by Guy Antibes
“A man was murdered, but it was a strange murder. Actually, I was wondering if you could help me. He spoke Toraltian, but his last words were in Vaarekian. ‘Romia, I am sorry I won’t see you again.’ Is Romia a Vaarekian first name?”
Banna shrugged. “Come inside. Emmy is pushing me out the door.”
Sam entered the cabin. The layout was nearly like the dead man’s. Emmy nudged him. Sam took the only chair in the room, while Banna sat on the bed. He told her about his investigation so far.
“Romia is an unfamiliar first name,” Banna said. “Ristarians, Vaarekians, and Trakatans speak the same language, with some variations, but I can’t help you. It does sound like a woman’s name, but…” She shook her head. “I suppose the mystery is this stowaway?”
Sam nodded. “I don’t think there is a stowaway, since I have been through every inch on this vessel. The story is strange. No one noticed blood on the deck. There was no blood outside the room. If Hardblow—”
“That is not a Polistian last name, by the way.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Sam said. “Nothing makes sense.”
The discussion seemed surreal to Sam. He sat on the chair with Emmy by his side, leaning her head against him. He rubbed behind her ears while he talked to his archenemy. She didn’t seem like one. He couldn’t bring up Toraltia in this conversation, but at some time, he felt he’d have to get some of the details of her actions that he was missing.
“So what are you going to do? You are just a boy.”
Sam pursed his lips. “I’m more experienced than Jordi Hawker, but I need to talk to someone about my investigation.” He swallowed hard. “Would you mind listening to my thoughts and giving me critiques?”
Banna Plunk laughed. “You want the criminal to provide you with perspective?”
Sam’s eyes turned to Emmy as he thought about what she said. “I don’t need a criminal mind’s perspective, assuming you have one, but I need a smart person’s opinion. You are a very smart person, Miss Plunk.”
“Banna will do. I should have used an alias, but I didn’t want to bother with a disguise for four months on a voyage.” She put her hand to her chin and spent a few moments looking at Sam and Emmy. It made Sam uncomfortable. She didn’t seem as intimidating, and yet, Sam knew what she had done. The woman took a deep breath. “I will help.” She actually smiled for the first time during the conversation. “It will forestall the boredom. Aren’t you bored traveling on the endless ocean? This voyage isn’t any better than the one I took to Toraltia.”
“I appreciate your help,” Sam said. “I’m going to do some research on Mr. Hardblow. It is something I can do on my own, but I’ll stay in touch.”
He rose and patted Emmy on the head. “Want to spend some time in my cabin?” he asked the dog.
She barked as she always did when Sam asked her a question. “Is that fine with you?” Sam asked Banna.
“It is, but oddly, her presence keeps the voyage from being more tedious than it could be.”
“I’ll bring her back tomorrow.” Maybe Banna needed Emmy more than he did. His impression of the woman kept changing.
Sam returned to his larger cabin. He sketched out the floorplan of Banna’s cabin and noticed a difference. He did the same to his own cabin and shrugged. Maybe all the cabins were different. Ships weren’t squares, after all. After closing his notebook, Sam sought out Captain Darter.
“I assume the surgeon told you Mr. Hardblow died?”
“She did. I suppose you haven’t found out who stabbed him?”
Sam smiled. “I haven’t, but his story was a fabrication.” He read the transcribed notes he wrote in the surgery to the captain.
“What makes you think the victim made up the story?” Captain Darter sat back in her desk chair.
Sam could tell she was testing him. “No trails of blood in the corridor outside Hardblow’s room and nothing on the deck. It wasn’t raining, even if the seas were a bit heavy,” Sam said, wanting to smile at his use of the nautical term he had just learned on the voyage.
“And that is a problem?”
Sam nodded. “If two armed men fought violently on deck, there would be signs. There were none. I looked myself. Is it easy for a person to stowaway on your ship?”
Darter snorted. “You’ve been on inspection tours with Jordi. Do you think anyone would be able to get on board?”
Sam shook his head. “Someone had to have stabbed him.”
