“Go,” a grizzled bear of a man said to her. Although he was a different guard than she remembered, the bloody whip was the same. He pointed with it at the doors, and as he did, she saw a straggle of her flesh drop to the ground.
Her hatred bloomed, giving her a small burst of strength. “What’s your name?” she asked. His eyes narrowed, and she explained, “I like to know the name of the people I kill. It’s only polite.”
He laughed at this, his face going scarlet and his eyes disappearing in a crinkle of flesh, tears forming at the corners. He turned and told the next Corsair, who exploded in gales of laughter. The story and the laughter spread, and while it did, the man with the whip sighed between chuckles.
Jillybean risked the whip, asking, “What’s so funny? I’m being serious.”
This induced a new burst of laughter. “Oh, you was bein’ serious.” More laughter. “Why didn’t ya say so? Ha-ha! Here be the truth, honey-britches. The truth is, you’re a joke. Ya just don’t seem to realize it yet.”
“We’ll see,” she said, and then pushed her way into the church. As bad as the outside looked, the inside was markedly worse. Rats scuttled beneath the overturned pews and dropped their filth on a floor carpeted with thousands of scattered Bible pages. An evil smell hung on the air, one which every survivor of the apocalypse knew. It was the smell of a rotting body.
A dozen or so sputtering candles lit the church, which was a simple rectangle divided by a center aisle with ranks of toppled, befouled and broken pews to either side. Near the front, some of the pews had been set back up and a huge throne-like chair had been pushed in front of an altar that had been thoroughly and disgustingly desecrated. The immense chair had stained red velvet cushions and directly in the center of the seat was the crown that had been fashioned for her. Hanging from the back of it was the robe—it dripped a brown substance.
Upon seeing it, she wavered both physically and mentally. Her legs shook and her mind filled with blessed darkness. She was on the verge of fainting when the whip brought her around. Fire raced down her back. It left her gasping, and she lurched forward to escape the next blow. Soft laughter from above floated down at her, making her wince as much as she had from the whip.
It was the Captain. He stood in the center of the balcony, dominating it like a dark god. As always, he wore his signature black attire; the only color showing about his person was a touch of silver from the twin .44 caliber Colt Anaconda revolvers he wore strapped to his lean hips. Behind him, his entourage filled the poorly lit balcony. There had to be thirty people with him, but to Jillybean, they were only a single amorphous blob of leering shadows.
Two faces stood out in the crowd, and both were faces Jillybean that hated with a hot passion. The first was Joslyn Reynolds, her beautiful dark auburn hair flowing over the shoulder of an electric blue dress. The dress was completely out of place. She looked as though she was attending an opera, that is if her face hadn’t been twisted into a grimace by the stench and filth around her. The other person who stood out was Eve. She wore ever-shifting layers of black, so that sometimes it seemed she was in a pantsuit, or a gown, or biker’s leathers. She grinned, her eyes dark with excitement.
In sudden fury Jillybean looked around for something to throw at her. Before she could find anything suitable, the Captain’s rich voice boomed out, “Take your assigned place, your Highness. We have a lot of work to do. Being Queen of the Slaves isn’t just about tiaras and throwing fancy balls. You have obligations to attend to. You have decisions to make about your fellow slaves. Important decisions.”
Jillybean was shoved in the back to get her moving again. Oddly, the shove was just about the nicest thing anyone in Hoquiam had done for her so far. She glanced back at the bearish Corsair. “You could have whipped me, yet you didn’t. Maybe I won’t kill you,”
He scoffed quietly and then darted a look up to the balcony, afraid he had made a mistake by not whipping her. The Black Captain hadn’t noticed one way or the other. He was waiting while one of his slaves arranged a blanket for him to sit on. “Just go,” the guard hissed.
She leaned forward and the chains grew tight as she dragged the heavy barbells down the center aisle until she reached the dais, where she heaved them up the steps, one at a time, before addressing the crown and the robe. “I don’t think I can do this,” she said to Ipes.
