The Island Deception

by Dan Koboldt

  “Yes.”

  “He sort of gave that to me.”

  “Why would he do that?” Jillaine asked.

  Better think fast. “I had a run-in with a real wyvern a while back, and told him the story . . .” He shrugged. “He said I could have it.”

  Jillaine’s eyebrows arched as high as he’d ever seen them. “He’s had that for years. I hope you put it somewhere safe.”

  “I did.” In my saddlebags.

  Sella waved in Quinn’s direction. “Moric’s always giving him things he shouldn’t.”

  “So it would seem,” Jillaine said. She said nothing more, but kept giving him a side-eye when she thought he wasn’t looking.

  “Do you have a way to locate him?” Sella asked.

  “I can try.” Jillaine closed her eyes and drew a deep breath.

  Quinn had seen her do the occasional bit of magic trickery, but this was something else entirely. There was a poise and a stillness to her. And focus, too. As if nothing else in the world mattered.

  The chambers grew dim all around, except for where Jillaine stood. She glowed with a fey energy. The sheer power of it made the air hum. Quinn took half a step back, just in case. Then she breathed out, and the light returned, and the glow around her faded. “I can’t find him.”

  “You’ve no idea where he is?” Sella asked.

  “No.” She chewed her lip. “I’ll try again later, when I’m back at the chandlery.”

  “If Moric has gone missing, it couldn’t have been at a worse time,” Sella said.

  “Why?” Quinn asked, even though he suspected he knew.

  “That’s not your concern.”

  Jillaine took two steps closer to Sella, so that she and the woman were face-to-face. “Why is it a bad time, Sella?”

  “The council is about to take a vote,” Sella said.

  “On what?” Jillaine asked.

  Quinn schooled his face to stillness. Come on, Sella, say it . . .

  Sella hesitated then, even though it was Jillaine asking. She looked from her face, to Quinn’s, then to Leward’s. “On the matter of the Valteroni Prime.”

  Chapter 34

  Coast Guards

  “Anyone who survives a career in an Alissian military is either very lucky or very, very good.”

  —R. Holt, “Assessment of Alissian Militaries”

  Logan wasn’t big on reunions, but it felt great to see Mendez. Some of the steel had left his eyes, and he’d found his laugh again. Wasn’t hard to see the reason why, either. The guy lit up any time Chaudri walked into the room. He kept close to her, too, like a bodyguard would.

  Maybe that explains the period of radio silence.

  There had been two days of it, starting with that late check-in after Mendez and Chaudri split up with Bradley. With the company-mandated daily check-ins—yet another new policy put in place after the Holt defection—the two days were a glaring mark on the comms record. Mendez claimed they’d been on a small ship en route to Bay of Rocks and didn’t have the privacy for a secure conversation. Logan didn’t buy it, but he asked the lieutenant not to press the issue. Mendez deserved a little quiet downtime, after what he’d been ordered to do.

  Today, he and Mendez had hired a skiff to take them out near the admiral’s island. If Chaudri was right about who had the backpack, it made him the most dangerous person in Alissia other than Holt himself.

  Logan found it hard to believe that Holt would keep his main piece of leverage so close to himself. The man had to know hundreds of people in Alissia. You’d think he’d have hidden the backpack on the other side of the continent. Instead, Holt sent them looking all over the world for a backpack he’d stashed in his own backyard.

  What a goddamn chess move.

  The two massive oarsmen, a father and his son, rowed with a steady, hypnotic rhythm. Their sun-leathered skin was almost as dark as his own. It wasn’t like a black guy stood out on this world—skin tone ran the full spectrum here, independent of geography—but he enjoyed blending in with the locals. More importantly, they knew how to keep quiet. If they thought it odd that Logan and Mendez had brought a pile of fishing equipment but not done any fishing, they kept it to themselves. Couple of smart fellows.

  “Think that’s it?” Mendez asked. He jerked his head to the southwest, where the rocky shores of a small island shot up great gouts of white spray as the waves hit them. Beyond the rocks, the rest of it was hidden beneath a blanket of fog.

