She seemed on the verge of having a regular royal hissy fit, and I had seen thosebefore, so I raised my hands, surrendering. “You’ll need to tell me more about this guest.”
Exasperated, she glanced at the sun, checking the time. “I suppose so. I really need to get back. I don’t suppose you can find your way back to the stable on your own? Fine. Fine. We can talk as we walk.”
“FINALLY,” ARIADNE GASPED, when we reached the stable door. “My god, it’s been hours. I’ll have to lie myself blue in the face to explain this one to my bodyguards. Look, I’m going to talk to Lynn tonight, let her know that you’re on your way. Should I tell her something else from you?”
“Tell her . . .”
My mind went blank. Tell her I love her? Tell her I’m not mad about Timor anymore? Tell her that I’m sorry, as usual, for being a stupid chump, as usual?
“Tell her that I’m coming as fast as I can,” I said at last. “And give her this.”
I dug in my pocket for the coil of leather, pressed it into Ariadne’s hand, and closed her fingers over it. She inspected the thing, and then her eyes came up to meet mine.
“This is a weapon, right? A . . . a garrote, you call it? Does Lynn know how to use it?”
“Lynn’s an artist with it. I’d feel a hell of a lot better if I knew she had it in reach.”
She winced. “If my mother finds it, things are going to get worse in a very big hurry.”
“It’s a strip of sinew, not a battle axe. Lynn’ll be able to hide it. Please, Ariadne.”
She still looked reluctant, but she tucked it somewhere into the piles of apricot silk she was wearing.
“And now I really have to go,” she concluded. “Remember to watch for the flag. Oh, and Darren?”
“Yes?”
She grabbed a fistful of my shirt and yanked me down to her. “You do plan to marry her, don’t you?”
“Urk,” was my first, not very intelligent, response, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that there was only one safe answer. “Yes?”
Ariadne jerked me down even harder.
“Of course,” I added. And then, when that didn’t seem to be working, “Very soon.” And then, “Next week?”
She released my shirt and dusted her hands off like someone who had just performed an unpleasant but necessary task. Then she solemnly shook my hand.
“So glad to have met you,” she said. And then she was off, her blonde curly head bobbing through the crowds.
My gods, I realized, there are two of them.
Maybe we did have a chance of winning.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lynn
Evening, Day X
“COME ON, ARIADNE,” I muttered to myself, pacing up and down Melitta’s room. “Come on, come on, come on . . .”
It was late in the evening, and, for the first time in almost ten hours, I was alone. Melitta had kept me at her side all through the day. During the morning, I trailed behind her as she made a tour of inspection around the castle (and you can be sure that the servants all snapped to attention when they heard her coming). Then I stood behind her chair when she and Iason ate lunch in their private dining room. Afterwards, we returned to her chamber, and she handed me a heavy piece of embroidery to unpick while she sewed. In all that time, she didn’t say a word to me. She would beckon to show where she wanted me, frown when I made a misstep.
She didn’t even make me go down the stairs for wood and water that day. A footman did that, slinging the buckets around with casual ease. It should have been a relief (toting an armload of logs up a hundred–and-twenty stairs is no joke), but it wasn’t. I would have carried wood or cleaned out stables or castrated cattle or done any job, just to get a few minutes alone, safe from Melitta’s piercing eyes.
The only thing that kept me sane was the prospect of seeing Ariadne that evening. We might be able to figure out some way to deal with the crackdown, the two of us together. Just as the two of us together had been able to engineer my escape.
We had talked about running away, on and off, ever since my mother died and Melitta brought me upstairs. But it was Ariadne’s looming marriage that finally pushed us into action. Once married, she would either have children or she wouldn’t. If Ariadne had children of her own, then I wouldn’t be needed, and Melitta would make sure that I ended up in a burlap bag below the tideline. If Ariadne turned out to be barren, then I would be needed, and Melitta would make sure that what happened next was nowhere close to fun.
We knew it wouldn’t be easy. We knew that they would come after me. But if I could manage to stay clear until Ariadne got pregnant, then they would stop looking for me. Surely. Even Melitta wouldn’t track me across the known world, just for the pleasure of throwing me out of a tower window.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I told my sister, the day of the escape, as I was tying her into a chair with strips of cloth torn from her petticoat. “But I hope that you get pregnant very, very fast. Tomorrow, even. Does that make me an awful person?”
“Of course not. I’m hoping the same thing.”
“That’s sweet.”
“Not really. I—I want them, you know.”
“You want what?”
I must have been looking at her funny. Ariadne fidgeted in the chair, as best she could, considering that she was bound hand and foot with all of the best knots that I knew. “I want . . . children. Not for the greater glory of the house of Bain, I mean. I just want—you know— children. I want to be a mother. And maybe I never can be.”
That brought me up short. I had come to think of babies as things that you only had because someone else forced you to have them. If someone had offered to cut my womb out, I’d have thanked them with tears in my eyes. But what the hell. Tastes differ.
