Arayevo snorted.
“Are you volunteering?” he asked her.
“No, I was laughing at the idea of you bending even a reed to your will. You wouldn’t want to impose yourself like that. But if you need me to go with her, I will. I like her.”
“Good. Thank you.” Yanko didn’t rebut the rest since it was somewhat true.
“If you need a bodyguard to protect you while you wield your magic,” Jhali said, “I volunteer.”
Yanko formed a soundless, “What?”
Lakeo scowled. “He has Dak, and if something happens to Dak, he has me. He’s not putting some assassin at his back, an assassin who tried to kill him multiple times.”
“Thank you, Jhali,” Yanko said, hoping to stop an argument before it started. “I’m sure I’ll need the help of more than one person tonight.”
His nerves jangled as he realized it would be tonight. As soon as the yacht landed, or even before, his team would have to slip away. Tynlee wouldn’t be able to distract the guards for long under the guise of her diplomatic mission.
Jhali inclined her head once and walked away, her hands clasped behind her back.
“Yanko,” Lakeo said. “You can’t seriously be ready to trust—”
“Land on the horizon!” the first mate cried from the wheel.
Scowling, Lakeo dropped the subject and peered into the gloom. Yanko’s nerves switched from jangling to jumping up and down and kicking his spine.
A gray rocky island had come into view ahead, surprisingly bright in comparison to the dark clouds and sea. A curving yellow dome arched across it, taking up at least two-thirds of the visible land mass. It was the source of the light, sending a magical glow into the sky. From this distance, Yanko couldn’t tell if a physical dome was built into—or onto—the rock of the island, or if it was all magical. It could even be an illusion, but he doubted it. That crawling sensation on his skin warned him of true and powerful magic.
“Should we get closer or attempt to keep this distance away from it for now?” the first mate asked, speaking to Tynlee.
She, Dak, and Professor Hawkcrest had come up on deck and were also studying the distant island.
“They’ll see that as suspicious,” Dak said. “We must assume they’ve already noticed us.”
“A diplomatic vessel on a diplomatic mission would sail straight in,” Tynlee said.
Dak and Hawkcrest went to the bow of the ship and bent their heads together, pointing to the island and talking.
Yanko hoped they came up with something brilliant, but he had a feeling that only magic would be effective against the magic that lay ahead. He assumed the dome contained the prisoners, but was it alone keeping them constrained? Or were other mages standing guard from towers built into the rocks? Mages who would sense him if he used his power to investigate too closely?
He scratched his jaw and considered how he might get a better look without doing so.
A squawk came from the open hatchway, and Kei flew out with a couple of beige items clutched in his talons. They looked like crackers.
A shout from the hatchway, and the ship’s cook appeared, waving a spoon. Kei flew straight to Yanko, circling around him instead of landing. Maybe it was hard to land with a cracker clutched in one’s talons.
“More worthless than a pregnant whore,” Kei squawked in Kyattese as he glared at the cook, an expression Yanko had heard out of his beak before.
“I’m going to pluck that feathered thief and throw him in the pot.” The cook stopped, pointing his spoon at Kei. “That’s the third time today I’ve caught him in my mess filching food.”
“He needs a lot of food for the scouting mission he’s about to go on,” Yanko said.
“He’ll have trouble scouting from my stew pot,” the cook groused.
“Relax, Gorree,” Tynlee said gently, smiling. Yanko sensed her using a hint of her magic to soothe the cook. “I’ll buy you some fresh supplies the next time we’re in port.”
The cook scowled, but grumbled a, “Yes, Honored Consul,” and slunk belowdecks again. He shot a hard squint in Kei’s direction before he disappeared down below.
Kei had found a spot to drop his crackers where they wouldn’t fly away and was plucking them up with his beak.
Kei, Yanko spoke into his mind. Will you go see if there are any seeds on that island up ahead? He added mental images to go with the words, since Kei only knew the words he liked to parrot.
“You sure he’s going to scout after gorging himself?” Lakeo asked.
