by Julia Knight
Ten Ruby Trick
By Julia Knight
Privateer Van Gast thrills in capturing treasure; delights in pulling off elaborate scams; and has an outrageous reputation with the ladies. But there is only one woman for him: fellow privateer Josie—seductive, brave and unpredictable. He’s hoping to make their relationship permanent, until he raids the wrong ship. Now slavers are stalking him, his crew is verging on mutiny and Josie has disappeared.
When she reappears with a new mark wanting Van Gast’s help running the ten ruby trick con, he senses trouble. It seems like Josie has joined up with mage-bound slavers to turn him over to their Master. Van Gast is about to take the biggest risk of all—and find out the true meaning of trust and betrayal.
Dear Reader,
A new year always brings with it a sense of expectation and promise (and maybe a vague sense of guilt). Expectation because we don’t know what the year will bring exactly, but promise because we always hope it will be good things. The guilt is due to all of the New Year’s resolutions we make with such good intentions.
This year, Carina Press is making a New Year’s resolution we know we won’t have any reason to feel guilty about: we’re going to bring our readers a year of fantastic editorial and diverse genre content. So far, our plans for 2011 include staff and author appearances at reader-focused conferences such as the RT Booklovers Convention in April, where we’ll be offering up goodies, appearing on panels, giving workshops and hosting a few fun activities for readers. We’re also cooking up several genre-specific release weeks, during which we’ll highlight individual genres. So far we have plans for steampunk week and unusual fantasy week. Readers will have access to free reads, discounts, contests and more as part of our week-long promotions!
But even when we’re not doing special promotions, we’re still offering something special to our readers in the form of the stories authors are delivering to Carina Press that we’re passing on to you. From sweet romance to sexy, and military science fiction to fairy-tale fantasy, from mysteries to romantic suspense, we’re proud to be offering a wide variety of genres and tales of escapism to our customers in this new year. Every week is a new adventure, and we want to bring our readers along on the journey. Be daring, be brave and try something new with Carina Press in 2011!
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Dedication
For Nerisse, may she always stay the free spirit she is today
Acknowledgements
As always, thanks to the AW crew, without whom I’d never have learned enough, especially Bettie and Martin for their insightful comments on this story. To the Unforgiven III, for the inspiration. To the T Party Writers’ group, as great a bunch of nutters—er, writers—as you could wish to meet, who help me in all sorts of ways. To the family, especially the Old Man, for putting up with me when I say “No, shhh, I’m writing!” Which is all the time. And of course, to the inestimable Deborah, whose smilies make the editing process a whole lot more fun.
Contents
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
About the Author
Chapter One
Black into white into blue into grey into black; the patterns kept Holden’s mind in check. He kept his eyes cast down. You didn’t look at the Master unless invited. You stared at the floor and kept your eyes on the tessellations of the tiles, the way the patterns interlinked. Sensible, orderly. Straight lines, symmetrical patterns, constants to soothe a disordered mind. The patterns were always the same.
“You’ve performed well, Commander.” The Master’s voice grated through the magic that encrusted every inch of him. “You may look up.”
Holden had never been asked to look on the Master before, though he’d seen him from a distance. Hesitantly, he let his eyes rise up the dais to the litter of cushions, all dyed a deep purple as befitted the Master’s rank. Over those, past the Master’s bonded women, indolent, dead-eyed but adoring, and on to the Master himself, full of wonder and dread.
Magic crept over him in lumps and bumps, his hands like crystalline tree roots, his arms misshapen from the need to remain still, his back hunched from the weight. Greasy clumps of brown hair stuck out between groups of crystals on his scalp. Remorian mages, mages of the power, weren’t like ordinary men. They were born the same, cried and suckled the same, but almost immediately magic began to accrete on their skin, to exude in tiny, delicate crystals through their pores. They built over time into a crackling suit of power. The Master’s eyes were mountains and craggy valleys in a shining relief map of his face. By his mouth the crystals thinned where he moved to eat or talk, and flaked away power with every bite or word.
The Master looked over Holden’s shoulder and a delicate frown cracked his forehead. The Master’s intended bride and a common sailor stood shivering in the sultry heat. Even without looking at them, Holden could feel their terror washing over him, the shock at the first sight of the Master, the clenching dread of what they must know would come next. If only the racketeers hadn’t chosen that ship to raid for the fulsome dowry in the hold. If only loneliness and proximity and the thought of long years marooned hadn’t led the sailor to defile the Master’s bride.
“Holden, bring him forward.”
“Yes, Master.” He turned and pulled at the sailor’s arm. The nut-brown skin of a mainlander was tinged with grey around worried eyes, and his damp dark hair stuck to the sailor’s face in tendrils. Beads of sweat trickled down his cheeks, darkened his grubby linen shirt and added to the scent of terror.
