by Julia Knight
The floor shifted under them, swayed with the tide. Van Gast lay back against the pillar, took the bottle of spirits from Guld and took a good, long draught.
“This, um, might hurt.”
At least with this pain, he didn’t feel ashamed when he cried out.
Chapter Thirty-One
Holden stepped into the cramped cabin that housed the healer. The stench was the first thing that hit him, a stinging assault on his nostrils. Then came the noise. It wasn’t loud. No screeches or screams. A soft, wrenching sobbing. Holden stared round the dim interior. The cabin was packed, men hunched into corners, under tables. Eyes wide and staring, come to the only place they knew to get help. Only help was the last thing they were getting. The healer was as bad as the rest, his eyes fixed on the bank of tinctures and ointments that were his trade. His brows were worried, his mouth trembling.
Skrymir had laid Josie on a bed and was doing his best. But it would take a Remorian healer, one who dealt with the bond, who knew them, to help, if help there was. Holden didn’t know how he knew that, but it was graven in his head. Her only, faint, chance.
Holden took hold of the healer’s arm and guided him round, gentle because he knew the desperation, the shaking hands of a man who’s lost his source of reference. “You have a patient.”
“I have nothing, not for this.” The healer’s arm trembled under Holden’s hand. “Not for this.”
“For her. For bonded unwilling. You have something for that? I know you do.”
The healer looked up at him, confused and scared. “I don’t know. In my head—it—I don’t know.”
“There are no more bonds.”
“I—”
“You’re a healer. Heal.”
The healer seemed to come back together then. “A patient, yes. Unwilling, I have something that helps, but she won’t—”
“You do it. Whatever you have. Do it now.”
“I’ll try. There’s the tincture we use to make it go slower. It draws the poison. That might work?” The healer’s hands trembled over a bottle. “Or not?”
“Do whatever you can. Whatever might work.” Holden thought of Van Gast, of Guld drawing the bullet. “You’ll have another patient soon. An easier one, a bullet wound. You have to deal with this. On your own, make your own choices. Understand?”
For a moment, Holden thought the healer might cry, but Skrymir loomed over him and made to grab for the bottle. That galvanized the healer into action, his instincts taking over. “No, you can’t. If it’s not done right…” He glanced at Holden. “I’ll try.”
“That’s all any of us can do.”
Holden stood aft and watched the sun as it crept over the horizon and flashed off the waves to dazzle him. A new dawn that would change his life forever, the Master had said. Changed it beyond imagining. Fear still clogged his head, fear of uncertainty, of possibilities, choices, but he was determined to master it. He would master it, be his own Master.
A bell rang behind him and men ran to change watch, scuttling up rigging or going below. A good wind snapped at the sails and the salt-laden freshness blew Holden’s tiredness away. Whatever else was different, this was the same. They were sailors, Forn’s children first, and always had been. The sea would be his new constant. Capricious, loving, vicious, ever-changing. It seemed fitting.
Van Gast hobbled over to him. He was still pale, haggard around the edges with a stillness, a seriousness to his eyes, that hadn’t been there before.
“You’re supposed to rest,” Holden said as Van Gast made a grab for the rail and leaned on it, breathing hard.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
He didn’t need to say any more. The sight of Josie lying in a cabin, barely breathing, the poison still working on her, had made sleep impossible for Holden too. There was little enough hope for her, only that she’d held on this long, and she fought, always she fought everything. All they could do was wait, and that was almost worse.
“Why are we sailing west?” Van Gast asked. “I said to sail to Dorston.”
“Not yet,” Holden said. “First we have to sail to Remon.”
“I realize this sounds like a stupid question, but why the fuck are you sailing us to Remorian waters?”
