Shell Game Read online

  “Captain,” I heard a sailor say. “Hate to interrupt you, but . . . tide’s changing.”

  Darren lay still for a moment, her breathing heavy. Then she leaned down on me hard with her uninjured forearm. So that she could get a hand loose, I supposed. There was the rustle of cloth as she rummaged in a pocket, and then a cord slipped around my wrists and tightened. Her weight came off of me, and I scrambled to my feet, but she kept a firm hand on my bound wrists. A few of the sailors were wearing sly grins, but those disappeared when Darren glared.

  “All right,” she announced. Breathless, but trying to get things back on track. “Someone take her on board. I’ll deal with the others.”

  The stocky sailor named Regon came forward (a little gingerly, I thought) and took hold of the cord that bound me. Darren edged away from us fast and stooped to retrieve her cutlass. She ran her thumb down the length of the blade, checking to see whether I had nicked it. Not even looking at me. All too ready to put me out of her mind. I wasn’t prepared to tolerate that.

  “Hey!” I said, stomping on the ground.

  She flinched, her face almost pleading. “What?”

  I jerked my chin in Regon’s direction. “Tell him to tie me to the mast.”

  Darren’s eyebrows flew up her forehead. “Tell him to do what?”

  “Tell him to tie me to the mast,” I repeated slowly.

  Her mouth opened and closed twice. “You want to be tied to the mast?”

  “That’s not the question,” I said, in my most reasonable tone of voice. “The question is, do you want me running around your nice orderly ship like a lunatic? Knocking over barrels and throwing wineskins overboard and trying to bite your fingers off? The only sensible thing to do is to tie me to the mast.”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” she said—with more confidence than she felt. I could tell.

  I grinned nastily. “Wouldn’t I?”

  Her face was an interesting study, right then. There was disbelief, but then as the seconds passed, she began to believe that I was serious. And then she realized that the tide was turning and that she didn’t have time to sit around and debate the issue. She made an intriguing sound, something in between a moan and a snarl—I was to hear her make that sound quite a few times in the coming days. Then she threw up her hands.

  “Fine,” she said. “Fine. Have it your way! Regon, you heard her. Tie her to the goddamn mast. Tie her to anything she wants to be tied to. Tie her to the anchor for all I care. But get her on the damn boat, now!”

  Then she strode off, nursing her bleeding arm. The village children scampered at her heels like puppies. Regon tried to lead me away gently, but I set my heels in the dirt so he had to yank me along. Within fifteen seconds, the cord was biting into my wrists and I’d stubbed a toe and my back was aching and my knees were scraped where I had knelt on the path.

  And I couldn’t figure out why I felt so fantastically happy. I filed that away as something to think about, once I had the time.

  REGON WAS TIGHT-LIPPED to begin with, but we got quite chummy while he was tying me up. We talked about our favourite knots, and about fly fishing, and the weather and the best way to cook oysters. Everything but the war, really. I think that we were both sick of discussing it.

  The small boat moved steadily back and forth between the ship and the shore, ferrying crew and passengers aboard. The other villagers climbed onto the ship, clutching a few possessions under their arms—Klea and Aegle had old shawls and pots and pans; the children had broken toys, shiny clamshells, that kind of thing. All of them looked at me sidelong as they walked by the mast. Regon had done a careful job. Rather than twisting my arms back around the pole (which we agreed would be too uncomfortable), he had lashed me there with a few turns of rope around my waist, and then tied my hands in front of me. I was sitting cross-legged on the deck, the sails shielding me from the worst of the sun.

  Darren boarded the ship last, looking surly, and stomped across the deck to the spot where I sat. I squinted up at her. Her left arm, the one I had bitten, was heavily bandaged. I wondered whether someone had stitched it up, and, if so, whether they used a sail needle.

  “Hello,” I said.

  She gave me a long, unfriendly look, and then dumped a bundle on the deck next to me. “These are your things. We picked them up for you.”

  “That was very thoughtful,” I said. Because it was.

  She looked at my tied hands, and her expression softened. “I just want to help, you know.”

  “I know.” I did.

  “So . . . can I let you loose now?”

  I smiled at her again, less savagely than before. “That’s up to you. Do you mind me running around the place like a maniac, foaming at the mouth, and doing my utmost to knock your entire crew into the drink?”

  Darren blew out a breath, running a hand through dark shaggy hair.

  I shrugged, as best I could, considering I was tied to the mast and all. “I did warn you, you know.”

  “You warned me,” she repeated. “You know something? Fine. I don’t have time for this. We need to get moving.”

  “Go ahead. I can’t stop you.”

  She still looked uncomfortable, but then the breeze freshened. All sorts of interesting things happen on ships when the wind gets stronger. Masts and booms groan disturbingly and sails ripple out and sailors go bouncing all over the place trying to do twenty things at once. Darren forgot about me immediately.

