Con & Conjure rb-5

by Lisa Shearin

  I looked over the crowds beginning to gather in curiosity at his arrival, and the dock workers going about their business. There were a few people—goblins, humans, and elves—whose eyes weren’t on the prince and his yacht, but were intently watching others, scanning the crowd.

  Just like I was.

  Agents of the prince, ready to take down any hopeful assassins.

  Agents of the prince’s opposition, ready to take out the prince.

  Chigaru was still a crazy bastard, but he was also crazy like a fox. Get someone to take a shot at him before he even set foot on dry land, his people pounce on them, interrogate them into revealing any accomplices, and he saves himself the trouble of spending every waking moment of his visit jumping at his own shadow.

  Brilliant. In an insane kind of way.

  I opened the door from the office and stepped outside onto the dock built adjacent to the warehouse. Phaelan came out with me. Mago stayed inside and out of sight.

  “He’s trying to get someone to take a shot at him,” I said.

  Phaelan heard me, but he wasn’t scanning the crowd, or even looking at the prince. My cousin’s dark eyes were intent on the busy harbor. It was the morning high tide and fishing boats of all sizes were coming in with the night’s catch, and merchant and passenger ships were either setting sail or arriving.

  I looked where Phaelan was looking. It was a pair of small ships, not much more than boats really, running protectively near the prince’s yacht, guiding it in. I recognized them. Mid’s harbormaster used dozens of them for patrolling the harbor and escorting larger ships. The pilot boats’ sails were full, the canvas straining.

  I didn’t see anything wrong, but Phaelan obviously did.

  “What is it?”

  “There’s only one man on each boat. The pilots. Harbor regulations in every major port stipulate a pilot and two crew. And do you notice anything wrong with the wind out there?”

  One boat was running slightly behind the other—intentionally hanging back. No mean feat with all that wind.

  I froze. “Wait a minute.” My eyes flicked to the goblin yacht’s rigging. The crew had pulled the sails in, and what canvas was still up was far from full. The only air moving in the center of the harbor was a light breeze.

  There was plenty of wind behind those two pilot boats, but it sure as hell wasn’t natural.

  A weather wizard. He or she was good, and probably about to split a gut moving enough air to fill those sails.

  “And pilot boats keep themselves light, easier to maneuver,” Phaelan was saying. “The one out front is riding lower in the water than it should.” He scowled. “Way lower.”

  One man, one laden boat. Another behind, no extra weight. Oh crap.

  I reached over and yanked Phaelan’s spyglass out of his belt to take a look.

  Elves. The pilots were both elves, in boats running alongside a yacht carrying a goblin prince—and the best hope for peace, a peace a lot of powerful elves and goblins didn’t want. The extra weight on one boat didn’t mean it was a suicide run with a hold full of explosives, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t.

  I handed the spyglass to Phaelan. “I’m going out to take a look.”

  I couldn’t walk on water out to those boats, but as a seeker, I didn’t need to.

  I’d only done a Sending a few times before. The last time I’d been trying to locate a kidnapped spellsinger. Someone with mage-level talent had blocked me then. Now, the only thing between me and my destination was half a harbor full of water. Water and I had an agreement. I stayed away from it and it wouldn’t drown me. I came from a family of pirates and I couldn’t swim for shit. Yeah, it was pathetic.

  I steadied my breathing and tried to ignore the fact that one of those two boats could go boom within the next minute when it caught up to the prince’s yacht, and I could be out there when it did. A Sending involved my essence leaving my body to do something it’d be impossible or ill-advised for my body to do—like hover over a boat possibly packed with explosives. I didn’t know whether my essence could be blown up, but I didn’t want to find out.

  I focused my will on my destination, trying to convince my stomach and nerves that I wouldn’t physically be going out over the water. Within moments, I felt myself rise out of my body and flow out over the harbor. As I crossed the hundred yards or so separating me from those boats, I clearly saw the pilot in the first one. Light brown hair, short military cut, chiseled features—everything perfectly clear, almost as if it were outlined.

