by Dan Koboldt
“The safest place I know. That was my only thought, when we fell.”
Quinn put that together with the cousins, the crashing surf, and the pervasive fishy smell. “Pirea.”
“My home village, believe it or not.”
“Your old stomping grounds? Oh, I can’t wait to see this.” He started to find his feet, wincing at the protests of pain from his legs.
Moric held out a hand to forestall him. “Before you get too excited, I should warn you that we’re close to the Tip. I trust you understand what that means.”
He meant the Pirean Tip, the northernmost part of the city-state. “Leward gave me a pretty good idea,” Quinn said. Not a good place to learn you have magic abilities. Leward and his brother had barely gotten out.
“I am a mapmaker, which is why my work usually takes me far away from here.” Moric’s tone said that this was not to be questioned.
“Of course. And it explains why you’re so . . . quirky.”
Moric huffed. “I don’t feel it needs to go so far. I’m perfectly normal.”
Quinn snorted. “Don’t give me too many lies. I’ll get them mixed up.”
“It’s a good thing you’ve had so much practice,” Moric said.
Touché. Quinn’s stomach grumbled. “Is there anything to eat around here?”
“The boats should return in about half an hour. We’ll eat soon after that.”
“Let me guess. Fish.”
Moric smiled. “As fresh as it gets.”
“I can’t wait.”
“Which reminds me, it’s my turn to get the cookfires going.” Moric winked at him. “I’m pretty good with flint and steel.”
Quinn laughed. “Oh, I’ll bet.”
Moric turned away, then paused. “That was a brave thing you did, to protect her as you fell.” He strode away without waiting for a response.
Quinn wanted to follow, and to check on Jillaine, but his entire body ached like he’d been used as a punching bag. In spite of Moric’s claim that he’d slept for two days, he still felt drained. The ball of magic within him felt muted, and used up. Well, as long as he had another hour . . .
He laid back and closed his eyes. Just for a few minutes.
He woke again in the dark of night. Starlit sky showed through the cottage’s open door, and orange firelight flickered on the frame. Voices and laughter drifted in, atop the whisper of the ocean surf. Damn, I was more tired than I realized. He stretched and rolled to his feet. He took the boots but left the sword. It might be nighttime, but if someone wanted to hurt him, they’d have done it while he slept for the last two days.
Moric, Jillaine, and a few of their apparent kinsmen lounged around a fire-pit dug in the sandy earth between the cottages and the ocean.
His boots squelched faintly in sand, which rose up in small puffs at every step. That alerted everyone around the fire to his approach. Moric greeted him with less of a scowl than usual. Two men and woman, all of a similar age to him, gave him guarded looks.
“Well, finally.” Jillaine offered a warm smile and beckoned him to sit beside her.
Quinn put on his walking-out-onstage grin. “Sorry I’m late to the party.” There was a spot on the far side of Moric as well, but he gambled and took the one beside Jillaine. That bet paid off huge when she slipped her arm through his and snuggled up against him. I might have snuck my way out of the doghouse.
“You hungry?” she asked.
“Starving.” He lowered his voice. “But introduce me first.”
The two men were Sennic and Ulron, both cousins to Moric. They were tall and rangy like him, but darker from years of sun out on the water. The full heads of ash-gray hair raised the possibility that Moric was either unlucky, or chose to shave his own scalp clean. The woman went by Nicoletta, and it wasn’t clear if she was married to Sennic or Ulron or both.
“This is Quinn.” Jillaine squeezed his arm. “You are still calling yourself that, aren’t you?”
He coughed into his hand and wasn’t sure if she was kidding. “Yes.”
“Are you a mapmaker, too, then?” Ulron asked.
“More like an apprentice. Trying to learn the ropes, as they say.”
“What’s it been like, having Moric as a teacher?”
“Sometimes I feel like he’s more of a torturer, but there’s never a dull moment.”
Both men guffawed and slapped Moric’s back. He smiled, though it looked forced.
I’m going to pay for that one later.
