by Guy Antibes
“Good,” Sam said. “Harrison and I thought we needed a strategy—”
“Or two,” Harrison said.
Sam nodded. “We should begin to talk about who might be leading the gang and see which people fit, and the other strategy is to have evidence of wrongdoing in Shovel Vale and Worrier’s Rest. I thought you could verify if the two villages have constables assigned, or are they imposters.”
“We did?” Harrison said.
Sam shook his head. “I’m just a helper, again?” he said.
Harrison chuckled. “No, you are too cute to let go without a bit of teasing.” He looked at Bentwick.
Sam felt his cheeks burn.
“Sam and I thought we needed to lay out what the troops need to do when they arrive. Showing them a tampered map isn’t enough to send in the king’s army.”
Bentwick nodded. “I agree with that. So we have two tasks to complete. I don’t know the people up here. We need to enlist another investigator.”
“Do you know whom?”
“You’ve already met him, Tom Elbow. He writes down everything and remembers what he writes and hears, if we can clear him of malfeasance. I’m still worried about that, regardless of what he says.”
Harrison smiled. “Then let’s verify that someone drugged him the night Ralt was killed. He gave me a name, but I’d like to see the turncoat in action, first.”
“When is your healing session today?” Bentwick said.
“Very soon, now, in fact.”
“Then there is nothing I can do,” Sam said. “I don’t think it is safe enough to walk the streets alone.”
“Then go on patrol with a pair of my constables. We can say you are being tried out for an apprenticeship.”
“Constables aren’t apprentices,” Sam said.
“We have them, but not in villages and towns. The Baskin constabulary has a handful apprentices at any one time. They have to be recommended by another constable. It’s three years as an apprentice, and then if you impress the right people you become a constable, or you are encouraged to find something else to do.”
“That sounds like anywhere else,” Sam said.
Bentwick shrugged his shoulders. “That’s how apprentices work in Toraltia and in most of the other countries on Holding. It is good enough cover for you since you two are staying with me in the constabulary.”
“Then how do we obtain property records and track the shares to the miners?” Sam asked.
“We’ll have Tom do that. He often scours records in the town recorder’s office, and that same office has whatever information Mount Vannon has on the shares.”
“That leaves me to do what?”
“An apprentice goes on patrol. Have you no ears? However, you’ll be in charge of the patrol. The constables are there to protect you.”
“Can’t I take Emmy?”
“The dog?” Bentwick shook his head and chuckled. “It’s either the dog or the constables, although I’m not sure who will protect you better.”
“Good. I’d like to find out if Les Oakbrush is still in Mount Vannon. It would be interesting to find out if he’s been out in the villages.”
Harrison smiled. “Whatever kind of gang this is, they can have multiple pollen artists, you know. All it takes is a good imagination and better than average talent.”
Sam shrugged. “I have to rely on your counsel. I only know some women can make beautiful veils, and others can’t.”
“Good imagination and better than average talent. Using one’s magic to create things is not the same for everyone. Your father uses pollen for his work, but his talent is different from a baker who creates molds, or a plate maker who creates dinnerware.”
“Or a healer, or a person who makes wagon covers,” Sam said.
“Right. That is something you don’t have to worry about. The spectacles give you the ability to see pollen better than others and the ability to ignore pollen, if you choose.”
Sam nodded. “Then I will talk to more miners. Maybe we need to take some constables and visit the Fealty Mining Company.”
“It is probably in a file in some lawyer’s office.”
“Then we can talk to the lawyer,” Sam said.
Bentwick grinned. “That’s the spirit. I’d rather move in that direction than talk to miners about their experience with Ionie Plunk.”
“I disagree,” Harrison said. “We should get a feel for what kind of threats Ionie made. I don’t believe the details she gave us.”
The chief constable nodded. “Very well. Interview your miners, then. Tom can find out where the mine is, or who is keeping track of the shares. I’m changing his shift to come to work from noon until ten after noon. We need him with us rather than being bait. Since Harrison knows who the suspected constable is, we can still fashion a trap with another person.”
Harrison spoke the name of the constable.
“I can see Harget Temper doing something like that,” Bentwick said. “I interviewed all the constables when I arrived. When you do that you get a feel for people. I didn’t like Temper. He definitely would be on my list of those who might betray Ralt.”
“Bad Temper,” Harrison said, smiling.
Bentwick nodded. “That could very well be true.”
“Does he have a high level of magic capabilities?” Sam asked.
“I can find out. It is something we test our constables for. We time them in creating things. Someone who can create lockable handcuffs is considered high level,” Bentwick said.
“Rather than creating pollen-rope?” Sam asked.
“Precisely. I will look at Temper’s file and return.”
Bentwick left Harrison and Sam looking at each other.
“Are you up for all this, lad? It is only going to get more dangerous.”
Sam shrugged. “I have no home. I have no profession. Playing as a constable’s apprentice is probably as close as I’ll come to the real thing,” he said.
“Are you going to commit suicide? Those are pretty depressing words.”
