Ariadne took possession of the girl, wrapping both arms around her. “Oh, Gwyn—”
“For the thousandth time, that’s not my name.”
“I keep forgetting how much you hate children.”
“I don’t hate children. I don’t want them to die, or anything. I want them to be perfectly happy and healthy, somewhere far away from me. Let’s get this one out of here.”
I could already hear—if I wasn’t imagining it—the slapping of shoes against stone. Not the heavy, regular tramp-tramp-tramp of soldiers marching in step, but the broken scuffling beats of men running. Men pushing in front of each other, and falling behind, and ranging out in front, and running, running, running to find us.
“Go,” I told Ariadne. “Take the kid out of here. If you argue with me now, I swear I will break your face.”
Her mouth tightened, but she hurried the child through the back door. I made one last lap of the room, checking under every bed, inside every nook, behind every hanging curtain. When I was sure it was empty, I caught up the fire shovel by the hearth and plunged it deep into the still-glowing coals. I scattered the red hot embers in and around and over the barricade, then grabbed a cushion and flapped it in wide arcs, fanning the flames until they lapped around the wood and took hold.
Then I ran, blood pounding in my ears and temples. The back door was heavy but well-oiled and I yanked it shut without any trouble. It was dead dark in the passage on the other side, so I worked by touch, finding bolts and latches on the door frame and shooting them home.
When I got clear of the passage, the full moon was overhead, flashing silver on the sheltered bay. The air was tinglingly cold. I took the stairs two at a time until I caught up with Ariadne, then helped her pull the sleepy, stumbling child down the steps. Together, we hurried towards the torch Regon was holding, a bobbling pool of orange light.
“Darren does have a reason for bringing us down here, doesn’t she?” I asked, somewhat belatedly. “I mean, we’re not just going to build sand castles and hope that nobody notices us, right?”
Ariadne squinted and blew upwards, chasing a sweaty blond ringlet out of her eye. “I think we’re escaping from the beach. She said there was a boat.”
“ . . . a boat? As in, one?”
One. I could see it already. One balky, ancient longboat moored at a short pier. Latoya was aboard, straddling two benches. Darren and Regon passed the smaller children to her, one at a time, and she set them down on the thwarts. Clusters of them clung to her legs. She moved carefully, stepping between tiny hands and feet.
Most of the older children managed to clamber aboard without help, but Hark missed his footing, and would have gone into the water headfirst if Regon hadn’t grabbed him by the jacket collar.
All but the youngest of the kids seemed to know what they were doing. They found spaces for themselves in the crowded little boat, crouching on the bottom-boards if there wasn’t room for them on a bench, and waited without fussing.
That helped, but there were so many of them. With each child that boarded, the boat sunk lower in the water, until it looked like a dent in a glass mirror. When we passed in the last child, a fat and placid girl who was sucking the hem of her shirt, the boat dipped low before it settled. There was a sliver left of freeboard, a few inches at most. Small waves lapped at the side and sent trickles of water over the gunwales.
There was no way the boat could take us all.
Just that minute, Ariadne shuddered, retched, and bent double, hand pressed to her mouth. The raw fishy smell of the seaweed must have got to her; it was pretty ripe. While she was busy with that, I pulled Darren to the end of the dock, rotten boards squelching beneath my bare feet.
“How many more people can we put in the boat?” I asked.
I was pretty sure that the honest answer was “None, oh god oh god, what the hell do you want from me?” But Darren always was a secret optimist. She squinted out at the waves, licked a finger, and checked the wind. “One. Maybe.”
“Can we lighten the boat at all?”
“We already unshipped the mast. Took out most of the oars. Unless you want to chop bits out of the hull, or throw a few kids over the side, I don’t think we could lose any more weight.”
“Latoya’s the heaviest. If she got out . . .” I let the words die away, giving up the idea even before Darren shook her head. The boat was so deeply loaded, no ordinary sailor could shift it. Darren and Regon together could strain at the oars until their backs broke without getting any distance. Only Latoya, with her powerful bargeman’s arms, stood a chance.
We could dump a few of the heavier children. I told myself that Hark kind of looked like a twit. But that would be a non-starter, with Darren around.
“Could we swim?” I asked, knowing the answer already.
“Water’s too cold. We’d pass out before clearing the bay. Or we’d panic, and try to climb into the boat, and swamp it. If we try that, nobody’s going to make it out.”
And we couldn’t tunnel and we couldn’t turn invisible and we couldn’t fly—my brain raced in circles, probing, testing, but hitting walls in every direction.
It wasn’t a new thing for me, this certainty that I was about to face something vicious and brutal in a cold dark place, but that didn’t give me any comfort. Sooner or later, I was going to outlive my store of luck.
My palms were damp. I dried them against my tunic while my mind went through that familiar adjustment, the world dimming and narrowing until I couldn’t see anything but the next step in the road.
“All right,” I said. “One more person. You know that has to be you.”
