by Julia Knight
Van Gast grinned despite himself. A fine racketeer in the making. Out loud, he said, “No one’s taught you any manners then, but I didn’t expect that on her ship.”
He looked back to Galdon, and the rest. “I can free you of the bond but it’ll cost and, until you get out to Guld on the dock, you’re still likely to die. Or I can make it quick. Or you can keep the bond and get the fuck out of my way. Your choice.”
“And Josie, you’ll be getting her too?”
“What for?” he snarled. At least this newfound hatred went with the sham they’d practiced all these years, made it easier to pretend that drove him. “She can stay, serve her right. If she wants to take a bond to those fuckers, that’s her lookout.”
Galdon stared at him with barely concealed contempt. Van Gast was going against everything, every custom, every vague moral that a racketeer had. They didn’t have many, but they kept what they had. Against the Remorians they should be together, no matter how much they hated each other. Van Gast told himself he no longer cared. She was Remorian now, had thrown in her lot with them.
“Then do what you got to, Van Gast. Let us out and we’ll get out of your way, leave your black heart free to do what you will. Be glad to throttle that mage meself, after what he done, if I can find it in me to fight this thing.”
Once Galdon told him where the key was hung, it didn’t take long to get them out. Van Gast stopped Galdon as he darted past. “You’re one of them now, and fair game, but I’ll give you a shot. Get off this ship while you still can.”
Galdon nodded a thanks and they headed for the stairs. The boy hung back, looking over his shoulder at Van Gast.
“You go with them, boy, you’ll get bonded soon as one of them mages finds you. Her crew will see you off the ship, then you’ve got to get away, understand? My mage is waiting on the dock, hiding by the tannery. Find him if you can, if not, find somewhere, anywhere, away from the Remorians. Got it?”
The boy frowned, thinking hard, his thumb shoved in his mouth. Finally he nodded and trotted away into darkness, leaving Van Gast alone with his hatred and his plan.
Now he could make sure they never came after him again, and repay Josie a thousand-fold for her betrayal. He headed for the cannon.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Holden stumbled at the top of the gangplank, icy tingles playing over his skin. He’d lost too much blood, and that and the lack of bond made him lightheaded.
Skrymir caught his arm and steadied him. “What we going to do?”
“I have no damn idea. Tell me everything that’s gone on, quick.”
“Cattan’s got her in the captain’s cabin. It’s—I was thinking of killing him myself. A mage, he’s weak. Isn’t a neck alive stands up to a sword through it, mage or no, and Josie’s got a little plan for him. Might work, might not. Only she’s awful weak now, and the Master’s here in port, be pulling in less than half a bell from now. Whatever we do, it’s got to be quick.”
Holden shook his head. “There’s a reason that mages have such power among us, enslave us. Even if you aren’t bonded, so he can’t see in your head, you’d not live to finish your stroke. Not unless he’s concentrating on something else. On me. That’s the weakness, that they think everyone in thrall to their power, helpless to resist. Complacent, and with good reason.” He looked down at what remained of his left arm. “Until today.”
He led the way to the captain’s cabin aft of the main deck and hesitated by the door. Did he know what he was doing? No. Did he even know who he was anymore? No. Did it matter? He smiled. No. All that mattered was that he was free and Josie needed him and he could redeem himself for bonding her. Everything else was fluff.
Skrymir drew his sword and faded into the shadows as Holden opened the door.
The stink of the Remorians stung his nose, rank and animal. He knew what it was then, why they reeked. The sour scent of hopelessness, the acridity of despair, the stench of magic used wrong. It was all he could do not to vomit on the floor there and then. His whole life, slave to wrongness.
Cattan rose carefully from the bed, making his movements smooth so as not to disturb the rapidly accreting crystals that shone like diamonds on his skin. Not yet malformed again, but still apart from normal men. Apart from decency, morality. How had Holden never seen it before?
Cattan smiled slowly and a flake of magic drifted from his skin, fell to the floor in little zigs and zags that hypnotized Holden. He took in the room, the half-empty bottle of brandy, the blood that spotted the floor, the rumpled, dirty sheets of the bed. He couldn’t see Josie anywhere.
