“I’m sorry. That must have been rough, when he died.”
“Not really. I only saw him on Monday evenings, and all he did then was grunt for a while above me and then pass out.”
My next question stuck on my lips for a second. It was an awkward thing to ask, but I had to know. “You didn’t get pregnant, did you?”
She grinned, without any humour. “You know I didn’t. If I had, would you be here?”
Yes, I had known that, but I guess some part of me had hoped . . . I stared into the orange coals, and then stiffened. “Damn it. I am really out of practice as a handmaid.”
“Why? What is it?”
“Wood. I forgot to get more wood, and the fire’s dying.” The copper woodbin next to the fireplace held only a couple of logs, and a scattering of bark dust. “I have to take care of that before Melitta gets back, or—”
I didn’t elaborate on the “or”; I didn’t have to. Not to Ariadne. She had patched me up countless times after the “or” happened.
“Well, there’s no need for you to get up. You look like you’ve been run over by a herd of mules.” Acres of silk flounced around her as she got to her feet. “Sit still and keep warm. I’ll be back.”
Her skirts swished out of the room, and I leaned against the cooling side of the grate. I wasn’t worried that she would get caught. Everything that I know about being sneaky, I learned from my big sister.
Since the two of us were tiny, Ariadne had been my best friend, my partner-in-crime, my secret sharer. When my mother was still alive, I lived with her down in the kitchens, territory completely off limits to a pint-sized princess. But Ariadne always found a way in. Our games took us all around the servants’ quarters, from the roofs of the stables to the beer cellars. Together, we investigated manure heaps, chased stray pigeons, and got hideously sick sampling the leavings of the brandy. After we were finished playing, she would brush herself off, adopt a princessly scowl, and flounce off to dinner, no one the wiser.
After I became Melitta’s handmaid and got moved upstairs, the differences between us became far plainer. Though we lived on the same few floors of the same tower, we might as well have been on different planets. She spent her days with her nurse, and, later on, with her tutors. I spent mine at Melitta’s beck and call, learning afresh every day exactly how much she hated me, long before I understood why. Officially, I wasn’t allowed to speak with anyone except Melitta and, now and then, my father, and there were days when the loneliness seemed worse than anything else they could have done.
But my sister fought back. During that entire miserable ten-year stretch, she visited me as often as she could. Usually two or three times a week; always late at night. Those hours were somehow all the sweeter for being stolen. Sometimes we talked and sometimes we played, but more often, she taught me all the things that I wasn’t supposed to know. It was from her that I learned to read and write, to do simple arithmetic and geometry. She would bring a lump of chalk, and use the flagstones under my pallet as a slate for words and figures.
I learned less serious things as well. Ariadne liked games, and she taught me any number of them, from koro to knucklebones. Besides that, there were practical lessons, like how to accidentally-on-purpose trip an annoying man into the fireplace and look innocent afterwards. She also passed on a number of the foulest curses you can imagine. She learned them from the soldiers who guarded her and used them to describe her parents every time she had to tend my cuts and bruises.
But Iason and Melitta never knew. Except for her late-night visits, Ariadne was all royal sneers and haughtiness towards me. She didn’t even glance at me if we passed each other in the corridor. Even at the age of eight, she had understood what the consequences would be if someone realized what was going on.
IT WAS A long way, as I well knew, to the woodpile at the bottom of the tower, but Ariadne moved fast. In a very few minutes, she was back, wobbling under an armload of ready-cut logs. She stacked them neatly in the woodbin, and then brushed sawdust and beads of resin from her sleeves. “Ruined another dress. Oh, well. I’ll have to have a tantrum and blame it on the laundry.”
She set a fresh log on the fire and poked it until the bark caught flame. The pearls around her throat seemed to burn orange as they caught the glow. “All right,” she announced, her tone all business. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”
It sounded so easy, just said like that. “They’ll be expecting me to pose as you again. That trick won’t work twice.”
“No,” she agreed. “We’ll have to come up with something new this time. And it’ll have to be good. The castle guard has tripled since the war began. Even I have a hard time getting out. And they’ll be watching you closely.”
My face was turned to the heat. It was something about the warmth, and Ariadne’s closeness, but I felt something in me start to crack, and I bit my lip. “You know, honestly, I think they might just kill me this time.”
“You know better than that,” she said grimly. “They can’t, no matter how much they might want to. They need you too much.”
This was true, though not very reassuring.
The fire was flickering well, now. Ariadne flopped down on the pallet beside me, and her arms came around my shoulders.
“I like the haircut,” she said. “By the way, is it true about you and the pirate?”
“Oh gods. Does our father know about her?”
“At this stage, it’s all hearsay and rumour. Is it true?”
I smiled painfully. It was still too hard to think about Darren. “It was true. Don’t know whether it’s still true. I think I managed to really piss her off, right before I got grabbed.”
