Beggar's Flip

by Benny Lawrence

  “Want to try it some time?”

  “Depends. Is it as much fun as the dancing you can do with trousers off?”

  At this interesting juncture, the conversation was cut short. There was a grating sound—metal on metal—and the cell door banged open.

  I stared up listlessly as two soldiers tramped in, wheeling a large, stinking barrel. What was a hero supposed to do at a time like this? Bounce up and knock their skulls together, I supposed. Even the thought exhausted me. I didn’t move.

  They paid me no attention as they emptied my slop-bucket into the larger barrel. It took all of twenty seconds, and they left as soon as they were finished.

  I waited for the door to slam shut again so that imaginary Lynn and I could continue where we’d left off. Instead, a tall thin figure appeared in doorway, holding a guttering rush-light. She stepped inside, and the door scraped shut behind her.

  She seemed to be one of the castle cooks, judging from the grease-stained apron, but her face, with its pox-scarred forehead, wasn’t one I recognized.

  My voice came out as a croak. “Who’d you piss off?”

  “I didn’t piss off anyone,” she said. “They’ll let me out when I knock.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s nice.”

  Silence. Something rustled in the bed of straw. Bigger than a flea. Cockroach, maybe.

  “Well?” she finally snapped. “You’re the one who came looking for me.”

  I stared at her in tired confusion. I didn’t have the energy, or the brainpower, to ask what the hell she meant. But that was when I noticed her eyes. They were deep-set in that wrinkled, scarred, unlovely face, but in the faint glow of the rush-light, I could see their colour: a pale, pale shade of brown. I’d only seen eyes that colour once before, and they’d been wide and liquid, like those of a startled fawn.

  “Tavia?” I whispered.

  WE STARED AT each other for long enough for the rush-light to burn down to half its length.

  At first glance, Tavia seemed middle-aged, her face and hands wrinkled and spotted from years of hard work. Only the skin of her neck, still smooth and fair, showed that she was a few years younger than I was.

  “So,” Tavia said at last. “You wanted to talk?”

  I took a shuddering breath. “The boy at the spits told me you were dead.”

  She laughed coarsely. “You marched into the kitchen and asked for me by name. He didn’t know whether you wanted to beat me for burning your supper, give me to your men as a present, or throw me off the tower roof. He covered for me.”

  Clever servants talking their way around the gormless noble. Classic. Lynn would have done it better, though—she’d have made up some bloody and interesting death for Tavia, something involving mad cows. Or carnivorous plants.

  “I guess you’re working for Milo now,” I said.

  She smoothed her apron. “I’m cooking for him. And his men. If that’s what it means to work for someone, then I guess I am.”

  “And are things better for you now?” I was groping for words. “For you and for . . . people like you?”

  Tavia shrugged. “Cooking’s still cooking. Onions still stink. Boiling water’s still hot. Nothing changes that, no matter who’s sitting in the big chair. Some things are better now. Some may be worse. I’ll tell you this, though. No one down below stairs is mourning your father. Or your brothers. Or Torasan House. Or you. That’s your truth and that’s for you to live with.”

  I nodded. “That’s fair. But a lot of people died so that Milo could sit in the big chair instead of my brother. It would be nice to know that he actually fixed a problem or two. People aren’t moved to revolution by the battle cry, ‘Things’ll pretty much stay the same!’”

  She shrugged again, clearly uninterested. “Why were you looking for me?”

  “I was . . . oh, crap.” It seemed a little bit pointless now. “I wanted to apologize.”

  “For what?”

  Well, I hadn’t imagined it this way, but this was the moment, I supposed. I raised my chin and straightened out my filthy shirt.

  “For hitting you,” I said. “I’m so sorry for the times that I hit you. It makes me sick to think about it. I don’t have any excuses. I’m just sorry. That’s all.”

  She studied me in response, eyes unreadable. “Did you apologise to the others?”

  I don’t know what I’d expected, but this wasn’t it. “What do you mean, the others?”

  “The other serving girls you slapped around.” The flame of the rush-light was flickering low, so just the barest glint of dull orange light played on Tavia’s grim smile. “You don’t remember, do you?”

  Through a rising wave of shame and nausea, I tried to search my memory. “I . . .”

  Tavia reached back and struck her fist against the door, twice. It grated open, and she turned to go, glancing back at the last moment.

  “All of us were afraid of all of you,” she said. “You weren’t as bad as some of the others, though, for whatever that’s worth.”

  The door swung shut behind her and the dark closed in. My knees buckled and I didn’t fight it—just let myself collapse against the wall and buried my head in my hands.

  Once I’d cried myself out, more or less, and wiped my face on a dirty sleeve, I opened my eyes to darkness and pictured Lynn again. She was sitting cross-legged in front of me, her hands pressed on my knees, her expression all tenderness.

  “Let’s say I survive this,” I said to the vision. “Can I ever do enough to make up for what my family’s already done?”