“Ah, Holden, there you are. I was worried. Have we caught Van Gast then? Good, in time for the Master to appreciate.”
“No.” Holden’s heart was loud enough to deafen him. He couldn’t go against a mage of the power. No one could, no one could ever survive. One word and he was shark-bait. Cattan knew even the thoughts that ranged his mind…or had, when he was bonded. It wouldn’t take him long to realize he no longer had any hold. Now. It had to be now.
Cattan cocked his head listening and frowned as though what he heard displeased him. “Holden, you—”
Holden launched himself, threw his fist in the face of a mage who had the ability to kill him with a word, and he never thought twice. Men like this had ruled his life, ruled him, heart, mind and soul. Dragged him from his dreams and smothered him in their own till they became his.
Cattan staggered back and tried to hold him to a bond that no longer existed. “Holden, stop!”
Holden just laughed, a jagged sound with a hint of hysteria in it, and punched him in the nose. Crystals cracked under his knuckles, dropped away in flakes like snow. Cattan fell awkwardly, and Holden’s heart soared. So easy, when you were free of the bond, when your will was your own. So easy to take down a stick of a man. Holden punched at his mouth before he could say any more, could attempt a spell. Cattan lay, broken and bleeding under him, helpless as Holden had been in his bond, and it felt good.
A scuffed step behind him. Skrymir. Holden turned to him, flying in his victory, higher than the sun.
Only it wasn’t Skrymir behind him. Half a dozen bonded men, swords out and ready, pointed at him. Skrymir was a boneless heap on the deck.
The stench of hot, fresh blood filled Van Gast’s nose, his brain. The whole world was nothing but blood and the screams of another dying Remorian choked his ears. He tried to shut his mind to it, but the only way that worked was to say fucking Remorians in his head, over and over so it drowned out everything else. Almost.
His little-magics had been burning so long now, so fierce, it was hard to tell what was what, if any more trouble made its way for him. Everything was trouble now.
The gun deck was clear of Remorians, and Van Gast stepped over the latest body, heading for the cannon and the powder. A soft sound behind made him turn, sword out and dripping blood onto the deck. The boy, his thumb still socketed in his mouth, his dark eyes glaring hatred and fear.
Shit.
“Boy, you need to get off the ship.”
The boy shook his head, eyes fixed firmly on Van Gast’s, so intent it unnerved him. The thumb came out of his mouth and, at last, he spoke. “What about Josie?”
“What about her?” It came out harsher than he’d intended, and the boy flinched. Van Gast didn’t have time for this, didn’t have time or patience or the inclination to help anyone right now. All he wanted, all that burned in him, was to get the powder and blow the fuck out of the ship, let some of his anger burn with it.
He turned away from the boy and rummaged around till he found what he wanted. Fuse. Powder.
“You can’t blow up Josie.”
“I’ll do what the fuck I like, and you can help or you can get off the ship before I blow it up. Or you can stay and get blown up, I don’t really care.”
There, a nice locker that would take a good lot of powder. He began to pour it in, liberally sprinkling in some shot for good measure.
; “You can’t blow up the ship with her on board!”
Van Gast finished with the powder and started on the fuse. Long enough so he could get ashore, not so long someone might find it before it went off. “Can and will. Look, you get off the ship, like I said. My mage Guld’s out on the dock, you might make it there before one of the crew finds you, or the Remorian mage works out what you’re about. Once this ship’s blown, and hopefully the mage with it, you might be free.”
He looked up from the powder. The boy was crying, silent tears that made his nose run. Oh fantastic, just what Van Gast needed. He dropped the fuse and knelt down in front of the boy. “Look, boy—what’s your name?”
“Ansen.”
“All right, Ansen. See, Josie’s—she’s, well—” Van Gast ran his hands through his hair distractedly. How did you explain to a five-year-old? Especially when you couldn’t even explain it to yourself, not without wanting to choke. “Josie’s different now. If I don’t blow this ship, right now, you and me are going to be made different too. Like those men, her crew, see. We won’t have minds left.”
“You can’t blow Josie up. Josie’s nice.”
“Ah shit, boy.” Van Gast turned away in disgust, more at himself than anything else. He wasn’t even going to try, was he? Not even try. You trusted her, gambled your ship and crew on her word and she betrayed you, she deserves it. She deserves a thousand times worse. Yet even the coward Holden was trying.
