The Pirate's Lady

Chapter Nineteen



Rillen stood at the top of the steps leading to Oku’s temple, Ilsa resplendent at his side. Something had changed in her, made her come alive, made her smile cold and beautiful and lush. He tore his gaze away and looked to where the guards were bringing Van Gast.

They came through the temple, Van Gast bare-chested, his arm black to the shoulder with twisting, deadly lines of poison. His bells rattled dolefully in the vast echoing space of the temple. A priest tried to bless him, held up hands to ward off injustice, but Van Gast snarled at him and the priest tried no further. The guards pushed him out into the harsh light of a new dawn.

He squinted into the glare and a grin flashed across his face when he saw Rillen. “Nice day for it.”

Rillen held himself in. He’ll hurt soon enough. Besides, he’s sweating already, and that grin is twisted with pain. “Give him to me.”

The guards let go of Van Gast and he staggered but managed to stay upright. Rillen took hold of the arm that was still brown and whole and steered Van Gast toward the archway that led to the Godsquare. “Look how many people have come to make sure you’re really dead.”

Van Gast raised his head and looked out over the square. Crammed to bursting with every type of person imaginable. The three Remorian mages sat in shining splendor on the steps. Traders and merchanters come to make sure Van Gast was really dead, was no more threat to their cargos. Behind them, separated by a line of Yelen guards, stood the rest—racks jeering the guards, merchanter crews jostling and countering the noise with their own cheers. Barkeeps, priests of every god and goddess, tavern girls, painted whores, chandlers, seamstresses, fishermen, mothers with their children held on shoulders—everyone in the city, it seemed.

When Van Gast stepped out of the temple, as straight as he could manage and with a superior lift of his lip, the noise grew, echoed around the square in a cacophony that whirled Rillen’s head.

The effect on Van Gast was instant. His shoulders went back, his head came up, eyes bright and fierce. His insufferable grin was back, despite all Rillen’s efforts to have the guards whip it from him.

He turned his gaze on Rillen. “They’ve come to see just how I’ll die. With style, that’s the way. Van Gast always does everything with style. I got what I wanted, and that’s enough for me, except this. Not the best way to go—I can think of better ways—but it’ll be one to remember. Besides, you didn’t catch her, did you? Didn’t get the other scapegoats. She’s out there, and you know all the while she is you’re a man with a target painted on your forehead. As unforgiving as the sea, my Josie, and you’ll know it soon enough. You and Ilsa and your mages. A knife in the dark one night, a bullet in the face, her laugh the last thing you’ll hear. And all the time between, just wondering when it will be. You’re as dead as I am, you just don’t know it yet.”

The grin stretched, laughing at him even now. Think you’ve got it all worked out, eh? Try this.

“No, not got her. Yet. What do you think all this is for? Where’s the one place Josie will be today?” Rillen flicked a glance at the mages and back to Van Gast’s face, grinning himself now. “Right here. I don’t need anyone to tell me that. I saw, in the strong room, in the dungeons. She’ll come for you. Unforgiving as the sea, you say. Here for a little light robbery—and revenge. I know where she’ll be, and I’m waiting for her. Then she can hang on the wall beside you and you can die as a pair. The two worst racks, pinned to Oku’s wall. How much trouble will I have with your lot then? How will the merchanters look at me? I am the Yelen now. Estovan is mine, thanks to you. You’ve given me everything I could have wanted.”

There, that rubbed the grin off your face, didn’t it? Rillen shoved Van Gast along the ledge that framed the temple, toward other bodies hanging from their wrists. Rillen flicked away a fly that buzzed around his face and got Van Gast up against the wall. A hooded man held out the nail and stood ready with the great hammer that would knock it home. For this man, this death, Rillen would be the one to take the first hit.

He checked the gunmen on the roofs and in the crowds, ranged along temple steps. All in place. Taking no chances.

Van Gast was slicked with sweat now, and surely not just because of the heat of the new sun rising above the walls. A grimace twisted his face, and the black lines seemed to sizzle as they grew and twined, aiming for the heart. Still trying to fight it, to the last.