Maybe just close your eyes and do it. Imagine that you’re a real queen again. Jillybean tried, but even with Ipes and Sadie whispering encouragement, the only image that came to her was the moment when Stu Currans knelt before her on a cold, wet dock in San Francisco. He had been the first to acknowledge her, and she could even hear his words echo in her mind, I pledge my life and sacred honor to you, my Queen.
“I can’t,” she whispered. Not even a whip could get her to put the crown on her head. She waited for the whip to come, slashing her flesh like lightning.
The whip did not fall, and it was the Captain who inadvertently came to her rescue. “That’s right, let your attendant help you,” he called out.
Her attendant was a collared slave with black hair. She was grubby in her ill-fitting and ragged clothes. They had been made for a man far larger than she and were pegged at the ankle and rolled at the wrist. She kept her face pointed down toward the floor, even when she mounted the steps.
“Don’t forget to curtsey,” the Captain warned, much to the amusement of the people filling the church.
The woman curtsied and then reached for the crown, showing Jillybean soft hands and only recently bruised wrists. On impulse, Jillybean breathed in deeply, searching with her faculties beyond the stench of the dead body and the feces. There were familiar scents about the woman that weren’t normal with the other slaves she’d come in contact with: coconut lotion, guava extract shampoo, perfume that Jillybean couldn’t name but could imagine came in a fancy gold-etched bottle.
She knew the woman from the scent alone. “Do you now wish that I had killed you, Colleen?”
Colleen White jerked before slowly lifting her chin. Her face bore a spectacular bruise beneath one puffed-up eye. She glared hatred at Jillybean, who only smiled, suddenly flush with strength. An unexpected hungry desire for vengeance gave her a thrilling tingle.
“Well?” Jillybean asked when Colleen refused to answer. Jillybean laughed, “I could kill you here and now. Beg me, and I’ll do it. Get down on your knees and beg me to kill you.”
The guard with the whip waved his leather lash so that it caught the Black Captain’s attention. “Sir? This one is threatenin’ to kill that one there.”
“That seems rather unbecoming in a queen,” the Captain mused. This was greeted with a perfect howl of laughter from the growing audience. He put up his hands to quiet them. “You may be the Queen of the Slaves, but you do not own them. And keep in mind, your positions may switch at any time.” The crowd let out a collective: oooh!
Eve was right there with them, looking excited at the idea of some sort of infernal competition between slaves, as if she wasn’t one of them. Which I’m not, Eve said, speaking through the buzz of the crowd. In case you forgot, I was queen first, and not some stupid slave queen, either. I was a real queen. You’re the one who pushed me away. You’re the one who thought you could do it all alone. Well, now you get your chance. This is going to be all on you until you can figure a way out of here. I’m not going to take another beating for you and neither will Sadie.
A chain appeared in Eve’s hand. She gave it a yank and suddenly Sadie appeared beside her, wearing a golden collar that was a perfect match to Jillybean’s. Sadie opened her mouth to say something, only to choke as Eve gave the chain a yank.
“Someone slap her,” the Captain said. “She’s zoned out again. Not you, Colleen. Oh, she’s back. Your Highness, if you don’t mind behaving like a proper slave that would be great. You are supposed to be setting an example. Yes? Okay, let’s get the crown on first and then I think it’s high time you got to work.” His dark eyes gli
ttered as Colleen hefted the hideous crown.
“You deserve this,” Colleen hissed, as she placed the crown on Jillybean’s head. It was uncomfortably heavy and, as it wasn’t padded or properly shaped, it threatened to fall off at any second. To keep it on, she had to sit with her neck perfectly straight. The robe came next, and if anything, it was even worse. There was a ghastly familiar smell to it that had Jillybean crying.
It smelled like Stu, except it also possessed a corrupted dead smell that she couldn’t equate with the handsome, sturdy Hillman. The flush of energy she’d felt earlier drained away as quickly as it had come, and now all she had were tears. They came steadily and prompted shouts of laughter from the crowd and a cold sneer from Colleen, one that was an exact match to Eve’s.