Holden leaned his elbows on the rail. It had taken him a long time, half the night, to decide. A choice, only his second ever. He was going to get it right this time. “The Master’s dead, the bonds are dead, or those he put on. Yet there are other mages, other bonds. They won’t let this go. A new Master will emerge, new bonds, if I do nothing. Men will be confused, they might take the bond again, as I did, in fear of what their new life is. But it’ll take time, and in the meantime, if this crew is anything to go by, there’ll be chaos. For a time. I mean to see to it that the bond doesn’t re-emerge. Mages of the power are nothing without us to serve them, to do everything for them.”
Strange, how differently men took it, this new-won freedom. Some embraced it, hugged it to them with a furtive joy. Others retreated, sat in corners and refused to talk, only shuddered with the enormity of it. Some, as Holden had, wanted the bond back, wanted the certainty back and only barely held on to themselves. They lost themselves in the familiarity of life aboard, in sorting rigging and sail, in the mindless tedium of scrubbing or a hundred little jobs that always needed doing. Still others were filled with nothing but rage. Two crew-hands had been killed in knife fights already.
“A good reason not to go there, I would have thought.”
Holden looked across at him. “And I thought Van Gast always did the thrilling thing, no matter how stupid.”
Van Gast’s lips thinned and he blinked rapidly. “The old me may have done. Look where it got me. Sail to Dorston. We can sell the ships and I can settle down to raise chickens or something.”
“Remon first. Something I need to do. I may not be the man to make sure the Archipelago is no longer yoked, but there is just one thing I have to do.”
“Getting used to it now then, this deciding lark? Can’t you put us off somewhere first? I don’t care where.”
“Not really, and no. I want you to see what you helped do, you and Josie.”
The lookout shouted from atop the mast, “Ship ahoy, starboard. A rack ship.”
Van Gast raised his eyebrows and motioned Holden to pass the glass. Using the rail to support himself, he raised it and looked at the incoming ship. He began to laugh, then had to choke it off in a spasm of pain.
“Holden,” he said when he could speak again. “First, I’d like to you to prepare to board that ship, guns at the ready. It’ll be easy, three ships to their one.”
“Board the—? I’m not a rack.”
“No, but that’s my ship. Those bastards stole it and I want it back. There’s something on board I need. Time for you to earn your keep.”
Van Gast sat on the side of the bed, willing himself to get up. It wasn’t happening just yet—going out on deck earlier had been a bad idea. Every time he moved, the stitches in his side pulled and chafed. At least Guld had managed to get the bullet out without too much screaming, and one of the crew-hands had fetched some weird ointment from the healer that stank worse than week-old meat but at least numbed the pain a little. Brandy was helping numb it a lot more, and other things besides.
When the door opened and Ansen came in, it was a good excuse not to try moving for a bit. The boy still had his thumb plugged in his mouth and he eyed Van Gast warily, but in his other hand was a little sack. One of the toy men, the racketeer, poked out of the top. Dillet and the rest of Van Gast’s crew were contemplating the error of their ways in the brig. All in all, Holden hadn’t done a bad job of boarding. In fact he’d had something of a flair for it. Van Gast would get him converted to his way of life yet.
He and Ansen stared at each other in silence. Van Gast didn’t know what to say, or how to say it. If Josie died, this little scrap of a lad would lose as much as him, and if what he’d said was the truth, he was part of Van Gast. He j
erked his head in invitation and Ansen shuffled over and sat on the bed, as far from Van Gast as he could get. The dark eyes never left his, as though he was just waiting for Van Gast to send him away, or maybe die on him.
“Did you like your surprise?” Van Gast asked finally, backing out of what he wanted to say, what he needed to know.
Ansen didn’t answer at first. He took out the toy racketeer and dug into the bag for another figure. A woman this time, a racketeer again. All bright breeches and tangled hair. Ansen stroked its arm, as though the feel of it comforted him. Finally he nodded and held out the woman to Van Gast.
He took it and set it in his lap. He didn’t want to think too closely about what it represented.
Ansen took the thumb out of his mouth and chewed his lip. “Did you like yours?” His eyes were wide and grave, and he blinked rapidly at the tears that gathered.
