Beggar's Flip Page 6

  Now, that kiss has become sort of famous in recent years. I think there are a couple of ballads on the subject, even. So I’m sorry to be a spoil sport, but I cannot tell a lie. That was the single worst kiss of my life. Jess was still laughing when I leaned forwards, so my lips squashed against her bared teeth, and our foreheads bonked together, and she was so confused that she sneezed on me.

  Afterwards, there was silence all around us—even the musicians had stopped playing. But I thought, or imagined, that I could hear my father’s breathing, loud and furious.

  Jess groaned in my ear. “Oh, Darren, no. Darren, you did not just do that.”

  “Please do shut up,” I muttered. My eyes were closed tight and I planned for them to remain that way.

  A deep sigh, and then her hand found mine and squeezed. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  SOMEHOW, WE FOUND our way out of the Great Hall and back to my quarters. Jess had to steer me. Left on my own, I kept bumping into walls.

  When we reached my room, I collapsed into an armchair and sat there clutching my head. Jess packed our bags, slipping a few small but valuable items of bric-a-brac in among the clothes.

  “Darren,” she said, as she squashed an armful of stockings into an overfull pocket. “We had a gentle little agreement that you weren’t going to do this kind of thing anymore.”

  “Do what kind of thing?” I mumbled into my hands.

  “Radical things. Dramatic, radical, spur-of-the-moment things. We agreed that you weren’t going to do anything dramatic anymore without talking it over with me first. We discussed it. At some length. I think we even put something in writing. Is any of this sounding familiar?”

  I scrubbed at my face, hoping that if I scrubbed hard enough, the world would right itself. “Could you hold it in for a while? If I’m still alive in six hours, I promise, you can yell at me all you want.”

  Jess softened just a bit, coming near enough to pat my hand. “Your father isn’t going to execute you over one not-very-good kiss.”

  “You don’t know that and neither do I.”

  She made a sound of exasperation. “Then why are we still in this room?”

  “What are you saying?” I tried, and failed, to keep the panic out of my tone. “Are you telling me that I should just run?”

  “Well, I don’t claim to be a great military mind, but isn’t it traditional to run away when people are trying to kill you?”

  She had a point and yet . . . I stared down blankly at my court clothes: a black doublet studded with agates, soft black half-boots, and pearl-grey hose. From my belt hung a silver dagger with the hawk’s-head crest, marking me as a captain who bore arms for Lord Stribos of Torasan. “Jess, if I leave the Isle without being dismissed by my father, that’s treason.”

  “Yes. But sticking around until he has a chance to pass sentence is stupid. Wouldn’t you say?”

  I breathed hard, stricken. “But where am I supposed to go?”

  “Back to the valley with me, of course. Back to my place. It’s a little premature, but I’m not about to abandon you in the wilderness. You’re going to have to learn to pick up after yourself, though. No more leaving your boots in the middle of the floor and your trousers draped over the kitchen table and your shirts every damn where. I’m going to be very strict about that, Darren.”

  It was gentle teasing, meant to make me feel better, but it did not have that effect. I barely understood the words she was saying. All I heard was this: Everything you have ever known is over.

  I swallowed, again and again. There was a lump in my throat that wouldn’t go down.

  It’s easy to do something reckless and heroic, when you’re in the moment and getting carried away. It’s especially easy if you have a few stiff snorts of cherry wine in you. What’s hard is holding onto those heroic feelings in the months and years that follow, as the cost becomes clear. Only the best of us can deal with the consequences of our sacrifices without coming to regret them.

  Tested by that measure, I am not heroic. Not even vaguely. As I stared at Jess, and panic rose in me hot as vomit, all I wanted to do was start the day over again and erase that life-changing kiss.

  That’s when a heavy fist hammered at the door.

  I didn’t know whether to scream, fight, cry, or roll over and play dead. In the end, I rose about halfway out of my chair. My silver knife slapped against my thigh with the motion—I wondered wildly if I would have the guts to stab whomever tried to arrest me. And only then did it occur to me to worry about Jess. If I was in danger, what in hell was my father going to do to her?

  I reached for my knife hilt, but the door swung open and Alek stood behind it, clad in full scale mail.

  Alek had been sort of crap as a merchant captain—so I’d heard—but he was gifted in the area of swinging heavy metal objects around and making people dead. Since it was wartime, there was a market for that particular talent. As the war raged on, my father had come to depend on Alek more and more, and liked to keep him close.

  Alek was just the man that my father would trust with a very dirty job. And now my heart really did begin to hammer, because he had a naked sword in one fist.

  I thrust Jess behind me and raised my silver knife. As I did that, I remembered, belatedly, that it was a ceremonial weapon, as dull as a knitting needle.

  Alek just shook his head. “That’s the problem with you, Darren. You never know when to stop.”

  His arm moved and I flinched, but he only rammed his sword back into its sheath and held out the scroll.

