“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that. The things that I’ve done here . . . the things that these people have seen me do . . .”
Her voice cracked on that, her breath quickening. It was all so fresh and raw for her still, and I wondered all over again whether this was really the right move.
I took hold of her hands before she could rub her eyes and destroy her makeup all over again. “You don’t have to do this. We can find somebody else.”
“Lynn, stop,” said Darren, of all people. It was surprise, more than anything, that made me shut up. “Ariadne, listen. She’s right. You don’t have to do this. You can say no. But I’m asking you to do it, because in a decade of searching, I won’t find anyone better. The job needs you. It needs everything that you are.”
Was it my imagination, or did Ariadne stand a little straighter at those words? She moistened her lips. “You’ll be there?”
“Every moment. For crowd control, and whatever else you need, up to and including snack delivery.” Darren carefully plucked a piece of lint from the shoulder of Ariadne’s dress, and flicked it away. “Not that you’ll need us. You’re a force of nature and you’ve terrified me since the day we met, and I know with every speck of my soul that you can do this goddamn thing. So give them hell, princess.”
“You bloody pirates and your smooth talk,” Ariadne said, after a few seconds in which I didn’t breathe at all. “Fine. But you’ve promised me snacks, and they’d better be excellent. If you try to foist me off with carrot sticks, murder will be committed.”
“I think that’s entirely fair.”
BACK AT THE council table, Ariadne sat very tall, very straight. She didn’t fidget, and her face was cool and composed, but she was breathing much too fast.
Latoya, on the rebels’ side of the table, cut right to the chase with her first question. “Why should these people let you rule their island?”
“I’d do it well,” Ariadne said, without a pause, but without a whole lot of conviction, either. “I know how to administer a state. I understand trade and fiscal policy and military strategy.”
“So we should make you a queen because you’ve read a lot of books?”
Yes—that was the right tone, that edge of scorn and condescension. It stiffened Ariadne’s spine, made her eyes flare and her chin jut out.
“I know how to do the job,” she said. “I once negotiated a sixteen-part treaty with the House of Tours and entertained thirteen lords for supper on the same day. I can make a balance sheet sit up straight and sing hallelujah.”
“So what would you do if, say . . .”
Latoya shot off a question, a complicated one that involved flour prices and barley blight, and Ariadne answered. Latoya asked another, this time about defending a long border with inadequate troops, and Ariadne answered. By now, the other people at the table were getting interested. Kelman asked about conscription and Tavia asked about meat imports, and Ariadne answered and answered and answered again. She didn’t always have a perfect solution, and when she didn’t, she admitted it, but she weighed each problem, took it apart into bite-sized pieces, and suggested a way over or under or through.
She wasn’t shaking anymore.
After an hour or so, the rebels ran out of questions. Latoya shot me a quick glance, and I nodded. Time for the tricky part.
“All right, you know how to govern,” Latoya said. “But someone else could learn. Why should these people put your faith in you? Why should they let you send their children to war? How do they know that you won’t turn into another Stribos, or Milo? Why will you be any different?”
Ariadne’s eyes sought out mine, and held them, as she gathered her courage. We’d planned for this, practised it, but even so . . .
She swallowed hard, gripped the edge of the table, and finally said the words out loud. “I’m barren.”
There wasn’t the uproar that I’d half-expected, but there was instant unease, bodies shifting in their chairs.
“I know,” she said, before anyone could talk. “Blood is rank and blood is right and blood is bloody everything, and in the eyes of every other Kilan noble, I’m a broken useless woman, unfit to rule so much as a tea trolley. And that’s exactly why you want me ruling you. You need a guarantee that things won’t go straight back to business as usual once I’m on the throne? This is the best you’re going to get. The rest of the ruling class will never accept me, and if I adopt an heir, they’ll never accept him or her. Whatever happens, I’ll have to fight all my life for the right to exist, and the right to pass on my crown. If I’m going to rule in Kila, I have to change Kila. I don’t have another choice.”
That was the end of her prepared speech, the one she’d practised in a mirror the night before, while I rubbed her shoulders and muttered encouragement. But she wasn’t quite done.
“I’ve been messed up a long time,” Ariadne said. “Like most of you, I suspect. But I’m done with hiding my damage. I’m going to hone it and polish it and sharpen it and send it off to war, and with it, I will fight for you. For us. I’ll fight for all of us.”
THAT WAS THE end of the job interview, but not the end of the conversation. There was more talk after that, and more, and more, and bleeding hell, more, about everything from the punishment for theft to the price of salt. So much talk that Latoya scooted her chair close to Ariadne so that they could hold hands under the table, and Darren took me out of the room for half an hour to commit some crimes against god, man, and nature. But we all refocused for the last item on the agenda, which was the re-naming of Torasan Isle.
Darren was very quiet during this, though she didn’t protest. I stroked her leg while other people made their proposals. I really wanted to suggest “Thundercunt,” because, though I knew it wouldn’t win, it was bound to liven up the debate. I managed to quell the urge, though.
