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  Ariadne whisked out of the stable, knotting her sash back into place around her gown. At the sight of my face, her eyes snapped wide, so I must have been looking worse than usual.

  “Gwyneth, what on earth happened to you?” she asked.

  There were so many sarcastic things that I could have said in reply, I couldn’t even pick one.

  “My mother,” Ariadne said a second later, answering her own question. “Gods on high, I’m going to strangle that woman one day.”

  She always said that. Lately, it had begun to piss me off.

  “Why are you out here?” I asked. “Don’t you have to get back to your . . . thing?”

  Ariadne waved that away. “She went back to the kitchens. Anyway, that’s not important. Are you bleeding?”

  “I don’t know. No, Ariadne, don’t check. There’s no time. I have to get back to your mother. She’s waiting for water.”

  “You’re hauling water up the stairs?”

  “Well, I considered throwing water up the stairs, but I decided against it in the end. Because that would be stupid.”

  She ignored my sarcasm, as usual. “Gwyn, you’re shaking like a leaf. How are you going to carry a bucket up a hundred steps?”

  “I’m going to imagine what your mother will do to me if I don’t.”

  That was the honest answer, but I should have known better, because it brought on Ariadne’s heroic side. Her nostrils flared and she stood so straight that she seemed six inches taller.

  She said, “Where’s the bucket? I’ll carry it for you.”

  This was a typical Ariadne plan. Generous and giving—and totally impractical.

  “You can’t carry it for me,” I said tightly. “What if Melitta sees you doing my work? What do you think will happen? We shouldn’t even be talking right now. It’s broad daylight!”

  Officially, I wasn’t supposed to talk to anyone but my lady Melitta. Ariadne was most definitely off limits. And though Ariadne rarely got into trouble, that could change very quickly if she was found hobnobbing with the bastard brat. There didn’t seem to be anyone watching us in the courtyard, but it was never safe to assume that. Our father Iason was so paranoid that he posted spies everywhere from the breweries to the brothels.

  “You’re right,” Ariadne said, after half-a-second’s thought. “Hang on a minute. I’ll get someone to help.”

  She turned, skirts swishing, but I caught her elbow. “I can’t wait, Ariadne. I’ve already been down here too long.”

  “So I’ll hurry.” She detached herself from me. “Wait. Please wait.”

  She bustled away so fast that the dust of the stable yard swirled around her. I began to follow, but just then, a scullery boy staggered into the yard with an armload of dirty pots from breakfast. I had to retreat to a safe distance and pretend that I was picking a splinter from the bottom of my foot.

  While I did that, I tiredly reviewed the conversation in my head. Ariadne had been kind and caring. I’d been a bit of a bitch. That had been happening a lot lately, and I wasn’t sure how to fix it.

  Ariadne was the one bright streak in the grey grime of my life. For the past eight miserable years, her loyalty to me had never wavered. She visited me as often as she could, to listen to my complaints and bind my cuts, to teach me and comfort me.

  You might think it strange that she went to all the trouble—but that was just the way she was. They could tell her all they liked that peasants were born with stunted brains and could only learn lessons taught with a whip. All that kind of thing rolled straight off of her, like water from a duck’s back. The two of us were sisters, and that was what mattered to her.

  Apparently, it mattered enough that she was willing to cut short a very nice escapade with a kitchen girl for my sake.

  So why, why, why did I snap at her every time she tried to be nice?

  But then again, why shouldn’t she be nice? She’d had breakfast. If I’d slept on swan feathers the night before and woken up to hot buttered crumpets, then I might be in a mood to help the downtrodden myself. And that was the thing. Grateful as I was to Ariadne, I was sick of being grateful. Sick of my neediness. Sick of never having anything to give her in return.

  And as a minute passed, and then another and then another, my fuzzy feelings towards Ariadne disappeared. I needed to go, I needed to go right away, and she was nowhere in sight. Maybe the kitchen girl had caught up with her in some dark passage.

  I was trying to scrape together enough energy to start up the stairs when a tall shape jogged across the yard—a man in the hardened leather jerkin of a castle guard.

  I backed away. Force of habit. Child servants, girls and boys both, know not to be caught alone with a soldier. But I’d seen this man around before, and I didn’t have the sense that he was dangerous. With his hunched posture and his too-ready smile, he looked like the kind of person who would say “Sorry!” if you kicked him in the shin.

  He didn’t meet my eyes as he neared me. He just stooped and grabbed the bucket. Then he loped up the tower stairs, taking them two at a time, as water sloshed over the bucket’s rim.

  I didn’t know how Ariadne had found him or what she had told him. Probably very little. When you were the heir of the most powerful lord in Kila, you didn’t have to explain yourself very often. Like her mother Melitta, Ariadne could get her meaning across with a finger snap.

  As I headed up the stairs behind him, a question started to throb away in my brain like a headache. It was an old and stale question, and it was something I tried not to think about, but I couldn’t always help myself, especially when I was tired.

