Shell Game

by Benny Lawrence

  As I stood and scowled and sneered at the right moments, I pondered this new puzzle of Lynn and the market. What was there about this place that could possibly frighten her? We spent most of our time in one kind of mortal peril or another (nasty men with big swords, food poisoning, take your pick) so it was hard to believe that she would hide from a herring seller. But if she really was afraid of something around here, why didn’t she tell me about it and send me off to beat it with a stick? Did she trust me that little? Or did she just want me to figure things out for myself? That was the only explanation that made even a particle of sense, considering the way she kept trotting out the same old shabby excuses.

  All right. (I aimed a particularly savage sneer at a nearby longshoreman, and he gulped and ducked his head.) What about the market made Lynn afraid? What about it was different from the dangers we faced day to day? Well, it was on shore. But we visited islands and deserted coasts all the time. Lynn didn’t exactly dance down the gangplank, but she didn’t seem unnerved by the experience, either.

  Was it the people?

  I almost dismissed that theory. Lynn spent almost all her time with pirates, vagabonds, and roustabouts. The vendors and shipbrokers at the market were pushy, but at least they were respectable . . .

  Respectable. My eyes shot wide open.

  That was it. So simple. The Freemarket was the only place where we had the chance to mingle with Kilans who weren’t criminals or paupers. At the market, you could rub elbows with members of the ruling class—wealthy merchants, or the nobles who served as captains on trading ships or war galleys. And Lynn wouldn’t set foot on the island, because if she did . . . then one of those people might recognize her.

  “Finished here, captain,” Corto said, loping over. “Are we taking the boxes straight back to the ship?”

  I pulled myself from my reverie. “You are. Take the others and get a move on. I’ll follow shortly.”

  Corto put his thumbs in his pockets and waggled them worriedly. “Alone?”

  There was no real risk that he’d disobey me—the Kilan commoner who can stand up to a noble is one in a thousand—but I snapped the words out anyway. “You heard me, you mutinous dog. If there’s to be any more discussion, it’ll be between you and a rope’s end.”

  “Aye, captain,” Corto said hurriedly. “Aye. Understood.”

  “Good,” I snarled. “Move your carcass.”

  He moved, but as he moved, he muttered, “Your slave is going to kill us for leaving you.”

  “It’ll be good for you,” I called after him.

  “What? Being killed?”

  “It teaches humility.”

  Then I twiddled my thumbs and tried to look natural until they all tramped out of sight.

  AS SOON AS the door swung shut behind Latoya, I picked my target. One of the shipbrokers was a little fat man with beady, calculating eyes. The perfect informant is easy to threaten and easy to bribe, and the little man checked both boxes, as far as I could see. I put on a suitably forbidding expression and ambled up to him, taking my time.

  The merchant was busy flicking the beads of an abacus and muttering under his breath, and for the first minute he pretended not to notice me, but I could see the sweat beading at the back of his neck. At last, he deliberately, oh so deliberately, set down his stylus. “Is there something more that I can do for you, my lady?”

  I laid both my palms flat on his counting table and leaned over. “I need to speak with you. Privately.”

  He didn’t seem nearly as frightened as I would have liked. “My lady, I’m . . .” He coughed. “Well, I’m flattered, frankly. But I’m a married man, and—”

  Oh, for the love of sainted trout. I got a good two-fisted grip on the front of his florid green shirt and hauled him up until he was standing on tiptoe.

  “Ah,” he said, talking more quickly, “ah. Right. I can see we aren’t looking for love. But you do remember the market truce, right? And all the soldiers that enforce the market truce? The soldiers who will put your head on a stake in the harbour if you don’t make an effort to be civil?”

  That was true, and it severely cut down my options. I gave the merchant a little snarl anyway as I let go of his shirt, but it wasn’t one of my best. Then I fumbled in the hidden pocket of my coat, grabbed one of the heavy red-gold coins that I kept there for emergencies, and slapped it into his chubby hand.

  He glanced at it casually, and then, for just a second, his eyes flickered wide. Then he stowed it swiftly in his bulging money pouch and ushered me to a small office at the back of the building.

  “What can I offer you?” he asked, broad and expansive, once we were back there. “Wine? Ale? Tea? I could send out for fig juice. Meat pies? Parsnip fritters! A girl? A boy? Or both at once? No? I could throw in some warmed oil. Perhaps a sheep?”

  “Thanks ever so, but I would settle for a heaping bowl of you shutting up right now.” I threw myself into a chair padded with wildcat hides. “All I want is information. What’s your name?”

  “Ballard,” he said, inclining his head. “Was that the only information you wanted?”

  Smug little ass. Moments like that, I felt a lot more sympathy towards all the thugs who wandered around casually gutting merchants. I pushed my feelings away, forced one of my uglier smiles, and asked, “What do you know about Lord Iason’s daughter?”

  NOT MUCH. THAT was the first fact that emerged, although he tried to hide it with bluster.

  I waited impatiently as he waffled for five minutes, and then cut him off. “Everyone knows that Ariadne is his only child. Details, Ballard. What does she look like?”

