I closed my eyes tightly. She didn’t get it. I couldn’t save her. Not this time. And I wouldn’t be able to bear her frustration and disappointment. She would ask me why. It should have been obvious why.
There were footsteps. Darren seemed to be turning in a small, bewildered circle.
“All right,” she said, more softly. “All right. How about I just talk for a while? You can jump in any time you like.”
Rope springs creaked as she sat down on Melitta’s bed. I winced at the thought.
“I’m sorry that I wasn’t here earlier,” she began. “No excuses. I’m so sorry.”
I pressed my face into the top of my knees, trying to control my breathing. But in my head, I answered her. Kind of late for that now, pirate queen.
“Melitta is the biggest bitch that I’ve ever encountered.”
No shit.
“If I’d grown up with her, then I . . . I don’t know what I would have done. I don’t know if I would have made it.”
This just made the nausea surge again. I bit my lip and rocked.
“I really hope that you can hear me, by the way. It’s going to be bloody annoying if I have to go up and down the tower, repeating myself on every floor.” She caught herself. “But whatever time it takes for this to happen, that’s fine. Because this is it, you know. This is it. The most important thing. And nothing matters more. Nothing.”
I heard her weight shift, and her boots touch the floor. She was beginning to prowl around the room, slowly. I could picture her bending to check under the furniture.
Melitta would be back soon.
You need to get out of here.
“You remember when we met? When I cold-clocked that thug Hasak, and then you challenged me to a duel and almost twisted my ear off?”
It was the tension, maybe, but I couldn’t help it. I sniggered. I caught it almost at once, but Darren had heard; her feet were silent on the flagstones outside the closet. Then, very slowly, taking her time, she started to come nearer.
“At the time, I just figured you were insane.”
Not so far from the truth.
“But these past few days, you know, I’ve been thinking.”
Sounds painful.
“And I think I figured something out. I think I did. And I hope . . . I hope that I’m right, because I kind of like to imagine that this is what happened.”
Her voice was nearer, nearer . . . She was right on the other side of the door. Light prickled through the keyhole as she nudged the tapestry aside, and I stiffened, but she didn’t touch the handle. Instead, she slowly let herself slide down until she was sitting on the other side of the wall.
That sent the panic surging. Iason’s men would come charging up here while she was still crooning at me through a keyhole. Melitta would come back, and if she found Darren here, she would . . . I couldn’t let myself picture it, but still, the idea hit my stomach so hard that I thought I’d been stabbed. My tongue still felt too thick to speak, but I thoughtthe words at her harder. You really need to go, you really, really need to go. Right fucking now.
“So what I was thinking was . . . oh, by the way, I’m touching the door now. Right below the keyhole.”
Darren could be stupidly mushy sometimes. What was I supposed to do? Touch the same spot on the door, only on the other side? Pretend that I could feel her through the wood? Embarrassingly soppy. I snorted. And touched the door anyway.
“So what I was thinking was this,” she went on. “I think that, all through your childhood, you were completely powerless. Right? Getting thrashed whenever you spoke up. And you fought it as much as you could, because you’re you, and you’re the bravest person I’ve ever known. But there was no way you could win, in the end.”
I closed my eyes. Her voice was as gentle as I’d ever heard it. I let my fingernails scritch against the wood.
“You were just a kid. They had all the power. There was no way you could win.”
Then why do I feel so guilty?
“But when you met me, even that first day . . . well, you can tell me if I’m wrong here. I think, I believe, that you trusted me from the start. I think you felt safe with me from that very first moment.” Her tone turned wry. “Or at least, you knew you could take me, any day of the week.”
And twice on Tuesdays.
“You knew I would never hurt you.”
You couldn’t, you stupid bint.
“So you didn’t have to be afraid of standing up to me. You could yell and scream and say that you were pissed off, and pound me and bite me, and still know that you were safe. You could twist my ear halfway off, slash at me with a cutlass, head butt me, threaten to sink my ship, and still know that I wouldn’t hurt you. So what I’m trying to say is . . . thanks. Thanks for trusting me so much.”
I licked my dry lips, my blood sounding painfully in my ears.
“So here’s what I’m asking you for, Lynn—and I know it’s a lot. Do you think you can trust me again? Here, now, today? Can you trust me to get you out of this fucking pisshole? I’ll be doing the work this time, you know. It won’t be your job to prop me up. You won’t have to reassure me or cajole me or soothe me. You don’t have to be the strong one. Not this time.”
Silence, then, very quietly, “Lynn, please. Tell me to open this door.”
Just sit, Melitta had said, just sit, just sit. I let the words slip out almost by accident. “If they catch us . . .”
There was no sign of surprise in Darren’s voice. “Then horrible things will happen. I know.”
