Beggar's Flip Page 9

  The peace talks began the next day. We started in the late afternoon, to give the chieftains a fighting chance to recover from the effects of far too much wine. I sat in state on a throne made of boxes, doing my best to look profound and wise while my palms were so damp with anxiety that I had to wipe them on my trousers every other minute.

  Meanwhile, Lynn lounged at my feet on a red beaded cushion. She kept a vacant stare on her face, as if she was an ornament or a pet, but all the while her brain whirred mightily. As I strove to keep the talks going, she sent me signals by tapping my ankle. One tap for yes, go on; two for no, stop; three for change the subject; four for not yet. A hard squeeze meant, Hold everything and give them booze.

  I’m talking a lot about tricks and gimmicks, and don’t you underestimate tricks and gimmicks—they help. But it was still damn hard work, as peacemaking always is, and it was the chieftains doing almost all of it. They were the ones who had to do all the imagining and the forgiving on behalf of their two peoples, and the effort of it made the sweat stand out in beads all over their faces. We talked until we all wanted to murder each other, took a pause for breath, and talked again. During the breaks, while she was passing out refreshments, Lynn gauged the chieftains’ levels of fatigue and frustration. Then she’d come back to kneel at my feet, and she gave me hints in whispers, her eyes fixed on the deckboards, while I pretended to sharpen my dagger.

  My biggest fear during all this was that one of the chieftains would offer to buy Lynn from me, at which point I would be forced to shatter the truce by dealing out bloody death to him and to anyone who came between us. When one of the chieftains (name of Ano) drew me aside, I was sure that the time had come. But all he did was to give me a long lecture on the need to respect all women, no matter their station in life. He strongly suggested that I buy Lynn some decent clothing and stop petting her like a cat. This conversation left me hideously embarrassed, as you can imagine, but Lynn found it hilarious and had to force down her snickers.

  It took a week, but we got there in the end, tying the final knot on the string of red-and-blue beads that set out the exact amount of reparations to be exchanged. As soon as the knot drew tight, Regon waved a blue flag at the villagers waiting ashore, and the coast erupted with cheers. The sounds brought on a shuddering in me, halfway tears and halfway laughter. I grabbed Lynn around the chest, pulled her back against me, rested my chin on the top of her head, and squeezed hard.

  I didn’t hear her sigh, but I felt it. “You did good, Mistress,” she murmured. “You did good.”

  I’m not pretending that I stormed down on Tavar and stopped a war all on my lonesome. But still, when the Banshee set sail, the women of the villages were preparing to plant the millet fields, for the first time in almost two years.

  So you see, it’s not as if there’s nothing we can do.

  LYNN AND I celebrated on our own that night. Guess how.

  After an hour, we lay sweat-slicked and panting on our hard bunk. I was feeling so languidly good that Lynn had to elbow me twice before I remembered, and reached down to untie her wrists and ankles. Once loose, she rolled over on top of me and nipped my lower lip. “You know what I’ve been thinking?”

  I propped my head up on my arm. “I’m sure you’ll tell me before I have to use harsh interrogation techniques.”

  Not that I would have minded. Harsh interrogation techniques, under the right circumstances and in the right company, can be quite delightful.

  “There’s an old legend in southern Kila,” Lynn said. “It’s about a holy leader. Someone destined to rise from the mists and pacify the islands and put an end to war and strife and unite heaven and earth. Latoya told me about it. Have you heard it before?”

  “The story of the Master of Storms. Yes, I’ve heard it.”

  She nipped again. “I think you should own that story. That could be you. ‘Master of Storms’ would be a nice addition to your list of titles. Don’t make faces. I’m serious.”

  I coughed, embarrassed on her behalf. “Did you listen to the whole story?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then you know that, according to legend, the Master of Storms will be a ten-year-old boy who can shoot lightning from his fingertips. And I think he’s supposed to be able to talk to dolphins? Can’t swear to that last part. It’s been a while since I’ve heard it.”

  “So?”

  “Huh?”

  “Who cares? Ten-year-old boy who can shoot lightning from his fingertips, adult woman who looks good in leather—what’s the difference? People around here want a saviour, and there’s no pre-pubescent dolphin talker in sight. They can’t afford to get picky.”

  “Lynn.”

  “Look, if you’re all that worried about it, we’ll find some dolphins and you can exchange some chit-chat with them. I don’t know what to do about the lightning thing. I guess I could embroider thunderclouds all over your coat.”

  I puffed out an exasperated breath. “Lynn, I’m not the Master of Storms!”

  “You might as well be,” she said reasonably. “Nobody else is.”

  “Why are you even bringing this up? So far as I know, you don’t believe in prophecies.”

  “And there you are wrong, O my mistress. I believe whole-heartedly in the power of prophecies to make people do things that they wouldn’t do otherwise. You’re a good woman, you’re a gifted leader—and yet there are morons a-plenty in the world who don’t think that’s enough of a reason to follow you. Make no mistake, those same morons will fall over each other to butcher people under your flag, if they believe that some prehistoric lunatic once predicted that you’d show up one day to throw lightning bolts. It’s stupid, but there it is.”

