The Lady Darren of the House of Torasan (Pirate Queen)
THE TRIP FROM the Great Hall to our bedroom was unpleasant for everyone involved. Ariadne stopped once to puke behind a tapestry, once to lean out of a window and gulp night air. When we had to climb the stairs, she swayed and stumbled and eventually gave up, plonking down on her backside right in the middle of the flight. Regon and I had to carry her the rest of the way.
By the time we reached our room, I was thoroughly sick of her. I would have cheerfully served her up to a pack of man-eating wolves right then—stuck her on a plate and put little sprigs of parsley around her and everything. I had to settle for dumping her on the floor as soon as we got inside.
It was left to Regon to help her into bed and pull the coverlet over her. She was a mess, gown sodden with sweat around the neck and under the arms, and Regon frowned at her doubtfully. “Are we going to stay awake and watch her?”
“We are not going to stay up and watch her.”
“What if she sicks up and chokes on it?”
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m planning to laugh and point.”
I spun around before I yanked off my tunic and trousers, more to hide my fury than to preserve my modesty. Regon had seen me naked countless times, and it wouldn’t matter if Ariadne saw, since I would be killing her anyway. Once I’d stripped down to my shirt, I tried to fold my court clothes, made a mess of it, tried again, did even worse. I gave up, sort of rolled the clothes into a ball and kicked them into a corner.
When I turned around to find some place to hang my cutlass belt, Ariadne was sitting up in bed, looking vaguely repentant. “Darren?”
“Princess.”
“Would I be right in thinking that I made something of an ass of myself tonight?”
“You would not be wrong.”
“I feel that something like an apology should pass my lips.”
“Oh, it’s far too late for that. Tomorrow at breakfast, while you’re nursing the mother of all hangovers, I’m going to march you in front of Jada and you are going to grovel as you have never grovelled before.”
“Give her a break, captain,” Regon said. “How many times have you got yourself pissed and acted like an idiot?”
“Plenty. When I was a kid. Not lately.”
“That time at Madame Lydia’s . . .”
“Was an aberration. And besides, I thought we had a gentlemen’s agreement that you weren’t going to mention it anymore. Here, catch.”
I threw a cushion at him. He caught it and tucked it behind Ariadne, then rolled her on her side, as he’d done for me more times than I cared to remember. Ariadne’s eyes were closed and her cheeks had gone slack. She snuggled unconsciously into the down comforter.
“Know something?” Regon said. “It was a hell of a relief when you stopped going through that charade every time we stopped at a brothel.”
I bristled. “What do you mean, ‘charade’?”
“Oh, the whole routine. How you’d pick out the prettiest girl and swagger into a back room as if you were actually going to touch her . . .”
“I did! Before Lynn and I were a thing, I liked scoring some easy sugar just as much as the rest of you.”
“Captain. You always brought a book.”
He smiled at me over his shoulder—the same easy, understanding smile he’d shown me my first day at sea, when I was forced to ask him whether “starboard” meant left or right. “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me. I’ll swear with my hand on my heart that you’re the biggest horndog in the western seas, if that’s what you want people to think.”
“I think my reputation as a horndog is pretty secure, considering how many dancing girls Konrad tried to fling into my lap tonight.”
He laughed, then grew solemn. “You’re not going to take up arms for your brother, are you?”
I made a rude noise, but when my thoughts caught up with my feelings, I paused. “I don’t know. He has some plans which are . . . not completely stupid, I guess. I don’t like them, but I’m not going to rule anything out until Lynn and I talk it over.”
“Will Lynn hate these plans as much as you do?”
I pictured it. Konrad as the High Lord of Kila. Ariadne as his fawning, tittering bride, never able to be herself except behind closed doors. Me as a Torasan captain and Konrad’s sworn vassal, doing my best not to roll my eyes when he gave me a stupid order. It wasn’t the worst thing that could happen, but it did not take any mental effort to guess how Lynn will feel.
“She will hate these plans so very much more. Problem is, our end game is to take over Kila . . . and I can’t think of a way of doing it that Lynn won’t hate. We might have to look for the least bad option.”
We laid out our bedrolls on the floor a few feet apart: sheepskins on the bottom against the stone flagstones, then a wool rug and a quilt for each of us. I’d slept in much less comfortable places. Stretched out, head resting on my folded arms, I listened to the logs popping on the low-burning fire.
Regon’s voice came through the darkness when I was already half asleep. “Captain?”
“Mmm-hmm?”
“It’s kind of nice to see you again.”
“You see me every day.”
“I mean, this you. I was proud, you know, as boy and man, to sail with her ladyship Darren of Torasan, captain in the service of the lord of the Isle. I’d be proud to sail with her again, if that’s the way the wind blows.”
He fell asleep almost at once after that, and I was left to stare at the ceiling, and try to swallow the lump in my throat.
I WOKE WITH a jolt, opening my eyes to blackness, and found that I was gripping my long knife. I didn’t know what had woken me up, but I didn’t question it—just rolled sideways and came up in a crouch.
The next second, I knew what had woken me. The door was creaking open, an inch at a time, leather hinges dragging.
I forced myself to stay still. Chances were, this late night intruder was a kitchen girl who wanted to offer me hot spiced milk with honey. Bludgeoning her to death with a table leg would be inappropriate. But my heart kept pounding like a dizzy drum, and an instant’s wild thought told me why: No glow of candlelight under the door. I couldn’t think of any reason why a kitchen maid would come around distributing snacks in total darkness.
There was a creak of the mattress and a loud snore as Ariadne turned over. With aching slowness, I drew my knife from its sheath.
The door was half open now. Thin fingers, silvery in the moonlight, curled around the edge of the wood. I tensed and lunged.