“No, you don’t,” I said, harshly. “You don’t, you can’t. This is different, this is . . . you couldn’t possibly understand.”
A short pause, and a great effort. “All right. I guess I don’t understand. Because I haven’t lived what you’ve lived. But that’s why I have to take the lead this time. That’s why it’s my turn.”
“Do you have a plan?”
“Well . . . not a plan as such, no. We’ve been improvising. Things have worked out so far.”
“Do you have a plan for escaping from the castle?”
“Um. It’s in progress. Ariadne’s helping. She’s very bossy, you know.”
“So you want me to charge blindly out of here, looking for an escape route that probably doesn’t exist. Knowing that all of this will probably end with you dead, and me locked in a kennel somewhere, with stumps where my thumbs ought to be. How does that make sense, Darren? Tell me how.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Darren admitted softly. “You want to tell me what does make sense?”
What made sense was to give in, let Melitta carve me open and take what she wanted from me. But that wouldn’t save Darren. Beautiful, heroic, idiotic Darren, who had as good as announced to my father that she knew too much to be allowed to live. I let my head fall forwards onto my hands.
“You know how I got here?” Darren asked suddenly. “I arrived at this island neither swimming nor sailing nor rowing, not accompanied and not alone, and neither by day or night. I came to the castle neither as a man or a woman, neither a guest nor an intruder, and not a noble or a peasant. And I gave your father a present which wasn’t a present, by which I mean that I kicked a cup of wine into his lap. I found another way, Lynn. It’s just how we work. We don’t let the world define what’s possible. We found a place together where the rules don’t apply, and where we aren’t anything except what we decide to be, from moment to moment. Damn right it doesn’t make sense. But it’s what we do. We do it every day. I learned from you how to do that.”
I didn’t answer. Light through the keyhole. Void roaring in me. The words, my keeper’s last order, still ringing—just sit, just sit, just sit, just sit . . .
A scraping sound on the flagstones. Darren was sliding something under the door. I felt for it, picked it up. A small scalloped shape, ridged, with a sharp edge.
A shell.
I folded the thing in my palm. Squeezed it hard.
“Darren,” I said, my
voice oddly loud.
Tense now. “Yes?”
“What, you just happened to have a shell in your pocket?”
“Well . . . yes, as a matter of fact. Why, is there anything wrong with having a shell in your pocket? When I was a kid—”
“Darren,” I interrupted her, “open this fucking door.”
She was brought up short. “Did you say-”
“Open the door,” I interrupted again. The small space was crashing in on me all of a sudden; the air was too warm and there wasn’t enough of it. “Open the door, open the door, open this goddamned fucking door!”
She was already on her feet and light winked out in the keyhole; Darren had thrust a dagger-point in there, forcing the lock. The door was flung open. I was trying, awkwardly, to get to my feet, and expected Darren to reach into the closet and hoist me up by the front of my tunic. Instead, she bent, got an arm around my shoulders and another under my knees, and hefted me like a small child. Staggering a little under the weight, she made her way across the room and set me down on Melitta’s bed as if I was a bruised peach. I forced down the instinct to jump straight back off of it.
Darren was doing her best not to blanch at the sight of my face, but it wasn’t going well. She had that panicked, searching expression which she always wore when she was looking for a way to change the subject. The results were usually disastrous.
I waited for it.
Her eyes went wide, and she blurted, “I kissed your sister. With tongue.”
I only smacked her six times for that. The other smacks were because she showed up so damn late.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Darren, formerly of the House of Torasan (Pirate Queen)
Night, Day XII
AFTER LYNN WAS finished venting her frustration, I rubbed my aching arms and took stock.
She looked far worse at close quarters, and I had to do my best not to stare. She knew, and her battered face was hot with embarrassment, but she tried to speak normally. “So, what’s first?”
“First,” I said, all business, “you need to strip.”
I led the way myself, unlacing my leather gambeson and tossing it aside, then pulling off my shirt. Lynn watched me, forehead wrinkled.
“I’m happy to see you, and all,” she said. “But is this really the moment?”
I shoved my shirt at her. “To change clothes? Yes, it is. Because I’m damned if you’re going to wear something that bitch put you in for an instant longer than necessary.”
I think I can say, that’s the moment when I first honestly, seriously astonished her. A smile broke out on her bruised face; it looked like another wound.
“You had a good idea,” she said, wonderingly. “When did you start having good ideas?”
In three-and-a-half seconds, she was out of her long respectable tunic and into my shirt. It hung down to her mid-thighs, and after she cinched it tight with Jubal’s belt, it fit her well enough. Which is to say, it looked nowhere near respectable, and much more like Lynn. I pulled my gambeson back on over my bare skin, doing my best not to think about how badly I’d chafe the next day. One thing at a time. If I was alive tomorrow to do any chafing, then I would be doing pretty well.
