Ten Ruby Trick

by Julia Knight

  It had sickened him to have to pretend to be happy about it, to listen to others gleefully embellishing their stories, thinking up worse and worse fates for her. So he’d slipped away, made out he had some tumble planned, which he did, only it looked as if she wasn’t going to make it.

  The houses thinned as the jungle crept in, vines that tangled along the path, twisted over roofs and through the stilts under the houses, huge trees that towered over everything and dripped their great leaves over the earth. There, at the very edge of the town, the little one-roomed house that was his, often used for secret deals and trades, more lately used for him and Josie to have some time.

  He climbed the steps to the front door and took a deep breath. The tang of the spicy wood used to build the houses was sharp in his nostrils, and the scent always reminded him of here, of the first time he and Josie had been together, the first tumble. He smiled at the memory and tried to still the little pang of fear. She’d come, she would.

  If she could.

  He lit the single lamp and hung it from the hook in the ceiling. No one waiting for him. No Josie asleep in the bed or lounging in the tin bath. No one, nothing. Not even a hint of her. He threw the sack of toys into the corner, sat on the bed and stared into space.

  He waited three days before he gave up, and tried not to think that she’d not come because she was dead.

  Chapter Ten

  Holden stared at the stone slabs of the floor, at their straight lines, and tried to keep his eyes blind and his ears deaf as he entered the cell block, but it was impossible. Sights and sounds leaked in, seared the backs of his eyes and echoed round his ears and into his brain. Not Remorian men—a bonded man would do nothing to bring himself to the cells. No, these were her men, her crew crowding the usually empty building, some compliant, some still free, in their minds at least, though their sanity was ragged at the edges because all were bonded. Sobs echoed along the corridor, the lonely sound of a man begging. The chant of the priests as they purified the next man in line, pain washing their sins away in screams and tears. The hopeless sound of a set of Forn’s bells chiming as a man shivered in his cell.

  Holden came to the cell at the end and waited at the entrance, trying to ignore the stench of sweat-soaked fear that tainted the whole building and fingering what he had in his pocket. The slick, greasy feel of it made him vaguely sick. At his order the guards went in and grabbed the boy, unlocked him from his chains and made to bring him out. Josie stood at the end of her shackles, straining as though she could break them, spouting every curse she could think of at the guards.

  Holden stepped in and she turned on him but he stood and took it all, until she spat on him. He pulled his hand from his pocket. A silver string writhed in his hand. A bond, seeking new flesh to enslave.

  Josie went very still and whispered, “You wouldn’t. Holden…you wouldn’t. Have you changed so much?”

  Her words slipped over him, over his duty, and left no ripple. Joshing Josie, that was what they called her. No one knew what her real name was. Or, if they did, they weren’t telling because racketeers were a superstitious lot, especially when it came to names. A racketeer held on to his or her full name at all costs, only revealing it to those they trusted beyond life. Not even Holden knew it, and they’d been lovers for two years, more, what felt like an eternity ago. A different life, when he’d been a different man. When he’d been a man at all. He kept his eyes fixed on the patterns on the floor, on his only anchor in a sea of grey thoughts and greyer duty.

  “You can stop this,” Holden said, though he didn’t hold out much hope she’d take the bait. His voice sounded odd to him, mechanical. He risked a glance at her.

  Her eyes were flat and still but she was wearing the lopsided grin that gave her the nickname. That smile meant one of three things, if you believed all you were told. She was about to rob you blind, she’d kill you without a blink of regret, or you’d have a night the like of which most men only got to dream of. They said. They were right about the nights though.

  “Don’t tell me,” she said, and the grin got wider, the eyes flatter. “Let me guess. I get on my knees, you untie your breeches and—”

  “No,” Holden said. Though he’d be tempted, very tempted. If she weren’t a racketeer and he weren’t now the commander in charge of finding Van Gast, through her. If he didn’t have his bond. Something about the unconscious grace in the way she moved, always something about the freedom of her that had a hold over him, that made his recent dreams dangerous things. “Not that.”

