The Island Deception

by Dan Koboldt

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not relevant to our mission, is it?”

  “The lieutenant doesn’t like me leaving stuff out.”

  “Come on, man. It makes me look bad.”

  Mendez groaned. “It was the best part of my report!” He looked away as someone climbed down into the hold. The pocket on his jacket yawned open to reveal one of the fat Alissian gold coins the lab had minted for this mission.

  Quinn plucked it out between two fingers, light-touch, and palmed it. “Can’t you help me out? I’ll make it worth your while.” He grinned and held up the coin.

  Mendez frowned. “Where’d you get that? I just had one of those.”

  “I know.” Quinn flipped it to him so that it spun in the air with that high-pitched metallic ring. I never get tired of that sound.

  Mendez caught it one-handed. But when he opened his hand, it was a crude penny. “Hey!”

  Quinn still had the gold coin, and now he danced it across all ten fingers. “I can do this all day.”

  “Maybe I’ll just take it from you.”

  “Better be quick,” Quinn said. He made both of his hands into fists, opened them, and the coin was gone.

  Veena reappeared before he could have any more fun. “Quinn! Good to see you awake. How are you feeling?”

  “Much better, actually. Just glad to be alive. And dry.”

  She handed him a threadbare leather canteen. “A little something to warm you up. Don’t let anyone see the steam.”

  “Ten-four.” He unscrewed the cap, careful to keep the thermal plastic bottle hidden beneath his hands. God bless our engineers. He lifted his hand long enough to catch the aroma. “Oh, that’s wonderful.”

  “Good, because you’ve got some explaining to do.”

  He blew on the coffee and tried a sip. It wasn’t as hot as it could have been, but the warmth riding down to his belly felt delightful. “About what?”

  “Falling overboard, for starters.”

  He felt a spike of fear, remembering the lurch in his stomach when he went over. “I didn’t realize how slippery it was.”

  “How did you get back?” She glanced around and lowered her voice. “Some of the sailors are saying that you flew.”

  That was close to the mark. He knew damn well how he’d survived, and it wasn’t something he was ready to share. If Kiara got word that he was manifesting real magical abilities, she might start guessing at his ulterior motive for returning to the Enclave. I’d better keep it under wraps. He grinned and shoved up his sleeve enough for her to see the frame of the elemental projector. “I had to use this.”

  “Ha! I knew it,” Mendez said.

  “Ohhh,” Chaudri said. “Well, now I see why they’d think that.”

  “I know it was risky, but it was either that, or drown,” Quinn said.

  “How about leaving the sailing activities to actual sailors from now on?” she asked.

  “Fine. I’ll be happy to.”

  That proved a timely promise, because the captain started yelling orders a minute later. The worst of the storm had passed, and he wanted the poles manned again.

  “How long until we reach port?” Quinn asked.

  “When Dr. Holt took this trip, the journey was about four and a half days total,” Chaudri said.

  “Man, that guy sure does get around, doesn’t he?” Quinn asked.

  “Tell me about it,” Mendez groused.

  “I made a tally before we left,” Chaudri said. “Dr. Holt visited every major city on the Alissian mainland at least three times in the past fifteen years.”

  Quinn whistled. “When did he sleep?”

  “Not very often,” Chaudri said. Her cheeks colored. “As far as I know, that is.”

  Quinn grinned. “Right. As far as you know.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re implying.”

  “Not implying anything.” Quinn held up his hands in apology. Too soon to press her on it. Besides, Mendez might just toss him overboard, and he didn’t think he could produce a miracle twice.

  He leaned back while Mendez and Chaudri started trading Holt stories, and toyed with the wayfinder stone. It might have been his imagination, but he felt like the pull of the Enclave was growing stronger as they pressed east.

  Soon, he kept thinking. Soon I get to start my real mission.

