waiting for a second automaton, there was a yank at her line.

Sophie turned, checked the net and her equipment, then began to swim toward the rowboat while slowly gathering her safety line.

She was only about twenty feet below when she hit a powerful rush of water, a current that threatened to pull her back to the limit of the rope.

She shut off the safety light and focused on swimming. The automaton was kicking against her, within the net, beating an artificial pulse on the rubber-clad skin of her hip.

It was as close as she'd come to true solitude in weeks. Her mind hashed through the unanswered questions she'd yet to research: Was this a future Earth? How did magic—any of it—work in both worlds? And now this new question, about Parrish and Gale having their futures set out for them.

Here in the water it seemed, suddenly, as if all the worrying and flailing had been so much wasted energy. Tonio was right: she'd been called here.

She had to know.

We have to, she thought. Bram as much as me.

That meant whatever it took—trading science favors to Annela and Cly, figuring out how to use Gale's old watch to sneak back and forth to Stormwrack illegally—they'd have to find a way. Pretending she wasn't going to try to stay here was … well, it was lying.

As for Parrish and destiny and Gale being doomed, she'd have to prove to his satisfaction that the prophecy was nonsense. If he was still attracted to her after that, well …

She broke the surface about ten feet from the rowboat. The ship was reeling them in. She could feel the water resistance against her body, her diving gear.

Tonio was there, rowing hard in the lashing rain, no tea on offer this time.

“Did you get it?”

She nodded. “What's wrong?”

“Don't know.” He yanked mightily on the lines.

They scrambled back to
Nightjar,
climbing aboard.

Parrish had all the crew at their stations. “Get below and warm up.”

“What's going on?”

“We've been spotted.” He pointed into a curtain of rain, presumably to indicate someone after them. Squinting, Sophie saw nothing.

“By which side?”

“Unknown. But with wind and tide and a battleship out there, the route past … past Bram's Rock of Elvis is blocked. I'm taking us through the Butcher's Baste.”

“Through the passage? Is that possible?”

He nodded. “I know the intervals.”

“In a downpour?” The wind was up to ten knots at least. Hardly gale force, but …

“Yes.”

“Could we be panicking? I mean,
Nightjar
's inconspicuous, right? Like Gale was?”

“Inconspicuous, not invisible.”

Bram was hovering, eager to get his hands on the automaton. “Did you get it?”

She handed him the net. He picked out the automaton carefully, setting it out to dry. It was still
tick-tick
paddling.

“Tag it,” she said. One of the goals they'd set out for their forensic institute was to try to establish the idea of a chain of evidence and some form of continuous custody.

“Done,” Bram said.

“Fake it until you make it,” Verena muttered.

“Sophie, Tonio, go warm up,” Parrish said. “I'll need all hands.”

She went to her cabin, stripped and dried off, and gulped tea until she stopped shivering even as she loaded up on warm-weather gear. Wool socks, base layer, jeans, sweater, Gortex raincoat overtop. It all looked faintly foreign.

Her legs were shaky from the effort of kicking against the current: she hit the galley for two of the savory scones, just to raise her blood sugar. Then she went up top, plucking at Tonio's sleeve.

“How can I help?”

“Help Sweet install the horn, then join her with the starboard crew,” he said, indicating a crew readying, even now, to lower and reef the mainsail.

She did as ordered, helping Sweet lift and then bolt a sturdy-looking brass gadget to the rail.

“What is this thing?”

“Speed gauge. Usually we estimate, but for the interval navigation…”

“Precision counts. Got it,” Sophie said. They tightened the bolts and went to their separate stations, Sophie taking a place on the starboard team, following orders, hauling ropes, belaying. Rain poured down steadily, the drops slapping coldly at the exposed skin on the backs of her hands, on her face, as the ship sailed through them. The wind was light, and the seas weren't running all that high.

The air was soupy, the passage full of rocks and shallows.

By now Sweet had climbed into the rigging with a spyglass, acting as a lookout. Parrish was at the wheel again.

“I need constant speed,” he told Tonio, who had taken a position by the gauge. “Six—keep it to six.”

It was better to be up top and pitching in than below. They raced through the hazard-filled water in the murk, with no idea if they were truly being hunted, if their presumed adversary might catch up.

“Hard starboard,” Parrish rapped out, as a warning, and Sophie braced along with the others on her rope crew as the ship heeled over in a sharp turn. A tower of rock slid by on the port side, maybe twenty feet away.

Parrish fixed his gaze on the stone as they passed, reset his stopwatch to zero, and aimed
Nightjar
port, into the unseeable black.

Rat-a-tat.
A distinct, mechanically regular series of taps, near the bow, raised the hair on her neck.

“What was that?” a crewman asked.

“Baste's a-haunted,” came the reply.

“Great,” Sophie said. “Now we have ghosts to contend with?”

Rat-a-tat-a-tatta
—

This time it was more of a burr, a series of impacts against—the deck?—like a woodpecker's tapping or a very small jackhammer.

“Did anyone see?”

“What is it? What hit us?”

“Turning to port,” Parrish announced, as if nothing had happened. Sophie saw another islet looming at a safe distance, but only just. He was cutting it fine.

Can he do this? she wondered. Zoom us through blind just by counting the distances between rocks?

Tonio was absorbed with the speed gauge. She was reminded, again, of an air horn, and as he maneuvered it, it made a low humming sound.

“It's an exercise they gave the most talented cadets,” the crewman beside her said. “Captain learned the intervals for the Baste before he was expelled from—”

Rat-tatta-tatta.
This time it was followed by a shriek.

“Krezzo, take the speed gauge. Call speed for Cap'n Parrish every thirty seconds.” Tonio waited until the massive cannoneer had taken over his station. Then: “Sophie, with me.”

She followed him across the deck.

Beal had fallen into a coil of rope. He was thrashing, obviously in pain.

“Smashed the thing,” he managed to say. “But—ow!”

He had been sewn to the coil of rope, fixed there with a strand of what looked like animal sinew—a trio of red stitches were looped into and through the rope and his coat. They glistened with fresh blood. The coat had been punched through, back to front, and on the way something had passed through the meat of his hip, had even nipped a little piece out of his leather belt.

The “it” Beal had smashed lay on the deck in broken pieces. It looked like a bone needle, six inches long.

Tonio gave Beal's pants an unceremonious yank, exposing the twin punctures and a good deal besides. “Sophie?”

“I think it got muscle, not organs,” she said, feeling to be sure. “Watts will know.”

Tonio cursed. “I forgot we had a medic again.”

“Want me back to my rope?”

“Not until—”

Rat-a-tatta-tatta—

This time they saw it, a vertical whisk of bone, bouncing across the deck in a straight line …

 … like a sewing machine needle, thought Sophie … until it struck her swim fin, which was sitting, abandoned, next to the lifeboat. The needle began bouncing wildly, stitching through the rubber, balling it in sinew.