“Are you saying the murderer is still on board?”
“Could be, but that doesn’t make sense either, unless the murderer wore the same sized shoes as Hardblow.”
Captain Darter looked out the rear-facing windows. She turned back to Sam. “That isn’t impossible, you know. Are you sure you aren’t making more of this than it is?”
A flash of self-doubt attacked Sam. “I remember Dickey Nail telling me that it isn’t just what is there, but what isn’t. If there is an inconsistency, that points to something that isn’t there.”
“Mr. Nail must have been some kind of snoop,” Captain Darter said.
“He was the best Chief Constable Bentwick had, and Dickey was less than thirty-years-old. Can I continue to look around?”
Captain Darter nodded slowly. “If there is a killer on my ship, I want him found at the soonest.”
“Good. What information do you have on Mr. Hardblow?” Sam asked.
Chapter Four
~
E mmy leaned against Sam, her way of telling him she wanted a little ear scratching. Her leaning couldn’t be ignored, so Sam went to work with a smile. He looked out at the ocean, rolling under a clear sky dotted with clouds.
The fickle nature of the weather made the voyage more interesting. Banna Plunk didn’t agree and spent most of her time in her cabin, at least she had until the murder the day before. She stood on the other side of her dog.
“I have something for you,” Sam said, putting his hand to his chest to feel the slim volume written by her father.
She grunted, not turning from the view.
Sam pulled out the volume and gave it to her. “This is yours. A Vaarekian captain delivered it to Antina Mulch by mistake.”
Her eyes grew wider when she read the title. “My father…”
“I know. There is a letter to you in the back of the book.”
She flipped the pages and looked at Sam. “No letter here,” Banna said, but Sam could tell she knew.
“Remember that I can see through pollen-patched documents. A noble lady that I know translated the cursive.”
Banna scowled. “You shouldn’t read what isn’t yours to read.”
“At the time, we weren’t exactly on speaking terms,” Sam said.
“And we are now?”
Sam nodded. “I think we are, Miss Plunk.”
She did some kind of wave that Sam couldn’t understand and that enabled her to read the message. She looked up with watery eyes. “I’m glad I didn’t get this book in Toraltia,” she said. Sam couldn’t read her emotions, but it was clear the book had an effect. “I might have turned back from my mission.”
Sam didn’t ask her what that was, specifically, but it was evident that Banna was pursuing revolution in Vaarek.
“You have read the entire book?”
Sam nodded. “I can read printed Vaarekian, as well as speak it, but the cursive has eluded me.”
Her next words were in her native tongue. “Then you know about the real magic of pollen.”
“Real magic? You mean being able to do things with pollen that others can’t? I’m not so sure it exists as something different than being very, very good at pollen-making.”
Banna shook her head. “A pollen magician uses a different kind of ability that few have to create things. I can make a pollen sword that will withstand the blows of a steel one.”
“Pollen armor can do that,” Sam said.
She lifted the corner of her mouth. “Much better. It takes a lot of time. I can duplic
ate anything to look nearly perfect.”
“Like Les Oakbrush?”
“You knew Les?” she asked.
Sam nodded, not telling her that he had killed her sister’s boyfriend. “He was an artist.”
“A magician,” she corrected. “There are few enough of us around.” Banna looked at Sam. “You’ve told others about this book?”
“My friends. They are not pollen artists, I can tell you.”
She sighed.
“Your father is open about the treatise in the book?”
Banna shrugged. “Open enough. Most people in Vaarek, in all Polistia, really, don’t believe in pollen magic. They think like you do.”
Sam didn’t tell her that he was close to believing in her extra abilities.
“How can you see through pollen?” Sam asked.
Banna laughed. “It is the sign of a true pollen magician. I recite a little verse to myself to trigger the effect, and then pollen becomes invisible to my sight. I become, for a few moments, just like you. It is easier to get into the state than it is to maintain it. An errant thought, an eyeblink, a dog barking,” she looked at Emmy, “can break the spell.”
