Beggar's Flip

by Benny Lawrence

  “Does it help at all?” I pressed. “To know that she’s out there?”

  Ariadne wiped her nose on her palm, then wiped her palm against the floor. She spoke in a voice that sounded like the puff of air that escapes when you press on a dead man’s chest.

  “The night that Jada sent me out to be whipped—well, the first time—I didn’t believe it would actually happen. Not because I thought you and Latoya would storm the palisade in the nick of time and snatch me away. I just couldn’t imagine the whip. Not really. Not in connection with my own back. Not until they had me up against the post, and my face was to the wood, and the wood had this reek of sour sweat from a hundred people’s terror—I won’t talk about that part, you know what a whipping post smells like. The point is, my body got the message, that bad things really were about to happen to it, and my heart began to go like the clappers and the blood was shrieking through my veins, steam hot. And I thought, I have to keep breathing. Regon told me that, it was the last thing he told me—I have to concentrate on something else so I can keep breathing. So, I watched the horizon. The whipping post is outside the palisade, there’s a view of the horizon, and I looked past the post and out to sea.”

  She leaned back against the wall, eyes half-shut, as if in a trance. “I wasn’t sure which way I was looking, because there were clouds blotting out the stars, but I thought it was maybe north and I knew the Banshee was to the north of the island somewhere. And there was a light. Not a star, redder and ruddier than that, and I thought, or I guessed or I imagined, that it was lantern-light. That it was the ship. And I said to myself, Latoya’s out there. She’s safe and she’s free, and for some reason, gods know why, she cares for me, and if there’s anything on earth she can do for me, she’ll do it.”

  “And did that help?”

  “No. Not at all. It seemed like a cruel sort of joke after a bit. Once they’d started, I mean. I was staring at the light, at the horizon, and the light jumped with each stroke of the whip. And she was out there, maybe, but that couldn’t be as real as the pain. Before long, I couldn’t see or think anymore. But later—the third night, or maybe the fourth—when Jada was done with me for the day and I was lying on that stinking cot, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t actually dying—I realized, that’s what I must have looked like to you. Back when you were my mother’s favourite victim, and I floated by in the evenings to try to cheer you up. Me with my lilac gowns and my poetry. That’s what I must have looked like to you then—a distant light, almost lost on the horizon.”

  A short pause.

  “Are you done?” I asked—rather politely, I thought, under the circumstances. “Or is there more very important self-pity that has to happen?”

  Her head lolled forwards. She breathed hard.

  “Stop wallowing, Ariadne. Those years with Melitta? They were hell, and now they’re over. And you won’t make anything better by going into a guilt spiral. The last thing I need is for you to pull yet another stupid useless bullshit act of self-sacrifice.”

  “If you haven’t noticed, I’m still a bit busy with my last stupid bullshit act of self-sacrifice.” She pounded the floor with a balled fist. “Which, by the way, would be a damn sight less useless if you hadn’t surrendered yourself to Milo!”

  “You should have left the island when I told you to go—”

  “And you should never have come back! Gwyn, do you have the faintest idea of everything that I’ve given up to try to make sure that you could have a life?”

  “You want me to thank you for the thousandth time? Or do I have to go further than that? Should I get down and grovel for a bit?”

  “I have never asked you to grovel! I just don’t want you to waste it! You know, all those years after you ran away from home, when I didn’t have a clue where you were, when I spent half my time sick with worry about you—I told myself, over and over and over, that you could take care of yourself. I thought, if nothing else, you knew how to survive. But all of a sudden, you’re spending all your time in war zones and . . . and giving yourself up to a murderer just for the hell of it—”

  “Sure. If, by ‘for the hell of it,’ you mean ‘to stop them from starving Darren to death.’”

  “Darren. Of course, Darren. Because you love to lecture other people about not taking pointless risks, but if Darren’s in trouble, all bets are off. Because of course you should gamble your life over and over and over again for a pirate with an inferiority complex who likes to tie you to a bed.”

  There were footsteps down the hall, but I barely paid attention. A skinny vein in my forehead was ticking with a steady pulse.

  “I know part of you misses the time when you were everything to me,” I said. “But I don’t. So you’ll have to find a way to cope, because I’m not that child anymore.”

  She wasn’t listening. Face rigid, she stared at the door. “They’re coming.”

  “I know. I hear them.” I shook myself, trying to reorient. “Get the knife.”

  “I’m not touching that thing! Do you know what they’ll do if they find it on me?”

  She was on her feet again, wringing her hands, and I was torn between wanting to shake her hard and wanting to hold on and never let go.

  “This could be it,” she said, brokenly. “Tell me you don’t hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you. I could never hate you. Come here, quick.”

  I still wasn’t in a hugging sort of mood but you don’t always get to choose when goodbyes happen. I gathered her in, her teary face hot and wet against my shirt.

  “You could though,” she mumbled into my shoulder. “You would hate me if you knew, I know that you’d hate me if you knew . . .”

