Wizardborn (World's First Wizard Book 3) by Aaron Schneider (read me like a book txt) 📕

train, with Ambrose being carried behind him in a pine box. Ambrose had traded his uniform for some tattered remnants smeared with the blood of one of the Soviets. It turned out the Red’s clothing hadn’t been burned; it was just that the guards were petty. Here they were, one captured black coat and one Russian spy’s corpse, all being served up to Roland. They just had to make it past some watchdogs first.

“What is this?” asked the officer standing on the platform as he nodded at Milo with obvious disdain.

He was a gaunt man with a long face with heavy brows over a pair of busy, worried eyes. He stood with arms crossed and foot tapping, trying to affect a stance of irritated boredom, but his eyes betrayed him. Nothing passed beneath his sight that was not scrutinized minutely.

Milo’s stomach clenched, and his mouth suddenly felt dry. He hoped the man didn’t start questioning him, lest he give himself away with a careless word or gesture.

“A gift for our Russian friend,” Lokkemand said in an enviably steady voice. “I thought you might drop him off since you were headed that way.”

The officer threw a sour look at Lokkemand.

“We’re not a parcel service.”

Lokkemand laughed, a strong, genuine chuckle that made the officer wince.

“Oh, Karl, always with the jokes,” Lokkemand said as though the two were old friends. “We both know you’ve got plenty of room, and this particular bit of cargo could prove very useful to our allies’ schemes and thus to ours.”

As Lokkemand spoke, Milo gently reached out his will and prodded the officer’s psyche with the Art. To Milo’s eyes, Lokkemand’s jocular tone seemed to be putting the black coat on edge, thus putting the magus on alert. Was this all a grand deception, an excuse to put Milo in as compromising a situation as possible?

“Even with that coat, he won’t be trusted near the men,” Karl replied, looking at Milo with a curled lip.

Milo found the officer’s will to be incredibly responsive, and in an instant, he discovered why the black coat became edgier the friendlier Lokkemand was. Karl was insecure. In a flash of tangled emotions and memories, Milo saw that Lokkemand was everything this man wasn’t, and Karl knew it. Lokkemand’s friendly tone made him certain the captain was mocking him, and he was so fixated on that, he was paying less attention to Milo.

“Oh, of course not,” Lokkemand replied. “I imagine a smart fellow like you’d want to stash him with the rest of the shipment, though I might assign a man to watch. He’s a clever little rat.”

Lokkemand rapped Milo’s head with one large knuckle and chuckled.

“Can’t be too careful with the beasts,” Lokkemand said with a wink to his fellow officer.

“Yes, of course,” Karl simpered as he leaned forward to gloat over Milo’s humiliation. As he did, his eyes swung past Milo’s shoulder and settled on the box containing Ambrose. “What’s in the box?”

“Oh, yes!” Lokkemand exclaimed with self-deprecating laughter. “How could I forget?”

Lokkemand pushed Milo at a trio of soldiers standing to Karl’s right.

“Mind him, would you?” he said in the off-hand way a man of authority gives a command phrased as a question. Lokkemand motioned for Karl to draw close as he moved to the box and lifted the lid.

“Dear God!” Karl gagged as a wave of stench emerged from the box.

Milo had ensorcelled some bits of meat and giblets from a butcher in Sergio-Ivanoskye to emit the putrid smell as they sat splayed across Ambrose’s stomach. It had been eye-wateringly convincing when he’d made it, and Milo was glad that the smelly mess hadn’t faded too quickly.

“Yeah, I hate it when all the bits pop like that, but this one was run down as he tried to escape,” Lokkemand said before pointing at something within the box. “I think you can still see the wheel tread on that bit right there.”

Karl turned from the box, his face pale and sweaty and one hand raised to his mouth.

“What would the Russians want with that thing?” he demanded, his legs trembling as the other hand sank to brace his stomach.

With his head bowed, Milo hid a devious smile. Being a true German of the Reich didn’t spare one from having a weak stomach.

“Didn’t you see the uniform?” Lokkemand said, his voice pitched to suggest shock and bewilderment as his gray eyes pinioned his fellow black coat. “Surely, you noticed it was wearing one of the Reds’ uniforms, didn’t you?”

Milo felt Karl’s will twist and squirm with fear as the insecurity bloomed into nerve-rattling terror. The man was terrified of looking incapable or incompetent, especially in front of Lokkemand. Milo subtly stoked the fear toward defiant anger.

“Of course I did,” he replied brusquely, a little color returning to his face as his cheeks flushed.

“Then I’m sure you know what this means when matched with your other cargo,” Lokkemand said, his voice dropping to a low whisper as he nodded meaningfully at Milo.

Milo, still using the Art to keep a thumb on the pulse of Karl’s will, felt unease and fear bloom again. Karl, it seemed, did not have a clue what it meant, but thanks to the anger, his fear of Lokkemand was growing into a vitriolic hatred.

Lokkemand’s expectant silence stretched, and Milo became afraid that his manipulation of Karl might get out of hand. If the black coat decided to be spiteful to the captain because of his growing hatred, their whole plan could be thwarted, and things would become much more complicated.

Milo couldn’t handle any more complications. He decided then and there to do something he’d never attempted before.

Using the Art, he sent the suggestion of images dappling across the black coat’s will, but instead of trying to affect his physical senses, Milo tried to affect his mind. He wasn’t convincing Karl that he was seeing or feeling anything, but that he was thinking something. It was akin to what he and Rihyani did when they communicated wordlessly, but far