The Raike Box Set

by Jackson Lear

  “Desdola’s alive.”

  Given the blank responses, I did my best to fill them in. Jarmella was brought along and helped for when my words failed me.

  “Does she have an army?” asked Alysia.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “A fleet?”

  “Most of her fleet is now your fleet.”

  “What about twenty vampires allied to her?”

  “I think she just lost sixteen of them.”

  “What about the money to pay her people?”

  “Not for another year.”

  Alysia started to blur in my vision. “Let’s question the survivors and see who’s now on the throne and what they know about them. If necessary we can send Agnarr back and pit one king against the other. Jarmella, can you do that?”

  “Yes, m’lady.”

  As soon as we were alone, Alysia said, “Zara? Make sure Draegor’s money is secure. We’ll be bringing it back privately.”

  “And the money we brought for Agnarr?”

  Alysia took a moment to think through her former deal with her betrayer. “Let’s keep that close by.” She climbed to her feet. Dusted off her hands. “Okay. Let’s see if Agnarr is finally willing to honor his deal with us.”

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  I opened my eyes to one of the most unfortunate sights I had ever seen. Zara was asleep in the cart next to me, leaning up against one of the roof-top supports while I lay in my cot, bandaged like a circus spectacle. I willed Zara to wake up right then, realizing that I had caught her with her arms crossed, mouth ajar, and a reasonable amount of drool running down her chin.

  I got my wish. The cart rocked to one side. Zara snorted, jolting herself back to the present and looking all around her. Then she found me, checked outside, and settled back. “What?”

  Drool central, that was what. “Nothing.”

  She peeled the drape to the cart back to show me the great outdoors. I was greeted with a smell I had managed to avoid for most of a year – the Erast dye house of my youth. It turned my stomach worse than the Vasslehün cuisine.

  I pulled the blanket away and inspected my chest and belly. I was a mess of stitches and bandages with some wounds still worthy of concern. As much as I try to brush it off, wounds do actually bother me a great deal. Wounds on other people? Not so much. Causing them? Even less. But lying there made me feel more like an old man than I ever cared for. I had fallen apart and was stitched back together, hopefully in the right order, and none of it with any vampire blood to heal me. Lavarta’s know-it-all surgeon agreed that once bitten I was too much of a risk to consume blood. Perhaps in a few years I would be strong enough to survive it without becoming one of them. So for most of the last month I’d been lying as still as possible in a winter infirmary while a private brought me soup and wiped my ass.

  A month. All I wanted to do was leave, but no. How about a drink? No. Oh, look, I popped another couple of stitches – back into surgery I went.

  I sat myself up. Winced more from the stiffness than anything else.

  “You’re allowed to ride in lying down,” said Zara. “That’s the whole point of arriving in a cart.”

  “I thought it had something to do with secrecy.”

  “A precaution for now, until I have a chance to get the feelers out to see how icy your return home will be.”

  I stretched, pulling my limbs back into alignment. “I’d like a horse.”

  “To eat?”

  I strained a look at Zara. “No, to ride.”

  “I see, so you do care about appearances.”

  “Every battle is won and lost by how afraid of you your opponent is.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  “So I’d like to ride in instead of being carted along like an invalid.”

  “Doctor’s orders.”

  I offered a moment of desperate silence. Zara ignored me as best she could. Started squirming. Eventually rolled her eyes and groaned. “Wait here.”

  We came to a stop a hundred yards out from General Kasera’s estate on the outskirts of Erast. My eight day journey from Anglaterra had been a misery of boredom second only to the infirmary. I had only two reliefs during the whole trip: The first – Zara helped me to mentally map out some of the wealthiest homes in the empire and bombarded me with anti-theft countermeasures that were intended to stop someone like me from pulling off the perfect break in.

  I slid out of the cart, climbed onto a horse, steadied myself, and rode through the gates towards Kasera’s fortified villa. Two youngsters came hurtling down the pathway towards me.

  The second relief – I had finally been able to convince Zara to read to me the rest of Día’s letter.

  Special Preview of Raike 4 -The Long Night

  Every career starts somewhere.

  On his first major heist with the company of mercenaries, Raike uncovers a plot to betray them all. Under-skilled and with limited experience, Raike unknowingly has the fate of his whole brotherhood resting on his shoulders as he sets out to unmask the rat trying to bring them down.

  Get it now!

  Chapter One

  Water dripped in from all sides, courtesy of the canal just a few feet above us. Our hand-cranked pumps cracked, sheared, and seized every couple of days, choking us to near asphyxiation. Buckets slid back and forth with scoops of earth, rock, and sludge. I had survived four cave-ins and was pretty sure the defenses surrounding the vault would provoke a fifth.

  At the front of the tunnel knelt our pint-sized squeezer – Knuckles. A needle-point chisel in one hand. A hammer in the other. He drew in a deep breath, now with the focus of a monk. Gave the mortar its first tap.

  An electric burst shot the chisel back. “Aagh!” A moment to recover. Checked his fingers to make sure they were still intact.

  Greaser leaned forward. “You okay?”

