the chill of that glance speared him where he stood.
He wanted to look, to check that Josie was all right, had fled from her place at the temple window. He wanted to look behind to see that Tallia wasn’t in trouble, or Ansen. He wanted to raise his arm and shoot Rillen before he could kill Van. Yet all he could do was stare at Ilsa, at the chill look of her, at the lift of her lip. “Ilsa, I don’t…I’m sorry. I betrayed you, and I’m sorry for that, for being weak when I should have been strong. But it was me who hurt you, not Josie or Van.”
Too little, too late, he saw that now. The Ilsa he’d known, or thought he’d known, was gone, sliding beneath a veneer of hatred. All his words got him was a sneer—and enough time for Josie to appear on the steps, hard-faced and grinning, her pistol pointed squarely at Rillen even as he sighted Holden down his barrel. She gave him a sideways look, as icy as Ilsa’s had been, and he knew what that meant. I gave you the time you asked for, the chance.
He turned from Ilsa with tight lips, with a rush of guilt and shame. Too late for him too—he’d ignored the guards too long in trying to talk to her, and one landed on him in a whirl of fists and sword.
* * *
Rillen watched Josie level her pistol at him. Careful, now. She hates as much as you do, remember.
One quick movement was all it took, a grab and pull and Van Gast, slippery and gasping, eyes rolled up in his head, was in front of him. Better than any shield.
Chaos swirled around below them in the square—guards bellowing, one on Holden now. Priests shouting, racks joining in now they saw Josie, their pistols fizzing bullets at all angles. Some had started looting already—two stalls lay on shattered backs and at least one more sent up scented plumes of smoke as its supply of herbs fell onto a cooking fire in the adjacent stall. Smoke began to curl around Josie’s feet, snake insidiously across the whole square.
The mages had their slaves trying to force a path, using blasts of magic, personal lightning bolts, to clear a way. Even as Rillen spared a glance at them, a bullet took one through the back of the throat from somewhere up on the roof. His slaves dropped him as though he burned them, grabbing for the bond that now twisted and dissolved on their arm. Much as Van Gast was now. It wouldn’t last long.
Josie advanced on him, all playfulness long gone now. All that was left of it was a lopsided grin that promised Rillen nothing but a long, hard death. He pulled Van Gast closer and shoved his pistol into an unresisting neck. All is chaos now, but a minute or so and the guards will be on her, as I planned. Just let her think she might get away with it. “Won’t do you any good, Josie. You try for me, I can shoot him just as quick. Or maybe we can deal.”
She cocked the pistol and took a step forward, her grin brighter than ever. “A deal, eh? All right. You let Van go, I’ll consider letting you live.”
Ilsa moved behind her, snake-silent, a sword from a fallen guard in her hand. Rillen kept his eyes fixed on Josie’s.
“As deals go, not very tempting.”
“I think what you and Ilsa, who is trying to creep up on me from behind, very badly, fail to understand is this. Van’s incidental. I got what I came for. Be nice to take him with me, but not essential. By the way, Ilsa, I’d look out if I were you. There’s someone not too happy at what you’ve put Holden through.”
Rillen couldn’t help but look. Smoke obscured most of the square now, but he could see jumbled images, colors. Shapes that glided in and out of the smoke like ghosts. Holden battering a guard. The last mage toppling, shattering like ice on the steps. All Rillen’s guards occupied with looters and rioters and stampeders, with trying to still the panic and greed that the cannon had let loose. A small boy lifting purses from all the prone bodies he could find, looking like all his namedays had turned up at once. He glanced at Rillen with an infuriating grin.
The worst was the guards, guards he’d had on hand to