“Yes, very much. Though I think mine was more of a shock.”
Ansen let the tears fall then, let the sobs out, and Van Gast put a hesitant arm around him. What did you do with children? It seemed the arm was the right thing to do, because Ansen flung his arms around Van Gast’s waist and began to cry in earnest. Van Gast tried not to wince when the hug pinched his stitches.
“Why, Ansen, why did Josie bring you? Who’s your mother?”
“Surprise for you. She said it would make you happy. My mother died two years ago and—and my granny said I was too much like you, too much trouble. So she sent me away, to the workhouse in Beneran. Josie came and found me.”
“In Beneran?” Tilly. Ansen’s mother was Tilly, and that was why they’d never let him close after. And she’d only died two years ago—they’d had him thinking she was dead years before. Now he knew why they hadn’t let him go to the funeral, because there was no funeral, they just didn’t want their daughter mixed up with someone like him.
Ansen sat up and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “You never came and found me. Josie’s nice. I like her.”
“So do I, Ansen, so do I.”
“She was only trying to help you.” Ansen’s face screwed up in sudden anger and he thumped at Van Gast’s arm. “And you wouldn’t help her. She’s dying because you wouldn’t! I won’t let her die, even if you would.”
“No, no I—”
Ansen batted away Van Gast’s hand, but he pulled the boy back.
“I didn’t know, Ansen. I thought her and Holden, I thought…well, I thought she liked him more than she liked me.”
“Don’t be silly.”
Silly. Yes, that’s what he’d been, more than silly. “I’m sorry, Ansen. I wish I could save her.”
“So do I. Do I have to stay with you now?”
Van Gast looked down at him, a little copy of himself. A reminder of both the women he’d loved, and maybe all he had left of either. “Only if you want to, but I hope you do.”
“You won’t make me? Granny always said I had to do what I was told. Only I never did, that’s why she sent me away.”
Van Gast leaned down and looked him straight in the eye. “First thing you learn if you want to be a racketeer. No one ever tells you what to do. You just do it, whatever it is you want to do.”
“Like when Josie wouldn’t do what Holden told her, even when she had the bond?”
Van Gast’s smile was strained. “Exactly like that, yes.”
Ansen stuck his thumb back in his mouth and frowned. The other hand stroked at the wooden racketeer. Finally he came to a decision and the thumb came out. “I can keep the toys?”
“You can keep the toys.”
Ansen nodded gravely. “All right.” He took back the toy from Van Gast’s lap and shoved them all into the little sack.
Only after he’d gone did Van Gast realize the little bastard had taken one of his knives too. A fine racketeer in the making. Van Gast wasn’t sure what being a father was about, but if there was one thing he was good at, it was stealing and not getting caught. He would make the boy the best racketeer the mainland had ever seen.
Van Gast made his unsteady way to where Josie lay. He reached the door, and found he couldn’t bring himself to open it. She was there on the other side, and he wasn’t sure he could take it, not again. Look at her and not know if she was going to live or die. She had to live. She had to. She would. Whether she’d forgive him was another matter entirely. He took a swig of brandy and opened the door.
He didn’t get any farther for long moments. She’d moved, now on her side with her eyes open. Ansen was sitting next to her, and it seemed Van Gast had arrived in midconversation. Or at least Ansen was talking. Van Gast was sure his heart actually stopped before it restarted with a pounding that was painful from relief. But when she saw him—ah, when she saw Van Gast, she turned her head away, not much, but enough.
The pleasure-pain drained from his heart, replaced with a cold foreboding.
“Ansen,” he said, “Skrymir wants to show you how to take the wheel.”
The boy looked up under sullen lashes and shook his head, thumb once more planted firmly in his mouth.
Van Gast didn’t know how to say it, was too caught up in how Josie refused to look at him, so it came out all wrong. “Ansen, you get topside, right fucking now.”
The boy looked at Josie and only moved when her head inclined slightly. Ansen barged out. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that Josie was alive, against every expectation.
