Beggar's Flip

by Benny Lawrence

  “Certainly, lady. Right away.”

  “Thanks. Your name?”

  “We met at the dock. I’m Milo.”

  “Milo. Buy yourself a drink afterwards.”

  I flipped him a coin, which he caught with a practised hand before jog-trotting out of the room.

  “It’s not like I’m worried about her,” Ariadne announced to her growing audience. “For one thing? Darren’s a cream puff. For another? Gwyn has Darren wrapped around her little finger, and more power to her. The gods alone know how hideously the pirate queen would screw up if my baby sister wasn’t there to hold her by the hand. It’s just that Gwyneth’s always with Darren now. Always. They’re always together. It’s just that . . .”

  Her voice died out, and she leaned over the table, breathing raspily. I took the opportunity to grab her by the shoulders and yoink her up from the chair.

  “All right, you’re done,” I said. “Bollocks and balls, you’re a prat when you’re drunk.”

  “Oh, I’m a prat?” Her knees almost buckled when she stood, but she grabbed a fistful of my shirt to steady herself. With her free hand, she slapped me across the face.

  “Ow,” I said by reflex, though it hadn’t hurt. Ariadne had the upper arm strength of vanilla custard compared to most of the women in my life.

  “You asshole,” she said—she was crying freely now. “They kept us apart all our lives. You couldn’t have let me have a year with my sister? One miserable little year before you swallowed her up?”

  “All right, you know what?” I panted. She was deadweight, and it was all I could do to keep her from sliding bonelessly to the floor. “If you have to take the piss out of me, could you do it pretty much anywhere other than here?”

  There was a soft call—“Captain!”—and when I turned, Regon was waiting at the side door. Gratefully, I lugged Ariadne over and dumped her in his arms. “Start working your way upstairs. If—no, when she pukes, try to stay out of the splash zone.”

  He nodded. “You coming?”

  “In a minute.”

  I expected a lot of wolf-whistles and knowing winks when I went back to the table. Fortunately, a distraction had arrived in the form of more food. Servants passed out little dishes of nuts and olives and anchovies, curd cheese and redcurrants, prunes and medlars. They’d keep bringing snacks of this kind every hour or so until dawn, to fortify everyone for a solid night of drinking.

  Jada was playing with a few olives, and didn’t look up when I approached, but she stiffened. I told myself firmly that I didn’t feel hurt.

  “Listen, Ariadne’s absolutely bladdered,” I said. “She didn’t mean anything that she was saying.”

  Jada crushed an olive between finger and thumb, watching the brine trickle out and drip down her hand. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Like hell it doesn’t matter. She was a total twat and she deserves to be thumped. But she’ll apologise to you tomorrow, or I’ll hang her out the window by her feet until she rethinks all her life decisions.”

  I snagged a handful of redcurrants, and was about to go when Jada lifted her head. “So, you do have a new girl.”

  “Oh. Um. Well, you see . . . there are certain . . . it’s sort of . . . yes. All right, yes, yes I do. I’m with Ariadne’s younger half-sister. I’d ask you to keep it quiet, but there wouldn’t be much point, since Princess Prattlepants just announced it to all the world. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s just complicated.”

  “Why apologise? It’s not like people make a habit of telling me things.” Her gaze snapped to mine, eyes wide and bloodshot, voice tight and trembling. “Father didn’t tell me when he picked out my future husband. I found out by accident months later, when I was going through his mail.”

  The only thing I found surprising in that story was that our father had remembered Jada’s existence for long enough to arrange an engagement in the first place. It did make clear how generally shitty it was to be Jada: the youngest child, the afterthought, overlooked and ignored, the butt of every joke.

  I cleared my throat. “Jada—”

  “What?”

  I meant to pop the big question, there and then. Did you kill our father? Did you spike his roast chicken with hemlock and watch him froth and writhe on the floor? Because if so, frankly, I don’t much care, but Konrad is a different story.

  I don’t know why I lost my nerve. It was something about the soft downiness of the back of her neck as she bent over the table. She was so young, still.

  Instead, I said, “Jada, do you love it here?”

  She gave me a dead, flat, are-you-kidding-me sort of stare, and I went on quickly. “Because if you want another option—well, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but piracy is a growth industry these days.”

  Her eyebrows went up and up. “You want me to be a pirate?”

  “What I want doesn’t matter. I’m just saying, if the time comes that you need a place to go—whether that’s tomorrow or in ten years’ time—I’ll find a place for you.”

  Maybe it’s because I was drunk, or maybe it was a trick of the light, but it did seem for an instant that her face had softened, as if she was considering it. But then her mouth twisted into one of her brittle smiles, and she gave me a punch on the arm that hurt too much to be purely playful. “How are you going to make good on that promise if you disappear again?”

