Shell Game
Table of Contents
PART ONE CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
PART TWO CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
PART THREE CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
EPILOGUE: SIX YEARS LATER
About the Author
Shell
Game
BENNY LAWRENCE
Mindancer Press
Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company • Fairfield, California
© 2013 Benny Lawrence
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted in any means,
electronic or mechanical, without permission in
writing from the publisher.
978-1-939562-08-1 paperback
978-1-939562-09-8 ebook
Cover Design
by
TreeHouse Studio
Mindancer Press
a division of
Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company
Fairfield, California
http://mindancerpress.bedazzledink.com
Life in a remote fishing village in the middle of a civil war is neither safe nor inspiring. So, when an opportunity comes along for village girl Lynn to be kidnapped and enslaved by Darren, a ruthless pirate queen, she takes full advantage of it. But Darren is neither as ruthless nor as piratical as she appears at first glance--and Lynn's not exactly what she seems to be, either. In between encounters with old girlfriends, a slow death involving marmalade, and bounty hunters with no sense of humor, Lynn and her new mistress attempt to work out exactly what they are to each other--and who's in charge.
For Quicksilver, inevitably.
A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather,
Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together.
Science announced nonentity and art admired decay,
The world was old and ended,
but you and I were gay...
~ G. K. Chesterton
People talk about a time that seems as distant as a dream,
When the stars all spiralled backwards, and the rivers ran upstream,
In the middle of the war that brought our nation to the brink,
Back when nothing ever worked out in the way that you would think.
PART ONE
I CLIMBED ABOARD
A PIRATE SHIP
Narrated by Lynn
CHAPTER ONE
HE SAID, “MY name is Hasak, and I am going to rule these islands.”
She said, “My name is Darren, and I am going to punch you in the nose.”
And this she did. Blood bubbled out juicily from Hasak’s nostrils, dribbling down his chin and fouling the front of his second-hand chain mail shirt. He staggered backwards, smashed his head against the lintel of the nearest hut, and toppled. And that was the end of another would-be overlord.
The village where I lived was nothing special—just a bunch of mud huts and a fishing skiff or two. And yet four raiding parties had invaded it in the past three days. The first set of raiders took all the young men, the ones with the muscle to work the oars of a warship. The second set took all the men older than twelve and most of the women as well. The third set took what food was left: sacks of flour and jugs of oil and piles of dried fish. The fourth set wasn’t very impressive. A few men with old armour and rusty weapons. All of them, even their leader Hasak, had a sort of mangy hangdog look about them, as if they didn’t really believe that they would get away with what they were doing. But they still rousted us out of the huts, all ten of us, and half of them held us at sword point next to the drying posts while the other half rooted around the village, looking for something they could use.
All of Kila was like that, back then. It was over a decade since the murder of the last High Lord. The civil war was in full flame, and the noble houses had stopped even pretending to make alliances. The islands had become a patchwork of tiny realms and principalities, whose borders shifted daily. Every minor noble with a pint-sized navy was scheming for control. That meant daily assassinations in all the larger towns and bitter sea battles over the trading routes. Out in the poorer parts of Kila, where I lived, it meant that marauders were common as ants. If you woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of scratching in a nearby hut, it was an even bet whether it was a raider or a rat. It wasn’t a good idea to go and check.
I don’t know if I can explain why we were all so calm when Hasak arrived. It’s true that, by the time he came, we had almost nothing left to lose. But that doesn’t necessarily matter, you know. I once saw a woman go manic, attacking a soldier three times her size with nails and teeth, because he had taken the last thing she owned: a battered baking tin. She did pretty well, too. The soldier who had tried to rob her walked away with one ear less than a person really needs to function.
But that all happened later. When Hasak came, as I say, we were all very calm. I remember a sword somewhere near my throat, and the hand of the raider who was holding it shook so badly that it scratched skin more than once. But that didn’t bother me. I had been through worse.
Even the smaller children didn’t cry. I can’t tell you what all of them were thinking. All I can remember, myself, is a kind of dullness. I’d been through this kind of thing time and time and time again, I knew how it always ended, and I knew that nothing was going to change this time around.
But that was before Darren showed up.
