The Pirate's Lady

Chapter Fourteen



Holden paced the deck, unable to settle to anything. The sun had just set in a maze of silver spinners across the myriad waterways and rivulets of the delta. Gloom crept up on him, growing to inky shadows beneath the ships at berth, gathering among the buildings like hired thugs. Without order, without comfort, he couldn’t get his mind to work in straight lines. Stay with the ship, Van had said, be ready to sail. That was all very well, but something was going on and he couldn’t just sit by and do nothing. A traitor, perhaps. Tallia in the brig. Ilsa hadn’t come back, and neither had Gilda. Van and Josie off somewhere, and a traitor loose. Perhaps. Or perhaps in the brig.

Holden took a deep breath and tried to settle his mind. It was hard, had been hard all these last weeks trying to think for himself, to choose, make a decision when all his life, decisions had been made for him, thoughts been thought for him. Van Gast had set him free from that, no matter that Holden himself had shot the bullet. Van Gast and Josie, fighting, biting Josie who never gave up, not till the end, and had risked dying, risked everything she was to save Van Gast from the bond. That was what had made him shoot. Her, refusing to give up, give in, let her dreams wash away on a silent tide of the gray fog that the bond laid over your mind.

Holden stopped pacing and found himself at the top of the steps that led to the brig. They didn’t know the traitor was Tallia. Gilda was more likely, and she’d yet to return from the palace. Jumped ship most like. But Tallia was hiding something, he knew that. Maybe he could talk to her—and more likely he was fooling himself, because he liked the way she made him feel, the touch of her hand on his arm, the enthusiasm that leached into everything she did and lit up her smile.

Ilsa had closed herself off again after one night when he’d thought—well, he’d thought that things were going well, that he’d breached the gap, that he was making her happy. She came and went without talking to him. Happy in herself, in her newfound freedom.

A choice. A hard thing, when you weren’t used to it. In the end it was the thought of Van Gast, the most notorious, hardhearted rack crying over Josie, loving her in a way that Holden never could, that had made him do it, shoot the Master. That made him do this.

It was dark in the hold, the night seizing its place here first, and Holden lit a lamp. The space reeked of fresh sawdust and pitch from repairs, a hint of the last cargo—silk and mangos—underneath. The brig lay at the aft end, a small cage just long enough for a man to lie down in. Tallia fitted with ease, but she looked even smaller than before behind the bars that lay like shadows across Holden’s conscience. He never could stand it, the locking up of free things, of wild things, not when it had been Josie, not now it was Tallia.

She wasn’t alone, he saw now. Another lamp lay broken and smoldering on the deck. In the dim light, he could make out the open door of the brig, a shape behind her, tall and leggy. A gasp escaped someone, a grunt of effort. Holden hurried forward. A rack, there in the brig with Tallia, a knife in hand. Gilda. Blood stained the blade and spotted Tallia’s shirt at the waist.

Holden leaped toward them, dropping the lamp before pulling his pistol and poking it into Gilda’s stomach. He cursed his lack of left hand when the lamp guttered where it fell and gloom descended, but he kept the gun where it was and cocked it.

Gilda stilled at the sound.

“Drop the knife.” Metal clattered to the deck. “Better. Someone want to tell me what’s going on? Tallia, are you all right?”

Her face was a pale smudge, and her voice wavered. “I think so. The cut’s not too bad.”

“Good. Get the lamp going again would you? Now you, Gilda, what in Kyr’s name did you think you were doing?”

It took only moments for Tallia to relight the lamp and hang it on a nail. Gilda glared at him sullenly, with a sneer at his gun, or maybe at her guess about whether he meant to use it. He shoved it in further and leaned forward, so their faces were nose to nose. “I’ll use it if I have to. Don’t doubt it.”

“Heard some talk,” Gilda muttered finally. “About this here trying to turn Van Gast in. Seems she was. It’s all over town.”

“And?”

“And seemed like if she’s tried to turn him in, she shouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t understand, neither of you. You aren’t racks.” The sneer in that last was palpable.

“Tallia?”

“I didn’t, I swear I didn’t.” Her hand was on him again, her eyes searching his, pleading with him. He couldn’t bear it, the thought of her locked up any longer than needs be. Yet the wanting, the nearness of her made thought hard. What would Van Gast do? He had absolutely no idea. He was on his own, and captain.

“Thing is, Gilda, I think it was you who tried it. You’re the one seen asking for Rillen, being let into the palace. You made a mistake coming back. You’re staying down here a while. Tallia, lock her in.”

“What about her?” Gilda burst out, making doubt sprout in Holden’s mind at her earnestness. “What if she really did—”

“I’ll deal with that, and not with a knife in the dark. Tallia, leave her the lamp, and I’ll get you patched up.”

