Deceptions (Ascendant Book 3)

by Craig Alanson

  The plan was that once they skirted around the invading host of orcs, Koren wanted to find his horse first, though Bjorn had warned the boy that finding one horse in the vast land between them and the border of Tarador would be nearly impossible. They had no idea where the retreating dwarves had taken the horses from that stable, Bjorn reminded the distraught young man. Koren needed to be prepared to purchase the first horse they found available, and be satisfied with that for their journey to Linden. “Thunderbolt found me alone in the wilderness once,” Koren shot back when Bjorn reminded him one too many times that finding one horse in the chaos of an invasion was unlikely, perhaps even impossible, and certainly foolhardy. “He came all the way from,” Koren paused, for he didn’t actually know how Thunderbolt found him, or how far the horse had traveled on his own to get there. “From a great distance, anyway.”

  “Good,” Bjorn brightened. “That settles it, then. Problem solved.”

  “What?” Koren stared at the former King’s Guard. “How is that?”

  “Well,” Bjorn shaded his eyes to study the smoke haze that lay beyond the last ridge they were approaching. “The horse found you once, he will find you again, if it’s meant to be.”

  That idea brought Koren to a halt. Walking while thinking did not seem like one of his capabilities that day. “You think, you think Thunderbolt found me because I’m a wizard, that, somehow I called out to him?”

  “I don’t know the ways of wizards,” Bjorn stated truthfully, knowing Koren was also entirely ignorant about how wizardry worked. “Something made that horse come straight to you in that wilderness, where even you didn’t know where you were.” Bjorn’s intention had simply been to allow Koren to think he had to allow the spirits to determine whether, when and how he was reunited with his horse, so the boy would forget the idea of running around a battle zone in a vain attempt to find one particular animal. But now that Bjorn really thought about it, the idea of a magical bond between Koren and the horse was not only possible, it was the only explanation. Bjorn also stopped walking to ponder that thought. “Koren, if the spirits want you to find your horse, I suspect they will guide Thunderbolt to you. If the spirits do not will it, you and I could wander this area until even you are old and gray, and never find that horse.”

  Koren did not like the idea of not trying to find Thunderbolt. There was a saying he had learned as a boy; the spirits help those who help themselves. Maybe that expression did not apply to wizards, who had the ability to bend the energy of the spirit world to their own will. “Hmmm,” he grunted.

  “What?”

  “Oh,” Koren hadn’t realized he had said anything aloud. “Perhaps what I am supposed to do is will the spirits to bring Thunderbolt to me. Safely to me,” he added hastily, lest the spirits misunderstand him. An amateur wizard trying to make the spirits do his bidding might only make them angry, and mischievous spirits did not do anyone good.

  “That’s the spirit!” Bjorn exclaimed, then, “No pun intended.”

  Koren began walking up the rocky ridge again, distracted by his thoughts. “I wish I knew how to make the spirits do what I want!”

  “How did you do it the first time, when Thunderbolt found you?”

  “I didn’t do anything!” Koren gritted his teeth in frustration. “I didn’t let myself even think about Thunderbolt, or anything I enjoyed about my old life in Linden. It was too painful, and thinking about it did me no good.”

  “Well then, maybe trying not to think about it is what you are supposed to do?” Bjorn guessed unhelpfully.

  “Arrgh!” Koren screamed, shaking his fist to the sky.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lord Mwazo had to admit their journey down the river to the sea was physically comfortable, certainly sleeping the days and nights away on a real bed in the cabin of a riverboat was preferable to being jostled and jarred all day in a carriage on rough roads. The quiet and smooth ride of the boat, even the gentle rocking as the boat bobbed over small waves, had done wonders for Mwazo’s constitution, by the time they reached the sea, he felt almost fully recovered. Even the food was good, though he did not wish to know how much the court wizard had paid for fresh, healthy food in the inflated wartime prices.