During this hilarity, the Black Captain sauntered down from the balcony. He walked up the center aisle, one hand on a pistol. The new slaves flinched away, none daring to look him in the eye. The poor creatures had a sad, gray sameness to them. Tall, short, thin, slouched, it didn’t matter. In Jillybean’s eyes they looked like the rejects from the potter’s wheel, like castoffs, like garbage.
The Captain treated them as such, fearlessly walking through their midst. He came right up to the throne, smirked at Jillybean’s tears and then moved to stand right behind her. She could feel his presence over her shoulder; it was as if he exuded evil.
“I say we get this show on the road,” he said. “Let’s have the first two prisoners.”
A man with a broken nose and shattered teeth was pushed forward. He stared at the floor, his head bobbing and jittering on his long neck. The man next to him was scrawny to the point of being emaciated; he held his genitals cupped in his hands as if he expected to have his parts lopped off at a word. He too refused to look up, and yet, Jillybean recognized him.
As though he were reading her mind, the Black Captain asked, “Do you recognize these traitors?”
“I don’t know him,” she said of the first man, “but that’s Rat-faced Ronnie.” For some reason Ronnie, whose nickname was perfectly apt, drew in a staggering breath and stepped back, looking like he was about to try and make a break for the doors.
“Yes,” the Captain said, “and ol’ Rat-face has been a bad boy. He’s been disloyal and is accused of being a traitor. The same is true of this other thing.” He sneered at the other prisoner. “This is Mordecai Monroe. Do you know him? Did he work with you?” His tone with Mordecai was different; it was searching.
The Queen shook her head, nearly losing the crown. “I don’t believe I ever talked to him.”
“Interesting.” The single cryptic word was all he put forth in regard to Mordecai. He seemed to dismiss the two prisoners altogether as he came around to Jillybean’s side. “Your job is quite simple. All you have to do is choose one of the two to die for their sins.” Jillybean’s spine, which had been as rigid as steel, turned to rubber and she slumped. Once more, lives were in her hands. Once more blood would be as well.
“What if they didn’t do anything wrong? What if they just happened to be a part of a crew that was giving up altogether? Or on a sinking boat?”
He leaned back away from her, feigning shock and disgust. “Your Highness! I would never kill a man for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I understand the desire to live better than anyone. These people aren’t being sentenced to death for a moment of weakness. No, no, no. They’re going to die because they had every chance to kill you, but they didn’t. No one even tried except for Leney’s sad attempt at poisoning you. They had guns. They had opportunity. They even had motive! But no one did a damn thing.”
Shaking his head, he looked down on the prisoners, his disdain for them written plainly on his features. “You are all stinking cowards!” His voice was so powerful that the flames from the candles seemed to bow to him. “Look at her! Go on! Look at what you were all so afraid of. Look at your Queen. She’s nothing but skin and bones. She’s barely even a woman.” The two men couldn’t raise their heads. The crowd stared with judgment and contempt. Forgetting for a moment the origin of the robe, Jillybean pulled it closer around her bare shoulders as her eyes drifted down and away.
The Captain scoffed, “No, she’s not even close to being a full woman! She’s just a girl, and none of you had the balls to kill her. One bullet. That’s all it would have taken. One bullet and you would’ve been a hero. Instead…”
More head-shaking, this time accompanied by a sigh. “Instead you’re on trial for your lives. But don’t look so glum. I’ve decided to make this fun. Since you bowed to her and groveled at her feet and gave up everything for her, I think it’s only fitting that your Queen decides your fate.” He turned to her. “By the way, I decided to make this into a game. You’ll get one minute to question each prisoner, and then all you have to do is pick one of the two for execution. If it seems too simple, you’d be right.” He grinned, letting the moment hang in the air so that the entire congregation leaned forward, eager to hear what deliciously cruel twist he had in mind.
“I will also make a choice.” The crowd oohed again. “If our picks match, then that man will be killed, and the other will become a slave. But if they don’t match, well, I’m afraid they’ll both have to die.”