  Too clear to be real. Like a mask. Except it wasn’t a mask, at least not one you could buy. It was magic, a glamour. That pilot wanted people to think that he was an elf. I looked closer. He wasn’t shielded. The weather wizard would need to be within sight of the pilot boats, and there couldn’t be any shield or wards between him and the boats he was moving.

  And if your goal was to ram the lead boat into a yacht and blow it up, there couldn’t be shields of any kind between you and your target.

  The wind in the pilot boat’s sails faltered and so did its forward momentum. For only an instant, I got a look at who and what he really was.

  A goblin. A goblin with a blood-red serpent tattoo on his cheek. That meant he was a Khrynsani assassin. The Khrynsani were an ancient goblin secret society and military order, and their assassins were even more fanatical than their merely homicidal brothers. I didn’t need to look in that boat’s hold; I could smell it, even over the stinking harbor water, I could smell it.

  Nebian black powder. Regular black powder didn’t have anywhere near the punch that the Nebian variety did. It was literally powder fine, highly unstable, and obscenely expensive. The impact of the boat against the yacht’s hull would do the trick. Either the Khrynsani pilot was planning to blow himself up along with the prince, or jump out once he’d steered his boat close enough for impact, then swim like hell for the second boat.

  Khrynsani were essentially the goblin king’s enforcers. It looked like Sathrik wasn’t even going to let his little brother set foot on dry land—unless one of his feet happened to fall there when he got blown to bits.

  And the elves would be blamed.

  The prince would be one of the first to die, but he wouldn’t be the last. I didn’t know how much Nebian black powder was actually in that boat’s hold, but when the prince’s yacht exploded, the flying debris could kill who knew how many. It was morning and the harbor was busy. And on shore, a crowd was gathering to watch Prince Chigaru’s high-profile arrival, like sheep for the slaughter.

  Countering the weather wizard’s spell would take too long. Those boats weren’t the only thing that couldn’t be shielded while the wizard did his thing. He couldn’t have magical obstructions or interruptions of any kind in his way.

  That included personal protective shields.

  His magical and metaphorical britches would be down around his ankles.

  And when you were that focused on maintaining a spell as complex as calling enough wind to fill two sets of sails, broken concentration meant a broken spell. And if I wanted to get really vicious with my interruption, that spell could snap back on its caster. I was feeling particularly vicious right now. But to do it right, I needed to be back in my body.

  Speeding across the harbor made me dizzy; coming back to my standing-still body made me sick. Suddenly seeing things through my body’s eyes again was one of my least favorite parts of being a seeker. Disorienting at best, nausea inducing at worst. I took shallow breaths and blew them out in short puffs, willing the contents of my stomach to stay where they were. I didn’t want to share Mago’s bucket.

  “Well,” Phaelan said, “what’d you see?”

  I told him who I saw, what they were disguised as, and what that lead boat was carrying. While I was telling, I was looking for the weather wizard behind all of the above. He didn’t have to be behind the ships to push air into their sails, but it’d make his work a lot easier. I was hoping he went for easy.

  I help
ed myself to Phaelan’s spyglass again and looked in the direction the boats had come from.

  Pay dirt.

  There on a pier jutting out into the harbor was a figure in a black cloak with the hood pulled up. If two Khrynsani assassins weren’t about to blow a hole in the water where the prince’s yacht was, he’d be laughable. Bad guys could get away with a lot more if they’d stop dressing like they plotted world domination for fun. He appeared to be short. I guess he needed all the evil accessory help he could get.

  He wasn’t shielded or warded. He might as well have been standing there buck naked. There was nothing between him and me but about half a harbor. I could probably use my magic to kick him off the pier from where I was standing, but adding momentum to an already moving object would work even better.

