The Pirate's Lady

Chapter Twenty



When Van Gast’s head cleared, when the bond fell from his wrist as a little black string of nothing, he was on his knees with a familiar pair of bright blue boots in front of him. Rillen lay in a bloody-faced, twitching heap next to him. Van Gast’s shoulder seemed to be on fire, leaking blood all down his arm. It’d be nice if people stopped shooting at him.

A voice he’d hoped was far away, and safe. Low and smoky, and, even now, teasing. “Hey, Van. You want to live forever?”

The world seemed alive with noise, with shouts and screams and swearing, but this voice cut through all that. He looked up at Josie, at that f*cking grin, glorious and maddening, which haunted his sleep, made it a sweaty tangle of sheets and want.

“Be nice,” he managed.

His arm was on fire, he would swear it. The bond was off, thank f*ck, thank Kyr or thank Josie, but the arm still throbbed with poison, sent stabbing pain all through him to sap his strength, his thoughts. He shuddered in the heat, despite the sweat that soaked him.

Her hand caught his good arm. “You’re going to have to move then, and quick. Come on, Van. Help me out here. You’re heavier than you look.”

Van Gast got his feet under him, slumped against the wall and stared at her. Vicious and capricious, and you never knew what she’d do next. Kyr, it’s not that I’m ungrateful, but this wasn’t the mercy I had in mind. I wanted her safe, away from bonds and mages. Slightly less pain would have been great too.

He managed a laugh that turned to half-gasp as another twist of pain caught him. “That’s because I’m all muscle, love. Fancy a quick try out?”

She got her shoulder under his arm, and her hand, warm and familiar and gods damn just what he needed, round his back. Her tone was just what he needed too—offhand and teasing, with deeper undercurrents. “If we manage to get out of this alive, I’ll try it all you like.”

“Mages?”

Her voice was taut with satisfaction. “Good and dead. Holden’s a good shot, and so is Skrymir. Less talking, more moving. We aren’t out of this yet.”

Van Gast leaned into her, watched the careful set of her face. Good and dead. That’s what she’d come for, not money or to test Van Gast or any of it. Revenge. Like the sea, like Forn the merciless. You didn’t play lightly with Josie, not if you wanted to live. Good job he didn’t want to play lightly then.

A rope fluttered down beside them, Skrymir at the top of it. Josie stepped over Rillen’s prone body and got Van Gast’s hands on the rope. His left caught at it all right, but the right, black and burning with pain, wouldn’t seem to work properly.

“Get a move on, Josie,” Skrymir called. “He’s right behind— Shit.”

Skrymir yanked on the rope and pulled Van Gast a yard up the wall. He swung there a heartbeat, still not sure exactly what had happened, or where the danger was. He saw now—Rillen, his face a study in bloody vengeance with a bullet score dug deep across his cheek and up into his hair, the rest of his face peppered with burn marks and a look of a hunting shark that’s scented blood. No gun, but a sword that was sharp enough.

“Josie, get on.” Van Gast held out his blackened arm.

She hesitated, casting a blood-filled look at Rillen. Damn woman. Once, just once it’d be nice if she did as he asked… “Josie, come on.”

He gave her no choice, grabbed her arm and yanked her, protesting, up with him. Her weight made his arm shriek, made him clench his teeth against a strangled scream, but she was there. He tried a weak grin. “Got something in my breeches for you.”

“Andor Van Gast—”

“Something better, right now. Hold the rope, I need my spare hand.”

Skrymir hauled on the rope again, and his grunt of effort echoed down to them. It was astounding enough he managed to pull them both, but then he was built like a bull.

Rillen reached the bottom of the rope, grabbed it and added his weight. Even Skrymir couldn’t manage that, and they heard his salty cursing as the rope burned through his hands and dropped them back into Rillen’s reach.

Josie reached for her gun, seemed to remember it was empty and then threw it. “I should have known it would take more than one shot to take that bastard down. Even a bullet in the face hasn’t stopped him.”

Van Gast lashed out with a boot. The blow missed, but it was enough to get Rillen to let go of the rope. Van Gast’s hand found what it was looking for and closed on them, the grip not tight, but tight enough.

“Last throw of the bones, Rillen. Want to take a bet?”

One of the first things anyone should learn about Van Gast was not to play him at bones. He dropped them at Rillen’s feet. Nine kraken winked up at them. Dead Man’s Hand—unbeatable, and so unlikely to be rolled that if it happened on your first throw, you had to be cheating and died pretty quick. Van Gast shut his eyes, yelled “Now, pull now!” and hoped that the man who’d given him the bones hadn’t been lying. He’d been a rack, so who knew?

