by Robin Roseau
Eventually the head cook told me, "You may go clean up, as it would not do to attend the captain's table like this, but be quick, as the captain will be expecting you to bring her the meal."
I hurried back to the captain's cabin, knocking and entering without delay. Captain Westmere, Commander Halfheart, and Minori were already there. They turned towards the door when I entered.
"I apologize for my appearance," I said immediately. "The cook told me to clean quickly then retrieve our dinner. I thought I should change tunics. I came to fetch one."
"Of course," said the captain.
I looked at Minori.
"I am only asking easy questions," she said.
"Quite right. I am disappointed," Commander Halfheart said. "I heard she was fierce."
"Commander," Minori immediately said. "Do you sleep well at night knowing you make your living by pulling children from their beds?"
"I sleep just fine," the commander answered immediately. "I count stacks of coins."
"Is your heart is so hardened you see sleeping, innocent children and count the money they can make for you?"
"Um-" said the commander.
"Captain," Minori said, "have you invited me to dine with someone that heartless?"
"Oh, god," said the captain, lifting her glass to cover her embarrassment.
"If you are both so heartless," Minori asked, "why is it so difficult to answer my questions?"
The captain continued to drink from her glass, and the commander looked away. Minori paused very briefly before her next question. "Is the captain a good lover, Commander?"
The captain had the glass to her mouth when Minori asked that question. She sputtered and began coughing. I was surprised by the question, but I was accustomed to Minori's surprises. I cherished them.
"As a matter of fact," the commander answered, "she is an exceedingly good lover."
"If she is a good lover, why did you stop sharing her bed?" Minori asked.
"How do you know to ask these questions?" the commander asked.
"I have years of asking questions," Minori responded. "And they are simply questions. Perhaps you would know of the captain's prowess as a lover only from reputation. But you spoke so self-assuredly, then I could only assume you had first-hand experience. Commander, does the captain know you have wagered against her winning the affections of my aunt?"
"You what?" the captain yelled immediately.
The commander had her hands up. "She can't possibly know something like that."
"I don't hear you denying it, Radha," said the captain.
"It was a question," Minori said. "Only a question. Commander, when the captain fails to win over my aunt, do you intend to try?"
"God damn it!" the commander said. "Enough!"
"Commander-"
"Minori," I said quietly.
"Do you still think my reputation is unearned?"
"No. I think your reputation is understated."
"Commander, what would you say if you knew that only today, the captain offered to retire from kidnapping women and children?"
The commander looked carefully into Minori's face and then into that of Captain Westmere. "I would say that I would serve under Captain Westmere if she were running a garbage scow."
"So are you saying you are hoping for a step up from slave ship?"
"Minori," I said firmly. "Enough."
She turned to me. "Yes, Aunt Rani."
Commander Halfheart looked between Minori and me. "I can't decide which one is worse, Captain."
"I know," the captain agreed. "Minori, your aunt needs to know you will not provoke us in her absence."
"Of course I won't," she said. "Aunt Rani is the only one who appreciates my questions. I wouldn't want to waste them on an unappreciative audience."
"She is safe, Ms. Karden," Captain Westmere said. "If she gets out of hand, may I gag her?"
"If you do, her mother won't let her return." I looked pointedly at Minori. "Nor will her mother allow me to spend more time with her."
"Aunt Rani," Minori said. "I already said I would behave. Commander, would you have played tag with us the way the captain did today?"
"Oh good god," I said. "You call that behaving?"
"The commander won't mind answering," Minori said.
I sighed, collected a tunic, and found I trusted my niece with the two of them. I couldn't have told anyone why.
Twenty minutes later found me delivering dinner to the captain's cabin. It took two trips, as I had no help. Everyone was smiling, so I presumed Minori had asked amusing questions. When I returned with the second tray, they were seated and laughing. I set everything down and asked if they would share the joke.
"I asked the captain if she would pay me to ask you more questions. She hasn't answered."
"Selling me out, and you so young," I told her. "And here I thought I was your favorite aunt."
"You're my only aunt," she replied. "Aunt Rani, if the captain agrees to pay me, will you answer my questions? I believe she is more likely to pay me if you agree to answer."
Minori was a smart girl, and her questions were always intriguing. I thought perhaps she had something in mind. But she was only twelve, and I wondered if she were playing well over her head.
They had already distributed the plates I brought on my first trip, but I delayed my answer by setting out the food then serving each of them. The captain hadn't asked me to, but she knew I was stalling and allowed me the delay. I topped off water glasses but finally ran out of things to do and took my seat.
"How much are you asking the captain to pay you?"
"Only a half crown each. But we agreed she will pay me for every question I ask. I am to continue asking questions until she tells me to stop."
I served my own plate. The captain poured me a glass of wine. I sampled it, and it was very good.
"Are these to be yes and no questions or questions with longer answers?"
"One-word answers," Minori replied. "Or perhaps short phrases."
