Beggar's Flip Read online

  Darren shook her head. “Even I have my limits.”

  “Good. Because that would be a little bit too much, today.”

  I threw the boots against the wall, first the left, then the right. There was a sort of tightness at the back of my throat which made me wonder whether I might burst out into tears. I never did that in front of Darren, it never happened, but I was dog tired, you see. I hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before, or the night before that, or . . . really, I couldn’t remember when I’d last slept well. I wrapped my arms around my knees and gripped tight, staring into the corner.

  I felt Darren’s hand hovering above me before it descended. Reflex took over, and my arm jerked up to protect the side of my head. Instantly, Darren’s hand shot away.

  I didn’t apologise—what was the point?—but I knew I’d upset her by flinching. In the stillness, I heard her swallow, and swallow again.

  “I won’t go,” Darren said abruptly. “Simple as that.”

  I had to bite my knee hard for almost a minute before I trusted myself enough to answer. “Why does it always have to be about sacrifice with you?”

  “It’s not a sacrifice.”

  “You want to see your family, Darren. Do you really think you’ve managed to keep that a secret?”

  “I don’t give a damn about my family! I give a damn about you!”

  “You can give a damn about both. It’s allowed. I won’t tell your adoring public.”

  “Can I come closer?”

  “Not yet.”

  The bunk creaked as she sat down. More silence.

  “Good god, Darren, why don’t you yell at me?” I asked with a flash of sudden irritation. “You’ve just been un-disowned and summoned home by the family that you still love, much against your better judgment and mine. You’re aching to go and swagger around Torasan Isle waving your shiny cutlass and showing all your stupid relatives how you made good. And here I am pouting and staring at the wall and ruining a perfectly decent pair of your boots. Yell at me already.”

  “I don’t want to yell at you.”

  “You do.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You’re lying and if you don’t stop, then so help me, I will bite you and it won’t be in a fun kind of way. You do not need to protect me from you.”

  “Fine!” Darren yelled, and she smacked the bulkhead for emphasis, no doubt raising a bruise that she’d complain about later. “Lynn—listen, Lynn, I am not that bitch Melitta!”

  Now I had to look at her. “If there was the slightest confusion about that, do you really think I’d be sitting here?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I really don’t.”

  “I mean—oh, bollocks.” Scowling, Darren ran her fingers though shaggy hair. It was clotted with sweat and blood, and I made a mental note to end the fight in time to give the pirate queen a bath before bed.

  “I’m not going to change,” Darren said, starting over. “I’m not going to transform into some rampaging asshole of a noble, just because my family doesn’t want me dead anymore. If I visit the Isle and wear a clean shirt and sleep in a real bed for once, I won’t become a different person. I’m not going to treat peasants like scum and I’m not going to start whoring with every girl in reach and I’m not going to create my own empire and name it Darrenland. And I’m not going to . . . Lynn, I’m not going to . . .”

  She was floundering, so I cut her off. “You’re not going to decide I’m subhuman, put me in a cage, and beat me with sticks. Again, Darren, I know. It’s not you that I’m worried about.”

  Darren narrowed her eyes briefly, then widened them. “My family? You’re scared of my family? Lynn, you haven’t even met my family!”

  “Jess has. She gave me the details.”

  “I don’t think you’re allowed to listen to anything that my ex-girlfriend says. I’m going to make that a rule. Look, not all of my relatives are evil. There’s my youngest sister, Jada . . . I haven’t seen her in years, but she was a good kid. And I have hordes of nieces and nephews. Some of them are tiny, so they’re probably all right.”

  “They’re probably adorable. Not that I’ll be able to tell. I’m never going to get a good look at them.”

  “You will if you come to the Isle . . . Hey, easy, easy. If you groan that hard you’re going to bust your vocal chords. Did I say something stupid?”

  I breathed carefully, trying not to explode. How could she not understand?

  “I wouldn’t be allowed to look at their faces.” It was ridiculous that I had to explain this—like having to warn someone that water can be really quite wet. “Your nieces and nephews are nobles, Darren. I would have to keep my eyes fixed on the floor at their feet, and address them as Young Master or Young Miss.”

  Darren, who had been pacing restlessly up and down, stopped short at that. Her expression twisted, as though she was about to laugh or cry or vomit or all three. “You think I would let them treat you like that? I would never let them treat you like that!”

  “They treated Jess like that. And anyway, how would you stop them? Whip out the old cutlass and leave a trail of bodies in your wake? That’d make for a hell of a family reunion.”

  “I don’t give a damn about—”

  “Yes, you do—and even if you didn’t, what’s the point of making a fuss? I’m the bastard brat of a scullery maid. A runaway servant. Under Kilan law, I have no rights. Zero. None. The great houses have spent the last seven years trying to messily exterminate each other, but still, they all agree on that much.”

