The Pirate's Lady

Chapter Eighteen



Rillen stepped up onto the dais, loving the feel of every man’s eyes on him, the way every trader, big and small, had deferred to him as he entered the main atrium, eager to know how things would play. They way they’d simpered, the “little gifts of condolence” they’d sent in hope of currying favor. Probably expecting him to be just like his father. He had to concentrate to keep the sneer off his face. Poor, deluded fools. But fools who would fall over themselves to gain his support.

“It is with great regret that I must announce the death of my father, and the rest of the Yelen, at the hand of racketeers within these palace walls.” Though, if you knew that my only regret was I didn’t do it sooner… “Van Gast led a raid upon the strong room, from within the dungeons. They took everything.”

A collective gasp, muttered swearing, and a few of the richer merchants paled and fanned themselves as they calculated how much they might have lost.

Rillen held up a placating hand. “Van Gast is in my custody and will hang from Oku’s wall. I’ve every reason to expect the capture of the rest of them, and the return of what they stole.” Several of the more astute looked wary, angry or ready to seize an opportunity. But I’ll keep you where I want you. “In the meantime, the Yelen is now under my control, with the assistance of Bissan.”

All eyes turned to the mage behind Rillen, drank in the monstrous sight of him. Rillen could almost hear the way their minds rattled along new tracks as they took in the slaves that stood at the rear of the dais. Men-who-were-not-men. Slaves, minds gone, bodies pale and pliable.

One of the more headstrong merchanters tore his gaze away from Bissan and looked up at Rillen, calculating perhaps whether Rillen meant what he thought. Rillen let a smile stretch his mouth, but it did little to comfort the merchanter, who covered his unease with a hasty hand to his lips.

You know what I threaten here.

The merchanter inclined his head to Rillen, all due deference, but his gaze kept jerking between Rillen and Bissan. “This seems more than acceptable, Rillen. Will contracts be renegotiated?”

They thought he’d learned nothing of trade from his father, just the bastard second son, only fit to be captain of the guard. They thought they could play him, fool him. But he’d hooked them on his line.

All the merchants looked at him now, assessing, balancing, seeing his reaction. Seeing if he was like his father. Now would be the time he hooked them all, or played the line too hard and lost them, lost his chance. He kept the smile steady. “All in good time, all in good time. First, I need to show Estovan and the racks how I deal with people who displease me. I expect you’ll take as much pleasure as I in Van Gast’s final debt-payment.”

A threat, and an offer, all in one. Van Gast had stolen or conned from every man here, most like. Yet no mention of racks being punished, and the hint of “people who displease me” had hit home. Lips tightened, skin paled, men looked away from him. Subtle—you couldn’t be a successful merchant without hiding your true feelings—but there. He could almost smell the fear on them. Good.

Now, once the fear was there, the tempting bait. What would keep them on the hook, keep Estovan’s trade alive and well, keep Rillen rich. “And once he’s disposed of, once you can trade without fear of him robbing you blind, then contracts will indeed be renegotiated. I’m prepared to be most generous. Most generous, to those whose trade will benefit Estovan.”

I have them now. Pulling them along by the greed that hooks their mouths.

* * *

Holden sagged against the pole and wiped his face with his sleeve. Tallia had got them out of the palace, led them to a gate that opened directly onto the river. There had only been two guards—from the noise behind them, the rest had been called away. Two guards hadn’t stood much chance, and the small punt tied up at the steps had got them away, Holden poling them downstream to the delta, toward all the little islands where they could slip unseen.

Josie had only stopped fighting when Skrymir dropped her, his face pale and haggard, blood dripping down his shoulder. Josie went from spitting feathers to quick concern on the instant. He lay in the bottom of the punt and she fussed over him like he was a child.

“I thought you said this was patched up,” she said.

“It was. Maybe if you’d stopped trying to bite me for long enough, you’d have noticed.”

They switched to talking in Gan as she saw to the bullet wound, her voice soft and apologetic.

