Well. That explained a thing or two.
His eyes scanned the crowd and rested on me. He smiled. I’d never before seen a smile that looked like a razor, like just the touch of it could cut.
“Darren, so good to see you,” he said. Leaning back, he dug into his belt pouch. “I was hoping that we’d run into each other so I could give this back. Naturally I appreciate the gesture, but I’ve decided that I’m going to buy my own drinks from now on.”
He pulled out the copper coin I’d given him only a few hours before and tossed it to me with a lazy flick of the wrist. It tink-tink-tinked across the stone floor and juddered to a stop by my knee.
“Why don’t we—?” My voice caught in my throat. I coughed and tried again. “Why don’t we cut to the chase here? I take it that you’re my brother.”
A hard rap on my head made my ears ring, and Jada’s voice hissed, “You’re nothing to him, you piece of shit.”
“Now, now,” Milo said, his voice calm and distant. “It’s only natural for her to be curious. And no, Darren, I’m not your brother. My father wasn’t Stribos, he was—”
“Uncle Saxon,” I finished for him. I could see the resemblance now. Something about the jaw. “So we’re cousins.”
“Well, that’s not quite true, is it? Bastards don’t count as real children. That’s what we were always told.”
We. My stomach gave a sharp twist, as my head flooded with pictures of my father chasing skirts, groping thighs, and pulling girls onto his lap. And Uncle Saxon hadn’t been much better, from what little I remembered. Of course I had a horde of bastard brothers and sisters and cousins that I’d never bothered to ask about and no one had bothered to mention.
“How many of you are there?” I asked. “How many bastards?”
He smiled again, distantly. “Just think for a minute. For three hundred years, the House of Torasan has raided and robbed and violated the people of the Isle. Every young lord with a prick has taken his fill from among the servant girls. For every pure line of Torasan succession, there are a thousand muddy tributaries. You probably share blood with half the people in this room. Stribos knew that, even if you didn’t. He thought it was funny. He liked to yell ‘Bastard!’ while his soldiers were drilling, to see how many of us would jump.”
“Konrad wasn’t Stribos,” I said. My bound hands were shaking—whether from pain or shock or rage, I wasn’t sure. “He wasn’t Alek, or Fletcher—he wasn’t a tyrant or a maniac or a brute. He cared about the Isle; he knew that people were hurting. He wanted to make things better, you murdering wankstain—”
“Better?” Milo said. “Oh, no doubt. I’ve known plenty of men like Konrad, men determined to be better than their fathers. Instead of throwing you a scrap of mouldy bread when you’re starving, they’ll throw you two scraps. Steal an apple, and they’ll give you five lashes with the rawhide, not ten. And they always act so hurt when you’re not grateful.”
He looked out to the crowd, eyes burning. “We decided we weren’t going to beg on bended knee for the little mercies that Konrad of Torasan was willing to show us. What do you say, Freemen of the Isle?”
The roar of agreement made the rafters quiver.
“And I wouldn’t throw around words like murder, Darren.” Darren, he said, but his attention was all on the mob. He was speechifying, working the room. “Today, those of us here avenged old Varro, hung two years ago yesterday for hiding his son from the press gangs. We avenged Tomm the wheelwright, who lost a hand for daring to strike that animal Alek in the face. We avenged a thousand men over ten generations who were worked to death on Torasan warships. What do you say, Freemen of the Isle?”
Another roar, but Jada’s voice—piercing, frenzied—rang out above them all.
And Milo leaned forwards in his chair, turning his attention towards her. “Jada.”
She came to attention like a pointer dog, trembling with eager energy.
“Jada, you were born a parasite, and they tried to make you think you’d never be anything more. But you killed two slave drivers with your own hands—the first when you gave Stribos the last cup of wine he’d ever drink, the second when you baptized your blade in Gunnar’s back. Any regrets?”
Jada lifted her chin. “No more than when I crush a cockroach underfoot.”
“That’s what I thought. And in helping us cleanse the Isle, you’ve cleansed your own soul, at last.” He crooked a finger. “Come up here to me.”
She mounted the steps to the dais, and the sight nearly made me vomit. It had been strange and painful to watch Jada playing the bully, her face lit up with cruel childish glee as she drew her knife point down Ariadne’s cheek. It was worse to watch her simpering at Milo. Her face glowed with a stupid sort of awe and wonder that bordered on worship.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding,” Ariadne muttered. Then, louder, “You think you’re in love with him? He’s using you, idiot!”
Milo’s eyes flicked up briefly. He spoke, not to Ariadne, but to Jada. “Is this the one you told me about?”
Jada cast us a look of smug triumph, like a child who’d tattled on a misbehaving sibling. I told Teacher what you said, and now you’re going to get it. “That’s the one.”