And she wouldn’t look his way. Van Gast stood by the door, for once with no words to call on, no flip remark. He slid into the seat Ansen had just vacated and tried for her hand, but it was no longer there.
“Josie, Josie love, look at me. Please.” He couldn’t bear it. She was alive. Alive, damn it! And yet her face was turned away, her shoulders hunched against him, her hand sliding away from his touch. “I should have trusted you, I know. I know. I’m sorry. Only Holden told me how you loved him, and I, I…” And he’d believed it, like the fool he was.
“You blew up my ship. And you meant to blow me up with it. You blew up my ship, you bastard.” Her voice sounded odd, sort of metallic. Cold, hard and unyielding.
Fear grew in Van Gast’s belly, wormed its way down to his balls. Please no, she was alive. And he was losing her anyway.
“You tried to kill me. You slept with—with him. You told him you loved him. You never told me. What else was I supposed to think? And that it was you, I—”
She shifted on the bed. The purple lines were still there, the poison still in her, but she was alive and moving. She’d fought and won. She always did.
But when her head moved round, that was when he saw. The poison was nothing compared to what he’d done to her. Her storm-grey eyes didn’t leak tears. No, not his Josie. He’d never see her cry again, he knew that. But there was a bewildered hurt there, one he never thought to see, never thought he’d cause. One he didn’t know how to undo. But, Kyr help him, he wanted to. He wanted nothing else.
She said the words that he dreaded, ones he had no defense for. “You doubted me. After everything, you doubted me. I never, not once, doubted you. Never. Until now. I said I always did love Holden, and that was true. I did, but not now, but there was nothing else I could say, not under that bond. And I did love you. But not now. Leave me be. Let me think.”
“Josie, I—”
She turned over, slowly and painfully still, and her back faced him, stiff with hurt. He had his answer, and he almost wished for the bullet in his stomach back, for her to be lying there and him not know whether she’d live or die. At least then there’d be hope.
She’d loved him. Damn it all, she’d loved him—she’d finally said it, and it was in the past. She’d said it, but he’d fucked it up.
He stood up. It was too late, but he had to say it. “I love you, Josienne. Not did. Do. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have cared that you tumbled him. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have wanted to make you pay for what I thought was your betrayal. I wouldn’t have done any of it, if I didn’t love you. I love you
. I always did. You just never let me say it.”
He pulled out the wedding knife, turned it over thoughtfully in his hands, watched the play of light over the oily liquid. Drink the liquid, then take the blade in your heart to show you’re true, that you marry for love. He had no heart left for her to plunge it into, only a cold, aching emptiness. He laid it on the bed next to her. “I brought you these because it was the only way I could know, because you wouldn’t let me know any other way. And it was the only way I could let you know too. But one on its own is no good.”
Her shoulders twitched but she said nothing, kept her face turned from him.
She’d fought. He’d lost.
He went to drown himself in brandy and regret.
Chapter Thirty-Two
They approached Remon just as dawn began to touch the sky. Holden watched the white houses appear out of the sea, shimmering ghostly grey in the new light. He had the Master’s ship pull into the harbor and tie up. The other ships followed silently, Van Gast’s re-taken ship last. Van Gast had insisted that the harbor would be too dangerous, that if they had to do this—and he’d sworn vociferously about it—then they should tie up somewhere out of sight. But Van Gast was asleep and Holden was at the wheel. He wanted his men to see, he wanted everyone to see.
The harbor was deserted of men. Instead of a spotless wharf, broken barrels littered the stone, trickling their wares in little pools of stickiness. The harbormaster’s office was burned to the ground, and the warehouses were ripped open, roofs gaping up to the sky. Two ships lay at berth, their decks tangles of shattered wood and ripped sail. No one here to help them as Van Gast had, with Skrymir and what they’d found of Josie’s crew. No one here who knew what life was like beyond the bond.
“Keep everyone on board for now,” Holden said to Skrymir. “On board, but ready.”