by Julia Knight
He smiled into her hair. No one knew, except them. Their hatred of each other was a useful thing, and a fun one too, though Josie found it more to her liking than he did. It meant they didn’t see too much of each other, that she didn’t feel trapped or caged. Or, more like, that she didn’t have to feel she relied on him. Butterfly Josie, too slippery to be pinned.
She turned toward him, her breath quick and warm on his neck. “Holden?”
The shaft of hurt that speared his heart robbed him of breath, that she thought he was that Remorian. What else, other than scamming, had she been doing with him? She might as well have taken her knife and twisted it in Van Gast’s chest. He waited until he was sure of his voice, that it betrayed no hint of that. “No, Josie. Not Holden.”
She relaxed onto his shoulder and nestled her lips by his throat. “Good.”
The tightness in his chest loosened and he pulled her closer, let his hand slide down her back. His Josie, not anyone else’s. Certainly not Holden’s. He didn’t know Josie like Van Gast did. She was his, and he knew her like he knew his ship, or his hand, knew her better than anyone alive yet would never know her, not entirely.
They must have slept like that for a time, because when he opened his eyes again the fire was dying and the last dregs of the storm ragged the trees outside. He tucked Josie in the blanket and got up to stoke the flames. When he sat down, he propped himself with his back to the table leg and lifted her up again. She murmured something in her sleep and he wrapped them tightly together again, her on his lap and her head on his shoulder. Skin to skin. She was warmer now, at last, and it seeped into him, the sheer vitality that always seemed to ooze from her every pore. He thought again of their nights together and pulled her closer, shifted so that he could see her face and let his hand drift lightly over the familiar curves of her back.
“Andor Van Gast, is that all you ever think of?”
He held on to the sigh of relief and grinned at her tone. Not angry with him, ready to tease him.
“Why yes, Josienne, yes it is. Plus, it’s a great way to warm up. How about it?”
She cracked open an eye and grinned back. “I suppose I owe you.”
“It’s a heck of a way to get some time alone, love. I know I’m irresistible, but you couldn’t think of an easier way?”
Josie slapped at his shoulder, sat up with a groan and tried stretching her arms. “I feel like I’ve been run down by a herd of cows.” She sank back onto his chest and tilted her head to kiss him lightly. “How did we end up here? And where is here?”
“Gods only know. Guld will find us, once the storm’s blown over. As for why, how did you manage to fall overboard?”
“Bloody man insisted on sailing that storm. And you, Van, why in the gods’ names did you follow?” She raised an amused eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you were jealous?”
“Need I be?”
“Maybe, maybe.” She grinned at the look on his face, reached up and kissed him again. “Don’t be stupid, it was for show, for the twist, nothing else. So why did you?”
Van Gast settled back against the table leg. “Because I wanted to know where you’ve been all this time, what the fuck you thought you were doing with a Remorian on your ship, hmm? And his mage. What the fuck are you doing with them and why Ten Ruby Trick? Trying to scam a Remorian. That is what you’re trying to do?”
She tensed under his hand and turned to the fire, threw on the last two logs and poked at it till the flames were rustling again. “Something like that. I knew you’d know something was up if I used Ten Ruby. And I knew you’d play along. He thinks we’re scamming you.”
“But Remorian, Josie—Kyr’s fucking mercy, woman, you want to get bonded?”
She went very still. Even her ribs didn’t move to breathe for long moments, though the muscles bunched along her throat and jaw, as though she wanted to say something but couldn’t. Then she leaped to her feet with a yelp of pain and massaged at one leg. “Cramp,” she said at last. “Just cramp.” But her hands were shaking and, if Van Gast hadn’t known better, he’d have thought she was making an effort to hold in some vast pain.
After a time she settled again and he massaged the last of the cramp from her thigh. “But why, Josie? I mean, Remorians of all people.” Van Gast shuddered and not with cold. Just the thought of the mage-bonds, of a country full of brain-dead slaves, was enough to bring him out in a rash. He’d no wish to join their ranks, and that was what happened all too often when you dealt with the Remorians, or even if you didn’t but got too close.
