Her voice got higher as it got more spiteful. As if as an afterthought, she picked up her own glass of wine and took a long swallow. That seemed to calm her, and she gave a long, reflective sigh.
“Isn’t that what you think?” she said, now smiling pleasantly. “That you’re different?”
I knew I was making a mistake but couldn’t help it; wine makes me blurt things out. “I am different, or none of this would be happening. I wouldn’t even be here if Iason wasn’t my father—”
I literally slapped a hand over my own mouth, but it was too late. Melitta’s face turned ugly, as if a flat stone had been flipped over to reveal the crawling things beneath. I stumbled backwards, knocking over my chair, and started to scramble away, but she caught up with me in three long strides. This was the moment, back in the day, when she would have grabbed me by my hair, and sure enough she tried, but the short locks slipped out of her fist. Even in my panic, I felt a moment of triumph, but that was cut short when she snatched my right ear instead. Her thumbnail and the nail of her forefinger almost met as her pinch pierced the skin.
Some faint cool voice was in my head, telling me that I knew how to deal with this. Little disconnected thoughts swarmed all over my brain, words like knee strike, joint lock, choke hold, but I barely remembered what any of them meant, let alone how to make them happen. The only thing I knew was that I was deep, deep, deep in trouble. As the blows began to hammer down on my face and head, I launched a half-hearted kick at Melitta’s shin, but that just made the force of the hits redouble. I shielded my head with my forearms as best I could and let the rest of me go limp. Sounds from somewhere far away buzzed in my ears.
Some time later, Melitta tossed me down. She was breathing through her nose, in short snorts, and she settled herself back into her chair gingerly, as though she was the one in pain. Tears stood out in her eyes, and her chin trembled. She was always like this afterwards. While she was composing herself, I picked myself up, very, very carefully, and stood my chair upright again. As I waited, I tasted the blood on my teeth.
A few minutes later, she smiled again, and waved a hand at my chair. “Please. Sit.”
I sunk down, my heart ticking painfully on my ribs.
“Iason’s not your father,” she said, still smiling. “Because that would make me your stepmother. Which I’m not. I’m just your keeper. Iason gave you to me long ago, did you realize that? I have his blessing to do whatever I like with you, and if it wasn’t for one thing, I would have had you whipped to shreds by now.”
She sighed, tracing the pattern on her wine goblet. “Blood. That unfortunate matter of blood. Something very precious, Iason’s blood, is trapped inside you. It’s as if you stole a priceless diamond from him and swallowed it. You’re holding all his descendants prisoner.”
If you want my blood, I thought for the thousandth time, cut me open and take it out, I don’t care, I don’t want it. The tightness of her smile told me that she knew what I was thinking, and, more than that, she had considered it.
“So what does all of this have to do with almond cakes?” she said conversationally. “Well, Gwyneth, this is how it is. I’m sick of your defiance, so I’ve decided that it’s never going to happen again. From now on, every moment that you are awake, you will be obedient, and docile, and attentive. You will do what I tell you to do, and only that. You will live how and where I decide. You will do this because every moment of pleasure or comfort in your life, every moment that you spend without broken bones and lash marks, will be a gift to you from me. And you will get those gifts only when I am satisfied. Iason is not going to intervene. No one will. So you’d better start improving.”
“I’m not a child anymore,” I said. I had meant for it to be louder, a ringingly defiant proclamation. But it came out as a whisper instead, and there was a hint of pleading in it.
“You’re right,” she agreed. “You’re not a child anymore. It’s a great relief, have I told you that? You’re not a little blonde imp for whom Iason has a bit of a soft spot. You’re a common, cheap sort of woman who doesn’t understand her place in the world. And I’m here to teach it to you. It’s as simple as that. It doesn’t particularly matter what I have to do in order to bring the message home.”
My chest was getting tighter and tighter. “You need me. You need me to—”
“We may need you to whelp a couple of times, yes,” Melitta agreed. “Do you need both of your hands to bear children? Do you need both your feet? Do you need your hamstrings unsevered, do you need your ears attached? Look at me and tell me that I wouldn’t do it.”
I didn’t even try.
“So understand this clearly,” she said, as her fingers curled again around her goblet. “You obey me. That is all you do. Whether I order you to pour a glass of wine, or bow, or kneel, or knock your own head against the wall, or bed the stable boy, you don’t hesitate. Your purpose in this life is to do as you are told. So remember. The next time you disobey me, I will beat you with the fireplace poker. And if you leave this tower without permission, then I will blind you with it.”
She broke off to take a swallow, then set the cup down with a click. “I prefer you with long hair. That’s one of the things we’ll have to fix.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Darren, formerly of the House of Torasan (Pirate Queen)
Noon, Day X
FAR BENEATH THE stone porch where Ariadne and I were standing, sailors and soldiers trooped past, unaware. I barely saw them.
