a fair wind and the world to do with as he wanted. That all seemed impossibly distant now. Feet moved around him, guards’ boots, a pair of slippered feet under gilded robes.
Shouts—he couldn’t hear what they were saying, all mingled together so that it was hard to tell one voice from another over the throb in his head. The stomp of more guards, and bells. Still bells, faint, as though Kyr was taunting him but didn’t want anyone else to hear. Another shot in the hubbub, and a gun fell by Van Gast’s hand, smoke gathering around the muzzle. A body fell—the man in the robes, that fat man, his florid face slack now, and a neat hole in his forehead between staring eyes.
Rough hands grabbed him up from the floor. Rillen shook him, his face twisted with indignant rage, but he couldn’t hide the flat-eyed glee, not from Van Gast.
Van Gast tried not to see over his shoulder, tried not to know, because they’d take him before the mage, were bound to, and a mage could see inside the head of a bonded man, so they said. So he tried to ignore the faint bells, tried not to have seen Skrymir’s broad, worried face, or the flap of Holden’s shirt as they darted away, unnoticed in the hubbub. Tried to be grateful that Josie wasn’t in Rillen’s hands anymore, and that this gave her more time, perhaps. Time to get away, sail out of Estovan and never come back.
* * *
Rillen grabbed up Van Gast from the floor and shook him. “We have our man. I say we hang him from Oku’s wall.”
Van Gast’s head lolled back for a moment, his eyes fixed on something far away. Yet then he stood straighter and fixed Rillen with a leery, cocksure grin that had Rillen itching to throttle him.
“I wish you would,” Van Gast said. “I’ve never been to a hanging before.”
Rillen thrust him into the waiting arms of the guards before he did something he’d regret. How dare Van Gast try to fuck up his beautiful plan? Calm. Be calm. He could get away with this, still blame it on Van Gast.
“Sergeant!”
His man-at-arms hurried back through the curtain, wiping his sword free of blood. “Sir.”
“Well?”
The sergeant allowed himself a tight smile, satisfied at a tricky job done neatly. “Sad to say, sir, the two councilors ran straight into the rest of the racks.”
“Very sad, sergeant. I’m sure you did your best.”
The sergeant slid away his sword. “Oh yes, sir. I even found one of their bells, you see?” He held up a single silver bell, and peered down at Van Gast’s leg. “Ah, look, his bells are one short. It’s truly shocking what these racks will do for money, sir. And shocking the way he chopped up those poor, innocent councilors.”
Don’t take it too far, man. Rillen turned to his father’s guards. His now, or they would be just as soon as the formalities were over.
“I think we’ve got proof enough, don’t you? Set all the guards you can find to seal the palace, try to catch the rest of them, and what they stole. Let me have a few moments with my father before you have him laid out with all the pomp we can muster.”
The palace guard captain hesitated, but only a fraction. Rillen’s men outnumbered him and his men, two to one. His patron was dead, and in the melee no one had seen Rillen grab his gun and shoot. The wind was blowing only one way, and the captain could smell it. “Yes, sir.”
They left, one set of guards taking a grinning and entirely too confident Van Gast back to the cells. Only Rillen and Ilsa remained, and the body of his father.
Yet Rillen felt no relief at the death, no thrill of victory, no sense of revenge earned. Only more hatred welling up, from nowhere it seemed. A part of him so long, he couldn’t now get rid of it. Hatred, plans, and a lot of money that used to be someone else’s.
Ilsa caught his eye and cocked her head. No innocence now. No naiveté. He might have missed it, except for how she’d embraced his plans, and him. How she’d come to life in their shared hatred, her mind sifting and sorting. Thinking, as he did. A true match.
“The mage,” she said with a curving sneer. “How sure are you of him? Do you trust him? He might still betray you.”