Holden pulled him forward and the man seemed powerless to resist, a limp weight he had to drag. Finally, shaking and sweating, the sailor stood before the Master. Holden laid a hand on his shoulder, a tiny gesture of reassurance. The sailor would suffer pain but it would be followed by blessed numbness, a release from uncertainty, a single-minded devotion. The bond allowed no room for fear, anger or envy, any of the petty emotions of the unbonded. He would become one of a useful, peaceful society, one with no crime or hatred. It was a good thing. A good thing.
“There is no shame in screaming.” Holden intoned the words of bonding, ones he remembered well from the day he’d come of age when the milk-bond of youth had been taken off and the mage-bond of adulthood put on. “There is no shame in crying. There is only duty, devotion, loyalty, obedience. This is your service to the Archipelago, to the mages
of the power who rule us well, in peace and prosperity.” Then extra words, just for this man. “This is your service to repay your crime.”
The sailor’s shoulder jerked under his hand but Holden held him fast, not unkindly. For a moment he thought the man might try to run but solid guards ringed the room with implacable faces that flickered in the dim lamplight. Their bronze-and-copper Remorian skin shone like their swords and their eyes were blank of emotion but fixed on the sailor. He couldn’t run, from them or the Master. The muscles along the sailor’s jaw grew taut as he clenched his teeth, as though willing himself to be brave, to not make a sound. A point of courage, of honor perhaps. It would be useless in the face of the bond.
Faint sobs echoed around the room as the bride tried to pull against her guard. “Please, please, he didn’t do anything wrong. I love him, please, you can’t…”
“And I shall not separate you.” The hint of a gesture from the Master, a twitch of his finger. “Holden, his arm.”
“Yes, Master.”
Holden took the man’s arm and rolled up the sleeve of his shirt, exposing his wrist. The Master lifted a finger just a touch, and the bond slid out of his sleeve. A silver string, writhing, blind and seeking, searching for new flesh to invade. Knowing whose flesh it sought.
At the last, at the final indisputable proof that the bond was no rumor, no fireside tale to scare the gullible with, the sailor’s courage broke. He batted blindly at Holden, turned to run, and his sweating bare feet slipped on the tiles. The crack of bone was louder than his sobs. Holden reached down, pulled him to his feet and held out the arm again. The sailor struggled once more, feebly, but his other arm hung limp at his side and Holden held him with ease.
“Don’t fight it,” he murmured. “The more you fight, the worse it is. Accept it and it will comfort you. It will be all the comfort you ever need.”
The sailor turned incredulous round eyes on him, seemed about to speak when the bond coiled along the Master’s hand and leaped. It sank into the sailor’s skin, leaving only the telltale red scar, a perfect circle around his wrist. His face dissolved into cracked panes of agony and Holden couldn’t hold him as he thrashed but let him slide gently to the floor.
Holden turned away. The bond was necessary and good, but the screams always made him uneasy, made unbidden thoughts swirl through the pearled grey fog in his head. Not good in the Master’s presence.
What he saw instead when he turned wasn’t much better. The bride on her knees and crying the sailor’s name—terror, love and grief all mixed up in that one sound.
The Master’s voice called him back. “Holden, attend.”
“Yes, Master.” He attended. The back of the sailor’s head was bloodied where his thrashing had banged it on the tiles, not noticing in his greater pain. The smears of blood made new patterns, chaotic, disordered, and that disturbed Holden, made him want to rub them away and let straight lines take their place again. The screams subsided in the end, fading down into strangled gasps until they ceased altogether. The sailor lay shivering and weak, his shirt and breeches soaked with sweat, until the Master’s voice called him.
“Up.”
The sailor stood on trembling legs, unable to resist the bond, the voice, the rich rolling power of magic that shone like a beacon on the dais. His face was calm now, all terror gone, all base emotions erased by the rightness of the bond, his memories rolled up into nothingness. Yet the scar on his wrist had darkened to a grisly, throbbing blue-black. Bonded unwilling. If he didn’t learn to accept, to not fight it, that blue-black would spread until it ate him. Yet he seemed willing enough when the Master spoke.
“Who was it stole my dowry?”
“Racketeers.” The voice was bland now too, the monotone of the newly bonded. Maybe he would accept it after all.
A tiny wash of relief touched Holden’s heart. He hated when they fought it, hated to watch the slow decline, the movement of the blue-black lines along their arm to their heart. He shouldn’t; those who fought would bring unrest among them, bring violence and hatred into a peaceful and benign society. Yet still it caused him a hollow pang, a sorrow that he didn’t understand. He hastily turned his thoughts away.
“Which racketeer?” the Master was saying. “Which one? What ship?”
“Van Gast.”
“Van Gast.” The Master let the words roll along his tongue, let his power infuse the words with the anger he couldn’t afford to show for fear of cracking his crystals, dislodging his power. “Good. You’ve gone some way to redeem yourself. You shall have your reward, for I reward my servants well. Bring her forward.”