“So you had the fever when you were little,” I said to Ariadne. “And Iason knew that it might have made you barren. All those years ago, he knew that you might never be able to give him an heir. So what did he do?”
“What do you think he did? He came up with a contingency plan. And by that I mean, he went and found Gwyneth—Lynn, I mean—and he had her brought up to the castle. She was two.”
“And her mother? Elain?”
“Oh, he brought Elain to the castle as well. She became a scullion—rotten job, but at least it got her away from my mother. She lived in the kitchens with Lynn for about seven years.”
“What happened then?”
“Elain died.”
“How?”
“She fell down some stairs. That’s what I remember being told.”
I knew this story. “And it was very sudden, am I right? And nobody saw her fall and they buried her very very quickly?”
“Yeeesss . . .” she said, confused now. “Why?”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “When somebody’s existence is an embarrassment to a powerful man, and that somebody dies very suddenly, then chances are, it wasn’t an accident. You must have thought of that before.”
I watched her eyes grow stricken.
“Apparently not,” I murmured.
“Are you saying,” she asked very slowly, “are you saying that my parents murdered Elain?”
“Can’t be sure. It’s not like I was peeking around the corner and taking notes at the time. But it seems the likely thing. It’s what my father would have done. He would have killed Jess if we hadn’t escaped in a blistering hurry, and . . . and that reference will make no sense to you.” I coughed. “Anyway.”
Ariadne was sporting an odd look by then. It seemed that she was turning over this new information, weighing it, and then accepting it, and mentally scribing it on the thousandth page of a book entitled Why I Hate My Parents.
“She was always kind to me,” she said at last. She bowed her head, and long blonde curls fell around it, shutting out her face from view.
I gave her, oh, two-and-a-half seconds to mourn. We were in mid-crisis, after all. “What happened then?”
Ariadne brushed her hair back, sighed deeply, and refocused on the story. “After Elain died—after she was murdered—that’s when my mother started taking an active role in things. She brought Lynn upstairs, out of the kitchens, and took her as a handmaid.”
“But Lynn must have been . . . what, nine years old?”<
br />
“Eight.”
“That’s ridiculous-” I began, and then I stopped myself. It wasn’t ridiculous. I had servants that young myself, once upon a time. With a pang, I remembered a fawn-eyed girl who used to bring the wash water to me and my siblings in the early morning. The jug was too big for her and she walked very slowly with it, swaying from one side to the other. If the water had cooled by the time she got to us, it was considered the done thing to give her a clump on the head. I usually didn’t participate in the clumping, preferring to wash before the water grew even colder. But now it appalled me to remember how I used to turn my back on the whole scene, blocking out the girl’s yelps and squeals as I got dressed.
I’d spent so many nights in my life sitting paralyzed in a drunken, guilty stupor. Funny how I’d never remembered the wash water girl on any of those occasions. I’d spent my entire adult life apologizing for the wrong things.
“Melitta used to beat the hell out of Lynn,” I said, stating it rather than asking.
Ariadne’s fingers drummed on the balustrade. She nodded.
“Anything else?” I asked savagely.
“Yes. Of course. My mother is an innovative person. Over the years, she made up endless ways to punish Lynn for being born. She humiliated her, she piled work on her, she wouldn’t let her eat enough, wouldn’t let her sleep. There’s a closet in my mother’s room where she used to put her . . . Honestly, Darren, I can’t talk about this. I may be sick.”
“But why? Why? None of this is Lynn’s fault. Why would your mother blame her?”
“Oh, please don’t ask me to explain the perverted mystery that is my mother’s brain. She resents Lynn, I guess. Resents Lynn for being a bastard brat, the living proof of my father’s indiscretions, who nonetheless means more to my father than anyone else in the world, because she can give him something that no one else on earth can provide. No, scratch all of that. That makes it sound far too rational. Let’s stick with, ‘My mother’s an evil bitch.’”
“But what about your father? Doesn’t he care? Doesn’t he try to protect her?”
“Not he,” Ariadne said, scornfully. “Sometimes he plays the sorrowful-eyed innocent, but don’t let that fool you. It suits him fine, the way my mother treats her. It would be a horrible loss of face for him if people knew about his . . . you know . . .”
“His withered balls,” I contributed.
“Yes. Those. So he can never let anyone find out who Lynn is and why he needs her. That means that he has to keep her close, but under control. Dependent and unambitious. Every now and then, when she was small, he used to spoil her a bit, just to keep her off balance. You know, he would give her sweets and fruit and let her play with my toys, that kind of thing. But she never bought the act. Not ever. One of the best moments of my entire childhood was when she took an apple from him and then used it to sock him in the side of the head.”
