Spy for a Vicious Circle (The Adventures of Grant Scotland, Book Five)

By Dan McClure

Rapid changes come to Aelfa, a city ruled by a foreign king but controlled by a crime boss. While King Reynard remains absent, the nefarious Mr. Quinn spreads his own influence and increases his power. Everyone in the city seems to be under his thumb, including the luckless Grant Scotland, caught in the middle of a web of intrigue and trying desperately to unravel the machinations of those thirsting to make a play for power in the once-proud ancient city. When a mysterious foreign investor appears and buys up land under Quinn’s nose, Grant is pulled into an ever-widening investigation of smuggling, corruption, and murder that will threaten to tear the city apart. As he prepares to make sure Quinn is out of the picture before the long hoped-for liberation of Aelfa by the forces of Zyren, he finds he must contend with not just one greedy villain, but an entire vicious circle of both friends and foes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dan McClure
• Release date: Nov 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463213438

Dan McClure

Writing, working and living in beautiful, historic Arlington, MA.

Book preview

Adventures of Grant Scotland: Spy for a Vicious Circle

Dan McClure

Copyright 2019 Dan McClure

Published by Dan McClure at Smashwords

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Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

MEET GRANT SCOTLAND

BOOK 1

BOOK 2

BOOK 3

3-BOOK SERIES BOXED SET

BOOK 4

DESCRIPTION

RAPID CHANGES COME TO AELFA, a city ruled by a foreign king but controlled by a crime boss. While King Reynard remains absent, the nefarious Mr. Quinn spreads his own influence and increases his power. Everyone in the city seems to be under his thumb, including the luckless Grant Scotland, caught in the middle of a web of intrigue and trying desperately to unravel the machinations of those thirsting to make a play for power in the once-proud ancient city. When a mysterious foreign investor appears and buys up land under Quinn’s nose, Grant is pulled into an ever-widening investigation of smuggling, corruption, and murder that will threaten to tear the city apart. As he prepares to make sure Quinn is out of the picture before the long hoped-for liberation of Aelfa by the forces of Zyren, he finds he must contend with not just one greedy villain, but an entire vicious circle of both friends and foes.

DEDICATION

To Ed Gardner—lifelong friend, patron of the arts, philosopher, and bandit king.

CONTENTS

MEET GRANT SCOTLAND

DESCRIPTION

DEDICATION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER ONE

DON’T JUDGE SOMEONE UNTIL YOU’VE WALKED A MILE IN THEIR BOOTS. That’s a little piece of wisdom my father passed on to me. But what about running a mile? Would that be any different? More tiring, probably. I wondered how many steps Dad took in old King Theobald’s boots before he killed him. That was a dark thought, but it’s hard to think cheery thoughts with burning lungs and aching legs. If I could have stopped, I’m sure my mood might have improved.

Up ahead the Aelmouth Bridge came into view and I started to feel a little better. Perhaps less bad would be a better way to describe it. I told myself I was at the halfway point—past it, probably—and forced my legs to keep pumping and my heart to stay in my chest for just a few more minutes. It’s all downhill from here. Not quite true, because that would mean I’d soon be running under water, which is difficult if not impossible. The thought of it made my legs tired and I almost stopped running on the spot, so instead I concentrated on the tall mug of beer that awaited me soon after I crossed the Ael River.

If I could just make it across the twin spans of the Aelmouth Bridge, I’d be home free. I wouldn’t stop until I got to the Green Briar and could allow myself to collapse at the bar.

My breathing became heavier and started to echo in my head like footsteps. Or were those actual footsteps? I spared a quick look over my shoulder. Uh-oh. He was gaining on me. Newfound energy flowed into my aching limbs and I forgot the agony of my personal struggle to keep breathing and put on speed. As I approached the bridge, a watchman leaned out of the newly constructed guardhouse and shouted a jeer at me, "You running from someone or to someone?"

