by Julia Knight
Van Gast leaned in, one arm either side of her, and pinned her to the bar from behind. He set his mouth by her ear, but he made sure his words carried. He wanted everyone to hear what he had to say. “Hello, sweetheart, I’m looking for a good time. You look like you’d be pretty cheap and plenty dirty. How much?”
Galdon flinched as though he’d been slapped, and Van Gast knew he’d hit on just the right thing to really fuck her off.
“I don’t think you could afford me.” Josie’s low, smoky voice held no note of anger, only a resigned weariness. She didn’t turn but she tossed back her drink in one hit and placed the glass delicately on the bar.
“Oh, I think I can.” Van Gast fished out the smallest coin he could find, half a copper fish-head, and slapped it on the bar by her glass. “That should buy me all night. You do the real kinky stuff, right? ’Course you do, no one would pay otherwise for a pox-ridden little whore like you.”
One moment her hand was resting lightly on the rim of her glass, the next her fist flashed back over her shoulder and caught him square on the cheek. Fuck, she was fast. He staggered back and she turned, aiming a swift boot for his groin as she pulled out her sword. His twist to the side made sure her boot caught his thigh not his balls, and then he had his own sword out.
She stood ready, light on her feet, and Van Gast wasn’t quite so confident now. He was bigger and stronger, yes, but she was a damn sight quicker and could stretch her kicks farther than she’d any right to. It was unnatural.
The inn was deadly silent as everyone held their breath, waiting for it all to kick off in earnest. Might as well give them what they want. If there was a choice between the sensible-but-dull thing and the stupid-but-exciting thing, Van Gast would say “fuck it” and do the stupid thing every time. Life was too short for dull and sensible when exciting was so much more fun.
“Come on, then, you reckon a girl can beat me, then beat me.” Guaranteed to start it—any racketeer woman was as formidable with a sword as a man in technique if not in strength. They honed their quickness with long practice and had a reputation for devious, underhanded viciousness that, among the best of them at least, made up for the lack of strength.
Van Gast led with a feint that Josie dodged with ease before she stabbed back with a riposte that sliced the cuff of his shirt.
Gilda swore behind him. “I’ll show you girls are just as good, you—”
He swung round, thrust at Josie again and in the corner of his eye Dillet was giving Gilda a run for her money in a fist fight.
Josie came for him, lightning quick, but he got his blade up just in time, brought his extra height and strength to bear as he forced her down and away. A swift kick to his knee and she leaped up onto a table. Then everything descended into chaos as her crew and his drew weapons, as more sober racketeers dived under tables, and whores screamed theatrically at the sight of blood when Gilda opened up Dillet’s face with a well-placed knuckle. The barkeep carried on serving with a look of long-suffering resignation, batting away anyone who looked like they were coming over the counter.
Van Gast leaped after Josie, up onto the table, chased her along and back down to the floor, parried two swift attacks and then he had her, his sword pushing her back to a flimsy driftwood wall. She lashed out with her other hand, but he knocked it away and bore down with all his weight and a grin.
A giant bald lump of a man crashed into them and sent them flying in opposite directions before he fell half through the wall in a smash of wood. Dillet got up off the unconscious man’s back, shook away fragments of driftwood, dipped the giant’s pocket and came away with a handful of coins. He winked at Van Gast before he leaped back into the fray with a wild grin.
Josie was gone. A door at the end of the taproom swung on one hinge and Van Gast laughed under his breath. Trying to run away, eh? Slippery little Josie. He planted a foot in the giant’s back and ran after her. The door led straight up a set of rickety stairs, and the muffled sound of scuffed footsteps creaked on the floorboards above.
He took the stairs two at a time, slowed a little as he neared the top and flipped round into a hallway. Four doors lined up along a carpet so old and ground with sand and dirt he couldn’t tell the color. The end door was ajar. He crept along, trying to keep the creaks to a minimum, but the boards were old and warped from the salt-laden sea damp, and every step sounded as loud as a pistol shot to his ears.
