Ten Ruby Trick

by Julia Knight

  Holden stared down at her where she lay, half propped up against the wall. The purple lines were vivid, even through her shirt. They curled around her in a lover’s embrace, over her shoulders, down across her breasts, pooling over her heart. The bond meant for Van Gast lay a black and shriveled string beside her, its power gone with the mage, but hers was still strong and would be unless Holden died. He didn’t want to say it, admit that he’d failed, but the words fell out of his mouth anyway. “She fought too hard, that always makes it quicker. She wouldn’t stop fighting it, and that last was too much. See how the lines have reached her heart? Taking off a bond is a hard thing for a body to bear, as bad as putting it on. It’s too late. Maybe if she had a Remorian healer…If I do it now, she’ll die just the same.” She was alive, but he’d killed her anyway.

  Holden tried to think past the fear, past the shock, past the coldness of uncertainty. He looked at the planking of the deck, the straight lines. The patterns as they linked together helped him think. More crew would come. The Master, in the end, would come. He lurched toward the door and fumbled the key round in the lock. It’d hold off the crew for a time. Maybe time enough to work out what to do. All he wanted was for someone to tell him what that should be. He’d wanted his freedom long enough, yet now he had it, he wanted certitude back, he wanted the security of decisions made for him. Freedom was cold and lonely, and had got Josie killed.

  When he turned back, Van Gast had hold of Josie, had her draped across his lap with her head on his shoulder. Holden couldn’t see his face for the hair that dropped forward to cover it. Holden grabbed at Van Gast’s shoulder and yanked him round so he could see his face.

  Madness scored harsh lines there, and grief and a hatred so strong and twisted that Holden took a step back. “Put her down,” he managed to say. It wasn’t right that her poor dying body was on the lap of a man whose hatred of her, and her hatred of him, had brought her to this.

  Van Gast shut his eyes, as though he refused to believe Holden was there. He murmured something to Josie, something about getting her warm, love, not to worry. Holden couldn’t bear it—it was bad enough she was as good as dead, worse that he’d put that bond on her, that his desire to be free had cost her everything. This was too much. He was a free man now, he had to keep reminding himself. A free man with his own choices to make.

  “Put her down. You hated her, don’t now pretend—”

  Holden never even saw Van Gast move before he was flat on his back, Van Gast above him, hands about his neck and squeezing, putting all his weight to bear on Holden’s throat. Flecks of blood dripped off his chin and splattered on Holden’s face, and in his eyes the flat depths of madness, a chilling calculation that here, this was the man who had made him this way. This was the man who’d taken every scrap of everything he had and thrown it to the Deeps. The room began to darken, though little white points of light appeared and floated round Van Gast’s head.

  “You—you killed her, fucker. I loved her and you took her, made her betray me, got her to—to—to be with you. You took her from me and then you killed her. You did, you, and I’m going to do what I should have done earlier and choke the fucking life out of you.”

  “She didn’t do it for you.” It wasn’t words, speech, and he wasn’t even sure why he used those words. Holden’s lips moved but little more came out than a puff of air. Van Gast understood though. The pressure lifted from Holden’s throat and light came back to the room.

  Van Gast reached for his belt and pulled out a knife. His lip curled into a sneer. “Still the Remorian man, eh, even though you’re free.”

  “She did it for the boy, for Andor, to keep him unbonded. I didn’t bond him, I kept him free. For her. In the rest I had no choice, she gave me none. I’d have taken off the bond if I’d found her in time. I swear it. She did it for Andor.”

  The blade stopped in its slice down toward his neck. “For Andor?” Van Gast shook his head and Holden was stunned to see tears running unheeded down his cheeks, but the madness seemed to have passed, his eyes clearer now, but still cold with hate. He got up on jerky legs, his face grey and sick looking. “Boy, come here and tell Holden your name.”

  The boy stood next to Van Gast, disheveled and tearstained, his thumb firmly in his mouth. Skrymir knelt next to him and murmured encouraging words, and Holden remembered that he’d spent a fair bit of time with the boy before they’d reached this damn port. Holding his loyalty to Josie, to the Gan, Holden had thought then.