Sam barely smiled. “No. My solution is to fight my way out of it. I’ve done that my entire life. With Link Cackle’s spectacles, I can see pollen, now. That is liberating for me. I no longer have to be like a blind man lost in the forest. I’ve become used to the danger. I can’t say I don’t get scared, but I don’t freeze with fear.”
Harrison looked long and hard at Sam. “No, you don’t, and many more people at your age, facing what we have, would be incapacitated with fright.”
“Anyway, I have Emmy now. She will keep me going,” Sam said.
“What are you going to do with her when we finish our tour?”
“Take her with me. If I go to Baskin, I will find a place where I can keep her, even if I have to become a hermit in the forest.” Sam looked at Harrison. It’s what the healer had done at Cherryton.
“There aren’t any forests close to Baskin, Sam. It is farmland, flat and fertile, for leagues in all directions from the sea. The only forest large enough to disappear into is Baskin itself.”
Sam had thought that might be the case. He’d have to find something to do, but he vowed he wouldn’t be reduced to begging on the streets. He set that thought aside as a problem to be solved for another day.
“Then I’ll pretend that Mount Vannon is my farm, and I’m going to go out to remove some rocks,” Sam said. “Ionie rocks.”
~
Tom generated a list of ex-miners, living and dead, for Sam to visit. After a breakfast of sorts cooked up by Bentwick in his apartment, Sam walked out onto the streets of Mount Vannon, escorted by two constables who had been told by Chief Constable Bentwick that Sam was being tested before being offered an apprenticeship.
Sam took them to a bench in the nearby park. “We should order this list, so we don’t have to walk back and forth across the town.”
The two constables looked at each other with knowing smiles before the three of them got to work. There were fifteen interviews. Sam did
n’t think they would be able to get to all of them, but the constables didn’t complain about the length of the list.
“Do you get to patrol very much?” Sam asked on their way to the first miner’s dwelling.
“Ah, that’s what we do, lad,” the taller constable said. “This investigating stuff you are doing was mostly what the Chief did. I’ve stretched my legs plenty in this town. That’s why my legs are so long.” He chuckled as he said it, and the shorter constable gave him a patient smile. The man must have told the same joke many times.
They reached the first miner’s house. This one had died and left a widow and a grown son living in the house. That was all the information Tom had available.
The son answered the door. He backed up a step when he saw the two constables.
“I am conducting an inquiry about ex-miners. This says your father died two months ago. Is that right?” Sam waved the clipboard with Tom’s list at the young man.
“I didn’t kill him,” the young man said. He rubbed his unshaven face.
“We are not here to find out if you did. Do you know how he died?” Sam asked.
“He got weaker and weaker and developed sores all over his body. My mom’s not been the same since. She is in bed right now.”
“Ah,” Sam said, writing the response on the paper.
“Was he taking some kind of drug, potion, or physic of any kind while his health deteriorated?”
The young man nodded. “The lady who came around to buy dad’s shares gave him a potion for good health. It made him feel better, but then, well, the sores came. We tried to give him more of the potion, but it didn’t do any good.”
“Do you have any left sitting around anywhere?”
“The lady—“
“Ionie Plunk?”
The boy looked surprised. “Yes, that’s her. She took the herb mixture away, but I think we have a little pot set aside somewhere. I was going to give it to Mom if she got worse.”
“Don’t do that,” Sam said. “The sores might be an allergic reaction to the herbs. I’d be happy to take it to my friend, an experienced healer. He will find out what’s in it. Would that be all right?”
The boy looked relieved. “Take it all. I don’t want the stuff in the house.”
“Has your mother seen a healer?”
The boy shook his head. “We don’t like to pay for that kind of thing.”
“Yet your father sold his shares.”
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take her to somebody.”
Sam nodded. “Please do.”
They waited at the door for a bit before the boy returned with a pollen pot. Sam didn’t have his spectacles on, so he could tell the mixture looked the same as the other stuff.
“Can I ask you how much you settled for the shares?”
The young man shook his head. “The lady made Mom and me sign a piece of paper that said if we told anyone about the details, we’d have to give the money back.”
Sam smiled. “Thank you for your information. We got more than we needed. Have a good day. Make sure your Mom sees that healer.”
“Funny getting advice from a teenager.”
“I’m supposed to act like a constable.”
The tall constable interjected, “He’s being tested to be a constable apprentice.” The man nodded to the bereaved young man, who shut the door.
“He’s not going to have his mother see a healer. He’ll be pocketing the money, sure as I’m standing,” the short constable said.
“Does it matter?” the tall one replied.
“It does, but what matters more is that Ionie delivered the drugs, and we have a sample,” Sam said.
The short constable shook his head ruefully. “Until she finds out we talked to the boy and puts the fear of Havetta into him.”
Sam wasn’t going to be deterred. “Who is the one at the constabulary who knows the law? Can a person sign a paper that prohibits them from talking?”
The two constables looked at each other and shook their heads.
“So,” Sam scribbled on the paper, “finding out goes on our list.”