It was Kelman who suggested calling the Isle the “Stormrock.” It sounded ridiculous to me, but most of the people in the room seemed happy with it. It wasn’t important. I let it pass.
THE FIRST TIME I offered to deal with Jada, Darren refused very politely. The second time she was less polite, the third time she was positively sarcastic, and the tenth time, she was too frustrated even to speak, and just made gurgling noises. We argued for approximately forever before she agreed to at least let me in the room.
Jada didn’t bother to get up from her stool when we came in. (She had a stool in her cell—and a cot, and a bucket. All the conveniences. Darren had insisted.) Her breakfast tray was at her feet, empty except for crumbs and spilt tea. For a little while, Jada had refused to eat and her meal trays came back to the kitchen untouched, but you need willpower to play that game, and she didn’t last long.
Darren closed the door, leaned against the door. She wasn’t quite as angry as I would have liked. More bewildered, and sad, and even a bit fond.
Jada spoke before long. Of course the little coward didn’t have the stones to wait out the silence. “Are you going to ask why I did it, pirate queen?”
Spite in the words, a prickle of venom, but Darren didn’t blink. “How’s your head?”
“I won’t die before you have a chance to execute me,” Jada said, picking at the skin around a thumbnail. “That’s what you’re worried about, right?”
“You’re not going to be executed.”
The breath left Jada’s lungs in a sudden hard pant, a sign of relief that she couldn’t quite hide. When she looked up, her eyes were bright and glassy with unshed tears. “You murdered Milo. Why spare me?”
Darren sighed. “Jada—”
“You murdered him!” And now the tears were flowing, as Jada’s face twisted up with ugly anguish. “There’s never been anyone like him, there never will be again. He saw all the horror around us that no one else could see, and he dared to take the world by the throat and shake it and choke it until the rest of us could see it too. He took the stupid preening pigs who were set to rule over us and he made them crawl
and he made them cower. There are a thousand fat greasy nobles gloating over his death today who don’t deserve to lick his boots clean. And you killed—”
“It was me, actually.” I raised my hand. “Spinner helped, but I definitely got the killing process started. Rather enjoyed it. Would do it again.”
Darren pinched the bridge of her nose. “Lynn, didn’t you promise to keep your opinions to yourself during this heart-to-heart?”
“Yes, but I didn’t really mean it, so it doesn’t count. Jada, you vicious little idiot—you do realize that Milo had nothing but contempt for you?”
“Maybe I deserved it,” Jada flung back. “Maybe we all deserved contempt from a man like him. You’ll never understand why—”
“I do understand,” Darren said—tired now, as well as sad. “You sat alone in the dark and took out your soul and looked it over, and whenever you saw a rotten patch, you tried to cut it out. Maybe you wouldn’t have cut so much if you’d been a little less lonely. Maybe you wouldn’t have cut so much if you’d been a little bit braver. But as it was, you cut and you cut and there wasn’t much left of you when you finished. You left a big hole, and Milo poured in and filled it. And that was that.”
She put a heavy hand on my shoulder, and I shifted my weight to support her. I hadn’t had a chance yet to bully her into eating lunch.
“I’m leaving now,” Darren said. “You’ll be leaving soon, too. Maybe, one day, we’ll be able to talk to each other again. But if that happens, it won’t be for a long time, I don’t think. You need to figure out who you are, and whether you want to be something more than Milo’s creature. And if you do come back from that, it’s going to hurt like hell. I couldn’t keep you from that pain if I wanted to. I don’t even know if I want to. I think I probably don’t.”
There seemed nothing else to say after that, and anyway, Jada had lost interest. She slumped in the corner of the cell, tears streaming, and gnawed at a bloody hangnail. Darren rapped twice on the door.
Outside the cell, Jess stood waiting, a solid reassuring presence in her tunic of nut-hull brown. She fell into step beside us as we headed down the hall.
“I’m not making any promises,” she said. “That is one damaged girl.”
“I’m not asking for promises. You know what I’m asking for?” Darren squeaked to a sudden stop. “Cows. I want Jada to spend at least the next five years up to her elbows in cow shit. I want her to shovel mountains of the stuff.”
“And as I told you, Holly and I can make that happen. But that doesn’t mean she’s going to change. Just don’t get your hopes too high, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Right.” Darren stared at the toes of her boots. “I’m grateful, you know.”
“Yes, yes. I should be horribly insulted. Your sister is an accomplice to mass murder, and how are you punishing her? You’re sending her off to spend time with me.”
“Her punishment is being banished to cow shit purgatory, as you know perfectly well—and can you please stop taking the piss out of me for two consecutive seconds? I’m serious.”
Jess smoothed her hands down her long split tunic, flicking away an invisible speck of dust. “Our relationship, such as it is, consists of me taking the piss out of you. It’s a little late to renegotiate.”