  No matter Skrymir’s urging, the boy wouldn’t speak. Finally Van Gast spoke for him. “I’m Andor, not him. Andor Van Gast, and Josie the only one alive—” He choked off before he gathered himself and went on. “Josie’s the only one knows my real name, like I know hers. Josienne ne Fiel eldan Van Gast. Josienne of Fiel, beloved of Van Gast. The hatred was a game, a twist, something we used to scam gulls like you out of money. We were the only people we could be truthful with, each other, and you took that from her when you bonded her and she had to lie to me. You took her and now she’s dying. She had a plan, that’s what she said at the last. She’d a plan to keep me free of you, of the bond, only it got fucked up. And I thought she’d betrayed me, so I didn’t save her. I didn’t even try until it was too late, because of you.” Van Gast scrubbed his sleeve across his face and his breath was quick little spurts of anger as he tried to calm himself.

  They watched each other warily, Holden expecting that knife to come down and take his life any moment, slice him ear to ear, and he almost wanted it.

  Skrymir broke the tension with sharp words. “So if you’re Andor, who’s the boy?”

  The boy tried to fade away but Skrymir’s gentle hand stopped him. “It’s all right. Josie told me to protect you, and I will, I oathed it. Do you know what that means to a Gan?”

  The boy nodded, his thumb jerking up and down with his mouth. Finally he pulled it out and spoke. “Josie told me. Her left leg is Gan, she said.” The thumb went back in.

  Skrymir smiled at him and laid a huge hand on his shoulder. “And she told you not to say who you were too, I suspect, didn’t she? Names are important things among the racketeers.”

  Again the thumb jerked up and down, though the mouth round it turned down into a perfect half circle as only those of the very young can. He tried to sniff back the tears, but they came anyway.

  Skrymir patted his shoulder, nearly knocking the boy from his feet. Van Gast stood over them, the knife seemingly forgotten as he stared at the boy. “Yet you told me one of your names. You don’t need to say the rest, not to anyone, ever.”

  The thumb came out again, though the boy bit at his lip before he spoke. “Your name’s Van Gast. Like mine. Josie said it’d be all right, if we could find you. I was a surprise, her surprise for you. It was all right to tell you, wasn’t it?”

  Van Gast’s legs belonged to someone else; they wouldn’t move as he wanted them to. The knife fell from his hand and he barely noticed. He rattled the handle on the door, he had to get out, get Josie out too, had to, but the door wouldn’t move and he couldn’t seem to grasp why.

  The room blurred in front of him when he turned. Voices were stretched, dull booming things that made no sense. He had to get out. Trust me, she’d said, and he hadn’t. In the end he’d let her down, betrayed her trust like every other man in her life. He’d been going to blow her up for fuck’s sake. Yet she’d done it for him. Lied to Holden to keep him free, taken the bond to keep him free. Had a plan, but the plan got fucked up, and still she’d fought and bit and scratched. Van Gast hadn’t cared; he’d only cared what he thought she’d done, eaten up with anger for a lie. And at the end, she’d risked death to keep him free. Was dying even now, for him. He should have known—his Josie would never give in, never give up. And now he had a surprise—the good surprise she’d told him about. A son. He couldn’t, it wasn’t possible.

  He tried to open the window. If he didn’t have air soon he’d be sick. It wouldn’t budge so he punched the gla
ss out, vaguely noticed the blood dripping from his hand. He took in a deep breath of cool sea air, and then he was sick, great heaving spasms that brought up nothing but bile that burned his throat. He reveled in the pain of his poor bruised ribs as he retched, wished he could have more. He could have helped her if he hadn’t been so insanely jealous, if he’d trusted her. He’d trusted her with his name, the biggest trust for a racketeer, but not in this. He’d believed this fucker over her.

  Hands pulled him back, but he couldn’t see faces, only blurs, one dark and one pale with blond hair a nimbus round their head. All he could see clearly was Josie, dying on the floor. She shouldn’t be on the floor, that was no place for her, not among the bodies of the crewmen that had held him. He fell to his knees and got his hands under her.

