Beggar's Flip

by Benny Lawrence

  If I’d said all this to Darren, she would have dissolved all over the floor in a puddle of guilt, and I would have had to somehow assemble her back together again before she could do anything useful. But Ariadne was made of stronger stuff.

  “Children,” she said again, flatly. “Babies. You’d walk away and leave them to die?”

  “We’re always leaving babies to die! You haven’t figured it out? If we’re stopping fires in the east, we’re ignoring plagues in the west. If we give twelve loaves of bread to twelve starving children, there’s a thirteenth child who gets screwed.” Latoya had almost caught us up, so I grabbed Ariadne’s wrist and yanked. “Shut up and move.”

  She moved, but she didn’t shut up. “This is not a hypothetical plague island half a world away. There are children at the end of this hallway who could be dead in an hour.”

  “Us too. Could be dead in an hour. In case you’re forgetting.”

  “Oh . . . balls, Gwyneth, what’s the matter with you?”

  “That’s not my name.”

  “You of all people should want to keep horrible things from happening to children. You of all people!”

  She got very shrill at the end, and when I jerked her close to me, the others must have thought I was trying to quiet her down. Just as well. I didn’t want anyone interrupting us. I was in no mood to humour well-intentioned people. Not even Darren. Especially not Darren.

  “Stop right there,” I said. “Stop before you tell me what I should do or should feel or should be. I spent nine years as your mother’s plaything. You do not get to tell me what I owe to the universe.”

  “I spent nine years watching her play with you!” Ariadne tore away, chest heaving. “Do you understand why I can’t watch more children suffer?”

  “Do you understand how stupid it is that you think that’s something you can control? You know what? Don’t answer that. Don’t say anything. Don’t talk to me tonight. This is your show, yours and Darren’s. Do what you want, but don’t expect me to applaud. This is not my war.”

  I put on speed, outpacing her, and had almost caught up with Darren when we reached a window that opened onto the courtyard.

  It was still full of people with torches. Not a great sign. Torches and mobs in close proximity to each other tend to be a bad thing as a rule.

  As we watched, a chunk of the glowing mass below us broke off and flowed out the castle gates, towards the docks. It separated into droplets as it spilled, a spray of liquid fire. It would have been pretty if we hadn’t known that each glowing drop was an armed man with a torch held high, running for the harbour.

  “Bollocking fuck,” Darren said softly. “They’re going after the ships. If they take the Banshee and the Sod Off—”

  “They won’t,” I said. “Latoya sent Corto to get the ships underway as soon as we extracted our heads from our asses long enough to figure out what was going on. They’re supposed to hug the coast and slip away just far enough to stay out of sight. Corto said there’s an anchorage to the northeast—”

  “There is. And it’s in rowing distance.” She blew out a long, relieved breath. “Good thinking.”

  “Yes, it was good thinking, it was superlative thinking, but that doesn’t matter much since your thought process seems to be, ‘You know what? Survival is overrated. I’m going to try one of those sucking chest wounds I’ve heard so much about.’”

  “I’ve got no intention of dying tonight.”

  “Then you’re walking in the wrong direction.”

  “Well, we’re almost there,” she said, as if that meant anything at all. “Look, we’ll find another way out. It’s what we do, remember?”

  I wondered then what it must be like to have a voice in your head whispering that everything will turn out all right in the end. The voices in my head whisper very different things.

  Darren was stalking along so vigorously that she stalked right past the nursery door without seeing it. Regon had to grab her shoulder and turn her around. At the edge of my vision, Ariadne was trying to catch my eye. I ignored her.

  Darren jiggled the door handle. Locked.

  “Lynn,” Darren said—an order—and stepped out of my way.

  I couldn’t see any light around the edges of the frame, but I put my ear to the door anyway, shut my eyes and listened. There it was, the smothered ripple of sound that meant that the room was full of people trying desperately to keep quiet. There were whispers, a few small sobs, shuffling feet. There was something else too, a strange alien sound amongst all the terror: a lullaby. Lullay, my dear babe, my dear son, my sweetling; lullay, my liking, the pearl of my heart.

  “They’re awake,” I reported. “So do they know what’s going on?”

  “Good question,” Darren said, squinting at the door hinges. “I’ve got an even better one. Where are the guards?”

  Latoya had lost patience with questions, good or otherwise. She cracked her knuckles. “Move.”

  We all flattened against the wall and let her do her thing. Latoya always did have a way with doors. She reared back and delivered a shattering kick to the wood, right below the latch. Planks snapped and splintered and the door lurched open.

  Small things scattered when we came in, like mice in a grain bin when someone lifts the lid. Children dove underneath beds and behind curtains, clumped together in the shadows, cowered in corners.