As I was lacing up my armour, Lynn used her teeth to tear a long strip from her servant’s tunic. She knotted it into a pouch with a few deft jerks. Then she toured the room as quickly as she could on her unsteady legs, filling the pouch with objects off the shelves and dressing table. There didn’t seem to be any reason or pattern behind her choices. I saw her grab a snuff box, four small bottles of perfume, a little elephant carved of ivory, and a paperweight, among other things. But I wasn’t about to argue. If Lynn wanted trophies, more power to her. I’d try to get her one of Melitta’s fingers to add to the bag later on.
While she was at it, I retrieved the grappling hook and coiled the rope nearly. Then I ripped a reed torch off the wall, kindled it to glowing red in the fire, and threw it from the window, watching it descend like a falling star. Lynn and I finished at about the same time.
“Stairs, right?” Lynn asked. “You’d better let me carry that. You’ll probably be fighting.”
True enough. I handed the coil of rope off to her, unsheathed a dagger, and led the way out of the room.
Outside the bedchamber was a small alcove, where a straw pallet and crumpled blanket rested on the floor. From what Ariadne had said, this was where Lynn used to sleep, and the sight affected me more than I would have expected. It looked like a kennel; all that was missing was a water dish and a leash. I was beginning to realize that nothing in the way Lynn had been treated was simple neglect or cruelty. Every last aspect of her life was designed to keep her small, and shamed, and powerless.
Lynn very studiously didn’t look in the direction of the alcove, so I didn’t mention it, and we just hurried to the stairs.
“Damn,” Lynn muttered before we got more than a few steps down.
I tensed. “What?”
“Listen. But keep moving.”
I listened and I kept moving. It took three turns down the stairway before I heard what she had heard—the clicking of soldiers’ hobnailed boots against the flagstones.
“Damn,” I concurred wearily. Regon’s diversion apparently hadn’t been quite diverting enough. “Stay behind me. We’ve got the high ground, that’s something.”
Those old tower stairways are all designed the same way, to favour the defender. If you’re coming down, you have free play for your sword; if you’re coming up, you’re hampered by the central post, slamming into it every time you swing.
It wasn’t much but it was something, so when I saw shadows flickering on the stairs beneath us, I hurried to get past the landing. I wanted to meet them where they couldn’t come at me at once.
There were only two in that first wave, and the first was stupid and eager enough to race up the stairs ahead of his comrade. I ducked under his blow and smashed the dagger hilt against his temple, and he dropped, rolling limply down the stairs. The next one gave me some more trouble—parrying a sword with a dagger is not a thing you want to do if you can avoid it—but while we were still clashing back and forth, a snuff box flew past my shoulder and struck him full on the forehead. It didn’t put him out; he just staggered. Still, that gave me the chance to dive in fast and slice his inner thigh. Blood spurted. As he went down, I grabbed his sword from his limp hand.
“Thanks for that,” I tossed back at Lynn.
“Don’t mention it.” She was already digging more ammunition out of her pouch.
There were three in the next cluster, and though they were all weak swordsmen, there were enough of them to give me a few very bad moments. Lynn had thrown the ivory elephant, and the paperweight, and several other items of bric-a-brac, before even the first of them dropped. But there was a lull in her throwing while I was battling the last one. It went on long enough that I almost forgot she was there, and focused on other things—my arm muscles, which felt like burning bits of string, and the sweat running into my eyes. Her shout burst out of nowhere, and it made me jump.
“You were never supposed to see me this way!”
Lynn punctuated this remark by throwing the perfume bottles. Three of them bounced off the luckless soldier’s forehead, and the last smashed solidly into his crotch. He gurgled weakly as he crumpled.
“What way?” I asked, hopping over the body.
“You know what way!” Her voice was high-pitched, and I knew she was having trouble keeping it together. “I never wanted you to see me as some kind of victim—some pathetic, mewling, helpless little kid.”
Another few soldiers came charging up the stairs, and I tiredly raised my stolen sword again. “Is that why you never told me who you really were?”
Her response, when it came, was so soft that I barely heard it over the clanging swords. “Sort of. Maybe. I guess. I never wanted you to picture me like this.”
“Lynn, you crackpot,” I panted. “You really thought that I
would respect you less because that bitch used to beat you?”
The last soldier was pressing me hard. I ducked; Lynn took the cue, and smashed the grappling hook into his face. He sagged, and we kept heading down.
“I didn’t really think it over,” she admitted. “I hoped that it would never matter, because I’d never be back here again, and I just wanted . . . I just wanted to leave it all behind.”
“But you never even told me about your sister.” More footsteps on the stairs. I transferred my sword from right hand to left hand and shook out aching fingers. “And you must have been missing her like mad.”
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