  “What does she look like,” he repeated worriedly. “Well, of course she’s been cloistered, she doesn’t move in public, I’ve never seen her . . .”

  “But you’ve heard things. Talk.”

  He pulled nervously at his lip. “Well, they do say that the Lady Ariadne takes after her father.”

  I had seen Iason of Bain only once, and that from a distance, at the wedding of my fourth cousin twice removed. Everyone had been half-mad with delight and terror to have him on the guest list, and for the entire week of festivities, he’d been surrounded by drink-stewards and dancing girls. Though I could still picture him vaguely, I didn’t want to trust my memory on a point like this. “And what does Lord Iason look like?”

  “Very fair, my lady,” Ballard said. “Pale hair, pale skin.”

  I pictured the girl I had left on the Banshee this morning, her hair sun-bleached almost white. She was as tanned as any of my sailors, but the skin on the inside of her wrists looked like milk.

  “Slight of stature,” Ballard continued. “Short, for a man.”

  Lynn barely came up to my shoulder. I could lift her with one hand. “How old is she?”

  Ballard counted on his fingers. “She would be twenty-one. There were great celebrations three years back for her eighteenth birthday. Perhaps you remember them?”

  I didn’t. Three years back, I was in the process of being exiled from my home for showing a bit too much affection to a certain lady beekeeper. Keeping up with current events was not a priority for me at the time. “Do you know anything about Ariadne personally? Her interests, her character?”

  Ballard winced, thinking hard. “The only thing that comes to mind is that she’s said to be—well, very outspoken. She has the stubbornness of a woman, so they say.” He saw my expression and quickly rephrased. “A young woman, I mean. But I imagine that’s changed in recent years. After her marriage, I mean.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MY FEELINGS AT that moment? Well, imagine someone prying your teeth apart, forcing a stone the size of a skull down your throat, and then shaking you so that it bounced around in your stomach. That would be a fair approximation.

  “Now that she’s what?” I asked. With a surprising amount of calm, I think, considering.

  “Married, my lady,” Ballard said, surprised. “She was married shortly after she turned eighteen. To
Gerard of Saupon.”

  Gerard? Gerard? I’d met that bastard. He’d spent almost a month on Torasan Isle, years back, during some kind of trade negotiation. He might have been the heir to a powerful house, but he was also a snivelling, useless boy, with a face like a flour weevil and a habit of groping every servant girl who walked within his reach. Eventually one of them got sick of it and threw him in the fish pond—for which she was soundly whipped, while Gerard watched and glowered. I couldn’t imagine gallant little Lynn putting up with that moron for a second.

  On the other hand, her father probably didn’t give her much of a choice.

  “She got married shortly after she turned eighteen?” I asked slowly.

  “About three years ago, yes. But Gerard was killed some time afterwards. A riding accident, I believe. I don’t recall exactly when. There were no children from the marriage.” He squinted into the distance. “I don’t remember hearing any news of the Lady Ariadne after that. Wait—no—there is something. If I recall correctly, she’s now betrothed to the second son of the Lord of Oropat, but the wedding has been delayed for years. Some dispute about the dowry. Does that answer your question?”

  I was still trying to cope with all the new information. Lynn, my Lynn, was married long before we met. Lynn was now a widow. Did she even know that?

  “My lady?”

  “That’s all,” I said, shaking myself from my stupor. “You can keep the change; you’ve been very helpful.”

  Ballard lifted his silly hat. “All my thanks, my lady.”

  I debated with myself for a minute, shrugged inwardly, and then grabbed his shirt again, pulled him in close, and gave him the most absolutely foul look that I could muster. “Don’t go offering me any sheep the next time I’m here.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, my lady,” he said, gently detaching himself. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  I WALKED SLOWLY on my way back to the ship, a sack of the more expensive and delicate supplies slung over my shoulder. As I walked, I tried to match up the dates. Lynn—Ariadne—was married to a spoiled princeling at age eighteen. By the time she was twenty, she was living in a miserable little fishing village without so much as a pair of shoes or a spare cloak to her name. When did she run away from home, and why?

  It had to be Gerard, I decided. Marriage to Gerard would be enough to make anyone want to head for the hills, but especially someone as fiercely free-thinking as Lynn. Since she was the heir to the house of Bain, her prime duty after the wedding would have been to whelp as many children as she possibly could. No surprise that she balked at that, especially since every pregnancy would have begun with a conjugal visit from the Maggot of Saupon. That’s what she was running from, but what was she running towards? Did she intendto spend the rest of her life in that squalid village where I’d found her? Surely not. Maybe she had something better in mind, but the war scuppered her plans by making it impossible for her to travel. She couldn’t reach her real destination and got stranded in the wilderness. By the time I happened along, she was in real trouble, but she knew how to seize an opportunity when it came.

