Shell Game Page 5

  “Blood alone is rulership,” Holly said, finishing the old saying. “I’ve heard that. Sometimes, Darren needs a gentle little reminder that things don’t work that way around here.”

  “I can imagine.” I raised my voice. “Darren, will you leave those poor men alone? They’ve got it under control!”

  She glanced up at me, irritated. “I’m making sure that—”

  “You’re just stepping on their feet.” (By now Regon and Kash were hiding their smiles.) “Give them some room.”

  Darren folded her arms crossly, but she also backed off. As she wandered further down the beach, I could hear her muttering something about checking the stores.

  Holly and I watched her go.

  “I’ve never really understood it,” she said presently. “The Kilan obsession with bloodlines, I mean. It doesn’t seem to make any sense.”

  “It doesn’t make the tiniest little bit of sense,” I agreed. “But that’s how it is.”

  “So impractical, though. We have nobility in this country, but they don’t have the blood mania to the same extreme. Is it true that a Kilan lord can be deposed for not having any children?”

  “Dead true. It happens all the time. There are always a bunch of second-rank aristocrats, younger sons of younger sons, looking to knife their way to power. You know what they say? They say that a noble without children is half a corpse. And not just because he’s a target for every assassin who wanders through the neighbourhood. Kilan lords believe that descendants make you immortal, and without them, you’re not even really alive.” A breeze touched the aspen, and I shivered. “Is there any more of that cider?”

  She refilled my cup again and left the bottle in my reach when she’d finished pouring. “But why do they have so many children? Take Darren—she has more than a dozen siblings.”

  “Because nobles get a lot of work out of their children. They use them as merchant captains, army fodder, wedding bait . . . everything but mousetraps. Darren was one hell of a moneymaker for her father, or so I’m told, so he must have been well and truly pissed when he banished her. Bet he regretted it later.”

  Holly finished her drink and overturned her empty cup. “Is it very dangerous for Darren to do what she’s doing? I mean, going back to the islands after her banishment?”

  “Yes,” I said flatly. “She’s an exile. In the eyes of the nobles, she isn’t even human. They could do anything to her and still be within the law. Kill her. Sell her. Paint her green and show her at fairs. Anything.”

  Holly let out a long sigh. “She doesn’t say anything, but I know she’s afraid. The last time she was here . . . six weeks ago . . . she staggered down the gangplank once the ship was docked and she wouldn’t say a word to me. She just sat in one place and stared until dark. Then she asked for brandy and drank until dawn. Regon told me they had a close call.”

  “What kind of close call?”

  Holly gave a helpless laugh. “You may find this funny, but Darren doesn’t really choose to confide in me, for some reason. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”

  Darren’s restless prowling had taken her near the stern of the ship, and something there caught her attention. She squinted, then backed away and took a good look. Then she marched back towards us with purposefulness in every taut line of her body. “Kid?”

  “It’s ‘Lynn.’ And yes?”

  “You want to explain why my ship has the word ‘Badger’ painted in giant letters on the stern?”

  “Oh. Did I forget to tell you? That’s the ship’s name now.”

  “You named . . . my ship?”

  “A pirate queen’s flagship needs a name.”

  “My only ship. My only ship. Not my bloody flagship. And what the hell kind of a name is Badger?”

  “It’s the ship’s name. Obviously. Look at this ship. It is clearly a Badger.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “It came to me in a flash of inspiration. Don’t question the creative process. Anyway, Regon agreed with me.”

  She threw up her hands and wheeled around. “Regon, you’re part of this . . . this conspiracy?”

  “Well, someone had to help her with the painting,” Regon said reasonably, tossing a barnacle over his shoulder. “She couldn’t reach. Being chained to the mast and all that.”

  “She told you to paint Badger on the ship, and you just trotted off and did it?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Holly said. “He had to wait for Lynn to write out the letters for him. And then he had come to me to get the paint.”

  The noises that Darren made right then sounded like a kettle that had been left too long on the fire.

  “You people better watch it,” Darren said. “Who the hell do you think’s in charge here, anyway?”

  She tromped off with the last tatters of her dignity.

  Holly waited until she was out of earshot. “She hasn’t figured it out yet. Has she?”

  “Give me time,” I protested, stretching luxuriously. “It’s early still.”

  “True, but I find it’s better to get them over the hump as soon as possible. Now, how about some of that soup? It’s getting a little chilly.”

  IT WAS VERY late when Darren came to our makeshift cabin, and her eyes were red-rimmed with drink. She unbuckled her cutlass and set it on the floorboards, her movements slow and deliberate, as though she didn’t trust her own hands. I sat up in my blankets and waited.

  At last, she said, “You know that we’re leaving tomorrow.”

  “So?”

  “So . . . you need to get down on shore.”