We had our backs to the harbour—that’s why we didn’t see her ship arriving. I did see a sort of red flush in the corner of my vision, but it didn’t mean anything to me. These days, of course, everyone knows that she’s coming when they see the red sails. But back then she was just getting started. It wasn’t like it is now, when you can make a chill settle over a crowded tavern by whispering her name.
She didn’t look like a conqueror when she walked into the village, either. More like a shipwrecked sailor hobbling back to civilization after years on a desert isle. All her crewmen looked the same way; it was the combination of faded, salt-crusted clothing, weather-lined skin, and sunburn. They looked like they hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a month.
And yet. There was a something about Darren, even in the beginning, that I now find very difficult to describe. It wasn’t the cutlass (though I did notice that) and it wasn’t the muscles (though I noticed thoseeven more). She moved in a way I found interesting, sort of steady and purposeful, as though a howling gale could whip over the beach without making her lose her footing. For a sailor, though, that wasn’t so strange.
I think what really caught my notice was her expression when Hasak drew himself up and issued his challenge. It seemed to translate, roughly, to, “Oh, fuck this shit.” I’d been thinking something along much the same lines myself when Hasak appeared, but I hadn’t been able to do anything about it.
&n
bsp; Darren, on the other hand, could punch him on the nose. And she did. Her face barely changed when her knuckles crunched against bone. After Hasak staggered and fell, she shook her hand out while giving a long, meaningful look around. The rest of Hasak’s men apparently remembered all of a sudden that they had very important things to do elsewhere. They headed fast for the trees, abandoning their leader where he bled by the huts.
We villagers were left behind with Darren and her salt-crusted mariners. They were the fifth bunch of raiders to conquer the village in three days, and I was beginning to get a little sick of it all. You’ll have to bear that in mind if you want to understand why I did what I did next.
DARREN FORGOT ABOUT Hasak’s men, even before the last of them were out of sight. She finished looking around, spat thoughtfully, and then said, “Regon.”
That was clearly an order, because one of her sailors—brawny, but short—detached himself from the group and made a quick tour of the huts. Meanwhile, Darren leaned against a drying post. Her hands were in her trouser pockets. Her eyes, grey-blue as her woolen shirt, were fixed on the thatch of a nearby roof, as if it was the only thing in the area worth her attention.
That irritated me. So did the casual way that Regon was turning over baskets and raking through wreckage. And so did the way that the ten of us were tamely standing there, waiting for him to finish.
“He won’t find anything,” I spoke up. “They’ve already taken it all.”
Darren gave me a cursory glance, and then dismissed me as Regon came jogging back to her side.
“Bare as a whore’s arse,” he reported. “There’s not enough here to get them through the month, let alone the winter.”
“That’s what I said,” I pointed out.
Now her gaze settled on me again. “You. Are you in charge?”
I wasn’t, but it struck me that I might as well be. I was older than anyone else left in the village—anyone except for Klea and Aegle, both of whom were too ancient to do anything other than mutter through toothless gums. So I nodded.
“You’ll starve if you stay here, you know,” Darren said.
The irritation was building. “If that bothers you, then you could give us supplies.”
She nodded absently. “I would, if I thought you would be able to keep them. But you’d lose them as soon as another raiding party showed up. So I’m going to take you somewhere else. Someplace safe. Have your people pack whatever they still have. Then we’ll get you on the ship.”
“Like hell you will,” I said.
A number of the children looked at me in surprise. To be completely frank, I was a little surprised myself. But more than that, I was tired of being bullied. So I took a step forward and crossed my arms and stuck out my jaw and said again, “Like hell you will!”
It sounded better the second time. Even so, I was expecting a few snickers from the watching sailors. I didn’t get them. Regon gave a small, tight grin, but it was one of painful understanding more than anything else. On the other hand, I now had Darren’s full attention.
“I’m not a slaver, kid,” she said. “Nor a murderer, nor a rapist. I know there’s no proof, and you’d be an idiot to trust me if you had any better options. But you don’t. I’m your only chance. So even if you’re scared—”
“I’m not scared,” I answered, “and I don’t give a good goddamn whether you’re a murderer. We’re not getting on that boat.”
