The Pirate's Lady

Chapter Seventeen



Holden followed Tallia down a dark and winding corridor, fitfully lit by guttering lamps that seemed to enhance the shadows rather than dispel them. They came to a doorway, shadowed and unkempt-looking as though no one used it much.

“This will get us nearer the cells. But, Holden, how are we—”

“We’ll think of something.” It was strange how the fear—of the guards, of Rillen, of being hanged from Oku’s wall by a nail through his wrist—wasn’t stopping him. Before, when he’d been bonded, his whole life was fear. Yet this was different, this was fear that made his heart thud in short, hard bursts, fear that made his hand tingle, that made him feel alive. Fear that made order, straight lines, comfort out of shadowy chaos. The tiles on the floor, the orderly pattern soothed him, but not to numbness as he’d once let them. His eyes followed the pattern and let his mind free, to think, to hope, to plan. To let the joy/fear thrill through him. Now he saw why Van Gast did this, why he lived his life as he did. He found he was grinning.

“How far to the guards, do you think?” he asked.

Tallia looked at him as though he was mad, but her smile was back, the bubbly bounce of her step. Almost as though she knew something he didn’t, which was not only very likely but not comforting.

“Not far. Look, Holden, I want to get them out as much as you do, but stop a minute. No one has ever escaped the Yelen. Not ever. Josie had a plan, and it’s gone wrong. She was never supposed to be in the cells, or not like that. Only Van, playing his part. It’s gone wrong, and that maid in the kitchen confirmed it. She said all of them are in the cells, even Skrymir. That’s not part of the plan.”

Holden was tempted to believe her, tempted to think the way she looked at him meant something, but the weight of Ilsa was heavy on him.

Tallia pushed open the door on squealing hinges that set Holden’s teeth on edge and his heart to hammering. He tightened his grip on the sword and wished he still had his other hand for the pistol. Instead he’d had to trust that to Tallia, one reason he kept behind her.

This corridor was better kept than the last, lit with many lamps that banished all shadows. Yet the prospect of it was gloomy, somehow, a weight on the shoulders, a press on the mind. Holden was sure he heard muffled screams echoing through the walls.

“The guards will begin beyond the door at the end. Many guards, I don’t know how many. And all rabidly loyal to Rillen.” She said no more, but stood and watched him with a wary look.

No plan in mind. None of Van Gast’s fearsome confidence. No fighting, biting Josie to help him. If this were a game of bones, he’d have just rolled Dead Man’s Hand. What would Van do?

Holden grinned again. Easy. Van Gast would say “F*ck it, let’s do it.” It made everything so gloriously simple.

His hand was slick with sweat so he had to keep adjusting his grip on the sword, but he opened his mouth to say it—just as the door at the end opened. Tallia grabbed his tunic and ducked down a side corridor.

A murmur of voices came toward them, the jingle of swords in scabbards, of mail armor. A trio of guards passed, and then, beyond any expectation, Skrymir appeared. He was stripped to his breeches, in the midst of turning to someone behind, but he caught Holden’s eye. Nothing in his face changed, nothing to give away that Holden was there, but he said something over his shoulder in a brutal language Holden didn’t understand. He’d heard it before though—Gan, and only two people he knew spoke it.

Then Josie came into view and slid her gaze his way. She winked at him and mouthed, “Quietly. Ready?” Before Holden could even nod his acceptance, she’d kicked out, taking a guard on the knee and by surprise. Half a heartbeat later Skrymir brought his double fists down on the head of the guard in front of him, sending the man sprawling and unconscious.

Another three guards appeared from behind Josie, pistols drawn and ready to club her down or shoot her. Until Holden pulled himself together and leaped out, sword at the ready. They wavered for a moment, one of them staring behind as, from the sound of it, Skrymir patiently pulled someone into small bits. Their hesitation, no matter how brief, was their undoing. Tallia smacked one on the back of the head with the butt of the pistol and Holden, grinning like he was out of his mind, took one through the throat with his sword. The guard fell to the ground with a gurgle, just as Josie took out the third.

“I love a good diversion,” Skrymir said and clapped Holden on the shoulder, hard enough that Holden almost fell to his knees.

Holden’s breath came in great gasps—he’d had no chance for fear, only heart-racing thrill. The sword trembled in his hand, because the fear came now instead, only it was different. Less paralyzing, accentuating the burst of his blood.

Josie and Tallia embraced and exchanged a few quiet words that Holden didn’t catch. He didn’t need to. The way they were just confirmed what Tallia had said was true—Josie had sent her to leave a message for Van. If that was true, he couldn’t deny it anymore. Ilsa wasn’t brainwashed, or kidnapped or anything else. It had been Ilsa who had betrayed Van Gast and Josie, got them in these cells. His wife.