“If you want children, you’ll get them somehow, whether you’re barren or not,” I told her. “Remember the Clever Lass. Remember the fishing net and the goat. There’s always another way, right?”
“That’s what we’re hoping,” she agreed. “Now gag me before I start to snicker. You look truly ridiculous in that dress, have I mentioned that? Remind me again why we chose the pink one?”
There’s always another way, I reminded myself as I paced up and down the tower room. I knew that it was true; I just hoped that we could figure it out in time.
“ABOUT TIME YOU got up here,” I snapped when I heard the door open. “Now tell me what was so important—”
I turned, and my voice, quite simply, died.
It was her, it was her, it was Melitta; the candle she was holding made a demon-light leap in the pupils of her eyes. “I can’t say that I’m disappointed,” she said slowly. “Because I expected this, of course. But oh Gwyneth, little Gwyneth, this is something you should not have done.”
All the blood in my body surged down towards my feet. “I didn’t . . . I haven’t . . .”
“Hush, Gwyneth, hush,” she said, as though she wanted to soothe me. She set the candle on her nightstand, where it lit the stone walls brassy red. “I know perfectly well what’s going on, so don’t dig yourself in any deeper. Sit down.”
My legs folded beneath me, and I started to sit on the floor. Melitta snapped her fingers impatiently. “Beside me, on the bench. That’s right. And now we can wait together, can’t we, my Gwyneth? We can see who it is that you’re so anxious to meet.”
Her long fingers reached out and snuffed the flame of the candle. We were left in the flickering firelight. Her hand found mine and clutched it tightly, her nails digging into my palm.
“You’ll need to be quiet now, Gwyneth,” she said, and her voice was still light, dreamy. “Quiet as a mouse . . .”
The fire snapped in the hearth. Melitta’s breathing was quick and eager beside me. On the stairs below, dead silence. I felt my hand, the one in Melitta’s grip, growing clammier and colder.
Ariadne would burst in any minute.
It would be fine, I told myself fiercely. Ariadne would come up
with some kind of excuse; she’d lie, or bluster, or cry, if absolutely necessary. Or even if she couldn’t, what would it matter? Ariadne never got punished. She would be sent to her room, maybe. Maybe. And only if Melitta was in an especially bad mood.
Footsteps. Soft, slippered footsteps as someone took the stairs two at a time. Melitta’s grip on my hand grew even tighter, crushing my fingers together. Her breathing rasped louder. She was excited; the energy of it was pulsing from her. And I knew—
I knew Ariadne wouldn’t be punished, and I knew that didn’t matter. I had just given Melitta the opening that she had been waiting for, aching for. If she found out about my friendship with her daughter, then it didn’t matter whose fault it was. I would be the one to bleed for it . . .
The footsteps began to head up the last landing.
“She’s here!” I yelled—the words just tore themselves out of me. “She’s here, she knows, go, run! Run!”
Melitta was on her feet and so was I; she stalked for the door and I threw myself in the way; she brushed me aside, wrenched the thing open and took a cursory look around—but she already knew what I knew. Those few seconds had been enough of a delay; the person mounting the tower stairs had heard me, the footsteps had fled back down. Ariadne was gone, the blood sang in my ears, and Melitta’s face was a plaster mask as she closed the door again.
“That was pointless,” she commented, moving towards the fire. “I’ll find out who it was soon enough.”
“He’ll never be back here,” I said wildly. As a bluff, it was probably too little and too late, but anything to muddy the trail. “He’s not stupid—”
“Then he’s got a damn sight more brains than you have.” Melitta was holding the fireplace poker now, and with its tip, she carefully raked over the logs. They hissed, steamed.
“I’m leaving this room now,” I said, as if by saying it I could make it happen. “I’m going to go to bed.”
“No,” she said, giving the logs another thoughtful poke. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think that you’re leaving this room. You’ve been getting up to all kinds of things in the dark hours—that much is clear. It seems that I’ve been giving you entirely too much freedom. Especially at night. That will have to change. You’ve been running wild, my girl, and the only thing to do about it is to shorten your leash.”
Just those few quiet words, and I felt myself slipping. I knew that she meant it. She wouldn’t leave me alone in the tower anymore, wouldn’t leave me alone, wouldn’t give Ariadne any chance to reach me. And just like that, the one thing that made life bearable in the castle would be gone. Just like my mother—whom I could barely remember—just like Darren—
“I won’t let you do this,” I said, to her and myself. “I won’t.”