I was just about airborne when I heard the hissing whisper. “Mistress!”
It was too late for me to check my motion, but somehow I managed to change direction mid-leap, crashing into the wall instead of the intruder. The impact knocked the beans out of me, and I blinked away stars as I rammed my knife back into its sheath. “Lynn, what’s wrong?”
She slipped inside the room, followed by a larger shadow that moved soundlessly over the flagstones. Latoya, of course. While Latoya was silent, Lynn was breathing in quick gasps, as if she’d been running not long before.
“Get dressed,” she said. “And get armed. We need to hurry.”
I stooped, groped, and found a bundle of cloth. Hoping that they were my clothes rather than Ariadne’s, I set to work inserting limbs into the appropriate holes. “Do we have time for an explanation?”
“Once we’re moving. Latoya, what is it?”
Latoya had lifted Ariadne into a more-or-less sitting position on the bed, but her head lolled limply, and even when Latoya gave her a good hard shake, she didn’t do more than twitch. Latoya bent, sniffed Ariadne’s breath, and then trained an accusing stare on me. “What did you do to her?”
“Torasan cherry wine,” I said, jerking on a boot. “It’s the great equalizer. Turns everyone into morons, then makes them sleep like the dead.”
“She picked a hell of a night to experiment.” Latoya scowled down at Ariadne’s floppy doll-like form. “How long will you give me to get her conscious?”
Lynn blew out a frustrated breath. “Take five minutes and see what you can do, but after that, we’re leaving, even if we have to carry her. Does that work for you?”
“I’ll make it work. Any water in here?”
“Jug on top of the washbasin,” I said. “Is Regon up?”
“He is now,” Regon said from the other side of the room. No noise of hurried dressing. Regon always slept in his clothes. “How did you two make it past the gate guards?”
“That’s the point,” Lynn said. “There are no guards on the gate.”
“The hell you say!”
“The hell I do say. Darren, if you want to kick me, I would support that decision. I made a stupid mistake and we might all end up dead as a result.”
“All right, stop torturing yourself,” Latoya said. She was bending over Ariadne, slapping her cheeks with a damp rag. “It’s no help now. Take a deep breath and get in the game. There we go.”
Ariadne bucked off the bed, choking, and Latoya gave her back an encouraging pat. “You awake?”
“Hell and damnation,” Ariadne stuttered out. “You sadistic bitch, what in the name of gods’ little apricots do you think you’re . . .”
Latoya put a stop to this by the simple expedient of upturning the jug over Ariadne’s head. As she sputtered, Latoya scooped her up, set her on her feet, and threw a blanket around her.
While this was going on, I fumbled my way into my leather gambeson. When I tried to start lacing it up, Lynn batted my hands away and took over. I was glad to let her do it; my fingers were cold.
“Look,” I said as she worked. “I know you don’t want to get into any long conversations, but while we’re just standing around here, maybe you could give me some idea what—”
She jerked a knot tight. “Why didn’t Alek give you the name of the traitor?”
“What?”
“Alek. Dying on the beach. Telling you to warn your father about the traitor. Why didn’t he give you the name?”
I blinked. “Well, he was . . . I don’t know, he was leading up to it.”
“Why? To build up the suspense? To add a little dramatic flair? He was dying. His lungs were shredded. With every breath he took, he was tearing his own chest apart. So why did he waffle around talking about One of us and One of our own? Why not just give you the name?”
“Because . . . well, because . . .” My tired mind suddenly focused. “Because the name would mean nothing to me. The traitor was somebody I’d never met.”
“Exactly. Now, remember, Alek knew he had been betrayed. How did he know?”
“Oh crap,” I breathed. It was so, so simple. A warship full of badly fed and badly treated sailors, ruled by a casually brutal captain. “It was a mutiny. Alek was stabbed by one of his own men. But my father—”
“Was murdered at the same time, because this wasn’t just a mutiny. The peasants of Torasan Isle are rising up. When Latoya and I were in the tavern . . . there’s no time for details, but some men were singing—”
“That stupid song about killing chickens?”
“Not just a song. A signal. The song isn’t about chickens, Darren.”
Pictures flashed in my brain in quick succession: tapestries, weapons, tunics, ceremonial daggers, all emblazoned with the same feathered crest. The symbol of my house. The Torasan hawk.
My stomach clenched into a tight, cold ball. “You think they’re coming after my family? Tonight?”
Latoya looked up from shoving Ariadne’s feet into a pair of too-large boots. “Have we mentioned that there were no guards on the gate?”
“You mean . . . but they . . . why are we standing here with our thumbs up our asses? We have to bar the gates! Now!”
“It won’t make any difference,” Lynn said. She gave the laces of my gambeson an extra yank and double-knotted the top, the way I liked it. “The ringleader’s already inside the keep.”
“How do you know?”
“I heard his name. So did you. I was just too lost in my own stupid head to understand. Remember the last thing Alek said, before his lungs filled with blood? He said, ‘Darren, it was my—’. He didn’t mean my sister, or my son. He was trying to say, ‘It was Milo.’”
Somehow or other, the room had grown a little brighter. Regon, who stood by the window, silently beckoned us over. Lynn and I joined him, looking down to the courtyard where, just hours before, I’d listened to a hungry servant sing about how much he hated me without understanding a word.
The gates of the Keep were wide open, and the courtyard was packed with people. With a thousand torches casting an orange-red glow, the milling throng looked like a blob of liquid hot metal quivering in a crucible, about to spill, consume, and burn.
I sucked in a long breath of ash-smelling air. “So it’s a revolt.”
“No.” Lynn met my eyes. “It’s a revolution.”