  Frustrated, I tugged at a fistful of my hair. How long was this going to take? “I’m your chained, helpless prisoner,” I pointed out for the sixtieth time. “How am I supposed to get down on shore?”

  She rubbed her temples, and I knew she was getting a headache. “Well, what if I decide to be merciful just this once, and let my helpless prisoner go free?”

  “Oh, I don’t think you’ll do that,” I said absently, tugging at my hair again. There seemed to be a bit too much of it. It was shaggy at the back. “I need a trim here. Lend me your dagger?”

  She drew it without thinking, and then there was the shade of a smile. “Isn’t it a bad idea to give a dagger to a slightly-deranged captive?”

  “There, now. Who said you were unteachable? You’ll have to cut my hair for me.”

  Darren lifted her hands. “I’m not going to do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I might stab you, that’s why not.”

  “Come on, I trust you.”

  “I don’t care whether you trust me, accidents happen. Besides, you don’t need your hair cut. You hardly have any of it to begin with.”

  “I like it short.”

  “You look like a boy. But if you insist, I’ve got some scissors around here somewhere.”

  Darren rooted around—it took her a minute or so. The shears that she eventually produced were long and blunt and rusty and looked about six times more likely to kill me than her well-sharpened dagger, but she seemed happy with them, so I let it pass. I scooted around so that my back faced her. She braced a doubled-up knee against me, to get leverage, and I leaned into it.

  “I mean it,” she said, between deliberate snips. “Even ruthless, pitiless pirates have their good days. I could decide to let you go.”

  I cocked my head thoughtfully. “You could, of course. But you’re the pirate queen. The captain of the formidable Badger. Even if you’re feeling merciful, you can’t do anything that would chip away at your fearsome reputation.”

  “Hold still. I nearly chopped off your ear. And even pirate queens let prisoners go sometimes, I’d think.”

  “Hey, which of us is the expert on pirate queens? Besides. By now I’m so bitter about my captivity that, if you ever let me go, I would probably just raise an army of deranged ex-slaves and come after you. And kill you elaborately when you least expect it.”

  “Hold still, I said.” She
grabbed the top of my head in one work-roughened hand. “Someday you’re going to have to tell me what you’re bitter about. How do you kill someone elaborately, anyway?”

  “Well, I have a few ideas. One involves marmalade.”

  “Does it?”

  “It does. Another incorporates ten under-ripe mangoes and a rat on a stick. You said ‘someday,’ by the way.”

  The snipping stopped. “I never—”

  “You said that I have to tell you someday what I’m so bitter about. And I will. But someday isn’t today. Good thing that I’m not going anywhere.”

  There was the familiar sigh, and then she brushed wisps of hair from the back of my neck. “I still don’t see why you want it so short.”

  “Because I like it short.”

  “Oh, for the love of—just look at it.”

  She held out one of the larger locks, and I studied it gravely. “Yes,” I agreed, after I felt I’d given it all the attention it deserved. “Yes, that is my hair.”

  “It’s so pale,” Darren said. “It looks like . . .”

  She paused, and I knew from her frown that she was concentrating deeply, summoning up every ounce of poetry in her soul. “It looks like wheat or something.”

  “Look at you, spouting compliments to captives,” I said. “That’s a pirate, all right.”

  She smiled in spite of herself. Then she looked down at her hands.

  “I know you,” I whispered. “You’re not the kind of woman who would pick up a slave girl on a whim. And you’re not the kind of woman who would just throw one away, either. You’re not going to let me leave.”

  SHE WASN’T THERE when I woke up. I’d gone to bed braced for another argument, expecting her to have an eleventh-hour change of heart. It would be just like Darren to stick someone else with the job of getting me off the ship, while she went and lurked in the bushes until it was done. But Holly wouldn’t be Darren’s stooge, I hoped, and Regon and Teek were both at least a little bit afraid of me. Kash and Spinner, more than a little. If Darren wanted me gone, she’d have to do the dirty work herself.

  So I didn’t panic as I looked around the empty cabin. I combed my hair, drank some water (Darren had left a flask), and then did a few deep breathing exercises, waiting for the combat to begin.

  But minutes later, I felt the thrum beneath my hand where it rested on the planks, and the next moment, my heart was leaping in my throat. That was motion. The Badger was outside the narrow inlet, sweeping full-sailed through the open seas.

  Regon peeked through the doorway. “Are you decent?” he asked dutifully.

  “You’re supposed to ask that before you look in, you know,” I pointed out, as I tossed the blankets aside. “Where’s the captain?”

  He stooped to unlock my ankle chain. “It’s her turn at the tiller. She wants to know if you’re so cowed and terrified that she can force you to help with the cooking.”

  “Good question,” I said, and pondered. “Is she looking very ruthless today?”

  His smile, in his brown face, looked like a crease in an old saddle. “I’ve never seen her so ruthless. Really, she must have been practising.”