  “Gotta be. This is the only island large enough to hold a structure.”

  No amount of their high-tech surveillance equipment could help with the fog. They’d just have to wait for the sun to burn it off. Fog was a risk you took when you ran an early-morning scouting operation, but it was also right around the traditional shift change for hired swords. Round-the-clock guards were expensive, but if anyone could afford them, it was the admiral of the Valteroni fleet.

  “Want to take us around that island?” Logan asked the crew.

  “Your coin, fella,” said the father. He muttered something to the son, and their rhythm changed. The boat began sliding to port, smooth as could be. The sun finally chased enough fog away that they got a good look at their target. A hulking stone keep dominated the center of it. The walls had to be thirty feet tall, and each of the corners had a guard tower with two sentries.

  “Yeah, I’d say we found the place,” Logan said.

  Mendez chuckled. “No shit.”

  A siege engine squatted on the roof of the keep. Four wheels, a sturdy wooden platform, and a single long arm bound by complex ropes and pulleys. Next to that was a pile of throwing stones, everything from thirty-pound rainmakers to boulders the size of a refrigerator. Sailors called those “shipkillers”—if they hit the mast or the hull beneath the waterline, that was it. Didn’t matter what kind of ship you were on, not with the force those catapults could muster.

  “Whoa, check out the harbor,” Mendez said.

  A small inlet came into view as they rounded the point of the island. There was a narrow gap, not much wider than the tiny boat they rode in now. Sheer rock faces bordered it on either side. The cove beyond grew much wider, judging by the single-master moored broadside against the keep. Probably the admiral’s personal yacht. Too small to be the Valteroni flagship, but still wide enough to make for a tight fit coming or going.

  “Only an admiral could hit that gap just right every time,” Logan said. “Downright cheeky of him, isn’t it?”

  “Looks like the only way in, too, unless you swim it.”

  And I wouldn’t want to try that, either. They were two-thirds of the way around the island now, and Logan had yet to see another option for landfall. Six-foot waves pounded the jagged shoreline with a constant thunder. “Man, I wish we had a chopper.”

  “Me, too. As long as the mangonel crew didn’t see it coming.”

  Medieval weaponry, as it turned out, was plenty effective against the relatively fragile forms of modern aircraft. As the Raptor Tech drone pilots recently discovered back home.

  “That’s gonna be a tough nut to crack,” Logan said.

  “You said it.”

  Logan put his hand on the older oarsman’s shoulder. “I think we’re ready to head back.”

  “Sure you don’t want to stop for a little bite somewhere on the harbor? I know a romantic little spot on the west side of the bay.”

  What the hell’s he talking about? “We’re not a couple.”

  The man shrugged. “Not judgin’. Just thought I’d offer.”

  Logan looked at Mendez. “You believe this?”

  “Ridiculous,” Mendez said. “I’d so be out of your league.”

  “Hate to break this up, but we got bigger problems,” said the father-oarsman.

  Logan followed his gaze, to where three sails were coming up fast from the north. The fleet ships had narrow hulls and lots of sail. Bay cutters.

  “Can you—” Logan started, but caught himself. The ships had to be doing fif
teen or twenty knots. They broke formation as they grew near. Two to port, one to starboard. The wake from their hulls rocked their skiff from both sides. The skiff started to tip over. Oh, shit!

  The father and son jammed their oars down into the water and steadied it, but not without a lot of cursing.

  “Good work,” Logan said. “You just doubled your fee.” As long as I’m alive to pay it anyway.

  Mendez gripped the gunwale so hard his knuckles were white. His face was pale, too. “Gods help me.”

  One of the cutters coasted in within shouting distance. A man in a blue jacket and black three-pointed hat stood in the bow. The laces on the front of the jacket were crisp, clean, and bright as driven snow.

  “Shit,” Logan said.

  “What?” Mendez asked.

  “Water patrol.” In peacetime, they had charge of the traffic and shipping in Valteron City’s harbor. Most were retired navy, so it made sense that they’d keep an eye on the admiral’s island for him. I should’ve seen this coming.

