“Lynn, I’m here!Please!”
Now bear in mind—I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in almost two weeks, and I hadn’t been eating enough to keep a rat alive. Nothing was really keeping me upright but anger and adrenalin. Bile burnt my throat. I know that doesn’t excuse what I said next, but maybe it helps to explain it.
“Lynn, don’t you dare ignore me. Don’t . . . you . . . dare. You belong to me, girl, you do what I tell you, and I will tan your hide if you don’t get over here right now! Lynn, fight. I am ordering you to fight!”
Lynn’s head finally came up . . . and only then did I realize my mistake. There was total misery in her eyes, a darkness so deep that it burned. Humiliation, and shame, and an emptiness that I had never seen there before. She had nothing left, that was the bottom line. It didn’t matter what I asked of her, because there was absolutely nothing there that she could give.
Lynn, I thought in a daze, oh Lynn, what in hell have they done to you.
I didn’t say it out loud. Didn’t have a chance. Melitta and her captive had slipped out the door. The next second, I became aware again of the chaos boiling around me, the fists and swords and boots. Regon was panting heavily, and even Latoya was slowing down. There was the telltale tramp tramp of hobnails from the hallway outside. Iason’s soldiers were on their way, just as the last few drops of my energy ran out.
It was over. We had lost. Lynn had lost her only chance at a rescue, just as I realized how badly she needed one.
THEN CAME A shriek. A woman in silken skirts fluttered, wailing, into the centre of the wolf pack.
“Why haven’t you killed her?” Ariadne asked hysterically. “Why haven’t you killed her yet? Don’t you know what that woman does? Did you hear how she defeated Mara of Namor?”
How she defeated Mara of Namor . . . I knew there was some kind of message there, but my brain was too numb to decode it. Luckily, Latoya and Regon were still awake. In unison, they grabbed Ariadne’s arms and threw her into me. Startled, I tried to back away, but she grabbed my wrist and guided my knife into place against her own throat.
I gaped down at the top of her head. By then, I was so out of it that I wouldn’t even have been able to pronounce the word hostage, let alone remember what to do with one. But I wasn’t the only one in the room. One of our attackers (burly man with a tooled leather tunic; he looked important) pulled back immediately. “Keep back, watch for the princess.”
They all leapt away from me, as if they were shards of iron, pulled by a lodestone. Weapons clattered down to the stone floor and hands were clasped behind heads.
Lord Iason was by the door; he’d been about to escape. Now he stared, hatred at war with panic in his face. I pressed the knife more tightly to Ariadne’s neck, wondering whether this could possibly work. It wasn’t Ariadne that the soldiers in the room were trying to protect—it was the House of Bain, the all-important royal line, which they thought was bound up in her blood. Unknown to them, it wasn’t Ariadne but Lynn who really mattered. It might be worth Iason’s while to let Ariadne die, if, by doing that, he could eliminate the threat to his descendants. That would be the brutally practical option.
Did Iason have some real affection for his oldest daughter? Would he at least decide that it was worthwhile to try to avoid the inconvenience of her death? I held my breath, while Ariadne’s pulse ticked against my blade.
At last, Iason whispered, “Stand down.”
Latoya and Regon didn’t miss a beat. They each grabbed one of my shoulders and hurried me out of the room, past stock-still generals and wide-eyed servants, past Iason himself, my knife still quivering at Ariadne’s throat.
Once we were halfway down the corridor, Ariadne ducked out and under my arm. “And now,” she said, with dangerous calm, “we’ve got to run.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Lynn
Evening, Day XII
IT HAD NEVER been so hard to make it up the tower steps. Melitta held me at her side, helping me up each one. Every time I wobbled, I clutched at her hard to keep myself from going over backwards.
“That’s it,” she kept repeating. “Almost there now, keep going. Good girl. Good girl, good girl.”
When we reached her room, I was staggering, spent; my eyes had closed and I let her lead me.
“Sit. Sit down, Gwyneth, it’s all right—”
It took a few seconds. My knees didn’t seem to want to bend.
Melitta sat beside me; one arm encircled my shoulders, the other took my head, holding it softly against her. I relaxed into her, numbly; my mind was nothing but cobwebs and dust, her voice just kept going . . .
“It’s all right now. Good girl. You did so well, so very well. That’s right. That’s right. Good girl. You’re all right now . . .”
And I don’t like to admit it, but it’s true—the tears started rolling out of me, in choking sobs. Melitta held me tighter, stroking my head with great gentleness.
“That’s my girl,” she whispered, “there, that’s the worst of it over. Everything will be better now, everything. Shhh, calm down, I’m here. There’s nothing you need to do now. Just relax . . .”
She disentangled herself from me, carefully; the warmth of her was gone from my side and I felt a flutter of unreasoning fear. My eyes were still closed, but somewhere in the room there was a swishing sound, a heavy cloth being pulled back, and a door creaked open.
