we’ll be overrun by madmen and they will die. If we find and bring the Remorians to be re-bonded, hang those too far gone, and if we catch the man the Remorians want, then these gentlemen will abide to be our new mages, our new power. Plans are already underway to negotiate new trades, new deals. This is a chance to make Estovan even greater.”
A chance for his father to get Remorian mages behind him and under his control. A power like that wasn’t to be snubbed, though Rillen doubted they could be controlled, at least not by his father.
A chance too for Rillen to prove he wasn’t just the useless second son and also to do other things, perhaps. Things he’d long dreamed of in his sweating midnight bed. He clamped his lips shut on the smile that tried to twitch them. Oh, I hope, I dream, I plan. He should do as they wanted for now. Watch, wait, be patient. See what the tide brought. “I’ll do my best, sir.”
Urgaut smiled his toady little smile. “The bond isn’t a pleasant thing to us, but it is part of Remoria, part of this deal, understood? Besides, this is your chance to catch the man who’s been a knife in our back for too long. The man you’ll be hunting is Van Gast.”
Van Gast? The name made Rillen’s stomach churn in anticipation. The ultimate prize, the most notorious rack. The man who’d stolen a ship, a bride, a dowry, a diamond the size of his fist and then disappeared without a trace. Who’d shot Rillen’s brother in the back last week, killed Arden, a fact which still hadn’t quite sunk in. He wanted to be the man who caught the uncatchable, whose name would be forever known as the captain who bested Van Gast, out-twisted him. Even better, he wanted to have his own personal revenge on the man who’d shot his brother like a coward.
Yet how?
They didn’t even know what he looked like in any detail. Dark eyes, dark hair, the nut-brown skin of a mainlander, which described just about everyone in Estovan, even Rillen himself. He could rule out Remorians, with their copper-bronze skin and bond scars, their disjointed ravings, and the handful of big blond Gan bodyguards from far over the Western Sea. Other than that, Van Gast could be almost any man in the city.
“The man’s impossible to catch.”
The mage’s voice creaked out into the silence that followed. “Not impossible. The Master caught him.”
“But he’s dead, you say.” I see, all of a sudden. “And it was Van Gast that killed him. Brought us this madness. You want vengeance.”
The mage’s eyes, hiding in their glittery caves, bored into Rillen and made him shiver in the heat. “As do you, if I’m not mistaken.” The mage smiled, letting a flake of power break off by his mouth.
Rillen glared at him, but the sick coiling in his stomach kept his words in his head.
“He had help when he killed the Master,” the mage said. “From other racketeers, from one of our own, Commander Holden. And if you find him too, then we’ll be doubly pleased. The price on Van Gast’s head alone should help you to catch him. Any rack would sell his soul for ten thousand gold sharks. For that, someone will turn him in, we’re sure. Or you’ll catch him. Then I’m going to put his head on a spike down by the rack docks so everyone will know the price for interfering in Remorian business. Eventually, anyway.”
Rillen tamped down his sudden interest. “So how do we catch him? How do we even know where he is?”
Urgaut smiled, the predatory look of a water-raptor waiting for a drunk to fall into its jaws. “That’s simple. We know Van Gast’s ship, even if he’s re-rigged it, renamed it—the Lone Queen. It’s just sailing into the delta. Find it, find him and bring him to me. I’m not overly concerned at the state of his body when you do.”
Rillen knew a dismissal when he heard it, and took his leave, his mind working furiously. Van Gast. A prize worth working toward. A retribution for Arden and more besides. Van Gast was uncatchable, or so they said, and Rillen had long suspected it was true.
So, play it clever. Find the ship and also find someone to get aboard, someone who could act like a racketeer. Someone who would do anything for him if it meant the possibility of her