Shell Game

by Benny Lawrence

  “When?”

  “Just now. Lynn, you know perfectly well that my mother is insane. Do you remember the day when she broke your arm?”

  My right arm and my left arm got broken in two different incidents, on two different days, but we both knew the one that she was talking about. I was sixteen at the time, getting harder for Melitta to handle, so she put extra effort into it. When the bone in my forearm cracked, the noise was enough to bring my father storming up from his room below. Ariadne came up behind him, and the sight of her chalk-white face would have given away her feelings if either of her parents had been paying the least little bit of attention.

  That time, they had no choice but to call for a healer. Some hours later, I lay on my pallet, still half-doped with the wine and opium I was given before the bone was set, and listened to Iason and Melitta arguing in the next room. In my foggy state, I couldn’t make out any words, but I did hear it when the door banged open and Iason strode out. He went down the stairs very quickly, without looking back at me once. At that moment, even though I was drugged to a stupor, I knew that Melitta had won some kind of victory. She didn’t do much to me while the bone was healing, but after that things got messy.

  “What’s your point?” I asked, interrupting Ariadne before she could launch into a blow-by-blow account of the incident. That day was not one that I needed to relive.

  “What did you do right beforehand? Right before she broke your arm?”

  “I called her a heartless bitch. You know that.”

  Ariadne slapped the hearthstone again, and I winced, imagining twenty palace guards galloping up the stairs inquisitively to find out what was going on. “Please stop it. Just cut it out . . .”

  “You cut it out. You. Lynn, you cannot give her an excuse. None of it is your fault, none of it has ever been your fault, but if there’s something you can do to keep her from hurting you, then put your pride in your pocket and bloody do it. Do what she tells you, just behave. Because I am not going to see you with bone splinters coming out of your arm again.”

  “Ariadne—”

  “Bones belong inside the skin. Not outside of it! Inside!”

  “Shhh. Ariadne, just hush.” I sat back down beside her. “I always do what I need to do to survive. I always, always have. Sometimes, to survive, you have to let yourself get hurt. Sometimes that’s the only way to protect something bigger, more vital.”

  Ariadne whipped a hanky of lilac lace from her sleeve and pressed it against her eyes as if she could push the tears back in.

  I put a hand on her shoulder. “Hey.”

  The hanky went down, exposing my sister’s face, flushed and grim. “One day, she’s going to push you too far and you’re going to jump out the tower window. I know it.”

  “I’m not going to jump out the stupid tower window. If I was going to do that, I would have done it years ago. Calm down. Nothing’s happened yet. My bones are all inside my skin. Why are you having fits?”

  That just set her off again. “Because you’re my sister, dammit! You’re my baby sister!”

  “I’m only four months younger than you, you drama queen.”

  “Still counts. You’re still the baby. Deal with it.” She drew a deep breath and scrubbed her face with the hanky, leaving it even more flushed than before. “I should get going. I’m leaving the food—eat as much as you can before she gets back. That’s an order. From your older and far wiser sister.”

  “Wiser?”

  “Infinitely so. And better looking. Don’t you forget it.”

  As soon as her slippered footsteps had whispered down the stair, I gathered the rest of the food into a squashy bundle, pried the window open a crack, and lobbed it out. When I pulled my hands back inside, they were slick with raindrops. The ache in my right arm had turned into a steady, pounding throb. It was going to be a hell of a storm.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Darren, formerly of the House of Torasan (Pirate Queen)

  Evening, Day IX

  THE RAIN BEGAN suddenly. One minute it was fat, deliberate drops, and the next a heavy drenching downpour that made the horizon dissolve in a wash of grey. Here and there were glowing orange dots in the gloom—flames at the top of sentry towers, along the cliff of Bero.

  Latoya deftly rigged a sail into a tent, and, hunched beneath it, we had a quick makeshift meal of dried meat and groats. We weren’t hungry, but we weren’t sure when we would next get a chance to eat. Besides, it would help to keep us warm.

  Beside us were three separate jumbles of wood and rope—sections of planking cut from the Badger’s deck, lashed to sealed and empty casks. We were already carrying the rest of the gear. We each had a knife—two in my case—bound at the back of our belts, the blades wrapped in cloth smeared with pig fat, to protect the metal. Our boots would be tied to our waists. We couldn’t take much more than that. We had to travel light where we were going.

  Regon and I sat on the wet deck to eat, but Latoya stayed on foot, her eyes roaming, restless.

  “We should go,” she reminded us. “No sense in waiting.”

  “We’re probably all about to die,” Regon said thickly, chewing his fifth biscuit. “Putting that off makes sense to me.”

  She dismissed him with a flick of her eyes and looked to me instead. “The navy will have seen us, sent scouts. We should go.”

  Reluctantly, I got to my feet. “Yarr,” I mumbled, trying to get myself into a swashbuckling mood.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, Regon. Get your lazy arse to the tiller. Make your course west by northwest.”

