by Guy Antibes
Sam rose, and Emmy lifted her head. “Stay, Emmy,” he said in Vaarekian. Sam hadn’t spoken the language in front of Banna before.
The dog put her head back down.
“I am amazed you can speak Vaarekian with an authentic accent.”
“I had a good tutor,” Sam said as he slipped out the door.
He found Jordi sampling the ship’s stores.
“Caught me red-handed like any good snoop would,” Jordi said, swallowing whatever he had shoved into his mouth.
“I won’t snitch on you. You know that,” Sam said. He knew about snitching from what Dickey told him about gangs in Baskin. “I do have a favor to ask…”
In a few moments, Sam rolled out the large thick parchment on his desk. The paper more than covered the entire surface. He stared at the paper until he was able to envision the layout he wanted.
The dinner bell rang throughout the ship.
Jordi opened his cabin door. “What are you doing with the parchment?”
“It is a chart of the events on board ship. It is to help me keep track of what has happened, what might have happened, and the relationship between the two.”
The purser looked down at the partially filled out grids. “I see. Organization.” He smiled. “Just like keeping track of stores?”
Sam thought he understood the comparison. “An inventory of my thoughts that begin with Hardblow’s murder.” Actually, Sam had left space to fill in ideas before the murder, but he didn’t want to get into too much detail with Jordi, and he dreaded going over the facts again with Banna. He didn’t want to get bored either.
~
Banna joined Sam in his cabin since his desk was larger. Emmy took up a bit less space in the bigger room. Sam explained how his chart worked.
“I could have used something like this,” she said.
Sam didn’t want to guess what for. He imagined it was her campaign to get control of the Fealty Mining Company.
“You put facts down, and then it can become easier to spot linkages, Dickey called them. Related facts that don’t seem to join up unless you look at the data.”
Banna nodded as she read Sam’s entries in the little squares. “Who is DS?”
“A sailor. He might be a spy, so I put him on the chart to remind me. One never knows what fact might lead you in the right direction.”
“But facts can also lead one in the wrong direction, right?”
Sam pursed his lips. “That is always a risk,” he said. He wasn’t sure he liked Banna Plunk challenging him, but he came up with an answer. “So what a snoop does is get as many facts as possible. That way you can sift useless facts from useful ones. The chart allows you to put everything down, so as facts shift and realign, you might find a better truth.”
‘Better truth’ had a certain ring, Sam thought, but he knew he was blathering more than thinking. He put his comment into the open notebook. He’d think more about the phrase.
Sam thought it was better to focus on filling out the facts, which would change the subject. They spent nearly an hour getting the chart up to date. Banna kept challenging him on the facts, but at the end, he could see she was actually helping him clarify what he observed and what facts he drew from those observations.
She sat on the bed. “What happens next? Isn’t the case closed? Our session was too short to cure my boredom.”
“Now comes the fun part. Dickey Nail didn’t like guesswork, but you need to make some guesses to test the facts,” Sam said. “So what do we know about Mr. Hardblow?”
“He was from Trakata. Perhaps the city of Romia. I don’t know much about Trakata since it is on the other side of Ristaria,” Banna said.
“Captain Darter’s book on Polistia didn’t say anything about Romia, other than to place it on a map between the major port and the capital city.”
“An assassin can be hired by anyone,” Banna said, “or he could be working for the Trakatan government.” She shrugged. “Aren’t you going to write that down?”
Sam shook his head. “Not yet. Let’s talk some more.”
As they talked about the facts, Banna’s superior knowledge of the political situation in the world produced possibilities that might lead to wider international implications. Sam tried to keep some of the guesses more local. Banna didn’t stop him when he mentioned it.
When they were done, Sam had filled in many more squares than he thought they would. He thought they had identified too many.
Banna stood up and put her hands on her hips while she looked down at Sam’s work. “Make me justify any of our guesses,” she said. “Perhaps we can cut down on the lines of inquiry.”
Sam began to ask her questions about some of the squares she had suggested, and Banna did the same to him. Sam was surprised at how effective the technique worked.
“Have you used that way to evaluate alternatives before?”
Banna pursed her lips. Her face darkened a bit, probably with an uncomfortable memory. Sam instantly regretted asking the question. Their experiences in the last year were from different points of view.
She sighed. “My father used to challenge my positions all the time, using a similar method. He told me it helped him evaluate his own thinking better.” She sighed again. “The little book? I contributed to those thoughts, although he never acknowledged me. Every proposition was tested and re-tested by his students and trusted peers, and by me.”
Sam raised his eyebrows. “So they aren’t just musings? Some crackpot theory?”
Banna leaned forward and narrowed her eyes, looking grim. “You didn’t seem to think it nonsense, did you?”
“No,” Sam said, feeling his face heat up a bit. He hadn’t meant what he said. He had to watch himself around Banna. If Sam had said something stupid at the constabulary, he was laughed at, and that happened often enough. Banna was definitely not the kind of person to joke around.
She leaned back. “Good. When we go over the book, I want you to challenge my father’s words every bit as much as you challenged my guesses and I criticized yours.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sam said.