Skrymir managed to get them a few feet higher—and then the blast shoved them into the wall, heat washed over them and the square fell silent.

Not for long. Smoke eddied in a fresh wind from the delta, left coughing and choking people behind, and not a few disgruntled guards. Most of who were now pointing their pistols this way.

Skrymir’s grunts echoed down the wall as he hauled them up and over in a sweating, bleeding mess onto the roof. Van Gast flopped on his back, trying to catch his breath and ignore the throb of his arm. He risked a glance at it—all black, none of his own nut-brown color anywhere until it reached his shoulder, where purple-black lines snaked across his chest toward his heart. Not growing now at least, there was that, but an agony he’d never known. Red hot pokers seemed to be jabbing at him, twisting under his skin. Real red hot pokers might even be preferable.

Skrymir’s voice sounded faint in his ears. “Josie, why did you shoot Van?”

Van Gast sat bolt upright, clamped down on the scream that wanted to break free and panted out his words. “You shot me? That’s a very good question.”

“Not now,” Josie said from her vantage at the edge of the roof. “Guards coming from every which way. Skrymir, you go and get Holden, Tallia and Ansen. Get back to the ship, best you can. I’ll meet you there. He’s not going to be able to keep up, not with the bond just off. Get the ship out into the delta, you know where.”

Skrymir hesitated, just a fraction, then nodded. “Aye.” His hand came down on Van’s good shoulder, threatening to turn it into the bad shoulder. “Glad you’re still breathing, Van. Come on, I’ll get you on your feet.”

Skrymir hauled him up and propped him against a chimney. “All right, Josie. I’ll make as much noise as I can, get them after me for a bit. You two be your sneaky selves.”

Tiles clattered farther along the roof—some of the more zealous guards had found the way from the loft of Oku’s temple onto the roof. They’d found the dead bodies of the guards that had been set there too. Skrymir leaped out in front of them, pistol ready and snarl twisting his face into a hideous mask.

The guards hesitated—Van Gast was fairly sure even Oku would have hesitated at the look on Skrymir’s face—but one of his fists sending a guard tumbling over the edge of the roof with a desperate, useless scrabble at the tiles got them going. Skrymir bulled through them and off the other side, and the chase was on.

Not that Van Gast and Josie had much time to even take breath before more guards came.

“Reckon you can run?”

“I can run faster than those bastards,” Van Gast said.

Together they slid into the nooks and crannies, the slim shadows of the daytime rooftops, their bells jingling their prayers.

* * *

Holden staggered back to his feet and looked around. Smoke choked everything, made people ghosts in the gloom. A blast from the top of the steps startled him. All the guards surged to the sound, and to the vast swearing and agonized screams from Rillen as he lay sprawled on the ground, one arm missing, the wound spouting blood, orders to “Get the f*ck here now and kill that bastard!”

Holden grabbed Ansen as he drifted by in the gloom. “Tallia, have you seen her?”

Ansen grinned up at him, his hands full of purses and trinkets, his pockets overflowing. “She belted Ilsa one. Over on the steps. Cow deserved it too.” He glared at Holden as though waiting to be told he was wrong.

Holden resisted the urge to shake him. Who knew what might fall out? “Yes, but where is she now?”

“I don’t know, I’m not her keeper.”

“Come on. I think it’s high time we were out of here, before those guards stop milling around and realize they want to shoot us. You can help me find her.”

Ansen grumbled under his breath, but not all the guards were with Rillen. More than enough were still in the square, trying to arrest looters, trying to find some sort of order in the chaos.

Tallia wouldn’t have gone up the steps—their part in the plan meant staying in the square until it was time to get out. Where then? They ducked past two guards under siege from a phalanx of looters and coming off worst, into the shelter of Kyr’s temple.

Tallia was waiting for him, half hidden in an alcove, gun firmly in hand as she searched the crowds. Holden grabbed her, spun her round and set her down again, her hand in his.

All duty was gone, burned away in that single glimpse of Ilsa kissing Rillen, of her answer on the steps. Of knowing that he couldn’t make her happy, that they had only been bonded by mages, not by love. The last vestiges of his Master’s voice were scoured clean by his newfound freedom, now finally realized in his head, in his heart. Instead of rules, lines, order, comfort, he saw now clearly, for the first time ever, who he really was. Josie had called him a man who had dreamed dreams big enough for the world, once, long ago, when they’d loved. Before his dreams had been stripped away, and her with them. Now they were back and they danced around his head, full of life and color with Tallia at the center.