  Two dock workers were rolling a barrel down the pier. My best estimate put that barrel about twenty yards from the wizard. An instant later—after a little nudge from me—that barrel mysteriously escaped. The dock workers yelled, people ran, and the wizard stayed right where he was, oblivious, intent on maintaining his spell.

  The barrel hit the wizard, the wizard lost his hold on the spell, and his feet lost their hold on the pier. Wizard and barrel hit the water together with a gratifying splash.

  The spell stopped, but a sudden gust of real wind kicked in where he left off. The pilot boats actually picked up speed.

  Oh crap.

  Chapter 2

  I estimated about thirty seconds before the prince’s yacht was blown to kindling.

  Time obligingly slowed to that speed that let me briefly ponder what it was going to feel like to go kablowie. A quick calculation told me that Phaelan and I would probably escape the blast, but odds were good that flying debris—flaming or just airborne projectiles—would do an equally good job of killing us.

  I was no weather wizard, but I had to stop those boats. Now. Sinking the things would be the simplest solution, but I knew from nasty past experience that water and unexploded Nebian black powder didn’t mix. I wanted to stop one explosion, not set fire to the entire surface of the harbor.

  “Raine,” Phaelan warned. “We need to get out of—”

  “I’m stopping them,” I said, my eyes focused on the boat with the black powder, drawing in my will to—

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Looks that way,” I murmured, keeping my eyes on the lead boat. Moving a small object was simple, so was what I did with the barrel. This was going to be like locking on to the back bumper of a speeding coach with my teeth.

  The Saghred had given me an obscene amount of strength. Even though that strength was a part of me now and not the rock, I still didn’t like using it. It was like spending dirty money that could spend you right back, but I didn’t have time to be squeamish. The pilot boat was traveling parallel to me and headed toward the docks and the prince’s yacht. I extended my arm and clenched my fingers in the air, using my mind and magic to latch onto the boat near the stern—and braced myself.

  I pulled back with every ounce of effort, magic, will, and sheer stubbornness I had.

  And someone else did the same.

  From the opposite direction.

  Two mages using that much magic on the same object at the same time from different directions was tantamount to lighting the fuse on a bomb and then standing there to see what happened. A split second later, I spotted my competition.

  Not one, but five goblin mages on the deck of Chigaru’s yacht. The prince didn’t travel with magical lightweights. They were strong, and worse, they could work together. I had the magical muscle the Saghred had given me. They were trying to push the boat away; I was trying to stop it where it was. A crack and snap of splintering wood sent its recoil up my extended arm. The pilot boat was going to disintegrate under our combined magic. Though if I let go, the mages would push the boat as far away from the yacht as possible, right into the middle of the crowded harbor, where it could run into any of dozens of ships. I was trying to keep the boat where it was to minimize collateral damage. The only lives the mages were concerned about were those of the goblins on the yacht; that their actions could cause other ships and crews to be blown to bits wasn’t their problem.

  I gritted my teeth. It was mine.

  They shoved and I shoved back. Hard. The mages weren’t going to stop. Suddenly, I didn’t just want to stop them now; I wanted to stop them permanently. Yank them off of that deck and into the harbor. Their robes would weigh them down, but their deaths would be their own fault for refusing to obey—

  Shit.

  Nausea flipped my stomach, and having just flown over the harbor had nothing to do with it. My breath came in shallow gasps. Steady, Raine. You don’t want to kill them, just stop them from what they’re doing. Just breathe and do the work. Breathing got rid of the urge to throw up, but it didn’t stop my heart from pounding at the thought of what I’d wanted to do, not only wanted, but had justified to myself all too easily. That was the Saghred talking, not you. Shake it off. Worry about it later.

  The goblin mages kept up the pressure, pushing the boat away from them. I had no choice; I let the boat go, releasing it slowly to minimize the damage. Still the boat lurched in the goblin mages’ collective grip. The planks were coming apart. Dammit to hell. Which was exactly where a good part of the harbor was going to be blown to.

