A Voyager Without Magic

by Guy Antibes

  “I know Wollians in Carolank, but no nomads,” Desmon said. “What was the pollen color inside his mask?”

  “I don’t know, but that doesn’t matter because the man created a dark green pollen club in front of my eyes. A dense club.” Sam pointed to his face. “The guard poured alcohol down my throat to relieve me of the pain right after, so I don’t know what Commander Eshing has found out. I am to return at noon.”

  “Then get yourself cleaned up. Maybe Banna Plunk can make a pollen-patch to cover your bruises.”

  Sam shook his head. “I wish.” A pollen-patch on Sam’s skin wouldn’t last very long.

  He left Desmon and changed his clothes. The guard hadn’t thought to wash his dark trousers, and they were nearly as bloody as his shirt. Sam finished cinching them up when there was a knock on his door.

  “Smith?” Captain Darter said. “Come to my cabin right now.”

  Sam nodded, but she couldn’t see that. “I’ll be right there.” He heard steps retreating from his door.

  After washing his upper body, he donned a clean shirt and threw on his purser’s coat and proceeded to the Captain’s cabin. When he entered, Jordi, the First Mate, Banna Plunk, and the Captain were already talking.

  “Sit, Sam,” Captain Darter said. “Does your face hurt?”

  Sam smiled. “It hurts about as bad as it looks, but not quite.”

  “If it is of any consequence, the guards are gone. You caught the murderer?”

  After telling them of his investigation, all of them, including Banna Plunk, looked relieved.

  “Jordi found a new rudder already made, so we can leave as soon as we wish,” Captain Darter said. “We are waiting for fresh supplies tomorrow morning, and the tide will permit us to leave in the early afternoon. I’m not sure if Commander Eshing will want your assistance at this point.”

  “He gets it if he wants it or not. I’m taking Emmy when I return to the guard office. She will find where the Wollian nomad lives. There is no better hound than her.”

  Banna nodded. “Emmy and her sisters were very special,” she said.

  The woman had been attached to her dogs, that was for sure.

  ~

  Emmy created a stir in the guard lobby when Sam entered. A guard summoned the commander.

  “Your dog?” Eshing asked.

  “I share her with another passenger. Emmy is a unique hound. We can find the Wollian if he is still in Carolank,” Sam said.

  “We can put off lunch for that time? I’ll fetch the man’s coat.”

  Soon they stood at the bottom of the steps to the guard office with the coat Sam had pulled off the Wollian. They walked to the Pelican’s Maw where Eshing lost the nomad.

  “Seek,” Sam said in Vaarekian. Banna said it was the best word to use.

  Emmy sniffed and trotted around the little square that fronted the tavern and trotted off down a street, pulling Sam along.

  Eshing and three guards ran after them. After a while, they came to a dead end alley. Emmy whined and pawed at the door nearly at the end.

  “Break it down,” Eshing said.

  After a few moments of nothing happening, the door burst open, splintering the ancient wood that held the hinges.

  “Go!” Sam said, letting go of the leash.

  Emmy took off and pawed at the door in a corridor. It wasn’t locked, but it led downstairs. Sam was the first to follow her, and at the bottom, another set of stairs led six flights further down. Eshing’s men broke down another door, revealing a warehouse dug below other houses. She sniffed and stopped at another locked door. It led to someone’s living quarters. Emmy ran into a bedroom and put her nose into a half-filled closet.

  “The Wollian didn’t waste any time,” Eshing said. “We should have used your dog last night, but I didn’t think we would need to act so quickly. It’s obvious this place has been cleaned out.” He sat on the bed. “The murderer is gone.”

  Sam let Emmy continue to dig in the closet while he looked at a dressing table. Small paintings of people were stacked on the side. He rummaged around in the drawers. The Wollian and whoever else lived here hadn’t bothered to check what they left behind. He didn’t find much, but there were three other bedrooms in a similar state.

  In the biggest one, a large desk had been shoved against the wall. Sam could see the scratch marks on the floor. He bent down to see how fresh they were. These were recently made.

