The Pirate's Lady

Chapter Seven



Van Gast let the crowds buffet him, kept his thieving hands in his pockets for once and his eyes open. The itch in his chest throbbed and burned, waxed and waned. Trouble somewhere, everywhere.

He came out of the delta, away from the vast, slow Est River that floated down all manner of things to trade from the interior. Over a last low bridge, dodging the slow water-raptor at the end, and onto the broad plaza that fronted the city proper, the buffer between the Yelen and the racks, licensed trade and underhanded dealing.

Heat radiated from the sand-colored city walls, shimmering the air over the crush of stalls, people and donkeys. Some of the more prestigious stalls were built of driftwood and silk, attached to the walls, but most were hastily arranged awnings on the vast plain of the plaza, some mere blankets laid on the ground.

As the day cooled and a fine dusk breeze sprang up to dry sweaty brows, more people squashed into the plaza until there was hardly a place to put your feet without stepping on something—feet bare or booted, tinkling with Forn’s bells or plain and silent. Trinkets for sale, herbs drying on blankets—a pungent bunch for every ailment from wart-eye to brewer’s droop. A stray orange, a child’s lost toy, or a water-raptor emboldened by hunger.

Van Gast insinuated his way through the heaving crowd and came to the dark entrance to the city—a narrow covered alley filled with traders, beggars, hawkers and guards. The farther in he got, the higher the quality and value of the goods on display, and the more guards.

Finally, the alley’s crowds spat him out into the Godsquare, the pulsing heart of the city full to bursting as the evening’s trading got underway now the heat of the day waned. Surrounded on all sides by temples, filled with not just traders but priests of all the gods. Oku’s men praying for justice, who Van Gast avoided like they were catching, because he’d never been too big a fan of justice. Kyr’s mummers acting out a mercy play, to beg for compassion for those who needed it. Van Gast dropped a couple of copper fish-heads into the bowl. Mercy he was quite fond of, especially when it was directed his way.

He pushed toward the temples and the busiest crush of the square. A glance up at the walls made him stop in his tracks and he let the crowds wash round him as he stared.

Oku’s temple stood like a sentinel over the heaving square. The temple’s façade was blank of ornament, the windows dark and unforgiving, the lines of the building simple and stark. Oku, god of justice and oaths. The Yelen were displaying their brand of justice rather more prominently than they had in the past.

On either side of the arched door at the top of a broad set of steps, the walls were studded with people. Racks on one side, their gaudy clothes clotted with blood, each with one hand nailed to the wall above their head. On the other side Remorians, their bond scars livid in the searing late sunlight, nailed through that scar in each case, hanging from it just enough so their toes touched the steps. All their bells were silent now, except one. Only one was still alive—a Remorian, his copper-bronze skin shiny with sweat, blood running down his arm, over his shoulder, pooling at his feet. He writhed and twisted against the grip of the nail, frothed and foamed at the mouth, spouting incoherent babblings that seemed all too familiar to Van Gast.

He turned away, all the thrill curdling in his stomach like bad wine. In the heart of the city was no place to be right now, and he wouldn’t find what he was looking for at this temple.

He worked his way round the edge of the square, past the bodyguard pen full of big men with bigger swords waiting for someone to come and hire them, for a job, a day, a week. Past stalls selling steaming pastries and tart little oranges or strange dried meats. He approached Herjan’s temple cautiously just as the sun dipped to the horizon out there beyond the walls. Boys hurried round with torches to light lamps in the gathering gloom, making the whole square flicker in dusk-orange and torch-red, turning faces into angular shadows, oddly unreal. As a rule Van Gast loved this time of day in the markets—dim enough that people didn’t see your hand unless they concentrated, light enough that he could see what he was stealing.

Not today though. He let his gaze flick casually over Herjan’s priests standing at the top of the steps, dispensing wisdom, settling disagreements among traders and others who gathered to hear their advice. His little-magics flared, but not enough to have him running, not yet, not when Josie might be so close. Over to the corner where the trader Haban habitually kept his tent—and a secret exit to the square nicely hidden. But Haban’s tent wasn’t there today. Instead of the pink-and-gold-striped silk tent Van Gast had expected, full of the scent of incense and sound—if not entirely honest—trading, stood a hastily cobbled-together stall selling pots and pans and other homely metal things, half of which Van Gast couldn’t name.

No Haban—that made his itch burn even more. Haban had held that pitch for as long as Van Gast could remember, had helped him out of more than one tight spot. Yet maybe that last trade had done for him—if they’d found that diamond on Haban, he’d be in the dungeons by now, or dead. A diamond that had originally been stolen from the Yelen. A theft that had started this whole sorry episode.

