Beggar's Flip by Zipplic

Part One: I Climbed Aboard a Pirate Ship

Darren, formerly of the House of Torasan (Pirate Queen)
Dark o'clock in the morning, Day I

I woke up as soon as Lynn woke up, of course.

If you've ever had your slave girl kidnapped from you by a couple of brutal sadists, then you know that the experience is not good for your beauty sleep. It had been five months since we rescued Lynn from the island of Bero, and, in all that time, I hadn't once slept all the way through my watch below. Five or six times a night, I woke halfway and poked around on the bunk beside me to make sure Lynn was still there.

I never slept through her nightmares anymore.

After the tent flap swung shut behind my girl, I scooted carefully over and peered through a crack. Lynn was trudging barefoot through the sand, towards the shore where my flagship was beached.

We had spent the day scrubbing the Banshee's hull. Careening is a long job and not an enjoyable one, unless, for some reason, you have some particular fondness for barnacles. Lynn had worked at my side throughout the day, as hard as anyone and harder than most. I knew she was exhausted. But I also knew she wouldn't come back to bed for hours, if she came back at all.

I don't learn from my mistakes the first time I make them. I don't even learn from my mistakes the seventeenth time I make them. But somewhere around the thirty-second go-around, I start to get wise. And after two years with Lynn, I was finally figuring out how to act when she had a bad dream. She didn't like being crowded too closely, but she would lapse into gloom if I just left her alone. That meant that I had to be patient.

I am not remotely patient.

I let the tent flap fall shut again, took a deep breath, and resolutely began to count to one thousand. As I did that, I let my mind drift five months backwards, to the day of the escape.

* * *

Here's the thing about being a pirate queen: It's damn hard to take a vacation.

Five of us escaped from Bero: Lynn and I, my first mate Regon, my bosun Latoya, and Lynn's sister Ariadne. We were not in good shape as we began the journey south. Lynn had just spent twelve days as the Lady Melitta's punching bag, taking beating after beating as Melitta tried to break her of the habit of independent thought. Regon and Latoya and I were better off, but we'd suffered quite a few knocks and scrapes in our various feats of derring-do. Ariadne wasn't injured, but she had just killed her mother and been banished from her homeland, so I think it's fair to say that she wasn't at her best.

The wounds didn't seem to matter that much in the first flush of our victory, when we boarded the Badger and set sail. But the euphoria wore off fast. It was cold, and we weren't dressed for that. Regon had a lump the size of an apple on the side of his head and walked with a definite list to starboard. Ariadne puked her guts out the first time she tasted salt beef.

The sea was choppy and our little boat was leaking like a sieve, and the sailor in me was screaming that we ought to head for shore. But I refused to give the order, because I could see the colour grow stronger in Lynn's cheeks the farther away we got from Bero.

Somehow we managed to hold the boat together and keep it on top of the waves. It was mainly thanks to Regon, my first mate, who came from ten generations of sailors and was himself (I firmly believed) part duck. Still, I wouldn't like to repeat the trip.

It took us two weeks to limp our way south, with Lynn and Regon and Latoya and I working watch and watch about the whole time. Our goal was the hidden harbour on the mainland, where I hoped to find my flagship, the Banshee. I hoped to find it there- but I didn't really expect to. When we rounded the cove, and saw my flagship at anchor in the inlet, with my red-and-black banner rippling from the masthead, I got a touch emotional. If you really want to know, I cried just a tiny little bit.

While I did that, Lynn stood by and gently rubbed my back. I almost stopped her. It didn't seem right, considering everything that had happened, that I was the one crying and she was the one soothing. But then, Lynn liked being the strong one. Maybe I could best comfort her by letting her comfort me.

At last, I dashed the tears from my eyes and tried to think of something tough and piratical to say. "They better have taken good care of my ship."

* * *

I didn't get the chance to inspect my ship right away, because my entire crew was pressing round me and screaming like- well- banshees.

They rushed us as soon as we swung on deck. There was Teek, the helmsman, and Corto, the quartermaster. There was Jess, who had been my lover- how long ago now? Seemed like a couple of lifetimes. Beside her was Holly, her wife. Holly was very fond of Lynn, and now she looked like she didn't know whether to hug me for bringing her back, or kill me for losing her in the first place.

And then there was Spinner, the young sailmaker whom I'd kind of sort of left in charge while I was away. He seemed ready to give up the title of pirate king, judging from the way he dashed towards me and all but hurled my cutlass back into my hand.

I raised the blade high, roaring at the top of my lungs, and drew Lynn tight towards me with my other arm. My sailors cheered so loudly that I felt a prickling at the corners of my eyes and knew that I would collapse into sobs then and there if I didn't get things back under control. So I called them all puking scuts and dirty sonsabitches and damned them to hell and back, and they cheered at that even louder. And though Lynn was exhausted- purple circles under each of her eyes as deep as bruises- she was smiling, too.

* * *

Lynn said that she would cook that night, and everyone in earshot said like hell she would cook that night. Jess and Holly, our resident landsmen, took over. They rolled up their sleeves, rowed to shore, and set to work wreaking havoc on the local chicken population. They rowed back a few hours later, the boat groaning with a load of roast fowl, loaves of bread, plump red cheeses, slabs of honeycomb, and a whole bucket of cream.

It was a ridiculously lavish feast. I thought I should protest, tell Jess and Holly that they didn't need to waste so much food on us, but Jess's hard eyes warned me that she wasn't going to listen. I gave up and piled my bowl so high that I had to use both hands to heft it.

That was a good night. We all stuffed ourselves until the stars came out. Half the crew got drunk off their faces and danced in the torchlight; the other half sat back, lost in silent dreams. I nursed my third cup of wine and watched Lynn. She and Ariadne were leaning on the gunwale, staring out to sea, their heads almost touching as they talked about whatever sisters talk about. Every so often, I heard them laugh: Lynn low and soft, Ariadne quick and bright.

Jess was watching the two of them as well, but unlike me, she was frowning.

"Why did they dye Lynn's hair?" she asked abruptly.

I had taken aside the people who mattered- Jess, Holly, Spinner, Teek- and told them a very little about what had happened on the island of Bero. Enough for them to understand why Lynn had been kidnapped. Not enough for them to understand all the details. It was only natural for Jess to ask about Lynn's hair. It was usually as pale as flax, but now, thanks to Melitta's meddling, it had been dyed an unhealthy liver brown. It didn't suit her.

"I don't know why they did it," I admitted. "Probably because Lord Iason was blond, and Ariadne, too. They must have been trying to hide the family resemblance."

Jess snorted. "Lynn doesn't look anything like Ariadne."

"She does so. You can tell that they're sisters. Ariadne's just..." My voice trailed off, as I weighed the words I could choose. Ariadne was taller and bustier, her hair was thicker, her lips were fuller...Lynn was short, bony, and boyish, flat where Ariadne had curves.

"Ariadne looks healthier," I admitted. "And yet I've got no interest in her whatsoever, and Lynn leaves me a puddle on the floor. Does that make me a bad person?"

"Yes. You're a pervert."

I glared. "That wasn't what you were supposed to say."

"Then why did you bother to ask? I'm not one of your adoring followers. I'm not going to blow smoke up your ass just so that you can feel better about yourself." Jess took a long slow swallow of wine. "Is that why our relationship didn't last? Was it because you were secretly pining for a scrawny little woman in a skimpy little tunic who would call you 'Mistress' and let you tie her up?"

"Apparently, our relationship didn't last because you think that I'm a pervert."

"Stop being so sensitive."

"Stop calling me a pervert. I didn't plan to end up with Lynn- it just happened. And don't even pretend that I'm exploiting her. I can't make Lynn do anything that she doesn't want to do. Hell, I wouldn't even know where to start."

Jess sighed at that. "I know."

"Good."

"You're still a pervert."

"Oh, shut up."

She smiled crookedly at this, but the lines of worry in her face didn't smooth away. "I have a proposal for you, Darren."

"I'm not going to marry you. I'm over that phase of my life."

"Save the sarcasm." Jess nodded towards my girl. "She's wounded, you know."

I grimaced. All of a sudden, things were getting serious. "I know. She's a lot better than she was. Her ribs have knitted some and she doesn't hunch over when she walks."

Jess shook her head impatiently. "That's not what I mean. Lynn's wounded somewhere deep." A pause, and then: "I don't know if she's really going to heal."

This was uncomfortably close to what I had been thinking myself, but I pushed it away. I wasn't prepared to allow it to be true.

"She'll heal," I said, forcefully. "She needs time."

Jess cocked an eyebrow. "Lynn's mother was murdered when she was eight. Lynn's stepmother took her as a servant and tormented her for the rest of her childhood. Lynn's father had no interest in her as a person, but he did plan to use her as a brood sow, and force her to bear his grandchildren. This because he had no testicles worth mentioning, and his trueborn daughter is as barren as a piece of toast. These were the people who kidnapped Lynn from you. These were the people who had their way with her for a couple of weeks. And the end result was, when you found her, she was cowering in a closet, too whipped to even tell you she was there. Darren, she needs more than time if she's going to heal!"

As usual, her lecturing tone made me feel bullied, but Jess did care for Lynn, in her own pushy mother-knows-best kind of way. If she wanted to help, so much the better. I forced down my defensiveness. "What did you have in mind?"

"I think the two of you should come back to the valley with Holly and me. Don't look at me that way. I'm not asking you to give up piracy for good. I tried to keep you away from the ocean once, and it didn't work out so well, as I recall. But the valley is a good place for healing. It's quiet, and it's safe. No need to risk your lives or battle barbarians every other day. And now that the harvest's in, there isn't too much work to be done. The two of you can take it slow for a while. Read a few books, milk a few cows, eat too much and...oh, what's the use? You're just looking for a tactful way to say 'no'."

"I'm not," I protested. (I was.)

She threw up a hand in exasperation. "Why won't you at least consider it?"

"I will consider it. All right? I will ask Lynn. But she won't want to come."

"Why not?"

A few months earlier, I wouldn't have known the answer to this question. Now, as I watched Lynn leaning on the gunwale, the moonlight touching her bare shoulders, it seemed all too obvious.

"Because," I said, as if I'd known it for years. "She loves the sea even more than I do."

* * *

Jess cornered Lynn later that night and made her pitch, about the peace and quiet in the valley, about reading books and eating too much and healing. And cows. Lynn heard her out, and then said "No, thank you" with cheerful finality.

Jess's lips were a tight line. "I worry about you," she said.

"Do you?" Lynn said lightly. "I worry about shellfish."

That was enough to make Jess blink. "Why shellfish?"

"Because nobody else ever worries about shellfish. Whereas people worry about me all the time. Which saves me the bother of doing it for myself."

Then, without even needing to look, she reached back and took my hand. "We're leaving tomorrow," she said. "Aren't we, Mistress?"

And that was it, really. The Banshee sailed the next day. We left Jess and Holly behind on the mainland, to return to their peace and quiet and books and bovines. Though Lynn was still so mottled with bruises and scratches that she looked like a piebald cat, she took her old place in the ship's routine: standing watches, conducting daily inspections, listening for murmurs of discontent from the crew, managing the supplies, plotting our course, planning strategy, boiling stew. As if that wasn't enough to occupy her, she began to teach her sister Ariadne how to perform all the one thousand and one little jobs that go into sailing a ship- from splicing a line to scrubbing the head.

In spite of everything Lynn had been through, she wouldn't slow down. She couldn't, I suppose. You can't sail out onto the high seas in the middle of a civil war and sort of be a pirate. Days after we left the harbour, we got a report of trouble. Heavily armed vessels, flying the colours of the House of Jiras, were stripping whole villages of all their able-bodied men and women, to be used as rowers on the war galleys. So we gathered up six ships of my fleet, all of us flying my red-and-black banner, and sallied off to cause trouble. When that was done, there was the food crisis in the southern islands, and then the outbreak of plague, and the cannibals in the west, and...well, we kept busy.

Lynn's hair grew out pale gold, like sun-ripened wheat, and when I trimmed her hair into its usual short neat cut, all traces of the ugly dye vanished. The bruises faded. She started to breathe more easily, walk without that trace of a limp. Her mind was as sharp as ever, her senses as keen. She could outthink a warlord cross-eyed and dead drunk, and pummel me at koro with only half her mind on the game.

She was so much herself- her tricky, conniving, capable, slightly ruthless self- that for days at a time, I could make myself believe that she really was all right. And then something would happen. She'd wake from a dream screaming, ripping gashes in her arms with her own fingernails. Or she wouldn't sleep at all for a week.

Once, after a particularly bad night, I spent some time kicking a couple of empty barrels into splinters, pretending that they were Iason and Melitta. It didn't really help, but that wasn't surprising. I'd already killed the real Iason and Melitta and even that didn't make me feel much better.