He stopped to listen at the last door but heard nothing and opened it. A flash of movement by the window caught his attention as Josie swung out and down. By the time he got there, she was a flicker of bright shirt and a chime of Forn’s bells twisting round a corner below. Toward the next inn, the Wicked Lady. He sheathed his sword, let himself down onto the empty path and followed, keeping to the shadows.
The sun had set and the Estovan delta wasn’t a safe place to be after dark. Of course, being one of the people who made it dangerous was an advantage. He crept round the back of the Wicked Lady, a more substantial affair than the last place. The narrow path was clogged with debris and he had to pick his way through with care. One window stood slightly open, a lamp glowing against a flimsy curtain. A woman’s outline moved across it. He had her.
A barrel made a handy jump-off point. He caught at the edge of the window and pulled up, quiet and quick. The window had a lock set into it, holding it ajar. For someone like him it would be a matter of moments to get it open. He never got the chance.
The window wrenched out of his grasp and Josie stood there, sword at his throat, one pale eyebrow raised imperiously. “Pox-ridden whore?”
Van Gast laughed, pushed her sword away and slid through the now open window into the room. “All I could think of at the time.”
She looked at him, half glare, half wry amusement, her sword still ready. She never gave up, not till the end. Too wary, too slippery to be pinned, his Josie. He made a grab for her but she wriggled out of his grasp and away across the room. By the bed.
Van Gast threw his sword across the floor and took her arms with both hands. She grinned her lopsided grin at him, the one that always made his stomach flip. The one that meant she was going to kill you, rob you or take you to bed. He was never sure, from one moment to the next, which it would be. Josie was the stupid-but-exciting thing, the never-quite-in-his-grasp thing that always kept him coming back for more, kept him from taking the tumbles of others, even though freely offered, even though it was expected of him, of any racketeer.
Even now she wriggled in his grasp but he stopped her with a kiss. She relaxed into him, returned his kiss with a hungry passion that shivered his toes, and dropped her sword. He pressed against her and slid his arms round her back and down.
She pulled away after a time and looked up at him with laughing, half-lidded eyes. “Andor Van Gast, is that all you ever think of?”
“With you in the room? Yes, Josienne, yes it is.”
“Good.” Then she grabbed his shirt and pulled him down to the creaking bed.
Van Gast lay on his back with his arms behind his head and looked up at Josie as she sat astride him, at the way her braids trickled over one pale shoulder and her mouth curved to one side in a smile. The hollows and shadows that flickered over her in the dim lamplight, the little scar on her collarbone that pointed at the cleft between her breasts. She leaned forward and all he could see was her.
“Andor, are you listening?”
“Hmm? No, sorry. I was admiring the view.”
Josie laughed softly and leaned farther forward so her breasts just touched his chest. “You’re incorrigible.”
“Damn, I was hoping for irresistible.”
She kissed him, softly and slowly, before she slid off to the side and lay with her head on his shoulder, one arm wrapped around him. “You’re that too.”
“Glad to hear it. So, tomorrow night at the Herald’s Trumpet?”
“And the next morning, that counter-scam I was trying to talk to you about. Silly man thinks we’re goin
g to rob you. You ready to be a respectable merchantman for the day?”
Merchantmen and racketeers, there wasn’t much difference between them, only attitude and flair. Many racks only traded, and legally. Many merchants ripped off or stole or bribed or otherwise circumvented the laws. There were plenty worse ships than either of them out there in the Deeps, ones who’d kill you before they robbed you whether they needed to or not, maybe shoot you just for fun or sell you to the Remorians to be bond-ganged.
No, not much difference between merchantmen and racks. It was all in how you approached life, and racks were born to it, not made. Merchants twisted the rules and laws if they could. Racks ignored them when they felt like it. It was a matter of being your own person, of never letting anyone—excepting maybe your captain and not always then—make you do a damn thing you didn’t want to.
Van Gast groaned at the thought of spending a day in the roasting sun, all trussed up like a merchantman. It was essential, because any merchantman worth his cargo was a hard man to fool. Besides, while Josie couldn’t hide her fair skin and blond hair among the dark mainlanders for long, there weren’t many people other than racks who knew his true face, and he intended to keep it that way. Yet the contraptions merchantmen used to hold in their bellies didn’t bear thinking about. Especially in the damp heat of Estovan. “Is business all you ever want to talk about?”
