Shell Game

by Benny Lawrence

  All that Lynn had to do now was admit that I was right.

  Right about then a shadow fell over me, blocking the warmth of the sunset. I looked over my shoulder to see a woman of my own height, dressed in the long split tunic of a landsman. Her amber hair—hair that I used to run my fingers through, once upon a time—was in a tight braid wound around her head, and she wore travelling boots rather than her usual calfskin shoes. She was clearly a woman with a mission, which was all fine and good, but couldn’t she be a woman on a mission somewhere far away from me?

  “Guh buh buh wah?” I stammered.

  If you can think of a better thing to say when your ex-lover suddenly shows up aboard your pirate ship, feel free to share.

  “Hello,” Jess said. “Do you have a minute?”

  “IT’S NO GOOD scowling at me, Darren,” Jess said later, after she’d refreshed herself with three of my very expensive apples. “Whether you like it or not, Holly and I are part of this movement now. You’ve been sending refugees through the valley for years, and the numbers are getting to be more than we can handle. Darren, don’t make faces, please. We’re not giving up on you—we just need a long term plan, because the gods alone know how long the war will last. I want to join one of your ships for a while and see for myself the situation on the ground. Then I’ll be better placed to help think of a permanent solution.”

  “How did you get to Freemarket?” I asked, just as Lynn asked, “Was Holly all right with this?”

  “Holly agrees that it’s necessary,” Jess said. “Though, Darren, she did tell me to warn you that she’s going to gut you with a clam fork if you let anything happen to me.”

  I acknowledged the threat with a grunt and a wave of my hand. I am used to threats, though I’ll never understand why people always hold me responsible for everything.

  “And I got to Freemarket on a cattle boat,” Jess went on. “Thatwas a mistake. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at sirloin the same way. Now, I know I didn’t warn you I was coming, but all of us are adults. This isn’t going to be a problem, is it?”

  I was opening my mouth to say something along the lines of Actually, yes it is, yes it really, really is, now that you mention it, but naturally Lynn jumped in first. “It’s fine. You can sail with us for as long as you want.”

  Jess did at least have the courtesy to look at me for confirmation. I sighed. “After all that you’ve done for me, Jess, it’s the least I can do in return.”

  It was true, so I tried hard to mean it. But my sense of languid well-being was gone, replaced by the first twinges of a stomach ulcer.

  JESS AND LYNN spent most of that evening catching up, while I sat nearby, sharpening my cutlass and feeling left out. It was slightly freakish, how well they got along. Every now and then people ask me about this, so I should come clean: I don’t know how you can make your old lover and your new lover get along if they don’t want to. And, for the record, I don’t know how you can stop them from getting along if they do want to. Either way, you’re probably out of luck. Grit your teeth and find a cutlass to sharpen. It does help work out the tension, a little.

  I left Jess about a year before I met Lynn, and the breakup wasn’t what you would call smooth. I don’t think that “smooth” is an option when your lover catches you sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night, with your boots tucked under your arms.

  I tried to explain that it was my duty as a noble to return to Kila and protect the peasants during the war. So my decision to leave her forever had nothing to do with my personal feelings.

  That didn’t go down well at all.

  For the next month, my face sported a bruise the exact size and shape of a wooden spoon.

  Later, Lynn insisted that Jess had forgiven me. Which I found very comforting until I realized that Lynn had reached that conclusion without once speaking with the woman.

  The first time the two of them met face to face was early in my piracy career. This was when we were shipping in the Idiot Kid,and we had come to the secret harbour to restock. Usually, Holly would meet us there. But on that particular day, it was Jess who was waiting by the dock, and even from hundreds of yards away I could see the thunderclouds in her face.

  My first impulse was to go and hide under a pile of fish guts and have the crew tell Jess that I’d been eaten by land crabs. I’m not ashamed to admit it.

  But I was a captain, and a noblewoman, and a fearsome pirate, so I screwed my courage to the whatevering place and tromped down the gangplank. Then I got a close look at Jess, and almost jumped off the end of the pier to escape.

  “Where is she?” Jess demanded, without any preamble.

  “What?” I said, confused. “You mean Lynn?”

  “Don’t play games with me, Darren. I want to know what you’re doing with that girl.”

  “What girl?” Lynn asked, popping up in that startling way she had. “You mean, the girl who has almost perfect hearing and doesn’t like it when people talk about her behind her back? That girl?”

  Jess inspected her through narrowed eyes, and I felt the heat rising to my cheeks. It was a warm day and Lynn wasn’t wearing particularly much. And then there was the fact that she was at least ten years younger than both Jess and I.

  Jess’s lip curled with open distaste. “So. Heroics aren’t enough entertainment for you anymore, Darren? You’ve decided to keep a concubine as well?”

  “I . . . uh . . . ah . . .” I looked desperately at Lynn for help, and she squeezed my hand.