Latoya happened on me when I was staring glumly at what was left of the barrels. "You can't fix her," she told me. "Just be patient."

It was good advice, I knew, but patient I am not.

* * *

"Five hundred and one, five hundred and two, five hundred and�You know what? Screw this."

Abandoning the count, I pushed open the tent flap and stalked out onto the beach in search of Lynn. The sand crunched beneath my feet like damp sugar. I sniffed the air. Wet. We were in the southern part of the islands, where I had grown up, and where it rained for most of the year, with a hurricane now and then for variety.

In the wan moonlight, I could make Lynn out. She was sitting some distance away, near the waterline, her legs drawn up, her arms wrapped around them. Despite the damp and the chill, she wore nothing but one of her thin tunics. It was slicked against her body like wet paper. She had to be freezing.

Most of my crew was sleeping, in a single great tent made of the Banshee's mainsail. But it was Regon and Latoya's watch, and those two were huddled on an upturned long-boat some twenty yards away from Lynn, passing a bottle back and forth. I ambled towards them, casually, as if I had just gotten up to ask some question about the weather.

Both of them showed surprise when I neared them.

"Lynn's over there, you know," Regon said, pointing.

"I know where she is." I shoved his hand down. "Stop it. You'll give me away."

"What do you mean, I'll give you away?"

"I'm trying to be smooth. You know. Subtle. I'm pretending not to know that she's upset. Oh, stop that," I snapped, as they exchanged knowing glances. "I can be smooth, you know. I can be smooth like a bandit. A smooth bandit."

"Captain," Regon said gently. "You remember how Lynn has ears like a bat?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

Regon pointed again towards the spot where Lynn sat by the waterline. She didn't turn her head, but she raised her hand and gave a little wave.

Crap and crap and crap again. It's very hard to keep a secret from a girl who can hear a whisper from forty yards away.

I tried to recover some dignity by snarling something incomprehensible at Regon and Latoya. They didn't seem fazed. Latoya just saluted me with the bottle as I went.

I walked slowly, descending the slope of the beach. Lynn's head cocked to the side when I neared her, but she didn't turn around. Her tunic had no sleeves, so I could see the angry red lines that formed a criss-cross pattern on her shoulders and back. Fresh scars. Gifts from Melitta. I didn't know what kind of weapon had inflicted those blows, but it must have been something heavy. It had been five months since Bero, and they hadn't really faded.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey," Lynn echoed. "Just so you know- I don't really want to be touched right now. Sorry."

"It's fine. I kind of figured. It's cold out here. Want my coat?"

"Thanks. No."

I laid it down on the sand beside her, in case she changed her mind, and then sat down myself, leaving a clear six inches between us. For some time, we watched the breakers roll in.

It startled me when she finally spoke: "In answer to your question, I don't really remember what my mother was like."

"What are you talking about- oh. Oh. Do you always wait five months before answering a question?"

She half-smiled. "Only if it's important."

I dimly remembered asking Lynn about her mother while we were dashing around in the cellars beneath the castle on Bero. We got interrupted by half of an army before she could answer, and for some reason, we'd never come back to the topic in the time since.

"It got me thinking," Lynn went on. "Your question, I mean." A pause. "The stupid thing is that Ariadne remembers my mother better than I do."

"Really?"

"Really. I don't even remember what she looked like. Sandy hair, I think."

"You don't remember anything? Didn't you live with her until you were eight? In the castle kitchens?"

"I remember the kitchens. Or the colour of the kitchens, anyway. Orange bake ovens and saffron in the festival cakes. Russet apples, yellow pears. Copper kettles. And the smells. Venison and butter and cumin and cinnamon. I remember all that. But my mother...She was always just there, so I guess I never paid any attention to her."

"Oh, Lynn."

"Stop that. No being maudlin. That's the rule. We've discussed it." She was quiet a while longer, then: "I hate the cold."

"My coat's right there."

"No."

"You're hardly wearing anything. It makes me colder just looking at you."

"So don't look. Look up instead. There's a ring around the moon tonight, see it?"

I squinted up through one eye. The ring was pale frosty blue, which did nothing to make me warmer.

Trying to be casual about it, I asked, "Do you want to tell me what you dreamed?"

I wasn't touching Lynn, but I still felt her shrug. "You know what I dreamed. I dreamed that I was back with Melitta."

"I mean, details."

"What do the details matter? I dreamt that she hit me. I dreamt that it hurt."

"It seemed like a bad one."

"I dreamt that she hit me a lot. I dreamt that it hurt a lot. I'm not trying to be cute here, Darren, I just don't know what else there is to say."

"You could tell me exactly what Melitta did to you while you were growing up. If you wanted to, I mean."

"Can't you just imagine it for yourself? It's not like what happened to me was all that out of the ordinary."

Somehow, her offhand tone made it all worse. "Lynn, what they did to you was disgusting!"

She was drawing in the sand with her forefinger: a cup, a sword, a wiggly-tailed fish. "It wasn't fun, no. It also wasn't unique. I was a small helpless person. Small helpless people get hurt. There are child servants in every wealthy house in Kila. And what about the children who end up on merchant ships? Remember where you found Spinner?"

I raked up a handful of sand, and let it slip through my fingers. I didn't really believe that Spinner's experiences were on the same scale as Lynn's, but I didn't want to argue with her, either. "I remember."

"And there are too many other examples to count," Lynn went on. "Walk into a neighbourhood tavern, put on a blindfold, and throw a bread roll. Likely as not, it'll bounce off the forehead of a person whose childhood was just as crap as mine. That's the kind of world we live in."

I wanted to argue- but there swum up in my mind, unbidden, the image of a long-ago child with wide eyes like a startled fawn. The servant girl who used to wait on me and my siblings when I was growing up in the House of Torasan. My sisters and brothers used to slap her around mercilessly when we were children. They were born noble, so they practised mistreating peasants the same way that kittens practise chasing mice. And- no use in pretending otherwise- I myself had landed a few hard slaps on that girl over the years. Why? Probably just so I would fit in. I shook my head, banishing the memory.

"All right, so it wasn't unique," I said doggedly. "It still matters. Doesn't it? Everybody's pain matters. No-one deserves to be treated the way you were treated. Isn't that the whole reason why we're doing this?"

She looked back at me. "Doing what?"

I gave a little wave around the beach, to indicate the guard pickets, the tents holding my sleeping crew, the row of torches stuck into the sand, and my flagship, its newly-scraped hull reflecting the firelight and star glow. "Saving Kila. Being pirates."

"I thought we were being pirates because you had no hope of getting an honest job. Plus, the clothes are nifty." She picked up my heavy embroidered coat and spread it out like a blanket. "I think I'm about ready to be touched now."

"Are you sure?"

"No, I'm only saying so to test you...of course I'm sure, twit. Come here."

I snaked an arm around her cautiously and counted five under my breath. She didn't scream, cry, throw things or try to beat me away during that timeframe, so I pulled her back against my chest. She spread the coat over us both, and I tried to rub some heat into her arms, but I might as well have been rubbing two icicles.

"All right, that's it," I announced. "You're coming back to the tent."

She glanced over her shoulder, eyebrows arched. "Is that an order, Mistress?"

So she was feeling better. Good. "Damn right it's an order, girl. You need your sleep. I fully intend to work you into the ground tomorrow."

"Oh. Spiffy. What are we doing? Wait, don't tell me. Burying treasure."

"Well, don't sound all excited or anything."

"I was plenty excited the first time we did it. But honestly, Mistress. Once you've seen one giant chest crammed full of gold, you've seen them all."

"There's got to be some way we can make it more interesting."

"You could..."

"I'm not going to sit naked in a chest of gold again. I told you, that was a one-time-only kind of adventure."

"Pity. It suited you."

"It chafed, darling."

"Wimp."

As we walked to our tent, we were both soaking wet- the damp sand, the spray. It was blue cold, the kind of cold that sinks so deep into your bones that you don't stop shivering for hours.

So why had Lynn gone outside wearing nothing but one of her holy-crap-that's-short tunics? Was she used to coping with cold, after a childhood spent in threadbare clothing? Or maybe she was unwilling to wear anything that might blunt the edge of her senses. Lynn had always been hyper-aware of her surroundings. She was almost animal-like in the way she could detect danger. Maybe that was why she was reluctant to put layers of cloth or leather between herself and the world. She didn't even wear shoes, unless we were walking over razor coral or hot rocks. And even then, I had to beg her.

The problem with mental wounds is that you can't check to see whether or not they're still bleeding. Inwardly, I sighed, but I was careful not to make any noise out loud.

I circled my girl with one arm as we walked. Almost absent-mindedly, she stroked icy fingertips along my cheek.

"I'm going to be fine," she said.

"I know," I said, with a confidence I didn't really feel.

"No, you don't know...but you'll see. You're being so patient with me, Darren. Don't think I haven't noticed. But you may have to be patient for a little while longer."

"I can be patient for as long as it takes," I said, and I did my best to mean it.

______________________________________________________________________________

Lynn
Noon, Day I

The next morning, Darren "left me in charge of the camp" while she went off with two treasure chests to play buccaneer. What she was really hoping, of course, was that I would catch up on my sleep while she was gone. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have let her get away with that kind of nonsense, but she was so worried about me, and trying so hard to hide it, that I decided to give her a break.

I did go down to the beach to see them off. The chest full of gold was loaded onto a wooden sledge, hauled by six hefty mariners. Behind them strode Latoya, who carried a second chest, this one empty. Darren followed, carrying the shovels on her shoulder.

We'd started to bury money a few months before. I didn't like leaving chests full of treasure lying around unattended, but, with Darren's fleet growing richer by the month, we had to do something with the loot. The only other option was to keep it all in the holds of the ships, and that would never do. If word got out that every one of Darren's ships was stuffed with gold up to the rafters, then not even the pirate queen's mighty reputation would be enough to keep the sea-wolves at bay.

So we buried it, but I did insist on precautions. Some of the stashes were hidden under heaps of seabird guano. Others were lodged under rocks beneath the tideline, in places where the current could suck you down unless you knew exactly where to put your feet. Sometimes we sunk a deep shaft for the chest of gold, filled in the hole halfway, and then put an empty chest on top, as a blind. Scavengers who found the empty chest almost never dug any deeper. People are so quick to give up.

After I saw the treasure party off, I settled down to real work. First came a tour of the sentry posts, and a quick conversation with each guard. Darren had done this already, first thing in the morning, but I thought some added caution was in order, since we were in the southwest part of Kila.

The southwest was the domain of Darren's horrible father, Lord Stribos. That was a problem because ever since Stribos exiled Darren, the two of them had not been on the best of terms. By which I mean, Stribos had hired a number of mercenaries to go after Darren and try to chop her into tiny bits. It had been a while since he sent the last bunch, but with horrible fathers, you could never be too careful. That much I knew from personal experience.

All the sentries were at their stations and alert. The water was rippled glass, the horizon broken only by a ship's silhouette. That was the Sod Off, one of Darren's smaller vessels, which was anchored in the bay, standing guard while the flagship was beached. No sign of danger, not so much as the puffiest little cloud overhead.

The next job on my list was something that Darren calls "taking the pulse of the crew," and I just call "snooping." It involves drifting around between sailors, listening to their conversations, but more than that, listening to what they're not saying. You have to be alive to the meanings hidden in a shift of stance, a fidget, the downward flicker of an eye.

You see, it's like this. A ship at sea is a little world, with its own wars and alliances and fashions and fads, its own culture and climate. A good captain knows that world so thoroughly that she can read the moods of her men like the wind and weather. A good captain knows that Sal can't eat the salt pork because his teeth are wobbly in his gums, and that Gurny is so homesick that he blubbers in his hammock when he thinks no-one can hear him. If two sailors start taking their pleasure with each other of an evening, a good captain knows what it means to each of them and how long it's likely to last. A good captain knows whose toes are aching and who eats too much, who sings below-decks and who can't stand music, who wanks on the foretop and what he thinks about when he's doing it.

It sounds petty, maybe, but you have to understand: the smallest things become immensely important when you're on board a ship. When you're at sea- that is, when you're trapped in a wet wooden crate with seventy or so other people- you never get one minute to be really truly alone. You eat and work and sleep and fight with someone at each elbow, and if you are secretly longing to step on Sal's face and stuff Gurny's hammock up his nostrils, then life gets very difficult very quickly.

A good captain can track grumbling and bitterness to the source, and roust them out before they grow into something worse. A bad captain understands none of this, and acts surprised and almost insulted when a mutiny suddenly erupts.