  Obviously, her father Iason had kept it a secret that she was missing. Not too difficult, since, as his precious only child, Ariadne had spent her entire life in seclusion. And since her husband was dead, no one would think it strange that she wasn’t popping out babies every year or so. To keep up the pretence that she was still at home, Iason had betrothed her to another idiot princeling, but he was finding excuses to put off the wedding. Dowry dispute, my hairy foot.

  Iason must be looking for Lynn—he had to be looking—but he was doing it very, very quietly, to prevent any scandal. Unfortunately for him, Lynn really did know how to hide. First she buried herself in the poorest, most miserable village she could find, and then she re-invented herself as a slave girl on a pirate ship. Not exactly where you would look for a princess.

  So Iason’s meek inquiries wouldn’t be enough to uncover his truant daughter. Sooner or later, all of Kila would find out that she was gone. When that happened, then it was just a matter of time before the childless Iason would be deposed and some other self-important twit would take his place. I couldn’t force myself to care about that prospect. Iason’s daughter obviously didn’t.

  Ariadne and I made quite the pair. An exiled noble and a runaway princess, turned pirate and slave. That was not something that happened in Kila every day. Or—well—ever.

  The thought cheered me. I was back in the harbour by now, running a professional eye over every ship that I passed. The Almathea looked leaky, but that could be fixed with a good scraping and caulking. The Silver Hind, a large galley with a milky-eyed doe as its figurehead, was almost new. I like a ship that’s weathered a few storms, myself. I wasn’t just killing time by looking the ships over. Chances were, I’d capture some of them for my fleet in the months to come, so I was getting a head start by inspecting them in advance. I gave them all a piratical grin as I strolled past. See you soon, my pretties.

  From a long way off, I could make out the red sails of the Banshee, and a small figure pacing restlessly in front of them. I checked my pace a little. I had forgotten that I would be in trouble.

  Lynn clumped down the gangplank to meet me and folded her arms. “I know you have an explanation. I know it’s going to be thrilling.”

  “I’m sorry, all right?” I said, as we boarded the Banshee together. “I know you were right about bodyguards, I just get edgy having people at my elbow all the time. I won’t do it again.”

  “Hmph,” she said, but she sounded mollified.

  I took the opportunity to distract her further. “Report. Everything all right with the ship?”

  “The ship,” she said, “is well. A couple of thugs have been standing on the dock there, peering at us inquisitively and scratching themselves where they shouldn’t. I put the harbour patrol on notice. And Regon had a rush of blood to the head and challenged Latoya to arm wrestle. I expect him to make a full recovery. Eventually. Oh, you bought apples.”

  “I bought apples,” I confirmed, leaning over so she could snag one from the top of the pack. “Not giant rubies, as you would expect from the price of them, but apples. They better be damn good. Or I’ll have to go back and snarl at the shopkeeper.”

  She was already halfway finished eating her first, but she paused. “Sorry, should I not have taken one?”

  “No, it’s fine. Just . . . take your time with it. Savour.”

  I slung the sack to the deck, took an apple for myself, and perched on the gunwale beside her. The water and sky were orange and gold. The tide lapped softly against the standing ships. Beautiful moments like that make me feel guilty, because I can never forget that I’m basking in nature’s splendor while other people are dying in their own filth. I explained this to Lynn once, but she, ever the pragmatist, pointed out that guilt was beside the point. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve earned a beautiful moment, she said, just take strength from it if you can. If you don’t love the world, she said, you won’t fight for it.

  I studied her out of the corner of my eye. She was eating the second half of her apple in slow, deliberate bites, licking drops of juice from her fingertips. That was Ariadne of Bain, I told myself—the heir to the most powerful house in Kila, with my mark of ownership tattooed on her shoulder, wholly content as she munched a piece of fruit. The idea should have terrified me, but instead, I found myself warmed. She had a world of other options, but I was the one she’d chosen.

  “I’m sorry I had that panic attack this morning,” I said.

  She waved that off. “You have panic attacks at regular intervals, Mistress. It saves me the trouble of checking to see that you’re still breathing.”

  “Yeah, well.” I rolled my own apple between my fingers. “What does it . . . Why do you . . . I mean . . . How does it make you feel?”

  I congratulated myself for getting the words out, but, maddeningly, Lynn came right back with, “How does what make me feel?”


  “When I—you know—”

  “When you tie me up?”

  “Yeah.”

  She took a small, thoughtful nibble, her eyes on the horizon. “Cherished.”

  I grinned in spite of myself, but I aimed it downwards, towards the water. “You don’t get scared?”

  “Ah—no, Darren.” She kept her tone as serious as possible, which wasn’t very. I knew what Lynn sounded like when she was trying not to laugh. “No, pirate queen, for some reason I’m never scared of you. Go figure.”

  And why would she be scared of me? Even at my worst, I was twenty times better than Gerard.

  I stretched in the warmth of the setting sun. My edginess was gone, my whole body languid and content. Lynn had given me a puzzle to solve, and lo and behold, I went and bloody solved it. Hadn’t even asked for a clue. It looked like maybe I was kind of a genius, which was something I’d always privately suspected might be true.