“What sort of things does he have you doing?” Ulron asked.
Nicoletta broke in. “Let him eat before you interrogate him, Ulron. The pot’s ready.” She looked at Moric as she spoke, though, in a furtive kind of way. Almost as if she knew a story about their real work would involve very little mapmaking at all.
She passed out wooden bowls to each of them, and they all six moved closer to the fire. A wide kettle rested on a metal grate above the coals. Quinn expected a soup or stew, but the creamy paste within lay perfectly flat, almost like a bowl of cooked rice. Maybe he’d missed the main course, and this was dessert. He was hungry enough not to care either way. His mouth was watering. Nicoletta broke the crust with a heavy ladle—and swiveled the handle around so that it faced him.
Ravenous as he was, he took the ladle and served Sennic who crouched to his left. Then he passed the ladle right to Jillaine.
Sennic gave him a side look. “You’re not Pirean, are you?”
“No.”
“But you’ve learned some of our ways,” Sennic said.
Quinn held his bowl steady while Jillaine filled it. “It’s a small price to pay, for food this good.” And it keeps paying off.
That won him an approving nod from Moric’s cousins, and even a little smile from Jillaine as she passed the ladle. He dipped a spoon into his bowl, tried it, and nearly burned his tongue off. The thick paste really held in the heat. It was thick but had a nice grainy flavor to it, almost like bread. “This is new to me, and here I thought I’d tried every Pirean dish.”
“This isn’t one,” Nicoletta said. “It’s Kestani sweetgrain.”
“Oh, an import?” So Pireans did eat things other than fish. Quinn nudged Sennic with his elbow. “The fishing must be going well.”
“Couldn’t tell you. I don’t even have a boat anymore.” Sennic tilted his head at Ulron. “Neither does he.”
Well, now I feel terrible. Here he was chowing down on a double portion, and these people didn’t even have fish to eat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize . . .”
Sennic waved this off. “No, it’s not like that. I got to retire early, that’s all.”
“Oh? Well, then. Congratulations.” Relief flooded him. He leaned back to rest while the stuff cooled. “How did you manage that?”
“Sold the boat to some foreigners.”
“Yep.” Ulron gestured around at the huts in the rest of the village. “All of us did.”
“We kept a couple skiffs, just for getting around,” Sennic said. “But the Felarans were desperate for deepwater boats, and they paid well.”
Alarm bells rang in Quinn’s head. He took a breath, and forced himself to keep his voice casual. “Felarans, you said?”
“A noblewoman showed up last month, looking for ships. Said they lost most of their fishing fleet in a storm.”
Ulron gave a low whistle. “She was a stern one, too. Didn’t take no for an answer.”
“Very stern,” Sennic agreed.
“You’re just mad that she wasn’t intimidated by you lot,” Nicoletta said. “I kind of liked her.”
Maybe it was all a coincidence, and a turn of good luck for some well-deserving Pireans. Quinn wanted to believe that, but the timing worried him. He looked at Jillaine. The crinkles on her brow said that she was troubled by it, too.
Moric held up his bowl so that Nicoletta could ladle in a portion. “So a woman shows up claiming to be Felaran nobility, and you sold her all your ships?”
�
�I know what you’re thinking, Moric, but we asked around about her. Nicoletta’s cousin sailed to Felara last year on a trade run, and knew about her back then.”
“But hadn’t met her,” Moric said.
“Don’t worry,” Ulron said. “She even showed us her papers, to prove who she was.”
“Convenient that she had her papers on her.”
“I looked at them myself,” Nicoletta said. “Everything was perfect.”
Of course everything was perfect. Quinn knew he should finish his meal, but he couldn’t make himself eat. He had to say something, though, because Moric clearly wasn’t buying this. The man took a breath.
Quinn cut him off. “I’m sure it was.” He lifted his bowl. “Cheers to your good fortune.”
Moric’s eyebrows shot up. Quinn gave him a subtle but clear shake of the head. Moric pursed his lips, and echoed the toast along with the others. He’d want an explanation for that, the second they were alone.