That morning, I learned that half the crew of the Banshee was snubbing Deriak because they thought he was swiping rum from the galley. I had my doubts, but never mind- they all believed it, and that could be enough to get Deriak "accidentally" bumped off the side of the ship some foggy night. We would transfer him to another ship, a smaller one, and warn its captain to keep an eye on the rum.

It was late morning by the time I was finished making the rounds. Time to feed the crew. The day before, while most of us were careening the Banshee, a few sailors scoured the coast for fresh food, but came up empty-handed. That meant the meal was made up mainly of salt beef. A large lump of it had been soaking in brine overnight, and I shredded it and boiled it for a couple of hours until it was almost soft enough to chew. The result was a kind of stew, which I thickened with crumbled biscuit.

It's impossible to make anything from salt beef which tastes genuinely good, but the stew was a reasonable approximation of food. The sailors made no complaints as they lined up at the pot with their tin pannikins. But that was the sailors, and sailors don't complain if you give them rat for dinner, as long as you pick off most of the fur. There was someone else on the Banshee who was a little bit more picky about her diet- and she didn't show up for lunch.

It was no big surprise, but I wasn't about to ignore it, either. I filled a bowl with stew and went looking for my sister.

* * *

I found Ariadne a stone's throw away from the campsite, at the edge of the trees.

She didn't look anything like the ornamental princess who had joined us on the Banshee a few months earlier. Gone were the long gowns and petticoats and corkscrew curls. She kept her hair braided, and pinned around her head in a neat crown. She wore the same clothes as most of Darren's sailors: a woollen shirt and sturdy trousers, dyed a faint grey-blue with tav root. Her face was bare of paint and powder, but between the wind and the weather, her cheeks were always vivid pink.

"What are you doing?" I asked, when I reached her. It was a silly question in a way because I could see what she was doing- she was ripping up handfuls of a long, spotted grass. But I was damned if I knew why.

She shook dirt from the grass's hanging roots, and glared at them angrily. "Scurvy grass," she said.

"That's scurvy grass?" I had heard of the stuff, though I'd never seen it. It was supposed to be good for bleeding gums.

Ariadne wiped her face, leaving a muddy trail. Her mouth looked pinched. "I don't know whether it's scurvy grass. I think that it is scurvy grass, but I've only ever seen drawings. For all I know it could be 'looks like scurvy grass but is actually poisonous as all hell' grass. And since I don't know whether it's scurvy grass, this whole exercise of picking it is pretty pointless. Which is why I'm pissed."

She threw away the handful of grass she was holding. Then she sat down with a bump in the sand. Then she screeched at the top of her lungs: "BALLS!"

She was learning to express herself, was my sister. I squatted down next to her.

"What's going on?" I asked. "Are you and Latoya having trouble?"

"No!- well, yes, but that's just part of it. Lynn, I've got a bone to pick with you. You never warned me that women are insane."

I stared at her blankly. "If you couldn't figure that out for yourself, then women might not be your thing."

"That's occurred to me." She rubbed dirt from her hands, pondering. "Maybe I should give the other side another try. Regon's available, isn't he?"

"Yes, and you could do a lot worse. But what gives? I thought you and Latoya were doing all right."

"We are- sort of." She sighed. "I don't know. She gets awfully nervous about things. I think she's afraid she's going to break me if she holds me too tightly."

Not an unreasonable fear, considering that Latoya was well over six feet, with the build to match, but I could understand Ariadne's annoyance. I don't like being treated like something breakable myself.

But that wasn't the only problem. Latoya was, far and away, the most useful sailor on any of Darren's ships. She came from Tavar, in the far south- that brutal stretch of desert waste where you can only survive by being good at just about everything. She'd been a hunter, a desert tracker, a circus wrestler, a camel-tamer and a leatherworker. Eventually, she made her way north to the Ughaion River and spent a few years as a bargeman. That was where we found her and convinced her that a life of piracy would offer more scope for her many talents.

Now she was bosun of the Banshee, and we called on her for help with every kind of problem. Invading barbarians? Call Latoya. Dry rot in the captain's cabin? Latoya again. Mutiny? Call Latoya, tell her to bring a sword. Flood? Call Latoya, tell her to bring a bucket. No doubt that cut into the time that she had available for romance. I made a mental note to try and adjust her workload.

"All right," I told my sister. "Give me the details. But while we talk, you'd better eat."

Ariadne's eyes flicked to the bowl of stew I was holding, and I saw her swallow hard. She looked away, and jerked several more handfuls of the long spotted grass out of the ground. When she spoke, it was in the same soft, self-damning tone that Darren always used when she thought that she had disappointed me. "I can't eat that stuff, Lynn. I'm sorry. I just can't."

What that really meant was that she wasn't yet hungry enough to eat it, and I thought about saying so, but I didn't. My sister came from a world of pigeon pie and roast peacock and sweet almond cakes. No surprise that she was finding it difficult to adjust to ship's biscuits and salt beef. Still, it made it sort of difficult for me to keep her fed. We didn't have many peacocks running around the decks.

I abandoned the stew, reached inside a fold of my tunic, found a handful of round sugary lumps and held them out to my sister.

Ariadne studied them, surprised. "What are these?"

"Dried figs. Try them, they're good."

Now she was suspicious. "Is the rest of the crew getting dried figs?"

I briefly considered lying, decided against it. "No. These are from Darren's private stash. Don't worry, she won't mind. It'll save her from going through a lot of existential angst as she decides whether she deserves a private stash of food in the first place."

I almost felt a surge of heat from beside me, as Ariadne's temper flared. "I don't want special treatment!"

"Yes, you do. You just don't want to want it."

Ariadne flounced angrily. "Well, I don't need it."

"You kind of need it. You haven't eaten all day."

"I'll survive."

Why were all the women in my life so stubborn? "All right, you'll survive. But why suffer? What's the point? The figs are right here, why the hell shouldn't you eat them?"

"I'm not pulling my weight."

She said it very abruptly. Probably because she wouldn't have been able to say it at all, if she had thought about it for more than three seconds. I leaned back on my haunches and closed my eyes. It was going to be one of those conversations.

"I'm not," Ariadne insisted. "Am I? I'm not doing anything on board the Banshee that's worth the cost of my keep."

"What do you expect of yourself?" I asked her, feeling tired. "It's only been five months since you came aboard. There's a learning curve."

"There's no learning curve when it comes to swabbing down the deck, and I can't even do that!"

Fact. She'd only tried it once. Five minutes in, she fell down and started wheezing. She had to nap in the shade for half an hour before she recovered enough to speak. Latoya finished the job for her. Embarrassed, I looked the other direction.

She was in full flood now. "You do three times the amount of work that I do, and you're half my size, and you hardly ever sleep! How the hell do you handle it?"

I couldn't help it- I had to laugh. "Ariadne, I've been working since I was five!"

"You were a house servant!"

"Exactly. If you're a servant in a noble house, you work every minute that you're not unconscious. Compared to that, the work I do shipside is peanuts. Tiny little peanuts."

She flounced again. "You're not making me feel any better."

"Just take the damn figs, would you?" I rattled them in front of her. "When we were kids, you spent half of your life bringing me food. Consider this payback."

She rolled her eyes, but she took the figs.

"Besides," I went on, once she had begun to eat. "You're our surgeon, remember? You'll pull your weight once we have injuries on board."

"Oh gods." She spoke thickly, through a mouthful of fruit. "I'm no surgeon. I don't think you realize how little I actually know."

"You know more than the rest of us," I pointed out, and that, at least, was true. After all the years that Ariadne had spent tending my various injuries, she could split a broken toe or wrap a cut while half-asleep. "The important thing is that you're willing to learn. You're new to all of this. Let yourself grow into it."

Still chewing, she upturned her face to the noon sun. "Lords of the deep preserve us, Lynn. When little squirts like you are the only ones talking sense, then the world truly is in trouble."

I grinned, would have responded, but then I heard the warning whistle from our sentries by the beach. An instant later, I was on my feet.

"What does that one mean?" Ariadne asked, getting up herself. "I don't know all the signals yet."

"A ship's heading in. Not a warship, though."

"Not an emergency, then?"

Maybe not, but I hadn't survived so long by hoping for the best.

* * *

I was the first to reach the lookout who had given the warning- a bony man whose name, most unfortunately, was Geezus. (I don't know why anyone would want to do a thing like that to a child.) He answered my question before I had a chance to ask it.

"It's a small dinghy," he said. "Looks like it's being washed in on the tide."

I squinted out at the water, and saw the little boat bobbing aimlessly as it made its way to shore. Big enough to carry ten men a short distance, I judged, if none of them were too heavy. But now it seemed to be empty, drifting towards shore. The oars were missing, and the sail was ripped to rags. "Unmanned?"

"Not quite." Geezus pointed.

It was hard to make out, but I saw it: the white hand and arm flopping against the dinghy's bleached white wood. A corpse, I thought, until the fingers clenched into a fist.

"Get your kit!" I called back to Ariadne, who was panting up towards us. She nodded and changed direction. As she sprinted off, I yelled for Darren's first mate: "Regon!"

There was no need. He was already wading into the waist-high water, his strong, stocky body fighting the breakers. Geezus followed him, and then two other sailors. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, wanting to help, but I'm of limited use when it comes hauling heavy things around. The four of them together managed to manoeuvre the boat close to shore. Then Regon and Geezus hauled out the weakly moving body, swung it between them and let it thud down in the sand.

I saw the wounds first: a deep one slashing across the torso, another in the gut, gaping so wide that there was a shiny gleam of entrails. Ariadne ran up with an armload of rags and set to work plugging the holes.

Then I saw the victim's face, and my heart flipped over. Was this Darren? There were a few seconds of raw, desperate panic- but then my vision cleared. Not Darren. It was a man, taller and heavier than my pirate. Still, he had Darren's lean, hawkish features, her shaggy dark hair. They looked too much alike for it to be coincidence.

I glanced up. "Regon?"

He knew what I was asking. Squatting down beside me, he explored the remains of the man's shredded clothing with his fingers. "Black tunic, silver piping. Lord Stribos's colours. And the hawk's head emblem. Yes. He's a noble. House of Torasan."

I swore under my breath. That was what I had thought. "Darren's brother, then."

"Or a cousin, at least. I don't recognize him."

"I do." That was Spinner, squatting down beside me. He must have been repairing a sail, because he still had a lump of beeswax clasped in one fist. He was gripping it so tightly that ribbons of warm wax were curling out between his fingers. "That's Lord Alek."

"Alek?" I brushed hair from my eyes. "You mean, the one who..."

"Yep."

This was getting better and better. "Regon, get the Banshee afloat. These are sword wounds. Alek's been in battle. That means warships nearby. I don't want company coming while we're still landlocked."

"I've already given the orders," Regon said. "But it's nice to know you agree."

"And Spinner," I went on. "Maybe...maybe you should go."

Spinner rocked back on his heels. "Why? You think I'm panicking? He's not going to be getting up any time soon. Or at all."

"No, but somebody has to tell my mistress that he's here. That might as well be you. No reason for you to stick around unless you want to kick him a few times while he's unconscious."

"Tempting," Spinner admitted. He shoved the wad of wax into his pocket. "But I like to think I'm a bigger man than that. I'll get the captain."

Ariadne had Alek's wrist now, checking his pulse, and she looked grim. "Better tell Darren to hurry, if she wants to say goodbye."

* * *

Over the next few minutes, Ariadne and I did what little we could for Alek. The seawater washing over his wounds had kept them clean, but it had also kept the blood from clotting, and so the gashes were still oozing pink-red. We bandaged the cuts tightly, and dribbled some fresh water between his parted lips, but we were just going through the motions. He had lost so much blood already that his skin was greenish-white, like the underbelly of a fish, and that was something that we couldn't repair.

I almost wished that I hadn't sent Spinner after Darren. Alek was going to die, that was clear, but did Darren really need to speak with him one last time? After all, Darren had been cast out by her family. Alek might not have been part of that decision, but I doubted that he had taken any kind of heroic stand in her defence. And now that Darren was an exile, she technically wasn't a member of the House of Torasan at all. She was clanless, orphaned, with a place on the social scale slightly below that of a mollusc. What if Darren came pelting back to comfort her brother at his dying, only to have him spit in her face?

I didn't want her to take the risk. But that wasn't my decision to make.

Ariadne's voice broke into my reverie. "How does Spinner know this man?"

I glanced up. "Alek is one of the sons of Lord Stribos, a noble from the house of Torasan..."

"I got that much, thank you."

"Spinner first went to sea when he was about eleven. Alek was his captain."

My sister hissed, and pulled a bandage tight with more force than strictly necessary. "Don't tell me, let me guess. Alek made his life miserable."

