by Julia Knight
“…out of the scam, then you take him to your cells and I’m free. In the meantime, we can enjoy ourselves…”
The grainy ghost of Josie leaned forward and kissed Holden, soft and slow.
Van Gast’s stomach rolled over and he had to fight the urge to be sick. “Shut it off.”
“There’s more…”
“Shut it off!” Van Gast stood up and went to the desk, poured himself a generous tot of brandy and swigged it like it was the cheapest grog. “She’s just setting him up for the scam, that’s all. Same way she always does when it’s a counter-scam. Makes them think they’re going to get a piece of her, going to twist me, only it’s us twisting them.” Only she didn’t always set them up like this, or not that he knew of. Of course, for her this man was different, might expect more from her.
“Van, I don’t think—”
“I don’t pay you to fucking think!” Van Gast threw his glass against the wall with all the force he could muster and ran his hands through his hair. “She’s setting him up. Same as she always does. That’s all.” That was all, except for this damn burn behind his breastbone and the thought of her with Holden, that it might be more this time. Might be more, or she might be in worse trouble, getting twisted by Holden because she was blind to see.
“If you say so, only Josie’s—”
“Josie again, eh? Knew you was up to something.” A new voice. Dillet, quiet and sneaky by the door that Van Gast had been too busy to notice open. “Told you, Van, told you we ain’t going nowhere near a twist on them Remorians.” His hand was on the butt of his pistol as he stepped back through the door and onto the deck, his voice getting louder all the while. “Told you, we ain’t doing it and you can swim to Tarana.”
Van Gast pulled his sword and stepped out onto the sunburned humidity of the deck. The heat dragged sweat out of him, stuck his shirt to his back, the fair wind snapping at the sails doing little to alleviate it. He dragged a sleeve across his face to wipe away the sweat there and Dillet did the same.
Dillet pulled his pistol out, but it was only a one-shot deal and he wasn’t the best aim there was. Van Gast raised his sword and walked toward him at the ready. He could beat Dillet if one of his arms fell off and he was struck blind.
“We’re going where I say we’re going, and that’s Tarana. Got a meet there, and a deal.”
“With that Josie bitch? No, Van, we ain’t. You take one step closer and I’ll shoot you.”
Four crew-hands appeared behind Dillet, all with pistols drawn.
Fuck it, fuck the lot of them. He lunged forward and slashed his sword along Dillet’s arm. Dillet managed to squeeze off his shot before he dropped it but it went wild. Van Gast didn’t wait to see if it hit him but brought an elbow round into Dillet’s face and lashed out with the sword again, at the hand behind him, drew blood and a scream and another pistol on the deck.
Then they were on him, and he was grinning with the stupidity of it, the thrill as he kicked and slashed and elbowed. He took a cut to his arm but barely noticed.
“Van look ou—” Guld’s voice, shrill and panicky.
Something smacked into the back of his head and the last thing he saw was the deck rushing up to greet him.
Chapter Eighteen
Two days later Holden hovered by the steps that led up to the quarterdeck. The wind was stiff enough to billow at his tunic, and the ship was scudding along fair. It wasn’t the ship that worried him, or whether they’d get to Tarana in time, but who lay in the captain’s quarters and whether she’d make it to port alive.
The hatch opened and Skrymir came out, his face pale and drawn with worry. He saw Holden watching, stopped dead and looked around to see who was about, more likely to see if Cattan could see them, but the mage wasn’t on deck. His magic had begun to grow back and being on deck was a risk to it, so he mostly kept below.
Skrymir stalked toward Holden, his usually amiable face drawn into a glare, and stopped a pace away, arms folded and legs planted like cannons. The disgust was plain to see. Holden had to fight the urge to look away.
“Closest I got to kin this far from home,” Skrymir said at last. “And you’re killing her, you and your mage, and I helped you do it.”