  One of them didn’t run: a chunky, heavyset boy, dressed only in a nightshirt, who stood in front of the door with a drawn cutlass. His stance was decent—almost good enough to make it seem that he knew what he was doing—but the blade was too shiny to have ever been used. Corto, the best of our swordsmen, had a blade so pocked with nicks and burrs that it looked like a star map, and Darren wore out her cutlasses faster than her socks.

  Darren didn’t even break stride walking up to the kid. He raised his sword—the tip of it trembled—she dealt a quick sharp blow to his forearm, and the sword fell from his suddenly nerveless fingers, clanging on the floor. Darren kicked it away.

  The room was lit only by the embers still glowing in the hearth, but even in the dimness, I could see the boy’s lower lip quaver. Darren took him by the shoulders and gripped hard.

  “Are you here to kill us?” he asked, his voice a thin, high treble.

  “What? No. We’re here to help. Hark, when did you leave the banquet?”

  He drew a shuddery breath. “Right after you left. Uncle—I mean, my lord Konrad—said I needed my sleep. But halfway through the night, our guards woke us up. They were saying . . . things. Mostly to the girls. Awful things. Things that I never heard anyone . . .”

  He halted, shivering. Darren gave him a gentle shake. “What happened? Did they hurt anybody?”

  He shook his head. “The nurse told them that they had to leave, and they left. I think they were drunk. But they said . . . they said we’d all be dead by morning. They said that the Freemen were coming to cut all our throats.”

  “Oh, they said that, did they? Probably because they’re a bunch of witless, ferret-cocked, jizz-gargling bellends.”

  Hark choked out a startled laugh at that, which brought some colour back to his cheeks. When Darren pulled his head close to her, he let her do it. She didn’t quite hug him, but she held him for a few seconds, and when she let him go, he seemed steadier.

  “Anyway, they’re wrong,” Darren said. “We’re going to get you all out the back way, and onto my ship, and then we’re going to sail away, and then I think we might moon them, just for the hell of it. How’s that for a program? Are you all right with that?”

  The kid still looked sick, but he managed to breathe, and nodded.

  “All right, then. Hurry and put some clothes on, and then—are you the oldest one here? We’ll need your help to get the little ones ready . . .”

  There were about twenty children, most of them already awake. Red eyes, tear-stained cheeks, snotty noses, but at least they were old enough to walk. I left the others to deal with them whil
e I looked for babies.

  There was a long row of cradles against the north wall, simple wooden ones, like crates on legs. Next to that was a shelf of well-worn nappies, and a shallow trough for washing them.

  The House of Torasan had quite a production line going here. I peeked over the rims of the cradles. Most were empty, but there were two babies, both with mops of dark hair and chubby cheeks. One was blubbering. The other glared at me with menace in its slitted little eyes, and I glared right back, warning it not to try anything.

  “Don’t touch them. Don’t you touch them!”

  A woman lurched out of the shadows. She was stiff with terror, but forced herself forward, between me and the cradles.

  I looked her up and down. She was dressed in rough peasant cloth, and had two smeary damp patches on her loose-fitting bodice. “Wet- nurse?”

  “Yes.” Her teeth were chattering, even the room’s stale warmth. “Don’t hurt them. Please. Please leave them alone. Even if you kill me for it, I can’t let you—”

  “I’m not going to hurt them. I just need to check something”

  I batted aside the nurse’s arm, reached into a cradle, and rifled through the baby’s blankets. There was a Torasan hawk-head embroidered clumsily on one corner. I ripped that away with my teeth, leaving the kid in plain wrappings of much-washed linen. The other baby was hawk-free. I left its blankets alone.

  That done, I scooped both of the babies out of their cradles and dumped them unceremoniously in the nurse’s arms.

  “There.” I kicked open the door to the nursery. “Get moving.”

  “Get moving . . . you mean . . . where am I supposed to hide Torasan children?”

  “What Torasan children? Those are your babies. Always have been. Take them out of here and disappear.”

  The nurse still looked terrified, but there was something else in her face now—a quavering kind of hope. She stared at the chubby children fussing in her arms. “Do you mean it?”

  “I don’t say things I don’t mean.”

  “You won’t come back for them?”

  “I told you. You’re their mother. I have no interest in changing that. Go.”

  The nurse took a step closer to me. My hand flashed to the knife at my belt, but she just touched my arm with trembling fingers. It might have meant, “Thank you.”

  She plunged out of the doorway into the dark corridors, a baby in each arm. As soon as she was gone, I hauled the half-shattered door back into its frame. Latoya was awfully good at getting through doors, but on this one occasion, I wished she hadn’t broken it down with quite so much enthusiasm.

  We’d have to build a barricade. I grabbed a child’s bed by one of its rough-hewn wooden posts and dragged it towards the door. It was heavier than it looked, and I strained hard for a minute or more without getting anywhere much before Darren appeared to take the other end. Together, we turned the bed on its side, using the weight to jam the broken door tightly into its frame.

