“Worth a try, I guess.” Latoya rolled her shoulders, and they went pop-pop-pop, like a string of firecrackers. “Let’s go have a chat with the crew. See if we can put the fear of god into them.”
“Nuts to that. Let’s put the fear of death by diarrhea into them. See how that goes. And both of you better remember this. I expect you to tell my mistress later how mature I’m being about this whole thing.”
CHAPTER TEN
The Lady Darren of the House of Torasan (Pirate Queen)
“I DID WARN you, Ariadne. I told you that Konrad’s wife was a rotten musician.”
“Yes. You prepared me for a rotten musician. You failed to prepare me for a woman whose lute playing represents an actual threat to world peace. Darren, I would like you to stab her repeatedly before she can trap me again. I am making a formal request.”
“All right. I have noted your request that I bloodily destroy my brother’s wife, and I will give it all of the consideration that it deserves. Why are you putting on so much rouge?”
“Because we’re going to eat in the Great Hall, and it’ll be dark there, and you need to use more colour if you want it to be seen in poor light. Science. Do you want me to do your face as well?”
“Allow me to answer that question by screaming non-stop for an hour.”
“Just some powder and kohl. I won’t paint your lips or anything. It’ll look very dignified. Not at all girly. Come here a second.”
“Get off. Ariadne. No, I said get off. Stoppit. No! Ariadne! Damn it, woman, I am a very intimidating and terrible pirate and you will not put goop on my face. Regon! Corto! What do you think you’re doing? Get up and destroy her!”
Regon and Corto, the traitors, barely looked up from their game of dice. Since my faithless crew refused to come to my aid, I had to snatch up a pillow and a feather-duster and defend myself. It was a hard-fought battle, but in the end, my tactical brilliance and physical prowess won out over Ariadne’s evil cunning, and she dropped, laughing, into a chair.
“You’d better hope that I never turn against you,” she said, once she caught her breath. “If I ever need to bring you down, I shall simply sneak up from behind and slip a pink frilly dress over your head. Stripped of your swagger, you will be helpless before me.”
She flounced in the chair, rolled her shoulders, and frowned. “Now look what you’ve done. You’ve gone and stretched my bodice strings.”
“Oh, rats. I guess I’ll have to sob with remorse and shame all night.”
“You should. Well, I’ll need someone to tighten these up for me, or I won’t be fit to appear in public.”
Her eyes skimmed the room and rested thoughtfully on Regon.
“Oh, no you don’t.” I lunged between her and my first mate before she could swoosh over to him in a swirl of lace. “How many times do I have to say it? My crew is not an all-you-can-eat buffet. You get one at a time.”
“You bloody prude. I was just going to ask him to help with my dress—not bend me over a table and have his wicked way with me. If you’re not going to let me recruit outside assistance, you’ll have to help.”
“Fine. Assume the position.”
She hopped up, swept over to the bed, and wrapped her arms around one of the posts. “Have you ever done this before?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Sure.” I squinted at the bodice laces and set to work unpicking the knots. “It’s been a while, though. If you want someone who actually knows what they’re doing, we’ll have to call a maid.”
“A maid, what a lovely idea. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll get one who’s more than eight years old and only has one black eye. I told you, no servants.”
“It’s not like I’m crazy about the idea.” Every time I turned a corner in the Keep, I expected to see the fawn-eyed girl, with her jug of washwater and her thin frightened face. “But not every servant gets treated the way Lynn did. All right, exhale.”
“I . . . know . . . that,” Ariadne panted, as I wrenched at her bodice strings. “But still . . . if I had to be a bond servant . . . I’d rather it be on Bero . . . than on Torasan Isle. Not so much . . . penny-pinching. On Bero . . . even our scullery maids . . . got to . . . eat meat . . . every so often. Oh come on, pirate queen, that’s not nearly tight enough. Put your back into it, woman!”
“I can’t get it any tighter unless I . . . you know.”
“Well, do it then. Honestly, do I need to talk you through everything?”
I scowled at her back—waste of a scowl, because she couldn’t see it—and planted a foot on her backside to brace myself. “You must have had servants of your own, growing up.”
“Yes, of cou-ou-ourse!” The end of the word turned into a squeal as I yanked the bodice strings as tight as they would go. “That’s good, Darren, that’s better. Tie it off. Not with any fancy sailor knots, if you please; I want to get out of this dress eventually. Servants when I was growing up. Yes. Alma, my old nurse—she dressed me and drew my baths and so on. And the housekeeper would do my rooms out and wait on me a bit.”
Regon looked up, crooking a furry eyebrow. “Two old women? Weren’t you supposed to have maids or ladies-in-waiting? Girls to catch you when you fainted, or carry your sewing silks?
“I did once. Just the once. Her name was Basia and she was fourteen—I was maybe a year younger. She served me for two months and then I caught my father with his hand up her skirt. So I threw a hideous tantrum, told my parents that Basia snored and smelt of piss, and made them send her back home. I don’t know whether it made things any better for her in the long run. There are people everywhere with grabby hands, and perhaps her home was miserable. But at least I didn’t have to stand there and watch it happen.”