  Knuckles mumbled as he slid on a pair of gloves. And ever so gently tested another brick.

  Zap!

  “Fuck!”

  Crank hollered from the pump ten yards back. “Who’s screaming like a child?”

  “Hey, fuck you! You want to be the point man on a wall like this? Huh? Or do you want to shut up and let me do my job?”

  “Does your job let you go no more than two minutes without complaining?”

  “Gentlemen?” said Greaser, with a growl of authority.

  Knuckles tried again, going for his third brick of the day. “Fucking build team. Might as well shove the hose up their asses for all the fresh air we’re getting.”

  Zap!

  “Fuck! No. No! Why? Why are you being such a dick about this?!” Knuckles threw chisel onto the ground and bottled everything else up, ready to explode. Greaser dug out a thin metal rod and pressed it against the wall, where it glowed a luminescent pink. Knuckles’ shoulders sank immediately. “What the hell? That didn’t glow at all before.”

  “That’s because it’s now reacting to the air,” said Greaser.

  Knuckles reeled around. “The wall knows we’re here?”

  “It’s a wall, not a god. Let’s give it a minute.” We waited. Wiped muck off our faces. Patched the roof again as a new leak sprung.

  It had taken us three months to dig that stupid tunnel. Three long, tedious months of carving a foot a day through solid rock. Crank and Knuckles were practically brothers back in Erast. Now they were ready to go toe-to-toe the moment anything went wrong, which would’ve been one hell of a fight since Knuckles was the size of a twelve year old and had the ferocity of a wolverine, whereas Crank was more of a lumbering sledge hammer. While those two would surely get over it, the same could not be said for me and one of the company’s premiere dickwads. Scratch trudged into the light, dragging along a canopy to keep the tunnel from collapsing onto our heads. Fingers was behind him, his arms overloaded with support beams he nearly dropped whenever cold water dribbled down his gangly frame. Scratch raised one hand in bewilderment at the solid wall. “The fuck? Kid, you said we were in.”
>
  I turned to stare at the scarred rat-like features of our senior most scrounger. “I said no such thing.”

  “Bullshit. An hour ago you said we were at the wall and lo and behold – still a wall. Isn’t there supposed to be a big ass hole in the middle of it?”

  “We’ve been busy.”

  “Doing what? Standing around with your dick in your hand?”

  “You could try headbutting it to speed things up.”

  Scratch dropped the canopy to the ground. “Ohhhhh, look who’s learned how to be cute during his time with the alpha team. Well, I’ve got news for you – the moment that first brick falls, your job on the dig team comes to an end. So guess who’s just volunteered to help me reinforce the new drop point?”

  “Oi, both of you settle down as well and get back to work,” growled Greaser.

  “I am settled.”

  “Then maybe you can fix the canopy so the roof stops pissing down on us. Kid?”

  “Raike.”

  Greaser leaned in. “Seniority may be a fluid thing on any given assignment but on this one Scratch has it. Keep that in mind.”

  “Damn straight,” muttered Scratch. “Hold this.” Once again I was manning a support beam with Fingers while Scratch struggled to fix it in place. While Scratch was usually an unending misery, these days he seemed to always be on the verge of losing his sanity as well. Naturally I encouraged that in any way I could.

  Greaser moved beside Knuckles and chiseled away more of the surrounding rock. I asked Fingers, “New drop point?”

  “North side of Jade Square, I think.”

  Scratch practically hissed. “Northbend, dipshits. No one’s dumb enough to use Jade Square. Well, almost no one.”

  I steadied the support beam while doing my best to ignore the gnawing feeling worming its way into my gut. “When do we move in?”

  “When the Captain gives the go-ahead.”

  I looked to Fingers. Whispered. “Who told you about Jade Square?”

  “The Captain.”

  “In private?”

  “More or less. Why?”

  Greaser interrupted us. “Gentlemen? More work, less talk.”

  Zap!

  “Fuck!”

  Greaser sighed. “You okay?”

  “Not really, no,” muttered Knuckles.

  Crank called out. “Hey uh, you want me to build something for that wall? You know, to get through it? Or should I keep doing this?”

  Knuckles eyes narrowed towards the point of murder. “I’m not trying to get through the wall.”

  “In that case you’re doing a fantastic–”

  “I’m trying to create a hole small enough to get the seeing rod through so we can find out what’s on the other side.”

  “It better be the vault.”

  “Yes, it better be because I sure as hell am not going to dig my way to another one any time soon.”

  “So give one of the mages a go.”

  “I would but if you blast open a wall without knowing what’s on the other side then you’re gonna bring whoever is upstairs down on top of us and I’d rather not have that happen!”

  Greaser shook his head. “All right, Crank? Swap places with Scratch.”

  Third-Eye called out from beyond my vision. “Hey, someone said we’re in?”

  “Not yet,” said Greaser, with a glare towards Scratch.

  “Then what’s with the ruckus?”

  Crank called over his shoulder. “We’re having problems with an enchanted wall.”

  Third-Eye grunted. “What’d the Captain say about only good news?”

