The Smuggler's Deal

1
At the Inn

Corre, Agenom
April 14, 1190 PT (Post Tyrannus)

Shane

This hunt had dragged on far too long. Shane zem’Arta surveyed the neighborhood as a temperate evening breeze wafted through the alley. The acrid mixture of sea water and refuse formed a pungent perfume. He winced at the smell. Kneeling beside a splintered crate, he scanned windows broken from the turmoil the city of Corre had suffered lately. Despite heaps of debris, the borough evidenced a previous decadence in its ornate streetlamps and carved details of the buildings. Violent uprisings, sparking like flint on steel, had disappeared quickly, leaving pillars of smoke and social chaos in their wake.

Shane rubbed his eyes and yawned. During the previous night, he and his companions had vacated their inn after a gang of rebels set fire to an adjacent police station.

He already hated being in Drawlen territories. Nothing good happened outside the Freelands. Blinking away his fatigue, he huffed.

“See anything?” Carris asked, crouching behind him. His companion faced the alleyway opening. Her brown bandana hid her pointed goblin ears, and her loose coat concealed several knives. Aginom, a human country, didn’t receive sharptooth sapiens warmly.

“No. Just tired,” Shane said. “I can’t believe that pile of ash managed to get all the way out here. Burning fires.”

“Hell of a way to start the year.” She punched his arm lightly. “We’ll manage. We’ll get that little grifter.”

“Liiesh will have me fully marked if we don’t.” He stroked his face, his fingers gliding over the ridges of the two horizontal scars on his left cheek. Another marred his right. In the Freelands, they labeled him a convict, one mark away from being tagged for death. Here in the west, they proved a passing curiosity. Shane licked his sharp teeth and spat on the ground.

Carris scratched her head of spiky black hair using her extended claws. Flexing her fingers, she retracted them. “Liiesh wants this fool brought in alive? How the hell we getting him across fifteen hundred miles of Drawlen territory? Not to mention the burning border.”

“I have an idea about that.” Shane tapped his forehead.

“A good one? Or will this be Dothra all over again?”

He shrugged. “Dothra wasn’t that bad.”

She punched him again, causing him to flinch. “My husband nearly broke both his burning legs.”

Shane recoiled, massaging his bicep. “He was fine.”

Carris rolled her eyes, her vertical pupils pulsing. They scanned the inn across the street, resuming their duty as impatient sentries. Framing the windows, the bright yellow shutters accentuated the vibrance of the blue building. Even in the dimness of oncoming night, the inn stood out among the tar-painted tenements to either side.

The Drawls had made bare wood illegal, part of their tactic to keep the Corigish commonwealth under their crushing grip. This inn must have imported paint from Yvenea, which would have been expensive. And he knew his target liked expensive things. Daeven Kritcher’s trail of luxuries had led Shane and part of his crew across the peninsula of Palimar. Shane licked his teeth again.

Carris jumped up, standing shy of five feet, and growled. “He’s here.”

Shane’s eyes locked on the second-floor window at the corner of the inn. A dim, orange light flickered inside.

After a long moment, a stout form silhouetted the panes, shutting the curtains. A black cavity replaced the light of the sun-crystal lamps.

“Was that him?” he asked. “I couldn’t get a good look.”

“Your eyes getting old, boy?” she barked under her breath. “What are you, twenty?”

He rolled his eyes. “Keep talking, old lady.”

She huffed. “Likely his bodyguard. But I can smell his perfume from here.”

Shane sniffed. The city’s reeking aroma filled his nostrils, along with the faint whiff of musk and honeydew. “Burn me. You’ve got a nose, Carris.”

The goblin woman glanced over her shoulder, grinning. “We gonna say hello?”

He returned his own fanged smile. “We’ll even buy him a drink if he comes nicely.”

They moved in unison, silent and sinister. The night pressed in, a salty gust cooling Shane’s face. After over a month of tracking, he felt the sharp pressure of blood pulse in his ears. There would be retribution for failure in this job.

He slipped into the alley across the street, next to the blue-painted inn. On the ground floor, a door of peeling black tar paint lay ahead of him. He sped up.