  Imaginary Lynn didn’t have an answer for this, because I didn’t have an answer. Instead, she stroked my shoulders, in what would have been a comforting caress, if I’d only been able to feel it.

  Softly, I asked, “What now?”

  “Go back to sleep,” imaginary Lynn said. “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but there’s really nothing else that you can do.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing. I’m sorry.”

  She touched my shoulder. “If you need an added incentive, Darren . . . you’re beginning to starve now, so the dreams are going to get very good.”

  I DON’T RECOMMEND starving yourself just so you can experience hunger dreams, but you would not believe how good they can get.

  Lying there on the bare stone floor, I heard impossibly wonderful strains of music and tasted every delicious food I’d ever craved. Those fried cakes Jess used to make in the summer, full of tart dried cherries, topped with cream and a drizzle of honey. Succulent cuts of lamb from a market in Tavar, chargrilled on one side, dripping savoury juice from the other, with a smear of crushed garlic. The little speckled trout that Lynn would lard with a thick slice of bacon and roast to crisp and crackling brown . . .

  And then Lynn was there herself, all wicked smile and gentle hands. Her skin was unblemished, her scars healed, her demons banished. She was twelve inches taller and a whole world gladder, with nothing in her past that she needed to wish away. When she touched me in those dreams, I felt it, the weight and the heat of her, her want and her need and the unfeigned joy she took in me. The soft ripple of her laughter and the warmth of her breath on my face.

  The problem was that the better the dreams got, the worse my waking hours became. By now, I had so little padding on my bones that their hard edges ground painfully against the floor. Finally, I admitted defeat and crawled over to that pile of straw. I felt the first stinging punctures of flea bites before I sunk back into my stupor.

  The civil war was over. No, the war had never happened. All the pain and terror had fizzled away, like dew in strong sunlight. The Banshee was flying through bright blue waters, the foam creaming around the bow, Regon’s sure hand on the helm. The people of Kila crowded on the shores of the isles to watch us pass, and was that . . . ? Yes! They were screaming my name, in joy and in gratitude. They lifted up the children so they could see me better, and the children clapped their hands in glee. Lynn’s eyes were aflam
e with her pride in me, because I’d done it, I’d done it, I’d . . .

  I woke again and my arms and legs were riddled with bloody scrapes. I’d been scratching my flea bites in my sleep and now I scratched them harder. My stomach was a hollow bag, sucked empty. The dizziness took over and the room began to whirl.

  You are better, Darren, because you were born to be better. You can deny your birthright, but you can’t strip the glory from your blood. You’re a phoenix among sparrows, and fire runs in your veins, so rise up and take your place at the table . . .

  At the table, at the table . . . I choked out a high-pitched laugh and bit my own fist.

  “Lynn,” I whispered. “Oh, Lynn.”

  “I’m right here.” Imaginary Lynn stooped down beside me and checked my ragged pulse. For once, she looked genuinely worried. “Can you stand?”

  I shut my eyes against the spinning of the room. “I’d rather not.”

  It was a very vivid dream. Imaginary Lynn’s hand was warm and solid on my wrist, and her voice sounded just like the real thing. “I’d carry you if I could, Darren, but that’s unlikely to go well. So could you try?”

  “All right.”

  Somehow I got both feet on the floor, and pushed. I didn’t put much effort into it, I just wanted to show that I was trying, but imaginary Lynn got my arm around her neck and gave a heave. My head spun as she wrenched me upright, and I would have fallen straight down again if she hadn’t leaned me against a wall, wedging her body against mine.

  “Damn,” she muttered. “Damn, damn, and damn.”

  Frustrated, she brushed her hair back with her free hand, exposing a small knotted scar at the base of her neck. I stared at it.

  “New plan,” Lynn said. “I’ll have to try and drag you.”

  “Lynn.”

  “What?”

  Though my jaw was trembling, I got the words out. “Do you dance?”

  One pale eyebrow went up. “At spear point, do you mean, or just for the hell of it?”

  Imaginary Lynn had never said that before. The Lynn in front of me had mussed hair and a sweat-stained shirt, and looked as if she hadn’t slept for a week.

  “Oh gods,” I breathed, understanding at last. “It’s you.”

  “If you were expecting someone else, I may get cranky.”

  The cell door stood open and two guards waited just outside. Still propping me up against the wall, Lynn turned to glare at them. “Well?” she snapped. “Were you two bastards planning on helping, or are you just here to enjoy the scenery?”

  For one moment, I let myself believe that it was Latoya and Spinner out there. Somehow Lynn had infiltrated the castle, she’d smuggled my most loyal sailors inside, and now the three of them would spirit me down to the harbour and away before Milo knew what was happening.

  But the guards were both rebels, Freemen. I recognized them, one from his harelip and the other by a mottled red-and-grey beard; they were two of the men who had dragged me down to the starvation cell on the night of Regon’s murder. If help was coming, it wasn’t here yet.

  “You surrendered yourself to Milo,” I whispered to Lynn.

  “I was out of options.”

