Ten Ruby Trick

by Julia Knight

  The crowd thinned as he walked, became more refined until his gaudy clothes were unusual rather than the norm and the sound of the bells at his ankle were a lonely echo, hoping for other seamen to join in the prayer. Just on the cusp of standing out, he stopped outside an inn. The Herald’s Trumpet. Then the itch was back, not an itch, gods no, not a burn, it was a tear in his chest. Someone was ripping his ribs apart with a giant hand. How had they found him? Who knew, and it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he was fucked.

  He didn’t stop to look, or to think. He ran and laughed aloud at the sheer blood-pumping joy of it, of knowing he was screwed but hoping beyond all hope he wasn’t too screwed, that he would weasel his way out of it.

  A shout went up behind him and he ran faster, jinked round a corner, the other way round the next, left and right down alleys, up a shambolic outside stair that led to a roof garden. Footsteps followed him and he took a heartbeat to look. The beggar and the Kyr’s mummer. Other men shouted from away to his right. Trying to hem him in.

  More fool them. He reached the roof garden, ran roughshod over the delicate arrangements, destroyed borders in a spray of dry earth, planted one foot on the low wall and leaped. His breath tasted of copper as the neighboring roof caught him. He scrambled up the loose tiles and ran on again. Shouts surrounded him, left and right from other rooftops, from behind. Only ahead was clear. Only ahead lay escape.

  Ahead was a ten-foot wall blank with stucco, no handholds, no handy bricks to climb, and either side a long drop to the street. He jerked to the left, past the outstretched fingertips of the mummer, ducked and rolled and caught the edge of the eave as he tumbled over the side of the building. His arm yanked him to a stop, the muscles screaming, but there was a window open, by Kyr’s mercy. He dove through, feet first.

  He landed in a messy heap on a filthy rug, but it didn’t matter. His heart was thumping pure, unadulterated joy-fear through him. He was Van Gast, he was good, better than good, he was the master at this, and better than whoever it was wanted him so bad. He scrambled to his feet and out of the door. The voices behind grew faint for a second then stronger again—someone had followed. It didn’t matter where he ran, only that he was running, that he was ahead, that his breath was fire and his legs were lead and he was going to win.

  Out the door, along a corridor, into another bedroom, making a woman scream and clutch a thin sheet over herself. Too late.

  “Pardon, madam. Nice tits.” Out the window, hold the sill and hang down, drop light as a feather to the street and round the corner into an alley. Keep going, keep running, Forn’s bells chiming so fast they’re a blur of tinkling noise, don’t let the bastards catch you. Go left, go right.

  Through that inn and out the other side, coming out with half a bottle of spirit that he swigged as he ran. Another turn and the ripping sensation faded, back to a burn, down to an itch and then gone. He’d lost them. He slid down a stucco wall caked in mud, down into whatever it was that coated the alley floor, and it was sweet as wine. He took another swig of the spirit and savored the burn that swept through him, that said he was alive, he was kicking, and the bastards would never get him.

  Chapter Five

  Holden and Skrymir stood panting on the broad thoroughfare that led down to the marina and docks, to the center of everything here in Estovan. Rich merchantmen eyed them warily and hurried past as Holden caught his breath. So close, they’d almost had him there for a heartbeat, outside that inn. Holden had thought him lost, had ordered his men back to the ship in the licensed dock with a heart heavy with fear. Then, just as Holden’s mind had conjured the third excruciating punishment the Master would plan for him, Van Gast appeared, standing outside a respectable inn, the Herald’s Trumpet. And gone, fast as a shark after seals, as they crept up behind him. The man was impossible to catch. He seemed to always know when they were coming.

  The rest of Holden’s men clotted round him, sweat and dust staining their faces, their fear no less palpable than his own. Failure was not a happy prospect.

  “You.” Holden pointed at the man disguised as a beggar. “Back to the docks, see if Cattan’s managed to find their ship, and if not, why not. The rest of you, back this way. We haven’t finished with him today, not yet.”