Holden’s mouth was helpless to speak, he could only stare. Skrymir pulled a knife from a sheath at his hip, reached up into his hair and with one deliberate stroke, cut off his braid. “You’ve taken my honor from me. I’d break my oath, cut off my braid, my family, my honor and go to the Deep rather than be oathed to a man who would do that and think it ‘right’ and ‘necessary.’ You said to me it wouldn’t kill her, that you’d see her right, and that’s the only reason I went along, that and I’m oathed to you. I told her you were a fair man to be oathed to. I thought you were a man of honor, that you would do what was right. I was wrong, I see that now. Without that chain about your wrist, you’re nothing, and I’m not oathed to you anymore. I’ve broken it, and given my word to her instead.”
He held out his braid, blue on white, the colors of his house, and pressed it into Holden’s hand. He’d cast himself out of his people.
Without a backward glance, Skrymir wrenched open the door to below and slammed it shut behind him.
Holden stared at the braid for a long time and recalled a time when Skrymir had told him what that meant. To break an oath was a choice, one that would cast him from everything he held dear, all that made him a man in the eyes of his people. A choice that the bond never gave. Holden had thought that his Master was the benevolent one, to welcome him back when he’d failed, that the Gan were the barbarians. He’d been wrong too.
He moved over to the door to the captain’s quarters, to a small pane of glass set into the surround. Josie lay on the rumpled, filthy bed dressed only in a shirt, her leg black with poisonous lines than were more than halfway from her knee to her hip.
With a glance around him to make sure no one was watching, he slid into the cabin. The air reeked of illness and decay. Josie lay still on the bed, curled around herself, her skin pale where it wasn’t black from poison.
“Josie?” He stepped forward, wanting to reach out, reassure her.
She said something in a language he didn’t understand, all throat sounds and brutality. All he caught was “Skrymir.” Their language then, spoken while the big Gan took what care he could of her.
A tingle in his wrist, the threat of pain made him turn. Cattan, his skin glittering in the morning sun. “Holden, attend to your duties. Now.”
His feet turned of their own accord and made for the stairs to the quarterdeck. He gripped onto the rail, tried to stop his steps, but the grinding pain thwarted him. When he looked at his wrist, a black line had begun to snake its way toward his elbow. There was no fighting it, not for him. He looked again at the braid in his hand. A man’s honor.
He’d failed her, failed them all, and all he could do now was to catch Van Gast and hope that Josie would live long enough to get the bond off her.
Van Gast cracked open a bleary eye against a blinding pain and a searing sun. He didn’t recall falling asleep on deck and, besides, the ship was rocking far too much. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes in the vain hope that would push the pain back and sat up with a groan. When he blinked his eyes open again, everything swirled around him. Blue sky with a furnace of a sun nailed to the center. Darker sea slapping against wood, the rhythm all wrong. A vague face, round and nervous. He squinted at it, and it swam into focus. Guld.
The true-mage sat in the stern of the longboat, swallowing rapidly, his skin pasty and sweating. He looked as if he were about to be sick, but he had the tiller under his arm. They were in the little dinghy, and Guld had managed to raise the small mast kept inside, but the sails and rigging had defeated him. They lay in a tangle of knots around his feet.
Van Gast shut his eyes again. Fucking Dillet, the little bastard had always had his eye on the ship. Van Gast should have been more careful—he was more careful usually, but th
is twist had got his head all spun round. He didn’t want to think about that right now, or what Guld had seen in his spell. First things first.
“Any idea where we are, Guld? How long we’ve been on this dinghy?”
“Since midmorning.”
Van Gast shaded his eyes and gauged the sun. Not much past midday. He reached down into the bottom of the boat and began the laborious task of unknotting the sail and ropes that Guld seemed to have knitted together. A task which would be a lot easier if his head didn’t ache so much or the knots didn’t keep swimming in and out of focus.
“Why did they put you in here with me?”
“Um, well, I said maybe they shouldn’t do that to you. I mean…well, anyway. They tied my hands and mouth, so I couldn’t even cast a spell. Not too tight, though, I managed to get them undone after a time. Managed to get a quiet spell off before they tied me too.” Guld grinned shyly and ducked his head.
“What did you do?”