"I don't think it was anything personal, or calculated. Just offhand cruelty. But offhand cruelty is enough when you're a skinny kid with a terrible stutter who gets seasick just from smelling a fish. Spinner went through hell until he ended up on one of Darren's ships."

"How did that happen?"

"He stowed away. Dammit. This man's waking up."

Alek's limbs were beginning to move jerkily. His breath came in a gasping rattle.

"Broken ribs," Ariadne said grimly. "A lot of them. He's had a bad day."

My immediate impulse was to say that he had probably deserved it, but I bit that back and yelled, in no particular direction, "Mistress, hurry!"

Pounding feet along the beach. That was Darren, racing as though she had hell hounds at her heels. Seconds later, she threw herself down next to her brother. She gasped: "Alek!"

Now here's the thing: she sounded worried, and her face was drawn, as though she was under horrible strain, but it didn't seem all that sincere to me. She was like a parody of a woman grieving, as if she was forcing herself to fake the emotions appropriate to the situation.

His rolling eyes focused on her, and there was the flash of recognition. He licked his lips with a leatherlike tongue until he managed to croak the word out: "Darren."

"It's me," she said, still panting for air. "Gods, Alek. Is there anything I can do for you?"

Ten seconds passed without him speaking, and yet I could see his pulse ticking faster and faster. Maybe he was trying to decide whether he would pollute himself if he spoke with his outcast sister.

Then, without warning, he jerked his hands up to grab Darren's shoulders. I saw her flinch, saw her force herself not to pull away.

"Warn...our...father." The voice was raspy and grating, but the words were clear enough. "Warn...him..."

Darren waited, but he seemed to have exhausted himself. In the end, she had to prod: "Warn him about what?"

He took a deep breath- and let out a strangled sob of pain. His broken ribs, I guessed. With each breath he took, he was tearing his own organs to shreds.

"Ambush," he whispered desperately. "Three warships�in the Refulon Strait. Betrayed...we were...Darren...our father has to know-"

"I'll tell him," she promised. "I'll tell him, Alek. Tell me who betrayed you, and I'll tell our father."

Another wave of pain; his entire body went into a spasm, his chest jerking. Darren caught his wrists and held them tightly. "Alek, who?"

More desperate breaths. "Traitor...one of us...It was one of our own. Betrayed us. Backstabber...you have to...not much time. Darren. Darren, it was my-"

The words were cut off, replaced with a moan. And his body jerked again, and again. Bloody foam dribbled between his lips and down his chin.

Darren waited, gripping his hands as he convulsed. For a while, she tried asking questions. About the traitor, about their father, about his wife, about his home. But Alek was beyond talking now.

In stories, wounded people pass out as soon as the pain becomes intense. In real life, it's a little bit different. Alek was conscious for over two hours, his kicking heels gouging trenches in the sand. Sometimes he screamed in agony; sometimes he cried. Finally, he reached the deep stage of suffering: too exhausted to scream any longer, but not too exhausted to hurt. He lay there, sunken eyes fixed on the sky, seeing nothing.

All that weary time, Darren had been sitting beside him, sometimes touching his hand, sometimes trying to talk, sometimes just staring dumbly. When he passed into catatonia, she rose shakily to her feet.

"I'll be back in a minute," she whispered, and headed at a run for the nearest set of bushes. The sound of retching wafted back to us.

But we didn't dwell on that. Latoya had been looming over the dying man for a quarter of an hour, and her eyes snapped to me the moment that Darren was out of sight. I just nodded in reply.

She stooped down beside Alek. I couldn't see what she was doing down there; her broad back blocked my vision. There was just the tiniest rustle and a soft little click, and then no more sound of tortured breathing. Latoya was about as good at killing as she was at everything else.

When she stood up, the bloodshot eyes had closed for good. That was the end of Alek: noble of the house of Torasan, Darren's brother, and Spinner's sometime tormentor. And yet, as I waited for Darren to stagger back to us, I had the uncomfortable feeling that we hadn't heard the last of him.

______________________________________________________________________________

Darren, formerly of the House of Torasan (Pirate Queen)
Evening, Day I

They gave me space for the rest of the day.

Regon and Lynn took charge as my crew launched the Banshee and loaded the stores. I barely noticed any of it. The hours slipped by blurrily, until I found myself at twilight, sitting on my bunk and staring at my own hands.

I tried saying the words to myself, as if I was prodding a bruise: "My brother is dead."

Nothing. I didn't really feel anything. Weren't you supposed to feel something when your brother died?

Then again. Alek was my second-oldest brother, ten years my senior. We hadn't spent much time together while we were growing up. Young nobles are sent to sea to captain the merchant ships as soon as they have a chance of surviving the experience. Alek was given his first command and sent away just as I was getting old enough to toddle around and notice things. Shortly after Alek was summoned home to take charge of my father's army, I was sent to sea myself. It was an understatement to say that we weren't close. For most of my childhood, I didn't say anything to him more meaningful than "Pass the salt."

I did have one vivid memory involving Alek, though it wasn't what you would call a pleasant one. It involved the night when I began to live the glamorous life of a noble in exile- the night when I was banished from Torasan Isle.

* * *

You've probably heard bits and pieces of the story. Seems these days that everyone knows something about my early career. So I don't need to go over every detail. What happened, briefly, was this: I invited Jess to visit the court of my father, Lord Stribos.

That was, to say the least, a bad move. Jess was a beekeeper and a midwife, a peasant from her tanned face to her muddy boots. Life at court, with all its intrigues and pretensions, alternately bored and repulsed her. And she wasn't very subtle about it.

I should have expected that, and I think I did, really. But Jess and I were together back then- these being the days before she decided I was a pervert, and I decided that a life spent with her in peaceful agricultural pursuits would drive me barking mad. An invitation to my family home, even though I knew the visit would be a disaster, seemed like an offering worthy of my love. Or something stupid like that. I was young then. Too young to realize that things aren't always worth doing just because they're painful and difficult.

Whatever. I invited Jess to Torasan Isle. It was a disaster. She spent all her time sneering at the nobles, with their lace-trimmed shirts and their velvet pantaloons, and they spent their time sneering right back at her.

Even the nights were bad. Being a peasant, Jess was supposed to sleep on a reed mat in the Great Hall with the servants and the tradesmen, and I didn't have the balls to protest. So, late every evening, I would sneak out, fetch her from the Great Hall, and smuggle her back to my own quarters. We would spend the night lying a foot apart in my deep plush bed, staring at the ceiling, glum and wakeful.

It all came to a head after we'd been there a week. An ambassador had just arrived from eastern Tavar. My father hated Tavarenes, but he liked Tavarene gold and Taverene rubies, so he ordered up a welcome feast and wrenched a smile onto his face. It did not look natural there.

I was seated at the High Table for the feast, of course, but they placed Jess somewhere well below the third salt, so far down the hall that I could barely even see her, let alone speak to her. I spent most of the meal hunched over my roast boar and apple cake, scowling at the food instead of eating it.

All around me churned the hubbub of tipsy nobles enjoying themselves. Two of my brothers were playing a favourite dinnertime game: balance a ripe fig on top of a wine bottle, and then, with a slash of a rapier, slice it in two. My father had pulled a young serving girl onto his lap, and was whispering in her ear, as he held her chin tightly between two fat fingers. A few ladies-in-waiting were clustered together, and their laughter sounded like the shrieks of parrots.

I sneaked a look towards Jess for the thousandth time and found that she had pushed her bench back from the table. She was staring, arms folded, at the drunken scene before her, and the expression on her face was so absolutely foul, she might have been contemplating rotten meat.

Why did I do what I did next? Why did I push my own chair back from the table and tromp down the steps to join Jess? It was one of the pivotal moments in my life, so you'd think I would remember it better. Fact is, I really don't know what I was thinking. Probably I wasn't thinking much. I'd put back more than one goblet of Torasan's famous cherry wine that evening, and usually just a swallow of the stuff was enough to make me slide happily under the table.

I stomped down the whole length of the hall, rigid with self-consciousness. People were staring already. I came to a halt in front of Jess, and thrust out one hand. "Dance with me," I ordered gruffly.

Jess had her eyebrows raised high. "Is this a good idea?"

"No. Come on."

"Oh dear," she muttered. She took my hand, but she took it very gingerly, so I would know that she was acting against her better judgment.

Feeling worse by the moment, I led Jess into the centre of the floor. Some wit among the musicians struck up a slow dance tune, and the others followed. I don't know what happened to those musicians in the aftermath of my little display of defiance. I imagine that they were whipped, at the very least. Maybe a couple of them lost a finger or two.

"Darren," Jess said warningly. There was a parental note in her tone- as if she was speaking to a child who was playing with a live coal. Jess always did think of me that way.

"Just dance," I said, desperate now, and already aware that I was making a terrible mistake. Dancing had never been one of my special talents, but it had been years since I had even tried it. I'd spent almost a decade away from court, stopping at the Isle for only a few days here, a few days there, to pay my respects to my father and take his orders. I couldn't remember any of the dance steps that I had memorized so painfully while I was growing up. I wasn't even sure which of us was going to lead.

More than ever, I wanted to retreat back to my chair, but it simply wasn't an option. I grabbed Jess's right hand and slapped it on the small of my back, and then pulled her in towards me. Together we executed just about the clumsiest dance in the history of our nation. It was kind of a back-and-forth shuffle.

At least the absurdity of the situation had Jess amused. She let out a helpless laugh, and tossed her hair back from her face.

At that moment, in spite of everything, I was at least able to see how beautiful she was. Her amber hair was aflame in the light of the torches. Her long tunic, though it was only woollen homespun dyed with nut hulls, caught the contours of her body, riding her breasts and hips. She was a vision, and she was my lover, and for some reason she hadn't abandoned me in the middle of the dance floor, so I did what seemed appropriate. I leaned in to kiss her.

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.

After it ended, 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.

Once we'd reached my room, I collapsed into an armchair, and sat there clutching my head. Jess packed our bags, and, when she was finished with that, she slipped a few small but valuable items of bric-a-brac in among the clothes.

After several minutes, she said, "Darren, 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. Drastic, radical, spur of the moment things. I thought we agreed that you weren't going to do anything radical 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 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 give my hand a pat. "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 was trying, unsuccessfully, to keep the panic out of my tone. "Are you telling me that I should just run?"

"Well, I know this isn't my area of expertise, 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 house. 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."

Maybe that was gentle teasing- maybe it was supposed to make me feel better. 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 particularly 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. That's the true test of greatness, I think: Can you deal with the consequences of the sacrifices that you make, without coming to resent 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, no matter how gallant it had been.

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

I didn't know whether to scream, fight, cry, or run in circles. 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 wield it in my own defence. 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 was already swinging open.

It was my brother Alek who stood there. Framed like the lintel and posts, with a man-at-arms at each of his elbows, he looked like a painting of some triumphant general. Alek had always showed more of a talent for fighting than for trade. In a more peaceful time, he would have been of limited use to my father. Much less valuable than a talented merchant captain. But now, with war boiling throughout the islands, 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 at the sight of it. "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. Then he 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 told me. "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," I said flatly. "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, 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 an appropriate 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!" I demanded.

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 fucking line. Feel what you want to feel, do what you want to do, but do it on your own damn time! If you'd been discrete, we would have had options. As it was, what choice did our father have? You of all people know that there's a cost of doing business. Sometimes you have to write things off."

What was there to say to that? I raked my fingers through my hair. It seemed strange to be doing so familiar and casual when my world was ripping apart at the seams.

Then, for the first time, Jess spoke up. "Will you go now, please?"

That was all she said, but her tone was as withering as a desert wind. Somehow, just with those five words, she managed to communicate that Alek was sexually unattractive to people of both 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.

He paused once when he reached the door. His hand dipped 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. Maybe he was fixing me in his memory. I've honestly never been sure. 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 still 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 fist.

"Copper," she reported. "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, if it came to that.

Now, on the day of Alek's death, I leaned back against the Banshee's curving side, 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? With the war raging so hotly, Alek probably wasn't the first of us to die. Was Konrad still alive? What about little Jael? More disturbing still...did I really honestly care one way or the other? When had I last even thought about them?

I didn't harbour many fuzzy feelings for my sisters and brothers, considering how willing they had been to write me off as the cost of doing business. But weren't family ties supposed to mean something? Weren't they supposed to 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 planks, that my ship was in motion.

Lynn didn't bother to answer. "You know, Mistress, I can hear you 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 be sticking around, no matter how little I thought.

"Give me a break," I said, trying to sound wounded. "My brother just died."

Lynn made a sympathetic kind of noise.

"I'm traumatized here."

"That can't be fun."

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

"Shouldn't I feel 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," was all she said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I leaned back on my elbows to give her space to work.

"I've never spent a minute of my life trying to feel anything but what I was actually feeling. It sort of seems like a waste of energy 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? Your brother Alek, I mean."