She let out a long sigh and leaned back against him. “Just another scam, Van. One too big to miss, Remorians or not.”
Hiding something, that was plain. Her shoulders were stiff as planks and she didn’t relax into him. Something was off, and though he didn’t want to entertain the possibility it might be her. He had a very odd feeling about this whole thing. “So, tell me then. What’s the plan?”
“You and me are going to scam them and get very rich. Rich as kings. Richer. He’s got something priceless to us.”
“That’s it?” He couldn’t keep the disbelief from his voice. She thought they could just dance in and scam Remorians, and with one of their mages about? Clearly she wasn’t telling him everything.
She didn’t say anything for a while, but it was only when her leg spasmed again and she hissed out a breath of pain that he realized she was trying to talk, only the words wouldn’t seem to come. She rubbed at her eyes, and Van Gast tried not to think how odd she was being. That she might not be his Josie anymore.
“Do you trust me?” Her voice was very small in the quiet near-dark.
Now that was a loaded question. Trust didn’t come easily, to either of them. He pulled her closer. She didn’t object, only laid her head on his chest. She was shivering again, and from the heat that radiated from her, he didn’t think she was still cold. “Yes,” he whispered into her hair. “Yes, Josienne. Yes, I do.”
“Then just go along with the trick. I have a plan, a good one. I had to change it a bit, but it’ll work, all right?” Her hand trailed up his arm, along his neck, and her fingers touched on his lips. She tilted her head to look at him, a sheen of worry in her eyes that he’d never seen before.
That was when he had to ask, had to know. “Josie, do you—”
“I hate you,” she whispered into his chest before he could finish. “I hate that you make me like you, make me trust you. That it’s too easy to be with you. You’re the only man in my miserable life who never let me down, never betrayed my trust.” Fear shrouded her face. That he’d be like the rest of them.
Not if he could help it.
Van Gast tried a grin and asked the question he’d wanted to ask for far too long, had put off for fear of the answer. “But you love me too, right?”
She must do. Or else why would she still come to him? Why would she still kiss him and take him to bed, even if she always left too soon? Yet those were the only clues he really had, because she’d never said. Oh, he thought she did, but she danced around the words, said all of them but the ones that really mattered, and because she didn’t say it, he’d never dared to, never dared to open himself to the answer that he was just a tumble, a way to pass the time, a warmth in her bed when she needed it.
The corner of her mouth twisted down and she tried to turn away, but he caught at her chin and turned her back, his heart grown colder than the sea. “Josie, I swear to all the gods that I trust you. Do you trust me?”
She pulled away, turned her back and brought her knees up to her chest, laid her head on her knees and her head on her arms.
“Josie?” Van Gast held out a hesitant hand for her shoulder but didn’t quite have the nerve to touch her. She wasn’t the same Josie, not his Josie.
“Will you do it, play the scam?” Her voice was muffled by her arms, but he thought he heard a hint of tears.
That couldn’t be. Josie had never cried, not ever. She’d fought and spat at and bitten her en
emies, laughed with him and called out breathlessly in his bed, but not cried. He wasn’t sure she could.
“Yes, I’ll do it. It’s worked often enough, I don’t see why a little twist shouldn’t work too but, gods damn it, Josie, Remorians?”
She lifted her head and there was no hint of the tears now, if ever there had been. “Andor, I—whatever happens, you have to trust me, all right? I’ve got a plan, and it’ll work, even now. We’re going to twist Holden till his balls bleed, and then we’ll all be free. Whatever it is you think I’m doing, whatever I do, you have to trust me.”
She unfolded herself and knelt in front of him, and he couldn’t tell, he never could with her. Couldn’t tell whether she was angry or afraid or just resigned. Then she flashed him her lopsided grin, as capricious as the sea, more changeable than the wind. That grin—robbed, killed or have the time of your life. Odds were one in three. Fuck it, it’d be a good way to go.