Quinn kept the smile plastered on his face. I have a lot of explaining to do.
Chapter 11
Returns
“Talking to the audience is all about controlling the narrative.”
—Art of Illusion, July 31
Of course, it wasn’t enough for Quinn to tell Moric that he came from another world. It wasn’t enough for Jillaine to describe the scene at the gateway. Moric had to see it all for himself.
That’s how Quinn found himself knee-deep in snow once more, leading his smart mule up an unforgiving mountain slope. Somehow he’d been voluntold to take the lead. Jillaine walked in the middle. Her mule followed without being asked. How she got a rapport like that with the animal, he still couldn’t understand. Moric rode at the back, watching the mountaintops and doing something with magic that Quinn couldn’t figure out. It made the hair on his arms stand up, though. At least, he thought so. It was kind of hard to tell beneath the two sets of borrowed furs that he wore to keep warm.
It’s a mistake to come back here. He knew that, and had tried to convince Moric of it as well. They had no idea what the company had been up to over the month. Now, Quinn was beginning to imagine all of the ways that this could go wrong.
“How far would you say it is?” Moric called.
Quinn halted, grateful for the respite. He even remembered to ask his mule to “Stop, please,” so the damn thing wouldn’t run him down into the snow. He took a minute to count the mountain peaks and reconcile that with the mental picture he kept in his head. “I don’t think it’s far. Maybe a couple of hours until we’ll have a visual.”
“Good,” Moric said.
“I still say this is a bad idea, for the record. The place could be crawling with mercenaries.”
“You’ve said a number of things, many of them untrue. I’ll be convinced when I see it myself.”
I guess I deserve that. Even so, convincing Moric would be pointless if they were captured by CASE Global. He sighed. “Can you at least use a scrying window?” Moric had done so before, when they were hired by Richard Holt to escort Kiara and company back to Felara.
“I suppose so.” Moric nodded in the direction of a copse of scraggly evergreen trees. “Let’s try over there.”
Quinn patted his mule’s flanks. “This way, please.” He took two steps toward the copse of trees and fell chest-deep into a snowdrift. “Jesus!” He scrambled back to the makeshift trail, cursing to himself, while Moric and Jillaine had a nice long laugh about it. His mule even snorted a couple of times.
“Mind the snowdrift, Quinn,” Moric said.
Now you tell me. Quinn shot him a dirty look, then felt his way around the ditch. They shoved through the snow to the dubious shelter of the trees, where at least it wasn’t as deep. The mules set about to cropping the few springs of undergrowth that managed to poke through.
Moric muttered to himself and held his hands in front of him, palms out. Light bloomed between them.
Quinn took a sharp breath. Pins and needles danced on the back of his neck.
Moric spread his arms wide, opening an opaque rectangle in the air in front of him. An image appeared on it, but that wasn’t what got Quinn’s attention. He’d seen this trick before. But this time, he felt like he might actually understand how to do it. He’d wait until he was alone to try it, though. The less he knows about my breakthrough, the more he might be willing to show me.
“Anything look familiar?” Moric asked. Snowcapped ridges scrolled past in his scrying window. Much of it looked the same as the wintry landscape they’d been riding through all day.
Then a kidney-shaped boulder appeared, and it rang a bell. “Keep going,” Quinn said. Up that long, evergreen-studded slope. Just to the right of the twin peaks. There. “Slow down,” he said, not knowing if that was even possible.
Moric made no visible gesture, but the landscape slowed to a virtual crawl. Which might be for the best, because if memory served, there was one more outcropping and then . . . bingo.
The tableau laid out before them, and even Quinn had to look twice. The gateway cave was entirely obscured by multiple interlocking walls. They were wood-colored, but had the unnatural sheen of a synthetic material. Blockish guard towers pockmarked the structure at regular intervals, and they were manned. Every guard cradled a nasty-looking crossbow with the casual readiness of born soldiers. They’d also built a prefab structure around the cave entrance. Quinn’s heart sank when he saw all this. There was an air of grave intent to all of that infrastructure. A permanence.