  Lynn rolled off the bunk and rummaged for her tunic. I felt strange and prickly as I watched her get dressed. “So you want to lie to people.”

  “I want the war to end. Don’t you?”

  She bent over me, dropped a glancing kiss on my cheek, and headed for the door. “Don’t wait up.”

  “Why?” I sat upright, trying not to whine. “Where are you going?”

  “To find Ariadne. Haven’t seen her much in the past week or so.”

  No, she hadn’t, since she’d spent the past week sitting on a cushion at my feet. But she hadn’t been spending much quality time with me, either. Didn’t “mistress” outrank “sister”?

  “You know, Darren,” Lynn said, pausing at the door. “I said that I wasn’t going to interfere—and I’m not—but don’t you think that this whole blood feud thing is getting a bit ridiculous?”

  I SPENT A good part of the next day stomping up and down my cabin, trying to make up my mind. I had this horrible feeling that if I approached Ariadne to make peace, I was going to have to do a lot of apologizing and looking humble, neither of which are my specialities. On the other hand, I had an equally horrible feeling that I wasn’t going to be able to wait her out. I was a hot-headed pirate, she was an ice princess—she had the advantage when it came to waiting.

  So I yelled a few bad words and stomped up to the deck to get it over with.

  It was the forenoon watch and half my men should have been sleeping, but there was a milling crowd of sailors on deck, clustered in a ring around something I couldn’t see. There were roars of encouragement and the clink of coins changing hands, and eventually I figured it out. Iason’s daughters were playing koro again.

  Koro, the Game of Kings, is played in every noble house in Kila. We played a great deal of it back on Torasan Isle, because of the weather. On the Isle, the sun shone, on average, one day a month and the rest of the time it was raining, hailing, snowing, or all three, so we had to find ways to amuse ourselves indoors.

  While I was growing up, I fancied myself a pretty good player. I was far better than my brother Alek, I’ll tell you that for free. But I hadn’t a hope in hell when matched up against Lynn or Ariadne. Lynn had been teaching my crew how to play—Spinner, in particular, showed promise—but Ariadne was the only
one who could really push her.

  My sailors liked to watch the two of them fighting it out. It gave them something to bet on that was a little bit more interesting than those other classic shipboard games, “How many maggots will I find in my biscuit?” and “Which seagull is going to take a crap first”?

  I shouldered my way through the circle and squinted. There they were, the princess and the slave, blond heads together as they sat cross-legged on the deck, bent over the dice. Ariadne was winning, it looked like, but not by much.

  Ariadne threw the dice and scanned them through narrowed eyes. “I’ll bid. Full moon rising.”

  “Buyout,” Lynn offered. “Twenty if you stop here, fifteen on the next throw.”

  “Oh, you wish.”

  Ariadne won that round, but bid royal five on her next throw and didn’t make it. Then Lynn got busy, her eyes serene and deadly as she moved in for the kill. She made a hundred points in a single round, closing the gap between their scores to almost nothing, then made two cautious but solid plays that pushed her into the lead. Ariadne had the last turn, but an unlucky roll of the dice left her unable to recover and before she could say “Aw, screw it,” all Lynn’s backers were collecting their winnings.

  Ariadne, lips pursed, glared at Lynn and rattled the dice-cup. “Small annoying person, you’re being most inconsiderate. You know perfectly well how much I like to win.”

  Lynn shrugged. “Then you’d better stop overbidding your throws.”

  “Look, you, my bidding’s just fine. The problem is the dice. These dice are defective.”

  I snorted in amusement, and Ariadne wheeled on me. “All right, Chuckles, wipe that grin off your face. You think you could do better?”

  “I know damn well I can’t do better,” I said, with perfect honesty. I’d never won a single koro game against either of Iason’s daughters . . . unless you count the time when Lynn got a headache in the middle of the game and had to go belowdecks for a nap, and I kept throwing the dice while she was gone and scored five hundred points before she resurfaced. And even then it was close.

  I’d given up trying to play either of them, just so that I could hang on to the last few tattered shreds of self-respect that I had left. But I was trying to make peace, and peace doesn’t happen without pain and sacrifice. I nerved myself.

  “I know damn well I can’t do better,” I repeated. “So what? Let’s you and me play, and you can show me how it’s done.”

  Ariadne made a mocking sound, a sort of chuh. “Listen, pirate queen. If your past performance is any guide, I would need six years and a marching band to show you how to play koro.”

  Lynn opened her mouth, ready to intervene. I shook my head at her. She’d been right all along. I was either going to have to learn to live with Ariadne, or kill her in her sleep.

  “All right, I’m awful,” I said. “So school me. Why don’t we play a different game?”

  A thought seemed to strike Ariadne. She cocked her head, and her lips curled upwards in a thin, wicked smile. “Did Lynn ever teach you the Beggar’s Flip?”