  When he struggled to his feet, she was nothing in his arms, a pale ghost of the woman she’d been. The warmth had gone, the vitality. That, more than anything, drove it home she was dying and he couldn’t save her. For long moments he could do nothing, think nothing, only feel the limpness of her seeping into him, into his skin, into his head.

  He laid her on the bed and covered her, covered the bond, the purple festering lines of its poison, with cool sheets. He had no blame left in him for her, he reserved it all for himself, for Holden and for the Master, but mostly for himself who should have trusted her. He couldn’t blame her when he couldn’t forgive himself. All she’d done was try and fight back, and failed.

  The voices were back, echoing round his skull without meaning. Hands grabbed him but he shook them off. Something struck his cheek, rocked his head and his eyes came back into focus. The Gan, Skrymir, stood in front of him with his arm raised to do it again.

  Van Gast held a hand up, palm out to stop him. “Leave me be.”

  “No,” Skrymir said. “No I won’t.”

  A hand the size of a ham grasped him under the arm and dragged him up. Van Gast staggered but managed to stand, even though all he wanted to do was sink down onto the bed and lay next to her, stay there, be with her while the life leeched away from her. It seemed the least he could do. Skrymir slapped him again, like being hit by a pouch of shot.

  “Wake up, man! We need to get out of here, quick.”

  Van Gast shook his head numbly but out of the corner of his eye he saw the boy. His surprise. His lips twisted. Ansen Van Gast. It couldn’t be. He had no son. “Ansen, who was your mother?”

  The door rattled behind them before Ansen could say anything, then someone began thudding on it, trying to kick it in.

  “We got to go.” Skrymir pulled his sword free of its scabbard.

  “I’m not going with you,” Holden said, his voice quiet but firm. “I—I can’t. I don’t know how to do this.” He was staring at Josie as she lay on the bed. Van Gast wished he wouldn’t.

  “Crazy,” Van Gast muttered. “You’re all mad.”

  Holden ignored the thumping on the door and turned to him. “You don’t know…you have no idea. Bonded in the head.”

  “Then get the fuck off her ship, and if I see you again, I’ll kill you.” That was when Van Gast laughed, an empty pulling out of everything left inside him. The stupid thing. Always the stupid thing. He had nothing else to do now, had nothing left. No ship, no crew, no hope for Josie, nothing inside him that resembled any emotion other than an ocean’s worth of regret, nothing outside of him worth more than half a thought.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Holden eyed Van Gast warily, the jagged laugh unnerving him. The man hated him, and with good cause, would probably stab him in the back without a backward glance. It didn’t matter, none of it mattered. He was at a loss as to what to do, his mind too whirling with possibilities to settle on one course of action. He wanted his old life back, he wanted not to have to choose, not to have to think. He wanted patterns and order and numbness. Freedom hurt. As a free man he was a failure.

  The door gave way at last, sprang from its hinges with a crash and a Remorian fell through, half a dozen more behind him. There was no time for thought, only action. One glance at Cattan’s decapitated body and the crew launched themselves.

  Holden could do nothing but defend.

  Van Gast beat him to it, the pistol shot whizzing past Holden’s face with a rush of sulfurous air to smash into the face of a crewman in a welter of bone and brain. Skrymir yelled hoarsely and leaped into the doorway. Holden grabbed his sword from where Cattan had thrown it.

  Bodies were everywhere. Van Gast, grinning coldly, fast and loose and full of a panache he seemed unable to suppress even now as he lay about him with a sword. Yet for all that, his face was vicious, the lips pulled back to show small, even teeth very white against his brown skin. Like rats’ teeth—once they started, they’d never give up gnawing.

  Holden thrust and parried, ducked and almost fell over Ansen huddled near the corner. A Remorian came straight for them both, a man from Holden’s own crew, a man he’d known for years, and there was a kind of hopeless recognition in him. Yet his eyes were dead, the smell coming from him in waves, the rankness, the sour odor of nothing, no hope, no dream, no thought. Holden shoved the boy behind him and took the attack on his sword, pushed it to the side and sank his blade into the now unprotected gut. The body slid away, blood running over the deck, and Holden could feel no regret, only the wish that he was like this man.

