table and ordered drinks, glaring at the barkeep until he handed them over with a sullen look.
Tallia sipped at the ale. She seemed worried, distracted, fiddling with the cuffs on her shirt and tracing a pattern on the table in spilled beer. Holden let the silence drag out, until she couldn’t take it any more.
“Well, what? So, I left the ship—I thought that was the point of racks, that you could do what you want.” The words burst out of her like firecrackers.
“Maybe, but I told you, all the new crew, no shore leave till I said so. I’m sure you can imagine why, what with the price on Van’s head.”
“You think I was going to collect?” Her laugh seemed genuine, a full-throated thing that made Holden’s spine tingle.
“Here I find you, watching as the Yelen guards chase him. Not much of a leap, is it?”
She shrugged, but the smile didn’t leave her lips and all her bounce seemed to have come back, making her wriggle in her seat with suppressed energy. Holden wanted, very much, to reach for her hand, to soak up her enthusiasm, her lust for life. Something he couldn’t recall ever having. Ilsa’s voice whispered in his head, What do I have to do to make you come back to me? and his hand stayed where it was.
“So then, if not to watch Van Gast swing from the walls of Oku’s temples, why did you leave the ship?”
“I told you, to see my family. I was as surprised as anyone when the guards turned up.”
It wasn’t the truth, Holden was sure of that, but he wasn’t sure it was a lie either. She looked straight at him, candor stamped all over her face and a puzzled merriment behind her eyes, in the lift of her lips. She reached out for his hand, and he let her. Her fingers were warm and tingled his skin. He wondered what she would taste like if he kissed her.
“What about Ilsa?” she said.
Holden pulled his hand away, though he could still feel the touch of her fingers on his. “What about her?”
“Why did she leave the ship? She was just ahead of me.”
A question Holden didn’t have an answer for, and he wasn’t sure he wanted one. He drained his drink and stood up. “Come on, I want you back aboard. You can explain to Van yourself what you were doing.”
“Why should he care?”
She left her drink where it was, but got up with him. He was suddenly aware of her nearness, of her warmth, the way she was looking at him. That he could talk to her as he couldn’t with his own wife.
“Because you make him itch.”
“Wait—wait. Holden, I can—no, I can’t explain. But I can show you.”
“Show me what?”
“Where Josie’s berthed the ship, the Ghost. Van wants to know, doesn’t he? I’ll show you and then you’ll know I’m all right. Van wasn’t supposed to go—”
“Go where? To the temple?”
Tallia shrank back from him, from his sudden glare. “I can’t say. I can’t. But I can show you where Josie is, then it’ll be all right, won’t it?”
Her hand found his again, her eyes pleading with him. He wanted to believe her, not because he thought she was telling the truth but because he didn’t want to believe she was lying to him, didn’t want to have to distrust her. And yet that was the problem—the way she looked at him, the way her hand felt, was getting in the way of seeing clearly. He shook his head, as though that would make everything better, but it was all still there when he’d done.
He found his voice and turned away before he said it. “I need to find Ilsa.” He needed to make it right with her, not with this girl, who was looking at him as though she liked him. Who kept taking his hand. Who made Van Gast itch.
* * *
Rillen scrambled up the wall after Van Gast, swearing under his breath. He didn’t have years of experience running the yards on a ship or climbing the rigging. His strength and experience lay in sword and pistol and guile, not clambering like a sodding monkey.
By the time he made it to the roof, Van Gast was no longer in sight, though three of Rillen’s men were skittering after him. A pistol flashed out a bullet and it whined off the tiles. A shout from Rillen to the men left below, telling them which direction to