“Why, what did you do?”
I sighed. It seemed so long ago. “I tried to seduce Timor.”
“Hmm.” I could see that she was trying to picture it. “I have to say, Gwyneth, that doesn’t sound like your all-time-best-ever idea.”
I leaned back into her. Her dress smelt reassuringly of bark and pitch from the firewood. “That’s the other thing. I go by ‘Lynn’ now. Would you mind?”
“Lynn,” she repeated. “That suits you, doesn’t it? ‘Gwyneth’ always seemed like a lace-and-ribbons kind of name to me. Lynn is more—”
“Tough?” I asked ruefully. My head was beginning to throb again.
“Tough,” she agreed, as she stroked my hair. “Definitely, tough.”
CHAPTER SIX
Darren, formerly of the House of Torasan (Pirate Queen)
Morning, Day IV
THE HERBS PLUNGED me into a deep void. It was forever, or so it seemed, before I surfaced enough to dream.
With Lynn sick, everything around the Banshee ground to a halt. Meals didn’t get out at the right time, the men on the dog watches were sullen, and none of us knew exactly what we were supposed to be doing. I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Every time I came up the gangway stairs to the deck, a bunch of expectant eyes turned to me hopefully, and then fell away when they realized that I wasn’t her.
I spent as much time as I could in our cabin, but I wasn’t much of a nurse. My hands seemed too big, too clumsy. Lynn had to remind me, in her painful rattling voice, to wipe the sweat off her forehead, air out the damp blankets. But after a few days, I made up my mind to take some initiative, and I set my shoulders and gritted my teeth and marched into the galley.
It took a lot of effort and my eyebrows got burned off in the process, but I managed to make something that I intended to call “soup.” I was kind of proud of it, though I didn’t know why it moved so gloopily in the pot, or where all the little gritty bits at the bottom had come from. Never mind. It was hot and I was reasonably sure it wouldn’t kill her, so I scooped out a cup of it and headed for the cabin.
I dropped it as soon as I got there. Lynn had been better when I left her that morning. At least, her eyes could focus on something for more than five seconds at a time, and she could raise her head to gingerly sip a little water. But now she wa
s sprawled across the bunk, motionless as a dead girl, pale lips parted.
I leapt across the cabin and grabbed the bits of her that came most easily to hand. “Lynn Lynn Lynn Lynn Lynn! Talk to me. Are you all right?”
One eye fluttered open. “I am definitely not all right.”
“I have some soup for you—” I began to say, looking around for it blankly, before I realized that it was now in a gloopy puddle by the door. I wondered if I could get it back into the cup without her noticing.
“Soup cannot help me now,” she said gravely. “Too great is my affliction. Pirate queen, mistress of my heart, I am so horribly, deathly bored that my brain is decaying into gruel. Have mercy on your powerless chattel, and entertain me.”
“Huh,” I said, as I checked her forehead. It was definitely cooler. “Well, I’d love to help out, but I’m not much of a singer, and I haven’t juggled in years.”
“And here I was desperate for some juggling,” Lynn complained. “I guess I’ll just have to come up with another idea.”
Gods on high, that girl could move fast. One minute she was stretched on the bunk, the next she had bounced up and onto me, clinging to my torso like a koala bear.
I staggered back, trying not to overbalance. “How the hell is this entertaining?”
“Well, I’m having fun.”
I twisted, bucked. It was no good; she still clung. “All right, you’re not sick anymore if you can hang on like that.”
“Victory is mine,” she said into my chest. “I have defeated the mighty Darren. I have freed the world from the scourge of her godawful cooking.”
“Just for that? You’re not getting any of my wonderful soup. I’m going to go find a new slave and feed it to her.” I tried bouncing on my heels, then spinning. She just clung tighter.
“If that’s what you plan to feed your slaves, you’re going to see a big increase in escape attempts.”
“I need less picky slaves. Or maybe I should just buy a cat. Lynn, ow. You’re hurting my back.”
She hopped off immediately, guilt in her eyes. “Oops. Sorry, I didn’t mean—”
I pounced, grabbing her arms and shoving her backwards onto the bunk. In one hop, I was on top of her, straddling her chest. It took just one of my hands to encircle both of her thin wrists, holding her hands immobile above her head.
“You’re far too trusting, girl,” I snarled.
Lynn wriggled. I knew from experience that she wasn’t trying to get loose. She was just arranging herself in a more comfortable position. “Far too trusting,” she agreed.
I put two fingers beneath her chin, forcing her to raise it. “You’re uppity, too.”
“That’s what happens when you leave me unattended.” She didn’t bother to hide her smirk. “So, Mistress, if you’re not going to feed me horrible soup, what are you going to do with me?”
I WOKE WITH a jump, as you do when your nerves are shot. Regon was squatting beside me, one hand on my shoulder, while the other carried a cup that steamed.