His gaze traced the patterns on the floor—order, there was comfort in order, in the patterns. He could find no comfort there, not for this, not today. His wife had done this, because of one stupid mistake of his. That he’d believed a lie because he wanted to, because he’d dreamed of freedom too long and wanted it too much.

“Holden?” The soft voice was Tallia’s, penetrating the gloom of his thoughts. “Holden, we can’t stay here. We have to go, quick.”

“Go where?” There was more he wanted to ask—Sisters? How could they be sisters?—but the questions tangled over each other and stayed unsaid.

Skrymir nodded at the two women, and they went on, back toward the cells, sneaky and quiet as they could be with their bells, looking around corners, into alcoves. It took a moment for Holden to recognize Haban as he sank, gray and gaunt, against a wall.

“They bonded Van,” Skrymir said. Holden only now noticed the wound to his shoulder, leaking blood and the dressing half off, but Skrymir seemed to shrug it off. Inhuman. Holden had thought it of him before. “I don’t know exactly what that bastard Rillen’s planning, but he’s going to use Van to do it. Josie’s, well, Josie’s mad bent on getting Van back.”

She would be—she’d been through worse, much worse, to try to save Van Gast before. Been through all Holden could put her through. “Where is he?”

“Still in the cells when we left.”

A formless howl reverberated along the corridor, a sound of pain and fear that speared Holden where he stood. He knew that sound, and it curdled all the thrill in his stomach.

“You think we can get in?”

“No. But she’s going to try anyway.”

“Wait—just make them wait. Did Rillen say anything about what he planned?”

Skrymir tried a shrug and winced at the movement. “He wants Van to shoot someone who’s on his way here. We were a plant—racks trying to steal what’s in the strong room, which is right enough, we were. Someone would come because of it. Rillen was going to let us ‘escape,’ no doubt supposedly with the loot, but I suspect a bullet in the back of the head was all we’d get, somewhere nice and quiet. We’re in the middle of a coup, I’m thinking.”

Van would shoot someone, under the order of the bond. Someone would die in the guise of racks escaping a theft, and then Van Gast would hang on Oku’s wall.

“Come on.”

“Holden, wait. Ilsa—she was there too. With Rillen.” Skrymir wouldn’t look at him as he said it.

“I know. I’ll deal with that later, if I can. First we need to get Van out.”

Skrymir nodded miserably and they caught up with Josie and Tallia. Now that he knew about Van, Holden could see it in her—a tenseness, a sense of her being coiled like a spring and ready to go off. A hint of fear in her eyes, where he’d rarely seen fear before. He didn’t know what to say, if there was anything he could say, and he couldn’t bear the look of her, of confident, sassy Josie with a lost air. Yet still, despite that, maybe because of it, she looked more ready than ever to kill someone.

Instead he kept his eyes on Tallia. “The reception—if someone was coming from that way, someone important, which way would they come? Where would Rillen hide an assassin?”

She didn’t need more than three heartbeats to work it out. “That way.”

Josie ran, almost before Tallia had pointed, her bells rattling furiously, her mouth grim and her hand tight on a pistol she’d stolen from the guards.

“Wait!” Holden called, but there was no staying her. Skrymir ran after, stumbling and leaving spots of blood in his wake, Haban ghosting after him, silent and gray. Holden had no choice but to follow. Tallia’s hand stopped him, and he looked down at her, at the irrepressible nature of her, even now.

“You were telling me the truth,” he said. “Ilsa…” He couldn’t finish that thought.

She reached up on tiptoe, brushed her lips on his cheek and said, “It’s all right. As long as we make it right.”

What was it about her that made him feel like this, like he was a better man when she was there? He couldn’t be sure, but it didn’t matter—it only mattered that she did. Ilsa was gone, left him and done this to those he cared about. His duty to Ilsa was done.

He took Tallia’s hand and they ran after Josie and Skrymir in a jingle of bells.

* * *

Van Gast struggled to keep his feet as Rillen dragged him along. He’d tried to fight it, tried to dig in his heels, tried to raise the gun to shoot Rillen and maybe give Josie and Skrymir some time. All he’d got for his efforts was pain enough to blank his mind, make his muscles turn to water, bring a scream out from the depths of him. He could barely stand on his own, and so Rillen dragged him.

Ilsa walked with them, a curious look on her face as she watched him, like a hawk watching a mouse—interested in a detached sort of way.

They reached an archway that looked much like any other, except it was hung with beaded strands like a curtain so that movement was obscured unless you looked closely.

“Here.”