Shit, fuck and double shit. He looked at the fuse. Should take at least half a bell. Enough to get out and with time to spare. He shut his eyes and tried to will everything back, only he couldn’t. Couldn’t rid himself of the memories, ones he wanted to think weren’t false. Or the other memory, of her standing over him, the club whistling toward him. A betrayal that hurt worse than any wound.
He knelt down and groped for his flint, the fresh tinder and the knife. Fat sparks flew and one caught. The fuse sizzled merrily. Van Gast leaned down and picked Ansen up, put the wriggling, biting boy firmly under one arm, still unsure what he’d do once up on deck. At least the little bastard didn’t make any noise.
“Too late.”
He recognized the oily voice that had told Josie to hit him again. Three Remorian crewmen stepped out of the shadows. The mage Cattan lurked behind them, his chest and chin covered in oddly glittering blood. Van Gast let Ansen clamber down and the boy hid behind his legs.
Van Gast slid a hand in to his flint and knife and glanced at the locker full of powder, right by his feet. One spark and they’d all go up, boom. A good way to go. He laughed, a low-pitched sound touched with the madness that swirled around his brain. He and the boy were right next to the porthole. They might even make it out before the explosion, if they were quick.
His hand slid nearer to the flint and closed round it. He just needed a moment. The Remorians stepped forward, swords already drawn. One took the time to stamp the fuse out with a twist of his heel. Then Cattan said something, only one word, and Van Gast’s head felt as though his brain had swollen, threatening to push out of his ears, bulging his eyes from his head. He dropped to his knees with a grunt of pain, and something warm and wet trickled from his nose. A Remorian raised a lamp and Van Gast’s blood spotted the deck. He sank down, his vision becoming blurred with red, and a pair of silk shoes stopped in front of his face as he dropped farther, prone against cool wood.
“Someone’s been dying to meet you, Van Gast. Bring him. The boy too.”
The pressure in Van Gast’s head bloomed in a dark spiral and sucked him in, ate him up and spat him out.
When Van Gast came to again, he was lying facedown on a different floor with a weight pushing into his back. He turned his aching, splitting head and squinted into a light.
Josie’s quarters, that was where he was. He recognized it. Only there was no furniture left, nothing but the bed. On the bed was…it couldn’t be a man, could it? Man shaped, yet with a thin crust of blood-spattered crystals covering him like a second skin.
“Welcome back.” It was only then that Van Gast realized it was the mage, Cattan.
Cattan indicated something on the bed with a wave of his hand. A leg, black with bruising up to the hip. Van Gast’s gaze carried on, slid up and over the hem of a shirt and up to a face. A gaunt, skeletal face, the dead face of someone he knew. Josie.
Cattan’s crystalline finger stroked one cheek and she wasn’t dead, not yet, because she flinched at the touch. Not dead, but close. Purple-black lines snaked out of the shirt, twined up her neck and over her cheeks, picked out her eyes in fanciful whorls. Rotting away from the inside. Her eyes opened a crack and looked back at him blankly. Oh, Kyr’s mercy, his Josie, and she was dead inside already.
Cattan spoke, lips moving slow and careful. “At last, we catch you, for my Master’s will. A shame, really, to bond you. But bond you I will. Or rather not me. That would have no…irony about it, no poetic justice.”
His hand twitched, just the smallest motion and something moved across his fingers. A little silver flash. He stared at Van Gast when he spoke. “Josie, my sweet, bond him, make him ours.”
Josie sat up with a drawn-out groan. Oh gods, oh Kyr’s fucking mercy, she was dead but still moving. There was nothing behind her eyes, no warmth, no emotion, no thought. Nothing left of the Josie he’d loved, that Josie was eaten up and gone. She’d thrown in her lot with the Remorians, betrayed him, and they’d taken her, mind, body and soul. The length of one leg was black and festering from the bond. No wonder he’d not seen it when he’d thought to check her arms. Even when they’d been beached, he’d not seen her in full light, must have missed it between the dim firelight and concentrating on other parts of her. She could barely put any weight on her leg but she staggered toward him like a machine, fell to her knees next to him with a gasp of pain.