The stifling heat of the Godsquare, from the old stone of the temples radiating the stored sunlight of the day, from the people who surrounded him, was a blessing to his bones. Because here was the biggest danger. A square full of racks and traders, any one of whom might recognize him. For ten thousand sharks his mother would have turned him in. Nowhere was safe, everywhere was risk—and with that risk, thrill. He was alive with it, with the flutter of his heart, the pump of his blood. The itch of his trouble bone.

He sidled up next to the stall selling pots and pans and looked about. No Josie, no white-blond hair among the dark-haired crowds. A merchantman’s crew barged past, drunk and stumbling. Two ladies, their faces painted and their outfits even skimpier than the heat demanded, winked at him, but he ignored them and kept scanning the crowds.

Guards moved along the edges of the square, attempting casual interest and failing. The itch became a burn, became a shout of run, run NOW!

* * *

Rillen scanned the crowds from his vantage at the steps of Herjan’s temple, where he lurked among the wisdom-seekers. The square was dim, orange and black against the dying sun, yellow sparks of lamps lighting up pools of people, heaving crowds among the stalls and priests, beggars and hawkers. The noise of them swirled up to him—shouts, cajoling traders, the low, pitiful tones of a professional beggar, the roar of a thousand sets of Forn’s bells swaying among the press, sounding for all the world like the susurration of waves upon a beach.

He’d prepared as much as he could. Guards all round the square, some dressed as traders or sailors, some as guards. Men on roofs—Van Gast was legendary for his way of snaking up a wall and disappearing among the chimneys. Rillen had made sure every logical way off the roof of Herjan’s temple was covered, but he wasn’t sure it would be enough, not when they couldn’t say for sure which man he was until Haban’s niece turned up. Maybe not even then, but it was all the men he had.

She entered the square and Rillen puffed out a breath of relief. He lost her a moment as she darted between a press of people, and then she stopped by a stall, staring at the corner of the temple below him. Where Haban’s stall had been. Rillen scanned the dark corner—half a dozen men. Two sailors, obviously drunk, one beggar in rags, the stallholder, a man in a green shirt and what looked like one of the bodyguards from the pen on the corner—big muscles, a lot of bare skin, a face like a dog licking a thistle and enough weaponry to floor an elephant.

Rillen made a silent signal and his guards began to move. He hurried down the steps, keeping his eyes on her. She still stood by the stall. He nodded to a guard, indicated her, that the man should bring her, and turned to the corner of the temple. He needed to know which one.

The beggar eyed him warily and drew back as Rillen approached. The sailors began to argue, flinging insults and oaths like the priests threw colored rice on Kyr’s day. The man in the green shirt stood with his back to him, and Rillen almost passed him over—nothing about him really stood out, just a man like thousands of other merchanters crew hands in the city, in a sober green shirt. And bright red boots.

Is that him? Or not? Where is that little bitch to tell me? He cocked his gun and strode forward. A voice came from behind, low and soft.

“The man in the green shirt.”

* * *

“The man in the green shirt.”

The low, feminine voice was just on the edge of Van Gast’s hearing. He didn’t stop, not to look or question or wonder who or why. He’d picked this corner to watch for a reason. The ancient stucco walls of the Godsquare just here were studded with the ends of rafters, handy foot and handholds that had saved him before. He scrambled up, his boots slipping but his hands sure. Forn’s bells jangled as he climbed, a counterpoint to the swearing that drifted up from below, followed by the thud of someone else climbing, the click of pistols being cocked. A shout of his name. Shit.

He reached the flat roof and risked a glance down. Guards, Yelen guards. He was in deep shit, and it felt good. He grinned wildly into the dark and scudded over the roof, checking that his pistol was loose and ready as he ran. His little-magics burned like a well-stoked fire. Trouble was everywhere, following him, ahead on the roof, to either side.

Yelen guards probably weren’t going to care overmuch if he was alive or dead, as long as they caught him. But they weren’t going to catch him, because he was good, better than good. He was Van Gast, uncatchable, and he was going to win. His grin stretched his cheeks, his heart thudding with the thrill as he ran, skipped around the guard who appeared from behind a chimney, slipped, rolled past another, scrambled back to his feet and on.

“Andor Van Gast!”

A shout behind, but he didn’t turn to look. A fizzing bang, and then a bullet took a chunk of roof by his feet. Dead was apparently fine.

That wasn’t what made him stumble, or shot fear through him. They knew his secret name. It was all over, they knew. His secret name, a woman giving him away…Josie, it couldn’t be but it had to be. His feet defied his brain, didn’t stop but carried on.

