“Mm,” Dak said neutrally.
At least he hadn’t told Yanko to mind his own business.
The yacht slowed as it rounded a rocky point, and the single dock came into view in its protected inlet. As Yanko had already seen, there weren’t any ships there. The best they could hope to do was free the prisoners from the dome and use them to help take over the island. Some supply ship would come eventually, and maybe it would be large enough for their transportation needs.
Lakeo jogged over, a bow in hand, a quiver over her back, and a cutlass belted at her waist. She must have borrowed the weapons from one of the crew, because the Turgonians hadn’t seen fit to arm Yanko’s allies before sending them off to sea.
“We’re almost to the dock,” Lakeo said. “When do you want to go over the—” She frowned as Jhali walked up behind her, then shifted positions so her back wouldn’t be to her.
“I am ready, Yanko,” Jhali said.
She was almost as well-armed as Dak. Maybe more so. She had folds in her mage-hunter garb where she could hide throwing stars and who knew what else.
“She uses your first name now?” Lakeo grumbled.
“I asked her to.”
“Yes, you should always encourage familiarity with your assassin. I hear it makes them more likely to stab you in the heart rather than cutting out your lesser organs and slowly torturing you to death.”
“She doesn’t want to kill me anymore.” Yanko met Jhali’s gaze, a little annoyed that Lakeo was speaking about her as if she couldn’t hear them. “Right?”
Jhali held his gaze. “I will not kill you.”
“So she wants to but won’t do it?” Lakeo asked.
Jhali’s gaze grew cooler as she looked at Lakeo.
“Yanko,” Lakeo said, “if you trust her, you’re just being—”
“Naive? Yes, we’ve established that everyone can apply that adjective to me in all circumstances.”
“It’ll be safer to leave her behind,” Lakeo said.
Jhali’s nostrils flared. “And what would I do here? Accompany the diplomat into the fortress to drink tea with the locals?”
“How about staying in your cabin and out of trouble? This sounds like a good time for you to examine your collection of belly-button lint.”
“My what? You are a foolish—”
“Jhali is coming,” Yanko said firmly, aware of the exasperated your-friends-are-being-nuisances look Dak was giving him.
“And nobody is killing anyone unless it’s on their side.” Dak waved at the fortress.
Yanko didn’t want to kill those people either, since everyone on the island, guard or prisoner, would be Nurian. He hoped that it wouldn’t come to that. That somehow, they could win the day by being clever instead of brutal.
A call came from the dock as the yacht glided closer, a man in a Nurian army uniform striding up it with a lantern in one hand and a crossbow in the other. It seemed strange that someone supporting a rebel faction would be wearing the uniform of the Great Chief’s army. A second soldier came behind him, lighting lamps on posts along the way. Lamps had already been lit in the fortress above, and the shadowy figures of guards were visible walking on parapets as night grew deeper.
Tynlee headed toward the railing to answer his call, a request to know who they were and who had sent them.
“Our diversion is officially in action,” Yanko whispered, rising to his feet. “We’ll go over the railing here.”
“Into the water?” Dak’s hand strayed toward one of his firearms.
Right, he wouldn’t want to get the powder wet. Presumably, his explosives needed to be kept dry too.
“I’ll levitate us to the rocks over there, around the bend and out of sight from the dock and the fortress.” Yanko had planned to swim, but he adjusted his plan. It would have been much easier to keep them magically camouflaged if he wasn’t doing two things at once, but… He touched the silky folds of his mother’s robe, hoping it would help him to focus on two tasks.
“Lead the way,” Dak said, no hint of irony or bemusement in the words. There had been a time when he never would have trusted Yanko to lead.
Finding that heartening, Yanko channeled air to lift him aloft. He could hear Tynlee exchanging words with the soldier, but he blocked them out, thinking only of his magic.
A shelf of wind thrust under his feet, elevating him into the air and over the railing. He extended it, lifting Dak, Jhali, and Lakeo. As soon as he had them in the air, he attempted to separate his thoughts, keeping them floating and also creating an illusion so that nobody looking down from above would see them. They were simply a part of their surroundings.
