and dice. There had to be a way to find out. “What is it?”
“Just what I was going to ask you.” Holden made himself comfortable in a chair and watched him swirl the cups again. “Why did you have me put Tallia in the brig? She’s—”
Van Gast pulled out the first message, the one asking him to go to the temple, and passed it over. “Someone is trying to set me up, get me hanged or bonded or, I don’t know, dead. Josie didn’t write that, or send it.”
Holden barely even glanced at the paper. “You’re sure?”
Van Gast smiled to himself and took another swig of brandy that did nothing to ease the burn in his ribs. “How sure can anyone be when it’s Josie we’re talking about? Pretty sure, same as I can be pretty sure I won’t get caught in a typhoon in Sarigin, or that a tidal wave won’t drown us all at midnight. Pretty sure, not certain. She left me this one too, one I know was hers.”
Holden studied the two messages, a deep frown creasing his forehead. “Kyr’s Palace? And who’s Mr. Ibsen?”
“Never mind that. Someone wanted me at the temple, made sure I’d be there at the same time as a whole load of Yelen guards. Someone was there to tell them which one was me. I heard them. A woman’s voice. A voice I know, I’m sure, but I can’t place it—it was too quiet.”
Van Gast swirled the cups again. A mermaid for Josie, one for Tallia sitting in his brig, one for…who? Was there someone else? Someone he was blind to? Gilda? She’d always been a twisty little madam and had never quite forgotten Van Gast turning down her offer of a tumble all that time ago. Yet that wasn’t enough to drive her to this. Racks didn’t betray racks, not for so little. Maybe for ten thousand sharks…
Holden’s voice startled him out of his thoughts. “Seems wherever you go, someone wants to kill you.”
“That, Holden, is half the fun. Stopping them and then thumbing your nose at them after. Reminds me.” He flicked his thumb along his nose in Holden’s direction.
Holden flushed at that reminder, but when he spoke, it wasn’t of his previous failure to kill Van Gast. “What are you going to do then?”
Van Gast gathered the set of nine dice together and slid them into their pouch, carefully. The man he’d won them from had told him of the magic in them, used to conjure double kraken when he wanted, and also of other, more dire consequences should he roll Dead Man’s Hand. “Follow the money, run the twist, steal back Josie and then get the fuck out of port. What else?”
“And if someone is setting you up?”
Van Gast took another swig of brandy and savored the burn in his throat. “It’s not just me, I’m sure of it. Not just me.”
Because the itch had been worse since Josie came, since she’d told him the message wasn’t hers, and he didn’t think it burned that way just for him. She was dicing with more than death, going up against the Yelen, and she knew it. Yet she was too damn stubborn to quit, to leave without getting whatever it was she came for. Never gave up till the end, his Josie.
He smiled at the memory of her on his bed, so close and yet not caught. Never caught. Dancing just out of reach, as always, tantalizing and tempting. That was part of what this twist was about, he was sure of that. Taunting him with herself, just how he liked it.
“Then why are you going? Kyr’s mercy, man, we know where she’s berthed. You should get her and we’ll leave. Today. The tide will be right in a couple of bells.”
Van Gast couldn’t explain it, not so that Holden would understand. That this was what he lived for, what made him know he was alive. That there was no way in the Deeps Josie would go anywhere until she had what she wanted. That if this was what it took to make it up to her, to make things right between them, he’d do it in a heartbeat. Besides which, there was a fortune to be had somewhere inside that palace, and he trusted Josie enough to know she had a plan, a twisty little plot to get it.
So instead he said “You’ll have to stay here. They’ll spot you for a Remorian straight off. So you’ll stay