  She raised a cynical eyebrow, shook her fair hair and made all the braids bounce around her shoulders. “An honest Remorian man? Wonders will never cease. Just as well because I’d rather take the bond. No offence, but you aren’t Holden. You’re someone else wearing his skin.”

  Holden wasn’t fooled by the cool façade. Her eyes kept flicking to where the guards held the wriggling, wide-eyed boy. When Josie turned, the collar of her bright shirt moved, revealing a raft of bruises along her collarbone and round her throat. They hadn’t been there when he’d arrested her, and Holden tried not to think of the purification rituals the priests had used to try and get her to talk. By the time they’d got bonded, most of her crew-mates were relieved more than anything, if it meant an end to the nonstop line of priests. Oku’s holy men took their notions of purity, freedom from sin, and adherence to justice very seriously.

  “None taken. And it’s not you I’m after, or rather not just you. I want Van Gast.”

  She laughed at that, though it seemed brittle and forced. “He doesn’t swing that way darlin’. Though if he did, I’m sure you’d be just his type, pretty boy like you.”

  Holden stepped forward a pace and the jingle of the bells at his ankle made her start. Forn’s bells. A whispered entreaty to the god of the sea with every step, a sound that marked him a sailor every bit as much as she was. Something maybe she’d forgotten. They were all Forn’s children. It didn’t hurt to remind her that they shared something, that they’d shared even more once upon a time.

  “Boy? I’m not a boy. He is.” Holden jerked his head toward where the guards held the boy and held out his hand so she could look at the bond, watch it blindly strive for a new victim. “But I am the man who can stop it. If you agree to help me get Van Gast.”

  Her eyes flicked to the boy again, but she kept her face blank of emotion. An act, Holden was sure. What he’d staked this gambit on, knowing what a soft heart she’d had all that time ago, for him at least, though he’d heard enough from her crew to know she’d changed since. Become brittle, hot-headed and dangerous to go up against. Still soft enough she’d try to save the boy, puzzle that he was.

  What was a racketeer, especially one with Josie’s more recent reputation, doing with a five-year-old aboard? Because he was important to her in some way. Not hers, because Holden had known her five years ago and she certainly hadn’t been pregnant or had a child. Blood relative or possibly a hostage to some fortune that she hoped to cash in on. Maybe the son of some favored friend, a promise kept to look after the boy. Even racketeers kept that sort of promise. Mostly.

  Whatever the reason, the boy was the key to getting her to cooperate so that Holden didn’t have to bond her, and despite the burn of his own bond, despite the flame of duty and obedience in his head, he didn’t want to do that. Not to Josie. If he did that to her, any hope he had was gone, his dreams turned to dust by his own hand.

  Holden held out his hand toward the boy and the bond wriggled furiously, seeking its target. Holden would have sworn Josie winced. “You can stop this now. Just say the word.”

  “All right,” she said in a whisper. “I’ll help. I could do with getting back all that bastard stole from me anyway.”

  Holden smiled tightly to himself and slid the bond back into his pocket. Josie’s and Van Gast’s enmity was legendary. Constantly needling each other, trying to outdo one another by any means, fair or foul or downright vicious. That hatred was something
the Master had counted on. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Maybe Van Gast was the only racketeer she’d help him catch.

  Her eyes were hot daggers on his. “Would you have done it? Bonded him?”

  Holden kept himself in check. No good letting her find a chink in his armor; she’d use it far too well and the chink wasn’t a chink, it was a chasm, one that widened every time he looked at her. It could be fatal for him, if she found it. That was what she did. Found the chink, played the odds, and until now she’d won every time. Except against Van Gast. Nobody won against Van Gast. Holden suspected she hated him as much as the Master did.

  “Maybe I’d have bonded him, maybe not. Tell me where to find Van Gast.”

  Josie stood up straight and squared her shoulders. Again Holden noticed the smoothness of her movements, even shackled as she was. Not slim, muscled, but like a dancer not a fighter, and she used those muscles and that grace in quite deadly ways. She really was something. Something different to the bonded girls, who wouldn’t know a lee wind if it slapped them on the arse, wouldn’t know the thrill of a storm or the comfort of the swell in the sway of your ship, the freedom of a good wind and a degree to head for.

