The woman—slight, white-haired, her long fingers curled on Crow’s shoulder—was Anny Pryce.
“Cannons!” Cat shouted, but none of the crew moved. It was far too late for shooting things.
“Good morning, Captain!” Crow called, leaning over the railing like a lady waving farewell to her sailor. “Good thing we got to you before you disappeared into that lovely clump of rocks up ahead. Our dear friend the Duke would be so disappointed.”
“You’re an ass, Crow,” I retorted. Cat flung out his arm to hold me back, but I ducked under and ran for the rail. The ships were close together, a lot closer than I think either Cat or Crow wanted to be, but Anny Pryce didn’t believe in personal space. Suited me fine, too. “When’d you take to running the Duke of Glasshill’s errands?”
“When we found out he was headed the same way we were.” Crow’s eyes twinkled like spilled oil. “For different reasons, of course.”
Golden was coming to, moaning like a gale wind. The Duke, who until now had been looking slavishly from Crow to Anny Pryce, turned his beady little eyes over to the Ruby Prince. “There she is!” he shrieked. “Make them hand her over and let’s get out of here.”
“Calm yourself,” Anny Pryce said.
If you ain’t heard Anny Pryce’s voice, I ain’t sure I can describe it for you so you understand. Some voices are cold, but Anny’s is just frigid. It turns steel brittle.
“As you can see, our dear friend the Duke judged it wise to abandon his ship for ours,” she said. “We are not running his errands at all, girl. Consider him a hound on a scent—or a decoy.”
I reckon the Duke and I were feeling about the same at that moment.
“We’d love for you to hand over Miss…Golden, is it?” Anny Pryce sneered, her mouth straight and flat as a blade. “But I’ll settle for only you, Shamrock.”
“No!” Cat shouted, and it was my turn to hold him back. I caught him, one hand on each of his shoulders, and stood between him and Anny.
“I told you, Cat, they’ll make matchwood of us if we don’t cooperate.” He stilled some, but there was still murder in his eyes. “You’re getting paid to get Golden to safety. Let them have me, and you can make it through the pass. Crow’s ship is too big for them to follow.”
Cat shrugged my hands off. “Listen to yourself, Sham! I said I won’t hand you over to Anny Pryce, and I meant it.”
“Maybe I ain’t yours to hand over.”
The color drained out of his face so fast, I thought I’d see it collecting in a stain around his collar. He took a tottering step back and passed a hand across his forehead. “I…damn, Shamrock, that’s not what I meant.”
“I know it ain’t.” I looked over my shoulder at Golden. She was slouched between Cornflower and Mayborn, looking sick and lost and determined all at the same time. Real lady, she was. I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile and turned back to Cat. “Take care of her, okay?”
“Shamrock!”
I grabbed a grappling line from the stack and flung it across to Anny Pryce.
Cat might’ve made a grab for me as I started to climb over—he can be an idiot sometimes, it sounds like something he’d do—but if so, the crew held him back. I dropped onto Crow’s deck half an eternity later and held out my hands for Anny to tie together.
“Nice fingers,” she said, flat as a paving stone.
I spat in her face, and Crow came up behind me, and there was a splitting pain in my head as everything went dark.
I woke up in the brig, which was no surprise, but I hadn’t expected the Duke to be keeping me company, trussed up in the corner like an autumn pig. Guess that’s a lesson about working with Anny Pryce; she ain’t for hire, even if you think she is.
My hands were tied behind my back, and someone—Crow, I’d bet, though it was probably Anny’s idea—had woven the rope between my fingers, straining the joints so hard I thought they’d break again. Real carefully, I twisted to my feet like a cat and pressed my eye against a crack in the wooden wall. No good; Crow’s brig was below the water line, and all I got was an eyeful of pitch. So I couldn’t know for sure, but I hoped real hard that Cat had taken Golden through to her hiding place and forgotten about me, like he was supposed to.
The Duke squeaked something around the dirty rag in his mouth. I kicked at him half-heartedly and plopped down with my back to the wall. “Shut up,” I said. “Greedy, murdering slime ain’t my idea of a good roommate, neither.”
