Ten Ruby Trick

by Julia Knight

  “Typhoon? Here?” Though now she said it, Holden felt the chill in his bones, the drop of the barometer in the throb of his blood. Ridiculous. “There’s hardly ever been more than a squall in these waters.”

  “Storm anchors,” she said, never taking her eyes from the sky. “Get the storm anchors down, head us into the wind. No harbor and no decent deepwater haven for miles—it’s all the chance we’ve got, and that’s bugger all.”

  Her agitation mixed with his own, brewed and fermented in his stomach like a sour wine. “No, we sail.”

  “Are you deluded? You can tell as well as I can what’s coming.”

  “I’ll have my mage do what he can, and that’s quite a lot, more than one of your true-mages can manage. My Master doesn’t send me out unprepared.”

  “Going to sink my ship!”

  “No more dangerous than riding it out here. There’s rocks aplenty by the shore if the wind breaks the anchors and drives us that way. Out to sea, with the mage dampening the winds, we’ll be fine.” He wished he could believe it, that he didn’t have this sense of dread at the pit of his stomach.

  He clambered aboard the Jesting Queen behind her but instead of taking her to his quarters, he barked out orders to get ready to sail and led her down the narrow steps to belowdecks.

  The way was cramped and musty down here, and Holden at times had to turn sideways and duck to make his way. Kyr only knew how Skrymir managed. Josie muttered to herself behind him, but he didn’t need to hear the words to know what she was saying. He was risking her ship. What he’d brought her down here for was to show her just why he thought sailing the best option. The least he could do, and if someone commandeered his ship, he’d want—no, demand—that the best care be taken of her.

  Josie wrinkled her nose and sniffed pointedly as they passed the mess, a few of his men shoveling the last of their meal in before they sailed. Was it true that Remorians smelled wrong to others? How could that be?

  They reached the last cramped room aft. Two sailors stood up straighter at their approach. Holden opened the door into near darkness and Josie stood back with a cry.

  “Kyr’s mercy, what have you let die in there?” The words were muffled by the hand that flew to cover her mouth and nose. “It stinks like month-old meat.”

  All Holden could smell was a certain extra mustiness and the hint of unwashed skin. “No one’s dead, and it doesn’t smell that bad.”

  She looked at him with wide, incredulous eyes. “You don’t smell it?”

  “Well, he’s a little ripe, but that’s part of the price of his magic.”

  “A little ripe?” Josie pulled her shirt up over her face and her breath puffed through it in quick, shallow gasps. The ship moved under them, buffeted by a stronger wind, half a point alee. Half a point farther toward the coast and the rocks that lurked in the shallows by the shore.

  Holden squashed the sharp words that came to mind and turned to grope for the lantern and flint that hung inside the door. “You’ll get used to it.” It took only a few moments before the lamp was lit and he pulled her into the room after him.

  He lifted the lamp so she could see better. Cattan sat in his usual place atop a pile of rugs and cushions to shield him from pressure sores, glittering with the magic that covered him in a lumpy crystal skin.

  Josie pulled away from his hand and he turned to berate her, but she sat abruptly on the floor, staring at Cattan. “What, in all that’s holy, is that?”

  “My mage, Cattan.” Holden thought she’d forgotten to breathe.

  “That’s a person?”

  Cattan creaked open an eyelid. Holden winced at the flakes of magic that fell from his skin and floated in the waft of his breath before they fell to the deck with a tiny green spark. Holden was so used to him, to the humped and monstrous shapes that the mages became when the power covered them, it had never occurred to him how strange Cattan would appear to her, to anyone who’d never moved among Remorians.

  “Cattan, may I introduce Josie, captain of this vessel, so kindly loaned to us for our mission.”

  Cattan’s lips moved, stiff with the effort of trying not to dislodge any more flakes than he need. “Charmed.” For all the repugnance of his appearance—to Josie at least—Cattan’s voice was rich and rolling and filled the small room with a hint of the wild power he held in glittering splendor on his skin.

  Josie got to her feet and moved closer, though her breathing was still shallow. She walked around him as though dazed, reached out to touch him but started back at a warning word from Holden.