“You really think I would save my own skin before yours?”
Bleeding tits, so typical. “I think that every once in a long long while, you manage to stop playing righteous warrior long enough to see sense. You’re the one the rebels want, not me. Nobody’s up in the castle screaming for the blood of runaway servant girls.”
“Maybe not, but if they capture you, they’re not just going to hand you a cupcake and wave you on your way. Gods’ teeth! The last time I let you sacrifice yourself for the rest of us, you ended up beaten bloody and locked in Melitta’s closet—”
“I remember what happened last time, Darren.”
All night long, I’d been fighting the fear, but now it flooded me, acid and blinding yellow, settling in my jaw as a sour ache.
“This isn’t about sacrifice,” I said, forcing out the words. “It’s about what makes sense. You’ll be in the deepest shit if you don’t escape, so you’re escaping, congratulations, move your pirate arse.”
Darren reached out to me, but stopped herself just in time. That was a relief. My skin was prickling all over, almost burning.
She said, “If I run—”
“Then I have to stay. We’ve established that. Get in the boat or I’ll get Regon to pitch you off the end of the dock. He’ll do it, if I ask.”
“That’s not what I mean. If I escape, your sister can’t.”
My heart stood still. My sweet, naïve, noble-born sister with her so-smooth skin and her delusions that the world could be fair and beautiful . . . my sister, having those delusions ripped away from her, once and for all . . . for once in my life, I couldn’t think of anything to say.
There was buzzing in my ears and in my head that almost drowned out the sound of Darren talking. “It’s all right. Lynn, breathe, it’s all right.”
“You are such a damn liar.” I could only get air in short gasps. That burning smell was back again.
“No, listen. We’re going to send your sister to safety. You and I are going to stay together, because that’s what we do. And, together, we will find a way out of this. Are you listening to me? Breathe.”
I breathed, shallowly. She nodded with approval. “Are you with me?”
I stuttered out a laugh, choked on it, and forced myself to breathe again. “Asshole. You still need to ask?”
Instead of answering, she reached
for my face. I flinched backwards but managed to check the motion, letting her pick something from the corner of my eye with gentle fingers.
“Eyelash,” she explained, and flicked the short hair away. “And no, I don’t need to ask. Isn’t that strange? Go get rid of the princess so that you and I can get some real work done.”
Down at the end of the dock, Ariadne straightened, wiping her mouth. “What’s the hold-up?” she asked, voice shaky. “Aren’t we going?”
Darren gave me another encouraging nod. I somehow managed to steady myself.
“Of course we’re going, you dozy pillock,” I said. “We’ve been waiting on your puking ass. Hop on the boat. You’re next.”
It sounded good—brisk, casual. No sign that when I said You’re next, I meant You’re last. But my sister never was a fool. She looked at me with suspicion, then with dawning realization, and the blood sprang into her cheeks.
“No,” she said fiercely. “No!”
This was just too much. “Why is everyone trying to argue with me tonight? When are people going to realize that I’m always right about everything? Get in the damn boat.”
“And leave you here?”
“Just for now,” I said through my teeth. “We’ll catch up.”
“You’re lying!”
“Yes, well, you’re ugly. Get in, Ariadne!”
She took two stumbling steps forward, and gods, did she look a mess now, with her nightgown slicked sweatily against her back and breasts, and her hair flying free in wild tendrils. “Gwyneth, I don’t care how much you hate me right now—”
“Oh, here we go. Yes, please do dissolve into weepy hysterics; that’ll fix everything.”
“—I am not going to stand aside and watch you get broken!” By now, she was screaming. “Not this time. Not again!”
“You don’t have to watch!” Cold wind off the ocean sliced through the linen of my tunic. Revolution or no revolution, I wanted to get away from the water and find some place warmer. “I don’t want you to watch. Whatever happens next, I don’t want you to be here!”
Ariadne shook her head, her pinched face almost a skull in the grey moonlight. She was gripping at her scarf in her distress, twisting it between her fingers, knuckles pale as old bone. “You’ve been through enough. It’s enough, Lynn! I won’t let it happen again! I can’t!”
“I’ll be fine! I’m nobody! You’re the noble, you’re the true-born, you’re the one with the target painted on her back—”
She took one step closer. “But you’re my baby sister.”
There was a blur of motion.
It was funny. I should have recognized the manoeuvre—I’d done it so often myself—but like most of my victims, I hesitated for just a second as the silk scarf whipped over my head. Another instant and I did understand, and I was clutching at the scarf with both hands, trying to pull the noose free, to clear my airway. Too late. Ten heartbeats after Ariadne’s makeshift garrotte tightened around my neck, my legs gave way, and the blackness rose to meet me.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Lady Darren of the House of Torasan (Pirate Queen)
I THINK THERE must have been something strange in the water on Bero, where Lynn and Ariadne grew up, because I swear, those two thought twice as fast and moved twice as fast as anyone else. Lynn hit the ground unconscious before I even had time to say, “Wait a minute.”