  I hadn’t noticed it before. The sword had been occupying all my attention, as you can imagine. But as soon as I focused, I knew what it was. A banishment scroll is supposed to be conspicuous, with its red wrapping and seals of black wax. Time was, they marked exiles with a bloody slash across each cheek, and a smear of black tar across the back of the neck. The scroll is the modern, civilized alternative.

  “You have three days,” Alek said. “Don’t waste them.”

  Mechanically, I took the scroll from him. I had to. During my three days of grace, I would have to show the scroll to any Kilan—noble, peasant, or slave—who asked to see it. If I didn’t have the scroll at the ready when questioned, or if I was still in Kila when my grace period ran out, then anyone who found me could deal with me as they liked, the options limited only by their creativity. A lot of exiles get stoned to death, or hanged. Sometimes raped first, sometimes not. I’ve heard of one who was crushed by a red-hot wheel. I’ve heard of one who was held prisoner for months in a wicker hutch, like a rabbit, before she was sold to a whorehouse in Jiras. I gripped the scroll hard, crushing the paper wrapping.

  Alek should have left then. There was nothing else he needed to do or say. But, for some reason, he stood there, the expression on his face midway between pity and disappointment.

  It was the pity, more than anything, that helped me find my tongue. “Our father is a fool. He doesn’t have so many captains that he can afford to throw them away. Banishing me is like dropping money down a well. He’ll regret it.”

  Alek splayed his fingers wide, as if he was letting something drop between them. “That’s not your concern any more, is it?”

  No, it wasn’t, and if I was a stronger woman I would have just marched from the room at that point, while making a suitably rude hand gesture. But the words slipped out. “Did anyone speak for me, Alek? Did you?”

  There was a flash of annoyance in his grey-blue eyes—eyes that were so like my own that they could have been mirrors.

  “Just answer me!”

  He sighed, loud and long. “Did you have to slow-dance with a woman in front of the fucking Tavarene ambassador? Gods, Darren, what possessed you? Nobody would have stopped you from having your bit on the side, but you have to know where to draw the line. If you’d been discrete, we would have had options. As it was, what choice did our father have? You know that there’s a cost of doing business. Sometimes you have to write things off.”

/>   For the first time, Jess spoke up. “Will you go now, please?”

  Somehow, just with those five words, she managed to communicate that Alek was sexually unattractive to people of all genders and had a member the size of a lima bean.

  I honestly thought that Alek was going to hit her—one fist did clench. But he mastered himself and turned away.

  When he reached the door, he dipped his hand into his pocket and came out with a small leather pouch. It clinked when he set it down on a nearby table.

  He didn’t speak again, but he did look back. Once. Then he was gone, and the door swung softly shut behind him.

  Jess and I were left there, surrounded by my clothes-press and my writing-desk, my chairs and linen chest. A soft breeze streamed through the open window. It was all perfectly normal, except for the crumpled scroll clutched in my fist.

  Jess, ever the pragmatist, went at once to the leather pouch Alek had left behind and poured the coins into her palm.

  “Copper,” she said. “But better than nothing. We might have to bribe someone to get passage off of the Isle.”

  She slung her leather satchel over one arm and hefted my bundle onto her shoulder. “Come along, sweetheart. It’s time to be somewhere else. And—quite frankly—I don’t think you’re losing much. Once you have a chance to think it over, you’ll realize that this is the best thing ever to happen to you.”

  THAT HAD BEEN five years before. And that was the last time I saw Alek, until he washed up mostly dead on the beach. It was the last time I had seen any of my siblings, come to think of it.

  Now, on the day of Alek’s death, I leaned back against the bulkhead of my cabin, and tried to picture my sisters and brothers. Most of us in the House of Torasan had high cheekbones, slightly hooked noses, and hair as coarse as a horse’s mane. It made it hard to remember the differences between individual faces.

  Where were they all now? What with the war, Alek probably wasn’t the first of us to die. I hadn’t seen my oldest sister Sala since the day before her wedding. (I wasn’t allowed to come to the wedding itself. Too many guests, not enough chairs.) Was she still alive? What about Brayan? Or little Jada? When had I even thought about them last?

  I was so deep in thought, I didn’t notice the footsteps approaching. It jolted me when the cabin door opened and Lynn slipped inside.

  “Are we underway?” I asked automatically—and needlessly, because I could feel, through the vibration of the planks, that my ship was in motion.

  Lynn didn’t bother to answer. “You know, Mistress, I could hear you all the way from the crow’s nest.”

  “I wasn’t making any noise.”

  “Not out loud, but you’re thinking too hard. I can hear it. Sounds like grinding teeth. You should give up thinking, you know. You’ll live longer. And your ulcer might finally go away.”

  I felt the sore spot on my stomach, gingerly. It had been there for months, and I was pretty sure that it would stick around, even if I gave up the habit of thinking.

  “Give me a break,” I said, in my most wounded tone. “My brother just died.”

  Lynn made a sympathetic kind of noise.

  “I’m distraught.”

  “That can’t be fun.”

