arch, and took Ilsa with him. When Van Gast looked, Rillen was kissing her, whispering into her ear with a sly, happy, vicious look. Her look at him was no better.
Oh, Holden, you poor bastard.
The bond on his arm seemed to raise his wrist without his thought, lifted the gun, set his finger on the trigger. Through the beads, Van Gast could make out a commotion along a corridor—some guards, what looked like a trader or two, and there, that must be the one. A fat man in gilded robes, looking flushed and drunk and angry.
“How!” the fat man shouted. “How in Kyr’s name could racks break into my strong room? They were in the cells, and it’s your job to keep them there.”
A low murmur from one of the guards—one of Rillen’s men, who Van Gast recognized from earlier.
The fat man stopped dead and turned on him. “I don’t care what they say about Van Gast, my cells should hold him.”
Muttering to himself, the fat man came on, ponderous and weaving, the armpits of his robe sweat-dark. The bond tightened on Van Gast’s wrist, squeezed his bones, his head, with what he was supposed to do.
If he shot this man, he’d be dead in hours, hung on Oku’s wall with a nail through his wrist and left to roast in the sun. He had no doubt—Rillen was using him for just that purpose, to take the blame for this death. If Van Gast didn’t shoot, he’d be dead soon enough at the rate the poison of being bonded unwilling, of fighting it, crawled along him arm, arrowed for his heart. Even shooting Rillen, tempting as it was, would bring no relief. Van Gast knew that much about the bond—the one who put it on had to take it off, or die, and the mage was who-knew-where. Too smart to hang around, especially given how his old master had ended, shot by his own bondsman.
Van Gast was a dead man. Again that phrase rattled around, trying to find a home. He shook his head—he needed to be thinking clearly, but he couldn’t, not with the iron will that held him, seemed to crush the soul out of him.
Two choices. Fight or not. End result would be the same. In which case, might as well be stupid and go out in a blast. At least he could still call his soul his own. He shut his eyes for the closest he ever got to a prayer.
Kyr, show me some mercy now. Remember, I put that devotional back rather than steal it.
Odd, how he could swear he heard the sound of bells then. Maybe Kyr was agreeing. Maybe she wasn’t. Didn’t matter.
His hand tightened on the butt of the gun as the fat man approached his hideaway. With teeth clenched so tight they squeaked, Van Gast dragged the gun away from the curtain of beads, inch by painful inch, and pointed it at Rillen. His hand shook hard enough that the barrel of the gun seemed blurred, and he steadied it with his other hand and with the last ounce of strength he had left. The black lines wriggled past his elbow, burning as they went.
“No.” Rillen pushed Ilsa behind him. “No, you can’t fight it. You have to obey Bissan and he said obey me. Obey me.”
All Van Gast had to do was pull the trigger, and still he’d be dead. The jingle of bells came again, closer this time. He shook his head—he had no time for hearing things that weren’t there. All he had to do was pull the trigger, but the strength was gone from his hands, from his arms, replaced by pain, a silver throbbing agony that crumpled him to his knees. Still, the gun was pointed at Rillen. Close enough, anyway.
The beads rattled behind him, but Van Gast couldn’t be swayed, he wouldn’t be. If he killed Rillen, set all his guards into disarray, then maybe, just maybe, Josie had a chance.
“What the—”
The fat man’s voice, petulant and confused. A heavy weight hit Van Gast’s back and sent him crashing to the floor. He squeezed off the shot as he fell, but the bullet went wide, skittered off the wall in a shower of plaster and dropped to the tiles. Van Gast watched it as he lay, the weight crushing him, the tiles cool under his feverish face.
Bells—he could hear bells again, sweet discordance, a sound he always associated with the sea, with wide skies and