  Lord Mwazo’s discomfort was mental rather than physical. They had reached the seaport where the river met the vast ocean, and their idyllic days of lazily floating down the river were over. They must concentrate their full energies on the next step in their doomed and desperate journey, and Cecil had to push to the back of his mind the knowledge that he and Paedris would not be returning.

  Despite the time of year and being on Tarador’s southern coast, the early evening was damp and chilly; it had been drizzling all day and now the rain had settled into a dense, misty fog. Fine droplets collected on Lord Salva’s beard and eyelashes, which he blinked away to run down his cheeks. The gloomy weather was exactly what he wanted, it kept people inside and prevented casual observers from identifying the two wizards who made their way through a tangle of side streets and back alleys near the docks. Both men wore cloaks and hoods, not unusual in the unpleasant weather and not attracting any attention. Weaving between mostly empty, discarded crates, old fishing traps and other junk cluttering the alleys, Paedris led the way to the side door of an inn close by the docks and produced a key from a pocket. The door was battered, with peeling paint, dents and marks that might have been caused by knives or even an axe. Paedris was not bothered, as this was known to be a rough section of the sea port and he had been there before. The lock mechanism, rusty on the outside, turned smoothly and silently, and the door hinges were well-oiled and made no sound. He had to push firmly on the door, for it was heavy, made of thick timbers. “Cecil?” Paedris gestured for his fellow wizard to enter. The room was used by those who wished to come and go without being seen by customers in the inn’s front tavern, and Paedris had hired the room for the night. Or, someone had hired the room and procured the key for Paedris, as the wizard did not wish to deal directly with the innkeeper and her staff.

  Lord Mwazo shuffled through the narrow alley to stand beside Paedris, and remained outside while he stuck his head through the doorway skeptically. “Here? You want us to meet potentially dangerous people here?”

  “Are you afraid, Cecil?” Paedris was amused. “Of ruffians?” he teased, knowing his fellow wizard had no fear of common thieves.

  “I’m afraid something living under the tables here will bite me.” He peered dubiously at the rough and worn furniture in the room. “More likely something living in those chair cushions will bite.”

  “I can get a plain wooden chair for you,” Paedris looked more closely at the chairs. In the dim light, he could not tell whether the pattern of the fabric was original, or the results of many mystery stains over too many years. “On second thought, I will get a wood chairs for myself also,” he decided, wishing to avoid giving fleas an easy route into his robes.

  “Then we need only fear poisoning from the food,” Mwazo remarked dryly, wrinkling his nose at the scent coming from the inn kitchen’s chimney.

  Paedris smiled, light glinting off his teeth even in the gloom. “People do not come here to eat, Cecil. They come here to drink.”

  “They come here to forget, Paedris,” he said as he took a step inside the room, and his boot squished on something he didn’t want to think about. “I will want to forget this when we are done.” He scraped the bottom of his boot on a broken crate in the alley and stepped inside. “Now?”

  Paedris closed the door and wiggled the handle to assure it was locked behind them. The only other entrance was on the far wall, a door which opened to a hallway leading to the tavern’s common room. That door was closed and, Paedris could tell with a rap of his knuckles, also thick and solid, though muffled sounds of shouting and laughter could be heard beyond the door. “Now, we wait. Let us push these,” he pointed to the stained, overstuffed chairs, “aside and use these plain wood chairs, eh? Behind you, there should be, yes,”
he saw to his satisfaction, “a chilled bottle of wine and goblets. I am thirsty.”

  “You trust wine from this inn?”

  “The owner of the inn is one of the most cunning smugglers in southern Tarador, she uses the inn as a front for her business. One of the items she smuggles is wine, and she is far more knowledgeable on the subject than the owner of a typical spirits shop.”

  “If you say so,” Mwazo pulled the bottle from the bucket of ice and cold water. At least the wine was, as Paedris expected, chilled.

  A few minutes later, having poured himself a second glass of the excellent wine, Mwazo thought that if Paedris was as right about other things as he had been about the wine, their evening might not turn out too badly.

