“I’m afraid you won’t get your hands on this ‘fragment’ so soon.”
Cove and Sinbad’s eyes briefly darted to me accusingly, and I raised an eyebrow in return. Cove was the one with better fortune-telling abilities…though I suppose he was blocked off from accessing them at the moment. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Ani and Ranch slink out from beneath the bed.
Catching this, Shahrazad calmly added, “Unfortunately, if I hand this over to you now, my head will be on the executioner’s block the next morning. As I told Hayden, once the threat has passed and you’ve completed the task I’ve assigned you,” again, Cove looked accusingly in my direction as if I asked to be drawn into the conflict of every world I’ve entered so far when I hadn’t even wanted to do anything in the first place.
Ranch took her place at Cove’s feet while Ani begged to be picked up at mine.
“May I ask what–” Sinbad, looking slightly excited, began as I hefted Ani into my arms.
“No, you may not,” Shahrazad cut his line of questioning at the roots. “He will explain it to you once you have ‘escaped’ the castle.”
Uneasily, I shifted my attention to the guards, who appeared unphased by this statement from her. Cove’s hand twitched, and Sinbad shuffled his feet. Shahrazad stood proud in her room, looking every bit the queen she was. It didn’t occur to us to argue with her any further. Perhaps the guards had long since learned that lesson.
She snapped once, and a mamluk approached silently from behind, stepping forward to the wardrobe Sinbad and Cove had secluded themselves away in. The man climbed into the wardrobe, his massive form hiding his movements from us as we looked on curiously. We heard a very faint scraping sound, and the mamluk stepped further into the wardrobe, vanishing completely down a hidden passage.
“This leads down to an untraceable, private shuttle. Please take it to meet with your crew and leave both shuttles down by the docs. There, you’ll find a brand-new ship with all the equipment you’ll need for the mission. Once you have finished, simply show this to any guard of mamluk.” She slid her hand into her pocket, pulling out a golden token attached to a leather rope meant to be hung around a neck. Shahrazad held it out to me, waiting patiently as I shifted Ani’s weight in my arms and took the pendant.
It was pleasantly warm to the touch. I clasped my fingers around the pendant and shoved it into my inventory, where it would remain safe until it was time to use.
“Guards loyal to my husband will be replacing these soon. You must go.”
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Next thing we knew, we were pushing back the clothes and following the mamluk down a sparsely lit passageway.
Cove brushed past me, a teasing smile on his face. “For someone who claims to be all about self-preservation and helping only out of self-interest, you certainly get yourself into a lot of trouble.”
Sinbad exchanged a knowing smile with him as if to share in a private joke at my expense.
“I’m working on it,” I grumbled. Too many people believed I was already a good person.
“Quiet,” the mamluk ordered.
We fell silent.
He turned the corner, his footsteps petering out from wood onto solid ground. There was a loud clanking as he flipped a switch, and we followed him around the corner to see ceiling lights growing brighter up ahead in the small dock containing a buoy. Above it was a door only slightly larger than the buoy itself, surrounded by red lights that were bright but still easy to look at without getting blinded.
With the press of a button, the cockpit of the buoy opened, and we climbed into the ship that was around the size of a small car. Cove and I allowed Sinbad to take the wheel without question, climbing into the back seat with Ani and Ranch clasped tightly in our laps. Outside, the mamluk retreated to the entrance of the small underground room, his hand hovering above the lights. Sinbad flicked a few switches and turned various knobs, a slight humming sound coming from the craft as it powered up. With a gentle flick of his hands, we began to hover gently off the ground, and the ceiling opened up above us, slotting nicely into place behind the glowing red circle.
With a gentle pull, Sinbad guided us perfectly through the hole and into the pink dawn sky above. The ground closed beneath us as we lifted above the trees, the entire area vanishing completely from sight. With hardly more than a gentle hum, Sinbad guided us through the trees at the speed of a bullet train, somehow managing to avoid striking a tree or a player at the insane speed we were traveling at.
In less than a minute, we were setting the ship down at the dock, the door falling into a platform connecting the inside of the ship to the dock. Ani leaped out of my arms as we exited, running down the small ramp and the hallway of the deck before stopping at the elevator and turning back as if to say, ‘What’s taking you so long?’
Another mamluk intercepted us at the elevator, slipping in silently behind us and altering the destination floor. He slid something into Sinbad’s hands and said, “The ship is ready and waiting, sir. Your crew is waiting for you.”
Sinbad tucked the item in his pocket with a grateful grin. “Thank you.”
The mamluk angled his head slightly as the elevator slowed to a quiet stop, the doors hissing open. Sinbad and Ani stepped out of the elevator confidently, Cove and I following after a brief, hesitant pause. A dog on a mission, Sinbad walked quickly through the empty room, heading toward the only ship docked on this level.
It was smaller than the passenger ship we’d taken to get here, maybe a tenth of the size. Still, it was massive, easily as large as my apartment building. A group of men stood outside the ship, huddled together in small packs. One casually glanced in our direction as Sinbad approached, his eyes going wide.
“Captain approaching!” He warned the rest of the men.
They slid into clean lines on either side of the plank, slotting into place with practiced ease.