“But then why fake a mutiny?”
“It protected Ariadne. If Milo thought that I was in charge of the fleet, then Ariadne was expendable—he already had you as a hostage. But if Latoya and I were on opposite sides, then he needed you both alive. Ariadne became the only card he had to play against Latoya.”
“Clever.”
“Latoya and I have been known to be clever from time to time. I’m sorry we had to leave you in the hunger cell for so long, but we had to stall for a while, so the commoners on the Isle could work through their emotions and start to have some sober second thoughts.”
“About Milo?”
“And about mass murder. Plus, we knew that Milo would start to lose his grip on the Freemen once he ran low on meat and good wine. And we needed time to drop off your nieces and nephews with Holly and Jess, and we had to collect supplies for the next stage of the operation.”
“You mean you had to go get a giant barrel of cholera shit.”
“That. When we’d stalled about as long as we could, I made a big noisy song and dance of my surrender, to keep Milo occupied while Spinner made his way into the Keep. You’ll have to ask him about the specifics, but you know how good he is at being invisible.”
“And he knows the Isle—he grew up here.”
“Yes, that helped. Apparently, he has a former boyfriend at the Keep, who is maybe not so much a former boyfriend anymore. With Spinner in position, we had a fallback in case I couldn’t keep control of the situation once Latoya invaded. But I managed all right. And then we just had to wait for things to play out. We had the cholera outbreak to whittle down Milo’s forces and make them want to surrender, and the Master of Storms to give them someone they’d be willing to surrender to, and we had Spinner lurking around with a vial of blackroot in his pocket, waiting to make Milo dead as soon as his usefulness ran out. And here we are. Now tell me that my plan was excellent, or I’ll poke you.”
“It was adequate, I guess. Ow. All right, fine, the plan was good. But did you have to keep Ariadne and me completely in the dark?”
“Mistress. High up on the list of Things Not To Do When You Have a Plan—maybe even at the number one spot—is ‘Talk about the plan lots and lots when your enemies might overhear.’ It was bad enough that you kept being so relentlessly optimistic. I mean, your blind faith in me was touching, but—”
“It wasn’t blind faith.”
“Mistress . . .”
“It was a little bit blind faith. But only a little. As soon as you showed up, I knew that you didn’t come to the Isle alone. So I knew you weren’t telling me everything, and it stood to reason that—”
“How did you know that I didn’t come to the Isle alone?”
It was rare for me to see something that Lynn had missed. I sat back smugly, basking in the moment, until she poked me again.
“Ow. Ow. All right. You arrived in a rowboat. Now, you may have powers beyond mortal understanding—but you’re really, really short. There was no way you could have handled both of the oars in any of our rowboats. You couldn’t possibly have reached.”
“Huh.” Annoyance flickered across Lynn’s face. “I guess that was a bit of a weak point in the story. Good thing Milo missed it.”
“But I didn’t miss it, because I’m a genius and the best pirate ever. Tell me I’m the best pirate ever.”
“If you’re going to make that claim, you’d better be prepared to prove it. Think you can shiver both of my timbers before suppertime?”
“Yarr,” I said happily.
And matters kind of progressed from there.
BUT THAT WAS all in the future. On the day of the battle, I understood very little about what was going on, but we weren’t dead and Lynn seemed pleased with herself, so I wasn’t about to complain.
In what was left of the soldiers’ camp, the resistance had thinned out to the most hardcore Freemen, the ones with chicken feathers adorning their jackets and helmets. These stood back-to-back in a tight circle as Latoya’s troops closed in, ready for a brutal and bloody last stand. But there were only a handful of them. Nearly all of Milo’s soldiers lay groaning in muddy pools of their own waste, or had thrown their weapons down when they saw Latoya walk out of the mist.
This, I realized, was going to be a bitch to explain to people. It was hard enough to tell the story of our battle against the Sons of Heaven, and how we won it with porridge and hand cream. Now people were going to ask how I defeated Milo’s troops, and I’d have to say, “Shit and religion.”
Noises had been coming for a while from the top of the hill. At last, there was a dull crunch and a drawn-out gurgle. Seconds later, Spinner joined us on the slope, wiping his dagger on the hem of his skirt.
“Did he remember Regon’s name?” I asked.
“He did not.”
Spinner didn’t volunteer any more information, but he passed me the bundle he’d been carrying under his arm: my cutlass, with its belt and scabbard. It was a bit damp and sticky in places, but Spinner had thoughtfully wiped off the worst of the blood.
“Lynn?” I said, raising my arms. “If you please.”
“Of course, Mistress.”
She fastened the belt around me, while I steadied myself on her shoulder. Now that the crisis was over, the past few weeks of pain and hunger and fear were catching up to me, all at once. My knees wobbled and my vision blurred.
“Do you need me for anything?” I asked, squinting at Lynn through one eye. “Because, if it’s all the same to you, I think I’d rather like to pass out.”