  Mendez grunted. “You know what we do where I come from?”

  “Bail out and swim for Florida? Not sure that’s going to work here.”

  “You’re funny.”

  “All right, what would you do?”

  Mendez looked away. “Nope, not telling you. Not after your cute little comment.”

  Damn it.

  The water patrol officer chose that moment to break in. “Morning, gentlemen.” He had a salt-and-pepper beard and a curved saber on his belt. The sword was the only well-worn thing on him.

  “Morning,” Logan called.

  “May I ask what you’re doing out here?”

  The father-oarsman hawked and spat noisily over the side of the boat. Not directly toward the cutter, but not away from it, either. “On whose authority?”

  “The Valteroni Prime.”

  “And here I thought it was a free ocean,” the father said.

  Oh, perfect. We’ve got an antagonizer. Logan cleared his throat. “We don’t want any trouble. We’re just out fishing.”

  He held up a spool of woven fishing line so the man could see it. Mendez pried the lid off of a wooden bucket he’d shoved under his seat. Inside were a bunch of cut-up fish that had to be a couple of days old. The stink of it hit Logan’s nose, and he forced himself not to gag.

  I’ll bet that would keep the coast guard away.

  The patrolman’s shoulders eased down a little. “Any luck, then?”

  “Can’t catch a bite to save my life,” Logan said. “You know what they say. The more you need a fish . . .”

  “The less you find one.” The officer signaled his cutter’s steersman, who began shouting orders to raise sail. The cutter got up and moving quicker than Logan could have dreamed of. He wished he could take a better look at the hull.

  “If I could make a suggestion,” called the patrolman. “Maybe try a different spot next time.”

  Logan nodded. “Understood.” Message received: stay the hell away from the island.

  “Well,” Mendez said. “Guess we’ll do things the hard way.”

  Step one, transportation. The encounter with water patrol had taught Logan that they’d need more than a skiff. That meant a galley or some kind of sailboat. But buying one of those proved a surprisingly complex procedure in Valteron. Lots of paperwork. And that was before Holt came to power. Logan doubted they could hire one, either. Holt would be watching for that.

  Grand theft marine, it is.

  Which is how he and Kiara came to be strolling along the traders’ wharf in Valteron Bay, boat shopping. The city had two other wharves, but the one for the naval fleet was guarded constantly, and the fishermen’s wharf never had any downtime. With this many mouths to feed, they were making a fortune. So were grain merchants, for that matter, but grain had to be grown for a season. Fish were available right now. Turns out, that’s part of why Holt had recalled all of the Valteroni ships. They needed the fishermen.

  Logan had charge of security, but the naval stuff was squarely in the lieutenant’s department. “So, what are we in the market for?” he asked.

  “A cog or a small galley. At least fifteen feet long, but no more than twenty-five. Otherwise we’ll be too slow.”

  They passed a wooden ship that seemed to fit the bill. Twenty feet long, round hull, and four oars. The colors said it was from Pirea. No crew aboard, either. It’s perfect. “What about that one?”

  “No. It’s a smuggler’s ship.”

  Pirean smugglers? That was a new one. “How do you know?”

  “Did you see how low it sat in the water?”

  “Maybe it’s just old.”

  “It’s heavy, not old. That means they’ve got cargo aboard,” Kiara said.

  “I didn’t see any crates.”

  “They’re smugglers, so they don’t want you to see anything. It’s probably hidden under the bulkhead, or with the ballast.”

  Right. And we sure as hell don’t want smugglers after us. That had almost put a quick, brutal end to the last mission. The wharf made a ninety-degree turn, and the lineup of watercraft began to feature more deep-water vessels.

  “All right, how about the Kestani sloop over there?” Logan asked.

  “Don’t like the tillers on those.”

  “Fine, you pick one.”

  “I already have.”

  That was fast. “Which?”

  “I’ll give you a clue. It’s flying Felaran colors.”