He screwed up his forehead like he thought looking at me ugly would light me on fire.
Then the sound of footsteps came from behind the door, sharp and light and even. I sat up straight. Someone fumbled with the rusty lock, and the door swung in with a slow, screechy creak. Anny Pryce stood on the other side, smiling like Death at a duelists’ society.
Up close, her face looked like a mask someone had stored in a dusty place for too long. Her mouth was dry and pale, and her eyes looked brittle. Back in Coldcliff people used to say that Anny Pryce was a handsome woman, but I can’t figure out how they managed to tell. All I could see was the dryness.
“So you traded yourself for the girl,” she said, sneering from me to the Duke and back again. “How...noble.”
“Actually, you traded the girl for me. Went back on your word.” I tilted my head, like I was considering. “Not very noble, but what should he’ve expected from your kind?”
Anny raised a single eyebrow. One of the only people I know of who can manage that expression without looking addled. “My kind?”
“Lying dogs who can’t do their own dirty work.”
Her slap came like a whip crack across my cheek. “Rest assured,” she said, dragging me to my feet, “I won’t be making that mistake again.”
Crow came out of the shadows behind her like a ghost. He took me by the shoulders, and Anny led us out and up into the cool salty night.
The deck was lit up with little glass-paned lamps hung in the rigging. They threw their light over the water, all the way to the shiny clump of rocks that guarded Golden’s hiding place—the shiny clump of rocks that was slipping farther away from us with each passing second. I prayed miserably that Cat wasn’t going to try anything stupid.
It took me a moment to notice Crow’s crew standing in a circle around us, drooling like dogs handed a plate of meat. Whatever Anny had planned for me, it was something special.
“Evening, boys,” she said. I gave her a funny look, ‘cause that’s the first time I heard a captain call her gents boys. It just ain’t done. And it was damn clear she was mocking them, twisting her words around in her mouth like a harbormaster. “I don’t suppose you all remember Shamrock?”
There were a few jeers, but not a whole lot. “I’m the one who killed Dragonfly,” I said, to help them out a little. Everything in my gut felt like soured milk. I knew I was going to die; it couldn’t hurt to make sure everyone knew why.
Crow gave me a shake and cut the rope from around my fingers. I rubbed my hands together and looked up at Anny Pryce. I was expecting her to have a hanging rope out, or a gun at least, but she wasn’t holding anything. Was she just going to throw me overboard again?
Then she held her hand out to one of the men, and he gave her a knife.
“You remember what Dragonfly did to Moirrey,” she said. It wasn’t a question, not even close, and it wasn’t meant for anybody but me to hear. “You remember how they found her clothes in bloody shreds around the bedroom. You remember how the blood soaked into the plaster walls—that whole part of the house needed to be burned down. You remember that the biggest piece of her your mother found...” She held up her free hand and lowered the fingers, one by one, until only the smallest was left standing. “Don’t you, Shamrock?”
“You’re a bloody coward, Anny Pryce.” I spat in her face again, and this time Crow didn’t do anything to stop me. Anny just smiled and wiped her cheek with her sleeve. “You ain’t got the guts to do any of that yourself, so you take credit for what your
trained dogs do. I ain’t afraid of you.”
That last part was mostly a lie, of course. Mostly.
‘Cause I had gotten away from Anny Pryce once before, and I had killed Dragonfly.
“You, now, Miss Queen-of-the-Sea,” I said, “you’re terrified of me. You’re scared like a kid in the dark.”
The crew laughed, as I expected they would—but not Anny. Her face went slack, like a sail with no wind.
“‘Cause anything Dragonfly did, well, I can do better than that. I killed Dragonfly. Scary as she was, she’s dead now, and it’s all because of me. You can give orders real nice, and maybe if you try hard enough you can break a girl’s fingers...” I wiggled my own hand, just like she’d raised hers. “But you’re nowhere near me, Anny Pryce, and you know it.”
