The Pirate's Lady

The Pirate's Lady - By Julia Knight

Chapter One

Van Gast eyed the man’s ring—emerald and diamonds. Very nice. He might have to steal it. No, not might, he would have to steal it. He glanced over at Holden, who was looking stern and disapproving, and suppressed a grin. Holden would have a whole litter of kittens, but it might be worth it just for that.

Van Gast’s swift brown hands juggled the cups over the makeshift table, swooping and swirling. He didn’t watch the cups, he didn’t need to, but kept his gaze on the mark. “Roll up, roll up, find the lady, win a prize.”

The mark with the emerald ring watched with sharp eyes. A merchanter by his clothes, all ruffles and brocade and pig fat slicking back his hair. The smart breeches were tight enough that Van Gast could tell the shape of his kneecaps. More importantly, he was a rich merchanter, if the ring was anything to go by. An opportunity not to miss. Van Gast made sure to fumble the cups a little—not too obvious, but enough that a sharp-eyed man would find the lady, win a prize. Enough to hook him like a fish.

The mark didn’t hesitate but pointed straight to the right-hand cup. Van Gast lifted it and feigned disappointment. A mermaid perched on a rock on the top of the bone die. “Well done, sir. Well done.”

Van Gast handed over the prize, two golden sharks to the silver seal the mark had laid down. No ordinary coins though. Holden’s face grew ever sterner as he watched the mark laugh it up with his colleagues and continue down the shabby street.

It took moments before the table was once again odd bits of planking. If only Van Gast could change from these drab gray clothes he’d been stuck with. One reason they’d stopped at Bilsen, to try to restock.

Only Bilsen was a cruddy little fishing village with not much to boast about except a stench that could make a grown man weep and a passable ale whose main attribute was it dulled the sense of smell. Van Gast had poked about and discovered that the town also had no guards, and currently most of the men were away to sea. More interestingly, some rich traders were wandering the muddy street who looked as out of place here as Van Gast would look in a temple. So, no nice new clothes for Van Gast, but an opportunity—and he never passed those up if he could help it.

He hadn’t a hope of scamming them on his own—Holden wasn’t yet a racketeer, not in his head, though Van Gast was intent on teaching him if it killed him, or both of them. He grinned at the thought of what Holden’s face would look like when he let him in on the plan—it’d look like a slapped arse, if he was any judge. About time he let himself have a little fun.

Fun had been thin on the ground just lately, and Van Gast was bored. Today looked like livening things up.

* * *

Three hours and several ales later, Van Gast and Holden stood outside a house that sat against a hill above the rest of the village.

“Tell me again,” Holden said, disapproval in the set of his mouth.

“We’re going to steal that ring, plus whatever else crops up. Look, like it or not, you’re a rack now, you’ve got to start thinking like one. You can sail, I’ll give you that, but you’re pretty shit at Find the Lady, either playing the cups or playing the shill. You can’t lie to save your life, so a good twisting con is out. Looks like theft is all you have left. Three rich merchanters, in this little village? No guards, no one really around, and at the least a very nice emerald ring. Maybe you could give it to Ilsa.”

Holden scowled at the mention of his wife. “She wouldn’t want a stolen ring.”

“You don’t tell her it’s stolen. Besides, I don’t think its current owner is being very legal. Why else would they be here in this backwater? Something secret or illegal, I’m betting. Or both. Look, here they come. Too late to back out now.”

Van Gast melted back into the shadows, pulling Holden with him. Four men, not three, came down the street. Excellent. All the more things to steal. The man they’d seen earlier wasn’t with them, but Van Gast knew he, and the ring, were in the house. The golden sharks he’d handed over had been specially treated for just this sort of thing and his ship’s mage had traced them here.

His little-magics were an itch behind his ribs, just a tickle as yet. A honed instinct that some mainlanders had, and Van Gast’s ran one way—they told him of trouble. But the itch was no more than usual, the anticipation of a little smash and grab, the warning it could go tits up. Not enough to worry him unduly, and anyway, being stupid for the excitement was what he lived for. If his little-magics weren’t tickling just a little, he wasn’t living, and they’d not tickled for weeks. Now it was time for some fun, and to show Holden just what being a rack was all about.

The merchanters glanced around before they entered the house, but not too closely, not so they saw Holden and Van Gast lurking in the shadows. Fools, to be so complacent, but maybe that was what made Bilsen so perfect. So small and out of the way, they expected no trouble.

“All right, lesson number one,” Van Gast said. “If it all goes tits-up, run like f*ck.”

“You’re not inspiring me with confidence. We should go back to the ship, back to—”

“Lesson number two,” Van Gast interrupted. He wasn’t about to let the staid Holden ruin his fun. “Be quiet and quick. You wait for me to get in the back. As soon as you hear anything, you go in the front. Those men are doing a trade deal or I’m an elephant, and where there’s trade there’s cash. Grab what you can, don’t get caught and we meet back at the ship.”