The sensation of a mage magically peering in their direction came over him, raising the hairs on his neck. Yanko swallowed, not allowing his concentration to falter, but he did his best to make the illusion more than visual. He attempted to make it so the mage would also sense nothing out of the ordinary.
He was attempting to focus on too many things at once, and his feet dipped toward the water, the shelf of air faltering. A curse escaped Lakeo’s lips as she also dipped downward. Yanko hastened to reestablish levitation for the group. He hurried them toward the shoreline, setting them down sooner than he had planned. They had traveled a couple of hundred meters, but the yacht and the fortress were still in sight.
As soon as their feet touched onto the rocks, Yanko marshaled all of his focus into hiding them. He sensed that female mage sweeping out and searching, but her focus seemed to be on Tynlee and the yacht. Yanko hoped that meant that he’d managed to evade the woman’s notice.
“Which way?” Lakeo whispered.
Yanko pointed away from the dock. The sooner they were out of sight from the fortress, the better. He would continue to keep his magical camouflage up for now, but he hoped that once the dome lay between them and the soldiers, he could let it down. He had a feeling he would need all his power and concentration for breaking into the prison.
* * *
“I was afraid of that,” Yanko said.
He crouched on the jagged black rocks, the yellow glow from the dome flooding the night and shining onto his little team as he examined the ground below it with his senses. They were on the far side of the dome from the fortress now, so he didn’t worry about the soldiers seeing them, but that didn’t keep him from feeling exposed and vulnerable. The waves were more vigorous on this side of the island, and they crashed against the rocks not far below.
“No door?” Lakeo rubbed her knee.
They had all cracked their shins and knees many times, clambering along the rocks to get to the far side of the dome. If there were beaches on the island, Yanko hadn’t seen them yet.
“The energy of the dome extends below the surface.” Yanko pointed upward and inland about thirty feet to the border nearest them. “And we can’t go any lower without taking a swim.”
“The dome would preclude us from tunneling straight in from here?” Dak rested a hand on a vertical rock face.
“It would.” Yanko slapped at his arm. The closer they drew to the dome, the more his skin crawled, as if ants roamed across his body, even under his robe. He kept catching himself scratching and slapping at his limbs, as if that would help. “I don’t sense that it extends much farther downward—it’s definitely a dome and not a full sphere—but if we started from here, we would have to make a curving tunnel that dips down before it comes up.”
“We?” Lakeo asked. “No, this is a you activity, Yanko. None of us can make tunnels.”
“Not true.” Dak reached back and patted his pack. “But my method would be noisy and would bring down a lot of the ground up in that dome.”
“I fear that my method may do that too,” Yanko admitted.
“No matter what method we use for excavating a tunnel, if we dip down and then up, we run the risk of running into water when we’re this close to the ocean.”
“I know. If we go another quarter of a mile that way—” Yanko pointed farther
up the coast in the direction they had been heading, “—there’s a cove where the water extends in under a shelf of land. If we’re going to have to deal with water anyway, we could start down there, and then we’d be able to tunnel almost straight up.” He’d been leading the team to it when Dak had stopped to examine the rock face.
“You want us to tunnel in from underwater?” Lakeo asked dubiously.
“I’m afraid I lost the Kyattese flugnugstica,” Dak said.
“I know, but I think I could protect us in a similar manner, at least for a short time. And propel us through the water and into the cove.” Yanko hoped he wasn’t overselling his abilities. He’d channeled air and water a number of times, but hadn’t done anything like he was imagining.
“While creating a tunnel in solid rock?” Dak asked.
Yanko hesitated. “There may be some air pockets down there where I can let my concentration lapse.”
“Does anyone else vote that we should let Dak lob explosives at the dome from here and see if that blows a hole in it?” Lakeo lifted her pinky finger.
Jhali hadn’t spoken since the group had left the ship. She watched the exchange but didn’t comment now.