  “You shouldn’t have—”

  “Mistress, hush.”

  I hushed—not because I lacked strong opinions on the matter of Lynn’s surrender, but because I’d run out of strength. It took everything I had just to lean against the wall, with Lynn propping me up like a third leg. Dimly, I heard her speaking with the guards: first arguing, then persuading, and finally begging, until at last one of them stepped into the cell and threw me over his shoulder.

  There was a hallway, then another hallway, then a few stone steps. At a low door reinforced with iron straps, the guard swung me down like a sack of oats. Lynn immediately wormed her way under my shoulder, steadying me before I dropped.

  The door swung open into a small stone room, probably a storage chamber. A little light filtered in through a barred window-slit. As Lynn and I staggered inside, a woman rose from a stool by the window. It was Ariadne—Ariadne in a servant’s tunic of lumpy grey homespun, her eyes impossibly large in her face.

  “Help me,” Lynn said, breathless. “We need to get her on the bed.”

  The bed was just a plank shelf with a sack of straw for the mattress, but it was as good as anything I’d ever had on board ship. Ariadne and Lynn hauled me over to it, my feet bouncing over the bumps in the floor.

  My eyes slipped shut of their own accord as soon as I was horizontal. For an instant, a hand cupped my cheek, and then it slipped away.

  “Take care of her while I’m gone,” I heard Lynn saying. “Get her to eat something, if you can. I’ll be back as soon as—well. I’ll be back.”

  “Will you?” Ariadne asked numbly. “Milo’s been in a foul mood all day and when he’s like this—”

  “I’ll be fine. Don’t dwell on it. Think about something else. The time we went night swimming together down south, and the plankton was all glowing bright blue, like stars underwater. Or—better yet—think of how violently I’m going to kill Jada, as soon as I have the chance.”

  Ariadne laughed, high-pitched and tinged with hysteria. “Get in line!”

  The voices moved farther away. The door creaked open, creaked shut, and, with a scraping sound, a bolt slid home.

  I opened my eyes. Ariadne stood by a small table. There was food there—I could see cheese and apples—and Ariadne was busy murdering a plum. With efficient strokes, she tore the fruit into weeping red gobbets, laying each on a cloth, one by one.

  “Fruit juice first,” she said. “If you keep it down, then we’ll try a little dry bread. We can’t rush things, or you’ll vomit, and that’ll make you even weaker.”

  I licked my lips with a tongue that felt like dry leather. “How long . . .”

  “. . . have they been starving you? Fifteen days, less a few hours. It was night when they took you away. It’s late afternoon right now.”

  Fifteen days. The last thing I’d eaten was that handful of redcurrants at the end of the banquet, the night of the revolution. It was sickening to remember how much food I’d left untouched on the table.

  Ariadne squeezed the cloth, and purple-red juice trickled musically into a tin cup. When the cup was half-full, she knelt down beside the cot and helped me lift my head. “I’ll hold it. You just swallow.”

  The sweetness of it was blinding, like a club to the skull. The acid stung a thousand tiny cuts and sores inside my mouth which, until that moment, I had barely noticed. But the worst part was when the liquid hit my wasted stomach. It washed away that comfortable numbness in my midsection. All of the hunger pains hit again with new force. The nausea, too.

  “That’s enough,” I gasped, pulling back. “Enough.”

  Ariadne rested the cup on her lap. “I’ll give you a minute. But you’re going to drink the whole thing before I let you go to sleep.”

  “Damn it. Regon was right that time he called you a budding sadist.”

  Ariadne flinched, and I felt a dull ache that had nothing to do with hunger.

  “I’m so sorry, Darren,” Ariadne said, a tremble in her voice that didn’t belong there.

  “Not as sorry as I am.” I stared stonily at the wall until I could trust myself to talk without crying. “Give me the damn juice.”

  She held the cup, and I forced myself to sip and swallow. It hurt, fuck it hurt. As though I was feeling hunger for the first time.

  But pirates don’t whimper, beg for mercy, and hide under the bed, much as we might want to on certain occasions. I gulped until the cup was empty, then shoved it away.

  “Well done.” She squeezed my hand. “I’ll see about that bread.”

  The bread was back on the little table with the cheese and fruit. Ariadne limped across the room to get it, her right leg almost buckling with each step.

  I somehow managed to lift my head. “Ariadne. I forgot. Your back. Are you all right?”

  “Wha
t?” she said, confused. Then, dully, “Oh. You mean the whipping. My back is fine. I’m fine.”

  I doubted that. “Don’t play iron man. Are you badly hurt?”

  “Darren.”

  “What?”

  Ariadne was tearing viciously at the loaf of black bread. “What is the point of asking me that question, considering that you can do exactly jack shit about it?”

  She was standing full in the light now, exposing the details I’d missed at first. Her long hair was gone, cut off ragged with a dull blade. Her eyes were puffy and swollen. A red weal crossed her shoulder, so fresh and raw that it looked like a slash of red paint.