  Skrymir left a trail of body parts and vicious curses behind him. Nothing left to lose, no soul to forfeit for any action.

  Then they were free, only the blood and bodies there to accuse them.

  “Master will be here soon.” Skrymir wiped his blade on the silk trousers of a crewman. “You want to go to him, Holden? Then go.”

  “Wait.” Van Gast glared at him and Holden couldn’t look him in the eye. “Not yet. You take that bond off. Josie never stops fighting till the end, you know that if you know anything about her. I’ll stop fighting for her when she does.”

  Holden shook his head helplessly. “Isn’t it bad enough I put it on? If I take it off, she’ll die. I can’t, I can’t.”

  “She’ll die if you don’t, and this way she has a chance. And if that chance fails, at least she’ll die free.” Van Gast took a menacing step toward him, his sword ready and already grisly with blood. “And you’ll die if you don’t. Right here, right now. If that’s all we can do for her, then we’ll fucking do it. She was always free, till she met you again. You have to make that right. You understand me?”

  Holden’s eyes were drawn to Josie, to the pale skin with the cruel lines of poison eating into it. The half-open eyes, the mouth that would never give him that lopsided grin again. Dead whichever way. Van Gast was right. At the least he could make her free, the way she should be. He swallowed past a dry click in his throat. “Yes, I understand you.”

  When he sat at the end of the bed, he could hear her breath. Short little puffs, too far apart. He laid a hand on her leg and she didn’t flinch or move. Her pulse was far too slow, almost imperceptible. He had to do this. His fingers delved into the scar far too easily past the decay. When he touched the bond, she moaned, a soft sound, not pain-racked but almost pleading.

  Van Gast leaned down by her head, held one limp hand and murmured soft words to her. His eyes shone with unshed tears, maybe with knowing they were doing the one thing they could for her, for her peace. Holden wished he felt the same, that this didn’t feel like murder. That things could have been different.

  He lowered his eyes and pulled. The bond came away in his hand, a blackened, useless string. Josie arched off the bed, her eyes wide and staring, and her breathing stopped for long, agonizing moments. When it started again, it was even weaker than before, maybe a halting breath every thirty heartbeats. He’d done it. He’d finally killed her, the woman who’d given him his dreams.

  He stood up and backed away on shaking legs. He couldn’t do this anymore. He could make a choice, couldn’t choose to let her die. He wanted to forget. All of it, but especially her. He wanted the bond
to make him forget. “I can’t stay.”

  It was almost as if someone had spoken for him. The horror in front of him, Van Gast’s grief-stricken eyes, made everything unreal. Only one thing was solid in his head. If he went back to the bond, he’d never have to face making the wrong choice again. It would make him blind to everything he’d done. Because to live with knowing that he’d killed her…

  “Now get out,” Skrymir growled.

  Van Gast glared at Holden and seemed to test the weight of his sword. “Might be a mercy not to let him go. Make me feel better if I kill him.”

  Holden looked Skrymir in the eye and saw the contempt there. Skrymir turned away and spat on the deck. “Leave, quick, before I let him.”

  Holden backed out the door until he could no longer see them, see the accusing body on the bed, the breaths that were coming further and further apart. Could no longer see her dying. He was a coward. He had his freedom, and now he couldn’t stomach it. All he wanted was to forget. For someone to tell him what to do, the comfort that order had given him. Freedom was nothing but a whirl of confusion he had no hope of untangling. Freedom, the wanting of it, had got Josie killed, would get them killed, all of them. Him too.

  He ran.

  Van Gast couldn’t take his eyes off Josie. He hadn’t even taken the time to clear his sword of the grisly debris but let it drip onto his boots. She was slipping away from him again, as she always did. Slipped away in the night, never there in the morning. This time maybe for good.

  “I need you to take her to a healer. It might do no good, but at least make sure it’s as…as easy as you can,” he said to Skrymir at last. “Start by finding Guld, he’s on the dock. Find a healer, find yourselves somewhere safe for a while. Maybe it’s too late for her, and maybe it’s not. Be with her for me, because…because I—”