  “Teek!” she called. “Hoist up the small boat, then weigh anchor. I want to be across the strait by sundown tomorrow; we’re too damn exposed out here. Spinner, find something to feed those kids. Not too much. The passage might be a little rocky and I don’t want to have to swab out the entire hold.”

  She took the tiller herself, and she was so absorbed, I don’t think she noticed me staring.

  WHEN THE MEAL was ready, someone brought me a portion. The soup was watery but there were scraps of mutton in it, a taste I’d almost forgotten. I cradled the warm mug as I sipped. It was getting cold.

  As I was tipping the dregs down my throat, a clamp-clamp-clamp of boots on the deck told me that Darren was stalking back over to the mast. Then there was a shring as her long knife came out of its sheath.

  “Hey, hey,” I objected, as she knelt down with the blade in hand. “I know I haven’t been making things easy for you, but murder is kind of a drastic solution, don’t you think?”

  “Just shut up and hold your arms out.”

  I pulled back, trying to wrench my wrists away from her. My mug went clattering to the deck boards as we wrestled. “You’re not cutting these ropes.”

  “Yes, yes, actually I am. You’re a kid. This is insane—Waugh!”

  “Waugh” was Darren’s reaction when I bared all my teeth and snarled at her. At the same time, she cringed a full foot back, out of biting range. I think that when I bit her earlier that day, I’d managed to leave an impression. So to speak.

  “Look, time out,” I said. “You’re new to this. I understand. But it isn’t complicated. You can’t let a prisoner roam around your ship. Not when she’s trying to kill you.”

  Darren made a small, exasperated noise as she sheathed her knife. “I don’t care if you try to kill me. You’re the size of a badly-nourished kitten. The worst you could do is give me a couple of flesh wounds and bruise my self-esteem. Here I am, trussing you up, treating you like an assassin, when you should be in the countryside somewhere, with a farmer’s wife force-feeding you pie.”

  Her eyes wandered as she spoke, and that’s when I drew back my heel and kicked her in the pit of her stomach. Not hard.

  She gave a little whoosh and sat back, blinking. After a second she asked, “What the hell was that for?”

  “For getting maudlin. I’m not a kitten.”

  “I just meant that you’re tiny.”

  “Hey,” I said defensively. “I could still be an assassin. Do you know how many assassins are short?”

  “Um—what
?”

  “A lot, is the answer.” She didn’t seem convinced. I lowered my tone to a warning growl. “A hell of a lot.”

  “Kid—” Darren pulled herself back up to her knees.

  “You’ve got to be careful, you know. It’s when pirates get overconfident that they end up dead. You know what kills most pirates?”

  “I’m not a—”

  “Monkeys,” I intoned darkly. “You wouldn’t expect it, but monkeys are much better with knives than most people realize—”

  She made that noise again—half moan and half snarl—as her hand clamped over my mouth. I could feel the fingers quiver next to my skin. She was fighting to keep her temper in check.

  “Why are you acting like this is a game?” she asked hoarsely. “I’m not a pirate and you’re not a prisoner, and you have to get a grip, kid, because captivity and helplessness aren’t funny. It would only take me an instant to cut your throat. The world is not a safe place for people like you. Do you understand that?”

  I moved my head to the side, just slightly, and as I had expected, she let me go right away. Wimp. The wind was cooler on my face where her hand had been pressed against it.

  “Let’s say I do understand that,” I said.

  She spread her arms—well?

  “Darren, captain, sir, whatever—I’m on a ship that I don’t know how to sail, being taken I don’t know where. I’m helpless. If you want to cut my throat, I’m not going to be able to stop you, whether I’m tied to the mast or not. Are you really saying I’ll be safer if I don’t talk about monkeys?”

  Her jaw worked a little as she thought about that, but all she said was, “It’s usually safer to do as you’re told.”

  I snorted. “That doesn’t make you safer. It just proves to everyone how helpless you really are. Trust me, I know.”

  That was more than I had meant to say. I closed my mouth with an audible snap before anything else could escape. Darren’s eyes were on me, thoughtful, and I bit my lip, waiting to see whether she would probe any further. I had revealed too much already, and if she asked the right questions . . .

  But one thing you could say for Darren, even then—she didn’t like to go after people’s secrets. With a sigh, she shifted her gaze to the pine wood of the mast above my head and stared as though nothing else in the world mattered more. When she spoke, her voice was quiet. “I could just as easily tie you up below decks.”

  The relief was so strong, I had to blink twice before I could concentrate again. And blink twice more before I realized the total insanity of what she was suggesting. “All the others are below decks, right? The other people from my village?”

  “What? Yes.”

  “Then they could untie me.”

  She raised her eyebrows, not getting it. “Um—yes. I guess they could.”

  I sighed. “Then it wouldn’t be a very good strategy to tie me up below decks, would it?”

  There was a long pause. By then, the sun was setting. Darren’s brooding face was half yellow and half pink.