She took a step away from the bed and her knees buckled beneath her. I caught her by the arm before she fell. “What’s the matter? Dizzy?”
“Yes. Funnily enough, that will happen when one’s lungs get squashed to half their usual size.” She detached herself, fanning her face. “What’s the plan for tonight? I take it that you want me to work the lady bits and try to get your family to talk to me.”
“I’m going to have to ask you never to use the phrase ‘lady bits’ again, but yes, see what you can find out. Regon—”
He nodded. “I know. Soldiers, kitchen wenches, and page boys. Corto and I’ll talk to as many as we can find.”
“Thanks, but . . . um. I was hoping that Corto could go check on Lynn.”
Corto punched Regon in the arm. “Less than a day,” he said, smirking. “You owe me ten bits.”
“Funny. Hilarious. Just give her a status report, all right? And see how she is. Please.”
He shook his head sadly. “Now, captain, is that any way to ask?”
“Fine. ‘Do it, you bastard son of a poxy whore, or I’ll see you hung from the yardarm.’”
“Better.” He stood and stretched. “I thought for a second that you were losing your touch. Family dinners can have that effect on people.”
I SHOULD HAVE felt a great sense of triumph when I paraded into the Great Hall with a beautiful woman on my arm. But it was the wrong woman, and that sort of ruined it.
“Do you have to be quite so clingy?” I hissed at Ariadne.
“I am trying to give the impression that I enjoy touching you,” she said through clenched, smiling teeth. “Remember how I’m supposed to be your kept woman? Your personal bit of skin? Stop acting like you’re escorting your great-aunt to supper. Pretend you’ve seen me naked.”
“I have seen you naked. Your first week aboard ship, remember? When Lynn and I were helping you find some trousers that fit. It was about as erotic as an old man’s bath. Besides, why do we want people to think that you’re my bit of skin? Why can’t we tell them that you’re my accountant, or my bodyguard?”
“Darren. We have talked about this. We want people to jump to conclusions. They’re supposed to file me away in a box labelled ‘Stupid useless girl’ and then forget that I exist. That way, I�
��ll have space to work.”
“Well, I’m not going to grope you at the dinner table.”
“I am relieved to hear it. Can we do something a little bit short of a grope, though? For example, you could try not to flinch when I touch you. That would be an excellent start.”
“I’ll try, all right? Don’t expect too much. I’ve never been all that good at flirting, and now I’m practically married.”
“Practically.” She pursed her lips. “Now, there’s a thought. Didn’t you promise that you were going to make an honest woman of my sister?”
“I did! More or less. Well. I tried, anyway. I asked if Lynn wanted to get married and she said, ‘Mistress, I just dug a tick out of your backside with my fingernails. Exactly how much more married do you want to be?’”
We had almost reached the high table, where a horde of dark-haired men and women made a solid wall. I took a deep breath. “Brace yourself. We’re going in.”
THE NEXT HALF-HOUR or so was about as awkward as a social situation could be, considering that no one was naked or on fire.
The men introduced to me as my brothers Gunnar and Talon had sour faces and beer guts. They greeted me with forced, artificial enthusiasm, and couldn’t hide their relief when I turned away.
Konrad’s heir, his oldest son Karel, was busy talking with a bunch of his cronies. He didn’t pause the conversation when I came near, just extended a languid hand for me to kiss. I shook the hand instead, and even that was unpleasant—his skin was damp and soft as a cod’s belly.
There were more of Konrad’s children, boys and girls who were old enough to sit up to supper, but young enough to think that they had to frown all the time to be taken seriously. They went around looking like they’d been forced to take a long lick of a mule’s hind end, and they refused to laugh at anything.
There were throngs of women, sisters-in-law and distant cousins, all of whom looked very prim and proper and upright, except for Konrad’s wife. She was as drunk as a pisspot, and she started the night off by blinking at me vacantly, asking when I’d grown so fat, and belching in my face. Konrad winced at that, his smooth mask slipping for just an instant. Talon and Gunnar’s wives looked almost identical, and both of them were named something that sounded almost but not quite like “Valerie.” All they wanted to talk about was clothes. I contributed my personal opinion on the subject—namely, that wearing clothes is generally but not always a good idea—and then couldn’t think of anything else to add.
While I was suffering through all this, Jada hung back at the fringes of the room, looking sullen and miserable in a too-small dress of faded yellow which might have been fashionable seven years in the past. Every time I tried to sidle in her direction, Konrad popped up with yet another distant relative or general or priest for me to meet. I bowed and smiled until my face hurt and my tired head spun.
At last, someone herded a boy in front of me who looked far too young to be up so late. He was horribly pimple-pocked, with red splotches carpeting not only his nose and chin, but his neck too, right down to the shirt collar. He’d tried to hide the ones on his forehead by combing down his fringe, but violent yellow-headed lumps glared out between strands of dark hair. He was shortish, but thick around the middle; he was wearing what had to be his only “good” pair of trousers, and a bit of belly flopped over the belt.
