Ten Ruby Trick

by Julia Knight

  His lungs heaved, trying desperately to make him breathe, to kill him. He struggled on and then stone was under his hand. The wharf. He had to surface, had to or he’d drown. Just as he’d made up his mind to try, to hope they were looking still in the water and not at him, a dull whump pressed him flat against the wharf. Heat bloomed through the water and even with his eyes closed the light was blinding. Now. If he was going to get out it had to be now. He kicked his legs and broke the surface, his lungs gasping, choking on saltwater. He spat out a mouthful that had a coppery taste of blood to it and rested with his face pressed to the stone. Flames seared him from behind. He turned to watch. Couldn’t stop long, but he had to see the flame he’d made.

  If Skrymir was right, the bigger the fire, the bigger the honor, she was the most honored woman ever. Flames rose to touch the sky, higher than the mast, higher than the world, the whole ship a crackling, splintered mess of fire. He shut his eyes against it and prayed, for maybe only the third time in his life. Please Kyr, when she dies, choose well for her. Keep her for me.

  Then his eyes crept toward the Master’s ship. Time to honor Oku too. Chief god of the Gan, one Van Gast had never honored before. God of justice, oaths—and vengeance.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  When Holden came back to his senses, he was kneeling on a familiar patterned floor. Black into white into blue into grey into black. The stump of his left arm cradled his right, but the pain wasn’t too bad. Not as bad as what he was sure lay behind his new numbness. It was a good thing, a right thing. It was. Everything now was order. His mind need not flay itself with the agony of choice. Of possibilities that only tantalized him and couldn’t be fulfilled. He was home.

  “Commander.” The Master’s voice, soft with understanding. The Master understood everything.

  “Yes, Master.”

  The tiles tilted beneath him and sent him crashing to the floor. His freshly bonded wrist caught beneath his ribs, the pain a lance of white-hot purple through his brain. Then the sound came, a hollow boom and with it a faint wash of heat. When Holden looked up, the Master was akimbo on the dais, surrounded by a shimmering lake of dislodged crystals. Holden struggled to his feet, his first thought to the Master. Everything else was secondary.

  Holden helped the Master to sit and tried not to see the sheen of sweat that melted crystals on his top lip, or how they flowed across his brow. The Master had his power still, a good thick crust of it. The Master was infallible, unending.

  “Her ship—her ship’s gone.” The Master’s voice faltered. “And with it my men.”

  “Van Gast?” Holden was numb, but the thought that the racketeer was gone somehow twisted him a little, though he couldn’t quite remember why. It would come back to him, or not. The man was a menace, that he did know. An enemy of the Archipelago for—for—for something.

  “Captain.” The Master’s voice had lost some of its richness with his crystals, a hint of hoarseness to it now. One of the captains of the guards presented himself smartly and saluted. “Make the ship secure. Every man on alert until I can ascertain where Van Gast is. But if you find him, bring him alive if you can. That racketeer shall squirm for this.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  The captain left with his men, and Holden and the Master were almost alone.

  “I thought you were lost,” the Master said. “You always dreamed, Holden. Fatal for one of my people. I sought to show you the futility, the pain of what you dreamt of. Do you know it now?”

  Vague images floated through Holden’s brain. A blonde woman, a grin, a laugh. Purple black lines over her skin. Her face, her halting, dying breath. For nothing. Freedom was pain, disorder, panic, that was all he could remember. “Yes, Master. I know it well now.”

  The Master smiled his careful smile, distorted now by the melted crystals that mortified Holden. “I know you do, I can see it in your head. I’m glad you came back to us, Holden, very glad.”

  Van Gast dragged himself onto the wharf and took stock. It didn’t look, or feel, good. Bruised ribs aching like buggery. His head still foggy from the blow Holden had given it. Blood on his breath. A hole in his side that was leaking blood at an alarming rate. Bits of glass sticking out of the hole and catching on the tear in his shirt. Didn’t hurt yet, thank Kyr for small mercies. Later it would be a bitch, if there was a later. If only Guld were here to cauterize the wound. The arm wasn’t too bad, just a bloody crease in his skin. He’d still be able to use his sword, though for how long who knew. His clothes were heavy with water, and the pistol was wet through and useless. His knives were all there though, and the burning need in him to use them.