There were murmurs around me. The other villagers seemed to disagree. Darren jerked her head at them. “You stay here and you’ll die. All of you. You realize that?”
“That’s not the point. It’s our choice whether to stay or go. You’ve got no right to make it for us.”
“You’ve got no right to make it for them,” Darren pointed out, with maddening accuracy.
“Fine. I’m not coming with you.”
Darren looked impatiently at the sun, checking the time. “I’m not forcing you, I’m offering—”
“So leave me alone.”
The skin of her cheeks twisted into a small, rather bitter, smile. “No. Sorry. I don’t let people die for stupid reasons.”
“Well then,” I answered.
We stood for a few moments, assessing each other. I was trying to think of a way out of the impasse when that little maverick part of my brain took over and announced, “I’ll fight you.”
The children’s curious looks turned into stares of open shock.
Darren, too, seemed flustered. “You’re a kid.”
“I’m twenty,” I retorted.
She drew her cutlass, slowly. I got the sense that she was doing it to give herself time to think. “Do you know how to fight?” she asked at last.
“No. Well, not really. I’ve fought fish. I mean, I’ve killed fish. I mean, I’ve fished. This is a fishing village,” I explained.
The doubtful crease in her forehead was turning into a deep trench.
“Oh, come on,” I said, trying to encourage her. “Just fight me.”
“What do you want to fight with?”
“Swords. What else? Crochet hooks?”
“Do you have a sword?”
“Of course I don’t,” I said impatiently. “You’ll have to lend me one, won’t you?”
The silence after I said this lasted a good few minutes.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said in the end. “Why don’t you take mine?”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly—”
“No, no. Really. I insist.”
“All right.”
Our hands met briefly as she passed the cutlass over. Her skin felt cool and dry and rough and made me shiver a little. To take my mind off of that, I gave the cutlass a few experimental swings. It made a very satisfying swish as it sliced through the air. I nodded, then did my best to imitate a fighting stance.
“I’m ready,” I said, and then I thought of something and looked back over my shoulder.
“Don’t try to interfere,” I announced grandly to the cluster of villagers behind me. “This is my battle.”
Klea muttered something through a gummy mouth that might or might not have been agreement. Either way, it didn’t matter much. Nobody was going to interfere; that much was plain. The younger children actually took several steps backward, clasped their hands behind them, and dug into the sand with their toes.
Darren was waiting, her arms resting at her sides. I took a deep breath and then aimed a slash at her stomach. I expected her to dodge it, and she did. What I didn’t expect was that her hand would dart out to grab my wrist and give it a single hard shake. The cutlass clattered from my grip.
“Surrender?” she said. And then she said something less polite when I seized her ear with my free hand and twisted as hard as I could. She grabbed my other wrist and forced it down, so I lunged for her shoulder with my teeth. She swore again, this time in a yelp.
Darren didn’t want to hurt me, of course. That was her handicap, and I made her pay for it as I twisted a hand free and went for her ear again. But now she was done playing. She locked her legs behind mine and bent them. That threw me off balance, and when I staggered, she knocked me to my knees. I butted backward with my head. Darren dodged that, and then bore down with her full weight, until I was lying full-length on the ground with her body sprawled on top of mine.
She was panting. I could feel it in the way her breath hit the back of my neck. “What is wrong with you?” she hissed in my ear.
“I’m sick of being pushed around, that’s what’s wrong with me!”
I bucked, trying to throw her off. She gave a frustrated grunt and shoved me down again. My lips scraped against the sandy dirt, and I spat grit.
“Look,” she said. “Just calm down and I’ll let you up.”
“You let me up and I’ll kill you.”
I sort of snarled when I said kill, and was pleased with the result. To me, it sounded suitably terrifying. Darren just gave a snort, clearly unimpressed, so I went for her with my teeth again
and this time got a mouthful of something soft. I clenched my jaw, forcing my teeth as hard into the flesh as I could, then twisted my head from side to side and tasted copper blood.
When she swore that time, she used words I had never heard before. I paused to listen, hoping that I would remember all of them later.
She was hissing with pain as she tried to tear her arm free. When I hung on, she gave me a quick cuff on the side of the head. I let go immediately. It didn’t really hurt, but I thought that I had made my point.