  “Oh, don’t be a prick,” Lynn said. “That’s not a game.”

  Ariadne swept up the dice and rattled them in one hand. “But it’ll be funny, won’t it? I mean, watching her try to figure it out. How long do you think she’ll spend fumbling around despairingly in front of the whole crew before she gives up and begs for the answer?”

  I’d really been trying to be meek and agreeable and all, but that made me bristle. “You know what, princess? Before you decide that I’m an idiot, you should try your hand at the kind of mental gymnastics I have to pull off every day. Have you ever determined a ship’s latitudinal position? Have you ever calculated a cosine in your head in the middle of a howling gale? Have you—wait. The whole crew?”

  Ariadne gestured at our audience. “I think just about everyone’s here. Why, are you shy?”

  That was not the point, as Lynn and Regon had already realized. Both of them—startled, a little guilty—shot to their feet.

  “The entire crew can’t be here,” I said, starting off low and dangerous and letting the volume rise with each word. “Because I know that my sodding lookouts would not just abandon their sodding posts.”

  By then, all the sailors were scrambling away, running to the rails to scan the horizons. I waited for the cries of All clear, the signal that no lurking danger had crept up close while we were distracted. I waited five seconds. I waited ten.

  Spinner spoke first, his voice a trembling treble. “Shit. I mean—sails, captain. I mean, shit.”

  AS I SPRINTED for the gunwale, I had my hand outstretched. “Spyglass!”

  Someone gave me one, I didn’t look to see who, and I clapped it up to my eye. Sails, yes, two of them, and—fuck in a bucket, no wonder Spinner was scared. I knew those ships, sleek and predatory as a shark’s fin slicing through the water.

  “Corsairs,” Regon growled beside me, making it sound like the dirty word it was.

  Corsairs: the vultures of the sea, who had preyed on the southern trade routes long before the war began. They’d found it very easy to adapt once everything boiled into chaos. They were human scorpions, more or less, who chewed dajiki root before battle to inflame themselves to a frothing, murderous frenzy. I’ve heard that after one lump of dajiki root, the screams of your enemies as you cut them down sound like sweet music. I’ve heard that after two lumps of dajiki root, running a cutlass into another human body is enough to make you . . . well. Finish the sentence yourself, in the interests of delicacy. Corsairs are scum, is what I’m trying to get at.

  “Another sail!” Spinner roared, and his voice was pitched higher than usual but there was no other sign that he was practically wetting himself. And that was impressive, since, except for Regon and me, Spinner knew better than anyone what corsairs could do.

  Up went the spyglass again. Sure enough, there was one more ship on the horizon: a square red blot.

  “That’s one of ours,” Regon said.

  I snapped the spyglass out to its full length. “That’s not just any one of ours. That’s the Sod Off—that’s Latoya and Flint!”

  “You can tell? For sure? From this distance?”

  “It’s one of my damn ships, isn’t it? Do you ask a mother whether she can recognize all her children?”

  The corsairs were wheeling, bearing down on the Sod Off like wolves scenting prey. I saw the blot of red veer to the side as Flint tried to change course. It wouldn’t be enough to get him clear. He was a fine sailor, my man Flint, but when it came to ship handling, he was no Regon, or Teek.

  I watched the corsairs’ ships turning, swift and light. It made me ever more aware of the massive weight groaning under my feet.

  “We’re too far out,” I muttered, partly to Regon and partly to myself. “The Banshee’s too heavy to move well in this miserable wind. I could fart harder than it’s blowing now.”

  “Whine, whine, whine,” Regon said. “It’ll be enough, because it has to be enough. That’s all. I’ll get the men to stations . . .”

  “Yes, and then you can line them up on deck, have them all bend over, and we’ll give the farting thing a try, because I don’t see how the hell we’re going to get this beast moving otherwise.”

  There was a crackle then, as though something in the sky had torn like paper. And then . . .

  I’ve mentioned what the weather’s like down south: violent and changeable. The heavens are constantly on fire, lightning flogging the ozone, the very clouds a-hum with forces that could rip a man apart. And every now and then, the sky tears above you, and something falls through.

  The sky came apart. I felt a blow on my back, as if I’d been punched hard just below the neck. That was the rain beginning to fall, solid as a sheet of iron. I gasped, abruptly drenched.

  “Here.” Lynn was at my side, helping me out of my sodden coat. “You ready? This is your wind, Mistress, so you better make the most of it.”

  She was right. Th
e sudden, violent squall had brought with it a sudden, violent wind, blowing abaft the beam. So there was still a chance.

  “I’ll have men aloft!” I roared, wiping water from my eyes. “Lynn, Spinner, up up up!”

  They raced for the rigging—both of them light and agile, nimble as monkeys on the ropes. Lynn slipped once on the wet lines, but Spinner shot a hand out to steady her, and they made it up to the foretop without disaster.

  The Banshee was flying, the strong wind hauling her through the waves like a racehorse would pull a child’s wagon, in great, bounding leaps. Too fast.