  Eshing put his head through the door. “Find anything, Smith?”

  “Help me with this desk, please,” Sam said.

  They pulled back the desk and found a cabinet in the wall. The cabinet was stuffed with papers. Sam pulled them out, and among the documents was a crumpled letter from Harbormaster Penstock saying that he had placed too many pollen artifacts among his friends and associates as it was, and if they wanted preferred berths, they would need to pay him in gold. The price the harbormaster asked for was very high.

  “He asked for his own death,” Eshing said.

  “Now you have a motive, but what was the Wollian doing in this warehouse?” Sam asked. He looked at the closet. “You can measure the clothes in the closets to get an idea about the criminals’ sizes and even their foot size from their worn shoes.” He thought a bit. “There might be some hair around to discover their hair color.”

  Eshing grinned. “You are a snoop. I was thinking the same thing. I think you have done more than enough to help. I’ll write a letter of recommendation for you.”

  “We depart on the afternoon tide, tomorrow,” Sam said.

  “Then I will treat Captain Darter, you, and whomever you wish to join us, even your pollen expert.”

  “I don’t think the pollen expert would want to join. Shyness.”

  Eshing shrugged.

  Sam walked through the warehouse, his way lit by one of the lamps left behind, while Eshing’s men worked in the bedrooms. Refuse was piled up against the walls. The pollen plank floors showed plenty of recent activity. Sam used his wand to poke through the piles of broken boxes, partially eaten food, and empty drink bottles until he came to a pile of broken swords and knives at the bottom.

  “Commander!” Sam called.

  Eshing emerged from the apartment and knelt by the uncovered stash of weapons. “All defective,” he said. “And new. This was a weapon smuggling operation.” He pulled out a sword identical to the one that hung in the harbormaster’s office, except the end had broken off an inch or two from the tip. “Poor quality. Want it?” Eshing handed the sword to Sam. “A souvenir.”

  Sam would rather have that as a souvenir than his protesting nose. “I’ll take it to show to Desmon. He’s a Wollian sailor aboard The Twisted Wind.”

  ~

  Sam watched the port of Carolank shrink in the distance with the Wollian sword in his hand.

  “I don’t know why you are holding onto that piece of junk,” Desmon Sandal said. “It is cast and polished rather than forged, more of a decorative piece than a real weapon. I’ve seen enough of them in my home country. Every house has a few swords hanging on the walls, and few are real weapons.”

  Sam looked at the broken tip and knew enough about metallurgy to see that Desmon was absolutely right, and that was why the pile of weapons was so large. Someone probably made a lot of money selling easily-broken cast weapons. No wonder the murderers of Harbormaster Penstock had left the city quickly.

  “At least Eshing will know that, and he has general descriptions of the criminals, one being a Wollian pollen expert.” He waved the sword around. “The balance isn’t very good, at least for me. Goodbye, Carolank,” he said before he tossed the sword as far out from the ship as he could.

  Desmon laughed behind him. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Asul Kindra was with them. He was down for extended leave in Carolank, according to Jordi Hawker.”

  “No one told me that,” Sam said.

  “And you are the snoop?”

  ~

  Sam spent a beautiful day on the deck with
Emmy. Banna Plunk emerged from her cabin for one of her rare appearances and stood at the rail looking out at the sea.

  “What did you learn from your experiences at the port of Carolank?”

  “Spicy food and don’t let someone hit you in the face with a pollen club. It isn’t steel, but it still hurts.”

  “You learned more than that,” Banna said.

  “I did, and I filled another notebook with my experiences,” Sam said. “I’m glad I accompanied Desmon on a walk through the city the first day, or I’d never have gotten off the ship.”

  “And you paid for that, didn’t you?”

  Sam nodded, looking back out to sea. “I’m still a bit confused about Desmon. I know he passed a note to the Wollian bartender. He thinks Asul Kindra was somehow connected to the secret warehouse. I’m not so sure, but I can’t confirm anything at this point.”

  “Do you want to?”

  Sam sighed. “I don’t know. We do stop at Wollia next.”