She jumped at me, knife raised, about the same time Crow made a grab at me from behind. I dropped to the deck and rolled out from under them. Of course the crew wasn’t just going to take that, and I was kicking for all I was worth, trying to keep their hands off of me. There was just one way for me to get out of here, I realized, and that was in the dark.
I grabbed a fistful of rigging and started climbing. The first lamp broke with just a jab of my elbow, and the second landed on the deck in a spray of glass and fire. Someone got his hand around my ankle before I had the third all the way loose, and suddenly I was on the deck myself, tilting my head crazily to avoid the burning oil.
Anny pressed her knee into my chest, driving the breath out of me. She pressed the knife deep against my cheek.
“Where did you think you were going, Shamrock?” Her voice was dry and breathless. “You’re caught, girl. There’s nothing here but the water and me.”
“Between the Devil and the deep blue sea,” I muttered.
And the third lamp snapped its rope.
I was hoping it would knock Anny Pryce insensible, and though I wasn’t that lucky, she must’ve had a lump the size of a rook egg on her head the next morning. I didn’t stick around to see. As soon as the pressure from her knee let up I rolled out from under her, dodged past Crow, and dove into the sea.
The water sprayed up icy and dark around my face. I moved my legs like I was walking up a steep hill and managed to keep my head above the surface. And it turned out to be a good thing I hadn’t put all the lamps out, because a little sparkle of light still got out across the water and glistened on the rocks by Golden’s hiding place.
I dove under the next few waves, until I got out to where the water was too dark for Crow’s crew to see me clear. I ain’t a great swimmer, but I’m better than most, and I had the threat of Anny Pryce to keep me moving. I closed my eyes, stretched my arms and kicked as hard as I could.
And didn’t stop kicking ‘til I heard the splash of oars by my head.
“Sham!” Warm hands reached down and closed around my shoulders. I pried my eyes open, sputtering and blinking through the salty water. Cat’s face was pale as sailcloth as he lifted me up into the dinghy.
“Sham, you all right?”
He lay me on the floor of the boat, resting my head against his knees. I coughed until I could get words out. “We’ve got to keep meeting like this, Cat.”
“I thought I lost you.”
“Well, you thought wrong.” I sat up, looked around the little boat. We were halfway between the sharp shiny rocks and the silent spinning of the whirlpool. If the dinghy were any bigger, I wouldn’t’ve liked our chances. But Cat’s hands were steady on the oars, and I knew I could trust him.
“What were you gonna do?” I asked, flat as I could. “Take on Crow in this mangy thing?”
He looked at me hard. And then his face broke with laughter, and I knew everything was going to be just fine.
Andromache’s War
By Elliott Dunstan
* * *
Andromache—once of Hypoplakia and once of Troy, and now of nowhere at all—watches the sky pass by behind her captor and master, the sea splash at the side of the penteconter, and dreams about home. Home is faces, long gone; home was burning, the last she saw it, a thousand voices crying out as they were slaughtered or captured; home is a memory.
“What’s the matter, Andromache? Lost in thought again?” Neoptolemos is staring back at her, the pride of victory lighting up his face. It’s been only a day since they put out from Troy, and her hands are still cold. The first morning without her son. The first morning alone.
-Hell hath no fury-
The anger starts slow, still smoldering as he turns back to stare out at the waves breaking at the prow. She gets to her feet, sandals soaking in the water at the bottom of the penteconter, and she strides down between the rowers. “More found than lost, my lord,” she replies, and he starts, glancing down at her again as she climbs up to stand by him.
He laughs, and she stares at the pearly white of his teeth. He’s young, too young to have so much blood on his hands. Her hands are so cold. So cold. “I thought you’d get a taste for the ocean.” His hand strokes her waist, and the repulsion that runs through her like a shock is so violent, so brutal, that she almost jumps into the ocean herself, to be away from him. She’d be with Hector, and Astyanax, and the rest of her family and people.
-Hell hath no fury-
“Tell me, Neoptolemos, once more,” she says it in a quiet, almost pleading tone, “why my son had to die.”