  She wasn’t buying it. I heaved out a breath, giving up the act.

  “Shouldn’t I care more?” I asked her, almost in a whisper. “Shouldn’t I feel something more than I do?”

  Lynn crossed the room to kneel at my feet—a quick, practised, graceful gesture—and began to unlace my boots. “We’re not the same, you and I.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I leaned back on my elbows to give her space to work.

  “I don’t see the point in trying to feel anything other than what you’re actually feeling. Seems like a waste of time to me. But as I said, we’re not the same.” She worked the first boot free and laid it on the deck beside her. “What was he like? Alek, I mean.”

  “He . . . was . . . well . . .” What came to mind was “Tall,” but that wasn’t much of a eulogy. I made an effort. “He was my older brother. My father’s second son.”

  Lynn nodded. “Second in the line of succession. He actually had a chance of becoming Lord of Torasan.”

  “Only if my oldest brother had died childless.”

  “I take it that your oldest brother didn’t die childless.”

  “Konrad was married on his fifteenth birthday. He fathered his first son before he even had a full beard. By now, he probably has—lord, I don’t even know. Seven kids, at least.”

  Lynn was still working on my second boot—the laces were tangled. “Why didn’t your father ever marry you off?”

  Strange to be talking about something at once so distant and so familiar. “I was the eighth-born, and my mother was my father’s third wife. I wouldn’t have been entitled to much of a dowry, even if my House were wealthy. And it wasn’t. Torasan Isle is mainly rocks and trees and dirt. The most valuable asset that we . . . that they have is the salmon fisheries. None of the neighbouring nobles showed much interest in me, so my father kept me on the merchant boats. I was more useful to him that way. But I’m sure he would have found someone for me in the end.”

  He would have, too. Because that was the most important of all commandments if you were born a noblewoman in Kila: multiply, multiply, multiply. Bear children, and still more children, to serve your husband and your noble father, to expand their realms and magnify their wealth, to captain their ships and die in their wars, to safeguard their bloodlines, to grant them life eternal. Bollocks. My skin itched at the thought. Lynn had narrowly escaped a life as a brood sow, but maybe the same could be said for me.

  Lynn set the second boot aside. “What was it like? To grow up with that many sisters and brothers?”

  “It was . . . I don’t know. Normal? Noisy? We all shared a room—like a long hall, with beds lining either side. It smelt of milk, and pitch from the torches. It had a huge fireplace, with an iron grille at the front so we couldn’t fall into it. And a washbasin made of pink marble. And a stairway at the back, down to the shore of a calm little bay where we all learned to sail. We told ghost stories at night, and the small ones would squeak and hide in each other’s beds. The older ones would sit up late, reading or working by candlelight. It was . . .”

  All of a sudden, there was a hard lump of pressure in my chest that wouldn’t let me breathe. I didn’t get nostalgic very often. When I thought of Torasan Isle, I mostly remembered the fakery and nastiness of life at court, all of the etiquette and fuss. I never missed that crap. But speaking of my childhood, I could remember a thousand smells and thoughts and feelings connected with life on the Isle, and each one was tugging at me like a tiny kite string. Overlaying all of them was that one inescapable fact: I could never, never go back.

  Lynn rested her crossed arms on top of my knees, looking up at me gravely. “You’re homesick.”

  “It’s not home.” Her head was right there, so I stroked it. “It hasn’t been home for a good long time now. I’m not one of them anymore.”

  “Your father has been going out of his way to make that clear, hasn’t he?”

  “By the time he sent the fourth assassin, I had pretty much figured it out, yes.”

  Lynn sighed. “Fathers.”

  “Fathers,” I agreed. “Is there a reason that you’re still sitting on the floor?”

  “I’m comfortable.” She closed her eyes, bowing her head just slightly as I stroked the back of her neck. “So, O my mistress. Since we agree that your father is ten degrees of arse, why are you going to bother to give him Alek’s warning?”

  “Who says I am?”

  “Mistress? If you’d decided not to warn your father? You would have begun to agonize about it by now. Loudly.”

  Every now and then, I used to wonder what it would be like to have a slave girl who couldn’t read my mind. It would have made it a lot easier to get away with certain things.

  “All right, I’m going to w
arn my father about the traitor. But not for his stupid sake. It was Alek’s last request, that’s why. Besides, if someone’s trying to kill my father, the rest of my family might get caught in the crossfire. And I’m not quite pissed off enough to wish that on them.”

  Lynn opened one eye and squinted up at me. “There’s a good chance that Alek was murdered by someone in your family, you know. What with all that talk about traitor and one of us.”

  “Hell, there’s more than a good chance. I would call that a solid working theory. And my money’s on Konrad. I wouldn’t put it past my father to have Konrad strangled so that Alek could take the throne. Maybe Konrad decided to strike first. But there’s nothing I can do about it, right? I’ll send Alek’s body home. I’ll write to my father and let him know what Alek said. And then I’ll sit back . . .”