I knew what the sounds meant, somewhere in some dim part of me, but the broken bits of my mind could do nothing with the knowledge. I just sat, and breathed through the tears, and thought nothing at all until Melitta’s hands were back, coaxing me up, leading me across the room.
“Nothing you need to do,” she repeated. “You’re safe, you’re safe, I’ve got you, I’ll take care of everything. All right, in you go. Now, sit. That’s it, good girl. Just sit. I’ll be back.”
I slid to the stone floor of the closet. My back rested against one wall; my bare toes touched the other.
Melitta stroked my head, one last time, and then she took a step back, and closed the cupboard door on me. The key grated in the lock.
For a second, there were glimmers of light in there—a yellow spark from the keyhole and a shining line beneath the door. Then the tapestry swished back to its place in front of the closet, and even those winked out.
I put my hands on my knees and stared ahead into nothing.
Just sit, I repeated to myself. Just sit. Just sit, just sit . . .
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Darren, formerly of the House of Torasan (Pirate Queen)
Evening, Day XII
ARIADNE ALMOST FLEW as she led the way. The castle, like the lower city, was a maze of narrow passageways and hidden staircases and secret doors. I didn’t even try to pay attention to where we were going, just jogged behind her numbly. There was no sound of pursuing feet behind us, so what she was doing seemed to be working much better than anything I had tried to do that night.
We charged through a bake house where the ovens still glowed red, down another short flight of stairs, and through a must-smelling wine cellar. Then there was a blast of cold air on our faces, and grit underfoot. We were outside, in the castle courtyard, our backs against the outer wall of the fortress. A stack of drying firewood the size of an average house stood in front of us, shielding us from view. There Ariadne ground to a halt, wheeled, and slapped me across the face with all her strength.
Regon leapt forward, but I waved him off, panting. The slap had felt almost good, waking me, focusing me, jump starting my thoughts. “It’s all right—all right. I deserved that.”
“Damn straight you deserved it,” Ariadne said crisply. “You muffed that one good and proper, didn’t you? And who do you think you are, talking to my sister that way?”
“It was a mistake,” I said. “It was a stupid, idiotic mistake which I’m not about to repeat. But try to understand, I’ve never seen her that way before. Never.”
“Haven’t you?” Ariadne
asked grimly. “I have.”
She was contorting herself, reaching for the hooks that held her pale green gown closed at the back. It clearly wasn’t working, because she stomped a small foot. “You—the terrifyingly enormous woman—help me get out of this thing. I can’t move in it worth a damn.”
Latoya froze, her face stiff with panic. Then she seemed to nerve herself, and she gingerly began to unhook Ariadne’s bodice with her large, calloused hands. The princess angled to let her get on with it, and kept talking.
“You have to get her out. You have to get her out now.”
“Yes, that was the idea, thank you,” I said testily. I was shrugging into my leather gambeson, which Regon had, mercifully, brought with him. I only wished he had brought my trousers as well. “I wouldn’t mind a little help right around now. Where’s Lynn? Where did they take her?”
“Hang on a second. Let me consult the crystal ball that tells me my sister’s location at all times, including times when I can’t keep an eye on her because I have to save her idiot lover from being crushed to death by a mace because her idiot lover can’t maintain a disguise for a couple of hours without losing it and rambling about men who sleep with lobsters. Darren, I don’t fucking know where she is. If they took her to the dungeons . . .”
“They didn’t,” Latoya said, breaking in suddenly.“Too far away and too risky. They’ll put her in a place where they have total control.”
Ariadne looked around with respect. “That’s . . . that’s true, actually. Would you mind hurrying up a bit, though?”
Latoya, seeming flustered, gave up on trying to extract Ariadne from her clothing in the traditional way. She grabbed the cloth of the bodice and gave a good yank. The hooks all popped free, seams splitting and thread tearing. Ariadne climbed out of the ruined gown. “Much better.”
“Where does Lynn usually sleep?” I asked.
“On the floor outside my mother’s room. But for the past few days, my mother’s been keeping her locked in the room itself.”
“And where’s your mother’s room?”
“Top floor of the high tower.” Ariadne looked thoughtful. “Give me a boost, will you?”
With Latoya’s help, Ariadne clambered up the woodpile until she reached a spot where there was a gap between the logs. She shaded her eyes, had a look, and then slipped back down to us.
“I thought so,” she said. “Guards at the tower door. There are usually only five. Right now, it’s more like thirty. And there could be more inside.”
I hissed. “I can’t take thirty.”
“I don’t think you have to. None of the guard houses face the back of the tower, so you might be able to climb it. Could you get up to that top window?”
I measured the distance with my eye and thumb. On an ordinary day, the answer to Ariadne’s question would have been “No.” Or, more accurately, “Hell, no!” with perhaps a hysterical laugh thrown in. But this wasn’t an ordinary day.