  “We don’t have to tell my family who you really are. I’ll say that you’re a sickeningly wealthy heiress from a house like—I don’t know—Nimian, or Tours. I’ll say that you have your own private army and any insult will be met with lethal force.”

  I could have screamed. “Darren. Think. What’s the punishment for a commoner who impersonates a noble?”

  “ . . . oh.”

  “Yes, oh. It’s usually flogging and branding, right? For a first offence. That’s what they did on Bero. For repeat offenders, I think it’s death by dismembering. You’d know better than me. You’re the one who got all that fancy upper-class education.”

  “I would never let them hurt you!”

  “And again, you would stop them . . . how? You can’t take on the entire aristocracy single-handed.”

  “Watch me,” Darren snarled. She was pacing faster now. “You just fucking watch me!”

  “Calm down. Remember your ulcer.”

  “Fuck my fucking ulcer! Fuck my fucking—”

  There was more along these lines, much more. Eventually I had to lead her back to the bunk, sit her down, and rub her shoulders. She slumped there, growling into her hands, until sanity returned.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled at last. “It just makes me so angry.”

  I gave her back an extra rub instead of answering. It was nice that she cared, but she shouldn’t have needed me to spell it out for her, and anyway, there was no point in getting hysterical.

  “You’re one woman,” I said, once the growling stopped. “You can’t bust every noble skull in Kila by yourself, just to protect my dignity. And I wouldn’t want you to try. You’d fail. I’d bleed. End of story. That’s how things are.”

  Darren yanked at her hair. “How can you be talking this way? You, of all people?”

  “How can I not be talking this way, me of all people?”

  “Because—damn it, Lynn, you don’t lie down and surrender. You find a way around or over or through.”

  “I try, sure. When I have to. When I have a reason. I have no reason to swan off to Torasan Isle pretending to be a daughter of the House of Tours. What do you expect of me? You want me to risk forty lashes with a cowhide whip, just so I can have the honour of patting your nephews and nieces on the head?”

  “That’s not . . . I didn’t . . . oh, damn it! Look, I won’t go. Nuts to my family, I just won’t go.”

  “It’s up to you,” I
said, brushing some dried blood from the shoulder of her shirt. “But you know you really should.”

  LET’S TALK ABOUT Darren for a second. As if we weren’t doing that anyway.

  When I ran away from Melitta, I was seventeen: a short, skinny kid with no real skills except the ability to take a stubborn stain out of any material, from velvet to chamois. I had no weapon with me, except a kitchen knife that I lost on the first night. I’d never slept out of doors, had never seen a river or touched a living tree, and had only the most general idea about money. That is, I knew that having it was good, so not having it was probably bad.

  And there I was, trying to make my way across the islands with a civil war in full bloody swing, in a time when there was a sex-starved soldier behind every tree, a warship in every harbour, and when nobody was happy to see a hungry stranger.

  How I survived, I really don’t know, except for the obvious: I always did what it took, no matter what it took. Some people can’t do that, I’m told, and while I know that must be true, it’s not something that I understand in my gut. How can anyone not be willing to do what it takes to keep on breathing?

  I’m not going to go into details about that time, the three years that I spent perfecting the business of survival. Some parts were ugly, some parts were very ugly, some were close to being all right. But the whole experience got me thinking.

  Thinking about people, mainly—those slippery things. Why are there people who get up in the morning, eat a hearty breakfast, and then spend the day killing, burning, raping, and ravaging? Why do other people sally out to save the downtrodden and protect the weak? Why are there people who do both on alternate days, with a pause every so often to drown a kitten or adopt a puppy?

  The answer, as I eventually figured out, is a whole lot simpler and sadder than might be expected: It’s just habit. A man can spit naked babies onto a spear and feel no more emotion about it than you feel when you pierce a piece of ham with a fork, as long as he does it for eight hours every day, with a break for lunch. And anyone can develop a murder habit, given the opportunity.

  Maybe it’s a sign of my own sickness that I can’t believe in heroes. Maybe it’s part of that brokenness that Ariadne always half-loved and half-feared in me. Fucked if I know. Fact remains, when you get right down to it, people—all people—are hungry, lonely animals. It doesn’t matter if they’re wearing burlap or velvet, fetters, or rubies. The beast is underneath all the same, and if you want to keep it quiet then you have to keep it fed.

  But that doesn’t explain Darren.

  Darren had flaws, dozens of them. I could list her flaws alphabetically before I’d known her a half a month, from “arrogant” to “zombie-like” (the latter applied only when she was tired). But somehow, Darren didn’t let the sheer weight of reality break her spirit, or let habit define the boundaries of the possible. Darren had glared Destiny in its bloodshot eye, and said only: Fuck this shit. Darren got up one morning, ate a hearty breakfast, and then went out to change the world. And that may not be heroism, but in my jaded, cynical book, it’s about as close as you can come.