It’d be a hard slog—at his insistence they’d left the Glass Dagger a safe distance away from the tiny harbor here, over a rocky ridge and hiding in a cove fringed with thick jungle.

“Van, I’m not—”

Van Gast didn’t give him time to finish but ghosted round the side of the house, relishing a return to what he knew—thieving, scamming, maybe some light skullduggery. Stupid but thrilling, what he lived for.

For cruddy little Bilsen, it was a fair house. For anywhere else it was one step up from a slum, which at least meant it’d be easier to break into. For all his talk, it had been a while since burglary had been on Van Gast’s agenda and he took his time checking the lay of the land.

The back of the house tumbled into a small hill which formed part of the back wall, with an outhouse propped against it as an afterthought. The all-over stink of Bilsen had numbed his nose so the extra smell barely registered. He got himself on the hill level with the second floor window, where the lights were brightest through sacking curtains. His heart stuttered—this wasn’t just stupid-but-exciting. With only him and Holden, it was past stupid and into idiotic. He didn’t care anymore. All he cared about was trying to recapture who he was, get back the fun in being a racketeer, in not caring about rules, not even knowing what the rules were. He wanted to feel the fear/joy thud his heart till it burst, he wanted to run, to chase and be chased and laugh at it, to feel alive.

F*ck it, he had to do this, had to get back to who he was. He pasted a grin on and slid his knife along the lock. He was rewarded with the softest of clicks and pushed the window open as slow as he could. Gently, gently.

“—so we thought we’d best contact you,” a voice was saying. “We hear you’re collecting them.”

The lamp was just by the curtain. If he took that out, he had a chance. Van Gast, against four men, maybe more? No problem. He was Van Gast, scourge of the western coast, the rack to beware of, the one they all wanted to beat. He shut his eyes to prepare them for the darkness he intended to make.

“Only a hundred golden sharks,” the voice said. “That’s all we’re asking.”

Excellent—maybe a bonus was in the offing.

With his eyes shut, sound became sharper, clearer. The muted slap of the sea along the shingle beach. A hum of activity down by the inn. The lonely call of a night bird. Someone else outside with him, an indrawn breath quick and sharp, surprised perhaps.

He kept his eyes shut but listened again. No sounds close except the men in the room. The man with the ring was on the right, from his voice. Aim for him first. No one outside with Van Gast, no extra breath he could hear. Good.

He thrust open the window as far as it would go, knocking the lamp to the floor and sending its flame to darkness. On the instant he leaped over the sill and into a room full of shouting men. With eyes open now, and with the advantage of his night vision kept intact, Van Gast made straight for the mark with the ring. A swift blow from the butt of his pistol and the man went down like a felled ox.

Shouts swirled around him as he knelt, pulled the ring off and made a quick search of the man’s pockets. A door banged open, and Van Gast hoped it was Holden come to back him up—he could see well enough to steal, but faces were indistinct, blurry in the faint light leaking through the window. He got up and checked around, his back to a wall just in case, ready to leg it out of the window as soon as it started looking too risky.

Holden was here—the pent-up way he moved gave him away. He’d let two men out through the door, running as though their backsides were on fire, and got another man to the floor but instead of robbing him, stood as though bewildered. “Van, I—”

“Van Gast?”

They both whirled to the whispering voice. It was too dark to see the face other than to note the dim glint of eyes. Not so dark Van Gast couldn’t see the gun pointing at him, the gleam of light along the oiled barrel. He didn’t need the little-magics flaring into life in his chest to know trouble when he saw it.

“Van Gast, I arrest you in the name of the Yelen.”

The Yelen? Oh, shit on a stick. He was in enough trouble with them as it was—the small matter of a large diamond. Now he’d just compounded his trouble, and trouble with the Yelen often meant trouble finding your own head after they’d chopped it off.

Van Gast shoved at Holden to go, but there was no room for him as the barrel raised. Holden stumbled as someone caught him on the back of the head, and then he was a pile of lifeless limbs on the floor.

No time for that, for anything. The gun was coming for him and his little-magics weren’t just shouting, they were screaming out, get the f*ck out! He agreed with them completely.

There was no way out. Holden and the man who’d taken him down blocked the door and another dark figure lurked at the window. No way out, and no time.

The figure at the window leaped a fraction of a heartbeat before Van Gast did, knocked the gun from the man’s hand just as it went off, sending the bullet skipping over the ceiling. The flash blinded Van Gast, but it didn’t matter—what mattered was the joy/fear, the thud of his heart telling him he was still alive, still alive. For now.

The figure from the window and the gunman struggled, but only briefly. A thwack of sword-hilt on skull and the gunman slumped to the floor. No telling who the other figure was, friend or foe, though his little-magics were still telling him to get out. He listened to them, backed away and reached down to grab Holden, having forgotten the other man at his back in the excitement.

