by Dan Koboldt
Quinn did his best to keep his eyes to himself, but he couldn’t help but glance around. Alissians. They looked human, albeit grubbier and with a good bit of facial hair to go around. The men had untrimmed beards and long hair that blended together into shaggy dark manes about their faces. The women had their hair pinned up, which explained why Kiara and Chaudri had done the same to theirs before coming through. Now Quinn understood why they hadn’t let him shave since he’d come to the island. A man with a clean-shaven face would stand out here.
All of the tables were full, so they stood up against the bar. Quinn did his best to appear casual. The innkeeper came over and plunked down four heavy mugs. Logan paid him with odd-shaped metallic coins from a leather purse at his belt. Then he took another fistful of coins and casually dumped them into the innkeeper’s apron pocket. The man moved away without seeming to notice.
“What’s that about?” Quinn whispered.
“Don’t let his manner fool you,” Logan said. “Old Sy keeps a squad of bruisers with steel-wrapped cudgels on the other side of that door. If there’s trouble, we just bought their allegiance.”
“For how long?”
“Daybreak . . . or as long as no one outbids us.”
God, hired thugs with clubs waiting in a back room. They weren’t kidding about this being a rough place. Quinn couldn’t get out of here fast enough.
Kiara left her ale on the bar untouched. “Logan and I will make the rounds. You two stay out of trouble.”
Quinn picked up his mug and hefted it. The ale was honey-colored and frothy, the glass cold to his touch. “Is it safe to drink?”
“One way to find out,” Chaudri said. She leaned back and took a sip.
“You look like you’re on vacation,” Quinn said.
“I am, in a way. It’s one thing to study the data. Quite another to be over here collecting it firsthand.” She frowned, her eyes distant. “Dr. Holt did most of the fieldwork.”
Quinn looked around the smoky common room, taking care not to stare at anyone for too long. The smoke helped with that—the air was thick with it. Men and women crowded the tables, drinking and laughing and shouting at one another. Like a scene from King Arthur’s court. Guess that makes me Merlin. He could see the appeal of a little fieldwork.
He thought more about what Chaudri had just said, about Holt doing most of it. “Did you work closely with him?”
“For most of my career,” Chaudri said. “He recruited me, trained me. Took me here for the first time.” She smiled in a kind of shy way.
Not for the first time since he met her, Quinn thought, Maybe there’s a little more to this relationship than she’s letting on.
“Does he have a family?”
“I don’t think so. His work was his top priority.”
“His name was on most of the briefing documents,” Quinn said. “Must be a pretty sharp guy.”
“Probably one of the smartest men I know,” Chaudri said. She took a long pull of the ale. “He lived and breathed this place. Spent weeks here at a time. Not to discount the efforts of the whole research team,” she added quickly. “But Holt was sort of our visionary.”
“You know, through all of the briefings and strategy meetings, no one’s ever mentioned to me why he left.”
Chaudri raised a hand purposefully and leaned her head on it, tapping off her communicator. Quinn did likewise.
“Just between you and me, I think he got wind of something that the company was planning, and he didn’t like it.”
“What are they planning?” Quinn asked.
Chaudri paused. “You saw the armory, didn’t you?”
“Of course. I spent two weeks there proving my martial incompetence to Logan. You must have every medieval weapon ever used in there.”
“We have even more in storage, and hundreds of mercenaries who know how to fight with them. Not to mention the siege engines on the roof of the armory.”
“Like catapults?”
“Catapults, mangonels, siege towers. Even a pair of trebuchets. All built by your friends in the prototyping lab to be lightweight and portable.”
“Does that make you nervous, at all?”
She offered a dismissive wave. “I think they’re just being careful.”
“Maybe it’s more than that.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, an invasion?”
“That would be a fascinating thing to see.”
“Fascinating?” Quinn was aghast. “How do you figure?”
Chaudri shrugged. “A small but technologically superior force against a larger native population. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before, in our world.”
Quinn shook his head. “Wow.”
“That’s the difference between Dr. Holt and myself. He always got too close,” she said. “To the work, I mean.”
Oh my God, I think she’s blushing.
Then Logan leaned into view from halfway across the common room, caught Quinn’s eye, and tapped his ear.
“I think Logan wants us linked back in,” Quinn said.
They both leaned against their hands and turned their communicators back on.
“So, Bradley,” Chaudri said, with a forced cheerfulness. “How did the company ever get you to go along with this?”
Quinn smiled and shook his head. “A check and a threat.”
“Were you in Atlantic City?”
“Vegas. Have you ever been?”
“Oh, heavens no. What sort of tricks were you doing?”
“You name it. Disappearing acts, sleight of hand, optical illusions. A lot of flash and razzle-dazzle. That’s what they want in Vegas.”
“You don’t sound as high on yourself as you did when you came here.”
Quinn sighed. “I have to admit I’m a little nervous. I mean, you guys have me posing as this magician and we know so little about them. How am I supposed to act? What things do they usually do?”