Rillen shoved him into a wall, and Van Gast sank against it. He tried to ignore the throb of his wrist, the burn of the black lines of poison that worked their insidious way up his arm every time he tried to stop, to fight, to go against the bond. At his elbow already. If he gave into it, let the bond take him, they would fade, and so would he, become a hollow shell with the face of Van Gast. F*ck that. If he fought much more, if they reached his heart, he was a dead man.

Dead man—that rang faint bells in his head, but Rillen didn’t give him a chance to follow the thought.

“Here he comes,” Rillen said, the flat shine of his eyes like looking into a mirror. “Here he comes, and you’ll shoot him, kill him for me. Bring me all Estovan and a host of stolen gold too. Look, the fat one.”

Van Gast didn’t turn to look, or raise the gun, despite what his muscles tried, what the silver pulse of pain told him. Sweat coursed down his face, soaked him, stuck him to the stucco wall. “Josie.”

Rillen pursed his lips in irritation. “Will be free, just so long as you shoot him. Now.”

Van Gast didn’t believe him, but he had no choice. He had to take the chance. Rillen slipped back so that he couldn’t be seen through the arch, and took Ilsa with him. When Van Gast looked, Rillen was kissing her, whispering into her ear with a sly, happy, vicious look. Her look at him was no better.

Oh, Holden, you poor bastard.

The bond on his arm seemed to raise his wrist without his thought, lifted the gun, set his finger on the trigger. Through the beads, Van Gast could make out a commotion along a corridor—some guards, what looked like a trader or two, and there, that must be the one. A fat man in gilded robes, looking flushed and drunk and angry.

“How!” the fat man shouted. “How in Kyr’s name could racks break into my strong room? They were in the cells, and it’s your job to keep them there.”

A low murmur from one of the guards—one of Rillen’s men, who Van Gast recognized from earlier.

The fat man stopped dead and turned on him. “I don’t care what they say about Van Gast, my cells should hold him.”

Muttering to himself, the fat man came on, ponderous and weaving, the armpits of his robe sweat-dark. The bond tightened on Van Gast’s wrist, squeezed his bones, his head, with what he was supposed to do.

If he shot this man, he’d be dead in hours, hung on Oku’s wall with a nail through his wrist and left to roast in the sun. He had no doubt—Rillen was using him for just that purpose, to take the blame for this death. If Van Gast didn’t shoot, he’d be dead soon enough at the rate the poison of being bonded unwilling, of fighting it, crawled along him arm, arrowed for his heart. Even shooting Rillen, tempting as it was, would bring no relief. Van Gast knew that much about the bond—the one who put it on had to take it off, or die, and the mage was who-knew-where. Too smart to hang around, especially given how his old master had ended, shot by his own bondsman.

Van Gast was a dead man. Again that phrase rattled around, trying to find a home. He shook his head—he needed to be thinking clearly, but he couldn’t, not with the iron will that held him, seemed to crush the soul out of him.

Two choices. Fight or not. End result would be the same. In which case, might as well be stupid and go out in a blast. At least he could still call his soul his own. He shut his eyes for the closest he ever got to a prayer.

Kyr, show me some mercy now. Remember, I put that devotional back rather than steal it.

Odd, how he could swear he heard the sound of bells then. Maybe Kyr was agreeing. Maybe she wasn’t. Didn’t matter.

His hand tightened on the butt of the gun as the fat man approached his hideaway. With teeth clenched so tight they squeaked, Van Gast dragged the gun away from the curtain of beads, inch by painful inch, and pointed it at Rillen. His hand shook hard enough that the barrel of the gun seemed blurred, and he steadied it with his other hand and with the last ounce of strength he had left. The black lines wriggled past his elbow, burning as they went.

“No.” Rillen pushed Ilsa behind him. “No, you can’t fight it. You have to obey Bissan and he said obey me. Obey me.”

All Van Gast had to do was pull the trigger, and still he’d be dead. The jingle of bells came again, closer this time. He shook his head—he had no time for hearing things that weren’t there. All he had to do was pull the trigger, but the strength was gone from his hands, from his arms, replaced by pain, a silver throbbing agony that crumpled him to his knees. Still, the gun was pointed at Rillen. Close enough, anyway.

The beads rattled behind him, but Van Gast couldn’t be swayed, he wouldn’t be. If he killed Rillen, set all his guards into disarray, then maybe, just maybe, Josie had a chance.

“What the—”

The fat man’s voice, petulant and confused. A heavy weight hit Van Gast’s back and sent him crashing to the floor. He squeezed off the shot as he fell, but the bullet went wide, skittered off the wall in a shower of plaster and dropped to the tiles. Van Gast watched it as he lay, the weight crushing him, the tiles cool under his feverish face.