Before he’d met her, he’d been nothing but a smash-and-grab man, stealing whatever lay to hand when the opportunity presented itself. She’d been a fount of ideas and plans with no one to help her finesse them. Apart they’d been insignificant. Together they were unstoppable.
“I expect you can persuade me to think of something else.” She snuggled in closer and let her hand run over his chest in slow swirls. Van Gast slid his own hand down her back and savored her breath on his neck. He turned on his side and they looked at each other across the pillow. She was smiling, not her Josie grin, but that soft smile that only he got to see. Her eyes were dark in the shadows.
These were the times when he hoped—when she lost her sharp edges and brittle words, just with him. When they were alone, secret together in the half dark, just them, their skin, lips, hands, hearts. This was when he hoped that she loved him, that he was more than just a tumble to her, someone to stop the loneliness, a warmth in her bed.
If only he could get her to say it.
She stopped his thoughts with a fierce kiss, one to bruise his lips. Tangled her legs around his and pressed into him with a quiet, nearly desperate arch of her back. When she pulled away, her hand fell from where it was entwined in his hair and dropped to stroke his cheek, along the line of his jaw.
The hand fell farther, across his chest, between their stomachs. Damn the woman. He leaned over her so she fell back to the sheets and lay looking up at him with her braids spread across the pillow. The press of him stopped her hand and he kissed her with a ferocity of his own, angry with her for making him be this way, for making him love her. Angry with himself for letting her do it to him.
He kissed her down into the pillows until she was breathless with it, and didn’t let her up until he’d loved her. Until he’d made her twist and arch beneath him, made her sweat and his mingle together and she’d called his name with what breath she had left.
Chapter Two
Black into white into blue into grey into black. Holden traced it with his eyes. The pattern was always the same.
“You may look up, Commander. I’ve a task I want to entrust to you.” The Master’s eyes bored into Holden. “One that requires your diligence and duty, your utmost effort. A tightening of your bond.”
Holden did his best not to flinch. Remorians were willing servants of the Master of Mages in return for the peace he gave them. They served as his hands and legs. A mage of the power couldn’t move—or bathe—without losing magic, so their every need was attended to by the bondsmen.
Holden was a loyal servant, he was. He didn’t need his bond tightened. “Master—”
The Master’s lips moved in the tiniest of smiles. Holden winced as a crystal by his mouth cracked. “Come forward, Commander.”
Holden had no choice but to obey. He knew the price of failure and it was pain. He took a step, and another, his heart dragging though he dare not show it, dare not think the thoughts that wanted to leap into his mind. A mage of the power could see inside the head of any bonded man, and those unbidden traitorous thoughts would see him dead. Why did he think them when he knew—with a cold, dead certainty—they were wrong, that the bond was right? He squashed them as he always did and thought of a fine sea breeze, of wind snapping in the sails of his ship, and a far horizon. He stepped up onto the dais and stood in front of the Master. His nose was full of the musky scent of unwashed skin and the vague, oddly comforting smell of accrued magic.
“You have long been one set of my eyes and ears, Commander. You are one of the men who keeps our land and seas in order. You carry the weight of my will in your bond. That has been your charge for some time. Order. Yet I find that racketeers, among others, upset that order with their wild and debauched ways. This Van Gast humiliates me, humiliates us all. We cannot appear weak in front of the free ports. Trade, and our livelihood, depend on it. I depend on you. Do you understand, Commander? We must catch this Van Gast at all costs, and show the free ports, the racketeers, that we’re not to be trifled with.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Kneel.”
Holden’s knees bent of their own accord. This close to the Master, to his power, he knew nothing else but obedience, had no deliberation on it. The Master controlled the muscles in his legs, the thoughts in his brain. Their faces were level, and the Master’s eyes glinted in their crystal caves. “Hold out your arm.”