  “The inn?” Skrymir asked and Holden nodded tersely.

  Van Gast hadn’t headed straight for his ship when he knew they were after him. Because he had something important to do in that inn.

  “I want everyone out of sight but watching it, every entrance. I’m going to catch this man if it kills me.” And if I don’t, it probably will.

  Van Gast threaded his cautious way back, intent on everyone and everything, waiting for the itch to start. He was tempted to take off his bells, to creep more quietly, but that would be an enticement to fate. Forn, the sea, the threat of the Deep, was a bigger fear than whoever chased him.

  He neared the Herald’s Trumpet through a rubbish-strewn side alley, and immediately it scratched at him, the itch. Faint as yet. He would maybe have time enough to say what he wanted here, though not time enough to do what he wanted, because they were waiting for him, whoever they were. This was possibly the most stupid thing he’d ever done, and his mouth ached with the grin he couldn’t get rid of, his heart thudding with the thrill of it.

  As he walked and sidled and crept, he thought. Who was after him—and why hadn’t they shot him? He’d seen enough of the beggar and the mummer once the chase had started to realize they wore pistols. Why hadn’t they used them? Because they wanted him alive, that was why. A vaguely encouraging thought, or not, depending. Encouraging if they merely wanted to scare him off something or warn him, give him a beating. He’d had worse on occasion. Not encouraging if they wanted to kill him slowly rather than quickly. It all depended on who was after him and why.

  He’d lost them, and then they’d found him, near the docks. On the way back to their ship? He was a fool not to have thought of it before, to have thought that the teeming anonymous humanity of the city would save him. He took a slight detour and found a shadowed nook where he could look out over the docks and see who was in port.

  Five fat-bellied merchantmen, slow ponderous ships that he’d love to take, only merchants that rich would have their gunships anchored just outside the harbor. Pity really, but the open sea was the best place to take a merchantman, where he could maneuver and twist and win. He recognized two of the ships. One owned by a man he’d stolen a cargo from not too long ago, no matter his gunships. Keeping Van Gast alive didn’t seem his style though. Stone cold dead with a bullet in the face was more his thing. Brutal but straightforward. No, not him.

  Van Gast’s gaze ran over the smaller marina to one side, where the Yelen kept their personal ships, an altogether more fragrant place than the rancid trading docks. The Yelen chambers, all pale stucco and occasional sculptures of ships and mermaids crudely placed, which seemed to be put there to try to assume a grace they didn’t have. A square and somehow sterile building that loomed up behind their yachts and pleasure barges.

  A powerful bunch, the Yelen, and noted for their love of vengeance. Van Gast had taken the Sea Witch, a daughter and a dowry. A huge incentive, for an Estovan. It was rumored that in the dark dungeons below their chambers, they long kept men who’d twisted the wrong person, scammed a Yelen or their kin. Kept alive and not-alive for months, years, decades. Van Gast was beginning to wish he’d never seen the Sea Witch, no matter the diamond was the one biggest share of a booty he’d ever had. Maybe he’d do well to keep away from Estovan and the Yelen for a while. Plenty of other cities nearly as rich, other ways to make money.

  The sun hovered just at the horizon, and it was only when Van Gast moved to go that he saw the other ship, hunkered in the long shadows piling up at the far end of the docks as though ashamed. A different sort of merchantman, this one. Sleeker, faster, well gunned on her own, no need of protective guard-ships. The sharpness of the prow, the way the quarter deck was aligned, ins
tantly told him its origin. Remorian. At least they weren’t after him for anything—he wasn’t so stupid as to scam a Remorian, or even get within a league of one if he could help it.

  They’d all heard the tales of bonding, of what it did to a man, took his mind and turned it over to the shadowy power that ran the Archipelago. Any racketeer, merchantman or lowly fish-gutter feared that more than a bullet out of the dark. But the men after him hadn’t been Remorian; they’d not the copper-bronze skin, the dark hair cropped close to the scalp. They’d been many colors of skin, even a pale Gan, but not that. Not islanders come to make his mind a slave, and he offered up a quick prayer of thanks to Forn.

