catch Josie when she came, and who instead were now fighting for their lives among smoke and flying debris around the square. How did this all go so fucking wrong? How do I retrieve this? Another guard, staggering back with blood at his throat, followed by…Tallia. You little bitch. But Tallia wasn’t looking at him, not now. Her eyes were firmly fixed on Ilsa, who turned just in time to be greeted with a resounding slap that staggered her.
His guards were just starting to regroup. Their uniforms showed through the gauzy smoke, blue with blue, gathering, ordering. Not quick enough.
Josie cocked her head as though listening, and then Rillen heard it too. A whistling sort of hiss. Faint at first, growing louder. Something flew overhead and landed in the front wall of the money-changers. Bricks flew in every direction, dust added to the choke, whispered round in a haze of fumes. The square was quiet, Rillen realized. Only the few faint shouts of looters, the occasional bark of a guard.
“I think they’ve finished bombarding the palace,” Josie said. “But my crew do so love a good run at the cannon. Especially on this nice new licensed ship we stole, and some of these towers round here are just begging to be shot at. Get a nice clear view from your licensed docks. Very nice. You don’t have a lot of time. Hand over Van or I’ll shoot your face off, right now. Or you can wait around, see if a cannonball gets you.” She shrugged. “Up to you.”
Rillen searched the square for some sort of answer, some reason that had brought him to this catastrophe. Nothing came to him—he had planned for her to come, planned for her to shoot Bissan. But not for cannon, not for the destruction of the palace, his palace, or the pandemonium in the square.
He could see no figures in the gloom except Tallia pulling Holden to his feet, the small pilfering boy, Ilsa looking stunned as she sat on a step, her face bleeding. His guards had their hands full with a riot. No help. It was down to him, it was always down to him. He could recover, he was the Yelen. He could do anything he wanted—if he lived.
“Oh, I haven’t got fucking time for this,” Josie said and shot Van Gast.
Chapter Twenty
When Van Gast’s head cleared, when the bond fell from his wrist as a little black string of nothing, he was on his knees with a familiar pair of bright blue boots in front of him. Rillen lay in a bloody-faced, twitching heap next to him. Van Gast’s shoulder seemed to be on fire, leaking blood all down his arm. It’d be nice if people stopped shooting at him.
A voice he’d hoped was far away, and safe. Low and smoky, and, even now, teasing. “Hey, Van. You want to live forever?”
The world seemed alive with noise, with shouts and screams and swearing, but this voice cut through all that. He looked up at Josie, at that fucking grin, glorious and maddening, which haunted his sleep, made it a sweaty tangle of sheets and want.
“Be nice,” he managed.
His arm was on fire, he would swear it. The bond was off, thank fuck, thank Kyr or thank Josie, but the arm still throbbed with poison, sent stabbing pain all through him to sap his strength, his thoughts. He shuddered in the heat, despite the sweat that soaked him.
Her hand caught his good arm. “You’re going to have to move then, and quick. Come on, Van. Help me out here. You’re heavier than you look.”
Van Gast got his feet under him, slumped against the wall and stared at her. Vicious and capricious, and you never knew what she’d do next. Kyr, it’s not that I’m ungrateful, but this wasn’t the mercy I had in mind. I wanted her safe, away from bonds and mages. Slightly less pain would have been great too.
He managed a laugh that turned to half-gasp as another twist of pain caught him. “That’s because I’m all muscle, love. Fancy a quick try out?”
She got her shoulder under his arm, and her hand, warm and familiar and gods damn just what he needed, round his back. Her tone was just what he needed too—offhand and teasing, with deeper undercurrents. “If we manage to get out of this alive, I’ll try it all you like.”
“Mages?”
Her voice was taut with satisfaction. “Good and dead. Holden’s a good shot, and so is Skrymir.