head bobbed up and down and made the rest of her jiggle. A well-set-up little thing she was, looking fine in a linen shirt that showed off her curves and a skirt that hid them. There was something about her, some air of eager helpfulness that made him throw all his caution to the four winds and say, “All right. Can you help us find more crew?” Stupid thing to do, probably, but her smile was worth it. He felt drunk with idiocy.
The smile was a tentative thing at first before a burst of enthusiasm made it take over her face. “Of course. I know everyone round here. Important asset in a bar. First, you need to look less like a Remorian. Come on, you can spend some of that money, and then you’ll get a crew in no time. I’m Tallia by the way.”
Holden and his crewmen followed her, wary at first, expecting a trap, to be rolled for their money in some dark alley. But Tallia led them through a maze of streets that were quieter now the sun had reached its midpoint, past beggars who fell back out of their way in fear, men who shielded their wives as though a horror walked among them, into a little square shaded from the blast of the sun by tattered silk awnings. A sleeping dog woke, looked up at them with one bleary eye, seemed to decide they weren’t any danger and went back to sleep. Tallia led them into a building in the far corner, a run-down little mud-brick hovel seemingly held up by its neighbors.
Holden had to duck to enter into a dark, cool room full of bales of silk and cotton and linen. Shirts hung all over the walls in every color Holden could imagine, so bright he had to shut his eyes for a heartbeat.
When he opened them again, Tallia had half a dozen shirts down from the wall. She measured one against him, a violent red cotton affair that would match Holden’s burning cheeks if he wore it.
“Tallia, we’re after crew, not clothes.”
Her eyebrows pinched together as though she was confused, and then her face cleared and she laughed. It was such a free sound, one he’d not heard in long weeks aboard, that he had to smile in return.
“There, that’s better,” she said. “You look much more handsome when you smile. Maybe the red is too much, but dressed in those drab grays—you’ll find only more Remorians, and few enough of them. If you don’t get picked up yourselves. You want rack, you have to look rack.”
“Remorian crew would be fine,” he said, his voice stiff at the implication. “Why wouldn’t they be?”
Tallia plucked out a loose linen shirt that looked like it might fit him, a dark blood red that was relatively sober, but only compared to the rest. “Because of the Yelen? There, that’s better. Whose ship are we sailing on? Yours?”
She watched him as he took off the gray tunic that had been his uniform for too long and slid on the shirt. Even the sober red seemed too bright, especially under her gaze. He hurried to button it up, fumbling with only one hand because buttons were still hard, worried that he was blushing the same color as the shirt.
“Yes, in a way it’s my ship.” The Glass Dagger was Van Gast’s really, but they’d known he’d be looked for here. Van had promised to keep a low profile, but Holden wasn’t sure anything he did could be anything less than flamboyant. So all the new crew would be kept aboard till they sailed, so as not to be tempted to turn Van in. The Yelen might not know what Van Gast looked like, but most racks would have a passing knowledge of the most famous rack along the western coast. “Can we see about that crew now?”
The other men swapped their tunics for bright shirts and they all found breeches that fit snugly—too snugly for Holden’s comfort. Tallia got them to ruffle their hair as much as they could, less stiff, more like a rack. Holden’s hair, which had been all but shorn in the Remorian style a few weeks ago, was now only just long enough to tousle. She stood on tiptoe, a hand on his arm to steady herself as she disheveled him. Her fingers were very warm through the linen, but not as warm as his cheeks when she smiled her enthusiastic smile straight at