I had no breath to respond, so I just waved at him and didn’t break stride. Halfway across the first span, I could no longer deny the footsteps behind me were closer than before. My pace faltered as I despaired of my vanishing lead.

Looks like you’re paying for lunch again, Scotland, Cole said easily as he overtook and then passed me as we got to Aelmouth Island.

My strength flagged and I almost stopped as I reached the crumbling ruins of Pelius Watch, the old harbor fort that took up most of the island. Cole’s long powerful strides were carrying him farther and farther away. I put my head down and charged after him. I couldn’t catch him, but every minute he finished ahead of me meant another round of drinks I’d be buying.

But my pace slowed further. The second span seemed longer than the first, although I knew they were nearly identical in length. When I reached the north bank, I hoped the homestretch would give me a second wind, but the final blocks to the Green Briar seemed to go on forever. Why did the ancient Aelfan city builders have to make this town so damn big?

When I reached the inn’s front door, my legs wobbled, and I tottered on the threshold before all but falling through the doorway. Cole was standing at the bar, chatting with Sylvyr. I was satisfied to see a fine sheen of sweat covering his dusky skin. Meanwhile, I was so drenched I was sure it looked and smelled like I had swum there through a river of whiskey-soaked dog fur. I straightened up and wiped my face with my sleeve and tried to get my breath back as I walked over to them.

Not bad, Scotland, Cole said. Only two minutes later than me this time.

Liar, I wheezed.

You’re right, Sylvyr said as she poured some beer into a mug and slid it over to me. I think it was more like three.

Betrayer! I coughed as I held the cool mug in my hand and tried not to lean too hard on the bar as I fought for enough air to take a drink.

How much of a head start did you give him this time? Sylvyr asked Cole.

Just one minute. He’s getting faster every day.

Next time, I’ll beat you. I managed to take a sip and barely managed to restrain myself from gulping the whole thing.

Unlikely, but nothing is impossible. I suppose we’ll wait and see.

Right. Same time next week then?

Tomorrow, Scotland. Same time tomorrow. Same as every day the past three weeks.

I don’t get time off for improvement?

That would defeat the purpose of your conditioning.

I have a business to run, you know! I can’t be running all over town with you in the middle of the day! I straightened and took a greedy sip from the mug.

Then wake up earlier.

Now you’re talking nonsense, I replied as I wiped foam from my lips.

You’ll find it easier if you don’t drink yourself to sleep every night.

You can’t possibly know that’s true.

Out! Sylvyr broke in as she held her nose. Go wash up out back. You two smell like a pair of wet rats suffering dysentery.

That must be Scotland, Cole suggested. Urken sweat is considered an aphrodisiac in many cultures.

Clearly cultures that have never discovered how to make soap. Sylvyr slapped a cake of something pink and brown on the counter and pointed to the back door. Out!

I took my drink and blew her a kiss as I pushed myself away from the bar, but she continued to hold her nose and shoo us away. The well in the middle of the courtyard in back of the Green Briar had never been fully out of service, but in recent months Sylvyr had invested in new housing and a winch. Cole filled a bucket for me, and I stripped down and began washing and scrubbing between fits of hacking and wheezing.

You’re looking better, Cole said as he brought up some water for himself. But not sounding any better. You smoke too much.

It’s only because you make me run too much. But he was right, at least about me looking better. I was still flabby around the middle, but leaner than I had been in a couple of years at any rate. Cole preferred I look like him, of course, but that was impossible. Aelfans, even a half-breed like me, weren’t meant to have that many muscles. It was obscene. I glanced at his massive torso of taut skin and rippling bulk and again failed to find any indication of fat anywhere. Even while washing himself it looked like he was flexing and posing. I commenced another coughing fit.

We have to get all that junk out of your system, he said.

I’ll thank you very much to keep your hands off my junk.

Joke all you want, Scotland, but you’re getting older. You can’t afford to indulge yourself the way you used to when you were younger.