There was so much pride in her tone, I had to smile ruefully. The funny thing was that I had seen Lynn pull off the same manoeuvre myself. Except, that time, her opponent was a marauder the size of a gorilla and instead of an apple, she used a coconut.
“All right,” I said. “But say you are barren. Say that your father needs Lynn to breed the next generation. What happens then? Would he acknowledge her as his child? As the mother of his grandchildren?”
“We’ve wondered about that,” Ariadne said absently. “There are a number of possibilities, of course. The most likely, I think, is that he would keep her hidden during her pregnancies, have me fake a big belly and morning sickness, and then smuggle the babies to me as soon as they were born. She would have to be kept well hidden for that to work. Maybe locked up. Or he could try to pass her off as a relative of his—cousin or niece or something—marry her to some minor nobleman and adopt her children when they were born. Or, if he’s really desperate, he could get rid of me and have Lynn take my place. I don’t think that last one is very likely, but it’s possible.”
“My god, Ariadne . . .”
She threw up her hands. “My parents are horrible people. This is what I’ve been trying to explain.”
“He expects Lynn to just go along with any of those plans?” I couldn’t picture it for a second. The Lynn I knew, if she was locked in a cell, would chew her way through the door.
“He’ll have a hard time keeping her in line whatever he decides,” Ariadne agreed. “So he must be counting on my mother to have her squashed good and proper by the time he’s ready to start. Unless I miss my guess, my mother’s been told to pummel Lynn until she doesn’t know which way is up. So you see, we don’t have much time.”
I stared at her, not sure why she was so calm. Lynn, impregnated by force, locked away, or beaten into silence . . . There were tremors of electricity up and down my spine. After a minute I recognized what they were: sheer, pulsing fury.
“I really need to get back,” Ariadne said suddenly. “Let’s get to work.”
ARIADNE SPOKE IN rapid, clipped sentences, pointing out the important features of the lower city—guardhouses, armourers, sentry towers. Then she moved on to describing the castle, the parts of it that weren’t visible from our perch. I was listening carefully, of course, but at the same time I couldn’t tear my eyes from her face.
She didn’t really look that much like Lynn, not now that I was paying attention. The eyes and the hair colour were the same, the faces were a similar shape. And they both had the same breathless way of speaking, the same (I searched for a word) strong-mindedness. But Ariadne was at least three inches taller, curvy at the waist and hips where Lynn was scrawny; her hair was fuller and thicker, and her skin was unmarked by scars or calluses.
They would have been near identical, I realized, ifLynn had been decently fed and treated when she was a child. And now it seemed all too obvious—Lynn’s waifishness was the pinched look of somebody used to the thin end of the stick. Jess was right. I had ignored the signs, because I wanted to believe that Lynn was a noble like me. I wanted to believe that she came from the same place I did, that she was . . . as good as me?
I’m a moron, I thought, dazed. Lynn’s in love with a moron.
“ . . . and that’s about it,” Ariadne finished. “Have you got all that? Now, about getting you into the castle. Is there some clever pirate trick you can use?”
“Um,” I said, trying to think clever thoughts. “We could try going over the walls, I guess.”
She clucked impatiently. “That’s always the first thing people try. We have a collection of skulls in the atrium, reaped from the corpses of raiders who made that mistake. Well, here’s my idea. I think you should adopt a disguise.”
“What kind of disguise? You want me to dress up as a sea gull?”
“I’m serious, Darren.”
“Well, so am I. You just told me that every person who tries to enter the castle gets searched by humourless men with very cold and pokey fingers. What kind of disguise will keep me from being noticed? Should I pretend to be a stable hand? A laundry woman? A rock?”
“You’re going at this from the wrong end. You’re going to stand out, no matter what we do. We can’t change that, so we have to use it. Don’t pretend that you’re somebody too small to be important. Pretend to be someone too important to challenge.”
“Someone important . . . like who?”
“Someone like the very special guest who’ll be arriving at the castle soon. My father’s never seen him face to face, so with a bit of luck and a lot of violence you can sneak in on his coattails. What do you think?”
“I like all of it except the word ‘soon.’ When is this guest coming?”
“The day after tomorrow. I know. I know. But Lynn’s been sort of all right for almost a week now—”
“You said she was awful.”
“Pretty awful, I said. Look, here’s what we’ll do. See that tower?”
“The big bastard? Topmost bit of the cliff?”
“That’s the one. The third window from th
e top? That’s mine. At dawn tomorrow, and again the day after that, I’ll fly a flag out the window. If it’s blue, then things are going as well as can be expected and you should wait to sneak in with the guest. If it’s red, then there’s an emergency and you need to get your bony pirate rear into the castle. Immediately if not sooner.”
“Yes . . . but how?”
Ariadne stomped her foot. “I cannot think of everything, Darren.”
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