“We’re not sure, to be honest. All we’ve been able to dig up is that they seem to take a lot of naps.”
“I’ll be sure to run that one by Kiara.”
They sat in silence for a minute, and Quinn let the hum of conversation wash over him. Two heavyset men at the next table were arguing over whose turn it was to pay the bill.
“Son of a bitch,” Quinn said. He leaned toward Chaudri. “They speak English!”
“No, they don’t,” Chaudri said.
“I’m talking about these two,” Quinn said. He tilted his head slightly in the direction of the fat guys. “I can understand them.”
“I expect so. That’s the effect of the polyglossia.”
“The poly-what?”
“Polyglossia. Universal comprehension of spoken language,” Chaudri said. “It’s one of the phenomena here that we don’t understand. And it works in both directions, too. They can understand us just as easily.”
“How is that even possible?”
Chaudri shrugged. “Like I said: we don’t entirely understand.”
Quinn frowned. The list of things they didn’t entirely understand just kept on growing. But he felt a wave of exhilaration just the same. He could talk to these people. “What about writing?”
“Well, there’s the rub. The polyglossia is limited to spoken language. We’ve had to learn Alissian writing the hard way. Took our best linguists more than a year.”
“Ooh.” Quinn made a face. “You know, I’m not sure I can spend that much time here.”
She took him too seriously. “No need to worry. The prototyping lab set us up.” Chaudri took out a metal case that looked a lot like the one Logan had had in Vegas. She flipped it open to reveal a pair of thick-framed reading glasses.
“The nosepiece has a tiny optical scanner. Whatever you’re looking at, it captu
res the text and runs it through our translation programs in real time. The top halves of the lenses display it in English.”
“Get out,” Quinn said.
“Here, take them. I have another pair.”
Quinn did, and chuckled. Looks like he’d snagged what was in Logan’s case after all.
Just then the big man reappeared, with Kiara right behind him. Their faces looked grim.
“We’re leaving,” Kiara said.
“What’s wrong?” Quinn asked.
“Someone outbid us with Sy’s bruisers.”
“Already?” That doesn’t seem like a good sign.
“Yes. Quickly now.”
They started for the door. Quinn set his mug down and started to follow. Of course, that’s when the men stood up, and the steel came out. Four of them. Four mercenaries, each holding a long dagger. Logan and Kiara retreated, moving back toward the bar. Two mercs pressed them. A third was on Chaudri. The fourth came for Quinn.
He thought about the sword, but knew he’d be less than useless in a fight. Especially at close quarters. Better to get out in front of this.
“I’m not with them,” he said.
The man had a narrow face and close-cropped beard. A pale white scar ran from one cheekbone nearly to his chin. “You came in with them.”
“We entered at the same time. That’s all.” Quinn leaned toward the man and lowered his voice. “I’m actually working right now.”
The man took a step forward. He held his knife low enough that it wasn’t in plain sight, though Quinn could see it. “Doing what?”
Quinn took half a step back. He felt the wood of the bar against his back. No way around it. This was going to end just like one of Logan’s cautionary tales.
“I’m the entertainment.” He threw his legs over and climbed up on the bar. Every eye in the room turned to look at him.
Quinn gave his best walk-on smile. “Who wants to see a magic trick?” he said.
“The best illusions aren’t a matter of technology, but of performance. First, you open the minds of the audience. Then you fill them with exactly what you want them to know.”
—ART OF ILLUSION, MARCH 5
CHAPTER 5
THE POWER TO SAVE THE WORLD
From his vantage point atop the bar in the Wayfarer common room, Quinn got his first good look at the crowd. Most of them hadn’t noticed that three of the mercenaries had Kiara, Logan, and Chaudri pinned against the bar. That, or they chose not to care.
He tried to forget everything about his current situation—the mission, the danger, the Alissian world—and pretend it was just another stage.
“I have in one of my hands the power to destroy the world,” he proclaimed. That turned some heads. “And in the other, the power to save it. Who among you is brave enough to guess which is which?”
No one stirred among the crowd.
“You, sir!” Quinn called. He pointed to the white-aproned innkeeper, who’d appeared behind the bar, looking nervous. He knew.
“Choose a hand to save the world,” Quinn said. He held both hands out, fists clenched, palms down, right in front of the man.
Old Sy looked dubious, but at last he pointed at Quinn’s left hand. Quinn turned and held both fists up to the crowd. “He says left. What do you say?”
Mutters in the crowd. Some were nodding, others were shaking their heads. That was part of why this trick worked so well. Everyone favored a hand.
“I say right!” someone called from the back of the room.
“Right!” another man echoed.
“Two say right,” Quinn said. He raised the right fist slightly higher.
“No, left!”
“Right!”
The crowd was getting into it, shouting out their preference. A scuffle broke out on one side of the room where two groups of bearded men seemed to disagree.
“It sounds about even,” Quinn said. He lowered both fists down, right to the face of the man who was waiting for him. “I’ll let you decide, my good man. Choose a hand to save the world.”
