“They just let us go to sleep,” she muttered, cranky as she always was before breakfast. “Don’t tell me it’s already time for walkies.”
“No. No more walking. We’re not going any closer to the fort. Milo wants a big buffer zone during the negotiations, in case Latoya gets impatient and sends out a raiding party.”
Darren looked up at that, eyes open and hopeful, and a knife twisted sharply in my guts. “Stop that. Latoya is not going to rescue us. Not you and me. Please don’t make me tell you that again, because it’s not getting any easier.”
I licked the ball of my thumb and wiped a smudge of mud from her cheek. At least I could do that much. “I have to go and let Milo talk at me. I’ll be back as soon as—Darren. Stop fiddling with that thing.”
“That thing” was the fetter on her right ankle, the other end of which had been looped around a tree and fastened with a heavy padlock. I’d poked rags into strategic places to keep the metal from rubbing all the skin off her leg, but Darren kept dislodging the cloth when she squirmed.
Darren stopped mid-fiddle and reluctantly drew her hand back. “It itches.”
“I don’t care if it itches. Leave it alone. And don’t think that you can start messing with it again as soon as I’m out of sight, either. I’ll know.”
I hated leaving her and Ariadne alone, especially in such an exposed part of the camp, where armed Freemen kept prowling past in search of the latrines. I couldn’t very well tell Milo to get stuffed, though. When you take the king’s coin, you kiss the king’s ass, and Milo was paying for a full-access pass to me and all my ass-kissing talents.
Milo’s tent was pitched on a hill, probably so he could survey the rest of the camp at a glance. From his vantage point, you could look downslope in either direction: west to a cluster of supply wagons and skinny mules, east to a flat plain scattered with the tents of the Freeman army. Beyond that was a dirt wagon-road that wandered up towards the mountains, and at its top, barely visible in a shroud of fog, reared the dull grey timbers of the hill-fort.
Milo sat on a stump just outside his tent’s open flap, flanked by two disturbing specimens of manhood. One had an honest-to-goodness ear tied to his belt. The other one held a braided hank of dark, coarse hair that he would not stop fondling. Souvenirs from the massacre, I guessed. I was careful not to get too close.
“You wanted me?” I asked Milo. I didn’t add “my lord.” Better to save that for an emergency.
“Your giant wouldn’t come outside the fort walls to talk,” he said, squinting down at a map. “She just stood on the ramparts and shouted down at our messenger. Explain.”
“What’s there to explain? She doesn’t want to give up the high ground.”
He grunted. “I don’t like talking on unequal terms.”
“Who cares, as long you get what you want? She agreed to deal for Ariadne, didn’t she?”
“So she says. I’m not giving her anything while she’s still holed up behind fifteen-foot walls and an iron portcullis.”
“Tell her that, then,” I said, with as much patience as I could muster on three and a half hours of sleep. (The army had marched for most of the night.) “Tell her that you won’t negotiate until she meets you on level ground. You have the hostage. That’s all the advantage you need.”
“Maybe. But what if she still won’t get serious?”
He already knew the answer to that. He just wanted to know whether I’d say it, like a good little turncoat. I very deliberately took my feelings by the throat and squeezed until they stopped twitching.
“If Latoya won’t get serious, then you parade Ariadne up and down in front of the hill-fort until you have everyone’s attention, and then tie her to a tree and set Jada loose. Latoya will be ready to deal as soon as she hears screaming.”
A smile hovered right at the corner of his lips. “And you would be fine with that, would you?”
“I want my sister off the Isle and away from the nutter you have babysitting her. If she has to catch a few more bruises for that to happen, fine.”
Speak of a nutter, and she shall appear. Jada, sour-faced and sleepy-eyed, pawed her way out of the tent, her shirt drooping off of one bare shoulder. Her mood took a dive when she saw me—her face got more sour, by a good couple of lemons’ worth—but she pretended not to notice my existence. “Milo, love, can’t we just get this over with? Shove the little slut into her ape-woman’s arms and tell them to go. We can be on our way back to the Keep by noon if we—”
“If we hurry. And risk making sloppy mistakes. You have a lot to learn about strategy—my love.” He gave her hand a half-hearted pat before returning his attention to me. “Lynn. I want your recommendations on how to manage the handover without any nasty surprises.”
“Well—”
“And, Lynn—I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of this, but just in case. There’s still time for all kinds of ugly things to happen to your sister before we send her back to her giant. So don’t try to get cute with me.”
“I won’t,” I said, stiffly. Did he really think I was stupid enough to screw him over right at this moment, when he was holding every card? Maybe he was a paranoiac like my father. “All right, let’s discuss timing.”
I laid out a fairly detailed plan of action for him, which involved getting all of Latoya’s troops to leave the islands, in groups of ten, a couple of hours apart, before he handed over Ariadne. Milo listened, but he squinted at me suspiciously when I was finished. “That’ll take the better part of a day.”