  The door smashed inwards to reveal Jada. She grabbed Ariadne by the neck, ripping her away from me, and dragged her up until she was forced to stand teetering on tiptoe.

  “Have you been keeping secrets from me, pet?” Jada asked. “Not smart.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ariadne said, without hesitation. “I don’t know what I did, but I’m sure I’m sorry—”

  “Get her out of here,” Milo said, stomping through the doorway. “Get her out of my sight and make her shut up. If I have to see that useless little bitch again today, I don’t want to hear anything from her except silence or screaming.”

  “I can make that happen for you, Master of the Free Isle.” Jada’s lips curled up in a poisonous smile. “Do you want to watch?”

  “Jada, this is not the time for one of your stupid games.”

  She blinked, looking absurdly hurt. “I’m just trying to help.”

  “So take her away. You can amuse yourself however you want once you’re out of here, but for the love of all the gods, don’t bother me when I am trying to work!”

  Jada pressed her lips together, sullen, but she managed to incline her head in a more or less respectful nod. Then she dealt a quick, vicious kick to the back of Ariadne’s ankles. “You heard the man, pumpkin. He wants you to learn how to be quiet. Let’s go practice.”

  She steered Ariadne out the door with one forefinger pressed to the back of her neck. As I watched them go, I made a mental map of Jada’s arteries, and imagined slitting them open lengthways, one by one.

  Then I turned my attention to Milo, and found that those blue-blue eyes of his were like bits of paint in an old fresco: flat and cold.

  “Did you say some prayers last night?” he asked.

  “Never do. I was badly brought up.”

  “This would be a good time to learn how to pray.” He jabbed a finger towards the door. “You think your sister’s having a hard time? I can make it so much worse. The markets in Sohanchi pay double for blondes, and they don’t much care whether they’re virgins.”

  Something had happened. He’d been on edge earlier, but not off balance. Was he . . . scared?

  “What’s going on?” I whispered.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

  “I don’t have a clue. That’s why I’m aski
ng.”

  “All right, Lynn. I’ll play it your way.” He stepped closer. “The lovesick giant just arrived on the Isle.”

  My heart skipped several beats. “Latoya’s here?”

  “Not in the Keep. She didn’t get anywhere close. And let me make it perfectly clear—if she had reached the gate, I would have had your pirate and your sister hung from the rafters and skinned. Just as a matter of principle. I warned you what would happen if—”

  “Milo. Milo, listen to me.” My pulse was racing so fast that it buzzed in my ears. “I told Latoya not to attack, not to do anything stupid—Milo, I begged her. Please don’t take it out on Ariadne. Milo, please—”

  He slapped me hard across the face, and I took the subtle hint and stopped talking. While he gathered his thoughts, I waggled my jaw. Not broken. Just felt that way.

  “Follow me,” he said at last. “We’re going to have a long talk, and you’re not going to enjoy it. But if it’s any consolation to you, your mistress is going to enjoy it a whole lot less.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Darren of the House of Torasan (Prisoner)

  I WAS DONE playing nice. As six Freemen dragged me from the Great Hall, I expressed some strong and persuasive objections, with my fists. Also my elbows, and my heels, and the knobbly part of my skull. Once I ran out of juice, I let fly with some really blistering insults that I’d thought up for Lynn’s father and never had a chance to use on him.

  They threw me back in the storeroom where I’d woken up with Lynn that morning. There was still half a loaf of dry black bread left on the table, which was one point in the room’s favour, but Lynn wasn’t there, which was fifty points against. I kicked the door for a while; once I was too dizzy to stay on my feet, I flumped down on the cot and fumed.

  It was the clanging of the warning bell that brought me back to my feet. Instinct. Back in my day, children on the Isle learned before they were out of diapers to leap into action when the bell rang to signal a corsair attack. Even kids too small to fight could make themselves useful filling fire-buckets and carrying bundles of arrows.

  But what if the warning bell was a good omen this time? What if it meant that Latoya was storming the gates of the keep?

  If she managed to take the city, then, mutiny or no, she wouldn’t just leave me in a cell to rot. I was almost eighty-five percent sure of that.

  I was still puzzling out what I thought about the mutiny business. On the whole, though, it felt like the time when I tried dragon fish, and Latoya sprinted the whole length of the ship to whack the first piece out of my mouth before I started to chew. In other words, I was confused, embarrassed, and bruised, but I had no fair reason to complain. Latoya and I had both known for a very long time which of us would make the better captain.

  On the other hand, Latoya had set Lynn adrift in a rowboat. For that, she deserved a punch up the bracket, or two or three or twenty. However many punches I could land, really. Which would not be many, unless she bent over or gave me enough time to go and find a stepladder.

  Regon would never have betrayed me. Given how things turned out for him, maybe he should have considered it.

  I waited, guts churning with a sour mix of impatience and dread, as the alarm bell clanged and clanged. When it broke off, I endured the long stretch of silence that followed.

