Soldier of Fortune: A Gideon Quinn Adventure (Fortune Chronicles Book 1) (22 page)

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-N
INE

THE CLOCKS WERE
chiming fourteen noon when Mia, Tiago, DS Hama, Officer Prudawe and four other officers from the 9
th
precinct house stepped onto the sagging Riverside dock.

Ishan, breathing through his teeth, found it amazing that despite over a decade of disuse, the place still reeked of fish.

“Not much left of it, is there?” Officer Prudawe asked, eying the slumping excuse for a boathouse which sat midway along the finger of rotting wood Mia had led them to.

“Puts me in mind of an ancient abstractionist my husband was fond of,” Ishan replied. “Any second now, and it will melt into the river.”

At his side, Mia shrugged, upsetting the draco, Elvis. “It’s not so bad as it looks,” she said, a bit defensively. 

Ishan imagined she was right. He imagined it was a great deal worse than it looked. “Why would Quinn choose this place for a meeting?”

At the question, she shrugged again, but her eyes weren’t on the boat house, they were scanning the surrounding area, as if she were looking for something — or someone.

Quinn?
Ishan wondered. He also looked around, but there was no one and nothing to be seen. There was only the river, grey in the overcast light, and the length of dock strewn with rotting bits of hemp and fishing boats with their hulls staved in and, of course, the boathouse which was their destination.

* * *

“He don’t want to cause no trouble,” Mia had explained, looking remarkably at ease in the 9
th
precinct’s detective pool.

The girl was now seated in the chair Tiago had been occupying, while the draco perched on the chair’s back and added the occasional chirp or hiss to the conversation, like a reptilian chorus of sorts.

“If last night is an example of Quinn not wanting to cause trouble ,” Ishan said, “I shudder to think what would happen if he did want to.”

“I already told you, he didn’t do no murder,” the girl protested.

“But he did, at your own admission, do damage to private property, commit at least one theft and instigated public mayhem.”

“The damage weren’t on him,” she said, loyal to the last, “and it was more borrowing of private property.”

Ishan smiled thinly. “And the mayhem?”

“Depends,” she said, scritching the draco under its chin.

“On what?”

“On what mayhem means.”

Tiago, standing over the young pair, smiled at that. “It means to cause a commotion,” he told the girl. “Among other things.”

“Oh,” she said, biting her lip as she thought. “Yeah, I suppose he done that.”

“My point,” Ishan said, “is that whatever your Mr. Quinn meant, his presence has caused all manner of trouble for the citizens of Nike.”

“Except it ain’t Gideon’s bein’ here that caused the troubles,” Mia said, her eyes glimmering with determination. “The troubles was already there, hidin’ like, until he come in and turned on the lights.”

* * *

Ishan still wasn’t certain he agreed with Mia’s assessment of Quinn’s presence in Nike, but he had agreed to accompany her here, to a section of the Avon River which had been abandoned for many years.

The party was perhaps twenty paces from the boathouse when Ishan spied movement through an open sliver of wall.

Immediately the detective held up a fist and round him, the other officers drew their weapons.

He gestured in a circle and they peeled off to surround the building.

“Stay here,” he ordered Mia and his son. Mia looked ready to protest but Tiago put a gentle hand on her arm — not too close to the draco — and she settled back.

Ishan started for the boathouse door, which hung askew from its hinges, his own weapon charged and ready in his hands. Despite Mia and Tiago’s assurances to the contrary, nothing he’d learned of Quinn thus far indicated he was anything
but
dangerous. Because of this, when the crooked door he approached began to creak open, it took an act of vigorous will not to shoot first and apologize later.

He was particularly relieved he’d resisted the urge when it was Hive Master Donal’s head that appeared around the door. “DS Hama,” Donal’s face split into a grin. “We’ve been expecting you.”

“That is very interesting,” Ishan said, carefully easing his finger away from the trigger, “as I was in no way expecting you.” Then he paused. “We?”

In answer, Donal swung the door further open, allowing Ishan to see who was inside the boathouse.

“Sir?” Prudawe called, from his three o’clock.