  “How does he do—well, anything?”

  “All he does is magic. We do everything else for him. That’s what the bonded, the Remorians are for. And he’s the one who’s going to keep the storm from hitting us too bad. All right, Cattan?”

  “Right,” Cattan breathed through still lips. “Ready.”

  Holden pulled at Josie, a dead weight against his hand as she stared at the mage, squinted at the crystals that shone in the dim lamplight like a million diamonds. He manhandled her out of the door, doused the lamp to save Cattan’s eyes, sensitive because so often shut, and dragged her back to the upper deck.

  “He can’t do anything else?”

  More than his appearance seemed to stick in her mind. “Not really, but what he does do more than makes up for it.”

  “He could bathe occasionally. The stink!” The wind whipped her hair across her face and she looked up at the rigging critically, muttering under her breath about the amount of sail.

  “Not if he wants to keep his magic. In you go.” Holden shoved her toward the door to their quarters.

  Once again she baulked at his push and was rewarded with a spasm of pain. One that brought it back to both of them, that he was Master and she was bonded. He’d almost forgotten, or maybe that wasn’t quite true. He’d wanted to forget. He tried again to get her in the door, but still she fought against him despite the clench of her teeth against the agony that had to be ripping through her for her disobedience.

  “Forn’s balls, Josie, get in the damn room!”

  She shook her head, whipping the beads and braids around a face set into a determined scowl. “My ship. Mine, no matter what else, and if you persist in this—this lunacy, I’ll be on the bloody deck making sure you don’t sink it.” The wind picked up again and squalled a sheet of warm rain across the deck. “You need everyone on deck if you do this. I know my ship better than anyone and my little-magics run this way. If anyone can keep a ship afloat sailing in a typhoon, it’s me.”

  He stared back, not sure whether to be angry with her for trying to defy him or admire her for fighting against him, the bond, the pain, for her ship. For what made her who she was. She planted her feet, let her hand drop to the haft of her knife and gritted her teeth against the pain. Foolishness, madness.

  Admiration won, nonetheless. Holden stood back and nodded in the direction of the quarterdeck. “Take the wheel then. Cattan’ll dampen what he can, but if the rain gets too bad it’ll interfere with the magic, reflect it back. Whatever, you keep her steady before the wind and keep your nerve, and we’ll be afloat come morning.”

  “Teach your grandmother how to suck eggs, why don’t you?” she snapped, but she ran up the steps and took the wheel.

  Another squall of wind, more vicious this time, whipped the words from his mouth as he turned away to give his orders. He shouted against the building roar and men scurried to do his bidding. Holden checked the sails and rigging, checked that everyone was where they were supposed to be.

  By the time all was to his satisfaction, he was soaked to the skin. The wind was a steady howl and had already turned them more than halfway toward the shore, despite all he’d done to try and prevent it. He shook off the subtle throb of dread in his stomach, took the steps up to the wheel two at a time and sent a crew-man down to Cattan. Now they needed his magic, now he could show Josie just a hint of what serving a mage of the power meant.

  She stood
at the wheel, swaying with the ship and glaring at the amount of sail. “Going to lose a mast if you keep that up.”

  “No, we won’t, just you wait and see.” Holden ordered the anchor pulled up and the sails loosed. The ship lurched as the wind caught at the sails and tugged. Josie struggled with the wheel a second before she got the ship steady, and they scudded across the rising waves away from Sarigin.

  Then, just as she was swearing at him in terms so vile he’d only heard of half of them, the wind dropped to a stiff, steady breeze, just right for where they were headed. The rain became a warm drizzle, a slight nuisance rather than a face-slapping half blindness. Yet not ten fathoms from the hull of the ship, the storm continued to build. Wind howled among the houses on the shore, sang in the rigging of the ships in port. A small ship closer to shore broke free from an anchor to swirl about wildly, and a roof whipped away from one of the buildings of Sarigin.

  Josie hesitated only a heartbeat, maybe the surprise at Cattan’s power secondary to the fact her ship was safer now than it would be at anchor. She heeled the wheel round, Holden shouted his orders, and they were underway.