  The recoil from even a slow release of my magic threw three of the goblin mages backward like dolls. Even though I was no longer holding on to the boat’s stern, I felt the hull shudder and the wood crack under the pressure. If one of those planks snapped the wrong way, the impact against those kegs would—

  The world exploded.

  I grabbed Phaelan, hit the dock, and threw the best shield I had around us both. I didn’t know if it’d hold if a chunk of ship came flying at us, but there was no time to run, and we couldn’t get far enough fast enough.

  Phaelan covered his head—like that was going to help—and laid out a string of curses that’d make his crew proud. I confess I joined him for a few seconds.

  The aftermath wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but it was bad enough. Other pilot boats abandoned their escort charges and became rescue vessels. There were people in the water and once the debris finally stopped raining down, the screams and shouts started. The mass of people on the shoreline had more than doubled.

  Great, just great.

  Flaming debris had started fires on the decks of at least four vessels, and at least one of them had been carrying something extremely flammable, judging from the panicked activity on deck and some crewmen diving over the side into the harbor.

  I looked to the bow of the yacht where Prince Chigaru had been standing.

  It was empty.

  Empty didn’t mean that he’d been injured; empty could mean the goblin was showing some sense and was doing what Phaelan had done—cower and cuss. But the number of goblins leaning over the yacht’s railing and frantically searching the harbor below indicated that the prince had taken a swim. I couldn’t see that being voluntary or good.

  Dammit to hell again.

  The thick smoke kept me from seeing the stern portion of the yacht.

  “Can you tell if she’s taking on water?” I yelled to Phaelan. It was the only way to make myself heard.

  “She’s not listing, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t hit.”

  I ran down the boardwalk toward the dock closest to Chigaru’s yacht. I’d been on Mid for nearly three months, and by now nearly everyone knew exactly who and what I was—or more to the point, what soul-sucking rock I was bonded to—and got the hell out of my way. For some, they threw themselves over the side into the harbor and thought that was the lesser of two evils. Smart people. I’d have joined them if I thought I could actually get away from myself.

  I’d almost reached the dock, when a goblin I knew only too well pushed his way through the crowd, shucked his outer robe and dove off the pier after the prince, smoothly cutting through the water’s
surface like a knife.

  Tamnais Nathrach.

  Tam was a friend of mine and a former nightclub owner. Now he’d gone back to his old job as a duke and chief mage to the Mal’Salin family. He wanted to kick the king off the throne and put the prince on it, which had resulted in a big bull’s-eye on his chest. Though right now, Tam was doing a fine job of killing himself before the king could by diving into flaming, debris-infested waters after a prince who hadn’t enough sense to keep his head down when sailing into enemy territory.

  If Chigaru survived his fall into the harbor, I was going to kill him.

  I got to where Tam had taken a swan dive off the pier and looked down into dirty harbor water.

  No prince. No Tam.

  Phaelan shouldered through to stand next to me. He looked down in the water, shook his head, and winced. “Damn.”

  “Yeah, they’re still under.”

  “I was referring to what they’re under,” Phaelan said. “I’ve seen what all gets tossed or dumped in a busy harbor.”

  “Good riddance to the goblin scum,” a man’s voice said from nearby.

  Phaelan and I turned our heads to find the speaker. He picked that moment to shut up. The comment wasn’t loud, but it was loud enough to earn him some mutters of approval from some of the people around us. Elves mostly, some humans. The murmurs spread and my hand inched toward my sword when a different man from farther back in the crowd said, “drown ’em all like cats” in a loud voice.

  Some of the goblins heard that.

  Great. Just great.

  There was enough elf versus goblin hostility in the air to start our own little war right here. A good number of the elves gathered on shore were mages and their guards. If an elf shoved a goblin or a goblin said something to an elf, the boat would merely be the first explosion of the day.

  A pretty, petite, and highly pissed goblin pushed her way through the crowd on a dock jutting out closest to the yacht, and frantically scanned the water. I couldn’t hear the word she spat, but my lip reading was working just fine.