“In just one second.” Lynn drew the cutlass for me—oh, that comforting steely ring; I’d missed it—and pressed the hilt into my hand. “Our troops still have some work to do today and they’ve been worried about you, so first, give me one good roar.”
I figured I had just about enough left in me for that, so I coughed to clear my throat, punched the cutlass high in the air, inhaled until my lungs burned, and let it all out in one long howl. The distant cliffs caught the sound and whipped it back, until the hills themselves seemed to be screaming.
Down below, Latoya raised a fist high in salute, grinning, and the pirates cheered. Good enough.
“Now,” I said. “May I please pass out?”
She was already clearing a space, kicking pebbles and twigs out of the way. “Be my guest.”
I’d never checked out of a battle before in exactly this way, but I knew Lynn and Latoya could handle things without me. So, with vast relief, I let myself drop face forward onto the soft earth, and the shadows closed together blissfully over my head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Lynn
I WOULD HAVE liked to pass out myself, but someone had to do the cleaning up.
It took about ten minutes for Latoya and her troops to finish off the last of the Freemen, ten minutes that Ariadne spent standing stock-still, eyes glued to Latoya as she whirled and slashed and pounded. I myself was tired both of standing and of sitting in the dirt, so I sat on Darren instead. She’d fallen on her stomach, luckily, so her buttocks made a raised seat, and it was easy to keep an eye on her that way.
When the last unfriendly face had been punched, and the last unfriendly testicle smashed into testicle jam, Latoya hurled down her sticky chain and raced over to us. Ariadne raised herself up on her toes and lowered herself again, like someone getting ready to jump off a cliff, and changing their mind at the last second.
Latoya ground to a halt a foot away. “Uh,” she began, with eloquence rivalling that which Darren displayed at stressful moments.
Ariadne had no such difficulty. She spread her arms. “Seriously? Seriously?”
“Um,” Latoya said this time.
“I’m so angry that I can’t even decide who to murder. You made me believe that you betrayed my baby sister!”
Latoya closed her eyes briefly, and she let out a sigh of pure exasperation. “Because it was the best play we had after you decided to martyr yourself.”
�
�That was my choice.”
“And coming after you was mine. I’ve chosen you so many times and in so many ways, Ariadne. Now you have to decide whether this is what you want, too.”
“Well, of bloody course I want you!” Ariadne screamed into the wind. “But how can I do that to you? You know what it’ll mean to live your life with me. It would mean choosing this bloody country and its bloody people and this bloody, bloody war—”
“I already chose those things—”
“But why? Why?”
“You chose them!”
“Yes, well, I’m an idiot!”
“Maybe I am too. Or maybe it’s because I like solving problems, or maybe Darren infected me, or maybe I want to do something that’s never been done before. Whatever the reason—no, look at me—I’m not afraid of what a life with you would mean. Not as long as you’re choosing me, too. Are you listening?”
“I . . . I . . .” Ariadne put a hand up to her head, and blinked hard, swaying. Latoya’s eyes widened with worry, but Ariadne shook off the moment of dizziness.
“I want to continue this conversation,” she said, in something close to her normal tone. “But not this very minute. You see, I think I’m on the point of having a bit of a breakdown, and if you don’t mind, I’d like you to hold me for the next ten hours.”
Latoya blinked. “Oh.”
“Is that all right?”
“Of course.”
I can be polite, from time to time, in situations where it doesn’t take much of an effort, so I looked away when Ariadne launched herself into Latoya’s arms. I still heard them—the heavy breathing, Latoya’s husky voice murmuring, “I was so scared for you,” and Ariadne’s voice in answer, repeating, “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.”
At least I didn’t have to lock them in a crate together, I thought, patting Darren’s thigh as she stirred underneath me. I already had more than enough to do.
THE NEXT WEEK passed in a blur of dispatch-sending and bandage-rolling and firewood-gathering. Miniature disasters bloomed on every side, and had to be stomped out before they grew to full size.
Ten or so of the Freemen who had surrendered to us tried to unsurrender the next day, then re-surrendered when Latoya demonstrated her ability to bend swords into novelty cock rings. The sick men called Ariadne an angel when she brought them clean water from the well in the hill-fort, and kept clutching at the hem of her dress. It rained, snowed, and rained some more. A rabid-looking squirrel found its way into the middle of the camp. The messengers from Torasan Keep were hostile at first, then cautious, then curious, and then swung back to hostile for no apparent reason.
It was just one thing after another in a sort of conga line of frustration. Darren, through it all, was so loving and patient with me that I finally had to bite her ear and chew semi-hard until she was forced to grab me and hold me still. Once she figured out what I was asking her to do, she did it, with as much pirate queen swagger as I ever could have wished. All the restless itchy terribleness of the world’s never ending demands went away when I was pinned to our bedroll, with Darren’s weight and breath above me, keeping me down.