"All right," I said. "I reserve the right to stop answering."
Everyone turned to the captain. She smiled. "You'll answer?" I nodded. "Ask your questions, Minori. Ask them slowly so I may stop you if I feel cheated."
I took a breath, and Minori turned to me. "Are you currently angry with the captain?"
"No," I answered immediately.
Minori immediately held her hand out to the captain, palm up, waiting for her money.
"May I pay you after dinner?"
"Cash on the table."
Radha laughed. "She doesn't trust you, Captain."
"You already have my money pouch, Minori."
"Are you telling me you don't have the cash to pay me?"
"I don't have any small change left. The money pouch was my small change."
She reached inside her borrowed tunic and removed the captain's money pouch. "Will I be able to make change?"
The captain laughed. "Yes." She rose from the table, turned to her desk, and retrieved a small metal lockbox. She took several coins from it, returned the lockbox to the desk, and sat back down. She slid one large gold coin onto the table. "That is five crowns."
"I've never seen one," Minori said immediately. She picked it up and examined it. "Aunt Rani, is this real?"
"I do not believe the captain intends to cheat you, Minori."
"That was not a question I am paying for," Captain Westmere said immediately.
"Fair enough," Minori said. She counted coins from her pouch, setting them beside the captain's five crown piece, then took the large coin and dropped it into her pouch. "A half crown, please."
The captain took the stack of coins and set a half-crown silver piece on the table.
"Aunt Rani, do you resent the duties the captain has given you?"
"No," I said. "I will resent it if she orders me to act the servant for a wider group than she already has. She has explained why she has given me these duties, and her reasons are sound."
Captain Westmere added another coin to the table.
Minori asked me several more questions, and the captain paid her for each one. She used her meal to cover the longer and longer delays between questions, and from time to time she asked Commander Halfheart or Captain Westmere questions instead, questions designed to provoke friendly conversation.
The captain ran out of the coins she had gotten from Minori. She set another five-crown cold piece on the table, and Minori traded for the stack of coins and immediately asked me another question. Halfway through the meal, with the questions coming slower, the captain again ran out of small coins and produced a third five-crown gold piece. She eyed it before setting it on the table, collecting her stack of coins again.
"Minori," I said. "Wait."
Minori immediately nodded.
"Captain, why are you doing this?"
"She is asking questions I would like to ask, but I do not believe you would answer if I ask."
"You have paid her ten crowns, and I have answered questions I would answer for any friend. And I know some of the questions she asked were not questions you would have paid for."
"No, but most of her questions are good."
"I apologize for the poor questions," Minori said. "I am asking questions Aunt Rani will answer. It is getting harder."
"You are not asking the questions I would most like answered," the captain said.
"No, and I am not asking questions you wouldn't think to ask, either. We can stop if the two of you want me to stop." She turned to me. "I am running out of easy questions for you."
"I know."
The captain smiled. "I will keep paying unless the questions turn trivial."
"Why, Captain?" she asked.
"I want questions with longer answers, Minori."
Minori turned back to me. "Are you asking me to stop?"
"No, honey."
"What is the real reason why grandma and grandpa disowned you?"
I stared at my niece. Then I glanced down at the money on the table. "Captain," I asked quietly. "If my brother were to pay the asking price for my ransom, how much of that would be your share?"
"One fifth."
"So one fifth to your lord in Alencia, one fifth to you."
"One fifth divided between the other officers, which includes the sergeant of the marines, and the remaining two fifths to the remainder of the crew."
"The captain makes so much more than the first mate?"
"This captain is also the ship owner," Commander Halfheart said.
"This ship also gets one tenth of any other prizes we take," Captain Westmere added.
"So you have already paid my niece far more than you will profit from me, and that's at full price."
"Yes."
"I would like to know why. If all you wanted was a warm companion for your bed, you have already paid her enough to hire one for months. And even if you are able to temporarily overcome my reticence, you cannot possibly believe I intend to join the crew of a ship that earns its living preying on innocent women and children. I do not understand what game you are playing, Captain."
"I have paid her enough to pay for a companion for years, Rani," the captain said to me.
"Have we become informal, Captain? Am I to call you 'Sorri' now?"
"If you allow me to call you Rani, then in private, you may call me Sorri," the captain replied.
"You may call me whatever you like, Captain," I replied. "I do not choose to become familiar at this time. But if you give anyone the impression I have offered to you more than I have, my reaction will land me in the brig."
"Understood," said the captain.
"And so again I ask. What game are you playing?"
Minori shifted in her chair, and I knew she had a question she wasn't asking. She looked at the captain sadly.
"I withdraw my question," I said immediately.
"Why?" the captain asked. "It's a fair question."
"I do not believe, if you were to offer an honest answer, I would feel very good hearing it." I looked away. "I do not believe I need more reasons to hate you. I do not believe I would respond well if provided any."
"My reasons are not remotely nefarious," the captain responded. "I wish us to be friends."