  “After seven weeks at sea. I can teach you to speak like a Vaarekian in that time.”

  “I thought I already did,” Sam said.

  Banna laughed. “Close, but not quite. You need to learn colloquial words, which you don’t use. Some of the ones you do use are unique to Toraltian court language.”

  “Oh,” Sam said, but he didn’t know if he needed to continue to do all the work. Perhaps he would be happy to be relieved of the boredom. Jordi had even admitted the leg to Wollia was the least interesting part of the voyage. “Can we get started now? I wanted a better idea of the color of pollen. Is it really true Toraltian pollen is a variation of one color?”

  “It applies to most of Holding. Norlank is a bit more colorful, I understand, but the northern half of the continent of Holding has mostly pale pollen users.”

  “Pale. I’ll have to remember that. Everyone produces a different color? Didn’t you tell me that?”

  Banna shook her head with a bit of a smile. “No. There are too many people for everyone to create a different color, but there are a lot of variations.”

  “So a snoop could use that in identifying people?”

  “Didn’t you do the same in Carolank? Desmon’s blue pollen, the Wollian murderer, dark green?” Banna said.

  It made sense to Sam, but he had no way to measure it unless he kept samples from the sailors. Perhaps he would do that as an exercise during the long weeks at sea and show Banna the results, except for the fact that most of Captain Darter’s crew was Norlankian and that meant pale pollen, as Banna put it.

  “I’ll think about how impractical it really is,” she said.

  And Sam would try to figure out a way to make it work, but he didn’t tell the woman that. Banna could be very prickly, very quickly. The voyage still had a long way to go, and Sam wanted their truce to last all the way to Tolloy.

  “By the way, thank you,” Banna said, looking out to sea, “for keeping me out of your investigation. I was afraid my activities in Baskin might have made things uncomfortable in Carolank.”

  “There was an arrest order for you, I found out. You were right not to venture off the ship, but your removal of the ward will help Commander Eshing find out what ships were doing the smuggling.”

  “You must think that makes me feel wonderful,” Banna said. “It doesn’t, but if you wanted to make my life difficult, you could have.”

  “And Captain Darter—”

  “The captain knows what I carry and what I am going to do with it. She has been well-paid to get me safely to Vaarek. I don’t want to talk about this. We will meet again tomorrow in my cabin to resume your studies.” She turned and left the deck.

  As Sam watched her leave, he marveled at the woman’s mercurial personality. She thanked him and nearly cursed him in the same conversation. The uncertainty made her a difficult woman to be around. He sighed as he put his hand on Emmy’s head.

  “Is she as odd around me as she is around you?”

  Emmy barked, making Sam laugh. The dog helped Sam bear being around Banna Plunk. It also helped Sam to remember he needed to learn as much about pollen as he could. He thought a deeper knowledge of the stuff would help him survive in the world. Speaking like a native Vaarekian would help him survive his time in Tolloy.

  Desmon came to his side. “The woman never looks happy, unlike Emmy.” He scratched Emmy’s coat, and the dog closed her eyes to savor the feeling.

  “Banna Plunk is leading a life filled with anger,” Sam said. “That’s about as much as I know about such things. I just don’t want to add more to it than I already have.”

  “Your history with Banna Plunk?”

  Sam nodded. “It is recent history, but her anger goes back to before she ended up in Toraltia.” He looked at Desmon. “That’s all you need to know. Can I go up in the rigging again?”

  “Sure,” Desmon said. “Change your clothes and put your dog where she won’t growl at anyone, and then we can find something to do up there.”

  ~

  The voyage proceeded without much change. The winds freshened and stalled as the rains came and went. They didn’t run into a violent storm all the way across the ocean.

  Sam kept himself busy climbing the rigging, doing constant inventorying for Jordi Hawker, and learning more about pollen and the Vaarekian language. He tired of practicing with the thin sword, but the exercise was good for his mind. Sam wanted to read more about Wollia, but even Desmon was stingy with information about his homeland.

  Frustrated, Sam asked to see Captain Darter in her quarters.