“If not, I’ll have to recruit a seagull.”
Kei squawked over at them. He finished his snack and sprang into the air again. “Seeds?”
“Is that what qualifies as a dessert for a bird?” Lakeo asked.
“If you don’t find any there, I’ll locate something good here for you,” Yanko promised. It was a long enough flight that Kei would likely be hungry again once he returned.
The parrot squawked again and flew away from the ship, heading toward the island. Yanko gripped the railing, intending to monitor him. There was nothing magical about Kei, but if some guard was paying attention, he would realize that this wasn’t the right climate for a parrot. Maybe a seagull would have been a better choice.
“I’ll gather my gear,” Arayevo said and headed toward her cabin.
Professor Hawkcrest said something in Turgonian and pointed after the bird. It sounded like a question.
Yanko ignored Dak’s response and attempted to see the world through Kei’s eyes, as he had done before. Communicating with animals—and fish and birds—still came more easily to him than other types of magic, and he soon found himself observing the ocean and island from the parrot’s point of view.
The rocky island was about five miles around, so not very large, and it didn’t look to be volcanic like the Kyattese Islands. Even though they were seventy or eighty miles off the Nurian coast, the ocean wasn’t that deep here. Yanko sensed a mountain range below, with this the only peak that had broken the surface in this area.
The island appeared to have been natural and largely unimproved until recently. Now guard towers dotted the coastline, and a fortress rose at one end, glowering over the dome to one side and a protected inlet to the other, where a single dock stretched out from shore. There weren’t any ships lining it. Yanko grimaced.
Kei flew around the dome and didn’t see any doors or openings in it. Though Yanko sensed its magic, he couldn’t sense what lay under it. He risked dropping his link with Kei to investigate it more thoroughly with his senses. It was just as opaque to his mind as it was to Kei’s eyes. Logically, it had to be where the honored families and mages were being kept, but he couldn’t verify that.
Yanko could sense people in the fortress, more than he’d hoped to find. Fifty? Sixty? At least.
Something brushed his senses, and he drew back. Another mage.
Yanko cursed under his breath. He shouldn’t have done more than look through Kei’s eyes. Now, the other mage was surveying the yacht. Yanko ratcheted down his senses and walled off his mind, then looked around the deck and raised his voice to address everyone.
“There’s a mage there who is looking over the yacht.”
Tynlee nodded. She must have also felt the touch.
“Can you use an illusion to camouflage the ship?” Lakeo asked.
“The mage would find it highly suspicious if we disappeared after he noticed us.” Yanko hadn’t considered creating an illusion since their plan was to sail in openly.
“It’s a lady mage, I believe,” Tynlee said, her eyes distant.
“Does that change anything?” Dak asked.
“Not unless you want to take off your shirt and flex your muscles for her,” Tynlee said.
Dak made a face.
“Would that change things for the better or the worse?” Yanko asked, glancing at Lakeo.
“It depends on whether he covers up that broken nose and missing eye,” Lakeo said.
&
nbsp; “How would he do that? Wear a bag over his head?”
Dak scowled at them. “I liked it better when you two were intimidated by me.”
Hawkcrest cleared his throat and switched to speaking in Nurian. “There is a plan to split forces, yes? So it is irrelevant whether they know this ship is arriving.”
“Yes,” Tynlee said, “perhaps I should be tied up when we dock?” Her eyes glinted, as if she looked forward to using some theatrical flair in her role.
Hawkcrest, who hadn’t been privy to that conversation, stared at her. “What?”
“We’re going in pretending that I am a diplomat on a diplomatic mission, but we’re also pretending that underneath that, I’ve been kidnapped and chained in the bilge room for the trip, and that I’m now being forced to do the bidding of my kidnappers.”
“You’re remarkably chatty for a chained woman,” Dak said.
Tynlee smiled at him. “Since it’s supposed to come out eventually that it was only a ruse that I was on a diplomatic mission and that I was, in truth, being mind-controlled by Yanko, I don’t know if I should appear for now, so the mage has some hint of something amiss in the future.”