Finding someone home first seemed to poison their efforts for most of the morning. They had five addresses that did not respond to their knocking. None of the premises looked derelict, and passersby who they talked to said the people inside had been seen recently. So that precluded someone dead inside the houses.
Just before lunch, they caught a miner locking the door to his cottage.
“Mister Youngbud?” Sam asked.
“That’s me.” He looked at the two constables and nodded to the short one.
“This boy is being tested to become an apprentice and is asking the questions, Jay.”
“I was just going out to the market, but come in. You can sit to do your asking, can’t you?”
Sam smiled. “We can and would appreciate the rest.”
Jay let them into his house. Sam looked around. Everything was neat, but not frilly. He doubted if there was a Mrs. Youngbud.
“I wouldn’t let you in if Lonny wasn’t with you. We go back a ways, don’t we Lonny?”
“We sure do, Jay.”
“You live by yourself, Mister Youngbud?”
“I do. My wife died years ago, and I didn’t care to break in a new one. Missy was enough for me,” he said.
Sam could sense some pain lingering in the man’s words, but he didn’t know what to say about that. So he grunted sympathetically.
“We are interviewing miners who used to work for Fealty Mining. My list says you did.”
“Is the Toraltian Constabulary after my shares, too?”
Sam shook his head. “Not at all. We are only gathering information.”
“Then could you get Ionie Plunk out of my life? She thinks she can bat her eyelashes at me, so I’ll sign away the shares. Well, I won’t.” Jay said. “It is something my wife and I often dreamed about, the re-opening of Fealty Number Seven. There is still gold in that mine. I’ve kept my mouth shut all these years, but it is time someone knew, in case she and the people she works for choose to kill me.”
“Has she threatened you?”
“All but,” Jay said. “She is too smart to threaten. She even brought over some medicine for my bad back, but I won’t touch it, I won’t.” Jay Youngbud began to get worked up a bit.
“Do you still have the medicine?” Lonny, the short constable, said.
“I do, even though I’ve been tempted enough to throw it out. I’ve only had the stuff for a week, maybe less.”
“I am traveling with a healer. I’ll have him come over and take a look at your back in exchange for the medicine,” Sam said.
“A real healer?”
Sam nodded.
“That sounds like a good trade to me. I want one of the real constables to sign for what the woman gave me.”
“I’ll do better than that. I’d like you to write down what you just told me and sign it. Maybe we can do something about Ionie Plunk, too.”
Jay rubbed his hands. “Even better.” He left them in his tiny sitting room and came back with a pollen-made container. The ingredients looked a little different to Sam’s eyes. “Did she make some claims about the medicine?”
“My pain would be gone, and I’d feel calmer than I have ever felt before.”
“Not happy, but calm?” Sam said. “Include that and the date she gave it to you.”
Sam thanked Jay when they left together. “Thank you for your cooperation.”
“It was my pleasure. You conducted yourself really well, apprentice. See you around, Lonny.”
“Sure, Jay,” the short constable said.
They watched the miner walk away.
“You should have told me you knew him,” Sam said.
“Consider it part of your test,” Lonny said. “If I told you I knew him, you would have let me take over the interview.”
Sam thought about the constable’s comment. “I don’t know if I would or not. But since I
passed that test, do either of you know the others on the list?”
“I know one we will see in the afternoon,” the tall constable said. “He is a cousin of my wife’s mother. I don’t even know if he will recognize me.”
“I’m hungry,” Sam said. “How about you two?”
“I thought you’d never ask. There is a nice little place not far from here. Food isn’t great, but the portions are,” Lonny said.
“I’ll treat,” Sam said.
The shorter constable’s face reddened. “Then I know a better place. It’s not that much more expensive.”
They settled down in the seats at a restaurant. The clientele looked respectable, but not wealthy, so Sam felt a bit safer about not spending much more than the meal money Bentwick had given him to pay for their lunch.
“How did you come up with the idea to have Jay write his own statement? That’s nearly as good as the witness showing up in front of the magistrate in the flesh. That’s why I witnessed it,” Lonny said.
“Lucky guess,” Sam said. “I’ve had a miner die on me in a previous village, not that I think Jay will be killed.”
“The sooner we shut down the Plunk woman, the better,” the tall constable said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
~
T HEY HAD FOUND ONE MINER DRUNK WITH ALCOHOL who could barely put two understandable words together. Another looked at the constables and slammed his door. Sam could see him run out the back.
A man younger than his father’s age answered the third to the last door.
“What can I do fer you?” he said. He was talking like a much older man.
“I’m here asking a few questions. You were a miner at Fealty Mining Company?”
The man nodded. “Fealty Number Three.”
That couldn’t be, Sam thought. The man might not even have been apprentice age when Fealty went bust. He slipped on his spectacles, and it dawned on him that the man who answered the door wore a pollen disguise. He could see the edges of the disguise with his spectacles that he doubted either of the two constables would see it with their normal sight. Sam had never seen a disguised person before. Could this be the pollen artist?
“Sam,” Lonny said, nudging him.
“Can we come in and ask a few questions?”