“Are you listening? You’re nothing but marriage meat to him!” Ariadne struggled upwards, and got about halfway to her feet before the rebel behind her shoved her back down to her knees. She winced, but didn’t stop. “He knows that every nobleman in a thousand miles will come down on Torasan Isle like a hammer, once they find out it’s been taken over by a bastard with ideas above his station. He knows that he has to marry a true-born if he’s going to have any vague chance of holding the throne. That’s all that matters to him, so forget whatever sweet nothings he’s whispered in your ear. He doesn’t give a shit about you, Jada!”
I tensed, ready for Jada to fly down the steps and smack Ariadne’s head clean off her shoulders. Jada didn’t move, though, just looked down at Ariadne with supreme contempt.
“You know nothing about him, filth,” she said.
Ariadne almost screamed in frustration. “Oh, for goodness’s sake—I’m trying to save your life. Don’t be a stupid brat, just because I embarrassed you at the dinner table!”
Milo ran gentle fingers along the side of Jada’s jaw, turning her face towards him. They kissed. At least, I think that’s what they were doing. Jada went at it so vigorously that she could have been mining for gold in his back molars. After a few seconds, Milo extricated himself.
“Mouthy little thing, isn’t she?” he murmured. “Could you do me a favour and take care of that?”
Jada glowed. “Anything for the Master of the Free Isle.”
She slid off of Milo’s lap—she’d ended up there, somehow, while she was plumbing his tonsils—and rose to her full height. There she stood, naked knife in one hand, staring down from on high at Ariadne, as a roomful of armed men watched in reverent silence. I watched her taste the moment, and like the taste.
“Take her outside and have her whipped,” Jada said. “Maybe that’ll teach her how much her opinion is worth.”
The rebels howled their approval and eagerness, and I wondered how many of them were personally familiar with the whipping post that stood just outside the palisade. Ariadne breathed slowly. Then, once again, she tried to rise to her feet. This time, her guards let her do it. Calmly, methodically, she smoothed out the skirt of her nightgown.
Out of pure panic and instinct, I grabbed her sleeve. I couldn’t stop this, I knew that, but how could I just let her walk away?
She pulled her arm free. “It’s fine, Darren.”
“How the hell is it fine?” I whispered. I’d seen so many servants and bondsmen sagging against the whipping post, while the rawhide carved their backs into flapping rags. My skin was tanned almost to leather by sun and salt water, but I knew I couldn’t cope with that kind of pain. Ariadne was all soft curves and smooth surfaces, and I didn’t see how she could survive.
&nb
sp; Maybe she didn’t see either, because she tried to smile and couldn’t. “All right, it’s not fine. But I can take this. Gwyneth took worse. Don’t judge me if I make lots of stupid noises.”
“Flaming shite, of course not.” I racked my brain, trying to remember everything I’d heard about flogging, everything that could possibly help her. “Lean back after every stroke, don’t let yourself slump against the post. Don’t turn your head sideways. Um—”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Regon put in, quietly, tiredly. “You’ll want to. Don’t.”
Ariadne nodded, teeth chattering. “I’ll see you on the other side, you two.”
Somehow, she managed to stay on her feet as they led her from the hall, though she stumbled more than once. Jada followed them out, smacking her knife-hilt against her palm, and whistling the chicken song under her breath.
“So,” Milo said briskly. “While Jada takes out the trash, let’s deal with the larger issue. What am I going to do with you, Darren?”
I WENT FOR him. It was stupid, of course, but I was so very tired of listening to Milo talk. I thought that maybe if I tore his nose off and threw it out a window, he might say something that was more worth listening to—something along the lines of, Oh gods, the pain, the pain.
After he’d knocked me down a couple of times, I stopped getting back up, and just hunched on the dais steps, trying to remember how to breathe. The air was thick and tasted like iron bees.
Far away, I heard Regon’s voice, saying things like Captain Captain Captain and Get up and Breathe through it. Regon type things, comforting things—the same kind of reassurances he’d been giving me since I marched onto the Glory of the Isles in a state of blind terror at age fourteen.
“Red-Handed Darren,” Milo said. “Pirate queen, defender of the helpless. Pride of Torasan Isle, and the peasants’ white-hot hope. Isn’t it a joke, how reputations are made? You know, Darren, I once heard a shepherd say—and he was dead serious—that you understood the plight of the common man because you knew how it felt to be hungry. This because you once ran low on rations during an overland haul and had to tighten your belt for a couple of months. A couple of months of hunger in a lifetime of gorging yourself at the royal trough, and suddenly you’re the people’s champion.”
“I’m not—” I started, but the toe of his boot caught me right in the pit of the stomach. I barely recognized my own gasping sob.
“Now I don’t want you to worry,” he said, still in that calm, conversational tone. “This isn’t your last night on earth. I have some plans for you that I think you’ll find interesting. You’re going to relive your glory days. Who knows? Maybe you’ll end up understanding the plight of the common man even better than you did before.”
Well, that wasn’t at all ominous. I rummaged around in my head for a menacing and impressive reply that I could deliver while curled in fetal position on the floor. Came up empty, but Regon was there in the pinch.
