Shell Game

by Benny Lawrence

  “I know. I know. It’s all so screwed up. But it was hard to think about her when I thought that I would never see her again.”

  “Just tell me this,” I said. My sword pierced a man’s shoulder, and I raised my voice over his scream. “Was it because of anything I did?”

  “Was what because of anything you did?”

  “That you couldn’t tell me the truth.” I got nicked along the ribs and flinched, but another paperweight came flying over my head, smashing my opponent’s throat. His eyes bugged like a sick frog.

  “No, it wasn’t because of anything you did,” Lynn said. “But I always kind of thought that you would get ten times as guilty and bashful if you knew. I thought you’d treat me like some kind of delicate flower, or like a kid who didn’t know her own mind. And you’d get all Darren-knows-best and overprotective, and you’d think it was your duty not to exploit me, and you’d refuse to do anything in bed other than cuddle. Darren, hang on. Don’t kill that one.”

  My sword point froze an inch from the soldier’s throat. “Why not?”

  “I know him from before. He carried some wood up the stairs for me, a few times. When I couldn’t do it on my own. When my arm was broken.”

  It didn’t seem like much, set against everything that had been done to Lynn in this castle, but oh well. I reversed the sword and smashed him with the pommel. Lynn bent and quickly tied his thumbs together with a strip of rawhide.

  When she was done, I cupped her chin. “Look. I may be a slow learner, but there are two things that I’ve managed to figure out. One is that you’re stronger than I’ll ever be. And the other is that you know what you want. The two of us decide what goes on when the two of us are in our cabin. All the people who don’t like it can go, collectively, to hell.”

  Her smile was pained, but it was a smile. “Thanks, Mistress.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “We’re not getting out of this one, are we?”

  I looked up. We’d left a trail of motionless or groaning bodies strewn along the stairs. I looked down. We were only a couple of turns of the staircase above the tower door. But even after we emerged, we were going to have to cut our way through the entire army of Bero to get out of the castle. Then we’d have to cut our way through the entire navy of Bero to get to neutral waters. Our odds of survival, objectively speaking, were crappy. But it was probably best not to think about that.

  “We’re not done yet,” I told Lynn. “Who knows what could happen?”

  “Stupid optimism,” she noted, as we headed down the last few stairs. “See, I always said that you were the hero.”

  THIS NEXT PART, I admit, is a little confused in my memory. We emerged from the tower into a courtyard awash with acrid smoke and orange light. The giant woodpile was burning, the flames stretching up like the clawed fingers of some beast trying to scratch out heaven’s eyes. Vaguely, through the smoke, I could see lines of soldiers passing buckets from hand to hand. Army drums pattered and trumpets howled. Lynn grabbed the back of my shirt and steered me through the chaos. It took about ten minutes to find our way to a row of low huts, built from the same white limestone as the castle itself.

  We checked the pigsties quickly, one by one. They were all well built and scrupulously clean, and the thought occurred to me that Iason housed his pigs a damn sight better than his daughter. I decided not to mention that.

  Ariadne, Regon, and Latoya were in the third hut along the row, with a bunch of yearling porkers destined to become bacon. They all seemed afraid of Latoya; they were huddled in a squealing pile at the far side of the pigsty, trying to stay away from her. I wondered, but did not ask, what she had done to keep them at a distance.

  “Nice diversion,” I told Regon.

  “The great big fucking fire? You know me, I love a classic.”

  “Well, you did good.”

  At that point, I was knocked out of the way by Ariadne, who lunged across the sty towards her sister. Lynn caught Ariadne’s arms, gave them a brief reassuring squeeze, then pushed her away. “I’m fine. Anyway, this isn’t the time. We need a way out.”

  We all stared around at each other. It was then, in that momentary pause, that fatigue hit me like a fist, almost bending me double. I suddenly wondered whether I would be able to stand upright much longer, let alone fight and scheme and do the impossible. The others weren’t much better off. Regon’s shirt was badged with blood and from the way Latoya was blinking, she was practically asleep on her feet. Gods alone knew how Lynn was coping.