  “Holly must have told you about me,” Lynn said. “So I’m sure she also told you that I’m here because I want to be.”

  “Well, I know that you’re not trying to escape out of a window. That doesn’t make the situation all right.”

  “The situation,” Lynn repeated. “What do you mean by ‘situation,’ exactly?”

  “You know perfectly well what I mean.”

  “Oh, I know what you mean, but what’s the sense in talking around it? Let’s get the facts on the table. You have a problem with this because I’m Darren’s slave.”

  Jess was speechless for ten whole seconds before she could collect herself. “This is sickening. How can you not understand that?”

  “What are you afraid of?” Lynn countered. “This is Darren that we’re talking about. She’s not going to sell me to corsairs, or clap me in irons. Not unless I beg her to, anyway.”

  Jess clapped her hands on her ears. “I don’t need to hear these details.”

  “You ask questions, you have to listen to the answers. That’s how it works. Jess, look. I know you’re worried about me, and that’s very kind, in an infuriating sort of way. But you don’t even know me. It’s sort of premature for you to be judging my choices.”

  “Your choices?”

  “You heard me.”

  Jess breathed: in, out. Tight, controlled. “Maybe we should talk without Darren listening.”

  “I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t.”

  “All right. Fine.” Jess drew herself up, her nostrils flaring, as though she was bracing herself to do something repulsive. “You love Darren. Well, I loved her too, but it didn’t blind me to her arrogant streak. She has this idea implanted in her soul that she has to be better than anyone else. It’s not enough for her to live as an ordinary human being. She has to work miracles and save nations and have adoring maidens grovelling at her feet in gratitude, or she doesn’t see the point. And now here you are, deliberately inflating her ego.You’re feeding all the worst parts of her.” She sighed. “Maybe Darren didn’t force you into this, but she knows better. She shouldn’t have—”

  “Shouldn’t have what?” Lynn interrupted. “Shouldn’t have allowed it? What should she have done? Forced me to do something different?”

  Jess brushed that away. “You don’t get it.”

  “Correction—you don’t get it. And there are parts of it you don’t need to get. You wouldn’t want what Darren and I have, and that’s fine. But you’ll
have to stop thinking of me as a victim.”

  “You really don’t understand.” Jess’s voice took on that familiar patronizing note. “You don’t even realize how much power you’re giving up. Women like us, we so rarely get the chance to make our own decisions, to control our own lives. You have that chance, so why are you throwing it away?

  “You want me to make my own decisions?”

  “In essence, yes,” Jess said. “I suppose.”

  Now she’s in for it, I thought. Lynn’s face was still solemn, but her eyes gleamed. I stood back and prepared to enjoy myself.

  “Let’s try a little experiment, shall we?” Lynn said. Clam shells littered the beach around us. She picked out three of the biggest, crouched, and set them side by side on top of a flat rock. “Darren, I need something small. Your ear cuff, the silver one?”

  I pulled it off with a wince and tossed it to her. She slipped it under the middle shell, and shuffled them, sliding them around each other on the smooth stone.

  “I know what this is,” Jess said, bending over Lynn to watch. “I’ve seen hucksters do it on side streets.”

  “Beauty and brains,” Lynn said approvingly, as she swapped the shells around one last time. “All right. So you know the point of this. Where’s the ear cuff? And this is a crucial question, because that’s the only piece of jewellery that Darren ever wears.”

  “It’s the only thing I’ve found that isn’t too girly,” I pointed out, but neither of them paid the slightest bit of attention.

  “Choose a shell,” Lynn said.

  Jess frowned, looking impatient. “I’ve told you, I know this game. I know it’s a con. There’s no point in choosing.”

  “But that’s how the game works. So choose.”

  Jess glanced at each of the shells in turn. Her eyes flicked up to Lynn’s, questioning, but Lynn just smiled pleasantly back at her.

  At last, Jess set a finger on the middle shell. Then she looked at Lynn again. “It isn’t there, of course.”

  “Of course not,” Lynn agreed, as she plucked the ear cuff out of her sleeve. “Here you go, Darren—no, careful, don’t drop it—oh, you’re hopeless, let me.” She clipped the thing back in place and patted my cheek before she turned her attention back to Jess. “You have choices in a shell game, but all of them are wrong. The thing you’re trying to find is up the huckster’s sleeve. So you can’t choose the right shell—it’s impossible.”

  Jess’s voice grew sour. “I knew that.”

  “You knew that,” Lynn repeated, “and you chose a shell anyway. I gave you three choices, and you knew they were all hopeless, and you knew you could never win that way—but you still played by the rules, because I told you to do it.”

  Jess was annoyed now. “Well, what could I have done?”

  “First thing that comes to mind? You could have knocked me down, sat on my chest, and searched me.”

  “But . . . why would I . . .”