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

Lynn nodded, thoughtful. "So he was important. He might actually have succeeded your father as 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 at the age of fifteen. He fathered his first set of twins 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 had gotten tangled. "Why didn't your father ever try to marry you off?"

It was strange to be talking about something at once so distant and so familiar. "I was the eighth-born," I told Lynn. "And my mother was my father's third wife. I wouldn't have been entitled to much of a dowry, even if my House was wealthy. And it wasn't. The House of Torasan rules a pretty small realm- 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, 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 increase 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, thinking about it. Lynn had narrowly escaped a life as a brood sow- but couldn't the same be said about me?

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

I thought about that. "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 rose quartz. 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..."

My voice tapered off. All of a sudden, there was a hard lump of pressure in my chest that wouldn't let me breathe properly. Most of the time, I didn't miss my home. 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 now, 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. Yep."

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 wonder what it would be like to have a slave girl who couldn't read my mind. It would make it a lot easier to get away with certain things.

"All right," I admitted. "I'm going to warn my father about the traitor. But not for his stupid sake. It was the last thing Alek asked me to do- 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. 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..."

"...and pretend that you don't care what happens next. Fooling no-one, by the way."

I gave her my best frosty look. "Will you please come to bed? I'm starting to feel neglected."

"Well, we can't have that." She eased up next to me. "What do you want me in the bed for? Are we sleeping, or are you doing unspeakable things to me?"

Good question. "It would be nice if we could combine the two," I mused aloud. "Fact is, I'm exhausted. I don't know if I could manage any unspeakable things. Maybe something mildly impolite, if I exerted myself."

"We'll save the ravishing for another time, then. For now- roll over onto your stomach, Mistress."

I did, with a shiver of pleasurable anticipation. Almost at once, I gasped, as fingertips began to probe into the exact parts of my back where they could accomplish the most. Lynn knew all my muscles and nerves the way a minstrel knows the strings of his lute, and with effortless strokes, she began to take me apart and put me back together again. It was the extraordinarily good kind of pain, and it made me realize that I wasn't nearly as exhausted as I had believed.

"That offer of unspeakable things," I murmured into the blanket. "Is that off the table, girl?"

"Oh, Mistress." I couldn't see her smile, but I could hear it. "As if I could stop you from taking what you want from me."

Why do words like that make my blood run twice as hot? Why do they make my heart skip three beats, and then start to pound harder than ever? Why do they send electricity crackling through my veins, as strength surges into my every muscle? I don't know. But they do, every time.

It was wrong, I knew, what with everything that had happened that day, but for once, I didn't care. I pulled Lynn down and flipped my body on top of hers, pinning her down with my full weight. As my hands closed around Lynn's wrists and guided them up over her head, the last thing on my mind was apologising for the way I was feeling.

Lynn
Slightly after dark o'clock in the morning, Day 2

Darren was yawning when we went up on deck the next morning, and Regon smiled tolerantly as he fell into step beside us.

"No need to ask what you were doing last night," he said.

On an ordinary day, Darren might have blushed at that. But I had put in some good hard work on her the night before- and a little bit in the morning, as well- and that had done wonders for her ego. Instead of stammering out something like an apology to her first mate, Darren just gave him a dirty look. "I was saving the country, as usual."

He rolled his eyes. "Right. Well, captain, I'll give you this. You two are surprisingly quiet when you're saving the country. I didn't even hear any squeaking."

Darren jerked a thumb at me. "Lynn's a pillow-biter."

"Captain, you don't have a pillow."

"No, but I have an arm." Darren pushed up her sleeve briefly, exposing a row of teethmarks. "Same theory."

Then her tone turned businesslike. "Where's my brother?"

Alek's body was lying on the quarterdeck in its wrapping of clean white canvas. Ariadne and I had done a quick embalming job the day before, cutting out the bits that would start rotting fastest and packing the interior with salt. With luck, the body would be more or less intact when it arrived at Torasan Isle after its three-day journey...but it was not going to look very pretty.

It would have been smarter and easier to wrap the body in a hammock, tie a good-sized rock to the feet and tip it overboard. Nobody had mentioned that option. Nobles get buried on land, in their family tombs, so that they can mingle with their own kind in the hereafter. I might have tried to persuade Darren to break with custom, if it hadn't been for one thing: Spinner would probably be buried at sea when his own time came, and Alek didn't deserve to share the water with him.

Darren bent over the corpse, and she stayed there for an awfully long time. I didn't have the faintest idea what she was doing- praying, maybe- but Regon and I stood well back to give her space.

It was one of those blinding blue mornings that you sometimes get down south, though the pale sun didn't have any heat in it. I hadn't gotten much sleep, so I felt glassy and not-quite-there as I massaged a sore spot on my shoulder. Darren isn't the only one who gets bitten when the two of us are fooling around. She's the only one who complains about it, that's all.

Abruptly, Regon spat over the rail, making me look over in surprise. His saddle-brown face was flushed with anger. That was strange, to say the least. Regon was so even-tempered that he wouldn't cuss you out even if you stole his last clean shirt. (I did that, a couple of times.)

"Out with it," I told him. "Come on."

Regon's eyes flicked to Alek's corpse. He looked disgusted. "The captain hasn't forgotten what that son of a whore did to Spinner, has she?"

Ah. That made sense. Regon did have his limits, and when people messed with Spinner, the top just about blew off of his head.

"She hasn't forgotten," I assured Regon. "But you have to understand. It's not Alek she's mourning. It's her childhood. It's a long hall that smells of milk, and a washbasin of rose quartz, and ghost stories at night, and everything else that she's lost and can never get back. Besides- Alek was her brother, even if he was a thug, and he was murdered. It's hard to just move on from something like that."

He snorted. "The captain murdered your father, and you didn't go all gooey."

"Well, no, but I'm very special."

I scanned the crewmen who were on deck. All of them were watching Darren without looking like they were watching Darren. Sailors are good at that. "Where's Spinner? It's not his watch below, is it?"

"I sent him down. If the captain's going to be blubbering over that stinking dog, Spinner doesn't need to see it." He spat a second time, hard and with feeling. "I can't bear this, Lynn. I'm going below. If the captain asks-"

"If the captain asks where you are, I'll tell her that you ate some bad fish and are puking with mighty abandon." I waved a hand. "Go."

He didn't answer- just stomped down the steps to the hold, his arms rigid at his sides.

I watched him leave, my brain buzzing. There was a sweetness in Regon's protectiveness towards Spinner- always had been- and it was tempting to think that the sweetness could become something more. But I knew better. Regon liked the ladies, and Spinner, like me, was too practical to spend his life pining after impossible things.

Still. Regon was too good a man to waste. Maybe, I mused, I should throw him at Ariadne after all. He liked breasts, Ariadne had two of them- relationships have been built on less.

Darren straightened up, but didn't move away from the body. Not surprising, really. Darren found it hard to deal with life when she wasn't doing something. She was probably putting off the moment when she would have to admit that there was nothing more she could do for her brother.

She snapped her fingers to let me know she wanted me. Obediently, I trotted up to the quarterdeck. "Mistress?"

"Signal to Geraint," she said, naming the captain of the Sod Off. The harshness of her voice almost concealed the fact that she was close to tears. But not quite. "I'm ready for them to come and take Alek."

"I'll signal," I said, and waited for more.

She scrubbed at her eyes with one fist. "That letter I wrote to my father- it's pretty terse. Maybe I should add another page."

"You shouldn't. Not unless you're going to write BUGGER OFF over and over and over, and then wrap the parchment around a dead fish. And that's not your style. Anything else?"

"I'm thinking of lending Geraint some of our men."

"Why?"

"Because he's going to have to give my father bad news. I want him to be able to defend himself, if worst comes to worst."

"Geraint will only have the one ship," I pointed out. "If it comes to the worst, Geraint won't be able to defend himself no matter how many men you lend him."

"Still," Darren said doggedly. "He'll be a little safer if we beef up his crew."

And he'd be a lot safer if Darren didn't send him off to deliver Alek's corpse in the first place. I considered telling Darren that a burial at sea was still an option, but I knew it would be wasted effort. Sometimes- just occasionally- Darren got so stuck on something that even I couldn't change her mind. This would be one of those times. I could tell.

So, instead, I said: "Geraint's no fool. Give him space and let him work. It won't help if you clutter up the Sod Off with a bunch of spare sailors he doesn't even know."

"True," she admitted grudgingly. "I know what, though. I'll lend him-"

"You're not lending him Latoya."

She blinked. "Why not?"

"Because we're working her into an early grave and destroying her chances of romantic happiness, and I'm starting to feel a little bad about that. No. You're not lending him Latoya. I'm going to make sure she has a few days off, even if it kills me."

"What if it kills Geraint?" Darren countered. "I know I've been relying on Latoya too much, I'll make it up to her, but I need her now. I can't send a ship to Torasan Isle unless it's equipped to deal with a little rough-and-tumble and she's the best bruiser we have. She's going."

"But-"

"End of story. My decision. Me am boss."

She said this in her gruffest, sternest, most piratical voice. It was the voice she used when she was explaining to callow young recruits that they would jump when she hollered or by god she'd know the reason why. I wasn't a callow young recruit and it took more than a few gruff words to make me hop, but still I sighed, and surrendered.

"All right, Darren," I said.

Darren, I said, not Mistress, and that was so she would know why I was giving in. Not because she was the pirate queen, not because she was the senior partner, not because she was being an ass and throwing her weight around. No. I wasn't going to argue with Darren because her brother had died the day before and she didn't have the energy to fight. Also, I could tell from the tightness along her jaw and cheek that she had a headache. Again.

Piracy has its good points, but it's bad for your health.

"All right," I repeated, more softly. "I'll tell Latoya and see that she gets to the Sod Off."

Darren nodded, but she sounded suddenly apologetic, now that she had won. "Your sister is going to kill me, isn't she?"

* * *

Not quite, but it was a near thing. Ariadne went white as a chalk cliff when she heard the news, except for two brilliant red splodges on her neck.

"You want Latoya to go where?" she asked, in a voice that sounded somehow like thorns and razors.

Darren still looked sheepish. "I just want-"

"You. Just. Want. Darren, for the love of sainted trout! When your father finds out that Alek was murdered, he's going to be swinging at everyone within reach. Isn't he? Isn't he?"

"But that's why-"

"That's why you want my woman to be within swinging distance? Why is that, Darren? Are you secretly jealous of her good looks?"

Weakly, now: "Ariadne."

"Don't you 'Ariadne' me!" My sister puffed out an angry breath of air. "You listen here, pirate queen. Everyone else seems to be tiptoeing around this issue, so I'll give it to you straight. Your brother was an arsehole. We're all happy he's dead. He's not worth mourning. And you have no right to send Latoya into danger, just so that you can feel better about the whole thing. He's dead. Throw his body over the side, get drunk, write a sad poem and move the hell on."

Throughout the conversation, Darren had been standing in a hangdog kind of posture, shoulders slumped. But now she drew herself up to her full height, and her chin lifted. It wasn't a fighting stance. It was courtlier than that. This was how a lady of Kila looked when she had suffered a terrible insult.

"Ariadne," she said coldly, "you forget yourself."

"Oh, do I?" Ariadne snapped back. Almost unconsciously, she too drew herself upwards, mirroring Darren's pose. "Let me remind you of something, so there won't be any confusion: You're not my mistress, and you're not my queen."

High colour dashed Darren's cheeks. "You are on my ship. You stay on my ship, you submit to my authority."

"I'm on your ship so I can be with my sister, Darren. That's all. You have no authority over me. You never did. You never will. Stop pretending otherwise or you'll only embarrass yourself. "

It's easy enough for me to tell you what they said, but I can't possibly do justice to their expressions. Their faces had frozen into stiff, haughty masks, with their eyes narrowed and their lips curled as though there was a bad smell in the room. (Which I suppose there was, but if you live on board a ship, you have to learn to get used to that sort of thing.) I don't think either of them knew how ridiculous they looked, nor would it have done any good if I'd told them. They were both of them obeying the call of something deeper, impulses ingrained in them before they'd even learned to walk.

It wasn't Darren and Ariadne standing there. It was the Lady Darren of Torasan and Lady Ariadne of Bain.

Almost unconsciously, I exchanged a glance with Latoya, who had been silently stuffing her kitbag. We both rolled our eyes. Nobles.

"I don't have any authority, do I?" asked Darren. "So I suppose that you'll be taking over as captain in the future?"

"Why not?" Ariadne asked tartly. "I know how to stomp around deck, drink too much, and cuddle with Lynn. Those seem to be the main job requirements."

"Splendid. Then I can take over your responsibilities. What were they again? Eating, sleeping, whining, and sarcasm?"