  That left Ariadne, and I turned to her. “Quick. Think of a plan. Any plan. It doesn’t have to be a good plan, it just has to be marginally better than cowering in a pigsty until the end of time. We need to use this moment while the fire’s still burning and Iason has things other than us to worry about.”

  Ariadne made a desperate sound and pressed her hands to her head, as if she was trying to force out an idea. “I don’t know, Darren. I’ve been trying to figure this out for years.”

  “Something. Anything!”

  She looked around wildly—tile roof, stone floor, scuffling pigs.

  “The guard house,” she said at last. “Maybe we can find some spare armour and maybe we can dress up as soldiers and maybe we can blend in and maybe we can slip outside the gate that way.”

  Lynn’s face twitched in a way that let me know this was a stupid plan . . . which was something that I could have figured out for myself. No matter how we dressed Lynn, there was no way to disguise her as anything but a very small woman. By now, Iason would have made it very clear to all his soldiers that horrible death would be visited on anyone who let a very small woman pass through the gates. I did tell Ariadne to come up with something, anything, though, so it was no good complaining. Maybe there was a way to make this work. Maybe I could hide Lynn in my own clothes and pretend to be a fat man. “All right. Fine. We’ll do that.”

  At once, Ariadne looked like she wanted to take the words back. “The guard house is locked, though.”

  “Locks aren’t a problem. We have Latoya.”

  “And some of the best swordsmen are there.”

  “Latoya! Now no more discussion. Only moving. Fast like bunnies. Ariadne in front. Regon, the rear. Move.”

  When we got outside, I knew we were in trouble. The fire was dying, the woodpile a sodden mess with a few glowing patches where there had been an inferno minutes before. The courtyard was swarming, and not just with soldiers. Stable boys thrust pitchforks into piles of hay; hostlers overturned wagons and barrels. Torches moved at a fast clip in the darkness; the tramp of soldiers’ boots was everywhere. It was like the last part of a hunt, the seconds before the fox is torn apart or the stag is brought to its knees.

  “Fuck,” I heard myself saying meekly.

  Ariadne suddenly veered off in a new direction. “The guardhouse is all the way on the other side of the courtyard. We’d never make it.”

  “So where are you taking us?”

  “The root cellars. We . . . we can hide there until things cool down.”

  Brilliant, except that things were not going to cool down. We knew it, every one of us knew it, but we followed her into an outbuilding and down an earthy-smelling set of steps.

  The air was close, stagnant. “Is there another exit from here?” I asked Lynn as we clambered down together.

  “No.” She sounded even more exhausted than I felt. “The words ‘death trap’ come to mind.”

  We jogged through a stone passage with bins of vegetables on either side, Ariadne still tramping along determinedly in front. I cast around for a topic of conversation other than our impending deaths, and thought of something. “By the way,” I asked Lynn. “What was your mother like?”

  Her mouth opened, but she never got a chance to answer. Torchlight suddenly blared behind us, and my stomach plunged to somewhere in the neighbourhood of my feet. I wheeled around and saw them—rows on rows of soldiers, choking the narrow passageway, the shadows of swords an
d spears along the wall. Too many of them to count, let alone fight.

  In the front rank was a familiar face—the guard Lynn had asked me to spare, back in the tower. I thought I saw him give me an apologetic shrug.

  Regon ripped his short sword from his sheath. “Lynn, they’ll only come at you over our dead bodies.”

  “Thanks,” Lynn said half-heartedly. “That’s very comforting.”

  The rows of guardsmen parted as if split with a hot knife, and Iason and Melitta both walked through. Iason didn’t look small now, not with fury pouring off of every square inch of his body, and Melitta looked anything but ordinary. Seeing her that moment, I got a tiny taste of what Lynn used to have to face every day, and I wondered all over again how she’d made it.