  For the remainder of the river journey, the crew seemed to avoid him. Everywhere he went on board, he was quickly alone. If he went belowdecks, everyone went on duty. If he came back up, everyone went on break. Chaudri assured him it was only his imagination, but he didn’t buy it. All of the men and women became stony-faced whenever he was around, as if they had no feelings good or bad about him.

  Captain Benvolio was the only exception. Whenever he’d see Quinn, he’d slap him on the back and say, “All right, brother?”

  “All right,” Quinn would say. It might not have a lot of variation to it, but at least it was conversation. Far more than he could pry out of any of the others.

  “I might as well be floating down the river by myself,” he complained to Chaudri, two days after the incident.

  She glanced up at him, and went back to working her hair into a thick braid, intertwined with ribbon. Apparently that was the Pirean style, and she wanted to blend in. “I think you’re exaggerating.”

  “Pay attention to the next five minutes now that I’m sitting with you, and you’ll see what I’m talking about,” he said.

  She humored him. Five minutes later, there was no denying that everyone on Benvolio’s crew somehow managed to find work on the far side of the riverboat.

  “All right, maybe it’s not just your imagination,” she said.

  “It’s not like I have a contagious disease.”

  “Well, they’re probably embarrassed.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re a passenger, and you fell overboard while working the ship.”

  “It was an accident. Could have happened to anyone.”

  “But it didn’t. It happened to someone who paid to be on board.”

  He rolled his shoulders, but the tension remained. “I don’t know.”

  She let the braid fall and bit her lip. “I wasn’t going to tell you this, but the captain chewed them all out last night.”

  “While I was asleep?”

  “While you were dead to the world, yes.”

  Damn. “Now I feel even worse.”

  “The best thing you can do is act normal. And not fall overboard again.”

  He laughed. “Oh, is that all?”

  “Maybe think about spreading some coins around, before we disembark.”

  It was a reasonable explanation, but it didn’t seem to be enough. He spent enough time in casinos to be pretty good at reading faces, and these weren’t simple looks of embarrassment. There was a guardedness to their features, as if he were a black cat they didn’t want to cross their path. They suspect what I am.

  On the last mission when they’d taken a ship, Quinn had practically bragged about being a magician. He’d put on a show, in fact, and broken a foul mood that had settled over the crew. Now he’d done the opposite—tried to hide what he was—and it had the opposite effect. He was an unknown and dangerous thing to them now. That’s why they gave him the look of guarded fear. The look you have when you’re on a narrow sidewalk and see a couple of bangers coming down the street.

  The same look, in fact, that Chaudri gave him sometimes when she thought he wasn’t looking. She’d seen something. Or heard about seeing something, at least. And she didn’t buy that he’d pulled it off by tech or hand-waving.

  Mendez had probably told her.

  I hope he didn’t tell anyone else.

  Pirea lay at the northeastern peninsula of the Alissian mainland, and represented the poorest of its nations. The soil and the climate were primarily to blame for that: the rocky ground was difficult to farm, and the harsh long winters only allowed for hardy, fast-growing crops. CASE Global’s genet
ic analysis of the wheat-like plants that were farmed here had spurred a new generation of hardier crop seeds back on earth.

  Quinn stood on a small outcropping overlooking the eastern seacoast. Mendez and Chaudri had gone down to the docks to see if there were any Valteroni sailors in town, but it didn’t seem promising. The few ships they’d seen so far were either limping in for repairs, or headed out to the fish shoals. Which all helped Quinn realize a single important fact.

  No one here has a goddamn clue where the Valteroni admiral will be holed up.

  The wind blew steadily in his face, churning whitecaps atop the smoke-gray water. His wayfinder stone, too, leaned steadily toward the oceanic horizon, which was roughly southeast. How far, he couldn’t tell. But they were in a port town in a nation known for its sailing abilities. If there was anywhere to catch a ride to the Enclave, it was here.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t really know where to start. It’s not like he could go into the downtown area and start asking people where he could catch the next ship to the secret magic community. The magicians liked their privacy, and the rest of Alissians seemed to know it.