This was getting ridiculous. I jerked my head towards the companionway, Latoya nodded, and we both climbed out of the forecastle. Voices kept blaring behind us, but we didn't turn around.

As soon as we were out on deck, with the gull-cries drowning out the argument, I asked Latoya: "Do you not want to go?"

She shrugged as she tied her kit-bag shut. "Captain wants me to go."

"Give me a couple of hours alone with her, and captain won't remember what she wanted you to do. Or what year it is. Or what her name is. Or what anyone else's name is. Or whether she has feet."

Latoya shook her head. "I wouldn't ask you to do that."

"You didn't ask. And I wouldn't exactly be suffering during the procedure."

She slung her kitbag over her shoulder. "There's no need. But walk with me."

Latoya headed for the long boats at the stern of the ship, with a quick, swinging stride that forced me to trot to keep up. "Hang on," I said. "You're not leaving without speaking to my sister, are you?"

"That was the plan."

"I hate that plan," I said. I ran a few steps in front of Latoya, then began walking backwards so I could keep her face in view. "That plan stinks. Come on. Say something to her. It doesn't have to be elaborate. Start with one syllable and go from there."

Latoya shrugged. "I've never been much for goodbyes. Besides. I don't know what to say to her when she's like this."

"Like what?"

"You know what. When she's a lady." Latoya shot me a quick, searching look. "She's not like you- your sister."

"No," I agreed, without needing to think about it. "You're lucky. She's the nice one."

"Maybe," she said slowly. "But you're the adult. Ariadne- she has some growing up to do. Doesn't even know who she is every day. Be good for her to have some space to do her thinking."

Latoya slung her kit-bag into a long boat. Then, without changing her tone, she asked: "Why is she pulling away from me?"

This was getting dicey. "I'm not the one you should ask."

"But I'm asking anyway. As a favour to me, Lynn- please."

It was hard to ignore that appeal, considering how many times Latoya had saved Darren's life. (Seventeen, if you count the time when she explained to Darren that you shouldn't eat dragon fish even if you're sure that you didn't puncture the poison bladder. And I do count that.)

I said, "I can't be sure..."

She prompted: "But...?"

"But...you might just be too whole for her."

Latoya raised an eyebrow at me. I grimaced, and looked down at her hands- brown hands roughened with callous and criss-crossed with scars. Those hands, with equal ease, could break a man's neck or carve an apple into a swan, make a rope fast or calm a frightened horse.

"It's hard to explain," I told Latoya. "But...I think Ariadne finds things easiest to love when they're half-broken. When she was a child, she could have spent all her time sitting on satin pillows and playing koro with dice made of diamonds. But she wasn't interested. Her favourite things were dolls without heads, and three-legged cats, and mangy horses..."

I faltered, but Latoya understood, and finished the thought. "And you."

"And me," I admitted. "Granted, I've caused a lot more trouble for her than any of those three-legged cats did. Well, except for Marvin. He was a bad cat, Marvin was. But it's the same kind of idea. She likes to be needed. She needs it."

I saw Latoya take this in. "You're saying she might not want to be with me- because I'm not broken enough?"

I shrugged. "Doesn't make much sense, does it."

"No," she said. "But for some reason, it doesn't surprise me, either." She sniffed the freshening breeze. "I should go."

She hesitated, and then, more softly, "Keep an eye on her. Nobody falls in love with broken things unless they're a little cracked themselves."

* * *

I perched on the rail to see her off. It was a pleasure all its own to watch Latoya row a longboat. They were big, cranky crafts, the longboats, and it took six normal men to get one moving- but Latoya, with an oar in each hand, fairly lifted it out of the water. She reached the Sod Off in about eight and a half seconds, climbed the rope ladder in easy swinging jerks, and gave me a last casual wave as she pulled herself over the gunwale.

Latoya and I always tried not to make too big a deal out of it when she went off on some dangerous mission from which she might never return (which happened more often than it should have). Goodbyes are awkward, and final goodbyes are doubly so, and goodbyes that might or might not be final are the worst of all. Better to stick with the wave-and-turn-your-back approach, and then make a big deal out of saying hello, if you do get to say it again.

As I crossed the deck, I was thinking about breakfast. Not my breakfast- Darren's. I'm not always regular about meals, but I do eat when I get hungry. Darren, though, Darren was hopeless. When she was distracted, she would forget that she had a body, much less that it had needs of its own. Sometimes, even when I put a plate in front of her, she wouldn't notice it until I shoved her face down into the porridge.

I was heading for the galley when I heard Ariadne's voice again, screeching from the forecastle, loud and shrill even through the wood planking.

"Oh, don't pretend that you saved her, Darren. You don't even know her."

That brought me up short. I hate, loathe, and despise it when people talk about me behind my back. Ariadne knew that, so why was she courting my wrath? For an instant, I did consider the possibility that she might be talking about someone other than me- but I couldn't sustain that fiction. When someone talks about some nameless "her" and I'm in the area, it's always me.

Darren let out two furious pants before she answered. "And who is her saviour then? You?"

"Look, you stupid bloody pirate, I know better to think that Lynn needs a saviour!"

Told you. Always me.

Ariadne just wouldn't stop talking. "It's pathetic. You think that Lynn is your big success story? You don't get to take credit for Lynn. You didn't save her- she saved herself, and she saved you too because she had some time to kill and why not? And she lets you pretend that you're in charge just so that your fragile self-esteem won't crack. And you know what I think? I think she's settling for you until she can find someone who can actually keep up with her. When all of this is over, you'll be the woman who got her started. That's all."

Well, crap. I was getting ready to sprint to someone's rescue- whose rescue, I wasn't quite sure- when I heard Darren's voice in reply: quiet, measured, venomous. "Right now, Lynn still thinks that you're the good angel of her childhood. But when she gets her head straight, then she'll figure out that you stood by for seventeen years, watching her get tortured, worked to exhaustion, and starved. You'll say that you helped her- and maybe you did- but you sure as hell didn't stick out your neck. And you know what that tells me? Shut up, I'm talking. Even if you liked Lynn, even if you loved her, she didn't mean dick to you. Not compared to your position, your title, your real family and your real life. She didn't. Mean. Dick."

A sharp intake of breath from Ariadne. "How dare you?"

"How dare I what? Tell the truth? Face facts, princess. Maybe you're right- maybe when all this is over, I'll just be the woman who got Lynn started. But you'll be a bad memory. A bit player in a life she used to live that she's trying to forget."

Right that moment, I felt a soft touch on my elbow, and my hand flashed to my knife. I had it halfway out of its sheath before I realized it was only Regon.

"What do you reckon?" he asked, eyebrows bobbing. "Should we pull them apart, or just grab a pump and hose them down until they start to squelch?"

"Neither," I said. I was a little light-headed- it could have been the lack of sleep, the argument, the sudden shock, choose your weapon- and I leaned back against the wall of the forecastle, trying to steady myself. "I should have known this would happen eventually."

Regon gave an affirmative kind of grunt. "I've seen it before. Hard to avoid it, when you put two nobles on one boat."

"Well, they'll have to sort it out for themselves, because I'm not going to give up either of them. And I will not spend the rest of my life playing monkey in the middle between those two."

He nodded, but still asked, "What if they strangle each other before one of them gets smart?"

"They'll figure it out," I insisted fiercely. "If those two can't figure it out, then I don't know what fucking hope there is for Kila."

All of a sudden, I just felt terribly tired. The war had gone on so long already, and Darren and I had been fighting for years, and had we even begun to make headway? We could ferry a thousand starving children to a place of peace and plenty, and a million more hungry mouths would gape open. We could cut down a thousand murderous raiders, and a million more would rip bloody sabres from their scabbards. I might be able to draw the line and call it quits sometime, when I couldn't take it anymore, but Darren wouldn't. Darren couldn't. And how long would I be able to keep her alive in the centre of the firestorm?

And say that we won. Say that it all went exactly according to plan, and we managed to end the war and unite the islands and put my sister on the long-vacant throne of the High Queen. Wouldn't there still be small children who had to carry heavy buckets up and down tower stairs every day, and who got the crap beat out of them if they took too long?

If you embark on a project as ambitious as saving your country, then there are bound to be times like this, when your energy drains out of you all at once. At such moments, you wonder why you would ever bother, and you're tempted to crawl back into bed and sleep until dinnertime tomorrow. For a second, I looked longingly at the door that led to Darren's cabin.

Just for a second, though. Maybe servants have an advantage when it comes to dealing with moments when nothing seems worthwhile. Every servant knows that the work has to get done, no matter how you feel.

I sighed, and refocused.

"I'll be in the galley, if anyone asks," I told Regon. "My mistress needs her breakfast."

Darren, formerly of the House of Torasan (Pirate Queen)
Day 18

After that, Ariadne and I were barely on speaking turns. We stepped carefully around each other if we met on the companionway, and only went to the galley when the other wasn't there. If we had to look each other in the face, we maintained expressions of weary indifference, as if the other was just too tedious to be borne.

All right, you don't need to tell me, it wasn't my finest hour.

Lynn told us conversationally that we were both being idiots, and then left it alone. Regon wasn't nearly as restrained. First chance he got, he cornered me on the maindeck, and gave me That Look. The one that suggested he'd caught me eating babies or using puppies as bedroom slippers.

"Word to the wise, captain," he told me. "If you want to stay in good with a girl, then you have to stay in good with her sister. It's just a law of life."

I protested: "But she's a spoiled brat!"

"And you're a fluffy kitten, are you?" He snorted. "Fix it before someone gets hurt."

I thought of a really snappy retort to that- half an hour later. I considered tracking Regon down and announcing it triumphantly, but he just would have countered by giving me That Look again, along with a pitying pat on the shoulder.

For a whole ten minutes, I thought about apologising to Ariadne. Then I thought about the way she had called me a stuck-up, self-obsessed megalomaniac, and how she suggested that I could only get off if I was looking at my own face in a mirror all the while. Then I decided that she could apologise first.

So I ignored her, with what I liked to think of as cold dignity, and got back to work.

We should have been heading north. I was an exile, with a price on my head, and though it had been a long time since anyone had shown up looking to collect, it was not a good idea to get too comfortable. Just a few months before, my father had sent an assassin after me who looked about sixteen. She posed as a refugee and sat sobbing on the shore while my crew drove raiders from a burned-out village. When I came near enough to pat her on the shoulder, she flung herself into my arms, sobbed some more, and then, without changing expression, she lunged for my throat with a saw-edged blade. I managed to catch her wrist, but even so, I took a nasty slash in the shoulder before Latoya could reach me. The wound didn't hurt nearly as much as the tongue-lashing that I caught from Latoya after the fact. As she reminded me fifty-six times in succession, I knew better than to assume a woman couldn't be dangerous.

I also knew better than to spend too much time paddling around in my father's domain...but somehow I couldn't make myself give the order to change course. I knew this southern stretch of ocean better than I knew the alphabet, after all those years spent on my father's merchant ships. Every time I saw a landmark, I went almost drunk with memory. There was the yellow sand of the Tavarene coast. There was the islet with the purple oyster beds. And there was the reef where, at the age of fourteen, I very nearly sunk the first ship I ever commanded. I'm going to save myself a little embarrassment by not telling you the whole story. Suffice to say, if you insist on sailing at night and taking the rudder yourself, you should at least be sober.

Gods, I'd been an idiot. Still, I felt some inexpressible tenderness, thinking of that first command. My ship back then was a balky, ugly old scow, over-optimistically named the Glory of the Isles. Her sails were heavily patched and she had so many leaks that she could have been usefully employed as a sieve for boiled asparagus, but she was mine. That was the first time I encountered the magic that's a ship at sea: it's a mass of wood and metal that can take you anywhere, around the world and home again. Ships stink, and unless you stick close to land, the food is worse than what you'd get in prison. Still, if you want my opinion, they're better than wings.

Then, too, there was the heady joy of being in charge for the first time in my life. No older siblings to thump me on the head and cram worms down my shirt. No tutors to whip me with bunches of reeds when I made an mistake in a geometry problem. Just a crew of ten sailors who did their best to pretend that I knew what I was doing.

Whenever I gave a particularly stupid order, Teek the helmsman would tug his forelock politely and say of course Captain, of course. Then he'd quietly do the opposite and never mention it again.

Regon had been there too- a dark, stocky youth with a cautious smile. Though he was three years older than I was, he'd served as my cabin boy, bringing me my morning porridge and my evening wine, blacking my boots and washing my shirts every other month. I pretended to accept all this as my rightful due, but the truth was, I was a little bit in awe of him. He'd been at sea since the age of seven, and it was all too obvious that he belonged there. He could climb the rigging as if it was a ladder, set the sails as neatly as a maid could thread a needle, and he never stumbled in the dark of the hold. He positively liked the taste of salt beef.