Tallia got Haban settled and came to stand with Holden. He poled them along the edge of the river, the only sounds the gentle bickering between Skrymir and Josie and the muffled slap of water on wood.

At last, the first of the jetties along Mucking Lane came into view. The Glass Dagger was there, and tucked up behind it lay the Lone Queen.

“I had them move berth. Reckoned we’d all be coming out together,” Josie said. For a heartbeat, Holden thought she was going to jump over the side, into the water. Maybe back to the river gate and into the palace. She tensed to do it, her face hard and implacable, but Skrymir lurched up and grabbed her.

Holden got the punt nudged up to the Lone Queen even as she turned on Skrymir, next to a net over the side. Skrymir didn’t give her a chance but shoved her up.

Skrymir scrambled up after, wincing at the effort but that was the only sign he gave that his wound hurt him. Inhuman. Holden tied the punt and followed him. At the rear, Tallia helped Haban.

Now they had little breath for talking. That didn’t stop Skrymir, who started shouting orders the moment his feet hit the deck. “Cast off, right f*cking now!”

Josie glared at him. “We aren’t—”

Skrymir whirled to face her. Holden had known him a long while, they’d been crewmates and friends, but he’d never seen him angry. Not like this. He loomed over Josie like a storm cloud, dark and threatening. She never gave an inch, stood square before him, her own features as dark, but not with anger.

“They know where we’re all berthed, remember? Those guards will be here quicker than you can say ‘shit.’ You might be the captain, but I’m the one with a clear head here. Holden, get your lot moving too.”

Crew hurried to obey Skrymir, and Holden called across to his own crew, ordered them all to cast off before he turned back. Within moments the gentle rock of the ship was replaced by smooth movement as they began to glide away from the jetty. Sails snapped in a brisk breeze.

“You can go then,” she said. “Go on, bugger off like a coward. I’m staying. There has to be a way to get him out of there.” She turned her back on him, and Holden saw what it was that darkened her face—fear. She’d never say it, never acknowledge it, but it was there. Not fear for herself but fear for Van. All her bright, cutting words couldn’t cover that.

Skrymir wouldn’t let her go so easily though. One fist grabbed her shoulder and yanked her back, shoved her down to sit on a barrel. She made to get up again, but the hand held her, pressed her down.

“You’re staying on this ship. I’ve broken oath for you, Josie, because I couldn’t be a part of what the mages did to you, to you and Van both. I made an oath to you. I haven’t got so many souls as I can afford to break that one too. So you’re staying on this ship, if I have to clap you in irons to do it, because that’s what Van wants. That’s why he chose to take the bond. He chose that, so that you wouldn’t have that pain again.”

Josie’s mouth dropped open, and Holden took a step forward. “He took it, willing? How do you know?”

Skrymir didn’t take his gaze off Josie, as though he thought she’d try to escape if he didn’t watch close. “Rillen wasn’t as quiet as he thought. He gave Van the choice as to who got bonded—you or him. Van chose this. He knew what he was getting into, took the bond as long as Rillen promised to let you go. And after, in the strong room—he wanted me to keep you safe, I know it. I’m going to do that to the best of my ability, on my oath to Oku, on my soul, because that’s what he wanted. It’s what he always wanted but you’re too stubborn to realize it.”

Josie had no answer for that, no answer to the widening gap between them and the jetty, or the fact she couldn’t swim. The ship lurched under them as they caught the current and crew chased along yardarms, pulled on rigging. Skrymir, maybe satisfied Josie was going nowhere, sank down to the deck and got someone to fetch the healer.

Holden watched Tallia at the rail, at the way she shook her head over Josie, exasperated perhaps. Sisters. How could they be sisters? He leaned on the rail next to her, lost in himself, lost to everything he thought he could rely on. No bond, no Van, no Ilsa… Everything seemed to swirl around him.

“Is there any chance someone could tell me what is going on?” he asked. “Properly, without any sidling about it?”