  “I’d like to learn more about Wollia, but no one wants to talk to me about the place.”

  “Won’t talk to you, or doesn’t want to talk to you?”

  “Is there a difference?” Sam asked.

  “Perhaps.” The way Darter said it there certainly was.

  “Can you help me? I want to know if it is the kind of place I can settle.”

  The captain pursed her lips. “I don’t think it would make a good candidate.”

  “There we go,” Sam said. “Can you give me some details?”

  She smiled a condescending smile. “Wollia is a wild place. It is filled with factions. You have the nomads, the farmers, the city dwellers, and the nobility all fighting each other. Each faction has definite opinions that aren’t shared with the others. It is so bad that people often don’t want to be identified with one or the other. We have put in at Port Hassin many times, and I have had sailors jailed or beaten for a slip of the tongue to the wrong people.”

  “Is that why Desmon runs free on the ship, even though he is a spy?”

  She nodded. “I don’t know who he reports to, and no one else does, so we keep our mouths shut.”

  “You are afraid of him?”

  “Not afraid,” the captain said, “just wary. There is a difference. You’ve never been there, so it makes it difficult for you to side with anyone.”

  “But that won’t be the case if I return to Wollia.”

  “No, it won’t.” Captain Darter said. “So what do you want to know?”

  “I guess I’d like to be ignorant of the factions, but I’d like to know what the country is like, including their culture.”

  The captain held up two fingers. “Two basic cultures, nomads and city people. Factions abound in both cultural enclaves.”

  “Can a faction be in both cultures?”

  “Some are, and some are identified by the group. It is a crazy place, and there is a chance we may be in port for some time.”

  “Why is that?”

  “A contract to bring a Vaarekian professor and his gaggle of students aboard. It is why we have so many empty berths on The Twisted Wind on this leg of our voyage. If he is already in Port Hassin, we won’t spend much time in Wollia, but in my experience, that never happens. He is supposedly journeying from Wollin, the capital.”

  “So I will have to watch myself.”

  “And watch everyone you meet. Say the wrong thing, and you can’t pre
dict what might happen. I’ve never been in such a place. It is like everyone hates everyone else.”

  “Do they have spicy food like Carolank?” Sam asked.

  “They do. The nomads eat their stew cold and congealed, but the city people like their stew hot and peppery. The wealthy dress in silks and loose linen, the nomads prefer thick felt to retain their heat. Walk into the wrong eating or drinking establishment, and be prepared to be chased out or beaten.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t leave the ship,” Sam said.

  “We all have to leave the ship. The Wollians don’t allow visitors to live on their vessels. Be assured everything is locked up tight when we leave each day. I’ve been to Wollia before. Miss Plunk has volunteered to protect the ship with wards, which is an accepted practice.”

  Sam wasn’t surprised that the woman offered to ward the ship. Banna had her own extremely precious cargo to protect. “So I am in for surprises.”

  “You are, but I wouldn’t worry too much. Just don’t stick your nose in other people’s business.”

  On his way back to his cabin, the captain’s last words were ominous because intruding was sort of what Sam did.

  Chapter Twelve

  ~

  P ort Hassin thrust up from low hills surrounding a large bay. The buildings were unlike anything Sam had seen before. The roofs didn’t have peaks but were rounded. Some domes looked like upside-down onions with spires in the middle. Needlelike towers thrust skyward from all parts of the city.

  He was surprised at the variety that abounded in the city. Buildings were painted bright colors and pastels. As the ship drew closer, Sam didn’t see brick or stone, but plaster covering everything, and painted. Even the vegetation looked different from the continent of Holding. He had been observing the exotic foliage as they hugged the shore for two days until the ocean poured into the Bay of Happiness where Port Hassin was nestled.

  When he had pressed Desmon for more details about Wollia the previous day, his friend laughed. “The captain is right about factions everywhere, but my country isn’t as wild as she lets on. I suggest you visit the city constabulary when we first land and show them your constable’s badge. It never hurts for authorities to know where to send your body.” He laughed at his joke. “You will be okay.”