  “I won’t disappear. I don’t know what’s going to happen with—well, all of this.” I waved a hand to indicate Konrad, the Great Hall, the Isle in general. “I don’t know how much time I’m going to spend at the Keep from now on, and I sure as hell don’t know whether I’ll swear fealty to Konrad. But I’m not going to disappear from your life. The House of Torasan is a screwed-up family, but I’m still a part of it. That’s not the kind of thing that anyone can change.”

  I expected another snort, but it didn’t happen. She reached for her goblet, and, without breaking eye contact, she raised it in salute. “Welcome home, Lady Darren of Torasan.”

  She drank and set the goblet down. After only a brief moment of hesitation, she reached out to give my hand a quick squeeze. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Lynn

  “YOU’RE MESSING WITH me.”

  “No, it’s true.”

  “Oh, come on. The captain does not juggle, you lying shitbird—”

  “Not for you, she doesn’t. There are skills which my mistress will demonstrate for the benefit and enjoyment of the public, and there are skills which my mistress will demonstrate for my benefit and enjoyment—and there’s very little overlap between the two lists.”

  I drained my latest cup of the putrid beer. It still tasted like something that had been left out in a field for three weeks and then strained through a sock, but I’d managed to choke down enough of it to get a buzz. I felt, if not happy, at least anaesthetized, and pleasantly smug.

  “You are such a pushy little brat,” Latoya said, rolling a coin across the backs of her knuckles. “Remember the day we met? I was there on the dock in Talhim when you and the captain came down the gangplank.”

  “I have been up and down one hell of a lot of gangplanks. Do you really expect me to remember one specific . . . wait. Was I riding Darren piggyback?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Damn, I do remember that. She was being really whiny about it.”

  “You were hanging on to her ears.”

  “She has big ears. They make good handles. Besides, I had to hang onto something, and I didn’t think she’d want me to use her boobs in public. Is that Corto over by the door?”

  All through the night, the tavern had been growing more crowded. The last men to arrive had to take their drinks outside, and the barkeep stood in the doorway, arms folded, in case anyone tried to make off with a cup. They were singing out there, stamping their feet in time to the chorus. Corto shouldered his way through clusters of raucous men to our table near the back.


  “The locals aren’t that friendly, are they?” he asked, dropping onto a stool.

  “They are all gigantic dickwads,” I said. “Latoya won’t let me murder them horribly.”

  “I don’t want you to start a riot while I’m trying to relax. Once we kill this bottle, we can reopen discussions about murdering them horribly.” She sloshed a third cup full. “Come on, Corto. Scar your stomach with some of this pisswater and tell us the news from the Keep.”

  “No news, except the captain’s already lonesome. She sent me to see how you were doing, Lynn. Guess I’ll tell her that you ran off to party with Latoya the moment she was out of sight.”

  “You want me to add you to my murder list?” I offered. “I can.”

  “Pace yourself. It may be a long haul. The captain gets all teary-eyed every time she sees a familiar rock, so I think we’re going to be here a while. You don’t want to slaughter everyone on the Isle the first night.”

  “Says you.” I put my head down on the table, cheek against its sticky surface. “Stupid island stole my pirate. Everyone on it should die.”

  The buzz had drained away, leaving a sick, swimming dizziness behind. The smoke from the sputtering rush-lights stung my eyes. I squinched them shut.

  “You done for the night, killer?” Latoya’s hand ruffled my hair. “I want one last drink before I drag your lightweight ass back home. That work for you?”

  “Fine.”

  I settled my head more comfortably on my folded arms. Above me, Latoya and Corto talked quietly. I didn’t bother to follow the conversation, just let myself drift with the rise and fall of their voices.

  The whole scene was falling away. The curses and sniggers of the men at the bar, the stench of piss and rotten meat, the tuneless singing outside, all faded. There was just the warmth of my friends on either side of me, the good salt-and-smoke smell of them, the promise of getting home soon. I let myself sink. A warm green wave rolled across my mind, rolled and crested and—don’t you dare fall asleep!

  My eyes shot open. Some kind of shockwave had gone through me, a jolt of sheer panic that rattled my heart around my ribcage. And now I was awake, I was almost frenzied, my body trembling with the same desperate energy that makes you jerk your hand off a red-hot stove.

  Some savage instinct, deep in my hindbrain, had ripped into me with sharp little claws of bone, tearing down the curtain of booze and boredom between me and the universe.

  Don’t fall asleep.

  You will die if you fall asleep here.

  I straightened up. My lips were painfully dry. I licked them, felt the flakes of skin come away. Every inch of me was tight, stretched, and tingling.

  Latoya put a hand on Corto’s arm, stopping him mid-sentence. “Lynn—everything all right?”