“Weapons down!” he called out, then looked at Mia, who was trotting up to join him. “I don’t suppose you would care to explain.”

“It’s complicated,” she said.

“And best discussed inside,” Donal added, opening the door and gesturing expansively within. “As I believe more company will be on the way, shortly.”

* * *

“And Quinn is not here, I take it?” Ishan  asked. On the other side of the room, Tiago spoke with the handful of children who’d been waiting inside with Donal, every one of them, Ishan noted, suffering from malnutrition and varying levels of abuse.

“Mr. Quinn had other business to see to,” Donal explained. “But he did ask me to deliver a message.”

Ishan turned to seek Mia, and found her currently digging through the rubbish at the far end of the boathouse.

“I never said he’d be here,” she told him, not looking up from her labors.

He shook his head and looked at Donal. “And the message would be?”

“The message was to be delivered in three parts,” Donal said, clearly enjoying his role. “The first being, ‘You’re welcome.’”

Ishan had never been a tooth grinder, but even now, he could feel his teeth beginning to grind. “For what?”

It was Mia who answered. “For this,” she said, emerging from the rubbish pile with a lock box, which she proceeded to drag across the floor — it was so heavy Ishan feared the thing would crash through the questionable flooring — and stopped next to Ishan and Donal. “I already unlocked it,” she added, a bit breathless.  

Ishan looked at the box, then at the mass of children, then at Donal. None of them looked worried about what one might find in a locked chest but then, none of them were coppers.
Please let it not be — anything to worry over,
he thought, then opened the box.

He stared down for a moment, then looked at Mia.

“That’s just the small stuff,” she said, rocking back on her heels as she also examined the contents. “Easy to stash, easy to fence, if need be.”

“I could retire on this,” he said numbly.

“I could expand the underground agri-center,” Donal added with a huff of breath.

“Gideon thinks we should give back as much as we can,” Mia said with only a hint of disgust.

“
Gideon
thinks?” Ishan looked up.

“It was also his suggestion,” Donal inserted, “that the children, having suffered under a cruel and corrupt influence, be offered Sanctuary and an opportunity to rejoin society under Keeper protection.”

Ishan felt a bit weak at the knees. He almost sat on the lockbox but for the certainty the floor would give way beneath their combined weight. “And does this corrupt influence have a name?”

“Ellison,” Mia said, the name falling from her tongue like acid. “Erasmus Ellison, our fagin.”

On the other side of the room, a small child of undetermined gender cursed the sounding of that name.

“And that would be the same Erasmus Ellison who claimed Gideon trounced him in your wheat field?” Ishan asked Master Donal.

“It was Elvis here what trounced Ellison,” Mia said proudly.

Ishan looked to the rafters, where Elvis was observing the proceedings. “Good on Elvis,” he murmured, wondering how on Fortune he’d write up this report. “Keeper, Sanctuary is your privilege and the children’s choice,” he told Donal. “Though I will wish to take their testimony against the fagin.”

“We’ll give it, right?” Mia looked at the dodgers, small and solemn and hungry who all nodded — some enthusiastically, some fearfully, but all most definitely.

“Bravely done,” Ishan said to the children, then looked at Donal. “And what is the second part of the message?”

“The second part is more in the way of being a favor,” Donal said.

“What sort of—“ Ishan began, only to be interrupted by Elvis, swooping down to Mia’s shoulder with a low keen.

It was the same haunting noise he’d made when the Rand carriage pulled up in front of the Elysium the previous night.

“I believe,” Donal said as Mia’s eyes, wide and frightened, met his, “you’re about to find out.”

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY

THIS TIME RONAN
skipped the shock stick. Like his sister, he held a live crysto-plas pistol, its grip thrumming reassuringly in his palm as they crept up to the decrepit boathouse where Gideon Quinn had supposedly taken shelter.

“Movement,” Rey whispered and both went still. Their grey on grey clothing, a mirror of the overcast sky, blended into the warped wood of the dock.

Ronan peered up through the hood of his tunic to see the last hint of a shadow passing the cracked glass of a window. He then checked their distance — twenty meters, give or take. “Door or window?” he asked, his voice barely even a whisper, this close to the objective.