Her smile infected him, made him giddy with it, made him relish the fizz in his blood that they were all still alive, still free. He kissed her with a dizzy relish at still being alive and, her hand in his, scanned the square, looking to see where they could squeeze out. There—a gap in the beleaguered guards who now were dealing with not only racks but disgruntled citizens, merchanter crew and a few Remorians, all getting a petty revenge while they could.

“All right. Ansen’s stolen everything not nailed down. I’d say it’s time to get the f*ck out of port. What do you think, Tallia? Still want to be part of the crew?”

Her smile was answer enough and they ran, delirious with freedom, toward the secret little slipway in the delta that held the ship.

As far as Holden could see, there was only one tiny cloud on his horizon. Van Gast was going to be his brother-in-law.

* * *

Van Gast staggered to a halt over a narrow alley in the delta, on the roof between two houses that leaned so drunkenly they looked about to fall over. He’d never tried the roofs in the delta before, a risk too far, that the rickety wood might give way. Now guards were in the alleys, on the walkways, everywhere. The roofs were less of a risk than the paths, especially given the state he was in.

“Josie, wait a moment, love. I need to—to catch my breath.”

No fizz in his blood now for the thrill of the chase. No glorious joy/fear twisting through him, making him laugh as he ran. Instead, a sick tide of pain from his arm, from his shoulder where it still leaked blood. Still, here she was, pulling him on, urging him forward, sideways, round the guards that were everywhere. Yet he was spent. His sweat stung the lash marks on his back. His arm twisted and shuddered from the poison still, sent jabbing needles of pain toward his heart, made his breath hard to come by, and his fingers numb. He was slow and getting slower, all his vigor seeping out with the blood from where Josie had shot him. With the thought that all this had been about revenge, nothing more.

He had nothing left, no strength, maybe not even the energy to get up again. He sweated and shivered at the same time, clenching his teeth against it, holding back a groan as another wave of pain washed through him.

She crouched next to him, her face serious for once. No Joshing Josie grin, no soft, private smile. Her eyes lingered on the black lines that still tangled over his shoulder, and she rubbed at her leg, as though in memory of the time those black lines had covered her, almost killed her.

“Since when did Van Gast not enjoy the chase?” An attempt at teasing, but there was a tremor behind it.

“That sodding Skrymir was supposed to keep you safe. Why, why didn’t you escape? That was the whole point of this.” He tried to raise his hand but couldn’t even manage that. Another shudder of cold, of heat. He didn’t need to look to know the poison, though slowed now, was hovering over his heart.

“Why did you choose it, Van?”

Van Gast couldn’t look at her, and squinted up into the smoke strewn sky instead. “Do you have to ask? So you’d have a chance. So you could be free, like you were always meant to be, that’s why. Because I love you, even if you won’t let me say it.”

“You thought you had to ask to know once. You don’t get it, do you? I came because I can’t do this without you, without at least knowing that even if you aren’t there with me, there’s someone out there, someone on my side, who knows the game like he was born to play it. Because I needed to know you’d forgiven me. Because I need you. Don’t make me say it. You know why I came for you.”

“I’m irresistible?” Van Gast managed a weak grin. “Heck of a way to get some time alone, love.”

She laughed at that. “Yes, you are that, and incorrigible too. And I can’t do it without you. I can’t be me properly, not without you. But you love me because you can’t ever catch me,” she said, soft, sad, like she wanted it some other way.

Yet he couldn’t find the words to say, the ones that would convince her that it wasn’t true, he’d love her any way he could get.

“If I let you catch me—once I’m yours, the magic will go. Another pretty face will take your fancy and you’ll be gone, lost in the chase again. It’s the only time you’re happy, when you’re chasing. So I can’t let you catch me, can’t stop playing, because if you do, I’ll lose you. And I don’t want to lose you, Van.” The grin was sudden, sharper than steel. Never knew, from one moment to the next how she’d be. The stupid-but-thrilling thing, the never-quite-in-his-grasp thing that always had him coming back for more. “Besides, I’m only happy when I’ve got someone chasing me.”

“And you had to shoot me for that?”

Her low laugh made all the hairs on his arms stand to attention. “Got to keep you on your toes, Van. Besides, it was the only way to shoot Rillen right in the face. I would have got him better, but even you couldn’t survive a bullet through the neck. Still, he’s got one heck of a nice scar now, and it did get him to let you go.”

She reached out and trailed soft fingers over his face, across the curve of his cheek, over his lips so that he kissed them.

“So what now, Josie? Where do we go now?”