“So I am half of a pollen magician?”
Banna ruefully smiled. “No. You are who you are, and I don’t quite know what that is.” She waved the volume at him. “This is mine to keep?”
Sam nodded. “It is. I am good at remembering what I read,” he said.
“I will introduce you to my father when we reach Tolloy, if he is still alive,” Banna said, tucking the book in the pocket of her coat and then left the deck.
~
Sailors knew how to scrub, Sam thought as he looked down at Mr. Hardblow’s wooden floor. The bloody sheets were gone, but Mr. Hardblow’s clothes and other possessions were untouched.
“No one has taken anything?” Sam asked Jordi, who stood behind him.
“It isn’t worth it for one of Captain Darter’s crew,” the purser said. “What have you found out?”
“Mr. Hardblow probably wasn’t his real name,” Sam said. “His last words were Polistian.”
“Captain Darter told me that. Does it mean anything?”
Sam bit his lip to keep him from saying something he shouldn’t. “There are some obvious and some non-obvious conclusions we can make,” Sam said. His words didn’t make much sense, even to him. “We are here to go through the man’s things.”
“Is that why I have a crate in my hands?” Jordi said.
Sam sighed. “Yes. We should see if we can get any clues about who Mr. Hardblow really is.”
Jordi nodded.
Sam began to rummage through the man’s clothes. Everything looked newish to him. The victim must have replaced his wardrobe when he reached a Holding port, but other than clothes, the man had little in the way of personal items.
“Did he have a trunk in the hold?” Sam asked.
Jordi shook his head. “Nothing listed. He boarded The Twisted Wind at Lirik City in Wistall on our way to Baskin. His ticket is for Carolank.”
“Why would he do that? Couldn’t he take a carriage and get to Carolank faster?” Sam asked.
“Norlank and Wistall are currently at war, which is often the case.”
Sam had forgotten.
“So, he can get to Norlank via Baskin.”
“We have another passenger doing the same,” Jordi said. “We generally have two or three.”
“I’d like to talk to the other passenger.”
“As soon as we are finished here.”
They didn’t spend long looking through Hardblow’s possessions. Sam cataloged them in his notebook and made a few sketches. He measured another pair of Hardblow’s shoes and took note of his clothes, the size and where they were manufactured. Once the trunk was stowed, it would be inconvenient to pull it out, or so Jordi said.
“That does it.” Sam snapped his notebook shut. “Do you need help with the crate?”
Jordi shook his head. “I’ll have a sailor take it to a locker we keep for such things.”
So it wouldn’t be hard to retrieve it, after all, Sam thought. He wondered how trustworthy his superior really was.
“I’ll find an idle body.” He left Sam alone in the room.
“Just so it isn’t a dead one,” Sam said. He noticed Jordi wince at the remark, so maybe it wasn’t a very good joke.
Sam sat on the bed, wondering why the man had so few papers. They had found his ticket and Wistallian identity papers. Sam had no idea if they were genuine or not. He flipped through his notebook and came to Banna’s cabin layout.
That gave Sam a thought. He stood up and turned to the wall that was a set of shelves in Banna’s room. He looked at the layout before taking off his spectacles. His gaze turned to the wall, or what should have been the wall. A pollen facade hid the same set of shelves.
He examined the boards, and one of them appeared to have a sheen. To Sam, that meant it might be warded. It was time to fetch Banna Plunk.
By the time he returned with the woman, the trunk was gone, and the door remained unlocked.
“What is it you want me to see?”
“Or not see,” Sam said. He pointed to the wall. “That is made out of pollen.”
Banna looked closer. “It certainly is, and warded, too. Clumsy work,” she said. “But not bad if he did it after he was stabbed.”
Sam didn’t think it was new. That didn’t make sense. “Can you remove the ward?”
Banna nodded and spent a little time on the wall, humming and waving her hand. “You wouldn’t have any gold on you?”
Sam nodded. “I always carry a golden wand tip.”
“Ah, your wand.”