“Hold,” Carris muttered, grabbing his collar.

He shrugged out of her grip and grunted. Her insistence to operate on an abundance of caution until it came time to rip throats really grated on him. He stepped forward.

Snapping wire twanged, slapping against his boot.

“You rookie whelp,” Carris growled.

Simultaneous with Shane’s cursing, a bell rang above him, followed by a rumbling of footfalls. Two hulking men, dull-eyed humans, hurtled through the door into the alley.

Shane hunched, extending his claws, and baring his teeth. If these fools had any sense, they would run like cowards rather than tangle with a troll and a goblin in close quarters.

One man whipped a knife from his pocket and offered Shane an ugly smile. “Come at me, ogre.”

Carris chuckled, putting up her fist and reciting part of the Karthan war blessing. “May you send a thousand souls to Sovereign’s judgement today, warrior.”

Shane bumped his fist against hers. “And may your claws never dull.” He hurtled toward the knife-wielding thug.

Carris, only reaching Shane’s chest at her full height, leapt past him like a hound and rolled under the legs of the other man.

Avoiding the thrust of his opponent’s knife, Shane sidestepped and caught the man’s head in his iron grip. A brief cry erupted from the man, his skin pale against Shane’s dusky hands. Shane slammed his opponent’s face against the wall. The man groaned as he slumped onto the gravel and lay still.

Carris forced the other man to his knees, her tarnished flintlock pistol pressed to the back of his neck. In the shadow of the alley, her green eyes glowed, causing the man to recoil.

“P-please,” he stammered. “The man said there be gangsters after him. He dun say nothing about no Freelanders. I dun get paid enough for this. Please, lady elf.”

Shane hissed at the slur, though the man’s tone indicated he meant no insult.

Carris pressed the muzzle of her gun tighter into the man’s flesh. “Using that word’s a fast way to meet a round shot, boy.”

“Sorry!” the man barked. “Goblin . . . I mean kobold, whatever.”

Carris chuckled, then holstered her pistol and jutted her chin to the mouth of the alley. “Get you gone.”

The man muttered incoherently and scrambled out to the street.

Shane stepped over the other man, who bled from the forehead and groaned. Pressing his boot against the man’s side, Shane said, “Follow your friend or meet your maker.”

The thug quivered and crawled toward the street as Shane and Carris stepped through the open kitchen door.

The night being young, the space buzzed with activity. The fragrance of stale beer permeated the air. The staff scowled at the pair of them. A portly man stirred steaming broth in the cookpot suspended over a bed of heat stones in the hearth. The sulfuric fragrance of furnace-grade sunrock burned Shane’s nostrils. He wrinkled his nose.

Three women cut vegetables at a prep table, black paint chips flying as they chopped.

Shane cringed when he saw the braided indenture collars encircling their necks. In his memory rang the moans for mercy he’d heard so often from the slaver’s brig of the Reaver. The older woman cursed in Aginomian, waving her chef’s knife. Shane caught a few words, mostly insults about being a sharptooth.

A growled order from the man at the hearth silenced her. He set his ladle aside and waddled toward Shane. His golden skin and bound black hair marked him the only native Aginomian in the room.

“I’m a businessman, sharptooth,” the man said. “I don’t know what you have against dat rich fool, but he’s been not’ing but a burning headache since he came. You got a legal warrant?”

Shane let out a long breath. “I won’t be the last thug to come knocking after your guest, old man. But I promise I’ll be the only polite one.”

The innkeeper dabbed a towel across his forehead. “I suppose you’ve done away wit’ my bouncers.”

“They’ll be fine,” Shane said. “We’re not throat cutters.”

The women glanced at one another with wide eyes and pursed their lips at the open insult about Drawlen agents. They bent their heads and resumed chopping.

Pointing to a narrow servants’ staircase, the innkeeper grumbled as he added the vegetables to his pot on the hearth.

Shane and Carris slipped through the kitchen and crept up the stairs to the second floor. The thrum of activity in the front room rattled the walls. Hopefully, this meant Kritcher hadn’t heard the bell or the fight in the alley.