Rillen undid the shackles on Van Gast’s wrists, sure that, with the mages so close to control the bond, Van Gast could do nothing to stop this. Sure too that Josie would try, any moment now. He grabbed the blackened wrist, felt his lip lift as Van Gast gritted his teeth against it. “I feel somewhat generous today, as you’re giving me so much. Would you like a priest’s blessing before we start?”

Shuddering now, not just sweating. Van Gast’s wrist was hot as new-forged iron under his hand. Van Gast stiffened, one last try, and the bond squirmed its answer against Rillen’s fingers. No fighting it. No escaping it. Rillen was coming to enjoy this. Maybe the bonds would be a more permanent feature in Estovan.

“I’ve never really liked priests all that much,” Van Gast managed through his gritted teeth. “You can bless me though, if it helps you feel better.”

* * *

It was all Van Gast could do to get the words out against the fire in his arm, in his head. Sweat trickled into his eyes and he tried to blink them clear. All he got as reward was Rillen’s shark-grin too close for comfort.

“Oh, I can bless you.” Rillen moved even closer and Van Gast slid his free hand down to his breeches, to all he had left except his bells. He tried to keep his mind blank—the mages were close, they could see inside his head. “I can bless you so that Kyr sees all you’ve done, and shows you no mercy.”

Van Gast’s hand closed around the set of bones. Find the Lady—that game was over now, he knew which lady it was. Yet there was Dead Man’s Hand, a way to make sure he wasn’t the only one dying here today. The bones always rolled as he told them, with little-magics of their own. An extra, the man who’d given them had said, if Dead Man’s Hand was ever rolled. Van Gast’s hand gripped the bones so that the edges dug into his skin.

Kyr, show me mercy now if ever. Make it a good show, eh?

A shout in the crowd made Rillen start, but then his grin widened ever farther, showing all his even teeth.

“Stop, thief!”

“Ah, so that’s how she plays it? Distraction. Won’t work. And it’s too late for you, Van Gast.”

“Stop!”

Van Gast struggled to recognize the voice, turned his sweat-soaked gaze down to the square. Against one wall the crowd flowed like a troubled tide, following a point he couldn’t see. The man shouting—Holden. It was Holden, and some of the sweat dried, some of the inner fear that they’d leave him. Only what was he doing?

A small figure, dark and nimble like Van Gast, darted past the Yelen guards, through the legs of one, behind the knees of another so that they tangled together as they tried to stop him. The boy darted around another guard, deft enough to make the man fumble his sword.

Ansen, you little git. I’m quite proud.

Through it all, here came Holden, dressed like a trader, bellowing as though Ansen had just stolen his life savings.

The guards were well trained enough that most kept to their posts and their eyes on what they were supposed to. Yet enough became embroiled in Ansen’s thieving dance, especially when he managed to cut the purse from one of them before he dived back into the forest of legs, that the crowd roared and surged. The Yelen guards, even those not in the chase, were hard put to keep any order as every man, woman and child tried to see.

Rillen turned, his face snipped into a scowl, but not for long. The nail was in his hand, a good forearm long. The other hand yanked Van Gast’s blackened arm up to the wall, hard enough that white spots spun in Van’s eyes.

“Enough of the show, whatever they think they’re doing. You, nail him. Time to finish this now, then I can deal with the rest later.”

The point of the nail touched Van Gast’s skin, nestled into the bond scar with a faint sizzle.

A boom shattered the air. The solid bang of a cannon, not far off. Again, another shot, the faint sound of cracking brick, tumbling stone. Rillen leaned in, his face a finger’s breadth from Van Gast’s.

“Sir! They’re firing on the palace.”

“Of course they are,” Rillen murmured. His dark eyes never left Van Gast’s. Looking to see the defeat in them.

Bugger that. Van Gast slid his hand from his pocket, ready to throw the bones, and then laughed, a jagged, painful drag of breath that brought a snarl from Rillen.

Van Gast caught his breath. “You realize that you’re f*cked, right?”

A cold gust of wind whispered through his hair and soothed his hot brow, cooled the sweat that greased his skin. The wind had a tang to it, a faint hint of… If Van Gast closed his eyes, he could almost swear he heard a far-off muttering, with the occasional “um.” A mini-roll of thunder echoed round the Godsquare, and a tiny tongue of lightning earthed itself on the helm of a guard, felling the man as surely as an axe in the back.