Meanwhile I was pretending to know what it meant when someone yelled out, "Heave her to!" I was always tempted to respond, "Make it three, and you've got a deal."

So long ago.

A week after Alek's death, when we still hadn't headed north, my excuses were getting increasingly threadbare. I think we should sail around that completely random patch of ocean for a while- that was the kind of thing I was coming up with. No-one broke out in open revolt, but Lynn's tone of voice was getting increasingly exasperated with each Yes, Mistress.

I wasn't sleeping well, either. Every time I sunk deep enough to dream, the same words went thudding through me: Traitor- one of us- one of our own- betrayed us- backstabber. Darren, not much time, Darren, Darren, it was my-

I would wake dry-lipped and shaky, and couldn't get back to sleep again. Instead, I'd watch Lynn sweating and shaking in her own nightmares, and wonder why I couldn't save either of us.

All in all, it was a good thing that the Tavarene ambassadors showed up around then.

* * *

"They want you to help them negotiate a peace," Lynn remarked with some amusement. "I think I should tell them about you and Ariadne have been plotting each other's deaths all week."

"Go ahead. Just make it clear that she's the evil aggressor and I'm simply defending myself."

"You're looking at me like you're expecting a yes, Mistress, and lover, it isn't going to happen."

A word here about Tavar. It's not part of Kila, of course. It's on the mainland, removed from the isles, and it wasn't a player in the Kilan war. But violence is like a liquid- it tends to spread, and stain, and spill. With every lord in Kila busily engaged in trying to slaughter his neighbours, it was no surprise that some of our friends in the south were getting in on the act.

Two Tavarene villages had spent the past several years locked in a small but nasty conflict of their own. Now, with many of their young men dead, and many of their women abducted or raped or sold, and their cattle butchered, and their date palms burned, they'd gotten sick of the whole mess.

It's always a hopeful sign when two warring parties agree to come to the negotiating table, but it's a mistake to hope too much. Peace talks can, and often do, break down over the stupidest things. Accidental insults, for example, or strange signs that someone takes as a portent, like a two-headed calf or a shooting star. Sometimes the talks go on for so long that no-one has the energy to continue. And there are always war profiteers- weapon sellers, slave merchants and the like- pulling puppet strings from behind the scenes.

If you really want to make peace, it's a good idea to call in some neutral third party who will keep the talks on the rails. And that's why the village chiefs called me.

This was what I needed: something that would keep me in the south, but keep me too busy to fret. I threw myself into the job, and Lynn followed suit. We both needed the distraction.

It would have been a great help to have Latoya there, but even without her, we had two Tavarene sailors on board. We began by questioning them mercilessly about the customs on the coast: how the locals dressed, acted, thought, and spoke. Then, when we reached the warring villages, we dispatched the crew of the Banshee to fan out and comb the area. They inspected buildings, counted crop fields, and struck up conversations with every Tavarene they could find, asking about their problems, their fears, their lives.

The chieftains of the warring villages asked me to dinner. I accepted and, as if it was an afterthought, offered my own slave girl to serve at table. All through the evening, as the chieftains and I sprawled on couches padded with leopard hides, Lynn went back and forth between us, filling wine-cups and passing platters of pomegranates and dates. She wore the briefest of white linen tunics, with copper anklets and bangles, and the chieftains looked at her the way you would look at an elaborate table decoration. They gave her a single appreciative glance, and then ignored her.

Which was what she wanted, of course. All the time that the chieftains and I were talking about the war and cows and maize fields and trade and temples and date palms, Lynn glided invisibly from couch to couch, noticing all manner of tiny details that you or I would never see. She knew it every time that the chieftains changed expression, changed position, fidgeted or began to breathe faster. With those signs as a guide, she was able to follow the chieftains' thoughts throughout our conversation. She knew what made them nervous and what made them bored, what issues mattered to them and which were throwaways.

The chieftains both drank heavily. Lynn pretended to fill my cup every time she filled theirs, but, in fact, I made one cup of palm wine last the whole evening. When the chieftains began to slur and ramble, Lynn slipped from the tent and Ariadne slipped inside to replace her. Neither of the chieftains appeared to notice that the blond serving girl had suddenly gained three inches and twenty-five pounds. They just yelled for more drink and Ariadne went to serve them, rolling her eyes.

Lynn met up with my crewmen as soon as she was free of the tent, and heard all their reports. Spinner had done the best- no surprise, because he'd found a loom-house and spent the better part of two days with a bunch of weavers. Weaving is one of those things that keeps about one per cent of your brain busy, and so weavers keep up an endless flow of chatter as they work. You might think it strange that they would talk so freely when there was a strange man standing nearby listening in, but Spinner, like Lynn, had a gift for blending into the scenery. Don't ask me how he managed it. Maybe he held a potted plant in front of his face. I'm not good at that kind of thing myself and I don't understand the people who are.

Eventually, the feast ended and the chieftains staggered off to bed. I retreated to my tent and Lynn briefed me, summarizing all the information my crew had managed to glean, as well as everything that she'd learned or guessed during dinner. Then, with Regon and Spinner and Ariadne, we held a council of war- actually, not a council of war. A council of not-war, I suppose. We hashed out a plan for the arbitration, guessing what problems would come up and deciding how I would respond to each of them. It went on long into the night and we only broke it off when we were too tired to see.

Ariadne and I managed to maintain a sort of chilly politeness during the meeting. I'd included her mainly so that Lynn wouldn't glare at me, but if I'm going to be honest about it, she came up with more good ideas than I did. It made sense, as I realized when I really sat down and thought about it. Ariadne was Iason's firstborn, and his heir; she had been trained from her cradle for diplomacy. As my father's eighth child, I had always been destined for the merchant ships. Political matters formed less of my education. But- going for complete honesty again- it still irked me to be out-thought by someone so...girly.

Ariadne's diplomatic education wasn't the only thing that gave her an edge, though. She and Latoya had been together five months, and during that time, she'd absorbed a lot of information about her lover's homeland of Tavar. I guess that all those times that she and Latoya snuck away together to "talk," some talking actually did go on.

The arbitration itself 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. In fact, my palms were so damp with anxiety that I had to wipe them on my trousers every other minute.

Nervous as I was, I wasn't alone: 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, unconscious of what was going on around her. Of course, that wasn't true. 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 most 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 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, whether slave or free. 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 spelled out the terms of the treaty. As soon as the knot drew tight, Regon waved a flag at the villagers waiting ashore, and the coast erupted with voices and drums. 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 single-handedly. Peace doesn't come all at once, or by a miracle. But still, when the Banshee set sail, the women of the villages were preparing to plant the maize 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 untied 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 can be fun, under the right circumstances and in the right company.

"There's a old prophecy in southern Kila," Lynn said. "It's about a holy leader. Someone destined to rise from the mists and unite the islands and put an end to war and strife. Latoya told me about it. Have you heard it before?"

"The story of the Blue Guardian. Yes, I've heard it."

She nipped again. "I think you should own that story. That could be you. 'Blue Guardian' 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 the prophecy, the Blue Guardian 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, too. Can't swear to that last part. It's been a while since I've heard it."

"So?"

"Huh?"

"So who cares? Young boy who can shoot lightning from his fingertips, adult woman who wears shiny boots- 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. Maybe we should embroider thunder-clouds on your sleeves."

I let out an exasperated puff of breath. "Lynn, I'm not the Blue Guardian!"

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

"But 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. There are plenty of morons in the world who won't follow you just because you're a good woman and a gifted leader. 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 and 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."

She looked up from knotting the length of rope that she wore as a belt. "I want the war to end," she said. "Don't you?

She bent over me, dropped a glancing kiss on my cheek, and then 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"?

Lynn noticed my annoyance. "You know, Darren," she 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 sort of 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 circle 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 in Torasan, 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, both of whom approached each game like they were making a single-handed assault on an enemy fortress. 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," she said tersely. "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 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, her lips pursed, glared at Lynn and rattled the dice-cup moodily. "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, amused, 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 that Lynn got a headache in the middle and had to go belowdecks to take a nap, and I'd kept throwing the dice while she was gone and scored five hundred points before she resurfaced. And even then it was close.

It had become so embarrassing that 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 let out a mocking snort. "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."

I saw Lynn's nostrils flare at this, and her lips parted as though she was ready to intervene. I shook my head at her, warning her off. She'd been right all along. I was either going to have to learn to live with Ariadne, or kill her in her sleep. There wasn't really any other way.

"All right," I admitted to Ariadne. "So I suck. Give me a break, princess. I've got to learn sometime."

There. How was that for diplomacy? I was being meek and humble and everything. There was no way Ariadne could stalk off in a huff without coming across as a total twat to my sailors- all of whom were still surrounding us, goggling like men at a half-price peep-show.

Then a thought struck me. If all my sailors were watching us, then who, in the name of the Great Khan's left testicle, was watching the horizon?

My gaze snapped up to the surrounding sea, just as I heard Spinner's shout: "FUCK!"

Then, sheepishly, and almost as an afterthought: "Sails off the port bow, captain!"

* * *

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, so sleek and predatory, ominous 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. Human scorpions, they were, who chewed dajiki root before battle to inflame themselves to a frothing, murderous frenzy. I'd heard it said that after one lump of dajiki root, the screams of your enemies as you cut them down sound like sweet music. I've heard it said 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 a little bit more high-pitched than normal but there was no other sign that he was practically wetting himself. And that was impressive, considering that, except for Regon and me, Spinner knew better than anyone what corsairs could do.

Another sail. 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 observed.

I snapped the spyglass out as long as it would go. "That's not just any one of ours. That's the Sod Off, man- that's Latoya and Geraint!"

"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 Geraint tried to change course. It wouldn't be enough- I knew that without having to think about it. He was a fine sailor, was my man Geraint, but he was no Regon.

I watched the corsairs' ships turning, swift and light, as though they were dancers moving on tip-toe. 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 responded. "It'll be enough, because it has to be enough. That's all. I'll turn out the crew below and get them 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, yes? I probably haven't said enough to really give you the feel. In the south, the heavens are constantly on fire with 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.

There was a crackle, and 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.

Beside me, a quiet voice. "This is your wind, Mistress. Better make the most of it."

Lynn. Of course. Trust Lynn to focus on what was important. The 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 were already bounding for the rigging- both of them light and agile, well-suited for work on the ropes. Lynn slipped once on the wet lines, but Spinner's hand shot 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.

"Captain, we have to reef!" Regon yelled at me desperately, raindrops pounding on his forehead. "At this clip, you'll capsize her!"

"All right, all right!" I snapped at him, but already I was distracted by a bigger problem. The Banshee was one ship. The corsairs had two. Whichever of them I chose to grapple and board, the other would be left free to attack the Sod Off. That would pit Geraint's twelve-man crew against a howling, maddened band of sea-wolves. Maybe Latoya would be able to even things out, but I still wasn't happy with the odds.

If only I had more of my ships with me! With the Black Rush on one flank and the Destiny on another, and the Idiot Kid lurking by for emergencies, I could have carved through those corsairs without changing expression. Wasn't that why I built a damn fleet in the first place? And here I was, in a single ship, with the Sod Off in trouble and my thumb up my arse. How stupid could I possibly...

Stop it. I actually slapped myself in the face. I knew better than to get locked inside my own head when there was work to do. Focus- that was what Lynn would tell me. Focus on what you have, not what you don't. I didn't have any extra ships. I did have the Banshee, my beautiful Banshee, and I loved every plank and peg in her, but still...she couldn't turn as swiftly as the smaller corsair vessels, couldn't manoeuvre as easily. She was too large, too heavy, too...

Yes. Heavy. Use what you have. Yes. Use what you have. Buggering fuck against a spiky tree, that was it.

The Banshee was still surging forward. All around me was a clutter of sound: the blatting of the rain, creaking of ropes and quick barked orders, as my crew prepared to shorten sail. I raised my voice over all of it: "BELAY THAT!"

"Captain?" I couldn't see Regon, but I could hear him bawling in the grey mist.

"Don't reef!" I roared, clambering towards the helm. I'm not one to stumble on board ship, but we were moving so fast, even I had to grab at the lines to stay upright.

"Captain?" Regon said, a note of pure panic entering his tone. It wasn't hard to translate: She's gone off the deep end at last. I always knew this day would come.

I said: "I need her going full bore!"

"Captain, we'll capsize! The wind's too hard; she'll go straight over!"

"Not my ship!" I yelled in no particular direction, shoving the helmsman away from the wheel so I could take his place. "Not my beautiful girl!"

A shout of protest came from high overhead. "Hey!"