It wasn’t Tallia who answered, but Josie. She looked up, and he noticed the scratches on her face, red welts as though someone had clawed her. “Ilsa. She wanted to hurt me, worst way she could. That’s what she said—worst way she could. Because of what I did to her, what we did to her. That’s what started it, anyway. Without me and Van, you’d still be bonded, you’d still be hers. Without Van you’d never have seen me again, and without me… You had a wife, Holden. A wife! And yet that didn’t stop you, did it? Didn’t even make you think twice when I offered myself to you if you’d stop chasing Van. Hurt me the worst way, that’s what she wanted. To kill Van, and even better if he thought it was because I betrayed him. At least he knows I didn’t. That’s all I’ve got. He’s bonded, because of me. They’re going to nail him to that f*cking wall, and I’m out here and not in there and—”

She broke off, her face pinched and pale and Holden thought how lost she looked, how she wasn’t Joshing Josie now, who fought and bit and scratched to the end, How she couldn’t be that Josie, not without Van.

“Tallia thinks it’s Van’s fault, she always did. But it wasn’t. It was you and me, Holden. You and me. Skrymir and Van think I wanted him to prove himself, but that wasn’t it. Not what all this was about. Tallia thinks I should hate him, but how can I, when it’s me I can’t forgive? That’s what I wanted. Him to forgive me, so that I could stop playing the game. I hate it, the games, but it’s all I ever knew how to do round him, the only way I knew I’d keep him. I was afraid of playing the games, and afraid of stopping them. I wanted him to forgive me, because it was me that made him do what he did. Because I love him.”

She ground a hand into an eye before she got up, creakily as though she was suddenly old, and went to her quarters, Van’s quarters as had been. She seemed so alone. Holden couldn’t bear it. They’d loved each other once, a long time ago, when they were young and he still had his dreams. He took hold of Tallia’s hand, wanting to show her too, wanting to show them both.

In Josie’s quarters he dragged at the bed, ignored Josie’s sharp exclamation, Tallia’s “What are you doing?”

The bed came away from the wall, and there was the secret name of Van’s ship, when it had been his. “He’s been busy carving the same on the Glass Dagger,” Holden said. “The secret name, he said. He hoped you’d find it.”

“I did.” Josie stepped forward and traced her fingers over the carving. “But I don’t know what it says. Not all of it. You know I can’t read.”

Holden found Tallia’s hand again. It all came down to this, all broke free in him now. He knew who he was now. He was Holden and he knew what he was going to do, had made a decision and found it easy. “It says the Josie-love.”

He turned away, not able to bear the look on her face, the hurt, the desperation, the fear and shame. But it was going to be all right. He knew what to do, how to do it. How to make everything right. A laugh bubbled out of him and he grabbed Tallia round the waist, kissed her sunlight lips, laughed again at her gasp of surprise, at the way she kissed him back, laughing now too. She had helped him to know who he was, who he always should have been, the man who dreamed dreams big enough for the world.

He ran back onto the deck, still clutching Tallia’s hand. At the rail, he called across to the Glass Dagger. “Guld? Guld!”

Guld came out onto the deck, blinking owlishly. “Yes?”

“How are you at weather spells?”

“I can do wind all right.”

“What about rain?”

“Rain? Um, well…not really much call for rain.”

“Start practicing. And get the helmsman to steer us out to the mouth of the delta, right in the main trading lane. Cannons ready!”

He turned back to Tallia, to Josie coming out of her quarters with a puzzled look, Skrymir glaring at him.

“Holden, what are you doing?” Tallia asked.

He laughed again and kissed her soundly. This was who he was, really, the man behind the bond, ready to see all his dreams. “Tallia, we are all going to do something really f*cking stupid. Stupid but exciting.”

