by Guy Antibes
Did these statues replace worship in Bossom? By the arrangement of the statues, he doubted it. From his viewpoint, the pattern told him that they merely started at the back and moved towards the front door.
He counted the statues and figured that the Citizens Council started less than two hundred years ago. The country must have changed a lot since then. He looked around the building, convinced that it started life as a cathedral.
A mother and her child walked in. She spoke too low for Pol to understand much of what she said, but he got the impression that the child was getting an unwelcome civics lesson from the look on the little boy’s face.
“I’ve seen enough,” Shira said, threading her arm through Pol’s.
Evidently the others had as well as they walked out into the cool, but sunny, spring afternoon.
“No market?” Kell said.
The mother walked out with her child. Paki somehow bumped into her, but Pol hadn’t noticed. She stopped immediately and turned around.
“I’m sorry,” he thought Paki said, but the woman put her hands to her face and screamed.
Although there weren’t many people in the square, five guards seemed to come from nowhere and quickly surrounded them. The woman and the guards exchanged words. Pol caught the drift of the exchange. It seemed that in Missibes, touching a married woman was a serious crime.
“We are foreigners,” Pol said, “and were just asking if there is a market in the Inner Circle.”
“Ignorance isn’t an excuse,” the guard said. “Males do not touch married females unless invited.”
Shira squeezed Pol’s bicep. He turned and saw a tiny smile. She might be amused, but Paki wasn’t.
“Papers,” the guard said.
They all produced their passes to the Inner Ring, but of course, Paki had left his in the room.
“It’s at the inn.” Paki pointed to the inn on the square.
The guards nodded. “He will need his papers when he is charged. We will all walk over.”
The woman finished talking to one of the guards. She produced her own papers, and the guard wrote something down. She glared at Paki, but bowed politely to the guards and dragged her child away with her. Something about the woman’s behavior looked false to Pol. She gave the child up to another woman midway across the square and headed in another direction.
Two guards accompanied Paki to his room, with Pol trailing behind. Paki produced his papers, but one of the guards slipped Paki’s papers in his pocket, and then escorted them down the stairs.
Pol noticed the pallor of Paki’s face. “I didn’t do anything,” Paki pleaded to the guards in broken Bossomian. His words had no effect, as he was dragged out of the inn and across the square. Pol did some quick locating and identified Paki as an orange dot surrounded by pale blue dots.
“I’m going to find out where they are going to stash Paki. Shira, would you like to come along?” He turned to Kell and Loa. “Could you stay here and wait for Namion? Who knows when he will return?”
They both agreed and went into the restaurant and ordered more of the orange drink, although both were old enough to consume alcohol.
Pol rushed out of the inn and took Shira’s hand as they walked briskly towards the dots.
“You’ll have to try to teach me how to do that again,” Shira said.
Pol didn’t know why she couldn’t locate and why he had failed to teach her a few times. “Not now, obviously,” he said as he picked up the pace. They were gaining on the dot when they turned down a street up ahead. Pol barely saw the uniforms disappear around a building.
Out of sight of the soldiers, Pol ran towards the dots. He turned the corner and stopped. Ahead of him a building, dark and foreboding, rose above him. He counted eight stories. This building looked like it had never been cleaned, like all the others around it. Three arches were set above a set of steps. Each arch had double doors. Uniformed men and women walked in and out. Paki reached the steps, still struggling with a squad of guards around him and the building swallowed him up.
Pol noticed something that caught at him. “Do you see the wards?”
“What?” Shira said as reached him”
Pol pointed with his chin. “Wards. They are black, hidden within the dirt, but look closely.”
Shira squinted at the edifice. “Oh. These make the Magicians Circle wards look like the scrawls of a child.”
The wards didn’t glow with bright colors and shapes but seemed to hum in Pol’s mind like a funeral dirge, low and slow. He focused again on the building and closed his eyes. The wards were knit together, like the silk clothing that he wore. There were three layers of the weave, dark and darker.
“I wonder what it looks like to one who can’t see wards,” Shira said. “Maybe as clean as the other buildings around it.”
Pol would have to agree, but he had never found a way to ignore his magical sight. The only holes in the wards were inside those three arches. “Evidence of the magical might of Bossom,” he said. “We might as well look closer and see what we can do for Paki, if anything.”
Pol felt powerless to protect his friend at that moment. He hadn’t been close to Paki since their voyage from Borstall in the winter.
They walked closer. Shira slid his hand into his. She looked at him. “For strength.”
“You’re intimidated, too?”
“Am I!”
Pol nodded. “Volian mind-control. It’s the wards.”
He observed understanding bloom on her face. “It is. I can fight it,” she said.
“How?”
“Think of an emotional shield, not a physical one. I’m not quite there, yet.”
Pol stood and concentrated and connected with the pattern of the wards and created a shield. “Mine is oily, like the feathers of a duck.” All of a sudden the building took on a less threatening feel. He took a deep breath.