Rillen turned as the wind picked up and swirled around the steps like a thief. Despite a sky bluer than sapphires, fat drops of rain made craters in the dust of the square. More fell on the mages, made them squawk in quick terror as the water slid down their crystals, taking away a layer of shimmering rainbow magic as they dripped to the flagstones.

Not for long—the air was filled with rain and the acrid stench of Remorian magic, of crystals burning as they used their stored power. Raindrops disappeared in puffs of steam above the mages’ heads, and Rillen laughed.

“See, they’re more powerful than your mage ever could be.”

Maybe only Van Gast saw the flicker, the gleam of sun on metal, the flash of a fair braid in the window of Kyr’s temple, up in the bell tower where it shared a wall with Oku’s starker monument. “He doesn’t need to be powerful. He just needs to get their attention. Told you. You’re f*cked.”

The bullet took the middle mage in the back of the neck, neat as you like. His body seemed to move as though in a dream, slow as treacle. He slid from his chair like a mountain landslide, starting slow then falling in a rush of flying crystals and shattered magic.

Van Gast twisted with the release from the bond. Pain arced through him, lightning in his bones from the bond outwards. Rillen lost his grip as he thrashed, blind with it, deaf to everything, slave to the pain.

Rillen’s voice was the only sound that penetrated, soft and smug. “No, this was just what I wanted her to do, and you’re f*cked.”

* * *

Holden stopped his mad dash after Ansen. No guards were looking at them anymore, but instead turned to the mages, to their thin screams and the stench of sudden magic. To the awful, glorious sight of a mage sliding dead from his chair. Distraction, always distraction. Van Gast had drummed it into him, and now he saw it for the beauteous thing it was. Three days they’d waited, holed up in the delta, waiting for Van Gast to come out of the cells, out to where they might rescue him.

No one was looking at Holden, and here he was, in perfect position with his gun ready. Up on the stairs, Van Gast fell, his face twisted when the bond left its final mark of pain on him and dissolved with the mage’s last breath. Rillen stood over him, his face a smug snarl as he took in what was happening.

Guards and bonded slaves ran to shield the other mages from any more bullets. But Holden wasn’t going for them. Ilsa stood at the bottom of the steps, and she wasn’t his wife, her face not one he knew. She was a stranger, and closer to him than anyone. A chance though. He’d give her a chance, a choice, because of what she’d once meant to him.

He slid through the crowd, gun tight in his sweating hand, keeping his face blank amid the sudden chaos. Ilsa turned away toward Rillen, calling something Holden couldn’t catch in the noise. No one noticed him or paid him any attention.

“Ilsa.” That one word seemed to fall into the square, into his head, like a dead weight.

She stopped but didn’t turn. “Kill him,” she called to Rillen, and now Holden could hear her, hear the bile and hate in her voice. “Then we can kill her too.” Finally she slid her gaze sideways to Holden, and the chill of that glance speared him where he stood.

He wanted to look, to check that Josie was all right, had fled from her place at the temple window. He wanted to look behind to see that Tallia wasn’t in trouble, or Ansen. He wanted to raise his arm and shoot Rillen before he could kill Van. Yet all he could do was stare at Ilsa, at the chill look of her, at the lift of her lip. “Ilsa, I don’t…I’m sorry. I betrayed you, and I’m sorry for that, for being weak when I should have been strong. But it was me who hurt you, not Josie or Van.”

Too little, too late, he saw that now. The Ilsa he’d known, or thought he’d known, was gone, sliding beneath a veneer of hatred. All his words got him was a sneer—and enough time for Josie to appear on the steps, hard-faced and grinning, her pistol pointed squarely at Rillen even as he sighted Holden down his barrel. She gave him a sideways look, as icy as Ilsa’s had been, and he knew what that meant. I gave you the time you asked for, the chance.

He turned from Ilsa with tight lips, with a rush of guilt and shame. Too late for him too—he’d ignored the guards too long in trying to talk to her, and one landed on him in a whirl of fists and sword.

* * *

Rillen watched Josie level her pistol at him. Careful, now. She hates as much as you do, remember.

One quick movement was all it took, a grab and pull and Van Gast, slippery and gasping, eyes rolled up in his head, was in front of him. Better than any shield.