  He crammed in the last of the biscuit, and licked his fingers. “West by northwest it is, captain. But couldn’t you just say, ‘Head for the damn big rock over there?’”

  “You just had to mention the rock. I was trying not to think about the rock. Latoya, set the sails.”

  I watched her sidelong as we worked. Regon and I had been laughing too loud and making unfunny jokes all through the evening. Latoya had been calm as a closed oyster.

  “Aren’t you scared?” I asked abruptly.

  “No point,” she said, making a knot fast with a jerk. “If we die, we die.”

  There wasn’t much arguing with that statement, but it annoyed me anyway. “Don’t you try that with me, sailor.”

  “Try what?”

  “The ‘too tough for my shorts’ act. I invented the ‘too tough for my shorts’ act. Hell, I am the stinking shorts.”

  That was enough to make her glance up, eyebrow raised.

  “That might not have been the best phrasing,” I admitted.

  “You spout crap when you’re nervous,” Latoya said with interest. “Maybe you ought to gag yourself or something.”

  “No, no . . . it’s probably good that I’m getting it out of my system before I see Lynn again.”

  I looked up, raindrops drumming on my face. The sails were billowing out now. The Badger was underway, for the last time.

  “Heading for the big damn rock, captain!” Regon yelled from his spot by the tiller.

  I could just make it out, a black humpbacked shape in the gloom. “You’d better get over here.”

  He didn’t bother to respond, but I heard rustling back there and I knew what he was doing: lashing the tiller in place, then hurrying to join us amidships. Latoya and I were already waiting by the gunwales by the pile of planks and barrels. The three of us stood together, watching almost reverently as the rock loomed larger and larger in the choppy sea. Beneath us, the planks of the Badger groaned and creaked.

  “Will she keep together until we get there?” Regon said, mostly to break the silence.

  “She’ll do,” I murmured, giving a fond stroke to the gunwale. “All right, time to be stupid.”

  We picked up one knotted mass of planks and barrels and heaved it over the side. It hit the water with a loud wet smack, but, I was relieved to see, floated immediately. Regon spat, rubbed his hands, and vaulted over the side himself. In two strokes, he c
aught up with the floating planks, pulled himself on top of them, and got a good grip on the ropes with fingers and toes.

  Latoya and I tossed in the other two makeshift rafts, and then Latoya herself crashed down into the sea. I stood at the gunwale, waiting to make my own jump, and thought the thoughts that one thinks when one is about to leap into ice-cold water in the middle of a raging storm. Which can all pretty much be summed up as Oh, shit.

  The rock was looming very large now.

  I’ve never been religious, exactly, but an old sailor’s prayer swam into my head as I looked at the shuddering waves. Lords of the deep, see our weakness; lords of the deep, allow us passage. Lords of the deep, know our need; lords of the deep, allow us passage.

  Lords of the deep, let me find Lynn, I finished off, adapting the end of the prayer for the occasion. Lords of the deep, don’t let her be too pissed at me . . .

  I leapt.

  IN THE FIRST ten seconds after I hit the water, the Badger hit the rock. The planks of the bow splintered with a noise like chicken bones breaking, and the little ship began to list to starboard as water poured in. Latoya had done some hard work down in the hold with a hatchet, weakening supports and opening gaps, to make sure it all happened quickly. The Badger would break apart or go to the bottom, and when Iason’s ships reached the rocks, they would find the shattered wreck. With any luck, they’d reach the obvious conclusion, that the pirate queen had tried and failed to make it to Bero through the reefs.

  It was a good plan, sacrificing the Badger to put Iason’s navy off the scent. Probably the best part of what was otherwise a very sketchy plan indeed. Still, my throat almost closed as I watched the little ship flounder.

  Pirates have their sentimental side. I’m no exception. Deal with it.

  But I didn’t have long to think sentimental thoughts, or rational thoughts, or plan-related thoughts, or indeed anything that you could call thoughts.

  As I clung to the raft, what was running through my head, at any given moment, was this: “Bad idea bad idea shit cold very cold shit dammit dying now bad idea bad idea ow was that a shark? shit cold stupid Darren bad bad bad bad bad!”

  For the million years that I was in the water, I did my best to focus on breathing. The trapped air in the casks kept me and the raft at the surface, more or less. But with whitecaps breaking over my head every few seconds, and solid sheets of rain bucketing down at the same time, that didn’t seem to make much of a difference. With my mouth always open and gasping, I drank pints of seawater within a few minutes, and before long my throat was on fire, my stomach cramping, and my tongue swollen to a fat slug.

  It was a toss-up which was worse, the thirst or the cold. Every now and then, I would upturn my face to the rainy sky, trying to get a mouthful of fresh water. The drops smacked every part of my face, it seemed, except my salty tongue, and the rainwater was so much colder than the surrounding sea that, within a few seconds, I had to dunk my head under the surface to get rid of the freezing slick.