“Oh,” Shira said, and must have used Pol’s hint. “That worked.” She smiled. “Much better.” She squeezed his hand, perhaps as a reward.
They moved more purposefully towards the building and up the steps. Inside, the walls were painted a light yellow. Perhaps the guards needed a little cheer if the wards affected them like they affected Pol.
Paki sat on a bench behind a railing. He wasn’t alone, but he was the only person dressed in silks.
“Pol!”
Shira and Pol walked up to the railing. “Did they tell you anything?”
Paki looked miserable, holding onto his head. “I think my explanation didn’t come out as well as it should. I can only remember so much when I’m upset like this. I only bumped into her.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “My mind seemed to go haywire when they brought me in here.”
A guard walked up, a little surprised to see visitors. “Are you with the foreigner?”
“We are.”
“How did you get in here?”
That was an odd question. “We walked in.” Pol wondered if the wards were supposed to repel rather than intimidate. “I nearly lost my nerve, but Paki’s my friend.”
“Paki?”
“Pakkingail Horstel,” Shira said.
“Oh, nickname. Can you pay a fine?”
Pol pulled out his purse. “I suppose so. Where do I go?”
“You can just give me the purse,” the guard said.
Pol noticed the surreptitious glances from other guards.
“No. I’ll want a receipt. I don’t want there to be any further misunderstandings.”
The guard turned red. “Do you think I’ll misunderstand?”
Pol gave the guard a little bow. “We have already been embroiled in a violation of your cultural rules,” Pol said.
“Think you’re so smart dressed in your Ring silks, eh? I have a daughter at home no older than your girl.” He looked at Shira.
“I just want to get this incident behind us,” Pol said.
“He will spend a week in this center,” the guard said. “It will take a pardon from the Co
uncil of Citizens to free him sooner.” The guard laughed, as if that was impossible and walked away.
Pol turned to Paki. “Did you understand what just happened?”
“A shakedown?”
“Close enough,” Pol said. “I’ll talk to Namion when he arrives back at the inn. He may be there now.”
“We’ve endured incarceration before, you know,” Paki said winking at Pol. “Although, they had to drag me in here that last little bit. This building scared me, but it doesn’t now,”
“The building has sophisticated wards. Just try to remain positive.”
“When have I not been?”
Pol remembered a few times in his long friendship with Paki, but they were few. “We’ll get you out somehow.”
The wards didn’t need to make Pol feel sad for his friend. They made their way back towards the inn.
“I don’t know if we accomplished anything,” Shira said.
“I think we did. We learned how to shield these emotional wards quickly enough. We saw Paki and let him know that we are with him. The most disagreeable part was being set up for a bribe in front of every guard in that lobby.”
“Brazen,” Shira said.
“It was, and set up no differently that what happened to Paki. Have us fork over a fee and then put us behind that railing with our friend, but with a much more serious charge. I have no love for the Bossomians.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“And I’ll say it again. If Paki were walking with us back to the inn, we’d be getting on our horses to leave.”
“Without Namion?”
“Is Namion any different than these Bossomians? I know he’s arranged something with Fadden, but I know he doesn’t care about us at all.”
“And you care?” Shira said. Her comment surprised Pol.
“I do, even if you can’t see it.”
“You’ll never be the Seeker that Namion is,” she said.
“I definitely won’t,” Pol said, wondering what kind of Seeker he would be. In Pol’s opinion, Namion gave Seekers a bad name, but what if it was Pol who didn’t really understand what made a good Seeker?
~~~
Chapter Twenty-Seven
~
They reached the inn and found that Namion had left a message.
“He won’t be back until tomorrow,” Kell said. “You can read this, if you want.”
Pol read the message, and it didn’t say any more than what Kell had described.
“I don’t think it is safe outside this inn,” Loa said.
~
Pol descended the stairs the next morning and sat in the lobby, waiting for his friends to show up for breakfast. Kell came down and sat next to Pol.
“I haven’t been paying much attention to Paki lately, and I feel bad about it,” Kell said.
Pol nodded. He smiled. “He doesn’t do anything wrong, and a woman still manages to get him in trouble.”
“That’s Paki. Do you think we’ll be able to save him?”
“I think Namion needs to ask after him. We don’t have any power in the Inner Ring. All the guards will want to do is entrap stupid foreigners,” Pol said. “I’m not interested in playing that kind of game.”
Namion came through the front doors of the inn. “Did you two sleep well?”
“Paki didn’t, I’m sure,” Kell said.
The Seeker’s eyebrows rose. “What happened?”
Pol related the entire story.
“I failed to warn you,” Namion said, but he didn’t look too concerned once he heard the story. “I thought we’d be able to relax here.”
“Not when we are fair game for government-sanctioned scams,” Kell said.
“I’m not finished with my work yet. I’ll see what I can do with the Council.” Namion looked away for a moment. Pol was encouraged that he might actually be thinking of a way to free Paki.
“We will have an audience with the Council of Citizens tomorrow, but don’t bring up your friend. I’ll work on that privately. I need to take a bath and change clothes, and then I’ll be off.”