Hawkcrest made an exasperated noise and looked at Dak. “Just do as we discussed and take some explosives in to sap in under the dome.”
“You have explosives?” Yanko asked Dak.
Unless he’d found them in Yellow Delta, he would have needed to bring them from Turgonia.
“Naturally,” Dak said. “And the professor has improvised a few grenades from materials scrounged in Yellow Delta.”
“I thought you were simply staying out of sight when you were ensconced in your cabin,” Yanko told him.
For an old man, the professor did an excellent job of smiling like a wolf. Tynlee looked a little dazed, perhaps at the idea of someone handling volatile materials on her consulate’s yacht.
“Honored Consul,” Yanko said, “I’ll leave the distraction to you to work out while I take my team overboard and figure out how to get inside the dome. Arayevo has agreed to accompany you and your guards. In case you need someone to point a weapon at your back or pretend to strong-arm you along the way.”
“Ah, excellent,” Tynlee said. “As a woman, she will appear more innocuous to the soldiers guarding the premises, so it will be all the more an interesting twist later when it’s revealed that she was controlling the situation.”
“It sounds like she’s got the whole novel worked out,” Lakeo muttered to Yanko.
“And even though Arayevo is not a mage,” Tynlee went on, “I, being so intimidated by the fierce Turgonian you enslaved to work for you, Yanko, would not dare stray from the script.”
“Is that me?” Dak asked.
“Do you not feel enslaved?” Yanko asked, smiling, though his gaze was drawn again toward the island. They were getting close enough to make out the fortress and guard towers without the assistance of a parrot.
“About as much as Tynlee, I suspect.”
“I should have made more explosives,” Hawkcrest grumbled.
“Yanko,” Dak said, “can you tell if that dome extends into the earth? From here, I’d guess it was built on top of the rocks, perhaps sunk in enough to make digging out unfeasible. I can’t imagine it goes that deep.”
Hawkcrest nodded.
“But,” Dak continued, “I can’t even tell if it’s a physical and permanent structure or pure magic at this point.”
Yanko touched Kei’s mind again. The parrot had finished circling the island and flew directly over the dome. An uncomfortable tingle emanated from it, and Kei abruptly shifted his route to avoid it.
“I think it’s energy,” Yanko said, noting the way the base perfectly followed the contours of the rocky ground. He might have believed the Turgonians could build such a structure, but his people weren’t master engineers. The Great Chief’s entire palace could have fit into the enclosed space underneath the dome.
“Is a powerful mage maintaining it?” Dak asked. “Or some artifact?”
“If it’s a permanent structure, I can guarantee a Made device is maintaining it,” Yanko said. “A mage would have to sleep, and you can’t maintain your magic while snoring.”
“Would it be possible to use explosives to come in from underneath it?” Dak asked, glancing at Hawkcrest.
“I’m not sure,” Yanko said. “I’d need to get closer to sense how far down the dome extends.”
“If it were that simple, a Nurian rescue party would have already broken out the prisoners,” Tynlee said.
“A Nurian rescue party wouldn’t have had Turgonian explosives.” Dak sniffed.
Hawkcrest also tilted his chin up in a haughty expression.
“I will gladly take your explosives along to use if possible,” Yanko told Dak.
“Consul?” the captain said, having joined the first mate at the wheel. “We need to turn now if we’re going to land. Are you certain? Do we sail in?”
“Head in,” Tynlee said firmly.
“Ah.” The captain looked like he’d wanted a different answer.
“In a bumbling way, if you can,” Yanko added.
“Bumbling?” The captain frowned at him.
“So that the yacht doesn’t dock until almost dark, and it’s easier for my team to slip overboard and swim to shore without being noticed.”
“You don’t think that mage will see us, regardless?” Lakeo asked.
Yanko smiled faintly, amused but pleased that she planned to go with him. This wasn’t her fight, and he was positive there would be no loot inside.