She turned, still holding the poker. “Gwyneth, Gwyneth. We’ve discussed this, don’t you remember? You have that tendency, that unfortunate habit, of thinking that you’re special. But you’re not special, Gwyneth, are you? You’re my servant; you belong to me just as my horse and hound and falcon do, except that you weren’t nearly as expensive. You tame a horse by working it to exhaustion, and you tame a hound with whippings and a falcon with darkness and hunger. I’m not sure what will work best on you, but I’m prepared to try them all. For as long as it takes, Gwyneth. Until you sit or kneel or run or hunt on command. Until you are able to remember your place in the world. I wonder what would help to jog your memory? Perhaps if you sleep at the foot of your mistress’s bed—”
“You are not my mistress!”
I screamed it, louder than anything I’ve screamed before or since, and her eyes seemed to go wide for a second, but perhaps that was just a trick of the light. An instant later, certainly, her face was the same as ever—pale, faintly amused, faintly scornful.
“Get on your knees,” she said, and the tip of the poker twitched. “Go on now . . .”
I launched myself at her. It was pure fury, no trace of method, but I think I meant to go for her eyes. She stepped out of the way nimbly, the tip of the poker weaving patterns in the air.
“Every second, you’re making it worse,” she said. “Every second that you disobey me, you’re getting in deeper. You’ve been here before, Gwyneth, you know how it ends. This is pointless; you know how it ends . . .”
There was a fierce pain tearing at my chest, and I knew I was close to breaking down. I went after her again, but this time there was no real strength in my fists. I pounded her chest harmlessly, three times, four times . . . the blows wouldn’t have dented a pound of butter. Then, without any effort, it seemed, Melitta caught me by the back of the neck and tossed me down on the floor. The poker glinted in the firelight as she raised it over her head.
It came down, it came down, it came down, it came down, and in the next minute, I lived sixty different violent lives and died sixty ugly deaths. The pain was crimson wells, it was dragons’ teeth, it was singing birds and it was tines of lightning. I screamed, I went numb, I thrashed, I couldn’t move, I begged her to kill me, I begged her not to; I blacked out and woke up and screamed again through tears, my face was a mask of mucus.
At last the blows stopped; I curled, waiting, and flinched when there was a gentle touch on my face—Melitta wiping it clean with her own handkerchief.
“This can happen for as long as it needs to,” she said softly. “This will just keep happening until you learn. Now get up.”
I didn’t think that my legs could possibly carry me, but the poker twitched in her hand and I somehow lurched upwards.
“You are not going anywhere,” she said. “Say it.”
There was no conscious thought involved. I blurted, “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You belong here.”
Another twitch. Gleam of fire along the metal. “I belong here.”
“You belong to me.”
“I belong to . . .”
The words stuck in my mouth for a moment, no more, but that was too long. The poker swung, and pain exploded on my elbow. I don’t even know how hard she struck me that time, but the blow seemed to crush nerves that scorched all the way up my arm. The scream that came out of me didn’t even sound human.
I staggered, nearly fell . . . but Melitta pointed the tip of the poker at my chest, as if it was a sword. “Get . . . up!”
I straightened, gasping for air.
“Step back. Twice.”
She must have opened the closet door when I was unconscious. Two hobbling backwards steps took me into it. The walls closed in on either side.
Melitta was a dark shadow, framed by the door. “You belong to me. And you are not going anywhere. Get used to it.”
The door crashed shut.
And it felt like another one crashed shut in my own mind.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Darren, formerly of the House of Torasan (Pirate Queen)
Morning, Day XI
“I DON’T CARE if it’s traditional, I’m not gonna say it!”
Lynn’s eyes danced. “You’ve forgotten about my superhuman powers of persuasion, have you?”
“Oh-ho-ho, no.” I clawed my way out of the bunk, snatched up the blanket and wrapped it around me. “No more persuading. You’ve been persuading me for hours now. I love being persuaded and all, but I think I pulled a muscle in a very important place. Besides, it’s my turn; I still haven’t done you.”
Lynn propped herself up on one arm, lounging across the narrow wooden shelf. She was completely bare—I’d taken the only blanket—but that never bothered her. “Mistress, the sky is not going to fall if I take two turns in a row. And I’m enjoying myself.”
“I hate being a taker.”
“You have to take things sometimes. You took me, right? Where would you be if that hadn’t happened?”
That was easy. “Dead.”
“Exactly. But if you’re really feeling guilty, then why don’t you get off your piratical high horse and say it already?”
There was just no way I was goin
g to win this one. I let out a feeble sigh and kicked the deck boards with my toes.
“Shiver my timbers,” I muttered, and then hurried on. “Lynn, it just sounds ridiculous. What is that even supposed to mean?”
“Well, your timbers are your legs,” she said, slipping off the bunk. “As for the ‘shiver’ part—”
“Captain—captain—captain—”
“What, what, what?” I snapped, rubbing my eyes. “Dammit, Regon, there ought to be a rule against waking your commander in the middle of a very good dream.”
Heavy shutters fit over the stable windows, so the light was dim, but I could make out the grim lines on my first mate’s face. “The flag is up at the tower. And captain—”
Shell Game Page 27