“Oh, for the love of crumpets.” Darren turned imploring eyes at the ceiling. “Will you just let me thank you for once?”
“For what?”
“For always being there when I needed you. Even after I dumped you by sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night. When I think of everything that you’ve done for me—when I try to imagine what would have happened if you’d been even a little less kind—”
“Oh, shut up,” Jess snapped, though her eyes glistened. “Are you fishing for compliments? Fine, then. You are, in many special ways, an asshole, but damn it all, you care so much and you try so hard. So I don’t mind having your back. I never did. Now, begone. Ariadne wants to see you before the coronation.”
They managed to get through something that was halfway between a handshake and a hug before Darren hurried off, and then I politely pretended not to notice while Jess blew her nose and wiped her eyes.
“I forgot to ask,” she said, tucking her handkerchief away. “Are Holly and I supposed to send updates about the murder baby? If Jada discovers the remnants of her soul, or if she falls off the wagon and starts to kill kittens with her teeth, do you want us to keep Darren in the loop?”
“You’ll keep me in the loop. I’ll decide what my mistress needs to know.”
“Yes, I figured.” She tucked her hands into the opposite sleeves and gave me a long, level stare. “Are both of you all right?”
“Sometimes. For certain definitions of ‘all right.’ Or did you mean now, specifically? Because we’re not all right just at the moment, no.”
Darren had woken up halfway through the previous night and spent an hour sitting at the edge of our bunk, just staring. I’d been awake already, so I watched, and eventually held her, but I couldn’t take her nightmares away, any more than she could take mine.
“Holly wants to see you,” Jess said.
“And I want to see her. Maybe we’ll be able to swing by the secret harbour soon, for a visit.”
“For an afternoon. Or, at most, a day. And then you’ll be back at sea.” She sighed. “We both know that Darren’s martyr complex will drive her forward until she drops, but that doesn’t mean you have to keep pace with her. I wish you would slow down once in a while, Lynn.”
“I can’t. Sometimes, I wish that I could . . . but, well, I’m useful this way. And I just can’t.”
This didn’t seem to cheer her up much, so I gave her hand a reassuring pat. “On the plus side, now I’ve met Darren’s family, so I don’t have that hanging over my head anymore.”
AND SO, AT high tide on New Year’s Day, as all the world knows, Ariadne was crowned High Lady of Kila.
That “High Lady” part was aspirational in the extreme, since her realm was limited to the Stormrock and a mile of sea offshore, but we had to think big. Besides, we were pretty sure that we’d make gains soon, what with Darren’s fleet and our connections to Bero, and we didn’t want to have to arrange a whole other coronation six months down the line.
We didn’t have an actual crown, a problem we’d only recognized the night before, so Spinner improvised something at the last minute with copper wire and grey seed pearls. It did the trick, though it fell apart shortly afterwards, if I remember right.
We also didn’t have a priest, so Latoya did the crowning. She was in full Master of Storms regalia, with embroidered vest and wrist bands. A coiled anchor chain hung over her shoulder, scoured until it gleamed silver-bright.
I lurked behind a pillar at the back of the Great Hall and watched the pageantry. Ariadne bowed her head, Latoya set the pearl-and-copper chaplet into place. The sun cooperated, for once, and streamed through the window arches just at the right moment, bathing everything gold. Cheers, clapping, all of that.
Darren marched forward in boots I’d polished to a mirror shine that morning, and went down to one knee in front of them. In a firm, clear voice, she swore to bear arms for the High Lady and the Master of Storms, to serve them with all her strength and all her wit and all her soul, until the fall of their house or the end of the world.
“You could be up there, you know,” Spinner murmured, from his place beside me. “They didn’t ask you to hide in the shadows.”
“I know. But I like the shadows, and I’m not the only one.” I poked him in the ribs. “I heard a rumour that Ariadne offered somebody a job as her spymaster.”
“Well. Not all of us are so in love with the seafaring life that we want to give big wet kisses to every ship we meet. And Gilbert, my old flame, the one who helped me sneak into the Keep? He’s aged pretty well. Bit of a paunch, but it suits him. What the hell are they doing up there?”
Latoya stepped to the edge of the dais and cleared her
throat. She glanced at Ariadne, and the two of them did a bit of the talking-with-their-eyes thing that Darren and I could manage on our better days. Are you sure? Yes I’m sure. Are you really sure? For gods’ sake, woman, get on with it.
“All hail Ariadne, High Lady of Kila!” Latoya roared—and it really was a roar; it put Darren’s best to shame. “All hail Ariadne of the House of Elain!”
“Elain,” Spinner muttered. “Isn’t that—?”
“My mother’s name,” I finished for him. Oh, that cheeky so-and-so. I’d wondered in an idle way whether Ariadne would rule in the name of her own house, or come up with some other alternative, but this . . .
Latoya wasn’t done. After a pause to let the clapping die down, she took hold of Darren’s shoulder. “All hail Darren of the House of Elain!”
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