“I’ll do my best to camouflage us,” Yanko said. “While the mage and all the guards hopefully focus on this yacht.” He extended his hand toward Tynlee but paused, realizing he wasn’t exactly giving her a reward for her assistance these past couple of weeks.
But she beamed a smile at him, her round face alight. “I’ve always wanted to go on a secret mission.”
Yanko didn’t presume to suggest a woman more than twice his age was being naive and didn’t know how dangerous this could end up. “You won’t need to ask Dak for stories anymore,” he offered instead. “You’ll have your own.”
“Delightful.”
Dak shook his head, probably also holding his tongue on words of naivety.
15
Yanko sat cross-legged on the deck at the back of the yacht, preparing to slip overboard and use his illusion magic to hide his team. The stone fortress loomed from the highest point on the island, the elevated position giving those inside a view of the water in all directions and also the dome. The captain followed the shoreline as they approached the inlet that held the sole dock on the island, with a path meandering up from it to the fortress above. They couldn’t yet see it, but Yanko knew they were getting close, thanks to his earlier bird’s-eye view.
Kei had returned, snacked on a few crackers, and was now napping on a perch. Since twilight was descending and it would be a nighttime incursion, Yanko planned to leave him on the yacht.
As they sailed closer to the inlet and the fortress, Yanko eyed the rocky shore, wondering if they could do as the professor suggested and tunnel in through some cliff to come up under the dome. Ideally with magic rather than noisy explosives. The problem was that the base of the dome was only ten or twenty feet above sea level in most places, and if he attempted to shift rock around too close to the surface, he risked cave-ins. He imagined the prisoners being injured when sinkholes opened up under their feet. There was also the risk of seawater filling in any tunnels he created.
“Are you ready?” Dak crouched beside him, armed in a manner befitting a Turgonian soldier, and with his pack stuffed fuller than usual.
“Don’t I look it? Just because I’m sitting cross-legged on the deck in a robe…” It was the right robe. His mother’s. After weighing the pros and cons, having extra stamina versus being caught wearing it by a bunch of honored Nurians, he’d decided to risk the consequences.
“You’re not
taking anything else?”
Yanko lifted Sun Dragon’s scimitar, the weapon in its scabbard by his side. A few times on the journey, he and Dak had sparred with it, but its magic had failed to come to life for Yanko. He would have to research it one day and see if there were command words.
“Did you bring any food and water, or is that completely loaded with explosives?” Yanko pointed at his large pack.
“I wasn’t planning on staying long enough to need meals.”
“In other words, I shouldn’t wander too close to you with a match.”
“Just watch where you’re throwing your fireballs.” Dak patted his pack over his shoulder. “I have the explosives I brought, the ones Hawkcrest made, and some more that Tynlee gave me.” His eyes glinted with pleasure at this last announcement.
“She brought explosives along on a diplomat’s yacht? It’s possible she’s been living in Turgonia for too long.”
Dak grinned, white teeth flashing. It was such a rare expression from the dour man that it startled Yanko.
“I like her,” Dak said simply.
“Because she gave you explosives? Or because she wouldn’t mind being chained in your cabin?”
The glint returned to Dak’s eyes. “Yes.”
“You may want to, ah…” Yanko was the last person who should give relationship advice, but he couldn’t keep from saying, “show her that you trust her. I think she’d like a sign of that.”
“I trust her to a certain extent, but I have to be careful. I’ve worked in Intelligence in the capital, and I know a great many military secrets from recent years. I need to be careful with what I reveal, and it concerns me that she asks about my past so often. And that she can read minds.”
That, Yanko gathered, was the sticking point. He worried that she would get past his mental guard and learn far more than was safe for him to reveal to a foreigner.
“I suspect she would be happy with some no-longer-top-secret stories from your distant past. Perhaps even some childhood adventures. I know she talks about novels, but I think she just wants to learn more about you.”
Assassin’s Bond: Chains of Honor, Book 3 Page 24