The silver thing, a writhing blind snake, lay under her hand on the wood of the deck. The bond, it had to be. He tried to struggle, tried to get away but nothing moved. The weight on his back pressed him down into the wood until just breathing was agony and all he could manage.
She stank of Remorians, a smell so rancid he would have thrown up if he’d had anything in his stomach. Where had his Josie gone, and why had she left him?
“Turn him over,” she said. The weight left his back for an instant. Someone grabbed him and turned him so he faced the ceiling. Then the weight was back and he couldn’t even lift his head to see who it was who held him. It didn’t matter, all that mattered was that Josie, his beautiful, free, butterfly Josie, had betrayed him, was bound and dead and trying to bond him with her.
Her hand slid along his cheek, down over his neck and into his shirt, her fingers cold, sleek as ice. She leaned forward, her lips brushing his skin, her breath Remorian rank. The silver snake in her hand strove to be free, to burrow into him, under his skin and make him like her. Dead but not dead, alive but not alive.
“Had a plan,” she whispered, so soft he could hardly hear her. “They took me but I had a plan, keep you and Ansen safe, unbonded. Keep you free. Priceless. Lie to Holden, all of it, all a lie. Believe me. All a lie. Had a plan, a good plan. Only the plan got fucked up.” Her hand closed over the hilt of the knife in his shirt. All he could do was stare at her, into eyes the color of the sea before a storm, at the fact his Josie—fighting, biting Josie—was crying, long, soft tears that burned him where they fell. “Got to fight the bond, got to. Always fight, fight what they want, what they tell you. You fight it, Andor, you hear me? You fucking well fight it.”
Before he could do anything, say anything, think anything, she pulled the knife from its sheath and launched herself at the mage on the bed with a scream of pain and anger.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Holden sat, spelled to a standstill up by the door, glaring at Cattan’s back, an unconscious Skrymir next to him. A crewman held the boy’s shoulder tight, too tight, and the boy squirmed in his grip. Still he didn’t say a word. Holden had begun to wonder whether he could.<
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One look at Josie had told him it was too late for her. Taking off a bond was worse than putting it on, stretched muscles and heart to breaking. She was stretched too far already, as he’d feared. Fought too hard, too long, and it was killing her. And it was too late to take the bond off, now the lines had closed in over her heart. He’d seen it before. If only she’d listened, if only she hadn’t fought, had accepted it, she could have lived. But then she wouldn’t have been Josie.
She staggered over to Van Gast, the bond in her hand, knelt by him and whispered something as she ran a hand over his chest. Van Gast lay stunned, only able to look at her, speechless for once in his life. Then Josie stood and whirled toward Cattan, a knife in her hand.
Cattan gestured and spoke one thunderous, terrible word. Josie smacked into the wall with a sickening crunch, slid down in a heap and lay there, still, her eyes half-open. The knife fell from limp fingers and clattered to the floor where the bond crawled round and over it. She was smiling.
There was a moment of stillness and then Skrymir was no longer a heap next to Holden, he was up on his feet. He grabbed a sword from a surprised crewman and was at Cattan’s back, the sword slicing straight through the mage’s neck in a shower of blood and bone.
Cattan’s body slid to the deck, and Holden could move again. He staggered to his feet and held himself upright against the wall. Skrymir turned, an exultant look on his face, one of mingled grief and victory. The crewmen who held Van Gast leaped up, but too slow to avoid the sword that scythed at them or the vast anger behind it. Holden had never seen Skrymir angry before. It was like watching a typhoon rage. The Gan crunched into the crewmen with a savage grin, the blood that spattered over his cheeks and eyelids only adding to his barbaric look. Finally he stopped, breathing hard.
“She said to be ready,” he said to no one in particular. “Said to be ready when she made her move. Might be too late though, for her.” He turned away, his teeth grinding and his jaw clenched hard enough to crack rocks. An oath broken, to her. To the Gan, it meant his soul was forfeit, that he had no way to redeem himself, had nothing to look forward to but the Deeps when it came time for Kyr to choose for him. “She’s still breathing, maybe we’ve got time. Holden, get this thing off her.”