I grunted in response. He wasn’t wrong, but he wouldn’t hear it from me. He could tease me all he wanted. I was just glad we had kissed and made up after how the investigation of the harbormaster’s death had ended last spring. I couldn’t afford to make an enemy of him. I wasn’t sure what his plans were, but it was certain he hadn’t decided to reside in Aelfa after his tumultuous past because he thought it was a safe place to retire. It was anything but.

Besides, Sylvyr liked him and she thought he was a good influence on me. I suspected what she really meant was that she was hoping to recruit him for Doogan, but she denied it. Didn’t matter. Cole didn’t work for anyone but himself. He had always been fairly clear on that point.

When we finished washing the sweat off we changed into some clothes we had dropped off before our run. My vest was fitting better. That was good. It was getting colder as autumn closed in on Aelfa. It was good to be able to button the vest without my girth forcing up the outlines of the contents of my secret pockets.

So, what’s your plan for the rest of the day? Cole asked as we washed and hung our sweat-soaked items.

Going to pick up some inventory for the store.

Really? What sort of inventory?

Cole still didn’t trust me. He had come to accept that I was an associate of Quinn, the crime lord of Aelfa who unofficially shared power with King Reynard, the king of the Huthan tribe known as the Gregyans who currently ruled the once-proud but oft-conquered city. I had managed to convince him I wasn’t Quinn’s partner nor one of his henchmen, but that I was using him as much as he might use me. I could tell he didn’t fully believe me, but that’s to be expected because it wasn’t fully the truth. I’ll take what I can get.

Books, I answered as we started walking back inside.

What sort of books?

Err . . . picture books. Not a lot of words. You’d like them.

Then perhaps I’ll accompany you.

Well . . . my supplier is a bit skittish. I doubt he’d respond well to having a big Urken over my shoulder while we haggle price.

I promise I’ll leave my sword at home and I won’t even eat any babies in front of him.

We had lunch and I couldn’t dissuade him from following me, so I relented. It was just as well. I was, in fact, planning to do nothing more nefarious than picking up new inventory for the store.

The Lower Rise, once the playground of the elite at the height of the Aelfan Empire, was a sprawling collection of oversized domus, graceful towers, parks, arenas, and other buildings devoted to various forms of entertainment, including one of my favorites—Sneaky’s Field. Over the many years since the fall of the empire, the area had declined as much as every other part of the city. During the Gregyan occupation, however, King Reynard had made some notable efforts to rebuild and reinvigorate the Rises, both Upper and Lower, as a means to bring the various noble families closer to him and hopefully pacify them. The results were mixed.

While the area was certainly the most prosperous part of the city, the heads of the families who comprised the Gregyan nobility remained aggressive and somewhat aloof. They cared little for his wishes to make the city into a true capital for the Huthan tribe’s fledgling empire and instead remained hungry for further conquest and pillage. Thus, the war against the Durfan tribe, known as the Eledani dwelling in the land to the south known as Orgslund, had been orchestrated to keep the more militant among the Huthans busy. That too had been experiencing mixed results.

Apparently, Reynard had accepted that the tribe that conquers together stays together, but that didn’t mean he had given up on pacifying his warlike people. The One God religion that the Huthans brought with them when they entered the city as its most recent conquerors was one that preached peace and tolerance and a certain spiritualism that sought to negate the influences of humanity’s baser desires. Although almost all the nobility had converted, the evidence was clear they paid little more than lip service to these ideas.

A case in point was the Huthan appetite for cheap Aelfan pornography. The One God’s priests frowned on such lewd devices and Reynard officially banned such material, but the ban was hardly enforced. This was fortuitous for yours truly, because it made the copying and distributing of such material my only reliable source of income. After all, Orwen’s Tomes and Journals wasn’t selling many tomes and journals these days.

But I had no talent for the writing, not to mention the illustrating of such works so I was always on the lookout for stashes of old pamphlets or even the discovery of new talent. One such artist was rumored to be penning fresh erotic material somewhere in the Lower Rise and after much investigation I had finally tracked down his distributor.