Gilda made a last effort, a grab for the gun, but he whipped it away and stepped back, out of her reach.

“Tallia, up the stairs, come on.”

She stumbled on the stairs, and blood spotted the wood. The wound was worse than she’d let on. This was getting more complicated by the moment, and Holden’s head spun. The cool sea breeze out on deck revived him, and he caught Tallia just as she was about to fall.

Her weight was soft against him, a tantalizing promise, and her hair smelled of sunlight. He pulled himself together and helped her toward his quarters. Ilsa could help with the wound and, if she was there, he wouldn’t be tempted, could concentrate on what to do.

The door to his quarters was shut still, and he steeled himself for Ilsa’s ice, for the shame in knowing he’d let her down somehow, failed in his duty to her.

Only when he wrenched open the door he found a guttering candle lighting the dim room. Clothes were scattered across the bed as though she’d got changed in a fevered rush, a chest left open and spilling the few things they had managed to scrounge since they’d left their home in a hurry. No Ilsa. Just the sad hint of perfume lingering by the table, a few strands of hair in her brush.

He couldn’t seem to think for long moments, but Tallia stood up on her own and looked around. She turned a speculative eye on Holden. “Where’s Ilsa?”

He clamped down on his own thoughts on that. “Let’s get you patched up. And while we’re doing that, you can tell me what in Kyr’s name is going on, because you know more than you’re telling.”

He sat her down on a stool and peered at the cut. It was bleeding freely, but he didn’t think it was serious. Dressing it with one hand might be tricky. For other reasons too—she was too close, both in body and in his head. And where was Ilsa?

“Gilda wanted you to think it was me. Wanted me dead so I couldn’t deny it, so you wouldn’t suspect her. But I didn’t,” Tallia said. “I swear, I didn’t. I told you the truth.”

“Didn’t what?” Holden couldn’t seem to take his eyes from hers, from where they watched him, wide and nervous. He busied himself with making a bandage from one of the spare sheets, ripping it with his one hand and teeth.

“I didn’t tell Rillen who Van Gast was.” Her lips trembled and she hastily covered them with a hand.

Holden resisted the urge to comfort her, and handed her the bandage. “No, that was Gilda. Van saw her going to Rillen, recognized her voice. But you’re hiding something, and I’d like to know what. It’s about time you started telling the truth. Start at the beginning, and go from there.”

“I can’t—I mean, I—”

He gave in, covered her hands with his one, held them till they stopped shaking. He shouldn’t be doing this, thinking the stray thoughts that kept popping into his mind, like how he wanted to see her smile again. How uncomplicated she made life feel for him despite everything—a straight line for him to anchor himself on, a point of calm order in a world of chaos. Or she had been.

Once she stopped trembling, she reached out with hesitant fingers to stroke his hand. “I don’t want to tell you. I don’t want to be the one. I don’t want you to hate me because it was me that said it.”

“Tallia, please. Van’s gone off on some mad plan that he thinks will win him Josie back, only I think he’s gone straight into something. A trap or I don’t know what. Please, Tallia. Tell me what’s going on.”

She wouldn’t look at him as she spoke, concentrated on binding the cut. Even worse, because he could see the soft curve of her stomach as she lifted her shirt, the hint of a breast, no straight lines, all curves and chaos and…

“Holden, do you love Josie?” She shocked him out of what he shouldn’t be watching.

“What?”

“Do you love her?”

The question startled him. He had done, once, he knew that. A long time ago, and Josie had loved him, before the bond had made him forget her, before duty and obedience had driven her from his mind. A long time ago, years. Then he’d found her again and let himself believe she still loved him, but she’d only been trying to save Van Gast. Even then he’d known, in the darkest parts of his soul, it wasn’t love on his part, not really. It was remembrance, it was wanting things to be otherwise, and a desperate need to be free, like she was. It was admiration, and a lust for what he thought she could give him. He’d pretended, fooled himself into believing it perhaps. Yet that one act of hers, risking all she had, every last ounce of herself, to save Van Gast…and Van Gast, the aching desolation when he’d realized what he’d done to her, what she’d done for him.

They’d shown him that what he felt wasn’t love. Want, yes. Need too, and lust and jealousy and emotions he couldn’t name all rolled into one. But it wasn’t love, not anymore, not in that way. Not the coruscating soar of emotion inside him in his youth, making all the world seem new and bright with it. Now when he thought of her it was a deeper thing, less vivid, and not love.

Tallia sat and watched as all this whispered through his head, through his heart. “You wanted to again, but you couldn’t, don’t,” she said in the end. “Or not anymore, not enough. Not the way you think you should.”

“How do—”

She didn’t let him finish. “What about Ilsa?” Her eyes were sharp as she watched, as though looking for every tiniest movement, twitch of lip, blink of eye.