  “All right, brother?”

  The voice startled him, and he was surprised when he turned around to see Benvolio’s heavily bearded face. “Captain! All right, I guess.”

  He hadn’t seen the man since they disembarked. Benvolio had been so occupied yelling at his men to be careful with the wood that he almost didn’t notice when Chaudri pressed a small, heavy purse into his broad hand. He paused long enough to tuck it away into the beard as he had the last one, then picked up the yelling again.

  I thought that was the only goodbye we were going to get. “Listen, I wanted to thank you again for yanking me out of the water,” Quinn said. “You saved my ass.”

  “Oh, I’m not sure it was me.”

  “Well, I am.” Quinn laughed. “You’re not easy to forget.”

  “I’ve had a few men fall into the water, over the years. Never saw anything like what happened to you.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Lost ’em to the river.”

  “Oh.”

  “Not you, though!” Benvolio grinned. “You’re special, aren’t you?”

  Uh-oh. “Nah, just a regular guy.”

  “A regular guy would’ve drowned.”

  Quinn smiled. “And a smarter one would’ve stayed below, out of the way.”

  “Listen, you want to play coy, that’s fine with me. But my brother Simeon captains a trading vessel, ’round these parts.”

  “I’m not sure I—” Quinn started.

  “Makes all kinds of interesting stops, if you catch my meaning.”

  Oh, my God, the Enclave. He could hardly believe his luck. “Where do I find this brother of yours?”

  “He’s got a two-master called the Purity. Should be dockside by tomorrow.”

  “I’ll look for it. Thank you, Captain.” Quinn offered his hand, and they clasped arms in the Landorian style. “What’s your brother look like?”

  Benvolio laughed his booming laugh. “You’ll know him when you see him, I’ll wager.”

  Mendez and Chaudri got back with predictably bad news: no Valteroni vessels in the harbor, and no sailors in town.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Quinn asked.

  “We’re sitting tight,” Mendez said. “Still waiting to hear back from the lieutenant.”

  Of course you are. Kiara probably just wanted them to stay with Quinn to keep an eye on him.

  “Well, I had a little bit more luck. Benvolio’s got a brother who runs a deepwater trading vessel. He seemed to think I might be able to catch a ride to where I’m going.”

  Mendez frowned. “I hope you didn’t tell him about the Enclave.”

  “I’m not an idiot, Mendez. He brought it up.”

  “What did he say?” Chaudri asked.

  “He called me special.”

  Chaudri giggled. “We all think you’re special, Quinn.”

  “I’m serious. He implied that his brother makes unscheduled stops at a certain island where there were other special people.”

  “Sounds kind of vague,” Mendez said.

  “I don’t think it could be any plainer. Trust me, that’s just the way they’d want it.”

  Mendez shook his head. “How in the hell did you ever find that island in the first place?”

  Quinn spread his hands out. “Well, I’m a magician, too. They’re my kind of people.”

  “You’re something, all right.”

  “Ha! Sounds like something Logan would say.”

  “Yeah, he gave me a few one-liners I could use to take you down a peg, as needed.”

  No surprise there. “Listen, you think you two will be all right if I manage to hook up with Benvolio’s brother?”

  Chaudri blushed, and mumbled something affirmative. Mendez grinned, and there was real happiness in it. “We’ll be fine.”

  “Can you look after my horse for me? I won’t need one until I get back.”

  “What about the saddlebags? I’m not sure we can keep an eye on those 24/7.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’m taking those with me.”

  Because I’ve got one hell of a performance planned.

  Chapter 14

  Different Ports

  “The new ship will find the old rocks.”

  —Pirean proverb

  In spite of its, well, colorful name, Crab’s Head was actually the fifth-largest port on the eastern seacoast, and an odd hybrid between fishing village and bustling port city. Ships were crammed in along the docks no more than a few feet apart, and no two of them were the same. Stout transport cogs bobbed low in the water beside fleet coast-cutters and deep-hulled schooners.