  Why couldn’t Ariadne get me what I really needed?

  Why did she have to stop at bringing me bread and teaching me arithmetic? Why couldn’t she tell her mother to find a different hobby? Why couldn’t she persuade our father to send me back to work in the kitchens, where I could scrub pots or peel potatoes in peace? And if that didn’t work, why couldn’t she get me away from here? There had to be a ship that would take me as a passenger, if she stomped her foot hard enough and often enough.

  I tried not to think about this because there were reasons, and I sort of understood them. Ariadne’s authority had hard limits. She could boss the servants around the citadel all she liked, but security was our father’s domain, and not even the heir to the house of Bain could get someone in or out of the walls who hadn’t been cleared by the gate guards. She had no money of her own—even her jewellery was locked away in the treasury at night—so she couldn’t offer bribes.

  As for trying to convince her parents of the errors of their ways . . . well, that was laughable. Once Lord Iason had made his mind up about something, you would have to use a sledge hammer to get him to change it. And there was no way of changing Melitta at all, short of assassination. In her seventeen years of life, I don’t think that Ariadne had ever managed to persuade her parents to do anything they didn’t want to do. In a way, she was at their mercy just as much as I was.

  Yes, in a way. A well-fed, well-treated, well-educated kind of way. Maybe my sister had her own problems but it was damn hard to believe it on a day like this.

  Though my progress was slow and stumbling, I was close to the tower’s top. Three more turns of the staircase to go. As I paused for breath, the soldier who had helped me came loping down the steps.

  “I left the bucket around the next bend,” he said, but without stopping. He had his eyes lowered so he wouldn’t see me.

  For some reason—maybe because I was tired of feeling ungrateful, on top of everything else—I said, “Wait.”

  He jolted to a halt, staring at me as though I’d suddenly dropped down from the ceiling, and there was something in his face that was close to panic.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I mean it.”

  He ducked his head, as if to tell me that it had been his pleasure, but it really hadn’t been and we both knew that. It would not be a good thing for a castle guard to be seen bounding up the steps towards
the Lady Melitta’s room. His career might not survive that discovery. He might not survive that discovery.

  He should have left then, but for some reason he lingered, studying my face. The lump in his throat bobbed as he swallowed.

  “I’m Whytock,” he told me in a hoarse whisper. “Maybe some time I can help you again.”

  He gave another awkward nod, and the next second he was flying down the stairs, out of the tower, and away from danger.

  I kept going up, step by step, retrieving the bucket from the landing where Whytock had left it. Why had he bothered to help, I wondered. Was he sorry for me? Or was he trying to get in Ariadne’s good books, hoping for rewards when she eventually came to power? Maybe it was simpler than that—maybe he just wanted to get in my skirts. Or Ariadne’s skirts, for that matter.

  That was the problem with accepting gifts. There were always strings attached. Hell, even Ariadne would expect my life-long friendship in return for everything she’d done for me. There were days when I couldn’t even figure out what I felt for her. Was it actual love, or just the fawning devotion of a hound towards a person who happened not to be holding a whip?

  I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I was still deep in thought when I opened Melitta’s door. I hadn’t done something so stupid in years, but I was beyond tired by then. There was a grey film in front of my vision and I couldn’t feel my own feet.

  And that is why, when I lugged the bucket of water into my lady’s chamber, I didn’t see the stick of firewood which she had strategically placed in front of the door.

  As a booby-trap, it was pretty weak. Melitta had probably done it as an afterthought, without any high expectations. She must have been pleasantly surprised when I barked both ankles on the log, flew headlong, and smashed into her carpet face-first.

  After the first shock, I found I was lying in a spreading wet patch. The bucket rolled on its side, empty.

  “My, my,” came my lady’s voice, syrup-sweet and low. “I suppose I’ll be needing some more water, won’t I?”

  Well, I lost it right about then. I think that’s understandable, but my timing was rotten. I should have kept it together until I was on my feet again. It’s hard to fight when you’re lying flat on your face.

  Somehow I managed to grab the bucket and sling it at Melitta, but it struck her only a glancing blow, and that’s as far as I got. She pounced, grabbing me by my hair—her favourite handhold. She wrenched it hard, forcing my head back, and then wrapped my long braid twice around her fist to make sure I couldn’t go anywhere. She half-dragged and half-led me across the room, her hand held so low that I had to clamber after her on all fours.

  Then she was leaning close into me and her breath was in my face. Sour wine and raisins. The veins in her eyes were inflamed. I knew she would cry soon. She always did.

  “You’re a rather stupid girl,” she said. “Did you know that?”

  I looked her straight in the eyes, because no matter what I did or didn’t do, this day would not be getting any better. “You’re a heartless bitch. So I guess we’re even.”

  She jerked on my braid. “Keep dreaming. I’ll just keep waking you up.”

  Her hand was almost gentle when it wrapped around my wrist and guided my arm behind my back, but then came the upward jerk.

  Several seconds before I felt it, I heard the bone snap.