Approaching the door to the corner room, Shane slowed his breathing. He locked eyes with Carris and nodded. She returned the gesture and spun, kicking the door off its hinges before ducking out of the way.

A gun fired, the tang of red powder filling the air. The round shot breezed past Shane’s shoulder. He ripped a sunrock lantern from the plastered wall, hurling it through the door. Another shot fired.

Carris launched herself over the threshold. A man screamed.

“Clear!” she called.

Shane sucked in a breath, glad this mad hunt could finally end. When he entered the room, he growled.

Carris knelt on the floor, clawed hand gripping the neck of a man pressed against the bed. In dress, build, and ethnicity, he matched their target. He’d even painted a mole on his right cheek to imitate Daeven Kritcher.

“Who the fires are you?” Shane demanded.

“A-an actor,” the man sputtered. “Please, I had no idea”—he squeaked when Carris tightened her grip—“no idea Freelanders were after my client. The riots closed the theater. I’m just trying to pay my bills, you see.”

Shane tugged his cloth cap tighter onto his head. He tucked in his loose silver braid, a feature clearly marking him a Zereen troll—not a welcome sight in the outlands. “Where’s your client?”

“I don’t know, truly. He paid me and left.”

“With no security holding?” Shane raised a brow.

“I-I—” the man stammered.

Carris chuckled. “Thurse can smell lies, whelp. Best you tell this man the truth.”

“He’s—” The man groaned. “He’s at the docks. He’s getting on a ship.”

“Atta boy,” Carris said, choking him out with her sinewy arm. He slumped on the ground. The echo of activity downstairs shook the floor.

“Ha!” she barked, looking at the unconscious man. “Burning fool pissed himself.”

“Let’s go,” Shane said. “Maybe Marcus will catch Kritcher at the docks.”

She shrugged. “Or maybe that filth hired other actors and duped him, too.”

“Sometimes I hate this job.” Shane snarled.

2
Evasion

Corre, Agenom
April 14, 1190 PT

Shane

The city of Corre hugged a narrow bay leading west to the Cathyn Sea. Unlike the mountain-rimmed metropolis of Palim, where Shane spent most of his time, Corre lay on a flat expanse with rolling hills and vast fields falling away to the east. However, these two port cities shared one thing: the docks attracted the best and worst of characters.

Shane stepped onto the wharf when a girl brushed against him, reaching into his pocket. He caught her arm, growled with bared teeth, and sent her whimpering away, empty-handed. He stared after her. His chest twinged. He’d known too many like her.

A few yards down the boardwalk, a team of policemen on horseback escorted a gilded carriage that stopped at a luxury yacht called the Fairy’s Delight. After the driver opened the door, an old woman in a red dress exited. When her dull-brown eyes, heavy with makeup, met Shane’s, she blanched. She stuck up her nose and sauntered onto the boat, her bulky red skirts gathered in her hands.

A bell tolled throughout the district, marking the ninth hour. The last whisper of daylight sank over the watery horizon. Beyond the Fairy’s Delight, Shane spotted Marcus Tolsum talking with a tawny dock worker. Having tucked his gold-weaved braids inside his cloth cap, Marcus blended with the Aginomians, only distinguishable by his long face and black eyes.

For this reason, Shane had assigned him to the docks. Aginomians were more likely to be helpful to someone they took as their own. The dock worker, stooping with a burlap sack slung across his shoulders, pointed toward the mouth of the harbor.

Marcus frowned, then nodded and marched toward Shane and Carris.

As he came closer, he spoke mentally through his mind craft. ‘Kritcher is on a ship to Ostus. It left an hour ago.’

Shane gnawed on his knuckles to stifle a string of curses. Carris shook her head.

Marcus reached them, brow furrowed while he glanced at the dock workers. Gray and black scruff covered his cheeks and jaw. Palish terrion typically stayed clean-shaven, but the last week of this manhunt had been relentless. “Three dock workers all told me they saw a fellow matching Kritcher’s description boarding a cargo ship called the Atlas. The harbormaster says it usually runs between here and Hasava in Thura. It stops in Ostus to resupply.”