  “Quick question here,” she said. “Did you just hand my baby nephews over to a complete stranger and send her on her way?”

  “I did, yes.”

  “ . . . right. I have immense faith in your judgment, you know I do. So I’m sure there’s a good explanation here, and maybe you could reveal it before I panic and go chasing down the hallways after them.”

  “She’s their wet-nurse. Can we brace the door with some of those chests, do you think?”

  “Worth a try. Kick a few of them over here. And, all right, you gave the babies to their wet-nurse. How can you be sure she’ll take care of them?”

  “Why is she breast-feeding Torasan brats?”

  “Probably because her own baby died—oh.”

  “I’m not going to pretend to understand why some women want helpless screaming doughballs in their lives, but apparently it’s a pretty common craving. She’s been taking care of your nephews since the day they were born. She’s invested.”

  Darren was silent for a moment, helping me to drag a heavy clothespress into position. “What if the babies’ real parents survive and want them back?”

  “Then we’ll deal with it if it comes up. It’s not a ‘tonight’ kind of problem.”

  Privately, though, I thought that the babies might be better off with a pushy and adoring adopted mother than as products of the Torasan child factory. I looked again at the row of crate-like cradles, and a slow burn pulsed through my chest which had nothing to do with an ulcer. “You deserved so much better than this, you know.”

  Darren glanced up with a wan half-smile. “Now who’s being maudlin?”

  “I’m not maudlin. I’m angry. Until you learn how to be angry at your family for all the ways they’ve screwed you over, I’m going to do it for you. Get used to it.”

  I threaded a few sticks of firewood into gaps in the barricade, weaving together the chair-backs and bed-frames, and surveyed the result. “I don’t think that this thing will hold up to much more than a good sneeze, so please tell me that we’re about to go away very fast.”

  “That is definitely the plan.” She looked over her shoulder. “I think we’re just about ready.”

  A door was open at the far end of the room, and the breeze gusting through carried the welcome fish-and-sulphur reek of seaweed. The stocky boy, Hark, now fully dressed, urged the older children through the door, one by one. Regon was nowhere to be seen—he’d probably led the way out. Ariadne had pulled herself together somehow. She was bundling sleepy, squirming toddlers into blankets. When there were five or six blanket-wrapped dumplings, Latoya bent down and picked them all up in one massive armload.

  “There are two more little ones, captain,” she said, and jerked her head towards the bed where they sat whimpering. “You’ll carry them?”

  Darren nodded. “You go on ahead. Lynn—we didn’t have time for a headcount. Do a last sweep? Make sure we didn’t miss anyone?”

  “I live to serve, O my mistress. Mostly. When I don’t have anything better to do.”

  “All jokes aside, make it quick? Like you said, we’re on a clock here.”

  “I know. Trust me, I have no desire whatsoever to stick around.”

  They vanished out into the cold salty air: Latoya with the toddler dumplings, Darren with one small boy in the crook of her arm and another perched on her shoulder. I wanted to follow them so badly that my teeth ached. It was fine, though, I just had to do one quick sweep. It would take no time at all, as long as there were no . . .

  “Are you honestly not going to say a word to me for the rest of the night?”

  . . . complications. I glared hard at Ariadne. “Go with the others.”

  “And leave you behind? When a horde of murderers could swoop down on this place any moment? Not likely.”

  If the nursery did come under attack, Ariadne would be no earthly use to me, but if she couldn’t figure that out on her own, what was the good of explaining?

  “Have it your way,” I said. “We’re searching for stragglers. You start in that corner and go clockwise.”

  I worked around the room in a spiral, looking under and behind every piece of furniture, kicking aside damp blankets and dirty clothes. Everything smelled like cheese and feet.

  “Admit it,” Ariadne said, as she looked behind a shutter too small to hide anyone. “We made the right choice, coming here.”

  “When we’re back on the Banshee, then you get an opinion about that. Not before.”

  “You just saved those two babies. That means nothing to you?”

  “I don’t know that I did save them. Maybe I just handed them over to some twisted monster who’ll keep them in a box. I think I improved their chances of survival, but that’s all this is: a game of percentages. Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Shut up.”

  I could only just make out the sound—a tiny, choking sob, underneath one of the beds. I dropped flat—yes—there was a small girl cowering under there, her body huddled right again
st the wall. I made a sweeping grab for her ankle, but my arm was too short by almost a foot.

  “What are you doing?” Ariadne hovered, trying to peek under the bed. “Stop that, you’ll frighten her. Let me talk to her for a second—”

  It was no use; my arm was too short. Spitting hair out of my mouth, I belly-crawled backwards until I could stand, then yanked the bed away from the wall. The girl jerked, leapt to her feet and tried to bolt, but I caught her by her skinny shoulders just in time.

  She whined, and tried to pull away. That was fine. I wasn’t interested in cuddles. I let go and the child staggered, falling against Ariadne’s chest.