Chaos swirled around below them in the square—guards bellowing, one on Holden now. Priests shouting, racks joining in now they saw Josie, their pistols fizzing bullets at all angles. Some had started looting already—two stalls lay on shattered backs and at least one more sent up scented plumes of smoke as its supply of herbs fell onto a cooking fire in the adjacent stall. Smoke began to curl around Josie’s feet, snake insidiously across the whole square.

The mages had their slaves trying to force a path, using blasts of magic, personal lightning bolts, to clear a way. Even as Rillen spared a glance at them, a bullet took one through the back of the throat from somewhere up on the roof. His slaves dropped him as though he burned them, grabbing for the bond that now twisted and dissolved on their arm. Much as Van Gast was now. It wouldn’t last long.

Josie advanced on him, all playfulness long gone now. All that was left of it was a lopsided grin that promised Rillen nothing but a long, hard death. He pulled Van Gast closer and shoved his pistol into an unresisting neck. All is chaos now, but a minute or so and the guards will be on her, as I planned. Just let her think she might get away with it. “Won’t do you any good, Josie. You try for me, I can shoot him just as quick. Or maybe we can deal.”

She cocked the pistol and took a step forward, her grin brighter than ever. “A deal, eh? All right. You let Van go, I’ll consider letting you live.”

Ilsa moved behind her, snake-silent, a sword from a fallen guard in her hand. Rillen kept his eyes fixed on Josie’s.

“As deals go, not very tempting.”

“I think what you and Ilsa, who is trying to creep up on me from behind, very badly, fail to understand is this. Van’s incidental. I got what I came for. Be nice to take him with me, but not essential. By the way, Ilsa, I’d look out if I were you. There’s someone not too happy at what you’ve put Holden through.”

Rillen couldn’t help but look. Smoke obscured most of the square now, but he could see jumbled images, colors. Shapes that glided in and out of the smoke like ghosts. Holden battering a guard. The last mage toppling, shattering like ice on the steps. All Rillen’s guards occupied with looters and rioters and stampeders, with trying to still the panic and greed that the cannon had let loose. A small boy lifting purses from all the prone bodies he could find, looking like all his namedays had turned up at once. He glanced at Rillen with an infuriating grin.

The worst was the guards, guards he’d had on hand to catch Josie when she came, and who instead were now fighting for their lives among smoke and flying debris around the square. How did this all go so f*cking wrong? How do I retrieve this? Another guard, staggering back with blood at his throat, followed by…Tallia. You little bitch. But Tallia wasn’t looking at him, not now. Her eyes were firmly fixed on Ilsa, who turned just in time to be greeted with a resounding slap that staggered her.

His guards were just starting to regroup. Their uniforms showed through the gauzy smoke, blue with blue, gathering, ordering. Not quick enough.

Josie cocked her head as though listening, and then Rillen heard it too. A whistling sort of hiss. Faint at first, growing louder. Something flew overhead and landed in the front wall of the money-changers. Bricks flew in every direction, dust added to the choke, whispered round in a haze of fumes. The square was quiet, Rillen realized. Only the few faint shouts of looters, the occasional bark of a guard.

“I think they’ve finished bombarding the palace,” Josie said. “But my crew do so love a good run at the cannon. Especially on this nice new licensed ship we stole, and some of these towers round here are just begging to be shot at. Get a nice clear view from your licensed docks. Very nice. You don’t have a lot of time. Hand over Van or I’ll shoot your face off, right now. Or you can wait around, see if a cannonball gets you.” She shrugged. “Up to you.”

Rillen searched the square for some sort of answer, some reason that had brought him to this catastrophe. Nothing came to him—he had planned for her to come, planned for her to shoot Bissan. But not for cannon, not for the destruction of the palace, his palace, or the pandemonium in the square.

He could see no figures in the gloom except Tallia pulling Holden to his feet, the small pilfering boy, Ilsa looking stunned as she sat on a step, her face bleeding. His guards had their hands full with a riot. No help. It was down to him, it was always down to him. He could recover, he was the Yelen. He could do anything he wanted—if he lived.

“Oh, I haven’t got f*cking time for this,” Josie said and shot Van Gast.