  Captain John Reed lifted his beer stein and pretended to drink from it for the umpteenth time. He had been sitting at a corner table of the tavern for over an hour, and the serving girl had taken away two full beer steins already. The girl had not commented on the sailor making a show of drinking without actually drinking, she had seen it before, it was none of her business, and the sailor tipped well. If other customers had been paying attention, they would have seen her pulling the tap of the beer cask behind the bar to fill a stein, and if they had been counting they had seen three beers delivered. They would have seen the serving girl taking away steins, but they would not have seen her pouring out the full stein into a drain when she was behind the bar.

  Reed did not like meeting a potential customer in the back room of the inn, which was widely known to be a front for smugglers. Reed had not been above small-scale smuggling, especially earlier in his career at sea; the tariff laws from the many nations bordering the sea were so nonsensical and confusing that an honest merchant captain might become a smuggler without intending to, or even knowing. It was not the meeting place he objected to, it was the mystery surrounding his potential customer. An anonymous message had reached him that morning, requesting a meeting that evening, to discuss hiring his ship the Lady Hildegard. A few years ago, even last year, Reed would have dismissed any sketchy request; potential customers should come to the respectable inn where Reed maintained a room while ashore, or the customer could send a message out to the ship at anchor.

  But now, Reed was desperate for business, like all the ship captains and owners in the port. After delivering most of her cargo at Gertaborg, the Hildegard had packed her holds less than a third full and set sail for Tarador’s main seaport, hugging the coastline and taking advantage of unusually favorable winds. The ship’s captain and crew would have preferred to wait at Gertaborg for a full cargo to haul, and a haul longer than a mere six day’s sailing. No such cargo was offered, so Reed had taken aboard what he could get and hoped to find better fortune at Pernelleton, where most shipping merchants doing business in Tarador maintained offices.

  Instead, to the great disappointment of captain and crew, they found the great harbor at Pernelleton crammed with ships riding idly at anchor, and no cargo going out. So many ships had been lost to pirates that insurance rates had shot sky-high, and no merchant could afford to transport goods by sea. The Lady Hildegard was the last merchant ship to enter the harbor, which is why she floated in an unfavorable anchorage nearly at the harbor’s mouth, subject to wind and currents. Two warships of the Royal Navy had recently failed to return, and it was feared they had fallen victim to pirates of Acedor.

  With no cargo being offered and none likely, the Hildegard was like the other unfortunate ships choking the harbor; some of those ships had been swinging on the end of their rusting anchor chains for nearly a year. Just last week, an abandoned hulk, stripped of everything useful including spars and topmasts, had taken on water from seams that had not been properly caulked in a year. As crews aboard other ships and crowds lining the harbor watched in either alarm or amusement, the old ship heeled over to starboard. As the harbormaster frantically sent out two boats to see if the hulk could be pumped out and refloated, people in the crowd took bets on whether the hulk would sink, and whether the boats rowing hard toward the abandoned ship would reach it before it slipped beneath the waves. The boats lost their race, although there was much shouting and arguing about the final outcome of bets, for the men rowing the boats had slowed as they judged they could do nothing to prevent the hulk from sinking, so why should they pull so hard on oars into a stiff breeze on a hot, sunny day?

  Now the sunken ship was a navigation hazard in the crowded harbor, although the harbormaster had determined the deep water of the harbor allowed most ships to pass over the wreck without noticing. And, as the only ships coming into or out of the harbor were shallow-draft Navy vessels, one more wreck littering the bottom of the harbor was a problem for another day.

  Captain Reed had talked, even pleaded, with the few merchants who still kept offices around the port. Give me a cargo, he said and offered the Lady Hildegard as collateral in lieu of insurance no one could afford to purchase. Sensibly, all the merchants had turned down his offer, reasoning that if Reed failed to deliver cargo, it would be due to his ship being seized or sunk by pirates. Reed had to admit he could not argue with that logic.