"Oh, come on, Lynn!" I bellowed up at her. "Don't you go getting jealous of my Banshee! You're lovely and all, but I can't ride on your back, can I?"

It was hard to hear her through the rain, but I made it out nonetheless: "That's not what you said last night!"

That brought on guffaws from the sailors around me, and I contributed one of my own (why not) before I slapped my wet hands onto either side of the helm, sighted along the compass and altered course.

I wasn't the best helmsman among my crew- not by a long shot. But at a moment like this, with the Banshee ploughing through the water so fast that the planks were shaking and groaning, and the wind so hard that we'd broach if someone sneezed in the wrong direction, I needed to be in control of things myself. I needed to feel my ship moving beneath me, responding to my every nudge and gesture, sweet and pliant as a thoroughbred mare, or...well...Lynn.

On and on the Banshee lumbered. Now the masts were creaking painfully, straining as the vicious wind surged against the sails.

"Captain!" Regon yelled at me. "We'll lose the mainmast; we have to lower sail!"

"She'll manage," I gasped out, fighting to keep my grip on the bucking helm. Good thing that I'd had all that experience with Lynn. "I just need another minute."

"Captain!"

Now we were so close to the corsairs' ships that I could count the daggers tucked into their sashes. As I'd expected, they'd split so they could sandwich the Sod Off, attacking from both sides at once. I chose the corsair vessel to starboard, and angled the Banshee so she'd strike the smaller ship broadside.

A gust hit hard, and the Banshee listed so badly that half the sailors went sliding across the deck. I snarled, and held course, heading for the corsair ship.

"CAPTAIN! What the fuck are you playing at? We'll never...aw, hell, what's the use." Regon raised his great bullhorn of a voice, which could boom with twice the thunder of a south sea storm. "All hands, find a grip and brace!"

As the Banshee reached her target, the whole world slowed for a moment, as if we were going to balance forever at the very tip-top of the wave. I saw a corsair gaping at us, and it seemed as if I had forever to study the wooden toggles on his ragged vest, and the hair bristling in clumps from his nostrils. Then, without warning, the world spun back to its normal dizzying pace, and the Banshee's side slammed against the corsair sloop. My teeth nearly shattered with the force of the impact, and my vision blurred. At first I didn't know whether I'd wrecked the Banshee, or the corsair ship, or just killed all of us.

Then I saw the wet, slick belly of the corsair ship, floating uppermost on the surface of the sea, and I started to breath again. It had worked. A whack from the heavy Banshee, travelling under full sail with the force of the squall behind her, had been enough to capsize the smaller ship. But the force of the blow had also sent us yawing, almost out of control.

"CUT AWAY SAIL!"

Regon and I yelled this at almost the same instant, and barely half an instant after that, there came a sound like flump-flump-flump, as the heavy folds of the soaking mainsail dropped to the deck. Spinner and Lynn- Lords of the deep love 'em both- had known what was needed, and had their knives ready to slash the taut lines as soon as the corsair sloop went over.

With the mainsail gone, the Banshee slowed and righted itself, like a runner taking breath. I spun the wheel once, leaving us heading for the remaining corsair ship, but at a more sedate pace.

Regon let out a breathy whistle. "Anyone ever tell you that you're a cheeky bloody bastard?"

"Often. And loudly." I unclenched my hands from the helm, and shook out my stiff fingers. "I'm off to play with pointy objects. The ship is yours. See if you can hold her together. And keep Lynn away from the fighting."

"Captain..."

"Just do your best, Regon, I don't expect miracles!"

The sea was alive with bobbing heads, the flotsam from the capsized ship. I wondered whether dajiki root helped you to swim.

As I moved away, I saw Ariadne clutching at the mast for everything she was worth. She had the look of fixed concentration that people get when they're trying not to vomit in their own shoes. The Banshee rocked as her grappling hooks sung through the air, and Ariadne gulped desperately.

"Get below, princess," I told her. I tried not to make it sound condescending, tried to be big about the whole thing- but that was all the time I had for her. Ripping my cutlass from its sheath, I sprinted for the quarterdeck

The grappling hooks had done their work, sinking deep into the wooden gunwales of the enemy ship. Now twenty sailors stood straining at the winches, hauling the corsair sloop towards the Banshee, closer and closer. Twenty more of my men waited on the quarterdeck, their faces lean and eager, like hunting hounds.

Corto, the quartermaster, had his foot up on the rail. His cutlass was already drawn, slick and silver in the rain, his main-gauche clasped between his teeth. I've known better sailors than Corto, but in the red hurly-burly of a battle line, with a blade in each hand, he was a whirling devil.

I took my place in the line, on Corto's right. On an ordinary day, Latoya would have been on my other flank, with a length of anchor chain. You don't usually think of bloody destruction when you see a chain, but the thing was easily the most dangerous weapon on the Banshee. Once Latoya got it going, it ripped skulls apart like melon-rinds and snapped limps like runner beans.

The two of them, Corto and Latoya, were fighters worth their weight in gold and cinnamon. If I'd had fifty more like them, I could have put an end to the war in about forty-two minutes. I didn't have fifty more fighters like them, so I made sure that they both ate very well and I tried not to get in their way when they were working. They would scythe their way through the melee, and I'd trot along behind them, cleaning up.

The winches groaned. The ropes tightened. A wave broke, and the sloop's side slammed into the Banshee. Corto leapt, and when his feet hit planking, it was on the enemy ship. He spun into the crush of the corsairs, his blades moving so fast and light that they could have been silver scarves in the hands of a dancing girl. I vaulted the gunwale to follow him, hardly feeling the wood under my fingers, and then the whirlwind took over.

You don't think a series of connected thoughts in mid-battle. I don't, anyway. It's all a bunch of jagged, divided pictures: man with a sword, another man with a sword, bad breath, hairy chest, slashed someone's gut open, rain in my boot, man with a giant pimple and a sword, ducked a punch, cut off someone's ear, slipped in gore. Still, at some dim level I knew that they were forcing us back, taking the fight to the Banshee's deck. Not good.

I shouted for Corto, with some vague idea of a clever counterattack, but that was a mistake. He turned, and as he turned, a scar-faced raider with a smile full of broken teeth closed in. One quick slash, and then a spraying arc of blood, the scarlet raw and hideous in the rain. Corto staggered, looking thoughtful, and then tipped over sideways, crashing to the deck.

Broken-Tooth was raising his sword for the killing strike when there was a horrible crunching sound. Broken-Tooth's eyes, which had been alight with dajiki-fire, went dark. He crumpled like a rag, and there was Lynn, stooping over the body to retrieve her long knife. She had thrust it in at just the right place, the spot where the base of the skull meets the spine, and he never knew what hit him.

Good so far as it went, but now she was standing there fully visible in the middle of the tornado, which was exactly where I didn't want her. Lynn belonged to the kill-them-before-they-see-you school of warfare, and her favourite weapon- the garrotte- wasn't something you could whip out in a duel to deflect a sword strike.

"Get out of here!" I roared at her.

"My god, you're shouty today," she said absently, trying to wiggle the knife free from Broken-Tooth's spine. "Oh- damn."

"Oh- damn" was Lynn's only comment on the fact that a berserker was bearing down on her with a wicked-looked axe, bloody foam streaming down his jaws as he gibbered and howled. Lynn tugged twice more at her knife, but it was stuck. Barehanded, she rose to her full height- all five feet of it.

I screamed again, ran a corsair through, and kicked the body off my blade, trying to chop my way to Lynn through the crush of milling men, but there was just no way. I was seriously considering trying to pole-vault in her direction when I saw her tense herself, raise her fists, and lunge towards the axe-wielding madman.

She was going to punch him. She was going to punch him? That would not be productive. I'd taught Lynn something about hand-to-hand fighting and there was nothing wrong with her technique, but she didn't have the weight to drive home a blow. The axeman just grinned at her, hoisting his weapon overhead.

Just as my body was turning liquid with horror, I saw Lynn's thumbs protruding from her fists, and realized what she had in mind.

Lynn dove in close to the axeman, so close that his breath left flecks of foam on her face, and thrust up with both thumbs. With a wet squelch, they disappeared into his eye sockets. While he was still pawing at his face, yowling, she snatched the dagger from his belt and slashed his throat.

I cut down one more corsair and finally, finally, managed to reach her. She was pinned to the deck by the body of the blinded axeman, and I had to hold him up so that she could wriggle free.

"That," I said pointedly, "was horrible."

She had been wiping her thumbs clean on the axeman's trousers, but now she looked up in irritation. "What? Should I have killed him nicely?"

"You should have stayed up at the masthead, that's what you should have done, you bloody contrary-minded wench!"

"Yes, yes. I was bad; no biscuit tonight. Why are you yelling at me in the middle of a battle?"

"Because I'll yell at you whenever I bloody well choose!"

"Yes, Mistress, but in the interests of us not dying, could you hold it in for a while? At least until the battle's over?"

Right around then came the whining sound of a chain whipping through the air in circles- then the thundercrack of a shattering skull.

Latoya- and her anchor chain- had finally made it to the party.

I cast a look of triumph at Lynn, and she sighed, surrendering.

"Battle's over," she admitted. "Yell away."

* * *

The squall ended as quickly as it had begun. Sunlight burned away the grey mist, leaving the horizon clear. Rainwater, murky with blood, drained through the Banshee's scuppers.

Regon was muttering to himself as he sloshed through puddles. I had to kick him to get his attention. "Where's Geraint? I'll want to talk to him."

"Now, Captain?" Regon objected plaintively. "We're not exactly ready for company."

As if to illustrate his point, he grabbed a corpse by its ankles and upended it over the side of the ship.

"Don't worry about it," I assured him. "It's just Geraint. You don't have to change your shirt."

"That's comforting," he said, picking up a severed arm and pitching it after the body.

The three ships were sandwiched together: the corsair vessel in the middle, with the Banshee and the Sod Off on either side. My men were beginning to lever free the grappling hooks that held the boats together.

"The corsair sloop isn't damaged, Mistress," said Lynn, passing by me and looking none the worse for the vicious scolding she'd just received. "That's another one for your fleet."

"Fine. Have you named it yet?"

"I was thinking Contrary-Minded Wench, but it's a work in progress. I'll give it some more thought once I've helped get Corto down below. By the way, Latoya's looking for you."

I could see Latoya already, looming head and shoulders above the rest of my sailors as they carried off the wounded and cleared the decks. The coil of chain draped over her shoulder was smeared with bits of things that I didn't want to think about. She had been busy.

As Latoya neared me, I had the noble intention of giving her something like an apology for sending her away to face my horrible father. That didn't work out. As soon as I got a good look at her- or, more correctly, what she was carrying- I turned pale and grabbed for her belt.

"Captain. CAPTAIN!" Latoya warded me off with one hand while she unhooked the document case from her belt. "There. Take it. And next time, get someone else to carry your mail."

She stomped away, I suppose, but I never saw her go. My whole being was focused on the document case: a tube of leather one foot long and three inches wide, treated with grease to make it waterproof. A hawk's head was branded into the tight-fitting wooden stopper.

A Torasan document case. During the thirteen years I'd spent on my father's merchant ships, I constantly had one of those cases at my elbow, filled with despatches and instructions, and I couldn't have forgotten the way they looked any more than I could have forgotten what it felt like to have skin. My fingers were shaking so hard that I had to use my teeth to pull the stopper.

Inside, there was a single roll of parchment. I fumbled to break the seal, but as I did that, I started to come back to my senses. What could my father have to say to me that I would possibly want to read? What with the banishment, and the assassination attempts, and all, he'd kind of forfeited any claim on my affections. So why should I give a red-hot damn? Why didn't I just toss the document tube over the Banshee's side, collect my slave girl, swagger down to my cabin, and call it a night?

I reminded myself it could be anything. A death threat. A ransom demand. Hell, a shopping list. There was no sense in making too much of it. But my heart was still pounding at a speed that it usually only reached during lovemaking or war.

Somewhere nearby, Lynn was probably waiting for me to resurface from my haze and get back to work. And I would, I would, of course I would- but couldn't I take five seconds out from piracy to remember the life that I used to live? Couldn't I take five seconds to pretend that I still meant something to the people that used to love me?

I rolled the scroll between my fingers. I broke the wax. I flattened it out.

It was a letter. Eight words long, that was all. My distracted eyes first took in the signature at the bottom: Konrad. My oldest brother.

Only then did I read the first line. It said simply, Our father is dead.

Below that were several ink-blots, as though Konrad had sat over the paper for some time, collecting his thoughts. Long enough for the pen to drip at least three times.

There was one more sentence below that, in neat, precise handwriting that showed how much thought had gone into the decision.

Please, it said. Come home.

To be continued in Part Two, Blood and Bone.