Shell Game

by Benny Lawrence

  That was also when I became aware that the woman in my arms was gently, ever-so-gently, pulling away.

  I released her and took a step back, baffled.

  “Thank you,” the woman said politely. “That was very nice. But I think you meant to give it to my sister.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Lynn

  Morning, Day X

  SOMETHING WAS DEFINITELY up.

  When I came up the stairs with Melitta’s breakfast tray, there was a green handkerchief wedged in the crack of Ariadne’s bedroom door. This was a message in our old code, and meant simply, “We need to talk. I’ll find you later.”

  My father spent an hour in the map room with his advisors, and when he left, he was wiping his forehead on his sleeve. He looked tired, but pleased, so I figured that something must have gone right for him that morning.

  But when I got back from dumping the wash water, he and Melitta were at it again, behind the closed door of her bedroom. I went partway down the stairs so that I could listen without being seen.

  “It solves one problem,” Iason was saying. “But that’s hardly the real issue here. What I really want to know is how you’re going to deal with her.”

  Melitta’s response was quieter. I could hear the venom in it, but couldn’t make out any words until the very end, when her tone suddenly soared: “. . . that defiant, sullen little slut!”

  You never hear anything good about yourself when you eavesdrop. Have you ever noticed that?

  Iason’s voice was half highly-important-and-overstressed-man, half helpless-nice-bloke this time around. “Woman, listen to yourself. You don’t need to go that far.”

  “You have always said, you have always said that it was my decision how far to go.”

  “It was, it is, but Melitta, listen. If you lose control, she could end up dead. And you know as well as I do what will happen if that girl dies.”

  I pinched my inner elbow, hard.

  Their voices sunk to murmurs. I considered going closer, but that would leave me in plain view if one of them suddenly yanked the door open.

  At last, Iason spoke hard and businesslike. “It seems like you have it all figured out. So why bother to ask me?”

  “I want you to say it, Iason.” Melitta’s voice had grown even sharper, now that she had almost won. “Look me in the eye, and tell me that I can do whatever I think is necessary.”

  The voices went quiet again. I strained my ears until my jaw hurt, but the next thing I heard was the door opening. It swung, it didn’t bang, which meant that they had reached some kind of agreement.

  Not good. Not good at all.

  My father, Lord Iason, clumped down the stairway at a methodical pace, left-right-left-right. A tired man, a busy man, a man who wished that people wouldn’t bother him with unnecessary drama. He gave me the merest glance as he passed.

  “She wants you,” he said. “Go on now.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Darren, formerly of the House of Torasan (Pirate Queen)

  Morning, Day X

  “YOU’RE ARIADNE?” I repeated for the fourth time.

  “Yes, yes,” the noblewoman said impatiently. She was leading us through a labyrinth of narrow alleyways at high speed. The three of us almost had to jog to stay level with her.

  “You’re Ariadne,” I repeated again, for a total of five, “and Lynn is your sister? But Iason only has one child—everybody knows that.”

  “Everybody knows it, do they?” The scorn in her voice was stinging. “Well, you’re out of your mind if you think that the public knows everything about my father. He has any number of guilty little secrets, and a few guilty big ones. The guiltiest and biggest is Gwyneth.”

  “Gwyneth?”

  “Lynn, I mean. Sorry, Lynn. I keep forgetting. Here we are.”

  She ground to a halt by a low-slung plank building. It had a heavy, iron-clamped door with a bastard of a padlock, but the princess produced a key from somewhere in the billowing folds of her dress, and clicked it open. The door didn’t budge when Ariadne tugged on the handle, but Latoya quickly joined her and wrenched it ajar with one hand. Beyond was the smell of musty straw and leather. A disused stable, it looked like.

  “This used to belong to my husband,” she said breathlessly. “It was his hunting stable, and he’s spectacularly dead now, so I suppose it belongs to me. Anyway, no one will wander in here. You two—yes, you, the short man, and the other one that looks like a bear in trousers—you’ll have to wait here. Darren . . . you are Darren, aren’t you? Pirate queen, right? Darren will be back in an hour or so.”

  Regon gave me a quick sidelong glance, and I nodded my approval. The two of them slipped inside, and I heard the grunt as Latoya hauled the door back in place.

  Ariadne tapped her foot. “Quick, we have to hurry.”

  I didn’t know how much hurrying she could manage, considering the yards of apricot-coloured silk that were draped around her, but she bundled her skirts up under one arm and trotted along gamely. Within a very few seconds, we had emerged onto a busy, rain-washed street. This was the lower city, where the ordinary folk of Bero lived, and the people tramping by were peasants—fishermen, fruit vendors, masons. I straightened my salt-streaked clothing and tried to act natural.

  “I haven’t got long,” Ariadne said over her shoulder as she picked her way through the puddles. “They know that one of your ships crashed on the reef last night. I heard my father talking about it this morning.”

  “How did you know that I made it to shore?”