  “Why can’t you do that?” Van Gast demanded of Guld as they watched Josie’s ship turn and head out to sea in a protective bubble.

  “I—well, that’s to say—it’s—I don’t know.” Guld stared open-mouthed after the ship.

  “Well, bloody well think of something. There’s something odd going on here and I want to find out what. I want to follow, now.”

  “I could…no, that won’t work. Um, I could—” Guld’s larynx bobbed up and down worriedly under Van Gast’s glare. “Yes, yes, I can dampen the winds a little. Not as much as that, mind. Remorian mage, see, they’re powerful.”

  “Get on with it then.” Van Gast squinted into the wind-lashed rain as Josie sailed farther and farther from him. She had far too much sail. Her ship should have lost a mast at least by now, the way the wind was tearing at him. Yet her ship moved easily over calmer waves, the sails bellied but not stressed.

  Van Gast had never seen anything like it, and that twisted the dread in him. What had Josie got herself, and now him, involved in? And why? If this Holden was on her ship, why didn’t she just take whatever it was she planned to steal? A Remorian in the bar had been bad enough—but she’d let them on board her ship and let a mage have control. There was no way in the Deeps the Josie he knew would even entertain the idea. No. Way. If he hadn’t seen her wrists were clear, he might have thought she was bonded.

  Yet there had been something odd about her tonight, something very different. It worried him that even he, with his little-magic in that specialty, couldn’t work out what was making it itch. The Remorian? Maybe, but Josie wasn’t stupid, far from it. She’d not be trying to twist him if she thought she’d end up bonded. A surprise for him, hadn’t she said that last time he saw her? A surprise, all right, but not a good one.

  It wasn’t the Remorian who was causing the itch behind his breastbone. Her, that was it, and that was stupid. She’d definitely been different though. Closed in, he’d thought at the time. Paler, and gaunt, as though she’d lost some weight. Maybe her bringing out the old Ten Ruby Trick was some kind of message, but what? Or maybe the itch was trying to tell him not that Josie was getting him in trouble, but that she was in trouble. Best to wait and see. Play it canny, see what occurred.

  The wind lessened around them as Guld got to work, not much but enough that Van Gast thought they could ride it. Out to sea and running before it was a better chance than squashed up here with half a dozen ships, any one of which might rip free from its anchor and slam into them. A lot better chance than ending up on the rocks that lurked under the shallows. He had his crew reef most of the sail—he might want to catch up with Josie and her new friends, but not at the expense of a mast. Still, this was reckless, even for him.

  Dillet was the one who finally said it. Van Gast’s first mate waited till he was alone on the bridge except for Guld, who was lost in concentration, and sidled up. “What we doing following her, Van? We all saw the Remorian on the longboat. Josie and a Remorian? We ought to be sailing the other way, if we sail anywhere in this muck. The lads—the lads don’t want to go, Van. Too bloody dangerous by half.”

  Van Gast contemplated how much to tell him. Not all of it, not even half of it. Yet the ship wasn’t just his to run as he saw fit. If he didn’t consider his crew, they’d leave, quicker than rats. So, just enough to mollify them for now.

  “Dillet, if they can sail this, so can we. Or you think a Remorian a better sailor than us? She’s all caught up in a twist, and while she’s otherwise occupied with him, I want to twist her, twist her so fucking hard she bleeds. She’s the one taking the danger with him, not us. We’re just going to keep a weather eye and see what drops. All right?”

  “I don’t know, Van.” Dillet spat on the deck and chewed at his bottom lip. “One of these days you and her’s hatred is going to bring some bad luck our way, and you know it. Don’t go pushing it too far. You listen to that trouble bone of yours.”

  Van Gast tried a reassuring smile. “Currently, it’s telling me no trouble. Now do we sail?”

  Dillet regarded Van Gast thoughtfully. “You reckon Guld is up to it? We ain’t getting through this storm without a powerful bit of magic.”

  “Guld?”

  The mage jumped, startled out of his muttering reverie. “What? Oh, yes. I think so. I think I can get us through it. Might be a bit choppy, but we should be all right. I just need to…” He trailed off, his eyes glazed over, and he started muttering again. The wind around them dropped appreciably.

