The Master had ruled his life up till now. Now it was up to him, his head, his heart.
“All right, Tallia. How do we get in?”
Chapter Fifteen
Van Gast was thrust into a fetid cell in a jangle of bells and blood where he hit the floor face-first. It had taken four guards to get him here, though with his hands cuffed behind his back there was little he could do except make their lives as difficult as possible. And hope this was all part of the plan Josie hadn’t quite got round to explaining. He’d hidden the key by sliding it into his breeches and wiggling until it fell into his boot.
Which was a problem, because a rough hand dragged him up and began slicing off his clothes with a knife. “Hey, that’s my best shirt!”
“Not anymore.”
The shirt ripped along the cuts and dropped to the floor, followed by the corset, which was a relief at least. One of the guards picked the shirt up and rifled through it. The two knives he quickly pocketed for himself before he squinted at the little square of cloth in the dim light, ripped it into quarters and threw it on the floor. Van Gast kept his gaze sharp, looking to see where they fell. Almost all he had. Except the glass wedding dagger. The one the guard was lifting up to the faint moonlight from a tiny light-well in the corner, which was all that lit the cell.
The guard snorted in disgust. “Bah, only one, that’s no good. And it’s not got the oil in. Sodding worthless.” With a casual flick of his wrist, the dagger shattered against the wall, and shattered Van Gast’s hope too. The cloth and the dagger, all he had, the only tangible things to show that he had a chance with Josie. The only things that actually meant anything to him, apart from maybe his bells. They could have taken the rest, burned it all, he wouldn’t have cared. But now his hope lay in tiny shattered specks on the floor.
He didn’t struggle as they wrenched off his boots, shook out the daggers, the key, and took them, patted down his breeches and found only his set of bones, which they left. There wasn’t much point in struggling. Violence would do him no good right now, what he needed was smarts. What he needed was Josie.
As a final gesture they moved the cuffs so that his hands were in front of him, and threw his bells back at him through the grill when they’d banged the door closed. “If you’re lucky, Forn will drown you before Rillen gets his way.”
They set off back down the corridor, laughing at their joke and rattling the bars of the other cells as they passed.
What the fuck had Josie’s plan been? She must have realized they might take the key. Was the plan still on, or not? Van Gast hadn’t liked the way her face had paled when Rillen knew him, the almost-missed twitch. She hadn’t expected it, he was sure. Maybe she’d thought they wouldn’t search Mr. Ibsen. But her plan had been to get him in the cells. Why?
Think man, think.
He scuffled among the dank straw, trying to find what was left of the cloth. Stupid, really, but that piece of cloth, that glass dagger had been his focus for long enough now, they were part of him. All he found were a few bits of glass, not even big enough to make a handy weapon.
She needed him in the cells. He wasn’t here so she could get the bounty, she hadn’t turned him in. Yet. He had to believe that or go crazy. She had a reason, a plan, even if it’d gone a bit tits-up. Plans always tended to. Still a chance to salvage it, if he could work out what it was.
Damn you, Josie, why do you always have to play so close to your—admittedly very fine—chest.
Because it was more fun that way. Good point, although Van Gast wasn’t seeing much fun right now. So, she wanted him down in the Yelen dungeons, where rumor said some men had spent decades not quite dying. She’d given him a key, which they’d taken off him, naturally. What was down here? Revenge and money, that was what she was after. Money, he and Josie were always after money, always the forefront of any plan, the harder to get, the twistier they had to