The roof dropped away in front of him, almost sheer and with no guards to bar his way, no guards that stupid probably. He hurtled down the slope, letting the ridge hide him from the following guns. Tiles clattered under his boots, making him slip and slide ever faster toward the edge and a dark drop. Just as he was about to tip over into the unknown, he dropped to the tiles and twisted, grabbing the eave as he turned. His bells jounced to a halt two dozen feet in the air over a narrow alley. High enough it might give the guards pause.

Tiles fell over the edge and crashed to the ground, followed by cursing as the guards followed him, though slower, more cautious than he’d been. Damn it, and he hadn’t even stolen anything. Today anyway.

The alley was empty except for two drunks trying to punch each other and missing by half a yard. No one to hide among, no stalls to cover him. Double shit. He dropped to the packed earth and rolled, jarring his knees and making his bells protest too loudly. He recovered and ran right, toward the drunks and what hopefully might turn out to be an inn where he could lose himself in the crowd. A house would do, a door to anywhere off this empty alley where he was the only target.

No such luck—no doors, only blank walls. Another bang, the sting of shattered stucco on his ear and a hole appeared in the wall next to his head. This was getting just that bit too close for comfort. He picked up speed, his bells rattling faster than his heart. He laughed at the dread of it, the joy of it as he leaped a barrel, careered between two men ducked low as they rolled a drunk for money, and shot out of the alley like a cork from a bottle.

The square he found himself in wasn’t much of an improvement over the alley and he didn’t recognize it in the torch-lit dark. A few stallholders packing up, one or two dawdling shoppers and what seemed like acres of open space. Footsteps, hurried, scuffed, tripping as they encountered the muggers, were only heartbeats behind him.

A dark space, an alley so narrow he could hardly see it, opened between two stalls and he dived in, ignored the alarmed shouts of the stallholders and a woman’s surprised shriek. Better, much better. Dark and secret, and full of debris just right for climbing, up onto the drunken roofs of the houses that crammed round the Godsquare and the trading quarters close by. Not the smart end of town, not here, but close.

He wished his bells would shut up, or that he dared take them off, but no rack, no sailor would ever be without his endless prayers to Forn the merciless. He’d rather be shot than drown, sink down into the Deeps and an endless watery grave. Both those things paled before what rose in his mind now.

Josie had been supposed to meet him in the Godsquare, there and then. Maybe they’d already got her. On the tail of that, even as his breath heaved with the thought that they’d caught her, came another, more traitorous image. Maybe she’d set him up. Maybe this was the revenge she was after, for his betrayal. The worst thing for a Gan, for a woman, and she was both.

Those guards had known his true name. The only woman who knew his true name was Josie.

He dragged himself up the wall by way of a derelict bed and onto the roof. A proper roof now, one he felt at home on with nests of chimneys, ridges, dormers, cupolas and sharp gables with fancy fretwork to hide among. He ducked behind a cupola with a weather vane in the shape of a shark twisting in the breeze and kept still, to keep his bells from chiming and to help steady his breath and heart.

Plenty of military-style swearing drifted up from below but no footsteps in this alley. Yet—it was only a matter of time until the stallholders showed them the way. He took a deep breath and tried to think. Few options, none very palatable. These guards were maybe looking for Josie too, and might already have her. Or, with luck, she’d kept out of their way because they were looking for him. A slim hope.

Someone had set him up. Someone had said “In the green shirt” right behind him, a woman’s voice, soft and low, a voice he knew but it had been too quiet to say whose for sure. The guards had all been heading his way even before that. They’d known he was going to be there, and the only person who knew that was Josie, or whoever had sent the note. And his little-magics had itched him like crazy and he’d still gone, because he’d been sure—well, hoped like mad—it was her. How many people knew he’d do that? Not many. Josie, Holden, Guld. Maybe a few of the crew, gossiping little rumor-mongers that every sailor was. But he was sure they didn’t know his true name. Holden did, and Josie. Skrymir and Van Gast’s young son, Ansen, who crewed for Josie. No one else that he knew of. Only one woman on that list.

The sneaky sound in the alley of someone trying to be silent and failing wafted up to his little hidey-hole. No bells, not sailors. Guards. No time to think now, only do. He cast his gaze around, peering into a dark crusted with stars and the tiniest sliver of a moon. Not much to see by, but enough. He ran, the joy of it dimmed for once, the burn of a betrayal worse than the burn of his breath. But those guards wouldn’t catch him, not Van Gast, because he was good, better than good, and the f*ckers could never get him.