Bells—he could hear bells again, sweet discordance, a sound he always associated with the sea, with wide skies and a fair wind and the world to do with as he wanted. That all seemed impossibly distant now. Feet moved around him, guards’ boots, a pair of slippered feet under gilded robes.

Shouts—he couldn’t hear what they were saying, all mingled together so that it was hard to tell one voice from another over the throb in his head. The stomp of more guards, and bells. Still bells, faint, as though Kyr was taunting him but didn’t want anyone else to hear. Another shot in the hubbub, and a gun fell by Van Gast’s hand, smoke gathering around the muzzle. A body fell—the man in the robes, that fat man, his florid face slack now, and a neat hole in his forehead between staring eyes.

Rough hands grabbed him up from the floor. Rillen shook him, his face twisted with indignant rage, but he couldn’t hide the flat-eyed glee, not from Van Gast.

Van Gast tried not to see over his shoulder, tried not to know, because they’d take him before the mage, were bound to, and a mage could see inside the head of a bonded man, so they said. So he tried to ignore the faint bells, tried not to have seen Skrymir’s broad, worried face, or the flap of Holden’s shirt as they darted away, unnoticed in the hubbub. Tried to be grateful that Josie wasn’t in Rillen’s hands anymore, and that this gave her more time, perhaps. Time to get away, sail out of Estovan and never come back.

* * *

Rillen grabbed up Van Gast from the floor and shook him. “We have our man. I say we hang him from Oku’s wall.”

Van Gast’s head lolled back for a moment, his eyes fixed on something far away. Yet then he stood straighter and fixed Rillen with a leery, cocksure grin that had Rillen itching to throttle him.

“I wish you would,” Van Gast said. “I’ve never been to a hanging before.”

Rillen thrust him into the waiting arms of the guards before he did something he’d regret. How dare Van Gast try to f*ck up his beautiful plan? Calm. Be calm. He could get away with this, still blame it on Van Gast.

“Sergeant!”

His man-at-arms hurried back through the curtain, wiping his sword free of blood. “Sir.”

“Well?”

The sergeant allowed himself a tight smile, satisfied at a tricky job done neatly. “Sad to say, sir, the two councilors ran straight into the rest of the racks.”

“Very sad, sergeant. I’m sure you did your best.”

The sergeant slid away his sword. “Oh yes, sir. I even found one of their bells, you see?” He held up a single silver bell, and peered down at Van Gast’s leg. “Ah, look, his bells are one short. It’s truly shocking what these racks will do for money, sir. And shocking the way he chopped up those poor, innocent councilors.”

Don’t take it too far, man. Rillen turned to his father’s guards. His now, or they would be just as soon as the formalities were over.

“I think we’ve got proof enough, don’t you? Set all the guards you can find to seal the palace, try to catch the rest of them, and what they stole. Let me have a few moments with my father before you have him laid out with all the pomp we can muster.”

The palace guard captain hesitated, but only a fraction. Rillen’s men outnumbered him and his men, two to one. His patron was dead, and in the melee no one had seen Rillen grab his gun and shoot. The wind was blowing only one way, and the captain could smell it. “Yes, sir.”

They left, one set of guards taking a grinning and entirely too confident Van Gast back to the cells. Only Rillen and Ilsa remained, and the body of his father.

Yet Rillen felt no relief at the death, no thrill of victory, no sense of revenge earned. Only more hatred welling up, from nowhere it seemed. A part of him so long, he couldn’t now get rid of it. Hatred, plans, and a lot of money that used to be someone else’s.

Ilsa caught his eye and cocked her head. No innocence now. No naiveté. He might have missed it, except for how she’d embraced his plans, and him. How she’d come to life in their shared hatred, her mind sifting and sorting. Thinking, as he did. A true match.

“The mage,” she said with a curving sneer. “How sure are you of him? Do you trust him? He might still betray you.”

“I don’t trust anyone. Not even you.”

“In that case, do you want to know the best way to kill one? Or shall we find a way to control him, before he controls you? Because he will try. Remorian mages always want control.”

Oh, my little laceflower, I love you. Rillen kissed her soundly, loving the way her eyes lit up, the way she seemed to come alive at his touch.

“Well, then,” he said at last. “Let’s go and find our mage. And seal my place as the new Yelen. No council now. Just me. And you.”

* * *

Holden and Skrymir ran back to where they’d forced Josie to wait with Tallia and Haban, impatience in every twitch of the sword in her hand, in every jingle of bells when she tapped her feet.