  That narrowed it down to two or three vessels. They were passing one at the moment, but it was a tiny thing with a cuddy cabin, barely enough room for Logan alone. Plus, it was chained to the dock, so that was out. Maybe it was one of the deeper-hulled sailboats farther down the wharf.

  “What do you think?” Kiara asked.

  “I think I don’t see it.”

  “We just passed it.”

  She couldn’t mean the little chained-up cuddy cabin. “You’re kidding me, right? There’s not even enough room on there for two of us.”

  “Only one person needs to be on deck. The other two can hide in the cabin.”

  “Gonna be tight in there.”

  “It’s all right. You and Mendez have bunked together before.”

  He started to utter a curse, and coughed instead. “I sort of figured I’d be piloting.”

  “Oh, did you? Well, then you figured wrong.”

  He glanced back. “I’m pretty sure it was chained up, Lieutenant.”

  “That’s what we want,” she said.

  “It’ll slow us down. Might get caught.”

  “A ship owner who goes to the trouble to use a chain won’t be watching it closely.”

  “Oh. Good point.”

  “You packed some bolt cutters, didn’t you?”

  He grinned. “Never leave home without ’em.”

  As dusk fell on the merchants’ wharf, Logan slipped into the water two hundred yards west of them. They’d had no trouble scouting them during the midday rush—hundreds of sailors and merchants and dockworkers came and went, so blending in was a snap—but the wharf quieted as darkness fell. A pair of guards at the entrance took careful note of the comings and goings.

  Kiara might get to pick the boat, but Logan called the shots when it came time to steal one. He could swim better than anyone on the team—which wasn’t saying much for Mendez, but still—and hold his breath for over a minute. His buoyancy vest provided just enough lift to make swimming near-effortless and, more importantly, quiet. He kept his body low in the water, just enough to keep his nose over the surface. He’d be practically invisible to anyone without a flashlight or infrared goggles.

  Almost a shame no one gets to see me swim. His mother told him he swam before he could walk. Spent more time in the water than on land.

  He kept in the shadow of the dock, and then looped out around the hulls of ships once they turned up. It should be eight vessels to the turn, and then four more before he found the one Kiara wanted.

&nbs
p; Except he counted seven vessels to the turn. How could that be? He half turned to make sure he hadn’t miscounted, and he saw the gap of open dock where the Felaran smugglers had been. So, the lieutenant had gotten that one right.

  Luckily, he counted three ships after the right-hand turn, and then came right to the cog she wanted. He made a sweep of the hull from the water first. It looked solid—no barnacles—and the tiller was in good shape.

  Permission to board?

  Granted.

  He braced himself against it and unclipped the compact grappling hook from his mesh equipment belt. It unfolded like an umbrella, and locked into place with a soft click. Then he unwound a few loops of paracord, enough to toss the hook over the rail. It landed with a whisper, thanks to the vulcanized rubber coating on the tips. He pulled it taut, and climbed hand over hand until he reached the rail. Then he hung there for a ten-count, listening for any cries of alarm.

  Nothing.

  He heaved himself up enough to get a boot on the edge of the deck. Then he crouched again, listening. Still no shouts, so he dropped to the deck and took stock. The ship was nine or ten feet wide at the mast. Ropes and old buckets of long-dry tar spoke to a half-finished attempt at winterization.

  Now, the chain.

  He unstrapped the bolt cutters from his leg and crept to the bow. The chain was wrapped around a pair of stanchions, which complicated things. He could take the time to unwind it, but moving around an old rusty chain was just asking to get caught. A transport carrying Felaran liquor had docked at the merchants’ wharf. For the past hour, it had disgorged a steady stream of inebriated passengers and crewmen. They stumbled by every few minutes in pairs or trios.

  He eased into position beside the rail where the chain ran out to the dock. The bolt cutters were sharp, but the chain still resisted. He shifted to get a better angle and squeezed them as hard as he could. The link snapped without warning. He couldn’t grab the ends before gravity took them. The end still attached to the ship made a faint clink, but the three-foot length secured to the dock swung down and clanged against it like he’d rung a goddamn bell.