  He spent a heartbeat to look at Josie’s ship. The Jesting Queen, gone now, just a shell of blazing planks and spiraling ash, the spirit of Josie with it. A message, a plea to Kyr, to embrace Josie when her fight ran out, and that would be soon. Even Josie couldn’t fight forever.

  Yet no time now to wonder. Now was the time to use the distraction. He ducked behind some bales of cotton, out of the glare of the fire, and studied the vast brooding hulk of the Master’s ship. Guns, lots of guns. Where there were guns, he could find powder. It had worked well enough on her ship. Why not on his? He’d have laughed if it weren’t for the pain in his side. Instead he spat onto the cobbles and tried not to see the hint of pink in it.

  As he watched, men trotted down the gangplank. He could smell them from here. Coming to check on the Remorians aboard her ship. Tough luck there. Coming to check on him too no doubt, whether he was still alive. Tough luck there too, because he wasn’t to be found.

  He waited till they were past, until they were stopped by the heat. As they watched the ship burn, he slipped along the wharf, behind a barrel here, a bale there. His breath was odd. Bubbling, not hurting but short, as though something clogged his lungs. Noisy enough that it might give him away. He tried to breathe shallower and almost choked. He’d have to make the best of it.

  His little-magics screamed at him, worse than the hole in his side. Trouble was everywhere, surrounded him and suffocated him as though he were drowning. Not an itch, not a burn, not a tear. It was a fucking explosion in his chest, and it didn’t matter. He was well past trouble and into suicidal.

  The Master’s ship was in front of him and he studied it intently. Two rows of guns, silent now. Tarana’s guns had stopped too—probably realized they weren’t getting anywhere or had run out of shot. It wasn’t as though they’d needed them in the last twenty years or more.

  But the important part was that the portholes of the Master’s ship were empty. The important part was this—could he get in and rig another explosion? He rather thought he could. The stupid-but-exciting thing, always. His mouth stretched into a grin.

  He grabbed a cotton bale and tried to pull himself up. The glass in his side moved and he had to stop halfway. Just as the pain subsided and he was about to try again, a hand landed on his shoulder. “Sit.”

  The hand pressed down and it was sit or get a bone broken. Van Gast sat. Skrymir appeared in front of him and shook his head ruefully. “You’re in no state for this. Whatever it is you’re planning, you’ll be dead before you do it.”

  “You underestimate the importance of being incredibly stubborn. It’s not as bad as it looks. Just a bit of a hole. Josie?”

  “Still fighting, but it won’t be much longer if I’m any judge. Guld’s watching her and Ansen, they’re hiding in the tavern.” Skrymir gestured at the hole in Van Gast’s shirt. At Van Gast’s nod, he peeled away the cloth carefully. Glass glittered in the mess in Van Gast’s side and he tried not to look at it, but the shine of blood, his blood, dripping from the glass all but hypnotized him. Skrymir made to pull out a shard. “Stubborn won’t help that. What’s the plan?”

  “It made such a nice fire I thought I’d try again. No, don’t touch it.”

  “You’ll get caught again. There’s a mage on board, stronger than Cattan, and plenty of his men too. This time Josie won’t be here to save
you from the bond.”

  Van Gast shoved Skrymir’s meaty arm away. “I don’t care.”

  “Josie did. Does. I can’t let you do it, she’d kill me rather than let you. And it’s not just the Master on that ship. Holden…he’s not a bad man, not really. I oathed to him, and though I told him I’d break it rather than go along—I had a choice. He didn’t.”

  “Fine. One punch from that anvil you call a hand should finish me off, though why a man so full of Gan honor should give a shit about that fucker is beyond me.”