Holden’s arm rose. He stared at it incredulously and made a fist to try to stop the shakes. The Master’s hand delved into his bond-scar, twisted round and scrabbled on bone till he had it, and pulled. Holden bit down on the scream that came to his lips as the bond drew tight on his arm and his head, rolling up his recent past into the fog of duty until nothing else remained.
The Master’s voice droned in his ear. “Bring me Van Gast, bring him alive so I may bond him unwilling, watch him fight against it and see that fight kill him slowly.”
The Master’s command, the burn in the tightened bond, dragged Holden back to his feet with his skin cold and clammy and his muscles trembling.
“Now that’s out of the way, I’ve something more pleasant for you.” The Master’s eyes flicked to the side and his aide bowed and left the room. “A reward for your fine service and in expectation of fine service to come.”
Holden kept as still as he could and concentrated on the soothing pattern of the tiles. Straight lines, smooth order calmed him.
The aide returned with a woman in tow. She stopped by the dais, her eyes turned to the floor as was proper.
“Come here, Ilsa,” the Master said, his voice kind.
She stepped up to the dais, her deep chestnut hair swinging between her shoulder blades, her copper skin shining. She’d have been pretty if it weren’t for the blank-eyed adoration that dulled her face. Holden’s heart twisted.
The Master held out his hand over Ilsa’s bond-scar, murmured to her as he turned his fingers in such a small movement Holden strained to see it.
“A gift, and one I expect you to use well, Holden. It’s been noted that you’ve yet to give a woman your bond. I expect better of my commanders, I expect them to set an example. Use her well, make many children for the Remorians. Start tonight. Come back in the morning and we shall discuss how best to catch Van Gast.”
Holden forced down the sickness in his belly, the treacherous thoughts in his head. “Yes, Master, thank you.”
“Now bond her.”
Another silver snake dangled from the Master’s fingers. Holden took it hesitantly, the feel of it churning the bile in his stomach. A good thing. A good one. Ilsa held out her arm without him hav
ing to say a word. Not just the bond that held her, but the training too. He didn’t want to put it on her. He didn’t want a woman to be his slave, to be bound to his desires, but he had no choice. His hands moved as though he was a puppet and someone else pulled the strings.
“You know the words, Holden. Bond her.” The Master’s voice held a hint of impatience.
Holden held the bond over her arm and let it slide from his fingers. His only comfort was that for those that took the pair-bond willingly, the pain was less, little more than a sharp sting, soon gone. The bond circled her wrist and he managed to choke out the words, the words every man used when he bonded a woman to him. Ones Holden had never wanted to have to say. “Let this bond you to me, your other master, my every desire your wish to fulfill.”
She fell against him and he supported her as best his shaking legs would allow. It wasn’t long before her whimpers faded. She stood up straight and raised her head. That blank, adoring look was fixed on him. He turned away.
Holden left the stale air of the Master’s chamber, silent as he paced the long dim corridor with Ilsa half a step behind him. She followed him like a dog; he could feel her eagerness to do his bidding, her pathetic need. It grated on him, and he couldn’t say why. The adoration was normal—he knew a hundred men with a hundred adoring wives and they were happy, content. Yet something about it, about her, nagged at him. A memory he couldn’t quite recall.
When they came out into the harsh heat of Remon, capital of the Archipelago, Holden took a deep, cleansing breath of the salted air and turned for home, through the market toward the docks.
It always took a little while for him to get used to it when he’d been away at sea. It’d been months since he’d seen Remon or any Remorian port. He was now more used to the noise and bustle of the mainland ports, the cries of the barkers and the soft promises of the whores, the redolent waft of ale, the chaos and bewildering variety. Remon was different, the Archipelago was different, and the normalcy, the quietness and peace washed over him like a cool breeze. No need to keep a watch on your purse here, no need to cross the road to avoid the brothels and the whores eager to have your business. No need to step over drunks or make sure your boot didn’t land in something rotten when you walked. Remon was different. No crime, no whores, no inns, and he didn’t miss them. Every citizen a good one, a law-abiding one, by their bond. Peace, through the bond. It was home.