* * *

Van Gast sat and shivered in his cell, staring up at the small patch of moonlight from the grimy light-well. Three days of this, of filthy straw, of rats not shy to come and stare, to try nibbling his toes when he slept. Three days of not knowing. Skrymir—he’d seen Skrymir, he was sure, no matter how addled he’d become. But had they escaped? Was she safe, had this been worth it? He had no way of knowing. If she was, if they all were, then they’d be long gone by now, if they had any sense.

He settled himself against the wall, trying to avoid setting the lash marks on his back against the rough stone. Rumor hadn’t lied about the Yelen cells. There were men here who had been almost dead for long years. He heard them, whimpering, sometimes begging. The worst were the occupied cells that no sound came from, as though the prisoners had long since given up. Sometimes prisoners screamed and fought when the guards came.

Van Gast had fought too, with the little he had. All that had got him were extra lashes and the black lines of the bond-poison working ever closer to his heart. They reached to his shoulder now, a constant, burning pulse along his arm that seemed to throb through his whole body, squeeze his head till he wanted to scream with it. But he wouldn’t. Josie hadn’t, and neither would he.

He wanted to know, had to know, that it had been worth it. If it had, if she was safe, then he could go to his death tomorrow with a clear head, with a smirk to piss Rillen off. Maybe more than that, because he had a little something in mind, just to liven things up a bit. If he was going to go, he was doing it in style. No one would forget Van Gast, the greatest rack on the western coast, the rack, the one they all wanted to beat. No one would forget him, or his death, or what it meant. He grinned into the dark. Maybe not the best way to go, but pretty damned good.

The outer door along the corridor creaked open, but Van Gast paid it little mind. He’d had his visit from the guards today, had the lash marks to prove it. He only tore his gaze away from the light-well when his cell door opened.

Ilsa looked very fine, all decked out in silk and jewels. An emerald clip set off the chestnut color of her hair that flowed over smooth, copper-bronze shoulders, over a dress women might have killed for. Her perfume filled the cell, a subtle waft that seemed to reach into every dank crevice. Yet it was her face that struck him most—no longer afraid, no longer unsure, or innocent or full of doubt about who she was. It was the face of a woman who knows what she is, and has come to terms with it, revels in it.

“You’re looking well,” Van Gast said. “But I don’t think it was the sea air gave your face that flush. Excuse me if I don’t get up, but I only stand for ladies.”

Her mouth smiled, a lush, full thing that held the promise of nights just as verdant, but her eyes narrowed. She said nothing for a long while, only studied him with interest.

When she finally spoke, it wasn’t what he’d expected. “You could have stopped all this before it began. I could have got her the way she got me, by taking her man. You knew I wanted to, didn’t you? You could have stopped it all.”

“How? By tumbling my friend’s wife? I may be a rack, but I do have standards. Sort of.”

She moved closer, and even the way she moved had changed. Smooth, graceful, full of a threat that was yet feminine and delicate.

“You could have done. Maybe I wish you had, because then…yet I should thank you. If you’d tumbled me, I wouldn’t have come still looking to hurt Josie. Through you, I knew that was the best way. As she hurt me through my man. Only—only he’s not mine, I see that now, and I’m not his. We were told to be together, bonded to each other without choice. He was my jailor, my keeper. With him, I had to be who he expected, not who I was. And I knew…I knew it as soon as I was free of the bond, as soon as I could think for myself. I wasn’t the woman he thought, not the woman he wanted, or needed. And he didn’t even love that woman, he only thought he did, thought he must. We lost the bonds, Van, but I lost who I was too. Now I know. I’ve found out who I was always meant to be, that the bond kept inside me.”

“What, a backstabbing bitch?”

She laughed, and it sounded genuinely amused. “Yes, if you like. Like Josie. I hated her, and I wanted to be like her, too, because Holden loved her once, maybe still does. Rillen is my Van Gast, you see? You admire her twisting mind—I see someone ruthless enough to do anything to get what she wants, no matter who she hurts in the process. She’s away and free, and you’re locked up here, and you even chose it. So stupid. It’s all a matter of perspective, don’t you think?”