Just one glance at him, and I knew he’d have one hell of a time until he went through a growth spurt and learned to stop picking his face. The sight did me good. At a few points that day, I’d been in danger of getting nostalgic. Now I remembered why I’d hated being young.
“Aunt Darren,” he said. The word “Aunt” came out in a deep baritone, “Darren” as a squeak. He winced, reddening to the roots of his hair.
Konrad cleared his throat. “Greet her properly, Hark.”
The boy flushed even deeper and snapped forward into a bow. He did it so fast, I only just managed to lean out of the way in time to avoid a collision.
“Hark,” I repeated, trying to place the name. I thought I recognized it, vaguely. At least it wasn’t yet another name that sounded almost but not quite like “Valerie.” “Are you one of Konrad’s boys?”
“My lord Konrad is my uncle,” the boy said, his voice a piping treble. “I have the honour to be Alek of Torasan’s oldest son.”
Several remarks came to mind about then, but none of them were appropriate for polite company. I swallowed them all down and tried for a sympathetic smile.
“You found my father,” the boy said. “You tried to save him.”
“Um. Yes. It didn’t . . . quite . . . work out, I’m afraid.” What to do? Curse? Apologise? Run around the table shrieking? I remembered something I’d once heard a stupid old man say to an orphan and blurted it out before I had time to think. “You must be a great comfort to your mother.”
Hark’s face became a little blanker. “My lady mother died of consumption two years ago.”
I should probably just stop talking completely, I decided. Maybe I could start wearing a gag to formal occasions. I could decorate it with feathers or something, make it kind of chic.
Fortunately, Konrad intervened. “You’re a lucky man, Hark, having your aunt here, tonight of all nights. You’ll want to pick her brain as much as you can before tomorrow.”
“Why? What’s so special about . . . ?”
My voice trailed off when I saw what Hark was wearing on his belt: a silver dagger with a hawk’s-head crest.
“His maiden voyage begins tomorrow,” Konrad said, spelling out what I already knew. “Tomorrow, we send a new captain out in the service of Torasan.”
WHEN WE’D ALL taken our seats at the long table for dinner, Ariadne gave me a dig in the side. “Why are you surprised by this?”
“I can’t hear you,” I said, as I ripped my napkin into little little pieces under the table. “I can’t hear anything. My entire being is consumed by the spectacular terribleness of this idea.”
“What idea? Putting stupid baby nobles in charge of merchant ships? Of course it’s ridiculous, but that’s never stopped anyone before.”
“But Kila’s a war zone now, and every year the seas get worse.”
Hark sat, baby-faced and pink with pleasure, in the seat of honour at Konrad’s side. I mentally ran through a few of the horrible things I’d seen happen to boys his age, and my stomach shrivelled in disgust.
I slammed my spoon down on the table. “What the hell is Konrad thinking? Couldn’t he take two seconds to say, ‘You know what, wacky thought, let’s maybe not throw all our children out into the killing fields.’”
“It’s adorable that you can still be that naïve.” Ariadne delicately wiped her lips. “Why aren’t you eating?”
“All of this talk about dead children isn’t doing much for my appetite.”
Ariadne clearly didn’t have that problem. She was working her way through every dish on the table: lamprey pie, roasted pigeon, onion salad, eggs cooked with apples. Already, her trencher was heaped high with bits and scraps.
Ariadne mumbled something with her mouth full. I shook my head. “Sorry, what?”
She swallowed. “I said, I told you that Torasan had fallen on hard times.”
I almost laughed. The table in front of us was groaning with food, an array of dishes dizzying to someone who lived mostly on hardtack and salt beef. True, it wasn’t the food I remembered from feast days when I was a child . . .
It wasn’t the same food at all, and suddenly I saw the point. Where was the suckling pig, the almond-milk custard, the roast peacock, the capon cooked with rosewater and cinnamon? One of the tureens in front of us held fish stew. Fish stew—the stuff that peasants would eat when they couldn’t afford bread. There was a dish of roasted rabbits, half-concealed under thick gravy. Rabbit is meat, but it’s a poor man’s meat, lean, gamey. The loaves at my elbow were manchet bread, white and fine-grained, but further down the table, below the first salt, the bread was black and coarse.
>
“You know what this means,” Ariadne said. “Even the nobles on Torasan Isle are tightening their belts, so the poor . . .”
“Ariadne, I have wonderful news: You can shut up now.” I toyed with a bit of roast mutton and then nudged the trencher away from me. “Maybe, under the circumstances, you could stop stuffing yourself for five consecutive seconds?”
“I’m not stuffing myself,” she said, through another huge mouthful. She dropped a barely-touched chicken leg onto her heaping trencher and reached across the table for more bread.
“Well, how about you stop loading your plate with food that you don’t want to eat? It could be a nice gesture, if there are commoners starving outside the Keep.”
Beggar's Flip Page 17