  Again and again, I raised my head and squinted desperately around, trying to make out the orange flames of the sentry-towers somewhere in the murk. Sometimes I thought I saw them in the distance, and sometimes up close, and sometimes I didn’t know whether I was seeing towers, or the reflection of stars on the water, or fireflies, or death, or dreams. It was no good trying to swim properly, to make headway, and the three of us had made up our minds not to try. With an immense amount of luck, the tide would wash us up on shore. Without an immense amount of luck, we were dead anyway. But as the night wore on and I got more tired, the animal part of me came to the forefront. I found myself struggling madly, kicking and thrashing and yelling myself hoarse, for whole minutes at a time, before I could force myself to go limp again.

  The whole universe had shrunk to a dark pit filled with cold water, and I seemed to be all alone there. It was hard to cling to the knowledge that two of my sailors were somewhere nearby. Once, just once, a wave sent me crashing headlong against Latoya’s raft. She looked like damp seaweed draped over a piece of flotsam until lightning flashed on her face, showed it calm and thoughtful.

  “Ow,” she commented darkly.

  And then the waves tore us apart again.

  A few eternities later, when nothing was real to me but the salt and the cold and each gasp of air, some part of me became dimly aware that my shoulder was scraping against barnacled planks. I looked up. My raft was floating alongside a tall white warship. There were lights moving on deck. I flattened myself against the raft, waiting for the whistles and shouts, the roar from the sailors on board, but there was nothing. The tiny craft drifted harmlessly past.

  That was the first of many encounters in that long stormy night. Again and again, the raft slipped between the ships of the mighty navy of Bero, invisible in the downpour. I couldn’t see Regon and Latoya any more, and could only hope that they were having the same luck, in the rare moments that I had the energy to hope.

  Then the storm was fading, and a grey glow lit the horizon . . .

  And then, without warning, my knuckles were scraping rock.

  I was so bleary after the bashing I had taken that it took me a good few minutes to realize where I was. The raft had washed up under a wooden pier, and I was draped across the rocks that steadied the dock pilings. Groggy as I was, I knew that I couldn’t waste a minute getting undercover. I couldn’t see anyone watching, but I couldn’t see anything anyway, with my salt-scarred eyes. After a few tries, I managed to free my knife with a trembling hand, and cut the ropes that held the raft together. The planks and casks, I floated underneath the dock. With luck, they wouldn’t attract any notice. Then I slipped into the water and half-swum, half-staggered to the beach. The nearest shelter was a boat overturned for scraping, and I slipped underneath it.

  Plan, I thought, need a plan, need a plan . . .

  That was as far as I got before I passed out.

  “CAPTAIN, WAKE UP. Captain . . .”

  Not very patient, that voice. With great reluctance, I opened my eyes.

  Latoya and Regon were crouched beneath the overturned boat with me. Both of them looked like they’d been stoned by a hostile crowd, and then drowned for good measure.

  Latoya summed up the situation in her usual accurate way. “That sucked.”

  There didn’t seem to be much more to say about it. Latoya had a skin of fresh water with her; she’d lashed it to the underside of her raft before we set out. We passed it round, swilling our mouths and spitting out the brine.

  “All right,” I said when that was done. “Everybody functional?”

  Regon winced and Latoya rolled her eyes. I wondered why I’d even asked the question. We all felt like living, breathing crap. But we had four limbs apiece. It would have to do.

  “So now we sneak into the fortress, yeah?” Regon asked, sounding exhausted. “Remind me, was there a plan about how we were going to do that?”

  “I think we were going to, um, assess the situation on the ground.”

  “Assess the situation on the ground,” Latoya growled. “You mean you’re going to make it up as you go along.”

  “Hey, a little less of the skeptical tone, sailor. Did I get us to Bero? Yes, I fucking got us to Bero. So far, my plans are coming up aces. I—Regon? Pay attention to the fascinating things that I’m saying.”

  He was peering under the bottom edge of the boat. “I don’t think we need to get up to the fortress.”

  “What? Of course we do.”

  He jerked his head. “Look there.”

  I looked there, bending so I could peek through the gap between the boat and the sand. My heart stopped beating for a full five seconds, and then began to pound out a loud and triumphant tattoo. Lynn. It was bloody Lynn, blonde hair almost white in the pre-dawn glow as she hurried across the beach. Her progress was halting. Every other minute, she stopped to glance behind a beached ship or a boathouse, obviously looking for something. Someone. Granted, she was in a dress that made he
r look totally unlike herself (mounds upon mounds of pale apricot silk) and there was something different about her hair, but that wasn’t the point. She was there and I didn’t think, not for a second.

  I lurched out from beneath the boat and threw myself at her. My legs almost buckled beneath me, but I got my balance back when I grabbed her. One hand on her head, the other at the small of her back, I pulled her in and kissed her with all my might. She froze a second, startled, but then relaxed into it.

  It was only after the first ten seconds of mind-melting relief that I began to notice things.

  I wasn’t bending over as much as I usually had to when I kissed Lynn. The shoulder I could see looked fleshy rather than bony. And she didn’t taste quite right.