"That is a very large amount of money devoted to ensuring friendship. Are you going to let her keep it?"
"Yes."
"I feel you have expectations for that money, Captain."
"I don't."
"There are things you are not telling me, Captain," I said. "And Minori, you shall not ask."
"Yes, Aunt Rani," she agreed immediately.
"I will tell this story, but then we are done. There are details of this story I will not share, and I will not accept questions afterwards. Minori, you are not to repeat this story. Captain, you will not feel cheated."
Captain Westmere slid a half crown over to Minori, and I began to speak.
Disowned: Rani's Parents
I have been a thorn in my parent's side since before birth. My brother is ten years older than I am, and I was an unexpected pregnancy. Everything about me has been unexpected since.
As one might imagine after spending more than ten minutes with me, the term "terrible twos" was coined for me. But for me, the terrible twos over time became the terrible thirty-twos.
Well, that isn't critical for this story, I guess. Everyone here knows my temper.
As a teenager, of course I heard over and over how if I didn't learn to become more demure, no man would want me. I imagine everyone can guess how much weight that argument held for me; to this day, I wonder if it hasn't subconsciously been a factor for my temper. My temper has certainly served as a beard. "Oh, Rani's tongue is famous; no wonder no man wants her." It has kept me from ever having to answer the question, "Why don't you have a man?" No one could possibly spend any time at all with me and not know the answer to that question.
Never mind it was the wrong answer.
In spite of this, and in spite of in effect being a social pariah, I learned about things. Seven years ago, my mother did something. I will not say what it was. I will only say this: it was legal. She did not break the law.
I suffered the effects of what she did long before I realized there was a cause for those effects. It took months for me to piece together the clues, a tiny bit here, a tiny bit there. But even when I realized what must have happened, I didn't have the proof for who had done it. It wasn't like I was well-loved; it could have been any of a thousand people in Norida. It could have been all one thousand of those people, for all I knew.
So I began investigating.
Mother was not done doing what she was doing, but I began to undo it, and that left me with the opportunity to set a trap.
I thought Father would be the one to spring it, or even Glora, if she had been bored. Instead, Mother sprang the trap, but she didn't know it at the time any more than I knew when she started the series of events.
When I knew the full truth, of course you know I didn't keep it to myself. I was living in a small apartment that I could barely afford, but it kept me away from everyone else, and that was better than being around other people. I went home, but when I arrived, Mother and Father were hosting a dinner party, a very elegant dinner party with very important guests.
I made a scene.
I was so angry that I was nearly unintelligible. Mother caught enough words that she knew what I had discovered; I'm not sure father did, and certainly the guests did not. But I began to lash out, and I knew things about several of the guests. Some of them I knew from my own ways; some I knew because from time-to-time, father would speak about things he should not.
I divulged three secrets I should not have by the time father dragged me to his study. I was actually not angry at father, so I was able to calm down enough to arrive at an agreement with him. He would buy me a small apartment, and I would never darken his doorstep again, and I would never divulge any secrets I had learned from hi
m. In addition, I was to make up reasons why I had known the things I did, reasons that were believable and did not point back to him.
I have not talked to either of them since that day. I picked out my apartment and contacted father's attorney. The attorney managed the purchase, and that was that.
I have never said Mother and Father disowned me, although perhaps they have. I have said we are estranged. And we are; I have disowned them.
If anyone was expecting a truly sordid story of neglect or abuse, I am sorry to have disappointed you. This is primarily a story of a mother's meddling in a very unethical fashion, and a daughter's lack of tolerance.
Glora probably would have forgiven her mother if she had experienced the same, but I have not been able to do so. Even if I could forgive her, and even if I could forgive my father's words later in his study, I do not believe they want me back. I believe they are happy having one child and not two.
Warming Up
Captain Sorri Westmere
It had been a long day. Minori's questions had turned tame after Rani's story, but they were incessant and always intelligent. She had extracted stories from all of us, easy stories. She asked about the running of the ship and how I had become captain. She asked Radha about her childhood and me about some of the places I had visited.
Once dinner was over, I ordered Rani and Minori to clear the remnants. Minori was to be returned to her mother, and Rani was to return to me. Rani took her time returning, which annoyed me. I had given her all day with her niece, and I thought taking twenty minutes to say good night when she knew I wanted her back was unreasonable. She waited until I was finished telling her that, and then told me hotly, "I didn't take twenty minutes saying goodnight. I took fifteen seconds. I spent the other nineteen minutes and forty-five seconds washing, drying and putting away the dishes we dirtied as well as doing anything else the cook ordered me to do. I did not realize I was on your clock."
Her tone made me angry even though I was the one at fault. I couldn't figure out why I kept sniping at her.
The three of us sat in my cabin for a few minutes, but when I invited everyone for a walk on the quarterdeck. Rani's body language remained stiff towards me, but she accepted the invitation. At the bottom of the ladder, she waited until I turned around from the top and invited her up.