  “I didn’t. Just hoped. And I knew that if you did make it this far, you’d need my help to get any farther. I had to throw a really terrible tantrum to get out of the castle—said I wanted to go riding—slipped all six of my bodyguards and lord knows where they’re looking for me. I’ve only just enough time to show you the way.”

  “Where are we going?” I panted, trailing after her. “Where’s Lynn? How is she? Can you get me to her?”

  “Halfway up to the wall. In the high turret. Pretty awful. And no. The fortress is heavily guarded even at the best of times, but my father tripled the soldiers on tower watch once Timor got back here with Lynn. This is going to be a tough nut to crack.”

  “Well, they have to open the gates sometime, don’t they? I mean, supplies don’t levitate into the fortress.”

  “Every shipment that goes through the gates is searched, no matter whether it’s going in or out. Every bag of apples, every wagonload of hay, every empty barrel. Trust me on this. Lynn and I spent years trying to figure out a way to beat the system . . .”

  A brilliant thought occurred to me. “Wait—you can get outside, right? What if Lynn pretends to be you, and—”

  She gave a snort of the utmost impatience. “Did you honestly think we never thought of that? That’s how we got her out four years ago, of course. But they’re watching for it now.”

  “Well . . . for fuck’s sake, you’re a princess. Can’t you grab a few guardsmen and order them to escort Lynn down to the harbour?”

  “I don’t have that kind of authority.”

  “Then screamuntil they think you have that kind of authority.”

  “You’re underestimating my father’s paranoia. He’s obsessed with the idea of assassins. Nobody but my father or the captain of the guard can approve an unscheduled entrance or exit, and I can’t change that no matter how loudly I scream. Besides, we’re not talking about getting just anyone out of the castle. We’re talking about Lynn, and she’s on a very tight leash at the moment, and it’s only going to get worse. If he has to, my father will spend his entire fortune to make sure she stays put.”

  I let out a frustrated pant. “But . . . why?”

  She raised an eyebrow, surprised. “You mean, you don’t know?”

  THERE WAS SILENCE then, as she led me through a dizzying series of back-alleys and narrow streets, up stairways and down other ones. I gave up interrogating Ariadne, and just tried to keep up. I’m not m
uch of a runner. I mean, I’m in shape and everything, but you don’t get much practice jogging when you live on a ship.

  “Ariadne,” I said at last, puffing along behind her. “I’m sorry about this, but if you don’t explain to me exactly what’s going on, then I’m afraid I’m going to scream. I’m sorry but I shall.”

  “Lynn said you were smart,” she called, again over her shoulder.

  “She’s over generous. Use small words.”

  “Oh, fine.” She waited for me to catch up. “It’s not complicated, really. It’s the simplest of stories. The oldest of stories. My father is lord of the house of Bain and I am his firstborn, his heir. My father is also a selfish pig and while my mother was pregnant and he couldn’t sleep with her, he used her handmaid instead. Elain, her name was. Nice lady. Liked cats. Before long, she was pregnant too. My mother Melitta—who is likewise a selfish pig, but nobody’s fool—figured it out very quickly. She flew into a rage, dragged Elain twice around the castle by her hair, then threw her out. Elaine went down to live in the lower city—here, in other words. Fortunately for her, she had an uncle who was willing to take her in. And a few months later she had her baby . . .”

  “Lynn,” I finished. “So Lynn is Iason’s bastard. But why was he so hell-bent on finding her?”

  Nobles aren’t famous for restraining their sexual urges, so most lords have at least a few half-blood children scampering around the servant quarters. But bastards can never take the throne, or marry into a good family, or, indeed, wield any real power at all. For all practical purposes, they’re irrelevant. So their fathers either ignore them or get rid of them before they can cause trouble—tossing them into the army is a common trick. I’d never heard of anyone going to such lengths to drag a half-blood home.

  Ariadne knew all of this. She raised an expressive eyebrow. “Five-day fever.”

  “What—” I began, and then, slowly, “Ohhhh.”

  “My father caught it off of a Tyranese ambassador, and my mother from him and I from her. The disease didn’t spread any farther, but the damage was done. Both my parents had serious cases. Running scabs over half their bodies, so I’m told.”

  “Oh lord,” I breathed. I had to slow to a halt, leaning on a nearby wall for support, as everything suddenly snapped into place. Five-day fever is about as ugly an illness as you can imagine, but it has one lasting effect that, to a noble, would matter more than any other. “It left them both sterile.”

  “Sterile as hot glass. I haven’t seen for myself, of course, but apparently my father’s balls actually withered. So you see. We need to go up here.”

  I barely saw the stairs beneath my feet as I followed Ariadne. I can try to explain how a Kilan noble would feel about losing the ability to bear children, but unless you’re a Kilan noble yourself, I doubt that you can even come close to understanding. Nothing meant more to nobles than the survival of their bloodline. Children meant richness, fame, immortality. Childlessness meant failure, dissolution, annihilation; it meant a once-great house would crumble, be eaten from within by rebellion and rivalries, and would finally die and rot.

