first. No one outside with Van Gast, no extra breath he could hear. Good.
He thrust open the window as far as it would go, knocking the lamp to the floor and sending its flame to darkness. On the instant he leaped over the sill and into a room full of shouting men. With eyes open now, and with the advantage of his night vision kept intact, Van Gast made straight for the mark with the ring. A swift blow from the butt of his pistol and the man went down like a felled ox.
Shouts swirled around him as he knelt, pulled the ring off and made a quick search of the man’s pockets. A door banged open, and Van Gast hoped it was Holden come to back him up—he could see well enough to steal, but faces were indistinct, blurry in the faint light leaking through the window. He got up and checked around, his back to a wall just in case, ready to leg it out of the window as soon as it started looking too risky.
Holden was here—the pent-up way he moved gave him away. He’d let two men out through the door, running as though their backsides were on fire, and got another man to the floor but instead of robbing him, stood as though bewildered. “Van, I—”
“Van Gast?”
They both whirled to the whispering voice. It was too dark to see the face other than to note the dim glint of eyes. Not so dark Van Gast couldn’t see the gun pointing at him, the gleam of light along the oiled barrel. He didn’t need the little-magics flaring into life in his chest to know trouble when he saw it.
“Van Gast, I arrest you in the name of the Yelen.”
The Yelen? Oh, shit on a stick. He was in enough trouble with them as it was—the small matter of a large diamond. Now he’d just compounded his trouble, and trouble with the Yelen often meant trouble finding your own head after they’d chopped it off.
Van Gast shoved at Holden to go, but there was no room for him as the barrel raised. Holden stumbled as someone caught him on the back of the head, and then he was a pile of lifeless limbs on the floor.
No time for that, for anything. The gun was coming for him and his little-magics weren’t just shouting, they were screaming out, get the fuck out! He agreed with them completely.
There was no way out. Holden and the man who’d taken him down blocked the door and another dark figure lurked at the window. No way out, and no time.
The figure at the window leaped a fraction of a heartbeat before Van Gast did, knocked the gun from the man’s hand just as it went off, sending the bullet skipping over the ceiling. The flash blinded Van Gast, but it didn’t matter—what mattered was the joy/fear, the thud of his heart telling him he was still alive, still alive. For now.
The figure from the window and the gunman struggled, but only briefly. A thwack of sword-hilt on skull and the gunman slumped to the floor. No telling who the other figure was, friend or foe, though his little-magics were still telling him to get out. He listened to them, backed away and reached down to grab Holden, having forgotten the other man at his back in the excitement.
“Van, can’t you go anywhere without getting into trouble?” A low, smoky voice, one he knew and had feared he might never hear again.
Joshing Josie grinned in the dark, the grin that was a world of trouble for someone, pulled out a second pistol and shot the man behind Van Gast. Another gun, primed and ready to shoot Van Gast in the back, fell with a clatter.
Van Gast didn’t move, couldn’t move. He stayed still as death while Josie took her time locking the door and lighting the lamp.
The guttering tallow lit her face in all kinds of tempting ways, flickered over the hood that hid her far-too-obvious white-blond hair, slid tauntingly over the close-fitting leather breeches that showed off her litheness, the way she was built like a dancer, full of fluid grace. Joshing Josie, supposedly his bitterest rival, his dearest enemy, and instead the one who got away. The one he’d never stopped chasing, never stopped loving. The stupid-but-exciting thing, the never-quite-in-his-grasp thing, and that was never truer than now.
The hood obscured her eyes, but he thought he saw a tremor on her