“No breakfast?” Kell said.
Namion shook his head. “I already ate. It was very good.” He smiled at them and gave them both a curt bow and ran up the stairs two-at-a-time.
“Do you believe him?” Kell said.
Pol threw up his hands. “That he had a very good breakfast? I guess they eat differently outside of his inn.” Pol didn’t like feeling so powerless. “What do I know? We’ll be right in front of the Council and can’t even mention our friend’s plight.” He shook his head.
Shira and Loa walked up. “I’m hungry. I wonder what everyone is eating this morning?”
“Whatever it is, I’m sure Namion had a better breakfast than what we will have,” Kell said.
~
Kell had the largest room, so they spent the day going over Bossomian vocabulary and started to study Terilan, the language shared by Teriland and Gekelmar. It seemed to be a lot like Eastrilian.
Loa came up with a simple game to play that involved sticks. Pol went into his room to grab the rest of the metal sections of skewers that would work as well, and found a servant rummaging through his bags.
“You may leave this room immediately,” Pol said. He located another man in the bathroom.
“No,” the servant said. “I am with the Ring Guard, and I can search your things all I want.”
“No, you can’t. Take your friend in the bathroom and leave. Right now.”
“Show me your papers that identify you as a member of the guard.” Pol put out his hand.
“I didn’t bring them with me. What are you going to do about it?” the servant said, while his larger friend came out of the bathroom and shook his head.
Both of the men stood between Pol and his swords, but that didn’t mean Pol wasn’t armed.
“I want your purse,” the servant said, holding out his hand. “Consider it a searching tax.” The other man laughed.
“My turn to say no.” Pol looked from man to man. “I am a skilled magician. I don’t need my weapons to fight.”
“I do,” the larger man said.
“Me, too.” The servant pulled out a foot-long knife from behind.
Pol kept his eyes on the thieves and pulled out two of his throwing knives that he kept together. He split them apart. “One for each of you,” he said.
The servant looked hesitant for the first time. “You’re too young to know how to use those.”
“You don’t really want me to demonstrate, do you?” Pol didn’t want a fight in his room. He had no idea how the guard would treat him, but it looked like he didn’t have a choice once both men began to converge on him.
He put the two knives together again and concentrated on his short sword. The long sword might be too clumsy in his room. “Watch.” Pol teleported the sword into his hand. “See? Just think where I can place these?” He waved the two knives at the men.
“You don’t know how to use that,” the larger man said. He grinned and began to advance, calling Pol’s bluff.
“Last chance.”
The man took a step forward, and Pol moved one of the knives into the big man’s thigh. There would be no blood spilt on the carpet. The man went down immediately. He began to cry out in pain, so Pol put him to sleep.
Pol looked the other thief in the eye. “I can just as easily put this knife into your heart. I’ve done it before. As far as I can tell, death isn’t quite instant.”
The other thief ran out the door. Pol hurried to Kell’s room. “Help me with a thief.”
The pair of them dragged the large man down the three long flights of stairs to the lobby desk, after Pol made sure the door to his room was locked.
“Would you get immediate medical attention for this man? He was caught stealing in my room. There is something that needs to be removed from his left thigh.”
The attendant looked at the man. Pol woke him up, and now he was yelling and moaning.<
br />
Pol and Kell climbed the stairs back up to their rooms.
“Were they really thieves?”
“They said they were Ring Guards and may have been, but I asked for their papers, and they didn’t give them to me. Pol checked his room and didn’t find anything missing, but his things were all over the place. He left the large man’s knife alone on the floor. He joined the door to the frame in a small spot and left with the metal slivers jingling in his pocket.
“Kell said you took care of the thief.”
“There were two,” Pol said, filling them in on the entire story. “I warned them.”
“What good is warning when they don’t believe you?” Shira said.
“It makes me feel justified.” Pol shrugged. “I didn’t kill anybody this time.”
“Thank goodness,” Shira said.
Pol didn’t know why they were ganging up on him.
Loa began to explain the rules of the game, but Pol’s mind wasn’t on her words. He stood when someone knocked on the door.
“It was just a matter of time,” Pol said. He opened the door on four guards.
“You were the one who knifed Abbo?”
“Is that the name of the big thief who broke into my room? What was the name of the other?”
“Ramy?” one of the guards said.
“Shut up,” the guard next to him said out of the side of his mouth.
“Abbo and Ramy.” Pol turned to his friends. “Remember to tell Namion that when he gives my regrets for not being able to attend an audience with the Council of Citizens,” Pol said in a loud voice.
“I don’t believe you,” the guard said. “Come with us.”
Pol didn’t care to compound the situation, and he left his friends.
“Don’t wait up for me. Hopefully I won’t be keeping Paki company.”
The route was very familiar. The guards expected Pol to struggle as they approached the wards, but were disappointed when he walked unfazed up to the arches. Once inside the guard headquarters, Pol sat behind the railing. Paki was elsewhere in the building,