“But it means that you’ll never be within arm’s reach of Latoya until she’s stripped of all her back-up. You stay in control the whole time.”
“What if her men double back to attack the Keep after they leave the hill-fort?”
“That’s why we’re splitting them up, so they won’t have a chance to coordinate. Anyway, you left almost three hundred men back at the Keep with Gryff. If he can’t hold the walls for a couple of days, he’s not trying.”
He sucked his teeth. “I don’t know.”
“Fine. Ignore me. But if you won’t listen, don’t blame me if the situation turns to shit. Latoya will feed you a bucket of tent pegs if she gets a chance. You can’t give her one.”
“If you’re playing games with me—”
“I know what’ll happen if I play games with you.”
“I’m just giving you fair warning. This is not the time to piss me off. Jada’s going to need a new hobby once the princess is gone, and she doesn’t care for you much. Isn’t that right, Jada?” He sat upright, annoyed. “Where is she?”
“She wandered off while we were talking.”
“Where did she go?”
“I didn’t look to see. I don’t care where she goes. Unless she wanders into a pit of fire and pain and cannibal sharks, in which case I want a seat with a good view. When are you planning to kill her, by the way?”
“That’s an awfully personal question.”
He smiled when he said this, though, and there was a kind of teasing intimacy in it, like he didn’t mind that I knew. Our little secret. I pressed on. “Any chance of doing it sooner than planned? You don’t need Jada anymore. You have Darren for your tame Torasan wife, you have me to keep her honest. You can go ahead and get rid of the crazy one.”
“Nice try.” Still with the smile. “But we need a little bit more of a relationship of trust before I’m ready to make that commitment. Ah—here she comes. You’d better mind your manners. Jada’s talents may be limited, but she never forgets an insult.”
THE REST OF the day was a long, dull slog. Messengers came back and forth, terms were negotiated and re-negotiated, Milo pestered me with endless questions, and Jada stared at me with cold malevolence whenever Milo was looking the other way.
There was one break, around noon, when trails of smoke spooled into the sky from cook-fires near the supply wagons. A sallow-looking woman in a grease-spotted skirt came over to deliver pannikins of soup. I asked Milo if
I could check on Darren and my sister while he was eating, and he pretended to agree and then “changed his mind” as soon as I’d walked a few feet away. My own fault, really, for failing to predict the bait-and-switch.
After a lot of dickering back and forth, Latoya agreed to send her men off the Isle in ten-man groups, but it soon became clear that there wasn’t time to complete the process before dark. Milo’s brain boiled over with impatience, and he all but slapped Jada when she tried to wipe a bit of spilled soup from his neck.
An hour past sunset, the sallow woman came by again with hunks of bread and cheese. I called Milo “my lord” five or six times during dinner, keeping it up until his mood softened. Then I tried again.
“Can I please go back to Darren and my sister for the night?” I asked. “It’s too dark to do the exchange now. We might as well get some sleep. And Darren’s less likely to act up when I’m with her. I’m her security blanket.”
“Or her chew toy.” He waited just long enough to make it clear that he could say “No” if he wanted. “Fine. Take her over to them, Jada.”
Jada’s idea of escort duty involved a lot of pinching. I didn’t really feel the pinches, but I made little desperate yelping noises anyway. People tend to be easier to manage when you let them have the occasional win.
The moon had topped the trees, giving a soft ghostly light to the clearing where I’d left Darren and Ariadne that morning. I relaxed a little when I saw them—one body, two bodies, both of them still breathing—and barely rolled my eyes when Jada produced a chain and ordered me to hold out my foot.
“You did some good crawling today,” she said, fastening the lock. “You have a real talent for it. What’s next? Are you going to get on your knees for Milo? Lick his boots clean?”
“If he wants me on my knees, I’m sure he’ll let me know,” I said. “Your nieces and nephews are fine, by the way. In case you were wondering.”
“You think I give a shit about those little bloodsuckers?”
“No, but I enjoy the thought that one of them might grow up to kill you.”
She wanted to hit me—I saw her hands twitch—but either she was scared of angering Milo or she didn’t want to be away from him any longer. Instead, she spun on her heel and stomped off into the dark. I let out a long breath, trying to rid myself of the day, and jumped a full yard in the air when cold fingers closed on my arm.
“Sorry,” Darren said. “Just me. I can’t believe I forgot to ask about the Torasan children. Do you know where they are?”
“I don’t know specifics. They were still on the Banshee when I left it. But Latoya will have hidden them somewhere safe.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she’s Latoya.” I jerked my head towards my sister. “How is she?”
Darren winced. That was enough of an answer. I scooted over to the hillock where Ariadne sat cross-legged, head in her hands. A lump of dark bread lay by her knee, untouched.
So my working day still wasn’t over. Typical.