  But this was Pirea, and so fishing vessels outnumbered the other craft ten to one. They ranged from the simple skiffs of hand-fishermen to huge three-masters that plied deep water with their nets. The smell of fish in the air was like a physical thing. Quinn hoped he’d stopped noticing it at some point, but after two days it still hadn’t happened.

  At least he wasn’t retching anymore. Small victories.

  Finally, a two-masted schooner coasted into the harbor. Quinn gave it a covert survey with his compact binoculars, which were disguised to look like opera glasses. Not that he planned to catch any operas in-world—he’d rather be slowly tortured by Enclave magicians—but that’s how the engineers had “disguised” the equipment for in-world use. Problem was, they didn’t have an opera in Crab’s Head, much less opera glasses. Nor would they be the sort of thing you carried around with you and used to scan the harbor. So Quinn had to resort to quick, surreptitious glances with the binoculars, and palm them whenever someone wandered by.

  He still managed to get a glimpse of the ship with them. It was the Purity, all right. The ship looked to be in good condition—the crew was fit, and the sails were taut as it coasted around the breakwater.

  It seemed sound to him, but for all he knew it would sink before it reached the dock. Not if the captain was anything like his brother, though. I wish I knew more about ships.

  Benvolio was still in town, waiting for the right cargo opportunity to come in. Maybe I should have let him make the approach. Time wasn’t on his side, though—if he dallied much longer here with Chaudri and Mendez, the lieutenant would come up with some new excuse to keep them together. This little naval intelligence exercise didn’t fool him. She wanted to keep him on a leash as long as possible, and maybe get a line on the location of the Enclave herself. That would make Quinn Bradley more or less expendable for future CASE Global missions to the magical community.

  Not until he learned how to use some of that magic himself.

  He made his way down to the docks once the crew began unloading the two-master’s cargo, which was in barrels. He tried not to make any enemies among the busy press of sailors and dockworkers—every one of them had that lumbering swagger of a man looking to pick a fight. He sidestepped around a p
air of crewmen carrying a barrel up off the gangplank. I hope Benvolio isn’t playing a joke on me. “Captain Simeon?”

  “On the ship,” they answered, without even looking up.

  He jogged down the plank to the deck of the ship. The wood gleamed with a fresh coat of varnish, and the smell of it in the direct sunlight hit him like a brick wall. I’ll be high as a kite by the time I find him.

  The captain stood over the door to the hold, yelling instructions to his sailors as they offloaded the rest of the barrels. His curses washed over them like waves over a rocky shoreline. He had his brother’s stout frame and reddish-brown beard.

  Quinn did a double take. Jesus, they could be twins. A small part of him wondered if this was some kind of practical joke. “Benvolio?”

  The captain glanced over his shoulder in Quinn’s direction. “You’re on the wrong ship, if you’re looking for him.”

  The voice had a different timbre. Otherwise Quinn wouldn’t have believed him. “Oh, he sent me to you, is what I was going to say.”

  “Is that handsome bastard still docked? Thought he’d be halfway to his next port by now.”

  “He’s waiting for some cargo, I’m told.”

  “Ha! That sounds like him.”

  “He thought you might be able to take me where I need to go.”

  “Where’s that?”

  Quinn didn’t want to say it. There were too many people around—sailors and dockworkers both—and for the first time, he wasn’t sure he felt safe bringing it up. But this guy knows. Benvolio said it.

  “An island.”

  “We got a lot of those around here.”

  Quinn lowered his voice. “This one’s got seven towers.” One for each nation in Alissia.

  The captain’s face had gone still, and his eyes glinted with a hint of danger. “You having a jest with me, boy?”

  Something told him he shouldn’t back down here. He held Simeon’s eyes, and didn’t smile. “I’m serious.”

  The captain smoothed out his beard. Benvolio had that same mannerism when he was wavering on a decision. “That sounds like a place you don’t want to go without an invitation.”