The guards brought the sullied bride to the edge of the dais, kicking, screaming, crying. She looked at Holden with a pleading in her eyes, begging him to do something, anything. He turned away. It was a good thing. A necessary thing. He believed that with all his heart.
Another bond snaked its way along the Master’s hand. “Come forward,” he said to the sailor, and the man took two jerky steps toward him. “Here, bond her. She’s yours, to serve your every need and desire, as you are mine.”
The sailor dipped his head but didn’t hesitate to take the bond from the Master’s hand. The guards offered up her wrist.
Her dark, sharp face was reddened from crying, tears dripping from her chin unheeded. “Please, I love you, please don’t, please—”
The touch of the bond on her skin cut off her words and drowned them in a formless howl of pain. The sailor stood, impassive, and watched her.
Holden pretended to watch but closed his eyes as much as he dared. Wished his ears would shut too. It was a good thing, a necessary thing. It allowed them everything they had. Peace, beauty, prosperity, freedom from uncertainty, from the fear of that uncertainty. In the swoops and swirls of life, the bond was smooth straight lines, constant, a comfort, what held his life together. The patterns were the cornerstone of everything he was.
It was a good thing. A necessary thing.
Van Gast lurched to a stop outside the inn and turned to his first mate. “Dillet, how much money have you got left?”
Dillet belched hugely and leaned against the wall. “Bugger all. Lost it in that game of bones. You?”
“Not a lot.” Van Gast had money, more than enough, but he had plans in this inn. He rubbed at a grimy pane of glass with the sleeve of his bright shirt and peered into the gloom beyond. “I know a way to get some though. We’ve spent enough, it’s time to get some back.”
Dillet pressed his nose to the glass and grinned. “Plan?”
“I pick a fight with the bitch, the rest of you pitch in and use the distraction to pick a few pockets.” Van Gast looked around for the rest of his crew. Most of them were staggering down the street behind him, just visible in the early evening murk. Barely upright bodies ricocheted between the driftwood houses that lined the little shifting islands of the delta in the more disreputable end of Estovan. The air reeked of brackish water, gently rotting wood and seaweed gasping its last on the clogged banks of the saltwater rivulets. The stench was only relieved by the hint of muggy breeze that managed to work its way through the narrow gaps that passed for streets. After a while you only noticed the smell when it was gone.
The crew caught up, leaning against the half-rotten walls of the inn in varying stages of inebriation. Van Gast looked them over and nodded. “Might as well kill two sharks with one spear, piss her off and earn some money. I’m not sure which I enjoy more.”
“Make sure you get her good, no letting her get away like last time.”
“I intend to fuck her so far off, she’s the other side of the ocean.”
Dillet rubbed his hands together and laughed to himself. “Oh, this I got to see.”
Van Gast pushed open the warped door, strode into the taproom and was enveloped in the fug of stale beer, tarts’ cloying perfumes and, yes, a hint of burning rend-nut drifting through the air, fogging minds and destroying brains.
Forn’s bells at his ankle chimed
in counterpoint to his stride, an endless entreaty to the merciless god of the sea to spare him what every sailor dreaded and expected—death by drowning. Every man and woman who sailed was a child of Forn, even before they were fisherman, merchantman, racketeer. Before they were friends, allies or enemies, they were Forn’s.
His crew scuttled in round him, their own bells chiming in the hubbub, and found themselves places at tables among other racketeers they knew or wanted to tumble. A woman detached herself from a captain and strolled toward him, her admirably full figure threatening to spill out of the flimsy blouse cinched tight around her. “Van Gast, lovekin, I haven’t had the pleasure of you for a while. Staying the night?”
Van Gast favored her with a grin. “Sorry, Gilda, not tonight. I’ve other plans just now.”
“Oh, you’re no fun anymore.” Gilda swayed past him and on to Dillet, giving him a quick pat on the rear as she passed. At least Dillet had his tumble sorted for the night.
Van Gast looked toward the bar. There she was, Joshing Josie, his bitterest rival and dearest enemy. He loosened the sword in his scabbard, checked his pistol and sauntered up behind her. All conversation died away. Every racketeer here knew of their enmity and they were watching, hoping tonight would be the fight, the one that ended it at last, when one would finally best the other for good.
Josie had her back to him and even when one of her crew whispered in her ear she didn’t turn. Cocky, way too cocky about her abilities. She was good, but he was Van Gast. He stared at her back for a heartbeat, at the way she stood, fluid and graceful like a dancer. At the braids and beads, feathers and trinkets woven into the white-blond hair, at the pale skin nearly unique among the mainlanders. The smooth-fitting leather breeches that showed off her lithe physique, the one that made her so damn quick. Another step and he was behind her, close enough he could feel the heat of her through his shirt. Her first mate Galdon drew his sword, but Josie settled him with a lazy half-raised hand.