“They’ll be going round in circles for a while. Maybe then they’ll realize what they’ve done.”
Van Gast laughed, glad to be distracted. “Good man, Guld. Good man. So did they give us any supplies?”
“Enough water for two days, same with the food. They let you keep your sword, knives and pistol too, and they gave me a gold shark ‘for my trouble.’ That’s it.”
Van Gast squinted up at the sun again and across to the horizon. “At least half a day, probably more in this thing, till we get to land, if I’m figuring it right. Then it’s at least three days’ sail to Tarana, in a ship. It’ll take more than a week in this shitheap. And we don’t have a week, or enough money to buy a passage.”
“You still want to go to Tarana?” Guld hunched over the tiller as though he was afraid of Van Gast’s reaction. “I mean, after what we saw…”
Van Gast stared down at the knot in his hand. “I have to. I said I’d trust her, and I do, Guld, fool that I am. Never trust a woman or a rack, and a woman rack doubly so, isn’t that what they say? Then I’m a fool thrice cursed. Setting him up, that’s what we saw. Just setting him up. You said it was days old. She often does it, makes them think they’re getting more than they will.” At least, he hoped that’s what it was. “Just a game, part of the twist.”
It was obvious Guld didn’t believe it from the way he wouldn’t meet Van Gast’s eye. “So how are we going to get there in time?”
Van Gast looked at the horizon to the east. A faint smudge of something there, a sliver of brown, a haze. “First you’re going to use a bit of magic to make this shitheap go as quick as we can to land, find a port. Then, my dear Guld, we are going to steal ourselves a ship. I may not be much good at planning a twist, but I can steal like a god.”
By the time they sailed into the village harbor and tied the dinghy up between two fishing smacks, it was long gone sunset. Nice and dark, all the better for stealing. Guld was whey-faced and weary from using his magic for so long to call up a good wind, and he stumbled getting out of the dinghy. Van Gast’s head had cleared by now, at least enough that he could keep his footing properly as he slipped along the jetty looking for a likely ship, but Guld tripped on a rope and fell into a pile of creels. The noise brought a glorified watchman who called himself harbormaster and a pair of brawny-looking lads carrying a long fishhook apiece.
Van Gast swore under his breath as the harbormaster disentangled Guld, picked him by the scruff of the neck and stood him on the jetty under a lamp.
“True-mage,” he said and clapped a meaty hand over Guld’s mouth just as he began a spell. “You can tell by the stains on their fingers. Bloody racks about. You two, look lively. You bind this ’un and you there, get the rest of the lads if you want to have boats to fish in tomorrow.”
This time Guld wasn’t bound lightly. A length of cloth cut into his fleshy cheeks and turned them a dark, disturbing red while his hands were all but covered in rope and knots.
“Fucking mages,” Van Gast muttered. “Only good for one thing, and that’s getting themselves killed.” He slipped behind the harbormaster as he marched Guld off to a small shack on the shore, shoved him inside and spent some time playing with a lock before he got it shut. One fisherlad stood beside him with his fishhook ready, but looking in all the wrong places.
The other lad was off running along the shorefront street, knocking on doors and calling up to windows before he headed to the small inn at the end. Not much time before the whole place was overrun with pissed-off fishermen.
Luckily the jetty was a mix of wavering shadows, pools of light and darker patches where a man could move unseen, if he were careful not to be heard. Van Gast slid through them, his feet soft and careful, his pistol out and sword drawn in his off hand.
The fisherlad was cannier than he looked—he swung round as Van Gast stepped up behind him and the blow from the hilt of Van Gast’s sword meant for the back of his head landed across his cheek and only knocked him back rather than knocked him out. The fishhook whipped across where Van Gast’s stomach had been a heartbeat before and the harbormaster turned from the lock.
The pistol shoved into his face stopped the harbormaster and gave the fisherlad pause, but not for long. He made the mistake of going for the gun and forgot about the sword, or maybe thought Van Gast wasn’t as good with his off hand. He forgot about feet too, and a crunching boot to his knee followed by the point of the sword as he fell took care of him.
