Black Ocean 04.5: Guardian of the Plundered Tomes by J. S. Morin

Author:J. S. Morin [Morin, J. S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction
Publisher: Magical Scrivener Press
Published: 2014-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

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On the streets of Boston Prime lurked no fewer than eight Mordecais. None of them would notice it, of course, but everyone who saw them perceived them as a tall, scrawny wizard with a baggy-sleeved shirt and a pack slung over one shoulder. Only someone as talented as Mordecai would be able to tell which was which without resorting to vulgar displays of revelatory magic. Every time he found himself at a crossroads or crowded terminal, he found a likely candidate heading in another direction and deputized them as a new doppelganger. Yet every time he sent another false Mordecai to muddle his path, he was still left with the pervasive feeling of being followed.

If he could not buy himself a moment’s peace from whoever was pursuing him, his plan might fall dead at his feet. Mordecai tried something more creative. He stopped at a shuttle terminal—nothing fancy, just a simple intra-hemispheric depot. Giving a paranoid look over his shoulder, he ducked into the mens’ washroom. In the privacy of his stall, he paused to collect his thoughts, counting to one hundred with a slow, even cadence in his head. He emerged and washed his hands, studying a gentleman at the sink beside him—tall, wide shoulders, with a gray suit and matching hair, receding from the brow. The man carried a business attaché case.

When Mordecai left that washroom, he was the one with the grey suit and hair, his knapsack transformed to appear as an attaché case. The false Mordecai who followed him out sported a beard and glasses that Mordecai lacked, and wore different clothing, but in all other ways look just like him, right down to the case that appeared as a knapsack, dangling casually from his hand.

Mordecai never discovered his pursuer. He stood by a departure and arrival board and watched as his body double boarded a flight to London Prime. By the time the shuttle to London lifted off, the sensation of a wizard concealed in close proximity vanished. It had to have been one of Wenling’s lackeys, he had assumed initially. But the more he thought about it, he wondered if it had been Pao Wenling herself following him. It certainly would have explained his inability to pinpoint his pursuer. As he watched the shuttle disappear into the distance, he raised a finger to his temple in a quiet salute.

Free from his tail, Mordecai made for the theater district, resuming his own form. At the Orpheum, he slipped past two magic-befuddled doormen and made his way backstage. “Where can I find Chuck Ramsey?” Mordecai asked a flunky who stood with datapad in hand, updating the flatvid boards that showed what was playing at the theater.

“That lot’s shipping off-world,” the flunky replied. “Try Logan Starport. His ship is the Radiocity.” The lad pronounced it like some sort of chemical process, but being a wizard, Mordecai’s mind parsed things differently. He instantly saw a likely spelling in his head, pulled it apart, and reattached it as Radio City, a New York Prime theater just as famous as the Orpheum.

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