Oligurd Relfson was a taciturn man of middle age who worked as a court scribe for the Gregyans, officially anyway. Unofficially he was the printer and distributor of the illicit productions of a very secretive society of artists among the Huthan elite. When I first met him he was adamant in his refusal to take me on as a partner, but when I offered to teach him some simple binding techniques to create bound volumes of work instead of selling his product in collections of bulky unstitched sheets, he mellowed. When I offered him straight-up cash for some of his inventory instead of selling on consignment, he became downright friendly. When as a sign of business in good faith I made a gift of some of the silver that Quinn had been throwing at me, he became a partner.

Olly was considerably less taciturn in recent weeks than he had been upon our first meeting, but that didn’t mean he was going to welcome a six-and-a-half-foot-tall Urken into his home with open arms. I stood outside the side door to Olly’s modest two-story home, an insula he apparently claimed solely for himself, with Cole and prepared my best smile as I knocked. The door opened and Olly’s rail-thin form and sharp-featured face filled a sliver of the doorway. He started to smile and then scowled as his eyes took in Cole.

Hey, Grant. Who’s your friend?

A mule. I mean to buy a lot of inventory today.

Olly chewed his lip and looked at us and then he stuck his head out and glanced up and down the narrow access street. Finally, he shrugged and let us in. That’s fine, he said. Just next time bring a wagon, okay? Bad enough I got to explain to people why I let a half-breed like you come around. I don’t need people thinking I also associate with savages. He housebroken?

Trained, but never broken, Cole said as we crossed the threshold into Oligurd’s office. Olly gave him a look and then cracked a smile and shook his head.

Yeah, okay. Come on back and I’ll show you what I got.

Olly’s office was little more than a workroom for copying and binding with few finished materials in sight. He led us through an archway in the wall behind his small desk and in the chamber beyond I saw stacks of loose sheets of parchment and re-treated Aelfan broadsheets and even a few bound manuscripts. Olly had been busy.

I haggled a bit over price, but only because I was buying in bulk. Olly consented to a small discount without too much hassle. Maybe having Cole there wasn’t such a bad idea after all. I carefully placed some collections for reprinting and binding in a large sack and even sprung for a couple of volumes that Olly had bound himself. Inferior work to my own, of course, but I wanted to encourage him. We settled up and said our goodbyes and within minutes Cole and I were back on the street.

What kind of work does this man produce, Scotland? Cole asked as he took one of the hide-bound volumes out of the sack and thumbed through it with one hand and swung the bundle over his shoulder with the other.

Leisure reading, I replied as we started walking back to my shop.

I see. Leisure reading with . . . unnecessarily explicit illustrations. Cole’s eyes widened as he studied the book.

Huthans are more visually stimulated than we of the more refined races.

This illustrator is uninformed. Urkens are much bigger than this.

I peeked at the page he held open. The drawing was typically ludicrous, but the characters seemed to be in proportion.

What are you talking about? That Urken is almost twice as tall as that Aelfan woman.

It was not his height to which I was referring.

Oh.

Perhaps I should look this person up and offer to pose for him.

Your devotion to artistic excellence is admirable.

I do what I can where I can.

As we crossed back over the Ael via Founder’s Bridge, we stopped and watched the construction of new fortifications at the landing. Similar to the Aelmouth Bridge, there were guard towers and movable barricades, but also something Cole and I couldn’t identify. We moved closer to where the laborers were hammering two large logs together, carved and fitted to cross each other at a right angle. It looked like a giant X. I nudged Cole and shot him a questioning eyebrow. He shook his head and shrugged.

What’s that for? I asked one of the laborers when he took a break from his work.

That? He wiped the sweat from his face and took a step back. That’s the new home for some poor sod.

What?

A criminal. Murderer, I think. They plan on nailing him to it in an hour or so. The man nodded to a knot of watchmen who were leaning against the supports of the small guard tower, watching me and Cole.

It’s a Nether Tree, Cole said as the laborer turned away from us and got back to work.