  It had always been suspicious that Iason had only one daughter, and of course there had been rumours. But there are rumours about every lord in the islands, myths that breed the catcalls and insults that sailors swap in taverns. I had never for a moment thought that one of them could be true, that Iason of Bain really couldn’t father a child. Just as I never thought that Nimian of Jiras actually slept with turtles.

  This changed everything.

  While I was still deep in thought, we emerged onto a stone porch that jutted from some high building—a temple, maybe—far above the streets. The lower city was spread out beneath us like a map, and we had a good view of the castle up the cliff to the west. But I couldn’t concentrate on that, not when things were finally beginning to make sense. “So if anything happened to you, the house of Bain would be completely wiped out.”

  “It’s worse than that,” Ariadne said grimly, resting her arms on the balustrade. “I had the fever as well, remember.”

  “You mean, you’re . . . well . . .” I couldn’t quite bring myself to say it, but I gestured vaguely in the direction of her stomach, and she grinned.

  “You’re shy for a pirate. I don’t know whether I’m barren. Not for certain. None of us do. I had a much lighter case of the fever than either of my parents. No scarring, and I was only in bed for a week. But my physicians at the time said that there was a fifty-fifty chance.”

  I was willing to bet that the physicians who made that assessment didn’t live long afterwards. “Is it true that you were married?”

  “For a full two years,” she confirmed, “and for all that time, I was being rutted as regularly as a prize mare. And nothing came of it but some medium-bad chafing. Now, that’s not proof. Maybe Gerard was the one shooting blanks. But I wouldn’t place any large bets on it.”

  My jaw locked. “And that means . . .”

  “That means that my mother and father can never have another child. And I probably can’t have one at all. And you know that I won’t be able to hold the throne if I’m childless. If the house of Bain, my father’s line, is going to survive, then he needs grandchildren and there’s only one place he can get them. There’s only one person who has both my father’s blood and a working womb. And that’s—”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Lynn

  Noon, Day X

  “GWYNETH.” MELITTA ACTUALLY looked up at me when I entered the room, for a change. “Sit down.”

  She was at the small tea-table. I sat in the chair across from her, warily. Something was definitely up.

  The table held a tray of cakes and hot spiced wine steaming in two silver tumblers.

  “Please,” Melitta said, waving an airy hand towards the food. “Eat something. Wherever you’ve been, you can’t have been fed well. You’re a skeleton.”

  The sheer hypocrisy of it made my bones itch, but since I’d been sick three times the night before and hadn’t been given breakfast that morning, I was more interested in eating than arguing. The cakes were probably richer than was good for me, but I was hungry enough not to care. I took a cake and cracked it in half. It was filled with sweet almond paste, and that broke down the last of my resistance. I moved the tray closer to me and set to work. Within five minutes, half of the cakes were gone. The wine was strong and scalding. After a few mouthfuls, there was a comfortable burn all the way through my torso.

  Melitta watched me indulgently as I ate. “Good, aren’t they? When Iason conquered Gantra last month, he brought me back a new pastry cook. I’ve told him that he needs to conquer Retlio and bring back a new seamstress.”

  I wiped my mouth on my sleeve. The wine had made me light-headed. “I’m not a pet, you know. You can’t buy my love with food. Iason never really understood that, but I thought you were smarter.”

  “It would be stupid to try to win you over that way, wouldn’t it?” Melitta agreed. “Considering the history of our relationship. And we do have a lot of history, don’t we? Go on and think about it.”

  I didn’t want to. “What’s your point?” I asked, as I reached for my cup of wine again.

  Melitta’s hand darted forwards. I flinched back, but her target was my wine-cup. She hit it backhand; the wine splashed over the table and floor in a long bloody stream, staining the rug. The next second, she grabbed the tray of cakes and flung it against the wall. The tray clashed horribly; the cakes pattered down onto the stones with soft little thumps.

  It didn’t startle me, exactly. I was surprised that she hadn’t done it earlier, and was glad that I’d eaten as fast as I had. But it was a sign that we were moving into a less pleasant stage of our conversation. Under the table, I rubbed my sweaty palms against my tunic.

  “Gwyneth, I couldn’t care less whether you love me,” Melitta began. “I care about one thing. Just one. Exactly one. I care about whether you do what you are told to do, when you are told
to do it, instantly, perfectly, and respectfully. Because you haven’t done that in the past, have you, Gwyneth? You’re rude, or you’re sullen, or you’re slow, or you’re lazy, or you talk back, or you go off and whimper to my husband. I don’t think you know how much trouble you’ve given me, over the years. Do you think I enjoy having to straighten you out?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, because it was obviously expected.

  The apology seemed to excite her, somehow. “There, you see? That’s it. That’s the insolence. No matter what you’re saying, there’s never a grain of real respect, real . . . submission. You still fancy yourself a sort of princess, don’t you? You still think that your attachment to Iason makes you special in some way. And that, my girl, makes you believe that you’re too good to do what I ask of you. Too good to be a servant, too good to do chores for your keep, too good to run errands for Iason’s wife, too good to bow your head to the lady of Bero . . .”