  Holden’s stomach turned as he thought of Ilsa, how he’d offered to take his bond from her and she’d begged to keep it, afraid of what her life would be without the comfort of its confines. Afraid to be anything apart from what she’d always known.

  When he’d met Josie, when his bond had been looser, it had been a revelation. A woman who could do as she pleased and yet who had chosen to be with him. It had ruined him for Remorian women for a time, until the memory had faded under the bond, too painful to recall. He wouldn’t let that get in the way of this, of catching Van Gast. Not just a racketeer. The racketeer. Because his Master said so. With a sudden clarity he saw himself as no better than those bonded women, and yet there was nothing he could do to change it.

  “I don’t know where he is,” Josie said. A lie, he was sure.

  “Then we’ve nothing to bargain.” He made to pull his hand from his pocket again and her voice, edged with a feathery hint of panic, stopped him.

  “But I know where he’ll be. And I know how to catch him.”

  Holden kept his back to her, afraid his face would reveal too much. “Oh yes?”

  “Yes. You could have done it yourself, if you’d had the brains you used to have.”

  He turned back to her and squashed the hint of doubt when he saw her lopsided grin. Joshing Josie. Rob, kill or delight. Odds are one in three. He’d not be trusting to any way she thought of. He knew her twisting mind too well and it was far too slippery. No, not trust it but use what she knew of Van Gast and how he worked, how his little-magics worked.

  “You’ll get the boy back once I have Van Gast in this cell looking at his own bond. And we’ll get him how I say, not through any plan of yours.” He looked at those bruises again, a dark livid purple against the paler skin under her shirt, and swallowed back his disgust at what the Archipelago would do to anyone in its way. “Let’s get you to a healer.”

  Van Gast couldn’t recall the last time he’d been this drunk. Maybe never. His tongue felt clumsy and sticky. His eyes were gummy, everything swam in and out of focus, and if he stood up he was pretty sure he’d be sick.

  A vague blob appeared in front of him. “Van?”

  He made an effort and propped himself on his elbows in a vain attempt to sit up straighter. Bad mistake. The taproom swam around him in a swirl of colors. He laid his head back down on the table. Better.

  “Van, get up.”

  “Don’t want to.” His voice sounded petulant and slurred. “Stay here ’n get drunk. Drunker.”

  “Van, um, you need to get up. Come on.”

  A pair of hands pulled at him, tried to get him on his feet, but he stumbled against their owner and the two of them fell in a tangled heap on a floor strewn with straw and reeds that reeked of rancid beer and week-old food. Guld, that was who it was. He could tell by the extra smell of mothballs and a musty hint of magic.

  Guld tried again and on the third attempt Van Gast was on his feet, Guld’s shoulder under his arm. “Kyr’s mercy, Van, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this drunk. What’s the matter with you?”

  Didn’t matter now. Might as well tell him. “Josie.”

  Guld helped him out of the inn and into the air. The slap of the salt breeze sobered him a little and that little was too much. He swayed around and tried to go back in the inn but Guld pulled him away. If Van Gast had been more sober it would have been easy to throw him off. Now it was easier just to go along.

  “Josie? I thought you’d be glad she’s not around anymore.”

  “Everyone does, that’s the problem.” Van Gast took a big gulp of air, fought back an urge to retch, and propped himself on a wall. The narrow street closed in on him and he struggled up again. Had to get to—to—somewhere else. Yes.

  The noonday sun stabbed at his eyes and he squinted up with a glare before he staggered away from the inn. He’d no idea where he was going or even what port they were in. The streets were narrow, paved only with packed earth and the occasional steppingstone over a bubbling channel of who-knew-what. As he went farther, other scents joined in. The sea, brine and seaweed and rot, wafted up from away down a hill. An earthier scent, a verdant wild sort of smell, mixed with the spicy tang of wood.