A what? I asked.

They used it sometimes in Zyren, but it was very rare. The criminal would be nailed at wrists and ankles to the crossbeams with arms and legs spread. Then the structure would be raised and the unfortunate victim would be suspended like that, upside down, until death.

Well, what is it doing here? The Gregyans don’t go in for that sort of thing. They’re more into head chopping.

Indeed. Cole glanced at the watchmen, who were now starting to take a more active interest in our own interest. He plucked at my sleeve and we walked away as nonchalantly as possible.

We walked over the bridge and traded notes about the increased presence of watchmen and their fortification efforts. We confirmed with each other that the City Watch had been growing in numbers and visibility in recent months. Where Reynard was getting the money was anyone’s guess, but the manpower was coming mostly from the non-Huthan denizens of Aelfa.

We couldn’t be certain, but any new Huthan recruits were probably going directly into the army instead of the watch. That made me think of Siggy, but I had just seen him not a week ago helping Tim in the vineyard. The press gangs wouldn’t be eager to lay hands on someone connected to the clergy. Even if they tried, Tim would see to it they released him. He had taken a special interest in the boy after nursing him back to health from when he had made the mistake of trying to help me do something stupid. Many people have made that mistake. It almost killed him. Most didn’t get off that easy.

When we reached my shop, Cole came inside with me and dropped the sack on my desk. He looked around the place and then raised an eyebrow at me.

See? I asked as I showed him my hands. No Quinn henchmen hiding in any of my shadowy corners waiting to leap out and murder you and then carry word of my nefarious deeds to my evil taskmaster. When are you going to relax and start trusting me again?

If you aren’t really in his pockets, then how did you afford the new bookcase and the new door, not to mention this very excellent rug I’m enjoying standing on right now?

Well, I couldn’t very well get you to pay for it, could I? Besides, sales of the new stuff have been good.

Not that good.

Yes, Cole. Quinn gave me some money. You already know that, but it’s not for what you think.

I wouldn’t have the first clue what to think. Maybe you can enlighten me?

You know I can’t do that. I swear it has nothing to do with you.

That’s what you said last time, he said with a smirk as he folded his arms.

Yes, but this time it’s the truth.

Cole shook his head and grunted but gave me a wave and told me he’d see me tomorrow as he walked out. That’s probably the best I’d be able to get out of our relationship for the time being, but it was good enough. As long as he wasn’t involved in this vicious little circle I had climbed into with Solin, Doogan, Quinn, and Reynard and I could still call him a friend, there was some hope I might be able to climb out of it alive. Not much hope, but I had survived on less.

I shelved my new inventory and then congratulated myself on sitting down and remembering to record the transaction in my flashy new ledger. I felt like a real businessman. It was tempting to think that maybe in the future I could do that sort of thing full-time. Of course, first I’d have to make sure I had a future.

The door opened and in walked Anthony and Fabulous, two people who were perhaps almost as skeptical of my future as I was. Anthony gave an appraising look around the room and Fabulous just stood near the door and frowned and took up a lot of space. That one played to his strengths, he did.

What’s shaking, boys? I asked.

Like what you’ve done with the place, Scotland, Anthony said as he sauntered over and stood in front of the desk. A real touch of class. I take it that broad you been banging helped out.

You’re a real gentleman, Anthony. It’s a wonder a woman hasn’t snatched you up yet.

Who says they haven’t tried? I’m not one to be tied down, like you.

I’ve always admired your free spirit.

That’s why I like this guy, Anthony said to Fabulous. He’s always so agreeable.

Agreeable, yeah, Fabulous replied with a nod.

I take it I’m about to agree to accompany you to see Mr. Quinn? I asked. It was a shame to steal Anthony’s thunder, but I guess I just wasn’t in the mood to play with them.

And smart too! Anthony said. I don’t always like that so much, but I guess today it saves us some time.

Yeah, boss wants to see you, Fabulous mumbled in my direction. He kept one eye on