“Storm’s brewing in the east, captain, and we’ll need you on deck.” He cleared his throat. “I hated to wake you, though. You were smiling.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lynn
Morning, Day IV
TING . . . TING . . . TING . . .
I was awake by the second ting, and started to move without even opening my eyes. Rolled over, yawned, scratched the back of my neck, reached under the pallet for my spare shirt . . .
It wasn’t there and that’s when I remembered. My chest clamped and I curled up tightly.
Ting . . . ting . . . ting . . . that fucking bell. For ten years, I’d woken up to that bell every single morning. It was how my lady Melitta let me know that she was ready for me to come in and start my chores. After I escaped, it was hard to get used to waking up without it, and if that sounds like a complaint, it isn’t. That first morning, when I drowsed until noon and only woke when the sun was beating hard through branches above me, I opened my eyes with such a sense of delight that I felt friendly to the entire world. When I realized the bell was gone, that’s when I reallyknew that I had made it out.
When I heard it again, that’s when I really knew that I was back.
Ting . . . ting . . . ting . . .
Now what? I sat up, hugging my knees, thinking. It was the old, familiar choice. Jump when Melitta whistled, or hold my ground and make her fight for everything she got? It was easier to hold onto my self-respect when I was resisting, but before long, she’d turn the tables by making things painful or hard enough that I’d break completely. Then, for a time, I would barely be able to speak without her say-so. My petty little rebellions were always doomed, and more than that, I suspected that Melitta enjoyed them. Sometimes, on days when I wasn’t even trying to disobey, I would catch her looking at me with a kind of longing. Give me a reason, she seemed to be saying. I want you to give me a reason.
Ting ting ting ting . . . she was getting impatient.
My heart was pounding now. I slapped my cheeks sharply. This was insane. I wasn’t a child anymore. I had escaped from the castle, caught a ship away from Bero, travelled across three islands, done whatever and whomever I had to do to keep breathing, talked my way into a fishing village, learned to empty lobster pots and set drag nets, faced down marauders, seduced a pirate, built a navy . . . after all of that, was I going to trot to Melitta’s side as soon as she snapped a finger? Did they really think that I would just fall in line?
They’re counting on it, I could imagine Ariadne saying. They think that if they act like nothing’s changed, they can make you forget . . .
Tingtingtingtingting . . . I had to make the choice now or it would be made for me. Melitta would not be happy if she had to come and collect me herself. What would Ariadne tell me to do? Hell (and my stomach plummeted) what would Darren tell me to do? Ariadne would never think less of me for giving in. In fact, she often begged me to. (“What are you trying to prove?” she had hissed at me more than once, in the dead of night, as she wrapped a bad cut or splinted a broken toe.) But Darren? Darren had never known me to back down, not from anything. And I believed . . . I had to believe . . . that she liked it that way.
But Darren wasn’t there. What happened next wouldn’t make a difference to anyone except me. And I had to husband my strength. I would need all of it.
From behind the door, there came the sound of an exasperated snort, and then the swish of the heavy bedclothes being swept aside, and her feet hitting the floor. Although I had decided, more or less, what I was going to do, my reaction to that sound was instinctive rather than reasoned. I shot off the pallet and scrambled onto my feet. I smoothed my tunic with one hand, my hair with the other, and pulled the door open just as Melitta was rising from her bed. Hastily, I bowed my head so I wouldn’t have to look at her.
“I’m sorry, my lady,” I said.
No explanations; they never helped. I waited, not moving, and after a long stony pause, the bedclothes rustled as she lay down again.
“Get started,” she said. “You know the routine.”
“Yes, my lady.”
I headed for the mahogany nightstand that held her slop pail. As I walked, I dared a quick glance at her face. The smugness that I had expected was there, in the lines of her lazy smile. I stared fixedly at my hands, trying to get myself under control, as I pulled out the pot. Full today. I could smell it.
“Don’t take too long,” she said.
“No, my lady.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her smile again, and acid trickled through my guts. This was my brilliant plan? Doing exactly what the bitch wanted me to do? How could that be the answer?
But there was no answer. There had never been an answer. That was the whole point.
MELITTA’S SLOP PAIL hardly deserved the name. Its rim was edged in gold and there were climbing roses painted all over the lid. Typical of nobles, to want something beautiful to piss in.
Out of sheer force of
habit, I studied the twining roses as I tromped down the stairs towards the middens. For ten years, I had carried that pail downstairs first thing each morning, and I knew each flower, each leaf, each godsbedamned artistic frond. I was strongly tempted to smash the stupid thing down on the stone steps; about the only reason I didn’t was that I didn’t want to foul my bare feet.
The old refrain was ticking away in my head. I hate my life . . . I hate my home . . . I hate my life . . . I hate my home . . .
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