  Van Gast stopped for a breath and peered out over the roofs of houses below him on the hill. A great green giant lurked on the edge of the town, looming over it like a storm cloud ready to break. The jungle creeping up on them, as if it thought they wouldn’t notice. Still in Dorston then, and she hadn’t come. She hadn’t come.

  Guld hovered nearby, his mouth flapping as though he wanted to say something but didn’t dare.

  “What?”

  Guld hesitated until Van Gast growled his question again. “Oh, um, what about Josie? Only the crew’s been waiting for you. We should have sailed two days ago, if we’re to make Sarigin in time. Dillet sent everyone out looking for you.”

  Van Gast started off again, down the hill toward the docks. What about Josie indeed. He had to tell someone, couldn’t keep it all in, and no point now. “Guld, can you keep a secret?”

  “I suppose. Well, yes, I suppose I can. My magic is secret, my spells.”

  Van Gast glanced at him, at the bright but tattered robe over breeches that were a little too long so he tripped on them occasionally. The pensive face and stutter, the habit of wringing his hands whenever he was called upon to talk. A figure of fun amongst the crew, though he knew his magic all right. Who would Guld tell? More to the point, even if he did, who would listen?

  “Good, because if this gets out—” he glared at Guld meaningfully, “—I shall be very bloody angry.”

  They reached the main market square. A little shop on the corner sold sweetmeats and the local specialty, a hot spicy drink made for curing hangovers or giving you some pep. Van Gast could do with both. He shoved Guld toward the entrance and pushed him into a seat in the corner.

  It only took a moment to get two small glasses of the tonic and sit down. Van Gast watched Guld, sipping his drink thoughtfully. He had to tell someone, had to. He was sobering up now and his hands began to shake, just thinking about it, about her. She couldn’t be gone. That was it—if anyone could help him find her, it was Guld. At the least, the mage was the one member of his crew who wouldn’t sneer or laugh to find out Van Gast wasn’t taking petty tumbles and hadn’t for some time.

  Only trouble now was where to start. “Josie…” Van Gast shook his head with a grimace and started again. Straight out was the best way, like pulling a knife from a wound. “I love her.”

  Guld’s glass dropped to the table, spilled its hot contents in his lap and smashed on the tiled floor. Guld leaped to his feet with a cry at the scald and flapped his robe while the shopkeep came and swept away the debris with a subdued tutting. When he’d gone, Van Gast tried again. It was h
ard, looking at Guld’s flabbergasted shock.

  “The whole thing, us hating each other, it was all a scam. Worked like a fucking charm too. Her idea, of course. Before I met her I was just a smash-and-grab man, couldn’t organize a fuck in a brothel. Her though, she had ideas that would make your head spin and needed me to help her finesse them. Add a bit of panache, you know? She sets up the deal, gets them sweet and makes them think they’re in with a chance with her, makes them think her and the mark are going to twist me. Only that doesn’t happen, because I twist them both, or so the mark thinks. Only it’s her twisting with me. You following me? Then me and her split the money, the mark thinks she hates me even more for doing her out of money, and so does everyone else. Perfect. She knew how to do it, knew how to keep everyone from suspecting, how to fire a shot across our bows that looked like it was just an unlucky miss. Knew when to cut and run with the cargo, leaving us the ship. Done that more than a few times and even Dillet never suspected, and he’s a suspicious bastard.”

  Guld sat there with his mouth open, forgetting even to wring his hands or say “um.”

  “Even the fights were nothing but a chance for both our crews to pocket a bit of money. If it weren’t for her and her twists, I’d never have afforded a ship or crew. Ten Ruby Trick, that’s what got us enough for a ship each, made it so we didn’t have to crew for anyone else anymore. Damn good twist, that one. She was damn good. And when we were alone I—I never even took anyone else’s tumble. Not once. And now…” Van Gast took a steady breath and tried to still the pain in his chest. “I was supposed to meet her here, only now my trouble bone’s itching like buggery, she’s gone and I don’t know where, or if she’s alive or—or if she’s just found another rack to help her or…I love her.”