“Now we get back to the ship, sail off into the sunset and go and live like kings for a bit. Till we get bored and find a new scam. For that I need you to run, Van.”

“I’m barely fit to stagger. And how will we live like kings, when we didn’t get a damn copper fish-head out of this?”

She held out her hand, palm up. A quick twist, a blur of movement, and there sat the diamond that had started all this. Big as his fist and worth a kingdom, maybe two. “With this?”

“You palmed it while we were in the strong room.” Kyr’s mercy, he needed to kiss her, now and for a long, long time.

Another flick and the diamond was gone. She stood and dusted herself down, cocked her head as if listening. Van Gast could hear it too—the unmistakable sound of guards closing in, a yelp as one fell through a salt-rotted plank and into the room below. Yet Van Gast’s legs seemed turned to damp rags, and whatever strength he had was leached away by the black lines on his arm.

“You go. I’ll wriggle out of it somehow. But I took this bond because you did it once for me, and I needed you to know you could trust me. And I took this bond so that you could escape. Because I need you to be alive more than I need me to be. Because no matter what you think, I’ll never catch you, not all the way. Not my Butterfly Josie. Even if I caught you, you’d still be freer than the wind. That’s how I love it, and you.”

Josie snorted in disgust, dragged him to his feet and looked him in the eye. No softness there, only hard steel and harder determination. “So you’re going to quit on me now? The ship’s not far. Just past this next alley, round the corner and…not far. I’ll do you a deal, Andor Van Gast. A one-time only offer, never to be repeated.”

She danced to the edge of the roof and looked over, calculated the distance to the next building, to the ground. When she turned back she was grinning, capricious as the sea, as unpredictable, loving and vicious, and all he ever wanted.

“Catch me just once, Van Gast, catch me today, and I’ll love you forever.”

With that she dropped over the edge, out of sight, the only hint of her a joyous jingle of her bells.

It was his last, only, best chance. It was everything he needed to get his feet moving, to get him running. He forgot the black of his arm, the lances of pain, the bone-aching weariness as he took the drop, rolled and ran on. He forgot guards behind him, forgot his ship, forgot everything but this, the joy/fear thrilling in him, making him laugh as he ran, despite everything. He was Van Gast, the rack to beat, he was good, better than good, and the bastards would never catch him.

The instant his feet hit the deck, Skrymir bellowed for the crew to cast off, and Holden was already firing cannon at the guards behind him. He didn’t care, not about the guards, not about the cannon deafening him, not even about the swell of the tide as it took them away from their berth, the snap of the sails, the scent of the sea.

He staggered as the ship caught him by surprise, and onto Josie as she stood by the door to his quarters. His Josie-love, on the ship he’d named for her.

Not Joshing Josie, no bright sparks to cover the softness underneath. She stood limned in red under a blood sky, what he’d always wanted and could never quite have, not fully. Yet she was different now, hesitant. Afraid, he realized, because she’d said she loved him.

“No more games. No more running.” She lifted her chin as though daring him to disagree. As though what she said next might be the end for her. She tried one of her grins, but it came out wrong, twisted. “A confession.”

Van Gast leaned against the doorframe and she came to him then. No running, no slipping away, no distracting grin. Not Joshing Josie, fighting, biting Josie, she was Josienne du Fael ne Van Gast. Hard as steel on the outside perhaps, but soft and vulnerable inside and only now did she let him see it. It was in the way she looked up at him, the cant of her storm-ridden eyes, the twist of her lips that twisted his heart in time with them. A bond wasn’t her only fear, maybe not the greatest.

She stepped up to him, graceful still, a slow dance that ended with her hand ghosting over his. “A confession,” she said again.

He was entranced by the look of her, by the blood of the sky in her eyes, the smell of salt-spray and a free horizon in her hair. Capricious, his Josie. Changeable as the wind, as the sea, and all he’d ever wanted.

“I’m incredibly sexy and you want to rip all my clothes off?” he managed.

She changed now, slipped into an easy lopsided smile that twisted his heart anew and made a thrill run in his blood. This smile was devilry, but delight all the way. Josie, and Josienne, all in one.

“I wouldn’t have left you there, and I’d have loved you forever anyway,” she said. ‘Now, what are you going to do about it?”

He kissed her enough to shiver his toes, to make him crazy with it, and yet it was different this time. Less frantic, deeper, surer. Better, because she knew he loved her and, at last, he knew she loved him. Better, but no less fun, no less thrilling to him, because there was always time for a different sort of game.

“We could start,” he said, “by getting very, very naked.”

She laughed at that, and he pinned his butterfly, claimed his Josie-sea with kisses.

* * * * *