Emmy barked, and that relieved a bit of the tension that Sam had felt.
“Have we had enough?” Sam asked.
“I think so. Tomorrow we will start on the book.”
Chapter Six
~
A glassy sea stretched in all directions. Sam walked up to the deck for sword practice before his first study session with Banna. He wondered if spending any time with the woman was prudent. She didn’t seem to hold anything against him, but she was touchy rather than friendly. Antina always had a smile on her face, and Banna Plunk always seemed to be on the angry side, as if she were a coiled spring ready to unwind at a moment’s notice.
He guessed their relationship was one of convenience and would quickly end once they reached port, maybe as quickly as Carolank, which was only a few days away.
Captain Darter showed up on deck for one of her rare appearances with the other officers. She carried two long, thin swords and called out to Sam.
“Something a little more challenging for both of us,” she said, handing a blade to Sam. “This is a Vaarekian weapon.”
“I didn’t notice a sword this thin in Baskin.”
Darter laughed. “These came into style long after the Vaarekians ruled Toraltia. I have another book for you to read. If you are spending any length of time in Vaarek, you need to practice with a sword like this. Dueling is a high sport.”
Sam frowned. “I am not a noble. I wouldn’t be drawn into a duel with one.”
“Vaarekian society isn’t like Baskin, as I understand it. Talk to your friend, Banna.”
Sam nodded. He stepped back and warmed up, getting a feel for the sword. He wondered if the apprentices at the Baskin constabulary learned on a sword like this, but if that were the case, then Kened Rider, the weapons instructor, would have had them use something this thin.
He watched Captain Darter play with her bl
ade. The sword required more wrist action, it seemed, and that meant the captain might have the advantage.
“Ready?” she said with a grin.
“I suppose so. Please don’t cut me to ribbons.”
“Test your edge.”
Sam ran his thumb along the blade and found it to be as blunt as the back of a single-sided knife. “A practice sword?”
Darter nodded. “Dueling versions are very sharp. I wouldn’t dare use anything like that to practice on a rolling ship.”
They faced each other, and Captain Darter nodded her head. The first match was over in seconds. She hadn’t shown him just how much wrist action the swords permitted. The thrust that caught him would still leave a mark. The other officers didn’t hide their amusement.
“I didn’t expect you to last long, and you didn’t. I wanted to show you how disadvantaged you would be in Tolloy.”
“I don’t have to fight in duels, do I?”
Darter turned her smile into amused pursed lips. “If you were drawn into a duel because you didn’t interpret someone’s actions correctly?”
“I’d be seeing a healer or the inside of a casket,” Sam said, answering her question.
“Astute,” she said. “A fluid wrist, fast footwork, and speed, speed, speed. You can master the style. It is time you began to practice with this. Using a cutlass is less fast, less precise. A cutlass does have an advantage, but not in a dueling situation.”
Sam nodded. Darter proceeded to show him wrist exercises. He could use his heavier wand to practice. Sam had to admit he had a long way to go. He had always thought of his swordsmanship as better than anyone else’s his age, but not with this style.
His arms ached when he had shown the captain that he could mimic the moves, but he couldn’t match her speed.
“How did you learn to use this sword?”
“My previous Second Mate was a Ristarian. Vaarek and Ristaria are images of each other, but I wouldn’t tell Banna Plunk that.” The captain winked at Sam. “I spent hours practicing until my wrists were strong enough to move as quickly as you saw. I still practice in my cabin,” she said.
“We can continue to work on this?” Sam asked.
“I don’t have a lot of time to constantly work with you, but I can give you exercises you can complete on your own. Take the sword and practice with that. As for me, I need to wash and check the duty list.”
She left Sam holding onto the unfamiliar weapon.
He decided he needed to clean up, as well, and ended up knocking at Banna’s door wearing clean clothes for their first session with her father’s book. He had brought the Vaarekian sword to show her.
Banna looked at the weapon. “Have you finally come to run me through?”
Sam didn’t know if she spoke truthfully. “Not this time,” he said. “I came for a cultural lesson, as well as a magic lesson. The captain seems to think I should become proficient with this style of sword.”
Banna grunted and opened the door wider. “My cabin is too small to use that anyway,” she said, as she stepped aside to let Sam enter.
The woman was probably right, Sam thought.
“Why are you carrying that? They don’t use swords like that in Baskin.”
“Captain Darter said I should train to use the style that matches this blade.”
Banna grimly smiled and shook her head. “You came to the wrong person. I am not an expert with that kind of weapon.”
The way she said it, Sam thought she meant without saying that she was proficient with other weapons. Pollen, certainly.
“She said that there are customs that I might violate.”
Banna nodded. “There are plenty of those. I can help you avoid having to duel,” she said. “What would you rather have me do? What is it, learn Vaarekian manners or learn pollen magic?”
“Won’t we have time for both?”
She sighed. “I suppose we will.”
“Magic first,” Sam said.
“Whatever you wish, boredom-breaker.”
Sam smiled. She had said something that someone might construe as light-hearted again. He leaned the sword against the wall just behind the door and took the proffered chair. Banna pulled the little book from the drawer beside her bed and sat down.
