The scepter heist the dr.., p.1
The Scepter Heist (The Dragon Rogues Book 2), page 1
THE SCEPTER HEIST
The Dragon Rogues Book 2
D.K. HOLMBERG
Copyright © 2022 by D.K. Holmberg
Cover by Damonza.com
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Author’s Note
Series by D.K. Holmberg
Chapter One
Jonathan Aguelon didn’t care much for this part of the city. For one thing, it was too quiet.
He’d had enough of general silence around him, especially after having spent five long years in prison—five years where he had been apart from everything he had known, where the only sounds had been his breaths, his heart beating in his chest, and the occasional noises that came from other cells. Some of the other inmates had tried to fill the silence, but men grew tired of talking, and Jonathan grew tired of listening.
This area of the city was quiet like that, and the silence enveloped him in a way he could scarcely stand. Part of it was because there weren’t many people out in the streets, which didn’t bother him so much. But the quiet was also because of how everything was so widely spaced. In other parts of Ishan, the buildings were closer together, and there was a general hustle and commotion that Jonathan had grown accustomed to.
Now that he was out of prison and back in the city, he found he gravitated toward that chaos, if only to remind himself it was still there. He had missed it.
“Would you stop looking back?” Matthew said.
Jonathan glanced over to his friend. He had his dark gray cloak thrown over his shoulders, concealing the sword beneath. It was a unique blade, especially here.
No. It’d be considered unique everywhere, Jonathan thought. Not many people carried blades like that, and few could afford one.
“I’m just—”
Matthew grunted. “I know what you’re doing. Do you realize you’ve been doing it ever since you got out? I remember the very first day you found me—interrupting my game, as I recall—you kept looking around just like that.”
“Was I?”
“You weren’t focused on the task at hand, so I would say that yes, you definitely were.”
Jonathan had thought that he’d been keeping himself focused, but he apparently had not been. Maybe that shouldn’t surprise him. His mind wandered these days, more than it probably should, and that could be dangerous. It was one thing to think about the aspects of a job he was going to do, but it was something else altogether to allow himself to get caught up in the activity around him.
“I’m here. I’m fine.” He said it mostly for himself.
Matthew scoffed. “You don’t even know if this man is going to know anything.”
“I don’t,” Jonathan agreed.
After Jonathan, Matthew, and their crew had robbed Vileforn’s vault, they’d made themselves incredibly wealthy and left Vileforn to the king’s mercy—and given that Vileforn had been plotting to overthrow the king, there had been very little mercy for him. Jonathan had also been looking for information about his old mentor ever since.
Grayson had been dead. At least, that was what he had been told and had come to believe. Heziah had told Jonathan that Grayson was alive and had been used for his plan, which had forced Jonathan to start looking for his mentor. Digging, really. There was no way Grayson would be helping Heziah.
Jonathan and Matthew were pursuing the first real lead they had. It had taken Jonathan a long time to get any information about Grayson, though mostly that was because it had been challenging to obtain more information about Heziah.
“We’re just going to ask questions,” Jonathan said.
“Fine. We go for questions,” Matthew said, “but what happens if you get something actionable? What do you intend to do?”
Jonathan knew his answer, but the real question was whether he was going to have the spine to do it. “I’m going to make sure Heziah loses.”
Matthew shook his head. His gaze darted all around him, probably more so than Jonathan’s did. For as much as he teased Jonathan about the way he looked everywhere, Matthew did basically the same thing. Then again, that was his role on their team. He was an enforcer who also took it upon himself to keep them safe. All of them.
“We haven’t seen Heziah since the job,” Matthew said. “If he was going to come after us, he would’ve done so by now. We dealt him a blow.”
“I think he only wants us to believe that,” Jonathan said.
Matthew nodded. “You know, you might be right. I keep thinking that he’s going to come at us. A man with his power and ability being bested by somebody without any magic? He’s not going to take it lightly. Even if it was by the great Jonathan Aguelon—the Dragon.”
“He was bested by Jonathan Aguelon. He never had to face the Dragon.”
Matthew looked as if he wanted to say something, but he bit it back.
They passed a run-down building that looked as if a fire had licked the boards and left them charred. In the distance, two underfed dogs chased each other, romping in some game only they understood. A ball rolled toward the street before disappearing. A thin, small child scurried after the ball, dark brown hair hanging in their face. At least there was some activity here—a sense of life and something else to be found.