“Door,” she mouthed. “High and low.”

He nodded and pulled his left arm from its sling. He still couldn’t use it but he wanted the arm free for balance and, he could admit, for the pain because pain fueled anger and this anger would see Quinn dead at his feet.

As one, the siblings made a fast, hunched-back dash for the crookedly hung door. Once there, Rey took hold of the knob. On the silent count of three, she yanked it open and ducked under his arm as both dove into the room, he high and right, she low and left,

“Eat plasma, Quinn!” Ronan called recklessly, finger already tightening on the trigger.

Except there was no Quinn to take out.

What there was, was a robust-looking Keeper, standing directly in front of the door, his teeth bared in something that could in no way be confused with a smile.

There were also, Ronan realized, a handful of coppers, weapons active and raised, spread throughout the room.

One of these coppers was standing against the wall to Ronan’s right, close enough Ronan could feel the vibration from his pistol.

“You know how this works,” the copper said to the flummoxed mercenary. “Do the needful, or I will have your smoking arse on the floor before you can count to one.”

As the twins, faces dark with fury, laid down their arms, Hama heard Tiago’s whispered cheer from the other side of the boathouse, where he, the children and the other Keepers had been huddling behind the rubbish pile. This filial approbation was immediately followed by Mia’s in no way whispered, “Your dad’s a right badass!”

Ishan Hama suppressed a smile and stepped back as Officers Prudawe and Stoltz put the two would-be killers in irons.

Any day he could impress the youth of Nike was a good day, he supposed, though he still had no idea who these twins were, or why they should be wanting to kill Gideon Quinn.

And then Donal cleared his throat. At least, Ishan assumed the noise (like a mason’s power grinder) was the Hive Master clearing his throat.

“Now it is time for the third part of the message,” Donal said, handing over a Stolichnayan infantry radio that had seen far better days. “Mr. Quinn sends this, with his compliments, and asks that you turn it on as soon as you are within range of the Rand residence, but that you not enter the house until he makes direct contact.”

Mia, who’d already been impressed by DS Hama’s cool apprehension of the twins, was even more enamored by the detective’s varied and creative swearing. “I ain’t even heard some of them words,” she confessed to Tiago.

“I think he’s inventing a few new ones, just for the occasion,” Hama’s son replied.

“Cor,” Mia said, shaking her head in admiration.

* * *

Outside, a few dozen meters downstream from the boathouse dock, Nahmin watched a not insignificant procession make its way to land. The unusual parade consisted of an interesting mix of law enforcement — civilian and Keeper — as well as a number of children, a young man of no obvious profession and, interestingly, a draco, flying over the lot.

There were also Rey and Ronan Pradesh, both being led away in shackles.

Even more interestingly, there was no sign of Quinn. 

Which meant Quinn was somewhere else, and Nahmin had a terrible feeling he knew exactly where that somewhere else was.

The procession was now moving further away from the river — no doubt their transportation was hidden somewhere in the warehouses scattered about the abandoned docks — so Nahmin also removed himself.

* * *

And while Nahmin sped away, Erasmus Ellison hunkered in the wreckage of an old ferry left to ruin on the shore and watched as the coppers and Keepers waltzed off.

Waltzed off with his loot and his dodgers.

With a stealth that belied his bulk, the fagin trailed the lot, and when they reached their cycles, clustered in the ruins of an old Tenjin Corp warehouse, he listened to DS Hama dispatching his officers like a general ordering his troops, some to deliver the man and woman they’d nicked to the precinct, and others to attend him to some risto’s house near the city’s center.

Then he waited until Hama and Prudawe mounted their cycles, again with Mia riding pillion. He waited for the draco to fly off after them, and then he waited for the Keepers, with the young man and Ellison’s dodgers in tow, to make their way out of the ruins of the old dockyards.

Once the coast was clear, he made a beeline for the bridge where he’d parked the stolen Comet, which he then drove at a calm and considered pace to 16 Chaucer Street, the address Hama had announced as his next destination.