The mercenary’s lips curled into a sour expression, but the crowd was hollering at him, everyone trying to shout down his neighbor. He raised a mail-gloved hand, started to choose Quinn’s left fist, but changed his mind and tapped the right.
“He chooses right,” Quinn said. He dropped his left fist by his side, raised the right one up to his face.
“Shut your eyes,” he whispered over the comm link. He rotated his hand, and made as if to peer in between his clenched fingers. The room fell silent now. He laughed out loud, held the fist up to face outward. “He chose wrong!”
He opened his hand and squeezed his eyes shut. A dazzling white light poured from his palm. Ten thousand candlepower. Everyone in the room was blinded, stumbling backward away from him. Men were shouting, falling on top of each other. Logan, Kiara, and Chaudri rushed past the mercenaries. Quinn ran along the top of the bar, jumped for it, and landed hard behind them. They ran out.
They slammed the door closed behind them. Logan dragged over a heavy crate and shoved it beneath the handle.
Quinn saw the door shaking as he scrambled into the saddle and followed Logan down the road out of the village. They fled at a full gallop for about half a mile.
At last Kiara called for a halt. She gave Logan a signal, and he rode back to scout behind them.
“What the hell was that, Bradley?” Kiara demanded.
“A simple trick. What we in the trade would call a looky-loo.” Quinn showed her the small glass-and-metal contraption. It was one of the company’s super-LEDs, the kind used on emergency vehicles and radio towers. About the size of a matchbox car. Only worked if someone was looking right at it, so he’d had to make sure they were. Usually, the “Power to Save the World” was just a coin that he’d work for a few minutes with sleight-of-hand. More entertaining, but far less distracting.
“You shouldn’t have drawn attention to yourself,” Kiara said.
“Hey,” Quinn said. He wasn’t about to take flak for this. “I’m pretty sure I saved your asses in there. Those guys weren’t screwing around.”
Logan reappeared. “No one following us. Looks like there’s a full-on brawl happening at the Wayfarer, though.”
“Wonderful,” Kiara said. “Bradley’s already causing riots.”
“You hired me to play magician,” Quinn said. “That’s what we do. We improvise.”
“In any case, I want a warning the next time you plan to go off script.”
I didn’t know we had one. “Know what, Lieutenant? You take the fun out of everything.”
The one redeeming point about the Wayfarer debacle is that it yielded the first intel on their quarry.
“Old Sy said Holt stopped in about a day after he went through the gateway,” Logan said. “Bought a horse and asked about the situation on the Kestani border.”
“Crossing the mountains is tricky this time of year,” Chaudri said.
“Think he’ll head for one of the bigger passes?” Logan asked.
“I would. Probably Nevil’s Gap.”
Kiara consulted her map and made a quick measurement with a stainless-steel ruler. “Should be about a week’s ride. That’s long enough to know for certain which way he’s headed.”
“Guess we’d better get moving, then,” Logan said. He tossed Quinn the reins of the mountain pony and took point. Kiara was after him, then Quinn, then Chaudri and the other packhorse.
They rode for five or six hours at a stretch, dismounting occasionally to walk the horses. Otherwise, they stopped only at midday for a brief rest and then to make camp at night. This wasn’t R & R time, of course. Once the pup tents were up and a perimeter set, it was training time for Quinn.
Usually that meant Logan drilling him in the finer poin
ts of swordplay or knife-fighting—often literally. Sometimes Chaudri would take a break from her reading to join in. For a self-proclaimed academic, the woman certainly knew how to swing a broadsword. She and Logan would spar with Quinn in a three-sided melee, an exercise that usually meant welts and bruises on two sides instead of one.
“You’re getting a little better,” Logan told him, after their fourth night of sword practice. “Might take an Alissian teenager to skewer you now.”
“As a general rule, I try to avoid teenagers.”
“It’s the girls you’ve got to watch out for.”
Quinn chuckled. “You say that like you know. You have daughters?”
Logan sighed. “Four of them. No boys.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow. The oldest just turned fourteen.”
“Ooh.” Quinn made a pained expression. “How do you survive?”
“Mostly by staying in the basement. And invading other worlds.”
The thought of this battle-hardened soldier hiding out in the basement from his wife and daughters made Quinn smile. “I didn’t realize you were such a family man.”
“That’s the first thing they teach you in basic. If you have a girlfriend, marry her. If you have a wife, start a family.”
So he is ex-military. “How’d you end up doing this?”
“That’s classified.”
Of course it was.
Kiara kept trying to raise someone on her long-range transponder. It might reach the gateway cave, if the lockdown protocol was lifted and a receiver unit came through. None of her transmissions brought a reply, though. No one talked about it, but Quinn could tell that the lack of communication had her concerned. As did the clouds in the distance.
The storm hit about four days later. The barometric pressure—updated hourly on the communicator Kiara had strapped to her wrist—had been falling for almost a day. It was early afternoon when the first storm clouds began to gather. Logan began making little forays ahead of the group to search for shelter.
“Got a clump of evergreens close to the road, about a half mile ahead,” he said.