“Van, can’t you go anywhere without getting into trouble?” A low, smoky voice, one he knew and had feared he might never hear again.

Joshing Josie grinned in the dark, the grin that was a world of trouble for someone, pulled out a second pistol and shot the man behind Van Gast. Another gun, primed and ready to shoot Van Gast in the back, fell with a clatter.

Van Gast didn’t move, couldn’t move. He stayed still as death while Josie took her time locking the door and lighting the lamp.

The guttering tallow lit her face in all kinds of tempting ways, flickered over the hood that hid her far-too-obvious white-blond hair, slid tauntingly over the close-fitting leather breeches that showed off her litheness, the way she was built like a dancer, full of fluid grace. Joshing Josie, supposedly his bitterest rival, his dearest enemy, and instead the one who got away. The one he’d never stopped chasing, never stopped loving. The stupid-but-exciting thing, the never-quite-in-his-grasp thing, and that was never truer than now.

The hood obscured her eyes, but he thought he saw a tremor on her lips, a hint of uncertainty, of vulnerability, quickly hidden by the lopsided grin that always made his stomach flip, the one that meant one of three things.

Van Gast took a deep breath and his life in his hands. “So, you killed one, meant to rob another. Does that mean I get the delight?”

The sharp grin dissolved into a laugh and he ploughed on before she could say anything.

“I’ve been looking for you.” And he had—had thought of little else. Only her, her laugh, her look, her love that he’d thrown away. Everything else had been nothing but a distraction from the thought of her.

She turned away and knelt to rifle the pockets of one of the men. Her voice was studied nonchalance, but the undercurrent was plain. “Really? I’m not hard to find, not for a rack of your caliber. The rack, aren’t you, the one they all want to beat? Yet you couldn’t find me, except by accident, despite me leaving a trail a blind man could follow. Anyone would think you were avoiding me. That’s not good for your reputation. They’ll all think you’re scared of me.”

He dared not move, because any word of his might be the wrong word, any movement might be the thing that would make her leave. Yet all he wanted was to hold her, kiss her till she forgot what he’d done, what they’d both done.

“Now here you are, interrupting a good twist.” She turned over the man who’d wanted to arrest Van Gast. “Gods damn, it’s Arden. A Yelen man. How am I supposed to twist him if he’s dead?”

She stood again, lightning-quick, her eyes hurt and wary, watching every move on his face, every twitch of his body as though she were imprinting them, to remember. A soft look, fleeting, gone almost as soon as it was there. “I never meant to come in. I meant only to watch, to see what they’re about, to ready the twist. And there you were, blundering into something too big, too stupid even for you, and I couldn’t stand by and let them kill you. And they would.” She nudged one of the prone bodies with a boot. “They’d kill you eventually anyway. And despite everything, I don’t want you dead.”

Then she was in front of him, moving so quick he almost couldn’t see in the dark. Everything about her was as he remembered. The heat of her radiating into him, the soft yet sharp look, the shield she held around herself that he’d got past once, and then had made even stronger. The vulnerable twist of her lips, the part of her only he’d ever seen, the soft part of her she held to herself except when they were alone.

The smile was slow this time, not Joshing Josie now, but Josienne du Fael, the secret her to match her secret name. She stood on tiptoe, reached a hand behind his neck and pulled his face to hers. A kiss like he’d never known from her before—wanting, needing. Joshing Josie never needed anything from anyone, but Josienne…Josienne was the other side of her.

He leaned into it, into her, ran his hands down silk-clad arms to her hands and twined them together. Felt the need, the want, the hurt that he’d given her, that they’d given each other. The ache he wanted to kiss away.

“A chance, that’s all I want.” A chance to put things right with her. He’d blow the rest of his life off in a heartbeat for that.

She pulled away, yet not far. Their hands still twined, he still leached heat from her, still felt the press of her lips on his. She glanced at Holden, in a heap on the floor, and a flash of pain marred her face. To save Van Gast she’d duped Holden into thinking she loved him, and in duping him had fooled Van Gast, had made him so insane with jealousy he’d—he didn’t want to remember it, but he’d f*cked things up with Josie, good and proper.

Blowing up her ship had been the least of it. He hadn’t trusted her. Worse, he had betrayed her trust, and that was one thing she couldn’t forgive.

“I wish I hadn’t…” She tore her gaze away from Holden’s face and stared at Van Gast with something that might be an apology in the cast of her eyes, the way she held herself. “It isn’t you I blame. Not you. It never was.”

She took a deep breath, as though steadying herself for some fearsome risk, some mortal danger. “Last chance, Van. Only chance. I couldn’t bear it if—only one chance.” The grin flashed back, lopsided and taunting, as always covering what she truly felt. Rob, kill or delight. Oh, he’d rob and kill anyone for that delight. “Estovan. A twist like you would not believe. I could use a man like you on this one, especially now Arden’s dead and I’ll have to work out how to get to his brother instead. You up to the job?”