Most of the buildings were falling down like the one that had been burned, though they were not nearly as damaged as that. Weeds grew along the structures and between them, and the weeds here hadn’t been trampled or pulled as they were in other parts of the city. The occasional person they did see looked just as threadbare as the buildings themselves.
All of this left Jonathan feeling unlikely that they would find anything out about Grayson here. If Grayson were alive—and as much as he hated to acknowledge what Heziah had told him, Jonathan remained compelled to believe that he had been telling the truth—then he didn’t think Grayson would be hidden out here.
Jonathan slowed for a moment. “Something doesn’t feel right.”
Matthew snorted. “You’re just now getting to that?”
“Well, I suppose I realized it before, but now I’m starting to acknowledge it.”
“It’s because of the part of the city we’re in. I don’t know that we can trust what Bartholomew told us.”
“The information wasn’t from Bartholomew,” Jonathan said.
Matthew arched a brow. “You have a more extensive network?”
“I’ve been back for a few months. Of course I have a bigger network now.”
“Of course nothing,” Matthew said. “If you’ve been working on your own network, you’ve been keeping it to yourself.”
Jonathan shrugged. “You don’t need to know everything. A man has to have his own secrets.”
“Maybe a man does, but I’m not so sure you do.”
Jonathan snickered. He paused, rubbing his arms. “It’s the feeling I’m getting here. There’s something.”
Jonathan had a gift that allowed him to feel magic used around him. He couldn’t detect it all the time, but often enough that he had come to recognize it and learn how it worked. Jonathan knew to pay attention to when magic was used near him. The sensation of power would wash over him and leave his skin tingling.
In this case, he had not felt anything before, but there was something now that he felt he needed to be paying attention to. If there was magic present, Jonathan had to watch out for it. He had to be ready for whatever it was.
“Do you detect anything?” he asked Matthew.
“I don’t have your ability.”
Jonathan looked over. “You have your own talents.”
That was about as far as he ever went with referring to Matthew’s heritage—at least the heritage that Jonathan suspected. He didn’t push, as Matthew was his friend, as well as the one person other than his sister who had gone looking for him when Jonathan had been imprisoned.
“It seems to me that there is a faint trace of magic here. And if that’s the case…”
Matthew frowned as he looked around, realization dawning on him. “You think this is Grayson?”
“Well, we’ve been looking for any sign of him, haven’t we? Anything that might tell us he’s here, and we haven’t found anything. The report I got sugg ested that he was out here. Or someone was, at least. Maybe it was never him.”
Admittedly, it was a weak report, and Jonathan had not expected to actually find anything from it. The information had been based on little more than an offhand comment about the sorcerer’s sneak, which could have meant anything.
Matthew spun in place slowly, and the intensity to his gaze suggested that he saw something Jonathan did not. He was likely using one of his enchantments. Matthew favored enchantments at all times, thinking that they gave him an advantage over those who didn’t have them. Now that they had considerable funds to purchase such items, he never hesitated to use them the way he once would have.
“I don’t see anything,” Matthew said.
“I don’t know that you’re going to see magic,” Jonathan said. “That’s the point. I’m wondering if maybe we can feel it, though.”
As Jonathan looked around, he certainly felt something. In this part of the city, in a place where he would not expect magic to exist, he found it somewhat surprising that there would be any sense of power out here. Unless somebody was using an enchantment the way Matthew was.
But the magic didn’t feel enchanted. There was something about enchantments that Jonathan had come to recognize. For the most part, they gave off a sensation of directionality to the power, much different than what he detected when someone used sorcery, or even a facade. This had a certain nonspecific directionality to it, something that was almost unfocused. Maybe it really was Grayson.
“I don’t suppose you have any enchantments on you that might disrupt what’s out here?” Jonathan said.
Matthew glanced over. “If there’s a facade out here, it’s incredible. Far more extensive than anything I’ve ever seen or experienced. I don’t know how powerful Grayson was—”
“Is,” Jonathan said, a little harder than he intended.
Matthew nodded, but his expression didn’t soften much. “I don’t know how powerful he is, but this would be more than any sneak would be capable of. Much more than even him.”
“Even a sneak who had been working with sorcerers?”
Matthew opened his mouth as if to argue, but he closed it and instead looked around. “Look for anything unusual. Aren’t you the one who taught me how to identify gaps in a facade? Even the most skilled sneak can make a mistake, can’t they? You taught me that, Jonathan. It’s a matter of finding the space where something should be but isn’t. And once you find it, then you can peel it away, or at least try to pass through it.”
Jonathan barked out a laugh. “All this time, you’ve actually been paying attention to what I say?”