  “Van Gast, you don’t understand. He was a good master, or I’d never have oathed to him. He was as kind to Josie as he was allowed to be.”

  “Not fucking kind enough and now he’s gone back to that, to the bond, to slavery. Willingly. Coward.”

  A stream of Remorians ran down the gangplank from the Master’s ship and clattered onto the wharf. Skrymir got his arm under Van Gast and they sidled farther into the shadows, hidden in the doorway to a silk shop.

  “He’s afraid.”

  “Like I said, coward.” Van Gast wiped a sleeve across his sweating face. “This is a lovely chat, but I don’t have time. I’ve got a ship to blow up.”

  “Maybe he is a coward. He only had time for one choice as a free man. One choice, he tried to best a mage for her even though it was too late to save her, and that choice may yet end in her death. He wants to forget that, he wants to forget her. That’s what the bond does, it makes men forget. What happened, their past, who they are.”

  “I don’t care about him! Fucker can drop down dead for all I care.” The Remorians had spread out now, farther down the dock, some boarding the other ships next to Josie’s, trying to stem the flames that leaped and spread. Now was the time. Now, when all their attention was outward, not inward.

  “If you kill the Master, all his bonds die. All those men free, and what’s left of her men, the ones they’ve bonded in town, all free again.”

  Van Gast managed to get to his knees and used the doorjamb to pull himself up to shaky feet. “Still not caring.”

  “Josie did. Does. She cared enough about you to spend everything she had keeping you free. That’s what this was all about, the whole time. She told me, after Moorain’s, when she knew that you’d hate her, knew you’d think she betrayed you. Didn’t matter, she said, didn’t matter because you weren’t bonded and neither was Ansen.”

  Van Gast leaned his head against the doorway. The wood was cool against his skin. “You’re a bastard. A complete fucking bastard and I hope you drown with all your oaths broken.”

  “Yes. Now, what’s the plan and how can we use what we have?”

  “I blow the ship up, you bugger off back to Ansen and Josie. That’s about as far as I got. Josie was always the planner. Twisty mind she had, the best.”

  “Well then, what would she do?”

  “No fucking idea. If I knew that, I wouldn’t be standing here bleeding all over my boots—I’d be doing it.”

  Skrymir chewed on a lip thoughtfully. “What if—what if you try, to blow the ship I mean, but plan for if you get caught?”

  “Like how?”

  Skrymir grimaced and pulled out his pistol. “I wish I knew. Here, take this at least, it’s dry, and if you can get a clear shot at the Master, then all those Remorians will be like Holden when you took his bond off. Shoot the Master and the rest will fall, you’ll not have to worry about a Remorian ever again. The mages are nothing without the bonded to do everything for them. Got anything to keep it dry?”

  “If they didn’t shoot it.” Van Gast reached carefully inside his shirt for the waterproof pouch he’d taken from Josie’s special place. Should be big enough. He slid out the papers inside and handed them to Skrymir. “You look after these. If I don’t come back, if Josie…They’re yours, all right?”

  “What are they?” Skrymir looked at the papers as though the thought of writing was a mystery to him. Most Gan never learnt to read.

  “That, my good man, is almost certainly a shitload of land.”

  Skrymir raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “If you say so. I’ll keep them safe. Are you sure you don’t want me to—?”

  Van Gast slid the pistol into the pouch and found a place for it in the mess that was left of his shirt. Maybe they wouldn’t see it amongst all the blood and glass. Not likely, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he was going to fucking well do this, however he could. “No. No, this one’s for me to do. You’ve got an oath to keep, right? You stay with her, let her have someone she trusts with her, because I can’t watch her slip away from me again. She always did, you know? Always slipped away, never there in the morning. Difference is, before, I always knew she’d be back.” He took a deep breath against the way his heart clenched at that, and regretted it when his ribs and side protested. “Besides, you’re too big to fit through the porthole. You can help me up though.”

  Skrymir got an arm under Van Gast’s shoulder and hauled him to his feet. “I reckon I’m going home after this. Back where people are sane.”

