without comfort, he couldn’t get his mind to work in straight lines. Stay with the ship, Van had said, be ready to sail. That was all very well, but something was going on and he couldn’t just sit by and do nothing. A traitor, perhaps. Tallia in the brig. Ilsa hadn’t come back, and neither had Gilda. Van and Josie off somewhere, and a traitor loose. Perhaps. Or perhaps in the brig.
Holden took a deep breath and tried to settle his mind. It was hard, had been hard all these last weeks trying to think for himself, to choose, make a decision when all his life, decisions had been made for him, thoughts been thought for him. Van Gast had set him free from that, no matter that Holden himself had shot the bullet. Van Gast and Josie, fighting, biting Josie who never gave up, not till the end, and had risked dying, risked everything she was to save Van Gast from the bond. That was what had made him shoot. Her, refusing to give up, give in, let her dreams wash away on a silent tide of the gray fog that the bond laid over your mind.
Holden stopped pacing and found himself at the top of the steps that led to the brig. They didn’t know the traitor was Tallia. Gilda was more likely, and she’d yet to return from the palace. Jumped ship most like. But Tallia was hiding something, he knew that. Maybe he could talk to her—and more likely he was fooling himself, because he liked the way she made him feel, the touch of her hand on his arm, the enthusiasm that leached into everything she did and lit up her smile.
Ilsa had closed herself off again after one night when he’d thought—well, he’d thought that things were going well, that he’d breached the gap, that he was making her happy. She came and went without talking to him. Happy in herself, in her newfound freedom.
A choice. A hard thing, when you weren’t used to it. In the end it was the thought of Van Gast, the most notorious, hardhearted rack crying over Josie, loving her in a way that Holden never could, that had made him do it, shoot the Master. That made him do this.
It was dark in the hold, the night seizing its place here first, and Holden lit a lamp. The space reeked of fresh sawdust and pitch from repairs, a hint of the last cargo—silk and mangos—underneath. The brig lay at the aft end, a small cage just long enough for a man to lie down in. Tallia fitted with ease, but she looked even smaller than before behind the bars that lay like shadows across Holden’s conscience. He never could stand it, the locking up of free things, of wild things, not when it had been Josie, not now it was Tallia.
She wasn’t alone, he saw now. Another lamp lay broken and smoldering on the deck. In the dim light, he could make out the open door of the brig, a shape behind her, tall and leggy. A gasp escaped someone, a grunt of effort. Holden hurried forward. A rack, there in the brig with Tallia, a knife in hand. Gilda. Blood stained the blade and spotted Tallia’s shirt at the waist.
Holden leaped toward them, dropping the lamp before pulling his pistol and poking it into Gilda’s stomach. He cursed his lack of left hand when the lamp guttered where it fell and gloom descended, but he kept the gun where it was and cocked it.
Gilda stilled at the sound.
“Drop the knife.” Metal clattered to the deck. “Better. Someone want to tell me what’s going on? Tallia, are you all right?”
Her face was a pale smudge, and her voice wavered. “I think so. The cut’s not too bad.”
“Good. Get the lamp going again would you? Now you, Gilda, what in Kyr’s name did you think you were doing?”
It took only moments for Tallia to relight the lamp and hang it on a nail. Gilda glared at him sullenly, with a sneer at his gun, or maybe at her guess about whether he meant to use it. He shoved it in further and leaned forward, so their faces were nose to nose. “I’ll use it if I have to. Don’t doubt it.”
“Heard some talk,” Gilda muttered finally. “About this here trying to turn Van Gast in. Seems she was. It’s all over town.”