  Ariadne leaned into me, her eyes suddenly liquid with false tears. “Father, you have to get back, you have to leave. They’ll kill me, they’ve said that they’ll kill me—”

  “Ariadne,” Iason said. “Do not ever again make the mistake of thinking that I am an idiot.”

  Somewhere nearby, water dripped from the ceiling.

  Ariadne’s voice was weakening. “But you don’t understand—”

  “Oh, darling,” Iason said, but not as if he meant it. “I do understand. You’ve had a fit of what is hopefully temporary insanity, and you’ve decided to consort with criminals. Very well. We all commit acts of appalling stupidity now and then. I suppose you think that I wouldn’t have you executed for treason. It’s true that I’d rather avoid it. It would reflect badly on me if I had you burned to death in the village square. But I have no use for a child who can’t be governed, and even less use for a child who lies. Now come here this minute.”

  “He’s bluffing,” Lynn said, immediately. “You know he can’t kill you. Ariadne, don’t move.”

  She sounded desperate and I knew why. Iason’s two daughters were acting as human shields, keeping the soldiers from rushing us. We were dead as soon as they moved away. Ariadne knew this, she must have known it, but her face crumpled, and her strength along with it. Maybe she had given up hope, I thought. Or maybe she too, in her way, had been so badly hurt by Iason and Melitta that she couldn’t resist them. Whatever the reason, she walked unsteadily over to her father. He snatched her wrist and swung her behind him, into the ranks of soldiers.

  Lynn hissed, then pushed in front of Regon and Latoya and me, her wiry arms outstretched as if she could use them to block crossbow bolts. She spoke, not to her father, but to the soldiers surrounding him. “Do you want to know who I am? You want to know why he’s hunting me?”

  “Not one more word, Gwyneth, not one more word!” Iason’s voice was a fang, a claw, a whip. “Those three savages with you are going to die, no matter what happens next. But you can control whether they die tonight, and die clean, or whether they die in the pits in three months’ time. Do you want them eaten alive by rats? Do you want their faces peeled off, an inch at a time? Do you want them sawn in half with a length of rusty wire? If not, then hold your tongue!”

  Lynn didn’t say anything. Her chest heaved.

  Water dripped. Drip . . . drip . . . drip . . .

  “Good,” Iason said at last, approvingly, as though Lynn was a student who had finally mastered the alphabet. “Now, Melitta, over to you.”

  Melitta smiled slightly, and her eyes focused on Lynn. “Gwyneth.”

  Lynn’s hand found its way back to me, and I gripped it. It was all I could do.

  “Gwyneth,” Melitta said again. “It’s time to end this.”

  “Don’t listen,” I said to Lynn, and she gave a quick sharp nod. Her eyes were tightly closed.

  “Oh, Gwyneth,” Melitta said, sounding hurt. “You know better than this, you truly do . . . You can’t sacrifice yourself to save them. That’s not how this works. They are going to die. You’re not. This ends with you coming back upstairs with me.”

  The pulse in Lynn’s wrist was a racing, skipping beat. She slowly shook her head. “If I were smart,” she said to me, “I would ask you to cut my throat right now.”

  “But you’re not going to, are you?”

  “No. In spite of everything, it’s still not my style.”

  “Just as well. I couldn’t do it even if you did ask me to.”

  Melitta’s face was darkening; her voice sharpened as the pitch soared higher. “Gwyneth, I’m only going to say this once more. Get. Over. Here. You’ve been very, very foolish. Now don’t make it worse.”

  A funny thing happens when you realize you’re about to die. Your life doesn’t seem your own anymore, and you wonder whether it was ever really yours to begin with. When that happens, it makes perfect sense to spend what’s left of it on some last, glorious hurrah, rather than trying to horde the last few drops.

  I glanced questioningly from side to side, at both Regon and Latoya. They knew what I was asking. They nodded. I cleared my throat.