“Do I have to remind you how food works?” I asked. “It goes in your mouth. Unless it’s a carrot or a cucumber or maybe a summer squash, and you’re satisfying a different kind of appetite.”
She raised her head, and looked at me blankly, like I was a page of writing in a language she could never hope to learn. Finally, she held the bread out. “You should eat this.”
“I’ve had mine.”
“I’m getting rescued tomorrow—or I’m getting my throat cut, if things go wrong. Either way, you need it more.”
“Milo’s not going to starve me. He needs me alive.”
“So did my parents, and we all know how that went.”
Her voice wobbled, and I wanted to scream. Did she think that if she shoved enough food into my mouth, my twelve-year-old self would somehow taste it?
“Anyway,” she said, picking at the crust of the bread with thin white fingers. “We should talk, you and I, before tomorrow.”
“All right. One second . . . Darren, could you leave us alone for a little while?”
Darren raised her eyebrows. Glanced at the chain that bound her to the tree. Raised her eyebrows some more.
“I’m not asking you to take a walk. Roll over and cover your ears.”
She did it, huffing, and I returned my attention to Ariadne. “What do you want to talk about?”
Oh, hell, emotions were happening. She’d curled tightly into herself, and was rocking back and forth.
“I have to tell you something,” she said. “In case this is the last time we see each other, which is looking increasingly—”
“It’s not going to be the last time we see each other.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Call it a goal.”
“Lynn, I have to ask you to forgive me.”
Was that all? That was easy. “All right, I forgive you. Eat your dinner, and I’ll forgive you twice.”
“You can’t forgive me until you know what I did.”
“Sure I can. Call it a general amnesty. Here’s the bread. Open up.”
She slapped my arm away, and I almost lost the bread. “Would you listen, for the love of every last god?”
I sighed. This whole thing seemed like a deathbed confession, and I didn’t want to encourage those kind of morbid thoughts, but I didn’t want her to get over-excited, either. “Fine,” I surrendered. “Tell me.”
She put one cold hand on each of my cheeks, holding my face still. She used to do that when she said goodnight to me, back when we were children.
In a voice that sounded like something breaking, she whispered, “You were supposed to be mine.”
“Oh,” I said, pretending that this made sense.
“That was what our father meant to happen. You weren’t supposed to go to my mother. He wanted you to be my servant.”
“Oh,” I said in a rather different tone.
“And when I told him ‘No’—this was when you were seven, I guess, or thereabouts—your mother came to me and she asked me to change my mind. She . . . she almost begged me, Lynn. But I wouldn’t do it.”
“Why not?”
I only asked to keep the conversation going, but Ariadne took it as if it was the rebuke she had been dreading all her life. Her face crumpled, like a fresh handkerchief wadded up in someone’s fist, and she took in a shuddering gasp of air.
“I told your mother that I wanted you to be my sister, not my property. I said that, and her eyes just went flat. Not angry. More . . . desperate. And she said something like, ‘My lady, she’s going to be someone’s property. You do know that, don’t you?’ And then she waited, and I . . .”
I didn’t want to hear the full conversation, repeated line by line in Ariadne’s shaky, gulping voice. “It doesn’t matter,” I said, trying to cut her off. “Melitta would never have let you keep me.”
“She might have,” she said. Passion spent, she just sounded tired. “If it meant that you were kept out of her sight, and she never had to acknowledge that you existed.”
Well. Maybe.
“I was a fool,” Ariadne said. There was the dead flat voice again. “I was a selfish little idiot.”
“You were just a child,” I said, and not for her sake, either. Suddenly, I needed that to be true. “You didn’t know what was going to happen.”
Ariadne’s face contorted again, as though she was about to scream. She squeezed her eyes shut. “But I did, Lynn. Your mother told me. She sat me down on a wine cask, turned around, and took off her shirt. Then she told me the story behind every last scar. Hers weren’t quite as impressive as yours, but they were bad enough, and all the exciting ones were my mother’s work. Long streaks the colour of wine, where she’d been beaten with some kind of a rod.”
Fireplace poker, I thought.
“And tiny scars, crescent-shaped, on her shoulders. Know what made those? My father’s fingernails. That was the day when he caught up with her in a dark room. The day you were conceived.
Your mother told me all about it, Lynn. She told me everything. Everything! Then, as she was tying her shirt back on, she said, ‘You won’t hurt her, my lady. At the end of the day, that’ll have to be enough.’”
“Then—why did you say no?”
It was a mistake to ask, I knew that, it was just going to push her over the edge, but I couldn’t stop myself. Ariadne hunched into herself as if the question was a blow.
“Your mother, Lynn, she hated my mother so much. The hate hung around her that day, like smoke over a fire, black and choking. And I just thought . . . if you were my servant, I would try to be kind to you, plan to be kind to you, but you would still be cleaning up after me day after day after day, and you would come to hate me in the end.”
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