  “All right,” Dillet said grudgingly. “But any trouble and we wants out of it, got that, Van?”

  “Absolutely.” Lying was as easy to him as breathing, but it never really felt right lying to his crew.

  Dillet jerked his head in agreement and went back to the crew, shouting orders as he went. Van Gast watched him go and tried not to feel the itch that was building to a burn behind his ribs.

  Holden tried to hold on to Josie but it was like trying to manage an angry octopus. Cattan was losing control—the rain was too heavy, reflecting his magic back to the ship maybe. With his loss of control, the wind ripped at them, a sudden blast that stretched the sails to breaking point.

  “You’re going to sink my fucking ship! Now either help me sort the sail or get your mage to do his job.” Josie pulled herself from his grasp and ran for the rigging.

  Holden lurched after her, but she slipped through his fingers and was at the first yard before he could blink, shouting for the rest of the crew to help her reef sail.

  The worst of it was that she was right. He’d relied too heavily on a magic he’d never understood, and risked her ship in a storm he’d never have sailed in his own ship. He clattered down the steps and ran along the aisle to Cattan, hunched over until he reached the compartment. The sailors weren’t outside the door—and the door was open. The ship heaved in the wind and tried to tip him from his feet, but he grabbed at the doorway and hauled himself through. It hit him immediately why the spell had failed, why even now his crew were risking their lives trying to reef in sail.

  Water was everywhere, spraying in between a rent in the planking. One of the sailors was trying to halt the flow, shoving spare sail into the gap, but still water seeped and spurted over the other sailor as he tried to protect the mage—and water spilled over Cattan.

  Dissolved magic flowed and ran across the deck, multicolored puddles that glistened in oily splendor. Cattan screamed breathlessly, silently, and Holden didn’t know if it was for pain or for the loss of his power. Holden had never, in all their years working together, seen his skin. He’d never known how wrinkled and shriveled it was under the crystals, how atrophied the muscles. How pathetic a mage of the power was when stripped of his only strength. How easy it would be…

  A crash from above decks, a series of screams, ripped through his thoughts. Magic, the magic that rul
ed his whole life, was gone. It was just them, what they could do against the storm. They were dead, sunk as a stone. Fear paralyzed him. Fear of having no magic to back him up, the one constant in his life. Fear that now he had to be a better sailor, not rely on an intangible, ephemeral power. That he had no orders for this, he had to think it for himself.

  Another crash shook the ship as this storm saw only a leaf in its way, one to toss around as it saw fit. More screams. He had to do it, and only one person to help him, one person who knew how to survive without a Remorian mage to stifle the weather. Almost before he was aware he’d moved, he was up the steps and back on deck. Into chaos.

  The main mast lay in ruins, the tip of it a mangled mess dangling over the side. Three men were trapped beneath it, one screaming as blood spurted from his leg, the other two still and pale and silent. Rigging and sail tangled the deck, and rain lashed everything into a blur. Holden ran to the steps, jumping splinters of the mast, and staggered into the wind. No one at the wheel, the first mate’s face a mask of blood as he wilted against the rail.

  Holden grabbed the wheel and lost the skin from one hand when it whipped round. It took all his strength to pull it back to center. Rain blinded him and he jumped from his skin when Skrymir appeared at his side, a grey humped shape in the darkness.

  “She’s gone!”

  Skrymir’s mouth was by his ear and still Holden had to strain to catch the words. When they finally penetrated, it wasn’t the wind and rain that ran goose bumps up his spine.

  “What?” Another blast of wind tore the wheel from his hands, and Skrymir lent his weight to keep the ship straight. Straight to where was another question.

  “She was on the main mast when it busted. She’s overboard. She jumped.”

  Holden staggered back from the wheel, forgot even to hold it. Josie was his chance, his only chance at doing what he had to. His only chance of catching Van Gast, of a life free of the pain and suffering an unfulfilled bond would mean. That wasn’t even the worst of it. Josie represented everything he wanted for himself, the person who’d begun to wake him up to the possibilities of life without bonds.