  “Iason has dry withered balls!” I roared. “And his wife and daughter are both as barren as kiln bricks. Five-day fever, years ago. Gwyneth is Iason’s bastard and his only hope of grandchildren. And now that you all know it, I’ll have plenty of company when I’m dying in the pits!”

  “It’s a damn lie!” Iason shrieked, but all his smoothness was gone; his voice was too hysterical to convince. Soldiers shifted their grips on their weapons, suddenly uneasy.

  “He’ll kill you all!” I announced over Iason’s screeching, pointing to each man in the front line. “He’ll kill you, and you, and you, and you . . . he can’t not do it. He would kill whole continents to keep people from finding out.” A thought hit me, and I followed the thread. “He killed Gerard of Saupon, Ariadne’s husband. Arranged that riding accident. Stuck a nettle under the horse’s saddle or something like that. He didn’t have a choice about that either. He couldn’t have people asking why Ariadne wasn’t getting pregnant, could he?”

  Iason’s face was turning purple, veins popping out all along his neck, but Melitta, unfortunately, was made of stronger stuff. “Men, you will ignore this woman’s ravings. A bag of silver to the one who kills her. Two bags of silver to the one who captures her alive and removes her tongue. Go!”

  They started forwards. Latoya snatched a barrel, hefted it, threw. It crashed into the front ranks, exploding into shards, and the soldiers flinched back. That gave us a few more seconds.

  I gripped Lynn’s hand, raised my sword, and addressed Melitta once more. “You’re done, you hoary old bitch, and you don’t even know it. Your sad little world is ending, and the new world is going to be one that this girl helped to design. She’s turning the universe into a place that won’t put up with people like you. She builds heroes. You kill me, she’ll build another. And you can’t starve or beat that out of her.”

  “Ah, well,” Melitta said placidly. “I can try, anyway.”

  “Wrong,” a voice said, halfway between a sob and a snarl, with an edge of desperation thrown in. “As always, wrong.”

  I had seen this before—the flash of something in the air above Melitta’s head, and, an instant later, a line drawing itself across the woman’s throat as the cord was yanked tight. But it wasn’t Lynn doing it this time. Lynn was beside me, gaping just as I did as Melitta gasped, white foam dribbling from between her lips. The soldiers to the left and right of her stood dumbstruck, and Iason stumbled backwards, while Melitta died. A strangling death isn’t a pretty thing when it’s being done by an amateur, and it seemed a long, long time, though it was just a few seconds really, before Melitta finally crashed to her knees. Behind her stood Ariadne, tear streaks in the dust down her face as she pulled the garrote still tighter.

  Iason didn’t exactly rush to Melitta’s side, but he leaned towards the corpse, unbelieving. For once in my life, I didn’t hesitate. I threw down my sword, grabbed a knife from the back of my belt, flipped it to grab the blade, and hurled it with all my might. Iason had just enough time to widen his eyes before the knife thunked solidly into the centre of his chest. His delica
te white fingers splayed, then he wheezed, and folded on the floor of the tunnel. He wasn’t done yet—his legs were still kicking in spastic jerks—but it was just a matter of time. Already, the dirt under him was melting into soft red-brown mud.

  It had all happened too fast for the soldiers. For a whole five seconds, they didn’t move, and the only sound was Iason’s jerking feet as they drummed against a root bin. But then one of the soldiers lunged for Ariadne and twisted her arms behind her back, and more of them immediately followed suit. I suppose it seemed like the thing to do.

  “They deserved it,” Ariadne announced, her voice shaking mightily. “They deserved it, they deserved it, they asked for it fifty times over. They killed your mother, Lynn, did you know that?”

  “I know,” Lynn said, so softly.

  “And then my husband, poor stupid Gerard. They used people, they broke them and bent them and tossed them away.” She was getting properly hysterical now. “You don’t understand. The things that they did to my sister . . . and I couldn’t do anything but watch!”