  “Then I’m duly cowed. Let me get at the supplies and I’ll see if I can make a duff that tastes a little better than Kash’s boots.”

  That turned out to be a busy morning, but Regon found the time to talk to me once more, while I was scouring out the breakfast pots.

  “You know,” he said, “I think it’s good that you’re staying.”

  “Thank the captain. I had nothing to do with it.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE WEATHER WAS worse on that second crossing, and we were heading into the wind, but everything around me was so fascinating that I barely noticed.

  It only took me a week or so to get the hang of the cutlass. A cutlass is designed to be easy to use; it’s basically a big butter knife, except that you can kill people with it if you happen to want to. Within a few days, I could make it swing and whistle through the air in a manner most gratifying. Darren would stand by, looking either tolerant (if she was in a good mood) or disapproving (if she wasn’t).

  “All of this isn’t going to help you in an actual battle,” she would say. “If you really want to be able to fight, I mean really, then we need to build up your arm strength.”

  “But where’s . . . the fun . . . in that?” I would pant in reply. “Watch this, I’m going to do the stab-behind-the-back thing.”

  Things had gotten into a pattern between us, more or less. Darren had argued that by now, I had to be so terrified of her that I wouldn’t try to escape during the day. I had agreed, after due consideration, so now I was only chained up at night. That left me free to prance around the deck wielding Darren’s weapon whenever I wanted, which made a nice change. Before long, though, I discovered something much more interesting than the cutlass.

  Darren had a habit of staring out at the horizon pensively, in the rare moments when she wasn’t busy. (It was on my list of things to fix, but I didn’t expect to get around to it any time soon. There were much more urgent concerns.) When she was standing and staring, her hand often slipped into her pocket and pulled out a coil of thin leather cord, which she would wind around her fingers or tie into elaborate knots.

  That was the cord she had used to bind me on the day we met. Somehow, I didn’t think that Darren kept a leather cord in her pocket just on the off chance that she would meet a strange woman who wanted to bite her, so the situation required further research. One night when she was sleeping, I filched the thing from her pocket to have a little look-see.

  There was a full moon that night. The dim blue glow trickled down from the galley stairs and through gaps between the warped planks. I positioned the cord in the best of the light. It was braided sinew (from a bear, I later discovered), smooth and shiny with use. Uncoiled, it was a few feet long. At either end, a small bone bead kept the braid from unravelling. I tugged at the ends experimentally.

  Darren’s voice came sleepily from the blankets. “Not for playing.”

  I tugged at it a few more times anyway. It was incredibly strong. “It’s a garrote, isn’t it?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  I made a loop in the sinew and imagined slipping it over a man’s head. He would start to suffocate as soon as you drew it taut, but you could kick him in the back of the knees to hasten the process. Then when he fell, his full weight would be added to the force of the pull. This garrote wasn’t wire; it wouldn’t cut the windpipe right away. But it was a weapon that you didn’t have to be a muscleman to use. The garrote could focus your strength, or make up for strength you didn’t have. You could wield it to defend yourself or to kill.

  Darren propped herself up on one elbow. “Lynn, please.”

  I coiled the cord carefully and handed it back before I flopped down beside her. “Teach me to use it?”

  Her eyes had slipped shut again. Groggily, she shook her head. “It’s not like a cutlass. No way to practice with it safely . . .”

  “How did you learn?”

  “Used a post,” she yawned. “Padded post.”

  “So we’ll set up a padded post. Honestly, do I have to do all the thinking around here?”

  Darren didn’t answer. Her chest rose and fell. Then she said, “Why do you want to learn to fight?”

  “Well, if the ship gets boarded . . .”

  “If this ship gets boarded, we’re all dead.”

  There was anger, but again, she was directing it at herself, not at me. I waited, and the next words were halting.

  “I’m scared shitless every time I leave that harbour. Every time we head back to the islands. Every time . . .”

  I waited long minutes, motionless, but there was nothing more. She slept, or more likely, pretended to sleep. I didn’t see any prospect of doing that myself, so I filched the garrote from her pocket again and practised tying knots.

  OF ALL OF Darren’s sailors, Spinner was the one I got to know best.
He was the youngest of them, maybe even slightly younger than I was, though he didn’t know his actual age. Looking at the rest of Darren’s crew, you saw grizzled faces, muscles like tree roots, and hands so rough that they could have been sharkskin gloves. Spinner, on the other hand, was slim and smooth as a peeled switch, with wispy hair and skinny wrists. His voice was flute-like, even when he was cursing.

  On any other ship, torturing Spinner would have been a popular form of recreation. On any other ship, men would have been lining up after dinner to kick him around the deck. On the Badger, for some reason, no one ever seemed to notice that there was anything different about him. All the sailors called each other dirty bastards and sons of whores in a completely impartial way, no offence meant and none taken.