The crowd loved the idea and cheered like mad. During the pandemonium, Jillybean glanced once at the two men in front of her. They were both sadly weak creatures. She was sure they had committed evil acts in their time—just as she had. A month ago, she might have been able to let them die in whatever horrid manner the Captain had in mind without batting an eye. It was different now. They had been her men, perhaps not totally, still they had fought for her and maybe, had things been different, they might have done enough good in time to atone for their crimes.
“What if I don’t make a choice?” she asked. The real question on her mind: What if I can’t make a choice?
“Then I’ll hang them together at once, and I’ll tie you to their bucking bodies so you can look into their eyes as they die. Maybe you’ll be close enough to hear their black souls drip on out of them.” He chuckled at the visual. “Trust me, with these two there’ll be no ascension and no Pearly Gates. So, are you ready to go? Good. Let’s have some paper and something to write with.”
Pen and paper were fetched, and the Captain set a timer on his watch. “One minute on the clock, aaaand go!”
If the Captain thought that Jillybean was too crushed in spirit to step up to the challenge in front of her, she quickly proved him wrong. In fact, he inadvertently assisted her by turning the whole process into a game. Her agile mind approached the questioning of the prisoners in a way that wasn’t designed to discover guilt or innocence. That would have been a waste of her minutes, since it was obvious that the Captain thought they were both guilty. Her questions were asked with the Captain in mind.
What was he looking for? What made him choose one over the other? Could questions be directed at one man and not the next to sway his mind? Could she paint one as particularly treasonous and the other as simply unaware or dragged down by a situation out of his control? Her one aim was to keep from having both men killed and in this, she failed three straight times. Four men joined Mordecai Monroe and Rat-faced Ronnie in the corner before she was able to guess correctly.
She didn’t recognize Dustin Heilman, the one-time captain of the Tempest, until she heard his voice. Even with fear making it warble, she knew the gruff captain. He had knelt before her, and for that insult he had to die. This was the Captain’s tell. He was a textbook narcissist and any affront, perceived or actual, to his character was grounds for death. Dustin had been gifted the position of captain, which to a Corsair was almost a royal position; a captain was supposed to have undying loyalty.
From then on, Jillybean had the upper hand and saved ten more men in thirteen tries. The new slaves stood away from the condemned men and although they had been saved, they looked almost as miserable as the ones slated to die. They knew better than to h
ope. Hope in Hoquiam was always a mirage, and sure enough they watched as the Captain’s toothy grin gradually dimmed with each minor victory by the Queen.
His growing ire was not lost on her. She could read it in his eyes. As smart as he was, he wasn’t good at hiding his emotions or his thoughts. The wheels turned in his head and she saw them working round and round as if his skull was glass, and she was well aware the moment he realized his major mistake: he had allowed her to engage her mind.
Then let him win, Ipes suggested. These are Corsairs, you know. They’re more his men than yours.
“Maybe. Maybe I should,” she told the zebra. But she wasn’t going to. The game allowed her to cling to a shred of sanity and with it some of her old strength returned. She knew it wouldn’t last. She knew that his goal was to have the enormous weight of guilt stack up on her, to crush her, to leave her broken and witless, a drooling nothing that he could parade around for a few months before hacking her head off and sticking it on his wall. And yet, like a drowning man, she clung to this illusion of sanity for just a bit longer.
The final pair of men were brought forward and questioned. Thirty seconds in, Jillybean knew which man the Captain would want killed: Wet Jack, the first mate on board the Red Pill. But she also knew that he knew, she knew which he would choose, so obviously she couldn’t choose Wet Jack. Unless…
It made for a convoluted mental puzzle, which she unraveled. When he showed his answer, a sneer entwined his full lips for a split second before he readjusted them back into his confident smile. He strode in front of the Queen, eclipsing her, turning her back into a nothing in everyone’s eyes. He asked the room, “Now, how should we go about killing them?”
Generation Z (Book 6): The Queen Unchained Page 7