  “To win. That’s the point. The rules of the shell game say that you have to lose. If you want to stand a chance at winning, you have to change the rules. You have to reject the choices that you’re given, and come up with some of your own.”

  An unbelieving smile was cracking Jess’s face. “So what would you have done if I’d asked you to choose a shell? Would you have knocked me down and frisked me?”

  “Something along those lines. Something that you wouldn’t have seen coming. I might have distracted you with a naked dance. Pretended to be a rabid dog? I don’t know. Whatever I did, it would have made me look insane to an impartial observer—like this fine, upstanding citizen here.” She rubbed my arm. “People always seem kind of bizarre when they do something unexpected. But if you don’t break out of the rules of the game, then the choices that you make aren’t really choices at all.”

  Lynn stood up. “I’m going to go say hello to Holly. We’ll probably get some supper started. This one forgets to eat if somebody doesn’t make her.”

  “I know,” Jess said softly.

  “I suppose you would, wouldn’t you?” Lynn agreed, and it sounded like a peace offering. “We’ll call you for dinner in an hour or so. Assuming that I haven’t seduced your wife and run away with her by then. I can be very convincing when I try.”

  She headed off into the trees, threading carefully between broken branches in her bare feet, and Jess followed her with her eyes until she was out of sight.

  “I don’t know if I’m convinced,” Jess said slowly. “But I think I like your slave.”

  And from then on, they were friends.

  Like I say—go figure.

  WE HUNG A hammock for Jess in a quiet corner of the Banshee, and got to our bunk fairly late.

  I woke an hour later to a distant rumble of thunder, and then the hissing of rain on the planks overhead. As usual, Lynn’s aching arm had been right about the change in the weather. I lay with my head propped up for some time, but in the end, decided not to go up on deck. Regon could handle the Banshee on his own, no matter how foul the conditions. And I was drowsy, and warm, and didn’t want to move Lynn’s head from my shoulder.

  But I did take the opportunity to unwind my garrote from her wrist, and stow it back in my own pocket.

  The movement made Lynn stir and groan. I ran a finger very gently down her cheek. Lynn had calluses in all the same places that I did, but her face was soft as peach skin.

  I thought about my girl living in the castle on the island of Bero. I wondered how long she spent with Gerard before she realized that she would have to break the rules in a very big way if she didn’t want to wake up beside that rat bastard every morning for the rest of her life.

  “When are you going to tell me the truth, Ariadne?” I asked her.

  Her eyes didn’t open, but her whole face contorted, as though she was about to cry. “Ar-i-ad-ne,” she said haltingly.

  She wasn’t awake, that I knew. Lynn talked in her sleep, though it usually didn’t make any sense. Just the other day she had sat bolt upright, her eyes blank, and announced solemnly, “But I don’t want to be a sandwich.”

  Tonight things sounded more promising, so I held still and waited. I didn’t know much about the ugly art of interrogation, but I was familiar with the old wakey-wakey technique, which involves snapping a question at someone just as you shake them to consciousness. I didn’t plan to go quite that far with Lynn, but if she should happen to let something slip when she wasn’t fully awake . . . well, that wouldn’t be the worst thing, now, would it?

  Lynn’s lips kept moving, but for some minutes, only mumbles came out. Then she frowned and snuggled into me, and the words became clearer.

  “ . . . selling . . . glorp . . . in . . . big buckets . . .” she murmured.

  Not exactly what I had been hoping for, but I tried to encourage her. “Sounds good, but where would we get that much glorp in the first place?”

  “ . . . probably . . . the pink one . . . but I’m not sure . . .”

  “Definitely pink. It’ll work with your complexion.”

  “ . . . I hate my life.”

  I straightened up a little. “What did you say?”

  Her eyes opened. “I hate my life,” she said again.

  My throat felt dry. “Why the hell are you saying that?”

  No answer. She was staring straight ahead, her eyes glassy.

  “Lynn, are you awake?

  Still no answer. I passed my hand a few times in front of her eyes. Not a blink, not a twitch.

  “Lynn . . . ?”

  She was scaring me with that dead-codfish glare. I reached out a hand to grip her shoulder, but to my relief, her eyes slipped shut again, and she let out a long sigh.

  Would she wake up if I touched her? I edged closer instead, my face inches from hers. “I hope you’re all right,” I whispered to her in the dark. “I hope I’m giving you what you need, because I’m just kind of guessing here.”

  Lynn murmured something.

  “What was that?”
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  She went on murmuring, very fast and so quiet that it sounded like a buzz. Carefully, so carefully, I manoeuvred so that my ear was just above her lips.“IhatemylifeIhatemyhomeIhatemylifeIhatemyhomeIhatemylifeIhatemyhome . . .”

  Over and over and over and over. There was no emotion in it—she recited the words so matter-of-factly that she could have been repeating a mathematical formula or a recipe for chicken stew. And yet, somehow, it seemed like the most honest thing I had ever heard her say.