Ariadne loosened the scarf, straightened up, and shot a glare at me that felt like a punch between the eyes. “Lynn takes the last spot in the boat. Any objections?”
Objections or no objections, there was no point in discussing it. Lynn’s eyelids were already fluttering—she wouldn’t be unconscious for long—but she’d wake up woozy and dazed. She wouldn’t be able to walk in that state, and piggybacking a girl through enemy lines isn’t as easy as you might imagine.
But Latoya surged to her feet, making the boat roll dangerously. “No!”
Ariadne didn’t respond, just turned that piercing stare of hers towards Regon and me. “Get her in.”
No time for second thoughts or long goodbyes. I grabbed Lynn’s shoulders, Regon took her ankles; we heaved her up and swung her twice and tossed her into the lifeboat. She landed with a plop and rolled into the bilges.
Latoya was trying to claw her way back to dry land, but she ran into trouble. The Torasan children—who had, apparently, decided that Latoya was the one thing in the world they could depend on—clung to her. They formed clumps, grabbing at her legs, her boots, her hands. She could have brushed them off like so many breadcrumbs, but instead she teetered in place, afraid of breaking tiny fingers if she ripped herself loose.
Meanwhile, Ariadne had reached the boat’s painter. She clawed at the knotted rope, undoing the cleat hitch that fastened the boat to the dock. There was a soft splash as the rope’s free end hit the water.
The boat drifted from the dock. Latoya, still weighed down by clumps of children, stood atop a thwart, face a mask of horror. “Why? Why?”
“Get them out!” Ariadne shrieked at her. There were tears in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. “Get my sister away from here! Get the children away from here! You’re the only one who can do it—don’t you dare disappoint me!”
That reached Latoya. She staggered back, dropped onto the bench, and, after one last look at Ariadne, took hold of the oars. Her first pull barely moved the boat at all, just stirred the waters. On her next stroke, she thrust the oars deep, and then strained until it seemed like either her arms or the oars had to break. Wood planks bowed and creaked, and Latoya gasped, but slowly, painfully, the oars broke the water, and the boat bobbed towards the open ocean. Latoya whipped the oars around and pulled again. Again. Again. The longboat was moving—sluggishly at first, then with greater momentum, faster, faster, and, finally, fast enough to churn up foam around the bow.
Latoya was dragging that massive weight through the sea with sheer brawn and willpower. Ariadne was right—no one else could have done it.
That didn’t make Ariadne’s stunt any less suicidal or rash, but give credit where it’s due. She had just, very possibly, saved the lives of the two people she loved most on the planet. That was a pretty good night’s work, considering that she was unarmed and hungover.
Regon cleared his throat. “Not to spoil the moment, but does anyone else hear pounding?”
ONE MAN, ONE pirate queen, one princess. A bare dock, a pebbled shore. Death behind us, and killing cold in front. And a distant drumming from the stairway, as someone rammed something heavy against the barred nursery door.
Ariadne wiped her eyes. “What now?”
“Now you and I get to pay for our drinks,” I said.
I couldn’t reassure her. On an Isle in revolt, a noblewoman was in much more danger than a runaway servant, just as Lynn had said. Still . . . still . . . I couldn’t help but think that Ariadne had made the right choice when she forced Lynn to take her place in the longboat. Our class, Ariadne’s and mine, had sowed the seeds of this revolt and it was only fair that the two of us should stay to reap the harvest. All noble houses are trading houses, and the first rule of trading is this: At the end of the day, the books have to balance.
Above us, at the top of the stone stairway, the pounding went on. The tempo of the blows had slowed, but it was more deliberate, now, more steady, the rebels finding their rhythm as they smashed away at the iron-bound door.
“Could we climb the cliffs, maybe?” Regon asked.
“I doubt it.” Most things on the Isle seemed smaller to me now than they did when I was a child, but not the sheer granite slabs that framed the cove. “Fletcher tried, when he was about thirteen. He fell from halfway up and hit his head on a rock.”
“Huh.” Regon glanced at me, curious in spite of everything. “Is that how he went wrong?”
“We think so. Unless he was just born wrong, which, with my family, isn’t an outlandish theory.”
“When you say wrong . . .” Ariadne let the sentence trail away
.
It wasn’t something we were supposed to talk about, but who cared anymore? “I mean that he developed a habit of cutting things up.”
“What kind of things?”
“Mainly animals. Sometimes women. Anyone have an idea other than the cliffs?”
Regon hefted the torch high and we all looked around us: sheer rocks and dark water. Pebbles, sand, beach grass.
“Should we try to swim?” Ariadne asked, voice thin and high. “It wouldn’t give us much of a chance, I know, but not much is better than none.”
Regon shook his head. “You’ve got it backwards. A cold sea will kill you surer than a blade, every time.”
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