“Open up, if you please,” Van Gast whispered to the harbormaster. Shouts reverberated along the street. The shack hid them from the fishermen for now but it would be only moments, and Van Gast’s heart thudded in painful, glorious anticipation. “Quick, if you like your nose where it is.”
The harbormaster fumbled the key but got the lock open quick when Van Gast jabbed the barrel of the pistol farther into his flesh. The door swung open and Guld stumbled out. A swift kick up the arse and the two villagers were in the shack. Van Gast slit the ropes and gag on Guld. He’d had an idea.
“You up for a spell?”
Guld gasped and rubbed at his cheeks but nodded.
“Good. This one.” He leaned down and grabbed the harbormaster. “Send him off, down the jetty. Make him scream good. You can do that?”
“Um, yes, I think so.”
“Don’t think, Guld, do.”
Guld bobbed his head and muttered the words to a spell as Van Gast used the ropes to tie the lad and then locked the door shut.
A bloodcurdling yell made Van Gast bite back a cry of sympathy and he leaned against the shack while his heart steadied. The harbormaster ran screaming down the jetty as though every malevolent spirit in the world was chasing him, his bare feet slapping on the wood. He didn’t stop for the end of the jetty but kept running right over, landing with a splash and another scream.
Van Gast didn’t stop either, to see what the villagers were doing. He grabbed Guld’s elbow and dragged him into the darkness between two smacks where they could watch without fear of anyone coming up behind. They slid into the water and kept a lookout, Van Gast holding his pistol above his head in a vain hope of keeping the powder dry.
Villagers swarmed across the jetty and wharf. A gaggle of them ran after the harbormaster. A few more dithered near the shoreline, unsettled by his screams and looking fearfully around them, brandishing a mish-mash of weapons—fishhooks, spears, the occasional sword. At least half had pistols too. A few of the bolder began to search, including a man with forearms like masts wielding a blacksmith’s hammer who came straight at Van Gast and Guld.
“Hope you can swim,” Van Gast whispered and kicked into a slow, quiet backstroke, pulling Guld with him. His other hand kept the pistol above the water as far as he could. Never know when you might need it.
He scissored his legs under the water, trying to keep the splashing to a minimum and rounded the smack to their left, keeping it between them and the searchers. Treading water, they hung on to the fenders on the smack, their heads only just above water. Lamps
moved up and down the jetty, onto and off boats, hung over the side to blind Van Gast, but they kept to their hidey hole and soon enough most of the fishermen went back to their houses, muttering and complaining about being dragged out for nothing—no rack ships in harbor or waiting outside, no racks waiting with cutlasses between their teeth to pillage and loot, like the stories said. Van Gast got the impression many of them were disappointed.
They left a goodly contingent behind though, just in case.
“If we try this again,” Van Gast whispered, “you reckon you can walk without falling over?”
“Yes, Van.” It was too dark to see Guld’s blush but it was evident in his voice, along with a deadly exhaustion. His magic was powered by his own strength, by the energy in his blood, and it was running dangerously low.
“Good, because I’m getting fucking cold and I’ve almost frozen to death once too often over the last few days. Right, see that ship over there? The two-master? That’s the one. Fastest ship in this harbor, see, you can tell by the lines, and she’s near enough pointed the right way. You, young Guld, are going to make it even faster. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, Van.”
“Good, because you’re fucking this up something awful. Come on, follow me and try not to drown. If you do drown, try and do it quietly, all right?”
They swam, round the patches of light that swung randomly over the water, and on toward the ship Van Gast had pointed out. Not big, but it had a sleek look to it that made him hope it’d be fast enough. Be a job and a half to sail with only two of them, and one of them not a sailor, but you had to take your chances. The boring thing would be to wait for daybreak and try and pay someone to take them. That would be no fun, and probably useless anyway because they didn’t have anywhere near enough money. No, this was the way. If you’re going to do it…
He pulled himself up and over, dripping onto the deck, leaned back and helped Guld. The pistol had got damp, but he couldn’t help that. With luck they’d not need it now.