Yanko? Tynlee spoke into his mind.
We’re here.
Arayevo and I have been invited up to speak to the major in charge of guarding the prisoners, and we’re already chatting with the mage telepathically. They are already suspicious. Apparently, nobody but a monthly supply ship ever comes here, unless it’s to drop off more prisoners. I will do my best to keep them from suspecting you’re out there, but you will wish to hurry.
Understood. We’re going in now. He hoped.
One more thing, Yanko. The mage is wearing blue disk earrings that are Made. I believe they are helping her block my mental snooping, but I don’t see how she could have anticipated the arrival of a mind mage, so they may do something else.
Maybe they allow her to use her magic when, for some reason, others can’t.
I assume the dome is what’s restraining the mages. Unless they simply killed anyone gifted.
Yanko’s stomach twisted at the thought.
“Any idea how many people are guarding this dome, Yanko?” Dak asked, unaware of the telepathic conversation.
“I sensed at least fifty people in the fortress, and I can’t tell how many are inside the dome.”
“That’s a sizable force.” Dak sighed and waved up the coast. “Let’s try your underwater idea. But if you let my explosives get wet, I’m going to…” He sighed again, not delivering whatever threat he had in his mind.
“Going to go Turgonian on him?” Lakeo suggested.
“He already does that when we spar,” Yanko said.
Dak didn’t smile. He gestured for Yanko to lead.
The night grew darker as they moved farther from the dome, the rocks blocking some of its light. Yanko found a spot to wade into the surf near the shelf he’d sensed. A huge wave came in, dousing his robe to his waist with icy water and almost pulling him out to sea.
He hadn’t been thinking about currents when calculating if he could form a bubble around his team and travel underwater. This was going to be a challenge.
Yanko straightened his spine and attempted to instill himself with confidence. He gestured for the others to join him in the water, then drew upon his power to form a bubble of dense air around them, jamming the tiny molecules together so closely that they would keep water out. He couldn’t see well through the barrier, but in the dark, he would need to rely on his senses, regardless.
He ushered an exterior channel of air to push his bubble into the surf. At first, it bobbed jarringly on the surface as he worked out how much force to apply to displace water and submerge them.
His comrades grunted and spat curses, and they ended up dropping to hands and knees. As Yanko forced his bubble down, he imagined it was a Turgonian underwater boat. The effort required far more mental energy than he had anticipated, and he worked as quickly as possible, channeling water to push them toward the shelf.
His friends fell silent as cold darkness surrounded them. Yanko pushed the bubble through a jagged opening under the shelf and into a water-filled cave. It wasn’t a lava tube, as it might have been if they’d done this on a Kyatt Island, but a hole eroded by the tides over countless millennia.
The water grew less turbulent as he guided them deeper into the chamber, and he stopped fighting the bubble’s tendency to rise, letting it bump along the cavern top. He was so focused on keeping them enclosed that he struggled to sense the air pockets he’d hoped would be down here. Or maybe there simply weren’t any.
“The gods never meant for men or women to ride in such contraptions,” Lakeo said. “Yanko, what are we doing? Are we crashing?”
“No.”
“Because I’ve ridden in a carriage with you before, and near-crashes were a constant.”
“It’s hard to keep us from floating up,” Yanko said. “I guess this is why Turgonian underwater boats are made of metal.”
“Actually,” Dak said, “the metal is largely irrelevant. It’s the water that we bring into the ballast tanks that allows the flugnugstica to achieve negative buoyancy.”
“I don’t know what he said,” Lakeo said as the bubble bumped against the cavern ceiling again, “but it still feels like we’re crashing.”
“Sorry,” Yanko said.
“I’d prefer it if Yanko didn’t bring a bunch of water into our bubble to create negative buoyancy,” Dak said, probably while patting his explosives again. “Also, bumping along the ceiling may be a good way to find an air pocket. We can’t be far below the water level.”