“I think you’re an evil-minded bitch, but I quite like that in a woman. As long as they aren’t being bitches to me. I’ve never been so keen on that. Or dying.”

She trailed a soft hand over his cheek, ran it around an eye with a touch as soft as clouds. He tried to pull away, but a burst of pain stopped him, robbed him of breath.

Her smile was seductive, her eyes half-closed. Enjoying it, his pain. “Bissan is outside. You’ll do what I want. Won’t you?”

Van Gast couldn’t say anything past the burn in his head, in his heart where his little-magics exploded like fireworks. It was all he could do to stay upright.

“Such a shame, really, Van. You having to die, I mean. You were the best of them, tried to help me, but I couldn’t be helped, not by you. Except you taught me that the rules don’t matter if I don’t want them to. A valuable lesson, and one I learned well. This is my one best way to show Josie what she did to me, how she hurt me. I want her to hurt like that, and this is the only way.”

Her fingers slid along his mouth, and Van Gast tried to work up the nerve to say “f*ck the bond” and bite her. He saved it though, stored up all his fight, all his little strength. He was going to need it, and not for a display of bravado that no one would see except Ilsa.

“Better than that,” Ilsa whispered. “Much better. Your Josie isn’t the only one with twisty plans in her head, oh no. Maybe you’ll get to see as you die. Won’t that be nice?”

She fixed him with a bright smile and stood, brushed off her dress fastidiously and turned to go. She hesitated with her hand on the door, and the look she gave him was the old Ilsa—timid, unsure, almost heartbreakingly naïve. Where had that woman gone?

“Remember, Van. He can see inside the head of bonded men. My one and only bit of help for you.”

She slipped through the door and he was alone again. He can see inside the head of bonded men. Keep your mind blank, keep it away from everything but breathing. Only he couldn’t. He stared at the moonlight splitting the darkness of his cell like knives. Like Josie, when they’d been in here together. Moonlight and midnight, the two halves of her. Soft and sharp, love and hate. It was worth it, all this, if she was safe. Everything was worth it for that.

The moonlight faded as dawn approached. Something fluttered down the light-well and landed with a whisper in the straw. Something pale and flickering. Van Gast shoved himself away from the wall and went to see. Anything to take his mind from what dawn meant.

A braid, white-blond, with a piece of shell woven in. From the time he and Josie had been marooned for three days on an isolated island and neither too keen to be found. He stared up the light-well, but no shadow crossed it, no one stood and stared down at him.

A whisper came down to him, barely a breath. A taunting boy’s voice. “I still say she’s going to shoot you in the face. If anyone’s going to kill you, it’ll be her. Paid me a whole gold shark to get in here, and no one else could squeeze that gap. A warning, I reckon. A bullet in the face before they get the chance to hang you.”

“Ansen?”

No reply—he’d gone. Van Gast stared down at the braid, remembered the sun on his face on that island, the way they’d got sand in places you really didn’t want sand but hadn’t cared. She was telling him something, but his brain was too exhausted to think properly, too tangled from pain.

She was here, and she shouldn’t be. He squeezed his eyes shut. If she was here, she wasn’t safe, and this had all been for nothing. Then again, if she was here, something stupid was in the offing. Stupid and thrilling and that might just see them dead. She’d come back for him. Had he really doubted she would? Not his Josie—he should have remembered, she never gave up till the bitter end. Too stubborn by half.

He had no time to think more—the door rattled open again and the guards came in. Big gnarly-faced men, scarred from long experience. Too wary of tricks, even if his fuddled brain could have thought of any, or if a trick would be any use now.

Save it, save it up for later. Don’t think about it, or he’ll see it in your head.

Van Gast staggered to his feet, slipped the braid into a pocket of his breeches next to his set of bones and faced the guards. He forced a nonchalant grin. “Ready when you are, sweet cheeks. Do you have to pay your whores extra or do you put a bag over your head?”