  At last, and with a hint of desperation, she asked, “Is it all right to give a prisoner a blanket?”

  I thought that over, carefully. “I think so.”

  “Would you like a blanket?”

  “Yes please.”

  She came back with one after a brief disappearance. It was rough wool, and, like all the other cloth on board the ship, it was greyish blue. Did they get a special deal on grey-blue dye, I wondered, or was there an entire herd of grey-blue sheep running around naked somewhere?

  Awkwardly, Darren folded the blanket around me, tucking the edges between my body and the mast. I smiled up at her. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome?” she answered. With a last bewildered look, she headed below.

  I WOKE HALFWAY through the night, when the wind rose. Wavelets were slapping the side of the ship, sending cold briny mist through me. The blanket was sodden. The knots that bound me had swelled in the wet and were digging into flesh. I was trying to decide whether to scream for help when I heard Darren trudging up from below.

  She knelt down beside me and felt my chilly cheek. “This is ridiculous. I’m taking you down.”

  Under the circumstances, that didn’t seem so wholly unreasonable, but I hedged. “You could take me to your cabin?”

  “I don’t have a cabin,” she said, as she picked at the rope on my wrists. “How big a ship do you think this is?”

  “Damn.” I bit my lip. “Do you have barrels? Crates?”

  “Ye—e—e—ss . . .”

  “All right. So go down to the hold and stack some crates around a corner, and that can be your cabin. And you can bring me down to that.”

  There was a little choking sound, but her face was invisible in the dark. I couldn’t point with my hands tied, so I nodded at the steps that led below.

  “Go on. Get to work. I’ll be here when you’re done.”

  And, staggering a little, as though she was drunk, she went.

  IT TOOK DARREN an hour to shift things around in the hold. The ship was a small trading vessel with a shallow draft, square-rigged on the foremast and mainmast. It was light and manoeuvrable, but it didn’t have much in the way of living space. There was no captain’s cabin. There wasn’t even enough room to hang a hammock for each sailor. If the weather had been a little warmer, then Darren and her eight crewmen would all have been sleeping on deck. As it was, they were crammed together in the open hold, along with water barrels, boxes of biscuit and dried meat, a tiny brazier for heat and light—and now the refugees from my village as well. Any time anyone moved in the close-packed space, they trod on someone’s foot or rammed someone’s skull.

  Darren told me all this, with some exasperation, as she brought me down to the tiny corner she had cleared behind a stack of biscuit boxes.

  “You’re more trouble than anything else that’s ever been aboard this ship,” she said, guiding me behind the wall of boxes. “And I carried cobras once. And they laid eggs.”

  “Poor baby,” I told her, or, rather, I told her “P—p—p—poor b—b—b—baby.” My teeth were chattering so hard that I thought they would splinter.

  Her complaints broke off. She looked at me with sudden concern. “You’re soaked.”

  I didn’t try to shoot out another smart-ass remark. I just glared at her.

  “Gods on high, I’m a moron,” she said, the self-reproach returning to her voice. “Wait here a moment.”

  She disappeared. My legs folded beneath me, and I flopped to the deck, feeling my wet clothing ooze into the wood. I wanted to call out to her and ask what she thought she was doing, leaving a prisoner alone and unguarded, but the thought of saying anything made my jaw tremble faster. I curled into a tighter ball. My sopping tunic squelched.

  Darren was talking when she came back in, her arms full of blankets. “. . . I should never have left you up there in the cold. I mean, you’re obviously out of your gourd, and I know you asked for it, but that’s no excuse. I should have—”

  “C—c—c—captain?”

  “Yes, what?”

  “B—b—b—b—blankets.”

  “Oh, damn it!” she said, and stooped to wrap one of them around me. She sounded disgusted but I could tell, even before she said another word, that the disgust was for herself rather than for me. “Look, warm up a second, then we’ll have to get your wet things off. I mean, I won’t get them off, you’ll get them off, I’ll leave you alone to—” She glared through the decks at a heaven she couldn’t see. “Blast and bugger and damn. I’m so bad at this.”

  “At what?” The dry blanket was making a difference already. I could feel my fingers again.

  “At—you know. Helping people.” She grew awkward. “Never mind.”

  She was flustered, and I didn’t want her that way, so I quickly changed the subject. “How many spare blankets do you have lying around?”

  “Not enough. That one’s mine. The other one is Regon’s.”

  “
He didn’t need it?”

  “He’s not big enough to stop me from taking it, so it worked out fine.” She sounded better now. “Are you going to get difficult if I ask you to take your wet clothes off? I’ll get out of the way.”

  Get difficult, she said, and I felt a bit annoyed. Hadn’t I been difficult ever since the moment we met? Lord knows I was trying hard enough. How much could one woman give?

  “I’ll take my wet clothes off,” I said. “But you should find a rope.”