“I’ll need a rope and grapnel,” I said in the end, evading the question itself. “Latoya, see what you can find.”
She peeled off obediently, though she glanced backwards at the princess, who was shedding several layers of petticoats. Regon looked worried. “No rope on earth is going to reach to the top of that beast.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ll have to do it in stages.” I tried to stay nonchalant. “You know . . . climb to each window in turn, and sit on each ledge while I throw the grapnel to the next floor. Nothing to it.” I blew on my cold hands and tried desperately to persuade my dinner to get back down where it belonged.
“You won’t be able to climb back down if the rope’s too short.”
“No. When I’m ready to come down, I’ll throw a torch out the window. You’ll have to create some kind of diversion to get the guards away from the door. Lynn and I will meet you at . . .”
“The pigsties,” Ariadne suggested.
“The pigsties.”
Regon nodded. “But what if Lynn isn’t up there?”
“Then Darren will meet us at the pigsties all the same,” Ariadne said. She had gotten rid of most of her underwear by then. Now she was left in a white linen sheath which still covered more skin than almost anything that Lynn liked to wear. “We’ll have to find my mother and convince her to tell us where Lynn is.”
“Convince her,” I repeated. “I don’t know if I want to have to convince that bitch of anything.”
“We could always use the magic stick,” Regon suggested, his bushy eyebrows twitching upwards.
“The magic stick?” Ariadne asked. “Is that some kind of pirate thing?”
I gave Regon a withering glare before I answered. “Um. Yes. It’s not a magic stick so much as a normal stick which is . . . oh, how to explain . . . used in a non-traditional way.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Um. Yes. A lot. Relax, I wouldn’t do that to your mother.”
Her eyes were flinty. “Why not? I would. As long as no sex was involved.”
This wholly disturbing line of discussion was cut short when Latoya slipped back behind the stack of firewood, a long coil of grass rope draped over her shoulder and a metal object in her hand.
“That would be a crowbar, not a grappling hook,” Ariadne observed. “I don’t know if you understand exactly what we’re trying to do here.”
Latoya smiled halfway, then gripped both ends of the crowbar and flexed. In three seconds’ time, the long metal bar was bent into a curve.
“I stand corrected,” Ariadne admitted. Latoya twisted the other end of the crowbar into a loop and Regon lashed it to the rope with a long row of knots. I transferred the grapnel to my shoulder, picked up a handful of sand, and rubbed it into my palms to improve my grip.
“Remember, I’ll need a diversion when I’m on the way down,” I reminded Regon. “I am going to get very cranky if you decide to wander off and play skittles instead.”
He smiled. “Diversion, captain. Aye. Anything else you need?”
A goat and a fishing net. “Just my girl. All right, I’m going.”
Ariadne looked at me, then up at the tower. For the first time, it seemed to occur to her that there was an element of danger in crawling up a sheer surface for hundreds of yards while soldiers swarmed around below. “Can you do this?”
“That’s the magnificent thing about not having a choice,” I told her. “Whether you can do something or not, you do it anyway.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lynn
Evening, Day XII
FOR A LONG time, I floated, unthinking, in a place where I wasn’t aware of anything, not hunger or cold or memory or pain. What tore me out of my beatific state was noise.
First there was a crash—glass breaking—and then a second one, as metal hit stone. In my sluggish state, it took me at least a minute to reach the obvious conclusion—someone had thrown something through the tower window. And by then I could hear something else, the scraping of boots against stone as someone climbed. Overlaying the scraping sound, nearby, and coming nearer, was a voice which spoke in short, breathless spurts. It sounded something like this:
“Stupid . . . pant . . .”
“Tower . . . pant . . .”
“Stupid . . . pant . . .”
“Slave . . . pant . . .”
“Oh . . . pant . . . sod . . . pant . . . this . . .”
“For . . . pant . . . a . . . pant . . . sodding . . . pant . . . game . . . pant . . . of . . . pant . . . soldiers . . .”
A final pant, a final scrape, and then, so far as I could tell, a gasping body flung itself over the windowsill. Then, once again, there came the sound of glass breaking. And a yelp.
“Blasted motherbollocking son of a twat!”
Darren had different curses for different occasions. That one meant that she had cut her finger. When she spoke again, it was muffled, and I knew she was sucking the wound.
“Lynn, are you there?”
I held my breath, said nothing, and waited
, hoping the distraction would vanish. Nothing for five seconds, but Darren’s voice just bored in again. “Lynn. Please. We need to move, fast. I know you’re pissed at me, but we can deal with that once we’re out of here. Where the hell are you?”
The voice was beginning to take on that edge of theatrical desperation. The one that meant that she had taken on more than she could handle. That was Darren. She would take all the problems of the world on herself, and then look around vaguely for a place to offload them.
“Lynn. Please. We have to . . . we need to . . .”
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