“Well?” One eyebrow arched, trying for confidence, her sharp words that covered everything, almost. She was too brittle and Holden could see through the cracks to her terror.

Skrymir didn’t wait for Holden to speak, but grabbed her round the waist and hoisted her up. He ignored the teeth, the knees and elbows, and half-carried, half-dragged her away. “They’re going to hang him. He’s back in the cells, with a host of guards, and we’re leaving.”

“We are sodding well not!” She wriggled out of his grasp and stood square before him, her sword loose but ready, even against Skrymir. “I’m not. I can’t.”

Skrymir’s face twisted, with regret perhaps, deep thought creasing his forehead. “You are. I promised, Josie. I oathed, to you. On my soul. I oathed to keep you safe as I could, and I have. I promised Van, before. He wants me to keep on keeping that oath, and I will. Don’t make me break it, not another. We have to go, and now, before half the palace descends on us.”

She looked down, a Josie Holden had never seen before. She’d always seemed so confident, always knowing exactly what she was doing and why, and the rest of the world would just have to fall into place around her. Now her fingers worked on the sword hilt, her eyes blank as she searched inside somewhere. All was torn away from her, all her games, her pretence, the sharp words that hid her from the world.

“I can’t leave him here,” she said at last. “We can’t.”

“We can,” Holden said. “And we have to. Right now. But not for good, Josie. Van Gast says you’ve got the twistiest mind he’s ever seen. We’ll think of something, some way. But unless we get out now, we’re as dead as he is.”

A shout from behind underlined his words, punctuated by a bullet that puffed out plaster from the wall by Holden’s head. They ran, all of them, to the sound of bells endlessly praying.

* * *

“What do you mean, they escaped?” Rillen advanced on the luckless guard sent to inform him of Josie and Skrymir’s break for freedom.

“I—I—” The guard swallowed heavily and gathered himself. “Another two jumped the guards on their way to the river, before they even left the palace.”

Holden and Tallia, no doubt. Holden, that made sense. But why Tallia? Why was she involved with racks? I can deal with this, I can. My plan can still work.

Rillen surprised the guard with a tight smile, rather than the fist or worse the man had obviously been expecting. “Make every effort to catch them. Every effort. One of them knows the palace, so check all the little-used passageways. Man every door, every window if you can find the men for it. Skrymir at the least should be easy to spot.”

The guard hurried out, like a man unexpectedly set free from a death sentence.

Rillen stared at the shut door. “What do you think?”

“They’ll try to rescue him, you know that,” Ilsa said from the low couch. The rustle of silk on linen was intoxicating. “But you can use it too.”

They would come for Van Gast, no doubt. At the hanging. Well, best be sure that guards were looking for them.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking.” He sat next to her, watched her as she thought.

“A trap there. And the mage?”

Ah yes, the mage. To keep him, harness his power, the fear men held for him and his bond? Or to be rid of someone who knew what he had done? Who could discredit him with a blink? Once he was established, that would matter less. Now, it was critical that he be seen to be blameless before the traders. A hint that he’d stolen their money, that he might do so again, and Estovan’s trade would be dead quicker than his father, the death throes as painful as Van Gast’s would be. Rillen wouldn’t be far behind.

“What would you do?”

Her mouth curved into a sly smile, one that he wanted to run his finger over, kiss and feel it. “You need the mage for now—to keep Van’s bond on. If the mage dies, so does the bond, and that’s all you have to control him. Once he’s dead…or as he’s dying, then you should strike. A trap, for both the racks who’ll come to rescue Van, and the mage.”

Rillen frowned. “How?”

“I heard Van say it. She came for a little light robbery—and revenge. The Master bonded her to try to catch Van Gast, and it nearly killed them both. She doesn’t take that lightly, not from all I’ve heard. I’m betting she wants all Remorian mages dead, that’s the revenge she was after. And she’ll come for Van Gast, I’m sure. Her and Skrymir and Holden. So use them. Use her. If she wants Van truly free, she’ll have to kill the mage, kill the bond. So have Bissan somewhere nice and tempting, where she’ll think she can kill him easy. When she does—you’ll have her to hang, and him dead by her hand. The other two mages will see a message too, become more tractable. They always thought they were invulnerable, and they were, perhaps, till the Master died. If he can die, so can they. Bissan’s death will bring that home even more.”

Rillen didn’t say anything, didn’t even think anything for once. He leaned forward and kissed her, kissed the sly smile, tasted the hatred and found it sweet. No thoughts came as he slid off her dress, shivered at her touch when she ran her hands under his tunic.

She turned her face to greet him, welcomed him with her lips, with her arms, with herself. This was new for him, who’d only known disdain or hatred, and he wallowed in it, in her.