  I ALMOST CLAWED my way out of sleep, wrenching myself upright. Phantom pain was shooting through my right arm. I clasped it, bent it, wiggled my fingers, rolled it from side to side. There was no deformity, no bleeding, no break. Just the familiar throb-throb-throb. That arm hadn’t been the same since the day, six years before, when my lady Melitta broke it to teach me a lesson about dreams and waking.

  I sat still for some time, as my heartbeat slowed. I wasn’t certain what was real and what wasn’t until I touched my wrist and found my garrotte tied around it, the braided sinew coiled loosely. Then I knew.

  Melitta was dead. My father was dead. Whytock, the sheepish palace guard, had replaced my father as lord of the island of Bero, posing as my father’s long-lost cousin. By all accounts, he was doing pretty well.

  I wasn’t in the castle where I grew up. I wasn’t sleeping on a straw mat outside Melitta’s bedchamber, or at the foot of her bed, or locked inside the stone closet in her room. I was on a beach two hundred leagues away, under a tent made of an old foresail.

  The most brutal war in living memory was ripping apart the islands of Kila, and I was trying to do something about that.

  And a pirate queen was asleep beside me.

  I couldn’t see my mistress’s face—the canvas above us blocked the moonlight—but I could feel the easy pulse of her breathing. Good. At least one of us could keep dreaming a little longer.

  I sat up, careful not to wake her, and slipped into my tunic. Then I groped my way out of the tent, into the chilly night air.

  PART ONE

  THE COST OF DOING BUSINESS

  CHAPTER ONE

  Darren, formerly of the House of Torasan (Pirate Queen)

  I WOKE UP as soon as Lynn woke up, of course.

  If you’ve ever had your slave girl kidnapped from you by a couple of brutal sadists, then you know that the experience is not good for your beauty sleep. It had been five months since we rescued Lynn from the island of Bero, and, in all that time, I hadn’t slept through my watch below. Five or six times a night, I woke halfway and poked around on the bunk beside me to make sure Lynn was still there.

  I never slept through her nightmares anymore.

  After the tent flap swung shut behind Lynn, I scooted carefully over and peered through a crack. She was trudging barefoot through the sand, towards the shoreline.

  We had spent the day scrubbing the Banshee’s hull. Careening is a long job and not an enjoyable one, unless, for some reason, you have some special fondness for barnacles. Lynn had been on the jump from dawn to dusk, and I knew she was exhausted. But I also knew she wouldn’t come back to bed for hours, if she came back at all.

  I don’t learn from my mistakes the first time I make them. I don’t even learn from my mistakes the seventeenth time I make them. But somewhere around the thirty-second go-around, I start to get wise. And after two years with Lynn, I was finally figuring out how to act when she had a bad dream. She didn’t like being crowded too closely, but she would lapse into gloom if I just left her alone. That meant that I had to be patient.

  I am not remotely patient.

  I let the tent flap fall shut again, took a deep breath, and began to count to one thousand. I’d had to do this far too often since the day of the escape.

  HERE’S THE THING about being a pirate queen: It’s damn hard to take a vacation.

  Five of us escaped from Bero: Lynn, her sister Ariadne, my first mate Regon, my bosun Latoya, and me. We were not in good shape as we began the journey south. Lynn had just spent twelve days as the Lady Melitta’s punching bag, taking pummelling after pummelling as Melitta tried to break her of the habit of independent thought. Regon and Latoya and I were better off, but we’d suffered quite a few knocks and scrapes in our various feats of derring-do. Ariadne wasn’t injured, but she had just killed her mother and been banished from her homeland, so I think it fair to say that she wasn’t at her best.

  The wounds didn’t seem to matter that much in the first flush of our victory, when we boarded the Badger and set sail. But the euphoria wore off fast. It was cold, and we weren’t dressed for it. Regon had a lump the size of an apple on the side of his head. Ariadne puked her guts out the first time she tasted salt beef.

  The sea was choppy and our little boat leaked like a sieve, and the sailor in me was screaming that we ought to head for shore. But I refused to give the order, because I could see the colour grow stronger in Lynn’s cheeks the farther away we sailed from Bero.

  Somehow we managed to hold the boat together and keep it on top of the waves. It was mainly thanks to Regon, who came from ten generations of sailors an
d was himself (I firmly believed) part duck. It still took a series of minor miracles, and for a very very short time, I rediscovered the habit of prayer.

  It took us two weeks to limp our way to the hidden harbour on the mainland, with Lynn and Regon and Latoya and I working watch and watch about the whole time. When we rounded the cove and saw the Banshee at anchor, with my red-and-black banner rippling from the masthead, I got a touch emotional. If you really want to know, I cried just a tiny little bit.

  While I did that, Lynn stood by and rubbed my back. I almost stopped her. Considering everything that had happened, it seemed perverse that I was the one crying and she was the one soothing. But then, Lynn liked being the strong one. Maybe I could best comfort her by letting her comfort me.