He pulled her toward him and she wriggled away, just out of his reach. The old game. She laughed when his hand missed her arm, back to being Josie, his Josie. He grabbed for her, wrestled her to the blanket and buried his face in her hair. She smelled of brine and seaweed, and a hint…he would have sworn the blood drained from his face. His lips were frozen again, his insides as cold as when they’d pitched up on the shore. Just a hint, but she smelled like them, like the Remorians. Their stink was all over her.
Then she turned her face up to his and kissed him, and all thoughts of that fled. None of it mattered anymore, just that she was here, with him, she maybe loved him even if she could never say it, she was kissing him and they had time and to spare. He kissed her solidly, slowly and thoroughly, pulled her tight to him, let his hand roam over the familiar curves of her, and he didn’t know or care where they were, or what she was planning. None of that mattered when he kissed her.
“Josie, I—”
She interrupted him with a laugh. “Van, shut up and get our clothes off.”
Fuck it. “Aye, aye, Captain.” He slid his hand down, undid the ties on her breeches and pinned his butterfly with kisses.
When Van Gast woke the sun was well on the way to noon. The muscles in his back groaned as he stretched, turned over sleepily and put an arm out for Josie. Nothing there but cold, empty space. He blinked himself properly awake, sat up and ran a hand through salt-laden hair.
The hut was empty but for him, the blanket wrapped round him to keep out the chill. The fire had long since died and while the storm had blown itself out, the wind still blustered through the trees and crept in the cracks between the boards and the gap in the roof.
Bloody woman, never would stay in one place for long, even with him. Still, worth it when she was here. He whistled a jaunty little tune as he got up and looked out of the door.
Josie’s tracks led off along the beach, making for the headland that was, even in the bright sun, a looming dark beast that commanded the bay. The beach was a mass of broken trees, rafts of weed, a ragged length of sail. All the flotsam and jetsam of the storm to bring home just how lucky they’d been. Just outside the door sat a pile of stones that, if they’d been there the night before, he’d not noticed. On top perched the fake ruby. Ten Ruby Trick. She meant to go on with it then.
He bent down to pick up the ruby and, at the different angle, saw the pattern the stones made. A V and a J, intertwined. A message. Trust me. He rubbed the pattern back into a mosaic of shingle. No good telling anyone they’d been there.
The ruby flashed in the sunlight as he tossed it in the air and caught it. He whistled a lewd shanty that reminded him of Josie on her wilder days and made off down the beach in the opposite direction to her tracks. No sense in this Holden knowing they’d met up, giving him any hint they were anything other than enemies. So he whistled his way down the beach and tried to guess how big a prize scamming a Remorian man would have to be worth for Josie to risk it.
Chapter Fifteen
Holden stared out into a day scrubbed clean by the storm. A fresh breeze, whitecaps on the sea, a scud of grey clouds to the west all that was left of the wild winds that had nearly killed them all. The deck was a tangle of rigging, mast, spars and rope, which the remainder of the crew were trying to set right as best they could. Holden held on to his temper, his voice coming out clipped and cold as he rounded on his mage.
“Gods damn you to the Deeps, Cattan, I don’t care how much power you’ve lost. I’ve lost a half dozen of my men and a mast, because of you.” Holden regarded the pathetic remnants of the mage in front of him, who’d done little but bleat how it wasn’t his fault. Pale, wizened skin, arms like sticks, a few clusters of crystals hanging on to his skin for dear life, and the rank smell of the terminally unwashed. Even Holden could smell it—it didn’t take Josie to point it out to him.
Cattan’s eyes rolled feverishly in their sockets and he shivered under his raft of blankets, not used to the outside air, not accustomed to as much as a breeze on bare skin. Yet Holden wanted him to see what his failure had cost them. Not just in men and mast, but that Josie, their one best hope of catching Van Gast, was gone.
It wasn’t just that which had Holden having to restrain himself from throttling the wretched mage. They hadn’t only lost their chance, he’d lost Josie too, and that was too hard to bear. He’d forgotten what it was like, what she was like, how she’d breezed into his life so many years ago and shown him…everything. The endless, joyful possibilities that life had to offer, before the Islands had sucked it out of him. Now he’d found her again, found the sense of hope that possibilities bring, only to lose her.