  The light bled out of the day in long red streaks that washed the streets as Van Gast made his careful way back to the Herald’s Trumpet. The itch grew as he got closer. They were waiting for him, must be, had somehow worked out that the inn had been his destination all along. The sensible thing, of course, would be to get back to the ship and sail the fuck away, stay away from the Yelen and Estovan for as long as it took for this to die down and for them to find another man to hunt.

  Fuck the sensible thing. Josie was waiting and she didn’t take kindly to waiting longer than she had to.

  Bad enough that he would only have time to say he couldn’t stay, he had to leave, and arrange their next meeting, when what he really wanted to do was spend the night in bed with her. Wait another month? He didn’t want to wait another day.

  He sidled down an alley behind the inn and stopped in a shadow, listened to his itch and let his eyes get used to the gloom. Someone up ahead, just standing and waiting. Watching. Van Gast slid back deeper into the shadows and looked around. The ground was covered, what about the roof?

  Moving carefully so his bells didn’t chime, he soon found what he was looking for—two houses that leaned toward each other drunkenly, narrowing the alley still further. Narrow enough he could place his feet on one wall and his shoulders on the other and shuffle his way up, until his reaching hand could grab the eave and pull him onto the tiles.

  He waited a heartbeat on the roof and scanned the inn. They had someone up here too, skulking in a nest of chimneypots. Taking no chances. The failing light would help Van Gast though, and the man was in the wrong place.

  He snuck along, ducked low behind the ridge of the roof and made the small jump to the inn. A close thing, but he was pretty sure the man on the roof couldn’t see him from this angle, though he might have heard the jingle of bells Van Gast couldn’t stop. The window he was after was just below him. He slid down and swung through.

  The slide of steel from a scabbard almost drowned the low whistle from the roof. Josie looked at him, one eyebrow raised, and lowered her sword. “What’s wrong with the door?”

  “Too sensible.” He stepped forward and took her arms in his hands and slid them down, felt the heat of her through the thin linen, the vitality that seeped from her into him, made him a little crazy. Maybe a lot crazy. Gods damn it all, he didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay, wanted everything of her even when he knew it was impossible, for her soul to burn away when he loved her, for her to lie under him and say she loved him. Only he couldn’t say it, not without driving her away. “I can’t stay. I only came to arrange another time, there’s people after me.”

  “When aren’t there people after you?”

  “True.” He leaned down and kissed her, and for once she didn’t try and wriggle away. “A month, at the Dorston house?”

  “Longer, six weeks.”

  “Six—damn it, Josie, I don’t want to wait another minute, let alone a month and then an extra eighteen days. It’s possible I might burst, and you wouldn’t want that on your conscience, would you?”

  Josie laughed then tipped her head to one side, her face unusually serious, her eyes soft. She traced a hand over his cheek and rubbed her thumb over his lips in a way that made his groin shiver. That made him think maybe, just maybe…

  “I’ll have a surprise for you. A good one. Six weeks.”

  Van Gast kissed her thumb. “Does this surprise include being naked?”

  She grinned up at him, the wicked, lopsided Josie grin. “Andor Van Gast, is—”

  A thin creak outside the room. Someone was trying to creep up the stairs, badly. At least Josie had the door barred shut. The creak of the floor grew closer, the itch in his chest grew warmer, began to burn. Shit, he didn’t have time for this. When had that ever stopped him?

  “All right, six weeks.” He kissed her again, enough of a kiss to last him that long. He slid his hands down her arms and twined them in hers, pushed her back against the wall, and let everything come out through his lips. It wasn’t enough, he needed words, and he didn’t have the right ones, he never did with Josie. With anyone else he could have said it and not meant it, but with her, in meaning it, he couldn’t say it.