Sam screwed the gold tip on and handed it to Banna. “The last ward I touched with that landed me in a healer’s bed.”
“This is a simpler ward. It will flash and burn the contents on the other side. You need to disarm it from the sides and let the gold do the work.”
Sam wrote that down on his notebook as Banna went to work. It took longer than Sam expected, but she finally finished.
“You can remove the wall. It has a catch here.” She pointed to a knot.
Sam touched the knot and felt it soften. “I think I ruined it,” he said.
“Then ruin it some more. It is that, or you’ll have to remove the whole wall.”
Sam nodded and poked his finger into the softening pollen until he broke through, then he pulled, and the wall popped off.
He removed his spectacles.
“Blood,” Banna said.
Sam pulled out a stiff bloody shirt wrapped up by what looked like pollen bandages. “We will have to wash this.”
“You will,” Banna said with a look of distaste. “Why would he leave these here?”
“Something to find out,” Sam said as he began removing items from the shelves. A knife was under the bandages. “How can this be the murder weapon? Why would Hardblow hide it?”
“Souvenir?” Banna said.
Sam didn’t realize the woman possessed a sense of humor. He put the personal items that were missing in the cabin into a small pile.
“These aren’t from Toraltia,” Banna said, “and they aren’t from Vaarek. Trakata. He must have been Trakatan.”
Sam looked through a small leather folder of papers. “Trakatan,” he said. “I can read the printed parts well enough.”
Banna perused the official papers and agreed.
“You’ll have to read this,” Sam said, handing her a letter written in the cursive alphabet used on the Polistian continent.
“Orders. The only name on this paper is the man who signed it, Tomi Wrilk.” She nodded. “That is a Vaarekian name. Hardblow was to kill an un-named person before he reached Carolank.”
“It looks like his victim got the upper hand,” Sam said.
Banna shook her head. “Not if Hardblow survived and his target didn’t.”
Sam looked through the papers again. The victim, if he was a v
ictim, had multiple identities, so Sam might never find out who he really was, but it looked like Hardblow was a Trakatan assassin.
Jordi knocked on the doorframe, but then he gawked as he looked at the hidden shelving. “You found more things? You said he didn’t have much in the way of personal things.”
Sam showed Jordi the knife. “A murder weapon, but we don’t know whose murder. Hardblow seems to have been a Trakatan assassin. Do you have a Tomi Wrilk as a passenger?”
Jordi shook his head.
Sam pressed his lips together. “Is anyone missing on board? Maybe a sailor you hired in Baskin?”
“Not that I know of, but we haven’t counted heads since before the murder. Captain Darter doesn’t like doing that when we are at sea.”
Sam sat back and wondered what to do. He looked at the bloody shirt. Hardblow had a shirt on when sailors carried him to the surgery. Sam remembered looking at Hardblow’s pile of bloody clothes.
“Let’s get the shirt and bandages washed,” Sam said.
“Let’s?” Banna said. “You make it seem that we are solving this puzzle together.”
“Aren’t we?” Sam asked.
She shrugged. “I’ll help for a bit. Boredom, you know.”
Sam just nodded and took the shirt. Jordi, Banna, and Sam went out on the deck. Sam sought out Desmon, who was making thick, dense pollen lines.
“I need to wash this shirt.”
Desmon looked at the bloody garment. “You are too young to cut yourself shaving.” He smirked, but it was quite different from Captain Darter’s or Dickey Nail’s smirk.
“It’s from the dead man’s cabin,” Sam said.
“I know that. I’ll fetch a couple of buckets of seawater.” Desmon went to the rail and created a length of line and then two buckets.
“He’s quite good,” Banna said in Sam’s ear.
Sam washed the garment, wringing out the blood as the shirt loosened up. When the shirt was clean enough to examine, he laid it out on the deck while he went to work on the pollen bandages.
“I don’t want it,” Desmon said. “I know you want to gift it to me, but I don’t want it.”
“It won’t fit,” Sam said, standing up to get a better look. “It is too small for you and too small for Hardblow, or whoever he is.”