“Only when you have good advice, like in this case. You saved me from a few different facades over the years. All because of that one little piece of information.”
Jonathan hadn’t seen any of the rippling he attributed to a facade. If there was something like that present, he thought he would’ve come across it by now. Given how comfortable he was with looking for that, he generally found it without even having to think about it. Part of that came from his time working with Grayson, but part of it came from working with Elizabeth over the last few months. She had been honing her skill with making a facade, which had forced Jonathan to understand it just as well so that he could explain it to her.
“I don’t see anything,” Jonathan said.
“Then maybe this isn’t a facade.”
“Or it’s just one made by an expert.”
Matthew shrugged. “If it’s him, maybe there’s a reason he doesn’t want you to find him.”
“The reason is that Heziah has him wound up with his work.”
“Or he’s upset about what happened with that job,” Matthew said. “I know I was angry when I learned what had happened. How you kept me out of it. Gods, I’m still upset about it, if I’m honest with you. I know you were doing it because you thought it was for the best, but there are ways to include your friend. Friends.”
“He was included,” Jonathan said.
It had been Jonathan’s fault that Grayson had been caught. For many years, Grayson had been actively working as a sneak to create facades for different teams just like Jonathan’s, and it had been Jonathan who had gotten him captured. All because of a job Jonathan had chosen to take that had probably been too dangerous for their team, but it was a job he had felt he’d needed to get revenge for what had happened to him. That had been the only reason he’d wanted to do it.
“Let’s keep looking here,” Matthew said. “If you see anything, we can stop. But if you don’t, I’m not exactly sure how you thought you were going to find him out here in the first place.”
“I thought I would see evidence of his work,” Jonathan admitted.
Matthew laughed. “So you anticipated finding a facade, and now when I suggest that this might be one, you disagree with me?”
The dogs circled in front of them and ran down the street, chasing one another again.
Jonathan froze. That exact movement had happened before. He pointed toward them.
Matthew frowned. “What is it?”
“You didn’t see those dogs?”
“I saw them. What’s the issue?”
“Did you see the dogs circle around each other?” Jonathan asked.
“Like I said, I saw them, but what are you getting at?”
Jonathan jogged forward, watching the sides of the streets as he did. Movement sometimes made a facade ripple faster, and it sometimes made it harder for the illusion to hold. Usually that occurred when somebody else was moving, but Jonathan had found that sometimes when he moved, the facade would shift and shimmer just a little bit, enough so that it was hard to maintain completely. It became increasingly difficult to hold on to when somebody was moving.
He didn’t see the rippling effect, though he started to question whether there would be anything. By the time he reached the alley where the dogs had gone, he didn’t see them. They had scurried away.
“So you chased away a couple of dogs. Now what?” Matthew asked.
Jonathan pointed to the street in front of him. “That’s what.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“Exactly. There were two dogs here. At least, I saw two dogs.” He looked over to Matthew. “I don’t know what you saw.”
Matthew grunted. “I thought I saw two. Unless you’re trying to tell me that there weren’t any here.”
“They were here. Well, we were supposed to see that they were here. But look at the ground. Do you see any footprints?”
Matthew tipped his head to the side, then crouched down. Jonathan joined him. The ground was hard-packed dirt, and though grasses and weeds cropped up, he didn’t see anything that had been disturbed. In fact, as he looked back, there was no sign of their passing through either. All of this was artificial.
“Someone is holding a facade,” Jonathan said. “If it’s not Grayson, then it’s someone else.”
“If it’s Grayson, and he knows you’re here, then give him a chance to come out,” Matthew said.
“If it’s him, he would have every opportunity to show himself.”
The fact that Grayson hadn’t done so suggested that he did not want to. Or he wasn’t able to. Jonathan and Matthew had found no evidence of Heziah since finishing the Vileforn job. Heziah had simply vanished.
Only, Jonathan didn’t think that the sorcerer had truly vanished. He was still out there. They had expended significant resources to try to find where he might’ve gone, and though Jonathan hadn’t found anything, he remained convinced that Heziah would find them. He would want revenge.
“Walk with me,” Jonathan said.
Matthew nodded, his hand on the hilt of his sword.
They carefully made their way along the street but still did not find anyone. Jonathan recalled the child who had run across the street in the distance, but now there was nothing. The silence made a different sort of sense to him as well. Only potent facades could mute sound, but given the extent of the illusion they were seeing, Jonathan supposed that he shouldn’t be completely surprised.