Carris growled. “It’s one thing to chase this fool across Palimar. Quite another to go to Thura.”

“We might catch him in Ostus,” Marcus offered, huffing.

“What if he gives us another slip?” Carris grumbled. “You gonna chase him to Thura, Tolsum? You’ll get your wings clipped and your brain drilled into. At worst, they’ll slice you up for dinner.”

“Liiesh said . . .” Marcus began.

Shane put up a hand. “That burning spire lord can go there himself if he wants.”

“I could overtake the ship,” Marcus said. “On the open sea, I could claim a blood debt on Kritcher.”

“You gonna fly that lump back here or something?” Carris asked with a laugh.

“I could wait on the ship and hire a return vessel in Ostus. The terrion there recognize Palish law.” He tapped the breast pocket of his coat, where his coins clanged. “And money.”

Shane scratched at the patchy silver stubble growing on his jaw. “It’s not the worst plan. But you’ll be too far to send word back if something goes wrong.”

Marcus smirked. “I’ll manage.”

“And if he’s not on that ship?” Carris asked.

“I’ll fly back and meet you,” Marcus said. “We’ll have to put a foreign bounty on him. Even Thuran guns for hire don’t balk at a Freelander payment. They know we’re good for it.”

Shane pursed his lips and gazed at the glassy, black water of the harbor. A natural breaker separated the port from the churning sea, a narrow mouth offering access to ships. “Fly. We’ll wait at the inn . . . if it’s still standing.”

Marcus nodded. “I’ll find you.”

Up and down the wharf, dock workers continued their tasks under the blue light of tall sunrock lanterns placed along the water. They stuck to their work, paying no mind to Shane’s crew.

“Try to lay low,” Marcus said with a wink. In an instant, his great black wings materialized behind him, and he leapt into the sky. The rush of wind in his wake ruffled Shane’s hat.

A few nearby workers gasped and pointed. Marcus glided above the water, the strong flap of his wings sending him steadily higher until he blended with the black sky, even to Shane’s keen eyes.

Shane placed a hand on his goblin companion’s shoulder. “Let’s get some sleep.”

With a shrug, Carris followed him along the slick, rotting planks of the boardwalk. When they passed the dock workers, one of them bent over and retched on the ground. A commotion of hollers halted their work.

Gripping his head, the sick man flopped at Shane’s feet. When he turned his neck, his pupils dilated and retracted in quick succession.

Shane yanked Carris back as she stepped around the man with an annoyed grumble. “Hold up.”

“You a doctor all the sudden?” Carris asked, her alto voice laced with sarcasm.

“He’s having a seizure,” Shane said. “From mind craft.”

A teenage goblin boy wearing a gold indenture collar knelt next to the convulsing man. As the cloud cover rolled away, the two half-moons glowed, the red Mortemus twice the size of its silvery-blue neighbor, Vitaeus.

“Mateo,” the boy said, shaking the convulsing man.

“He’ll be fine in a minute,” Shane said.

The boy leaned back, eyeing Shane with his mouth agape.

Sure enough, the man on the ground stilled and groaned. He mumbled in Aginomian.

“What’s he saying?” Shane asked.

The boy met Shane’s gaze with wide lavender eyes. “He’s saying an old woman put magic on ’im.”

“Old woman?” Shane asked.

Bending down, the boy spoke again with the man in his native tongue.

“An old woman in a red dress put pictures in his mind,” he said to Shane. “Something about a man with a mole on his cheek getting on a ship.” The boy rose and dragged the man to his feet. A few dock workers gathered around and carried him away.

“Fires in hell,” Carris growled. “Someone used mind craft on this fellow. Deception. Kritcher does have an accomplice. Terrion, most likely.”

“No,” Shane said. “Kritcher apparently has his own mind craft. He disguised himself. Damn. I looked him right in his filthy eyes and didn’t see him. Burning fires.” He stared at the dock where the Fairy’s Delight had been anchored moments ago. By now, it had cleared the harbor, its full sails catching the air stream, speeding it out to sea.