  The door finally opened while I was wondering whether I should try to build some kind of booby-trap out of stale bread and my own trousers. Freemen flooded the room, formed up around me, and quick-marched me to what used to be Konrad’s study.

  Milo sat glowering in Konrad’s old armchair, a drawn cutlass resting on his knees. A familiar cutlass. My cutlass. The impossible jerk had my cutlass, and that hoisted my fury to new heights. No, there wasn’t anything special about it, yes, it could be replaced, but still, you don’t mess with a pirate’s cutlass. It is just not fucking done.

  Of course, it is also just not fucking done to mess with a pirate’s slave girl, and Milo had managed to miss that memo, too. Lynn stood at attention in front of Milo’s chair, and as I stepped into the room, she shot me a warning look.

  I decided to take the warning as more of a suggestion than an order, and ignored both it and Milo. Instead, I snapped my fingers. “Lynn. Report.”

  She showed a touch of exasperation. “Right now? Really?”

  “Yes, really. I need to know what’s going on and this asshole can’t tell a story straight. He just launches into a speech every time he opens his mouth. That’s how you can tell he’s in politics, instead of a decent and respectable career like piracy.”

  “You don’t always have the best sense of timing, you know.”

  “I have an excellent sense of timing. It’s the rest of the world that’s wrong. Report.”

  “The things I do for my marriage,” Lynn muttered beneath her breath. Almost unconsciously, she rolled her shoulders and clasped her hands behind her back. “It’s about an hour after high tide and the weather is cool with a chance of scattered showers. Latoya has just attacked the Isle. Judging from what I overheard while Milo was frogmarching me in here, she had two ships with her—maybe a hundred swords. Milo’s forces managed to beat her back from the Keep, and she retreated inland. Milo should be happy about this, but he is not. I speculate that this is because Latoya both terrifies him and makes him feel uncomfortable things in his undershorts which he does not care to admit. Plus, he’s probably nervous because he’s only ruled the Isle for two weeks and he’s already started to run low on beer.”

  “Really? Goodness. It’s such a sloppy mistake to run out of beer in the middle of a campaign.”

  I glanced at Milo sidelong. His face was composed, more or less, but his eyes were all thunderclouds and murder, from which I deduced that he wasn’t having the best day. “So, does Milo still have his Freemen in line, or are they getting anxious about their future in his administration? Anxious about their career prospects. Anxious about their life expectancies. Either, really.”

  Lynn rocked her head back and forth. “From what I can tell, things are at a gentle simmer right now—they’ve yet to boil over. But with food stocks getting so low, he may have to start rationing bread and salt soon, and when that happens, his subjects are going to get awfully cranky. Maybe they’ll rebel.”

  “The rebels are going to rebel? That’s a stunner. Still, I’m sure that Milo has some bright idea to boost his people’s morale.”

  “Well, he’s a fight-fire-with-fire man, so he might try burning all their houses down. That will for sure go just great.”

  Milo stirred. His thumb ran lightly down the blade of my cutlass, and a hair-thin line of red appeared where skin had touched metal. “If you had a single grain’s worth of sense, Darren of Torasan, you’d fall on your face right now, and beg for my mercy.”

  I shrugged. “I’m not very good at that, the begging. If you want to go first, show me how it’s done, then—”

  It was like a whip-crack when Milo moved, rearing out of the chair to press my own cutlass against my throat.

  “Well, now,” I said. “This is getting interesting.”

  “All right,” Lynn said, palms up in surrender. “Let’s calm down. We’re not—”

  The cutlass flashed forwards. There was a lick of sensation along my neck, like a cold wire had been laid on it, and then a burning wire alongside that. I gasped, sort of, and Lynn shrieked, almost, and then something was trickling down my collarbone. I brought a hand up gingerly—I had the delirious feeling that my head might topple off if I prodded too hard. It turned out to be just a cut, a shallow one, but bleeding juicily. Just as well that the shirt I was wearing was already a lost cause.

  “Shut your mouth,” Milo said, the words slow and deliberate.

  “Not going to happen, you son of a—you know what? I’m not even going to call you a son of a bitch. Your mother was probably lovely. You’re the jerk son of a lovely person, that’s what you are.”

  “I said shut your mouth!” Milo�
�s pretence of calm cracked like a thin plaster veneer, as something in his mind spilled, ignited, and flamed. “You stupid cunt, what does it take to make you be quiet?”

  “Yeah, you like your women quiet, don’t you? You’re in for a lot of disappointment if you keep me around.”

  “Milo, wait,” Lynn said. She edged forward, trying to angle herself between us. “Darren’s impossible when she’s cranky. Let me get a hot meal into her, and she’ll be a whole different person.”

  He wheeled on her. “I think you’re confused about what’s happening here.”

  “I’m trying to—”

  “How this works is that she does what I say, and maybe I don’t gut her like a salmon.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “Don’t say anything. Get down.” He jabbed the cutlass at the floor. “Get down on your knees and put your hands behind your head.”