I ever knew how to do round him, the only way I knew I’d keep him. I was afraid of playing the games, and afraid of stopping them. I wanted him to forgive me, because it was me that made him do what he did. Because I love him.”
She ground a hand into an eye before she got up, creakily as though she was suddenly old, and went to her quarters, Van’s quarters as had been. She seemed so alone. Holden couldn’t bear it. They’d loved each other once, a long time ago, when they were young and he still had his dreams. He took hold of Tallia’s hand, wanting to show her too, wanting to show them both.
In Josie’s quarters he dragged at the bed, ignored Josie’s sharp exclamation, Tallia’s “What are you doing?”
The bed came away from the wall, and there was the secret name of Van’s ship, when it had been his. “He’s been busy carving the same on the Glass Dagger,” Holden said. “The secret name, he said. He hoped you’d find it.”
“I did.” Josie stepped forward and traced her fingers over the carving. “But I don’t know what it says. Not all of it. You know I can’t read.”
Holden found Tallia’s hand again. It all came down to this, all broke free in him now. He knew who he was now. He was Holden and he knew what he was going to do, had made a decision and found it easy. “It says the Josie-love.”
He turned away, not able to bear the look on her face, the hurt, the desperation, the fear and shame. But it was going to be all right. He knew what to do, how to do it. How to make everything right. A laugh bubbled out of him and he grabbed Tallia round the waist, kissed her sunlight lips, laughed again at her gasp of surprise, at the way she kissed him back, laughing now too. She had helped him to know who he was, who he always should have been, the man who dreamed dreams big enough for the world.
He ran back onto the deck, still clutching Tallia’s hand. At the rail, he called across to the Glass Dagger. “Guld? Guld!”
Guld came out onto the deck, blinking owlishly. “Yes?”
“How are you at weather spells?”
“I can do wind all right.”
“What about rain?”
“Rain? Um, well…not really much call for rain.”
“Start practicing. And get the helmsman to steer us out to the mouth of the delta, right in the main trading lane. Cannons ready!”
He turned back to Tallia, to Josie coming out of her quarters with a puzzled look, Skrymir glaring at him.
“Holden, what are you doing?” Tallia asked.
He laughed again and kissed her soundly. This was who he was, really, the man behind the bond, ready to see all his dreams. “Tallia, we are all going to do something really fucking stupid. Stupid but exciting.”
* * *
Van Gast sat and shivered in his cell, staring up at the small patch of moonlight from the grimy light-well. Three days of this, of filthy straw, of rats not shy to come and stare, to try nibbling his toes when he slept. Three days of not knowing. Skrymir—he’d seen Skrymir, he was sure, no matter how addled he’d become. But had they escaped? Was she safe, had this been worth it? He had no way of knowing. If she was, if they all were, then they’d be long gone by now, if they had any sense.
He settled himself against the wall, trying to avoid setting the lash marks on his back against the rough stone. Rumor hadn’t lied about the Yelen cells. There were men here who had been almost dead for long years. He heard them, whimpering, sometimes begging. The worst were the occupied cells that no sound came from, as though the prisoners had long since given up. Sometimes prisoners screamed and fought when the guards came.
Van Gast had fought too, with the little he had. All that had got him were extra lashes and the black lines of the bond-poison working ever closer to his heart. They reached to his shoulder now, a constant, burning pulse along his arm that seemed to throb through his whole body, squeeze his head till he wanted to scream with it. But he wouldn’t. Josie hadn’t, and neither would he.
He wanted to know, had to know, that it had been worth it. If it had, if she was safe, then he could go to his death