“When aren’t I?”

Someone rattled the door and shouts echoed outside, making his trouble bone flare. Out of time, when time with her was what he craved.

As quick as she’d been with him, she was at the window. She slid back the hood and he caught a flicker of her white-blond hair in the lamplight, and the flicker of her eyes too. Hoping, wanting, hurt—and waiting for him to take the hurt away perhaps. “You want to know why, look in the next room if you get the chance. Oh, and Van, get some new clothes. Gray is really not your color. Come to Estovan, for the twist of our lives. Come and catch me if you dare.”

Then she was gone, and he was left with the warm memory of a kiss that shivered his bones, and a chance. Estovan, home of the Yelen. A dead Yelen at his feet. A challenge, and a dare. The sort of thing he lived for, and Josie knew it. Estovan, the stupidest, most dangerous place for him to be, because there was a price on his head there, because he’d stolen a diamond the worth of a town. He glanced down at the man who’d shot at him. The man she’d saved him from. Even worse after tonight and this dead body.

Stupid to go. But exciting too—there was a thrill at the thought. Guards, chases, scams to run, thefts to organize. People to outwit. Slippery Josie to pin down. Maybe it was time he was that Van Gast again. He found he was grinning so hard his face ached. Yes, oh yes. Time for fun with a capital F, and down-and-dirty Estovan was just the place. And Josie would be waiting for him. A chance, and he always had his eye on the chance.

One of the prone bodies groaned. Van Gast gave the man another thwack to put him out, emptied the pockets of all of them and got Holden in hand.

Holden was heavier than he looked. In the end, Van Gast got a shoulder under his, got him out of the room and locked the door behind. No point being stupid on purpose. By now Holden was blinking back to wakefulness.

“Van, what happened?”

“Tell you later. Come on.” He supported Holden for a step and then he spotted the door. Look next door, she’d said. A throwaway comment, but those were the ones he’d learned to listen to from the contrary Josie. “Hold up. Let’s take a look in here.”

Holden rubbed at a lump on his forehead and winced. “No, let’s not.”

“You’ve got no sense of adventure.”

Only, as Van Gast set his hand on the door, his little-magics, which had faded to a dull niggle, flared into life, an itch, a burn, a desperate need to run, and run now. For once he ignored them—Josie’s words meant more than that. She said little lightly.

The door was locked but that only mattered for a moment, because locks usually dissolved in Van Gast’s presence, at least once he took them to task. Every hair prickled as he turned the doorknob.

A small lamp lit the decrepit room and shone off something in the corner. A man—and not. He was naked, and if Van’s nose hadn’t been numb from the smell of the village, he’d probably have smelled this sooner. Holden surely would.

A withered stick of a man sat in a corner, his skin pallid and wrinkled with grime etched in the creases, his muscles thin and wasted. Yet there was something else about him—a shimmering skin over him, just now beginning to grow, magic crystals accreting over every inch of him, crusting him in new-made power. Not much as yet, thank Forn, thank Kyr, thank every god and goddess, but enough. A Remorian mage, and Van Gast had thought them all dead. Words rattled in Van Gast’s brain—I hear you’re collecting them.

That was bad enough, but something to ponder for another day. What really got Van Gast moving was the pistol shot that smashed through the door behind them, the bellowed order from one of the men Holden had let escape. “Van Gast! Kill him!”

Instinct and the prod of his little-magics propelled Van Gast, made him grab a groggy Holden and drag him through the second room, made him smash the window with the butt of his pistol before the pathetic, depleted mage had a chance to gather his limited power.

They ran, their prayer bells to Forn, god of the sea, jangling in harmony, sending a prayer with every chime. Laughing at the thrill of it along the path and off into the little cut-through that led up to the rocky headland. The fear/joy pumped thrill in his veins, made him know he was Van Gast again, the rack, the one the others all wanted to beat. Made him want to kiss the sky and swim the sea for reflected stars.

Not just that—it was the chance, and the knowing how stupid it was. The chance to catch Josie, to go to the most dangerous place on the western coast for him, to brave the Yelen council and their guards, to thieve and scam and burgle his little heart out, all mixed up together. The twist of their lives. Knowing that the men they’d left behind would report to the Yelen, that they’d be looking for him for this and other things. Knowing he could twist out of it, if he was lucky, and if he wasn’t he’d be dead.

Risk was how he knew he was alive, what made him laugh into the night, and suddenly he had all the risk he could handle. Risk was why he stood on the salt-blown deck, grinned up to the gods and thanked them for granting him the threat of death, for granting him a chance with Josie, as Holden called the careful orders that would see them past the reef and out into the wide and capricious sea.