His eyes blur with confusion for a second, eyes as blue as the ocean and the sky that meet behind him in the horizon, and then smoldering fury sets them alight like tinder to bark. Then—”Oh, yes. Hector’s son. If I’d left him alive, he would want me dead. My father killed his; I’d be the target. Better to end the cycle now.”
And in your favour. But Andromache just nods, the picture of innocence, of matronly subservience and understanding, and pretends not to be hearing the awful thud of a body falling off a wall, over and over again.
“So Hector kills Patroclus, Achilles kills Hector, you kill Hector’s son so he won’t kill you—the cycle ends there, then?”
Neoptolemos shrugs. “Unless there’s some bastards I missed, the house of Priam is at an end.”
It’s never occurred to Andromache to count herself as part of any dynasty or house. She’s a princess, of course. But to hear herself and Cassandra and Hecuba and so many other living, breathing souls denied and ignored, as if their souls passed on when their husbands did—
She touches the front of Neoptolemos’s bronze armour, as if with admiration, and takes hold of a leather strap. Then in quiet, unassuming words, she says, “So is the house of Achilles.”
And she shoves him with strength she didn’t know she had, balancing the fates, and Neoptolemos topples over the prow of his ship, bronze armour glinting in the sunlight, boars-tusk helmet falling off his head and fair curls tossing this way and that in the salty wind.
He disappears under the wine-dark waves with a speed that surprises her, the armour he was so proud of weighing him down (and, she’ll wager, all the lives that hang on it like heavy, sodden fruit).
Andromache has seen plenty of men fall in battle. They’ve fallen to their friends, to their enemies, and when the despair of the Achaean assault had built to the point of no escape, sometimes to the points of their own swords. But as she waits and watches the murderer of her son, her father-in-law, her people drown in the Aegean Sea, she scrubs her hands against each other with a sudden conscious knowledge that now, a man has fallen to her, and she cannot take it back.
Hell hath no fury like a woman with nothing left to lose.
~2~
Hypoplakia – under the mountain – is not quite big enough to be a city, not quite small enough to be a town, storied enough to matter, inconsequential enough that it could vanish without a trace. Herakles founded it generations before, named it Thebe, and all the following generations since called it something else to distinguish it from its cousin.
This is Andromache’s homeland. Even more so, she is one daughter compared to seven son
s, all competing to decide who will inherit their not-quite-city, to pay tribute to Troy, which will in turn pay tribute to the Hittites inland in their grand city—
It’s no wonder that when Hector, son of Priam and prince of Troy, rides into Hypoplakia, there’s not even the glimmer of suspicion in Andromache’s mind that it has anything to do with her.
Except, of course, it does. Andromache is sitting in the olive grove when Hector comes to her. He asks her for her hand, like she is a princess with a dowry instead of an unwanted extra mouth to feed, and she accepts—it is her duty, after all, the first thing that Hypoplakia has asked of her, in her short life, and it’s something she can do for her birthplace. Hector marries her in the olive grove, his hand warm in hers, and they ride away together. He whispers promises into her ear that they’ll visit.
(When Hypoplakia burns to the ground under the greedy swords and chariots of the Achaeans, Hector holds her while she cries. He doesn’t mock her. He swears that he will drive them off or die trying—and Andromache is struck by the sudden realization, oh, oh she does love him after all —and asks him please, please to stay with her.)
~3~
She turns from the prow, staring down at the rows and rows of oarsmen and trying to pretend that her heart isn’t jumping into her throat with fear. In the middle, some of the other Trojan slaves are looking up at her with the selfsame fear, Andromache what did you do – but the Myrmidons are confused, angry, befuddled, trying to understand what has just happened.
Of course, she realizes, on the edge of desperate laughter. The grandchild of the sea. It won’t be long before Neoptolemos resurfaces. How could she have been so foolish?
They’re all waiting for the inevitable. Thetis will bring her grandchild back to the surface, and either she or Neoptolemos will execute Andromache for her insolence.
The ship rests in the dead wind, in haunting silence. Then, one by one, the Achaeans drop their oars and stand, staring up at the concubine, the murderer, still unsure whether she is blessed or cursed.
Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) Page 10