It was a statement that CASE Global had come to stay.
“Now do you believe me?” he asked softly.
“Why couldn’t you have been lying about this?” Moric asked, almost to himself.
“I’m sorry. I wish I was.”
“Who are they?”
“Mercenaries from another world. From my world.” It felt strange to admit that to Moric, even though his daughter already knew. Confessing to her had felt like a grand gesture. Confessing to him felt like a setup for disappointment.
“How did they get here?” Moric said.
“You can’t see it now, but there’s a cave in the hillside behind those walls. You go in that cave, and there’s a dome-shaped gateway that leads to our world.”
“Gateway?”
“A portal, so to speak. Between this world and ours.”
Moric nodded as if this were perfectly normal. He made no gesture, but began doing something through the scrying window. Quinn could feel it. He closed his eyes and tried to sense what this new spell accomplished, to no avail. He wanted to ask but figured that might be impolite.
“I make around fifty soldiers, give or take,” Moric said.
“There were more last time we were here.” Quinn looked at Jillaine. “Weren’t there?”
“You dragged me away before I could count,” she said.
“I’m sure there were more. Hundreds.”
She shrugged. “Maybe they went back where they came from.”
He shook his head. “More likely, they’ve gone somewhere else. Maybe on the boats Ulron and Sennic sold. They came here for a reason.”
“I don’t suppose you’d care to tell us why?” Moric asked.
“They didn’t really loop me in on everything, but I know their top priority.”
“Which is?”
“Removing Richard Holt from power.”
Moric’s lips quirked downward at this revelation. “And then?”
“And then no one will be able to stand in their way.”
Moric let his scrying window fade, and said, “I’ve seen enough.”
“What now?” Quinn asked.
“Now, we return to the Enclave.”
“I’m not sure how warm a welcome they’ll have for me, what with your . . . not being dead and all.”
“How they welcome you is not important. This is a threat to our entire world, and the council must know about it.”
Quinn looked at Jillaine. It was really her call, because she�
�d been the one who’d been so eager to escape the Enclave in the first place. She already had her chin tilted up, which wasn’t a good sign. But she chewed her lip and finally said, “I agree, they must know.”
“How soon do you think you can take us—” Quinn started.
But Moric was already chanting.
The crenellated spires of the Enclave towers cast long shadows across the island. Quinn rubbed his arms and sneezed. He’d still not gotten used to the magical teleportation thing, though this time had somehow felt different. As if he were starting to sense the enchantment Moric used to move them from one place to another. There were these threads tying the two places together. Like a tin can telephone, but with a magical tether instead of string.
But piecing that together could wait. Moric was already striding toward the crest of the hill that looked down into the Enclave’s little vale. The last time they were here, Moric had conjured some kind of a platform and zoomed them down the slope. It seemed like half a lifetime ago. Sure enough, Quinn felt the distant tingling sensation as the air beside Moric’s feet became an opaque square. He stepped on and looked back at them expectantly.
Well, it can’t be that hard. Quinn stalked over to the crest to give it a closer look. The odd part was that the platform was air, somehow solidified into a block structure. The well of magic in him sang a note of encouragement. I can do that. He drew on the power until his ears buzzed. Electric spiders danced on his temples. Then he molded it into a platform of his own, a round concave saucer three feet across. It was solid, too. He tried not to think too hard about how he knew that.
Moric pursed his lips, looked down at the saucer, and up at Quinn. “Well, that’s new.”
Quinn nearly ruined the moment by trying to step on. It wobbled under his weight a little. He spread out his arms like a tightrope walker and fought for balance. Then he got his other boot on it, and the thing seemed to hold.
“You all right?” Jillaine asked.
“Yeah.” He didn’t dare look as he felt her summon a platform of her own. He was too busy trying not to fall.
“Shall we?” Moric glided forward and shot down the hill.