Holden shivered, suddenly cold even in the sweltering heat. “We were bonded. I—I have a duty to her. She’s my wife.”

“But do you love her?”

“Yes—no. I don’t know. I have to make her happy. She’s my wife, it’s my duty, and I want to make her happy. I’m all she has, all she’s known.”

Tallia’s eyes seemed to be the only thing Holden could see, vast wells of darkness which reflected him back. He didn’t much like what he saw and looked away, only to see himself reflected in Ilsa’s mirror, looking gray and haggard and somehow lost. He wanted to get up and walk away. Away from her tempting curves and chaos, back to straight lines, order. Safety in what he knew. Find Ilsa, love her, make her happy. Forget Tallia and her infectious smile, or how she made him feel. The Master was dead, Holden’s bonds were dead, but he had a duty, a responsibility. It was all he had left of his old life, the only straight line left to hold on to.

“What’s this got to do with anything? And what are you doing, how are you doing this? What have you done? Tallia—”

“Little-magics. I get them from my mother’s side.” She ducked her head at that, made a show of inspecting her bandaging. “Sometimes I know how people connect with each other, the strands that bind them together, the things that pull them apart. Like a web that connects everyone, and I can see it. Sometimes. And your strands are tangled so tight, I’m surprised you can move. Do you know Haban?”

Haban—the name rang a little warning bell in the back of Holden’s head, brought to mind an expansive girth, a booming laugh and a tent in the corner by Herjan’s temple. “The trader. He sold me a way to get after Van Gast. Why?”

“After the Yelen caught Haban with the diamond, they put him in the cells. They knew he’d got it from Van Gast because there’s no two diamonds like that in the world. It was part of the dowry payment, for the trade deal between the Yelen and Remoria.”

Holden searched back, into the fog of his memory, back to when he’d been bonded, before seeing Josie again had woken him up. Van Gast had stolen a ship, the Sea Witch. That had been the start of everything. The Master had been livid for the loss of bride, of dowry, of pride. He supposed the Yelen were too—the marriage was to have been part of a trade deal between the Remorians and the Yelen. The dowry had been huge—and stolen.

“Ten thousand sharks,” Tallia said. “He’d be turned in for sure, with that much on his head. But Rillen—”

“Who’s Rillen?” Holden asked. “You wouldn’t give me much before, but you know him, that’s plain.”

“Son of one of the council, brother of the man Van shot in Bilsen. He wants to rip Van Gast’s throat out. Or maybe torture him some first. When the mages came and made an offer to the Yelen, they wanted Van Gast too—and Rillen’s father wants Van Gast bonded before they put his head on a pike. It was Rillen after Van Gast in the square. Rillen—I don’t think Rillen connects to anyone. He only pulls them apart.”

Holden remembered Van Gast laughing when Holden said it was too dangerous to come here, brushing off his fears and saying it would be fun. “The square—yes. Gilda told Rillen who Van Gast was.”

“Because she’s Haban’s niece, and I think Rillen offered her his freedom in return for Van. All I did was leave the note from Josie. I swear. I was supposed to leave the ship after that, but I stayed. Because of you.”

He wanted to believe her, he did. Yet he knew he shouldn’t, knew that he was as hopeless at spotting a lie as he was at lying. He’d never had the opportunity to practice. Van Gast had left him here, with her in the brig, and already he’d gone too far letting her out. If she was the traitor…

Think the way you used to, in straight lines. Forget the way she smiles at you, forget the way you want her to keep touching you. The way she makes you want to smile. Remember, back when you were a commander. Order. Answers. Maybe Gilda was the one trying to turn in Van, but there was something else here. Something bad for Van, and for him too perhaps.

“So why were you in the square? Why were you watching Van Gast, following him, because that’s what you were doing, isn’t it?”

“I told you, my family. I went to see them.”

A lie that wasn’t a lie, he’d thought before. “Did you find them?”

A teasing pout from her, half amused, half annoyed. Even now she couldn’t dim her bubbly nature. “You didn’t give me much of a chance. I found Josie for you, for Van, though, didn’t I?”

Finally, she finished dressing the cut and pulled her shirt back down. “Aren’t there other questions you should be asking me, like who Josie is running the twist on, or where Ilsa is?”

“Never mind Ilsa—”

“But I do mind. And I mind that Rillen is the one after Van Gast, because that’s who Josie is trying to con, and if Rillen recognizes him, if he knows who they are before they can try the twist—I promise you, Holden, I may hate Van for what he’s put Josie through, but I don’t want him dead. I just want him to leave my sister alone to be happy. Maybe squirm some first.”

The lamp-lit darkness was soft as velvet when she stopped, the silence a shroud around them. Holden wanted to ask, to blurt out, “Sister?” but didn’t get the chance.