The world came back the next day, because the sun has this exasperating habit of rising each dawn. Fortunately, Darren ordered me to stay in our tent all morning—once I’d given her a series of pointed hints to that effect—and that gave me enough time to level out again.
Three days and a cross-island march later, we were back at the Keep for peace talks.
There was an odd selection of people on the rebels’ side of the bargaining table. Gryff, the lieutenant whom Milo had left in charge of the Keep, had shown a bit too much interest in a seven-year-old page boy. As a result, a bunch of kitchen servants got together and encouraged him to take a swan-dive off the castle walls. Encouraged him pretty hard, I must say. He splattered into so many bits at the bottom that it took a whole month of rainstorms to get rid of all the stains.
After Gryff made his dive, a ragtag bunch of strong personalities had taken charge in his place. There was a drover, and a dockmaster, and a cook named Tavia that Darren couldn’t quite look in the eye.
It was the drover, a man named Kelman, who bent over the table in the first hour of negotiations and said, “There’s one thing you have to accept. Darren of Torasan will not be lady of the Isle.”
And Darren, who wanted to rule the Isle rather less than she wanted to wear trousers with inward-facing spikes on the crotch, managed to summon a shocked expression. “You must admit that I’m the rightful heir.”
All by herself, Darren did this. Without any encouragement from me. Without so much as a nudge or a poke. Which proves, once again, that nobody is unteachable, as long as you’re willing to put in the time.
Latoya jumped in. “You’re going to have to give way on this one, pirate queen. Torasan’s legacy can’t be redeemed. Your house has to end here, or there’ll never be peace.”
“That’s what we say,” Kelman agreed, and a mighty argument erupted, Darren shouting and protesting on one side of the table, Latoya pounding her fist on the other.
And I twisted around and pressed my face against Darren’s trousers to hide the smug smile that I couldn’t suppress. Sometimes, things just work out.
We’d spent hours preparing for the negotiation the night before, charting out eight or ten ways that Latoya could emerge as the spokesman of the rebels without being too obvious about it. Then Latoya and I came up with five or six more ideas after the others went to sleep. Even so, we hadn’t been really happy with any of the options. They’d been sketchy, relying on guesses and estimates, full of if-this-then-that contingencies.
No need for any of that now. Darren and Latoya could dominate the table for hours, as Darren demanded the throne and Latoya shouted her down. By the time Darren finally, reluctantly gave way, Latoya would be positioned as the loudest voice among the rebels, which was right where she needed to be, for the next stage. Negotiations are much smoother when you control both sides.
And all with minimal work on my part. Hell, I could probably take a nap.
I didn’t nap, though, because it was too entertaining to watch the two of them going at it. Darren wasn’t used to Latoya yelling at her, sneering at her, and discussing her personal flaws in brutal detail. It made for some quite genuine frustration on Darren’s part, which, in turn, caused Darren to be extra shouty and obnoxious. Lots of fun.
After a few hours of this, a bell clanged down in the harbour. Darren went rigid; so did Kelman, and Spinner, and—I scanned the crowd quickly—yes, everyone who had grown up on the Isle. Only outsiders like Latoya and I were in the dark.
“Corsairs,” Darren said. She gave my shoulder a squeeze and stood up, ripping her cutlass from its sheath. That was sort of silly, since she would have to sprint to the harbour and climb onto a ship before she could get in stabbing range of a corsair, and it would be awkward to do all that with sword in hand. It looked good, though, so it was still a reasonable decision, from a piracy perspective. “Quick break for violence?”
Latoya shrugged. “I need to stretch my legs, anyway.”
And they headed out together because they were still, occasionally, the same kind of idiot.
While Darren played conquering hero, I kept up my work in the council room, flitting between groups of people, now listening, now suggesting, now diving behind a pillar to compare notes with Spinner. I got so engrossed that it seemed minutes before she was back.
Darren stalked through the hall, sweaty but uninjured, and tossed her bloody cutlass down on the council table as she went—a nice touch. Just before she reached the far door, she snapped her fingers in my direction. “Girl, attend me.”
I scrambled to follow her to the storage room we’d appropriated as a base of operations. “How did it go?” I asked, as soon as the door swung shut behind us.
“Fine. Corto’s sword arm is back in form. He did the slashy-slashy-make-them-all-die thing. I just watched his back.” Darren n
odded towards the council chamber. “Do you think that our friends in there are ready for the next step?”
“I think so. Spinner and I have been warming them up for you. Question is, are you ready, Ariadne?”
Ariadne had been waiting in the storage room for most of the day, alternately pacing and chewing her nails down to the nub, fussing with her clothes and re-doing her makeup. She must have gone through six or seven different faces before she settled on light powder, faint blue shadows around the eyes, and a hollow in each cheek. It was a haunted, unsettling look, but it gave her a solemnity that was worlds away from her old costume of lace, frills, and titters.
“Am I ready?” Ariadne repeated. “Well, that depends. You think anybody’ll notice if I throw up and then run away screaming? Or if I scream and then run away throwing up?”
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