“What?” Kalyan asks, noticing my stare.
I buckle Hubris to my belt. “Nothing. Let’s go.”
We run into a wall, the rocky end of Belwar Bay, where the cliffs raise up to form the southernmost coast of continental Wickery. We’ve passed fifteen perfectly fine docks, all posed and ready with hundreds of ships latched to their sides or floating just off. Now it’s emptiness, a wall, and the slosh of semicalm sea.
“Sixteen, you said?” Kalyan asks.
“Blood.” I knew the number sixteen sounded wrong on Sims’s lips; I thought Belwar had only fifteen working piers. I’m an idiot. Months of work and blood in the ring, and Sims lied to my face. And I had thought I had put on my Bloodlurst addict act so well too.Idiot.
Kalyan suddenly points. “The waves are off.”
I whirl around. “What?” But I’m already looking, analyzing where he gestures. And I see it. A current is bringing in the waves and they furl nicely into surf. But they aren’t catching therocks. In fact, if anything is off it’s that the waves are altogether too peaceful.
Kalyan and I both step back and I reexamine what’s in front of us.
“A near-perfect illusion,” Kalyan voices. My sentiment exactly. I’m almost in awe of this thing’s complexity and strength. Nightfall helps, but still. Mere wind isn’t breaking it.
“Except at the seams.” I glance over at him. He really is a natural at black magic. He’ll have no problem casting on his own mask, a spell I created to conceal myself.
“Except at the seams,” he agrees.
We creep up the beach, guiding ourselves along the illusion, not daring to break through yet. Best to find the edging so that the two of us aren’t walking in the middle of who knows what. Right past the seawall we find the fissure of a corner. Now the hard part, because the easiest thing about an illusion is breaking it. That’s the opposite of what we want, however. The Vencrin are astute enough to notice two people-sized holes.
I ready myself to step forward and cast my own little illusion like a poor patch job, but Kalyan stops me. With one spell, white smoke engulfs his arms, and he reaches forward and pulls the corner apart. His nod indicates I should go ahead, like he’s holding a door open for me. One might even consider this gesture chivalrous, if the other side didn’t possibly lead to the criminal underbelly of Belwar. But his magic is still impressive.
The scene that appears after I duck under Kalyan’s arm? Not so much. Pier Sixteen resides on the grimy side of forgotten and abandoned, just past disgusting and living alongside jagged rocks, and waves endlessly try to soften them. An average captain would perish if he set off from this location. Now the location makes sense. The Vencrin have tapered off the last section of beach, a place no one would think to reclaim due to the risk and needless danger.
Voices rise from down the pier, and Kalyan and I crouch behind the nearest jumble of wicker crates and fishing nets. A quite flavorful seaside stench confronts us, but I don’t think we’ve been spotted. From our perch we can see a ship that doesn’t appear to be in much better condition than its dock. Sludge and barnacles have climbed from the water and cling to the boat’s siding. Sails with small tears in their orange fabric fan out like the scales of a fish.
Three wizards are loading a crate, one positioned on the dock, one on the ramp, and one on deck. They use a yellow levitation spell, passing the wicker crate among the three of them in a rainbow sheet of orange, black, and purple. It must be heavy and fragile to need the power and concentration of all three wizards.
There’s something weird about the orange forte user. I don’t recognize him from the Underground and yet his features ring inside my memory. Where have I seen him before?Wasit the Underground?
I’m wasting time searching my nagging memory. “I need to see what’s in those crates,” I whisper.
Kalyan pushes at my shoulder as I begin to stand. “You’re going to barge in there with no plan?”
“No, I was about to tell you the plan.”
“I think we should call the Dome Guard. Get them involved. Will only take one bout of magic.”
“No,” I say reflexively at the thought of a jet of white magic zooming into the sky and alerting everyone to our position. But then I pause. Guard?The guard!Basu. The man with the nose, who loaded Basu’s unconscious body and kept staring at me. I spin back to the man with a crate above his head. It’s him.
“It would be better if—”
I cut Kalyan off. “Blood no. See the wizard closest to us. He works for the Guard.”
“How do you know that?”
“Long story. Doesn’t matter now, but I’m sure of it.”
It does matter, though. Was that why Basu was released so quickly? The betrayal when I fought Basu gathers its twin and stuffs the emotion into my heart. Why! Why is everything corrupt in Belwar? Then an awful thought permeates my misery. Is this why the best swordsman and purple magic user I know is in a coma? Maybe it wasn’t just a Vencrin attack that cast Riya’s father into his deathlike state. Maybe it was an ambush, the Guard itself backstabbing him. I stifle the rage that wants to spout out of my mouth.
Kalyan’s stunned expression reverts to one of neutral concentration. “You’re right. If he’s a Belwar guard we can’t call them.”
Good, he’s with me, because I can’t stop now. Forget my promise to Maharaja Naupure about retreat if necessary. I’m going to make these men bleed.
“You take the guard on the dock. I’ll take the one on the ship. Whoever the black ramp wizard goes for, we take him out.”