  According to the merchant agents in the port, almost all cargo to and from Tarador was traveling overland, though that route was expensive, slow and carried its own risks. With the war boosting demand for almost all supplies, any ship successful in carrying cargo to Tarador could be assured of a handsome profit. The problem was, now even the great port at Gertaborg was nearly blockaded by pirates, so no cargo west of Gertaborg was moving by sea.

  Reed had approached his dwindling crew with the proposition they weigh anchor and sail at best speed for Indus, hoping to find westbound cargo there. During the voyage, Reed could not afford to pay the crew, nor would there be assurance of pay when they reached the Indus Empire. Crew signing on for the outbound voyage would even need to pay for their own food during the passage. This announcement caused much grumbling and the loss of another dozen disheartened crewmen. To Captain Reed’s surprise, enough crewmen from other ships offered to join the Hildegard’s run to Indus that he actually had to turn people away.

  Then a second Royal Navy warship was declared overdue and presumed lost to enemy action, and Reed’s new crew evaporated back into the taverns where they spent their days drinking away the last coins in their pockets.

  Unless Reed could find paying work soon, he was facing the prospect of paying anchorage fees out of his own pocket. Most of the ships in the harbor were in debt to the harbormaster, some had run up fees so high, those ships had been abandoned by their owners and turned over to the port to manage. A petition to the harbormaster, seeking reduced fees during the pirate crisis, had been rejected despite the harbormaster’s sympathy. Any reduction or waiver of fees would require approval by the Regent or crown princess or queen-in-waiting or whatever Ariana Trehayme’s title was at the moment. As the young Regent was extremely busy pushing scattered remnants of the Acedoran army back across the River Fasse, relief from the Regent was unlikely.

  That was why Captain Reed sat in the dark smoky tavern, pretending to drink one beer after another.

  The front door of the tavern swung open, and Alfonze strode in, looking one way and the other as casually as he could manage, then went straight to Reed’s table. “Two of them. Wearing cloaks and hoods, I couldn’t see their faces.”

  Reed had ordered the trusted Alfonze to wait across the street at the end of the alley, to see who entered the inn’s back room from the alley. “This fog is too thick,” he looked out the still-open door, for the view through the tavern’s filthy windows would appear foggy on a clear day. “You couldn’t see faces anyway. Just the two?”

  “Yes, both of them were men, by the way they walked. Sorry I can’t tell you more.”

  Reed clapped his man on the back. “We are sailors, Alfonze, not spies.” They sat quietly a few minutes until the clock struck seven in the evening, then Reed stood and brought his beer stein to the bar, placing it behind the counter to
be emptied. In case the men he was meeting with had his own spy in the tavern, Reed walked with the unsteady gait of a man slightly drunk, bumping shoulders with Alfonze in the narrow hallway. At the door, Reed straightened and knocked.

  “Come in,” a voice called out.

  “Captain Reed?” Paedris asked without stirring from his chair when the door opened.

  “I am,” Reed said cautiously, stopping just inside the doorway to allow his eyes to adjust to the dimness. The only light in the room came from a fire that had dwindled to one thin, flicking flame, and a candle that was too far away from the table to illuminate the two occupants. Reed could see two figures, one of whom had a hood draped over his head, concealing his face so all that could be seen was faint light glinting off his eyes. Knowing how that sort of meeting worked, he nodded for Alfonze to close the door behind them. “Who might you be?”

  “A potential customer. I would not sit in those chairs if I were you,” Paedris cautioned the merchant ship captain. He pointed to a pair of plain wood chairs, and the sailors sat cautiously, as if the chairs were about to collapse on them.

  “Do you mind telling me what you want, since you won’t tell me who you are?” Reed asked, growing in confidence.

  “I want to hire your ship.”

  “To go where?”

  “That will be revealed after we weigh anchor.”

  “In that case, you can’t afford to hire my ship.”

  “We haven’t discussed a price yet,” Paedris expressed surprise.

  “We don’t need to. If the destination is so dangerous you can’t discuss it,” Reed’s lips curled in a wry smile, “then you must think the odds are my ship won’t be coming back.”