for some fearsome risk, some mortal danger. “Last chance, Van. Only chance. I couldn’t bear it if—only one chance.” The grin flashed back, lopsided and taunting, as always covering what she truly felt. Rob, kill or delight. Oh, he’d rob and kill anyone for that delight. “Estovan. A twist like you would not believe. I could use a man like you on this one, especially now Arden’s dead and I’ll have to work out how to get to his brother instead. You up to the job?”
“When aren’t I?”
Someone rattled the door and shouts echoed outside, making his trouble bone flare. Out of time, when time with her was what he craved.
As quick as she’d been with him, she was at the window. She slid back the hood and he caught a flicker of her white-blond hair in the lamplight, and the flicker of her eyes too. Hoping, wanting, hurt—and waiting for him to take the hurt away perhaps. “You want to know why, look in the next room if you get the chance. Oh, and Van, get some new clothes. Gray is really not your color. Come to Estovan, for the twist of our lives. Come and catch me if you dare.”
Then she was gone, and he was left with the warm memory of a kiss that shivered his bones, and a chance. Estovan, home of the Yelen. A dead Yelen at his feet. A challenge, and a dare. The sort of thing he lived for, and Josie knew it. Estovan, the stupidest, most dangerous place for him to be, because there was a price on his head there, because he’d stolen a diamond the worth of a town. He glanced down at the man who’d shot at him. The man she’d saved him from. Even worse after tonight and this dead body.
Stupid to go. But exciting too—there was a thrill at the thought. Guards, chases, scams to run, thefts to organize. People to outwit. Slippery Josie to pin down. Maybe it was time he was that Van Gast again. He found he was grinning so hard his face ached. Yes, oh yes. Time for fun with a capital F, and down-and-dirty Estovan was just the place. And Josie would be waiting for him. A chance, and he always had his eye on the chance.
One of the prone bodies groaned. Van Gast gave the man another thwack to put him out, emptied the pockets of all of them and got Holden in hand.
Holden was heavier than he looked. In the end, Van Gast got a shoulder under his, got him out of the room and locked the door behind. No point being stupid on purpose. By now Holden was blinking back to wakefulness.
“Van, what happened?”
“Tell you later. Come on.” He supported Holden for a step and then he spotted the door. Look next door, she’d said. A throwaway comment, but those were the ones he’d learned to listen to from the contrary Josie. “Hold up. Let’s take a look in here.”
Holden rubbed at a lump on his forehead and winced. “No, let’s not.”
“You’ve got no sense of adventure.”
Only, as Van Gast set his hand on the door, his little-magics, which had faded to a dull niggle, flared into life, an itch, a burn, a desperate need to run, and run now. For once he ignored them—Josie’s words meant more than that. She said little lightly.
The door was locked but that only mattered for a moment, because locks usually dissolved in Van Gast’s presence, at least once he took them to task. Every hair prickled as he turned the doorknob.
A small lamp lit the decrepit room and shone off something in the corner. A man—and not. He was naked, and if Van’s nose hadn’t been numb from the smell of the village, he’d probably have smelled this sooner. Holden surely would.
A withered stick of a man sat in a corner, his skin pallid and wrinkled with grime etched in the creases, his muscles thin and wasted. Yet there was something else about him—a shimmering skin over him, just now beginning to grow, magic crystals accreting over every inch of him, crusting him in new-made power. Not much as yet, thank Forn, thank Kyr, thank every god and goddess, but enough. A Remorian mage, and Van Gast had thought them all dead. Words rattled in Van Gast’s brain—I hear you’re collecting them.
That was bad enough, but something to ponder for another day. What really got Van Gast moving was the pistol shot