“If you hurt her,” he said, “if you put a single stinking hand on her, then people from here to the Bay of Accra will curse your name until the sea drains dry.”
“Do you lick the boots of every noble you come across, or just hers?” Milo asked, a nasty edge in his voice. “Just hers, right? I know your type. You’re a one woman dog.”
“You think you can shame me for following her?” Regon spat on the floor. He must have managed to work up a fair amount of spit, because it made an emphatic splat. “I don’t know how long you’ve been planning this shit. But all the time you’ve been smarming around the Isle, working up the courage to slaughter unarmed women, my captain’s been on the seas fighting the real fight.”
I balled my bound hands into fists underneath me and pushed up until I could see something other than floor. Regon’s boots. Milo’s boots. Two shadows across the flagstones.
“Fighting the real fight,” Milo said. “You mean, her own people threw her away when she turned out to be a sexual pervert, so she decided, what the hell? Might as well side with the commoners. Hell of a comfy way to fight the system, piracy. She gets all the glory of being the peasants’ champion and never has to scrub a single floor.”
That wasn’t fair. I had tried. Lynn always complained that I missed too many spots.
Regon grunted. “All right, you fetid sack of goat scrotums, go ahead and shit on her motives. She’s still saving lives, and you’re still a butcher. And don’t give me that crap about justice. You’re hardly the first bastard son of a noble to whip the peasants to a lather and send them out to cut down their liege lords. It always ends the same way. The other lords strike back with a great mailed fist, and then farmland’s salted and villages are burned, and women and children are starving in the streets. I’ve heard this song before. So go ahead. Preach yourself blue in the face, and promise your followers castles in the clouds and feasts of sugar candy. You aren’t going to get them anything but dead, and they’ll realize that sooner than you think.”
Was it just me, or did Milo not have a ready response to that? I groped in a random direction, found something steady to hold, and managed to totter up to my feet.
“You’re a loyal bitch,” Milo said to Regon at last. “Does Darren take you from behind, when she’s bored with her little slave girl?”
“Don’t you fucking talk about Lynn,” I snarled. It was a pretty good snarl, but since I was still hunched over my aching ribs, most of the effect was probably lost.
“Lynn,” he repeated. He rolled the name around his mouth, and I cursed myself for giving it to him, letting him touch it and mangle it. “That mouthy little blond called her something different—but what the hell, right? Maybe you don’t know her name. Maybe you assign her a new one every day. Muffin. Slut. Fido.”
Incandescent with rage, I opened my mouth, but Regon got there first. “You really are a pig of a man, aren’t you?”
“And you let a woman lead you around by your prick,” Milo said, his voice becoming even nastier, somehow. “Why is that? You think she can help you now?”
Regon spat again. This time, the grey gobbet landed on the toe of one of Milo’s hobnailed boots. “You’re not worth arguing with, you sad little boy, and you’re boring me. Just get on with it.”
Get on with what? My brain must have been numbed almost to crawling pace with exhaustion and pain, because even when Milo drew his sword, I didn’t understand.
Regon was saying Regon-things again, like It’s all right, captain and It was worth it, and the words buzzed fitfully around my head, connecting with nothing. I looked at the sword and I looked at Regon.
“No,” I said, brain snapping back to life. “Don’t you hurt him, leave him alone—”
“I’m not going to hurt him,” Milo said. “I’m going to put him out of his misery. When you cut his balls off, you made one hell of a clean job of it.”
“Sad little boy,” Regon said again. “Sad little boy lives in terror of meeting a woman smarter than he is. Sad little boy holds his dick with both hands when he talks to a girl, in case it starts to come loose.”
Milo’s face didn’t show that the jibe had landed, but his knuckles whitened on his sword-hilt, and he hefted his blade.
“No!” I gasped. “Milo—No! Leave him alone! Do it to me! I’m the one you’re after! Milo, me! Me, me, me, me, me!”
“Me, me, me,” Milo repeated. “That’s always the way of it with you nobles, isn’t it?”
The blade flashed out.
For a second, I thought Milo had missed. Regon still stood upright, though his head was bent at an unnatural angle. But then came the blood, streaming from the left side of Regon’s neck like a red carpet unrolling, down his shoulder and arm. Maybe the sword was dull, or maybe Milo’s sword arm wasn’t as strong as he fancied it, because the blow had only taken Regon’s head off halfway.
There was no such mistake with the second strike. Regon’s body crumpled to the flagstones. A fraction of a second later, so did his head. The grey eyes, in a suddenly ashen
face, were still wide open, and staring.
Too late—far too late—I surged at my captors, howling, flailing, not even caring what Milo was going to do to me if only I could punch a few of those perfect teeth out. Hard hands grabbed me and pulled me backwards. Someone dealt a clout to my skull that took me down, and then they all closed in with fists and boots.
Very dimly, through the blows that rocked me, I could hear noise from outside the courtyard: the cracking of a whip. Ariadne didn’t last even one stroke before she started screaming.
PART FOUR
BASTARDS
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
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