  “No.” I looked around. Greasy plumes of smoke trailing from the hearth. Sour-faced men muttering over their ale-cups. What was I missing?

  “Lynn . . . ?”

  “Quiet.”

  My eyes were closed when that surge of panic hit, so it couldn’t have been something I’d seen. I closed my eyes again, pressed the heels of my hands into the sockets, stopped breathing, stopped thinking, and listened.

  Outside the tavern door, they were starting yet another round of the song they’d been singing all night:

  In the chicken run, under sunset skies,

  All the birds goggle up with their bead-black eyes

  And they strut in the yard with dainty feet

  Too proud to believe they could ever be meat . . .

  They were terrible singers, but they all knew the words. They knew them by heart.

  . . . See the cockerel preen, see his feathers shine

  As he lords it over the ducks and swine.

  Lazy and fat, he’ll sit and gloat

  Till the butcher’s hand is around his throat . . .

  I grabbed Corto—got his bad wrist by mistake—ignored his pained yelp. “Have you heard anyone else singing?”

  “Lynn, you bitch, I could still lose this arm—”

  “Just answer me. Have you heard anyone else singing tonight?”

  He stared at me, confused. “They’re singing all over the village.”

  . . . And the butcher swings, and the hatchet hacks

  And the blood drools out like red red wax . . .

  “What song?”

  “What do you mean, what song?”

  “What song are they singing all over the village? Is it that song?”

  . . . And the earth is pink with the dying sun,

  As the chickens follow him one by one . . .

  By now, Latoya was listening too, and understanding flickered across her face in one sudden flash. She stood up without a word, threw a handful of coins down on the table and stalked towards the door. Corto still looked baffled, but he tossed down his drink and hurried after her.

  . . . And they flap and thrash, and they cackle and squawk

  And they peck and they scratch—but a hen’s no hawk.

  When the sun goes down on the killing day

  They’ll learn too late that they can’t fly away . . .

  A man in a ratty dogskin cap leered up from a crowded table as we passed. It shouldn’t have been enough to scare me—wouldn’t have been enough, on an ordinary day—but a thin bitter voice was in my head now, asking me how I could have forgotten how easy it is to die.

  Outside, chilly fog filled the narrow alleys, the damp of it like a long tongue, licking. All around us, invisible in the fog, men were singing. A raucous pack at the end of the street howled the words and stamped in time to the rhythm. A trio of old men sang in thin, quavering voices. A young boy’s voice was high and clear, but feverish with emotion, terrible fear or terrible hate.

  I caught myself against a post and tried to catch my breath. Latoya touched my shoulder, not saying anything, not needing to—just reminding me that we didn’t have a second to waste.

  “All right,” I said hoarsely. “Corto, we’re heading for the ships. Don’t catch anyone’s attention. Don’t look anyone in the eye. And don’t run, but walk fast. I’ve been so stupid, and now it may already be too late.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Lady Darren of the House of Torasan (Pirate Queen)

  THE TRIP FROM the Great Hall to our bedroom was unpleasant for everyone involved. Ariadne stopped once to puke behind a tapestry, once to lean out of a window and gulp night air. When we had to climb the stairs, she swayed and stumbled and eventually gave up, plonking down on her backside right in the middle of the flight. Regon and I had to carry her the rest of the way.

  By the time we reached our room, I was thoroughly sick of her. I would have cheerfully served her up to a pack of man-eating wolves right then—stuck her on a plate and put little sprigs of parsley around her and everything. I had to settle for dumping her on the floor as soon as we got inside.

  It was left to Regon to help her into bed and pull the coverlet over her. She was a mess, gown sodden with sweat around the neck and under the arms, and Regon frowned at her doubtfully. “Are we going to stay awake and watch her?”

  “We are not going to stay up and watch her.”

  “What if she sicks up and chokes on it?”

  “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m planning to laugh and point.”

  I spun around before I yanked off my tunic and trousers, more to hide my fury than to preserve my modesty. Regon had seen me naked countless times, and it wouldn’t matter if Ariadne saw, since I would be killing her anyway. Once I’d stripped down to my shirt, I tried to fold my court clothes, made a mess of it, tried again, did even worse. I gave up, sort of rolled the clothes into a ball and kicked them into a corner.

  When I turned around to find some place to hang my cutlass belt, Ariadne was sitting up in bed, looking vaguely repentant. “Darren?”

  “Princess.”

  “Would I be right in thinking that I made something of an ass of myself tonight?”

&nb
sp; “You would not be wrong.”

  “I feel that something like an apology should pass my lips.”

  “Oh, it’s far too late for that. Tomorrow at breakfast, while you’re nursing the mother of all hangovers, I’m going to march you in front of Jada and you are going to grovel as you have never grovelled before.”