“I don’t care how you do it, Cattan. Frankly, I don’t care if it kills you. If you want to make amends to our Master, to me, you’ll find her. She’d better be alive too, or you won’t be making it back to port.”
Cattan somehow managed to sneer and cower at the same time. A mage of the power, who no longer had the strength to do much but cast a spell to track Josie’s bond.
Holden left him to it and went to see how the repairs were coming along. A couple of Josie’s crew had been allowed on deck under Skrymir’s watchful eye, and they’d brought out the spare rigging and sail. Maybe enough to get them to a port to refit. Barely. Some of his men were doing what they could with the mast, and at least they’d managed to plug the hole, temporarily, but it wouldn’t get them far. The rest of the crew were in the hold shoring up leaks, only the one bad one but several smaller. If they didn’t get to port by sunset, Josie would be proved correct. He would have sunk her fucking ship.
He joined his men on the mast, stripped off his shirt and hauled with them to get it upright again, strap the fragment to what remained. By the time his first mate called him up to the wheel, he was dripping sweat.
Cattan had found her, alive, and not too far away. Holden reined in the relief and snapped out orders to set sail as soon as they could. Other repairs could be done as they sailed. Strange though the looks he got were, he went to make himself presentable, to wash the sweat and grime and fear away.
The fear seemed to stink to him worse than anything else, a rank odor he’d never smelled on himself before. Fear that they’d all die in that storm, because he couldn’t sail well enough, because he’d never run a storm without a mage to dampen it. Fear of his Master’s wrath when he found that Josie, their one leverage on Van Gast, was overboard, and worse than that, worse than everything else. The night had been full of fear that Josie was dead, and that it was his fault, that he’d driven her to it.
A man overboard was rarely found alive and Holden had given up when Skrymir had screamed his words through the storm. His lovely beautiful dream, blown apart by a storm. The dream to find Josie, or someone very like her. A woman who’d never known bondage, whose very freedom lightened his own heart. He’d dreamed his dream and known it could never be real. Someone very like Josie, he’d always thought, not her. He’d doubted he’d ever see her again, and there, she’d dropped in his lap.
Perfect, it had b
een perfect. Until he’d had no choice but to bond her. That he could get round, he’d planned for it. Once they had Van Gast, he’d release her. Not for his dream, but in gratitude, for all she’d shown him when they were young and foolish and full of stardust and moonbeams. Before reality, and his bond, had asserted itself.
His bond was the problem, the one sticking point that made his plan only a dream. There was no way round a bond, no way to take it off except by permission of the one who put it on, or their death. But his Master did not die, had lived a thousand years, survived a thousand assassination attempts. Bonded men would die, willingly, to keep him alive. No matter what Holden might dream, there was no way out for him. Not now, not ever. Best to accept it as he had once done blindly.
He slumped down to the bed. He’d never allowed himself to think it could ever really happen before. Hope was too much to bear, so he’d told himself it would come to nothing, that it was nothing but a nice fancy to fall asleep to. But to have it dangled in front of him and then ripped away…
He dunked his head in a bowl of cold water and shook the droplets away. She was alive, and they’d find her. Do what had to be done, and he’d see that at least she was free, if he could. If he got Van Gast, that was his only hope of freedom, what his Master had promised him if he brought that bastard back. Freedom from his bond, at least his direct servitude to the Master. Bonded to the Archipelago, yes, unable to go against it, but in every other way free. If Holden could do that, could give Josie back her own life…he could have his dream. If he couldn’t, he was a dead man. Yet she was more than a means to an end, to his freedom.
Skrymir knocked at the door. “Almost there, Commander.”
Holden tried to still his racing heart. If he played this right, he could have everything. One slip, and he could lose it all. This was his second chance, his last chance. He slipped on a clean shirt, hoped the wash had cleaned the Remorian stink from him, and made his way on deck.