“I don’t know. It’s taking a lot of my concentration to—” Yanko felt some give as his bubble surfaced, bobbing instead of bumping into rock. He sensed a three-foot-gap between the water and the ceiling. “We found an air pocket, but there’s nothing to stand on to stay dry once I release the bubble. Sorry. I’d originally imagined swimming. I wasn’t thinking that Dak would have an armory of firearms and explosives that couldn’t get wet.”
He should have thought of that. What kind of Turgonian soldier wandered into enemy territory without something that made loud booms?
“If there’s a chance to keep everything dry,” Dak said without judgment, “my armory may come in handy.”
“I know. Let me try.” Yanko’s head was starting to ache, and they hadn’t reached the dome yet. He focused on maintaining his bubble, reassured that they wouldn’t drown now if it lapsed, while examining the rock above them. Limestone and sandstone, for the most part. Not surprisingly, there weren’t any tunnels already made.
But, as he’d done back in that prison cave, he found cracks where the rock had shifted over the millennia. He poured his power into the rock, attempting to widen one crack into a fissure sufficient enough to crawl through but not so large that it would cause a sinkhole in the ground above. He also didn’t want to collapse the ceiling of their cavern.
Splashes sounded, a few inevitable rocks coming down, and Lakeo cursed again.
“It’s all right,” Yanko whispered. In the dark, it had to be scary for the others. If someone panicked, it would make concentrating even harder. “I’m just pushing a few rocks around.”
“We’re definitely crashing,” Lakeo groaned.
“Technically, rocks are crashing into us,” Dak said.
“Thank you so much.”
A snap came from above, followed by an ominous grinding sound. Someone gripped Yanko’s shoulder, but he grinned, sensing an opening in the rock. It didn’t reach all the way to the surface, but once they climbed out of the water, he could let go of the bubble and more fully concentrate.
“Time for a vertical ascent,” Yanko said.
“This night gets better and better,” Lakeo grumbled.
“You told me I should not come,” Jhali said, “but clearly, you are the one who should have stayed behind with your lint.”
“I don’t h
ave any lint anywhere. I keep my nooks and crannies clean.”
“How do I get out of the bubble?” Dak asked, sounding desperate. Yanko suspected that had more to do with escaping the conversation than any sense of claustrophobia from being in the dark and underwater.
“I’ll push us up, so we’re right under the fissure before I dissolve the bubble. If you’re ready to climb and can go fast, you might be able to avoid getting wet.”
“I can be fast.”
As soon as they were in place, Yanko released his bubble and pushed Dak upward with a gust of channeled air. Cold water rushed into the void, soaking Yanko to the chest, and he almost lost his concentration and let Dak fall. But even in the dark, Dak found the fissure and pulled himself up into it.
“How about some light, Yanko?” Lakeo treaded water beside him.
Feeling overwhelmed, Yanko almost snapped that he couldn’t do everything at once, but he’d let go of the bubble, so he could concentrate on creating light. His friends, he reminded himself, weren’t able to sense their surroundings like he could.
He drew on a smidgen of power to create a yellow globe of light and was surprised when his head stabbed with pain. The light fluctuated and almost disappeared. Grimacing, he willed it to brighten and float up into the fissure.
In the past, he’d gotten headaches when drawing on a great deal of his power over a short time, but he was wearing the robe, albeit the hem currently floated around his armpits, so he’d expected more stamina. Also, he didn’t think he had done that much yet. He would need to use far more power tonight, as he doubted they would find the prisoners sitting around inside the dome, free to go as soon as someone opened a door.
“Yanko,” Dak grumbled a protest as the light drifted between his legs on its way upward. He had his back against one side of the fissure and his hands and feet against the other, his pack rotated around to his chest.
“Lakeo asked for light,” Yanko said.
“Between my legs?”
“Just be glad you’re not wearing a dress.” Lakeo frowned upward and scraped the ceiling with her bow. “How are we supposed to get up there?”
Assassin’s Bond: Chains of Honor, Book 3 Page 25