Banna spoke in Vaarekian. “My father’s treatise starts with a description of pollen magic. I know his thinking well enough to tell you that in my own words. With you as the exception noted, every living thing uses pollen. This is elementary for you, isn’t it?”
Sam nodded. “People use pollen with different degrees of expertise. Is that learned, or is it something inside them?”
“Good question. Good enough that we can skip the basics. The answer, as you probably know, is both. People can improve on their innate skills. But talent is a sliding scale of expertise. That expertise is generally expressed as the speed at which pollen magic can be harnessed by the wielder. Expertise is partly inherited and partly a gift from whatever god or gods you worship.”
Sam nodded. “So the sliding scale doesn’t slide when you encounter someone who practices real pollen magic.”
“You did read the book,” Banna said. “Pollen magic is something else entirely. A true pollen magician can look at an artifact and duplicate it without having to consciously duplicate every little detail.”
“And that includes the coloring, too, doesn’t it?”
“You have seen my work, and you have seen others’ work. The difference is easy to tell, and it took me mere seconds to make some of the items you saw at Lennard Lager’s dining hall instead of the few hours that a pollen artist would have had to take.”
Sam nodded. He was about to mention Les Oakbrush, the true pollen magician that he had personally killed in Mount Vannon, but he kept quiet.
“What about your wards?” Sam asked. “The one you placed in the Records Repository was potent.”
“And meant to kill, if you must know. A stern warning not to pursue me. It was created with real magic, as were the pollen patches you discovered in the records. A lot of good hiding the real signatures did, eh?” She narrowed her eyes at him.
Sam felt anxious. Perhaps he shouldn’t have brought up the ward. “Do you want me to leave?”
Banna actually laughed. “If you have learned anything about your brushes with me in the past, it is that I am a very, very pragmatic person. The past is the past. There is nothing I can do to change it. Toraltia is history, other than what this ship carries in the hold. I look forward, not backward.”
Sam wondered if that attitude allowed her to feel guiltless for what she had done. He suspected it did. He still wouldn’t mention Banna’s sister or Les Oakbrush.
“Then let’s get back on track. Magicians can do more than manipulate pollen.” She lifted her palm. Sam drew back when a tiny flame began to dance on her hand. “Some people in Vaarek would call these parlor tricks, but these aren’t really tricks.” She looked at the flame and watched it grow.
“The pink pollen? Did you use magic to combine it with sheep pollen?”
Banna nodded. “I suspected you figured out what I did when you visited the livestock pens outside of Baskin.”
“But I couldn’t figure out how.”
She shrugged. “No one in Toraltia could combine sheep pollen with red deer pollen. It takes magic to combine the pollens and make them stick. The mixture doesn’t last long.”
“I found that out. The pink pollen, especially,” Sam said. “I found traces of it at the scenes…” he stopped before he said ‘scenes of the crimes.’
“Even with real magic, some of the red deer pollen fell out of the patch, an unexpected oversight. Our operative would remove the patch and take the booty,” Banna said.
Sam couldn’t resist asking. “You didn’t kill her, did you?”
Banna shook her head, with a grim smile. “Not my style, is it? That was Issak Bolt’s idea. I don’t know who did it, maybe Bolt himself. Do we have to talk about the past?”
“Not at all. That was the only loose end that we didn’t solve. It won’t be solved now.” Sam didn’t see any reason why Banna would lie about that. He took her nod as agreement. “So how do you create the flame?”
“How does one manipulate pollen? Father always seemed to think they were connected. As a practicing magician, I would have to agree. Magic doesn’t allow one to move mountains, or create tempests, or kill people with a single glance, but it does allow a person to be more…innovative when it comes to creating pollen objects.” She narrowed her eyes, and a pollen duplicate of the chair in her room appeared a few inches above the floor. It fell, disturbing Emmy’s slumber.
“Watch this,” Banna said, as the chair crumbled and fell into a heap of disorganized pollen. “You will clean that up, of course. A pollen chair wouldn’t last long in your cabin, would it?”
Sam shook his head. Banna had revealed her secret. Now he knew how quickly she could have created the platforms at the back of the Royal Recorders office in Baskin. She had magic on top of magic when it came to pollen.
“How many Polistians can do what you have just done?”
She frowned as she thought. “Twenty, thirty. Certainly not more than one hundred. I haven’t seen any evidence of such talent on my travels in Holding. Toraltians are a bit lower than average on the scale of talent, I have found.”
Sam could believe it, but he also knew Banna hadn’t been exposed to everyone in Toraltia. “Does it take study? Training?”
She nodded. “It does. My father worked with me for three years to tease out my skills. You can tell if someone is adept enough by the speed at which they can produce pollen-made objects.”
Dickey had been the fastest pollen magician that he had seen, even faster than Harrison Dimple. He guessed his former partner would have sufficient talent to try to learn.
“Could I try to see if I could do the more advanced magic? How did you learn to make the flame?”
“Your abilities were burnt out,” Banna said. “If you can’t make pollen, you can’t possibly possess real magic.”