  Someone tried the latch quietly and found the door barred. Van Gast pulled away. “You’ll need to get out too, but it’s me they’re after. Just get hidden and safe, all right? And take these, look after them. A surprise for you, in return.”

  The glass daggers had been troubling him the whole way. He hadn’t trusted Dillet not to sell them to the first buyer, but the thought of all that wealth waiting to break the first time he stumbled—why couldn’t Haban have given him something more robust?

  He didn’t have time for more—someone banged on the door as though they were a bull trying to break it down. Van Gast swung a leg over the sill, but Josie stayed where she was. “You need to get out too, Josie.”

  She grinned her Joshing Josie grin at him and nodded to the other door, the one that led to a room all but filled with a vast bath. The one he’d been planning to spend a lot of time in with her, getting very clean and then getting mucky again. “They’re after you, not me.”

  The bar on the door groaned and splintered. Josie slipped through the door to the bathroom and the bolt went home. Kyr have mercy, the woman drove him mad. He sometimes wondered if she ever spared him a second thought when he wasn’t there. Then he had no time to think, only do, as the bar split and two men fell into the room.

  Van Gast got his other leg over the sill and dropped to the alley. He landed lightly enough and ran, a mad, joyous grin on his face. Stupidity had never been so much fun.

  Chapter Six

  Holden and Skrymir stood at the rail together as the ship slid into port and nestled up against the jetty. Skrymir called a few orders and deckhands rushed to tie up, glad to be home again, or at least partly glad. Not for them the punishment of failure, the responsibility of the Master’s orders. Holden shivered in the humid heat that seemed to strip the breath from him and looked up at the city, at the white houses marching up the hill, stained orange and pink by the lowering sun. His sharp gaze roved over the regular lines, the wide streets scrubbed spotless, the neat harbormaster’s office, the painfully clean docks. A breeze washed out over them from the Master’s gardens atop the hill, surrounding them in the heavy scents of honeysuckle, moonflower and jasmine. He was home, and it was good, no matter the circumstances. It would always be home.

  This was Skrymir’s first time ashore in a Remorian city. One cheek bunched as he considered the view and his eyes never stopped moving, but he said nothing until Holden made to disembark.

  “You don’t have to, you know.”

  Holden stopped with his hand on the rail and looked the question.

  “Go ashore, take your punishment. You did the best you could to catch him, we all did, but from everything we’ve heard, he’s uncatchable. You don’t have to…” Skrymir’s good-natured face screwed up with words he couldn’t say, or didn’t want to.

  Holden hadn’t said anything to him about his own fate once they were ashore and he was in the presence of the Master. Doubtless the crew had told Skrymir and it wasn’t sitting well on his heart. The Gan had odd notions about things, about how people should behave.

  “I do have to.” There was no more to be said. He’d
failed in a direct order from the Master, and not just once. He had no excuses for that. Forn’s bells jingled at his ankle as he started down the gangplank. Skrymir’s chimed in time as he followed.

  The deckhands finished off and hurried up to the communal rooms by the harbormaster’s office, or to their homes and the women bonded to them, a tangle of bells and goodbyes. Holden and Skrymir made their way more slowly up the hill toward the palace, Skrymir’s eyes never still, taking it all in with a frown.

  “Why?” Skrymir asked after a time.

  Holden let his pace slow further and rolled up the billowed sleeve of his commander’s grey silk tunic. The scar was livid in the late sun, and the muscles in Skrymir’s cheek twitched again. “I have no choice, and even if I did, still I’d do it. Look around, what do you see?”

  They’d reached the edge of the market square. Traders were packing up stalls, bakers selling off the last of their wares cheap before they finished for the evening. A silk merchant struggled with his display in the strengthening wind, and two neighboring traders hurried to help him. No shouts to advertise their wares, no loud haggling over prices or disputes over space. Children played quietly in a corner, no screams or tears or arguments over who had which toy. The paving stones that lined the square were scrubbed to within an inch of their life, no rubbish blowing in the wind, no dust or dirt marring them. Skrymir’s eyebrows drew down in long thought.