Someone rapped on the door, urgent and insistent, making them both jump. When Holden opened it, Guld scurried into the little circle of light.

“Holden, you—you’ve got to do something!”

Holden started, feeling guiltily ashamed but not sure why. Guld was a wreck—his hands wrung together so hard that the knuckles cracked and his stutter became more pronounced as the words blurted out of him. “It’s V-V-Van—they’ve, um, got him, in the c-c-cells. You have to do something!”

Holden gripped one of Guld’s shoulders, thin, bony beneath his fingers. “Calm down. Deep breath. That’s it. Now, start at the beginning.”

“Van—he asked me to keep an eye on him, um, them. It’s tricky, because the Remorian mages, well, they can do things to block me. Only they’re still quite weak and, um, well… Sorry. Anyway, so I kept an eye on him. The picture was a bit grainy and I didn’t get much sound, but I could see him, and, um, Josie and Skrymir. Josie turned him in!”

“Are you sure?”

“Look, I’ll show you.” As always, when Guld concentrated on his magic, the stutter disappeared. He murmured a few words under his breath and a light grew in his palm, a silver ball that swam with all colors and none.

The light swirled, confounding the eye so that Holden had to look away. When he looked back, a blurred image was playing across the surface. The inside of a large room, the Yelen palace he assumed. Some sort of party. Just on the edge of hearing, Josie’s voice whispered, “Ten thousand sharks was just too good to pass up.” Then Skrymir, dressed oddly, stormed toward a discreet corner, his face as dark with anger as a storm cloud. One fist delved into the corner and came out with Van Gast.

The picture shimmered and twisted so that Holden’s stomach rolled, then it cleared again. Van Gast stood with a bloody nose and a fat lip, glaring into a face Holden didn’t know. The words “Van Gast” ghosted out of the spell and then guards cuffed him and dragged him off.

“That’s Rillen,” Tallia whispered. “He’s got what he wanted then.”

“There was more, but that’s the pertinent bit,” Guld said. “Van’s in the cells. The Yelen cells. No one gets out of there.”

“But why would she?” Holden glanced at Tallia but she looked as perplexed as he felt.

“That’s not how it was supposed to go,” she said. “Not quite. Rillen wasn’t supposed to know who Van was.”

“Josie’s pissed at him, you know that,” Guld said. “Wants to make him pay, I expect. Women are like that. Um, present company excepted, I’m sure. But you can’t ever tell what Josie will do. You’ve got to do something.”

“How do we get into the palace?”

“Well, um, no. Sorry. Those mages are weak still, but strong enough to stop that. I was lucky to get what I did with the scrying spell. If I tried to get us in, we’d probably end up splattered over half the docks.”

Holden ran his hand over his hair. “There has to be a way. Has to be.”

“I can get you in,” Tallia said and Holden whirled to face her. She looked up at him with dark, soulful eyes, searching his face for something. She held out a hesitant hand for his. “Only—” She shook her head, as though clearing out dark thoughts. “I can get you in, Holden. It’s getting out that will be the problem.”

Holden tried a smile, but it felt awkward and stretched. “Not with Van Gast around. Not a cell in the world can hold him, that’s what they say, right?”

Her smile was tremulous, the bottom lip aquiver, and tears lurked in her eyes.

“Tallia, I—”

“It’s all right, Holden.” Again, her hand on his, warm and smooth. “I just don’t want to see you hurt, that’s all.”

He couldn’t still the thrill at her touch, or the way her tears made his heart ache, or the way he wanted, very badly, for her not to be the traitor she seemed. He covered his confusion with gruff words that came out harsher than he intended. “I’ll not be the one getting hurt. But what’s to say I can trust you?”

Her tears fell slowly, mesmerizing him, spearing him with the thought that he’d caused them. “Nothing, except you won’t get in without me. Please. I want to help. It’s—my family are in there too, in danger, the only family I have left.”

Not for the first time, Holden wished he had Van Gast’s little-magics. An itch behind his ribs to know whether she was trouble, whether he should believe her or not. In his heart he wanted to, but his head—his head told him that there was a good chance she wasn’t telling him everything, and that was dangerous. Tears are the sly woman’s weapons. Someone had said that to him once, and he knew it for truth. His heart told him one thing, but his head ruled him in this.

He hardened his heart against Tallia’s tears. She had tried to betray Van, and him. Perhaps. There was something more to Gilda coming back, that was sure. Maybe they were in it together. Or in it with Josie. Whichever, she hadn’t told him the truth yet.

Remember that. Don’t trust her, use her. It wasn’t his voice that sounded in his head, it was the rich, rolling, commanding tones of the Master, dead now but still with the power to rule him, if he let him.

The Master had ruled his life up till now. Now it was up to him, his head, his heart.

“All right, Tallia. How do we get in?”