  “Hey, I’m just passing it on.”

  Greaser once again pressed the metal rod against the bricks. It glowed blue.

  “It has rotating enchantments?” spluttered Knuckles.

  “Sure looks that way. Kid? Better go get the Captain.”

  Gods, how I was grateful to leave all the bickering behind. I gathered my bucket of sludge and left the increasingly sour Scratch and dopey Fingers in peace. One glared. The other tried to smile bravely as if his parents were fighting in front of him and his friends.

  I was eighteen. Had been with the Governor’s Hand for three years and was still the youngest member of the company. I was surrounded by trained killers, mages, military deserters, thieves, runaways, and all manner of assholes. For the first time in my life I felt like I actually belonged to a brotherhood.

  We were hours away from pulling off the largest heist in our history – eighty of us in the eastern-most city of the empire, risking our necks to sneak off with a hundred barrels of wine. Not just any wine either, but Vikanda – at one time the single most expensive commodity in the world. The ultimate symbol of wealth. No high-born wedding was complete without someone presenting a bottle, firkin, or barrel to the happy couple. And no senator, priest, or foreign king could keep the emperor forever on their side without spending a fortune on this nectar of the gods. Within that vault was supposed to be the largest cache of fine wine the world had ever seen, and come dawn it was going to be ours.

  The build team upstairs was responsible for keeping the tunnel from collapsing and make sure everyone remained alive while we dug – a job they frequently neglected when some moron left the air pump unattended to go and take a piss. The deltas were on lookout duty across the whole city, keeping an eye on our fence, the city watch, and anyone else who would happily attack us if they realized they could get their hands on our wine. Others worked in the warehouses, refitting a dozen barges so we could transport a hundred barrels through Solento’s canals without being noticed. Finally there was the alpha team – the diggers, crawlers, and ones responsible for actually breaking into the impenetrable vault. I volunteered for one simple promise made by the Captain – alpha team are the first into the vault. No one else.

  I crept along the tunnel, ducking under another set of support beams, turning over what Scratch had said – there was a new drop point in Northbend. Why? We already had three safe houses lined up and they had been reinforced against potential raids for months. So why was another safe house being worked on? And why did Scratch say it was in Northbend when the Captain himself told me it was going to be in the Hovel? And why did Fingers think it was in Jade Square?

  The obvious answer was to somehow confuse Luuko – our fence. A renowned dick whom we had mutually burned the last time we were in Solento. Unfortunately he was the only person capable of handling a hundred barrels of wine stolen from one of the richest and most connected senators in the world. Half of our scouts were watching him and his people, convinced he was going to fuck us over, yet no one – not even Rush, our closer – could find out when and where the inevitable ax was going to fall.

  I found Third-Eye at the ladder, yawning and scratching his butt. “Hey, Third-Eye, there’s no chance of me being pulled from the alpha team and put under Scratch’s watch, is there?”

  “I dunno. Depends how much you piss him off.”

  “Sounds like a sure thing, then. Has something happened to one of the safe houses?”

  “Not that I know of. Why?”

  “Just heard we needed a new one.”

  “Yeah, Rush found a new place over in Caldwell. Closer to Luuko.”

  My pulse started to race. “Will it be ready in time?”

  “No idea. Never been there. Eh, don’t tell anyone I told you that, okay?”

  “Why?”

  “Captain has a stick up his butt about doing Luuko a favor. Doesn’t want to reveal his hand just yet.”

  “No problem.”

  Third-Eye climbed up the ladder while I tried to silence the whispers coming from within me. I’m sure there was a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why Scratch thought the new drop point was in Northbend, why Fingers thought it was in Jade Square, why Third-Eye thought it was in Caldwell, and why I had been told by the Captain himself it was in the Hovel.

  To make matters worse, we were about to break into the wrong vault.

  Than
k you for reading!

  Thank you for reading!

  Being an independent author has quite a few perks. One in particular is that I can spend all day in fluffy slippers if I want. Sometimes, though, I have to ask for help: if you could find it within you to write a review, even just a few words, you would really be helping me out a lot. Honest reviews is one of the hardest things to get as an independent author. It’s also invaluable for being able to afford to write the next book.

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  Also by Jackson Lear

  For the full list of books you might enjoy feel free to visit http://www.jacksonlear.com/books.html

  Acknowledgments

  A huge thank you to Karen for her meticulous notes, revisions, and patience. She really is the best editor you could hope for.

  A big thank you to Andrew Boots for his lightning-fast turn around, picking out a lot of Britishisms, and coming up with some pretty good suggestions.

  Graphic Design by Karen Rachel Wood.

  Author photo by Nicola Bernardi.

  About the Author

  Jackson Lear grew up around the world and has developed an accent that can sometimes be described as mostly Irish, a fair whack of English, and a hint of American. That's pretty handy for someone who lives in Australia. He considers 8am to be the middle of the night, has a habit of buying more books than he can ever read, and still considers becoming Batman as a viable career option.

  www.jacksonlear.com

  jackson@jacksonlear.com

  Copyright © 2020 by Jackson Lear

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