  “Probably a good idea.” Van Gast leaned on a barrel. The shard of glass in his side was doing strange things to him, and blood trickled down the inside of his breeches.

  With a last look around to check that he wasn’t being watched, he slipped along the shadows on the edge of the wharf and into the water, the giant looming bulk of the Master’s ship dwarfing him.

  “I must be fucking mad.” He was, but not the insanity kind. A blazing anger was all that was keeping his limbs moving, that and the need to make as many people as possible pay. He gritted his teeth against the pain and swam.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Holden led half a dozen men into the guts of the Master’s ship. Most of the crew were out on the docks, searching for Van Gast or what might remain of him, but the Master was taking no chances. Sentries on every deck. Van Gast was too tricky to be complacent about. Holden left three men on the top gun deck and led the rest down. They moved quietly among the cannon, unmanned now that the incoming barrage had stopped. Holden paused by the bulkhead. A scratching sound came from ahead, loud in the otherwise soft silence. He pulled out his pistol, cocked it silently and crept forward. Someone moving where there should be no one, a shape in the dimly lit deck.

  One of his men came level at the other run of cannon and Holden nodded at the shape. They advanced cautiously. It soon became clear a man was huddled between two guns. A succession of sparks lit the underside of his face. Van Gast, dripping water and blood onto the powder he was trying to light.

  Holden raised his pistol. “Too late.”

  Van Gast swore under his breath but didn’t turn. He kept on bringing sparks, trying to light the fuse at his feet. Holden moved forward, wary. This man had eluded him for far too long, far too well. He was just within reach when Van Gast stood, quick as a snake, and whirled round with his sword out.

  Too late, as Holden had said. His man cracked Van Gast on the back of the head with the butt of his pistol and the racketeer fell like a stone. Odd. Holden felt nothing, no satisfaction in finally catching him.

  He crouched down next to the limp body and turned Van Gast over so he could look at his face. The nut-brown skin was crumpled and grey now from loss of blood, the hair matted and tangled, with shards of glass sticking out here and there. Nothing to show the man he’d been. Would never be again. That thought echoed in Holden’s chest weirdly.

  No matter. He had done his Master’s will, at last. No more punishment, or not for him. Van Gast’s was just about to begin. He couldn’t understand why that thought brought only pain in his head.

  Blood. That was Van Gast’s first sensation other than blackness. The taste of blood in his mouth. He tried to spit it out but that only sent waves of pain through his chest and stomach.

  He was lying on something smooth and hard, cool against his face. Tempting, very tempting to go back to sleep. Things didn’t hurt when you were asleep. Footsteps clacked across the floor and stop
ped by his head. Go away. Someone grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him off the floor. Van Gast forced his eyes open.

  “Ah, you are awake then,” a voice said behind him. He didn’t recognize it, but he did know the face of the man forcing him to stand. Fucker, that was who it was. Probably had a better name, but Van Gast couldn’t remember it. Whatever his name was, he gripped Van Gast and turned him round.

  A dais covered with cushions took up most of one wall, and a figure perched atop them like a goat on a mountain. Not a man, some vast heap of glittering crystals, sparkling red and yellow in the lamplight. A pile of rubies maybe. Then Van Gast noticed the holes at the top, the dark, gleeful eyes peering out from a mountainous range of diamonds, the slash of lips below. What the fuck?

  “Don’t look at the Master, look at the floor.” Holden, that was his name. Still a fucker though.

  Van Gast looked at him, to see himself reflected in the blank eyes of the bonded. “Coward.”

  Holden’s eyes tightened for a heartbeat, almost too quick to notice before his face slacked out into impassiveness. “Look at the floor.”

  “Commander, it’s all right. I want this man to look at me. I want him to see his Master. Bring him to me.”

  Holden shoved Van Gast and he staggered forward, leaving a trail of blood and bits of glass on the tiles. One of the bigger shards twisted in his side at the movement, and his feet refused to hold him but Holden’s hand gripped his arm tight and held him up.