  Why did I bind myself in service to this beautiful madwoman? Many reasons, some of which, as you can imagine, stemmed from the desire to get in her pants and have a good old rummage around there. But I could have done that without throwing myself headlong into her crazy crusade. Nor were my motives unselfish. Hell no. I wasn’t out to save my country or the peasantry when I turned Darren into a pirate queen. I did it because I knew one simple thing: If Darren ruled the world, I could be safe.

  Imagine, if you can, what it was like for me to be with Darren in the beginning. On a pirate ship, there’s no god but the captain and no law but the captain’s law. I was what Darren said I was, and I could do whatever she said I could do. And the rest of the world could take a flying leap.

  But I think I always knew that we couldn’t hide at sea forever. Piracy was a good starting point, but Darren would need to do more if she was going to take the nation. Sooner or later, she would have to deal with the ruling classes—not just fight them, but find allies in their ranks. She’d have to attend banquets, pay off lords, wheedle, flatter, broker deals, sign treaties. When that happened, then she’d start to look a lot less like a pirate and a lot more like a noblewoman. She’d be recovering her place in the world she once belonged to, a world of ballrooms and trade relations and political manoeuvres—a world where I didn’t have the right to exist, except as Melitta’s thing.

  Yet, in spite of all that, I couldn’t ask Darren to forget about Torasan Isle. She was changing so fast, you see. Already she was so much more than she had been when we started. Rescuing damsels and burying treasure was all very well, but Darren had outgrown her pirate boots. She was ready to be a new kind of leader, to fight a different and longer and harder kind of war. And I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, stop her from doing it, even if it meant that she would outgrow me as well.

  Because Darren wasn’t the only one who had changed during our time together. And gods help me, now I wanted to save the world, too.

  THE NEXT DAY and a half was busy—so busy that Darren and I couldn’t continue our conversation in one unbroken block. We had to snatch moments here and there.

  “I really should go,” Darren told me as we headed to the brig to interrogate the prisoners. “Torasan isn’t a rich house, but it has good sailors and good harbours. Konrad could be a valuable ally, if he’s serious about making friends.”

  “I know you should go,” I said. “I just can’t go with you. That’s all.”

  At that point, Darren was called away to deal with a rowdy corsair, and I was called away to help scrub Corto’s wounds with brine, and we didn’t see each other again until I was ladling out supper.

  “I get that it would be too risky for you to pretend to be a noble,” Darren said, holding out her tin plate. “But why can’t you just come to Torasan Isle as my slave?”

  “I could, I guess.” I slopped out a portion of stew. “But I won’t.”

  “It’s not that I’m arguing,” Darren said half an hour later, when she came to get a second helping. “But why not? You’re not exactly shy when it comes to the yes-Mistress thing. When we were in Tavar, you spent practically the entire week on your knees.”

  “Yes, but that was my choice. I could have taken a time out whenever I wanted. Have an extra biscuit. You missed lunch.”

  Some hours later, as Darren and I walked the deck together on evening watch, she pointed out, “You never did take a time out in Tavar.”

  “I never needed to, but it was always an option. It wouldn’t be that way on Torasan Isle. I’d have to obey you to keep the skin on my back. That’s the difference.”

  Later, as we lay in our bunk, Darren mumbled into my shoulder, “Does it really make that much of a difference?”

  It was the kind of question that she only asked when she was already half-asleep, too tired to worry about pissing me off. I stroked her hair, teasing the dark heavy locks. “Yes. It does make that much of a difference.”

  I didn’t bother to explain, because she wasn’t asking for an explanation. It just took her a while to accept facts that she didn’t like. She had a way of prodding at them over and over, as if reality was a side of roast beef that she was trying to cook medium rare.

  But now, at long last, she heaved a sigh of surrender that filled the whole room. “So I’ll go to the Isle. And you won’t come with me.”

  “Looks like.”

  “It’ll just be a couple of weeks.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll feel lost without you there to steer me, and I’ll be useless at everything.” She yawned. “And you’ll spend the whole time worrying. You probably think I’ll get myself killed if I go off to be a hero without any supervision.”

  She fell asleep then, so I didn’t have a chance to point out the obvious: there was no way in hell that I was going to let her go off and be a hero without any supervision. No matter. She really sho
uld have known.

  “ARIADNE?”

  “That is her name, Mistress, yes. People usually don’t pronounce it as a despairing screech.”

  “Ariadne?”

  “Or a tortured moan.”

  “Aw, bugger it.”

  “You didn’t really think that I would let you go to Torasan Isle without a chaperone, did you?”

  “I’m not a helpless infant, Lynn! Just occasionally, just once in a while, you could let me do something on my own.”

  “There are all kinds of things that I’d let you do on your own. Like weaving a lap rug. Or petting a sheep. Well—a small sheep, anyway. But you’re going into a political snake pit instead. So you need backup. So you’re taking Ariadne. Now stop screaming before you rupture something.”