by Tammy Walsh
Suddenly, the police officer’s line of questioning snapped into focus. I awoke from my comatose state and burst up onto my feet. The blanket fell from my shoulders.
“You think she took him?” I yelled.
The officer spoke calmly. No doubt he was used to this kind of reaction.
“Often, the kidnapper is someone the family knows,” he said. “They work together in teams with one or more people on the inside. It’s much easier for them to kidnap the victim that way.”
“She would never do such a thing!” I snapped. “She’s kind and good. She would never let anything like this happen to him!”
Waev pressed a hand to my shoulder and eased me back down into the chair. I was so angry, I might throttle someone.
“It’s a potential line of questioning, sir,” he said. “I meant no disrespect.”
Appraising my reaction, the officer flipped his notepad open and made another note. He glanced at me twice as he did it. He was a detective. No doubt he could read my reactions far better than most. By my outburst, he must have understood how much I cared for the governess.
“You’re wasting your time investigating her,” I said with greater control. “You might as well investigate me and my business to see if I need the cash injection.”
The officer pursed his lips. I’d correctly intercepted his next line of questioning.
“If you want to investigate my business, you can,” I said. “I won’t stop you. I’ll even give you full access to my accounts. But I want you to give me your word you won’t spend more resources than necessary investigating the governess. Focus on identifying who the kidnapper really is.”
“We want to find your loved ones as quickly as possible,” the officer said.
“I have good relations with my neighbors,” I said. “They’ll allow us to search their land. I’ll call them now and get their permission and explain the situation.”
“I’m afraid that might be a little premature,” the officer said. “We don’t have the personnel to conduct such a massive search.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll ask my neighbors if their staff can be made available. Would that help?”
The officer bowed his head.
“That would be much appreciated,” he said.
“I suggest you concentrate your efforts on investigating this individual and all public spaces,” I said, feeling a little more relaxed now that I had taken some control over the situation. “The town, local housing, anyone who might be foolish enough to attempt such a despicable act.”
“We will,” the police officer said shortly. He didn’t like being told what to do by a member of the public.
He made eye contact with Waev and nodded toward the doorway.
“We’ll be in touch when we have more information,” he said.
The officer met Waev in the hallway and muttered something to him, gesturing in my direction twice before turning to leave. Waev immediately returned to my side.
“What was that about?” I said. “To ensure I stay here and don’t do anything too rash, I suppose.”
“Pretty much,” Waev said. “He suggested I give you a sedative to help you relax. I can’t say I disagree with him.”
I shook my head.
“I need my wits about me,” I said. “There will be something here, something I’m not seeing. It will point the way.”
Waev smiled at me reassuringly. It was all the sedative I needed. He covered my shoulders with the blanket again and placed my hand on my shoulder.
“Thank you,” I said. “You’re a good friend.”
Waev gently squeezed my shoulder, showing a level of warmth we both knew was always there but never expressed openly before.
Before Bianca and Cleb came along, he was my closest friend and ally. The one person I could rely on, no matter what happened. Beneath his strait-laced demeanor was a man with a heart of gold. And I knew for certain he would never leave my side.
I stood at the foot of Cleb’s bedroom. Everything had been left exactly as I found it earlier.
The police and their forensic team had conducted their investigation and left. Every surface had been checked. They found no sign of any hair follicles, no flakes of skin, no fingerprints, no DNA that didn’t belong to the servants, me, Cleb, or Bianca. It was like a ghost had abducted them.
And they had been abducted. It was the only thing that made sense. I refused to entertain the idea that Bianca was responsible for kidnapping Cleb.
With no evidence of the mysterious stranger, the police assumed Bianca had to be the kidnapper.
Well, so be it. When we found Bianca and Cleb safe and sound, we could tidy up any misunderstandings. I wouldn’t allow her to be punished for something she hadn’t done.
There were small indentations in the carpet where they’d placed the holographic projectors and taken a complete three-dimensional snapshot of the scene. They could go over it again and again as many times as necessary.
It didn’t matter. The room wouldn’t be touched until Cleb was found.
No matter how long that took.
I entered the room and walked among Cleb’s things. I ran my hands over the toys I’d bought him to play with. None of it got played with. His favorites were his spy collection. Captain Titan, Titus, the gadgets, and sporty spaceships. I could swear he had the entire collection, but many appeared to be missing. He must have put them somewhere else.
I smiled at the idea of him playing with them. To think I was almost too late to enjoy being with him. After his parents died in tragic circumstances, he was left to me to take care of. No sooner had I learned the error of my ways than he was taken from me. Him, and his beautiful doting governess, who I fully intended on marrying.
It was a funny thing, for your entire worldview to shift on its axis. You think you have everything figured out, and then something comes along and blows a hole in it completely. To make you realize that the thing you prized above all others, the thing that you thought was the most important, suddenly gets shunted into second place. And a distant second at that.
It was also the cruelest thing that could happen. To come to love something so much and then for it to be stripped away.
I wanted to head outside right now and join the search. Maybe I would see something the others would not.
I wanted to lock down all travel stations, shut down the roads, prevent any spacecraft from leaving the planet.
But that was never going to happen. The thought of them slipping through my fingers, through the police’s net, was too much to bear.
I couldn’t be in that room. It was too stifling. I couldn’t be surrounded by everything that reminded me of Cleb and Bianca, the most precious things to me.
I turned and marched toward the door.
If only there was something there, something I could notice that would point the way.
I paused, my hand perched on the doorframe and recalled something, something so small and insignificant it would have been overlooked by anyone else.
It pointed the way.
I turned and headed back to Cleb’s collection of toys. I passed the untouched items that he never played with, items that gathered dust, passed the cuddly toys that were nothing to Cleb but decoration.
I moved to his collection of spies.
Most of them were missing. But were they missing for a reason?
Perhaps someone took them? Snatching them up in a hand as they stepped outside?
I scrambled under the bed and among the other toys. I checked under the rugs and the shelves. I felt each piece of clothing in his drawers and came up empty.
The other spy toys were not there.
“Waev?” I yelled. “Waev! Come quickly!”
Only one remained. The female spy. She lay on her back, her pistol pointing vaguely at the window.
Maybe I was reading too much into it. Maybe I was seeing patterns where there weren’t any.
Or maybe I was picking up on something only I could see.
�
�But Cleb might have played with the toys somewhere else in the house,” Waev said.
He looked dubious about my theory. I didn’t blame him. I’d think the same way if I were him.
“Have you ever known Cleb to play anywhere but in his room?” I said.
“No,” he admitted, “but since Bianca came, he hasn’t exactly been his usual self.”
That was true enough. Cleb had changed so much he was like a completely different person.
“Look, even if I’m wrong about the toys, isn’t it better we’re out there looking for him?” I said. “Doing something useful? And it keeps me preoccupied.”
I smiled sheepishly. The truth was, sitting around in the house while everyone else was out there doing something useful was beginning to make me nuts.
Waev sighed and shook his head.
“I can’t argue with you on that point,” he said.
I knew he wouldn’t let me down. I grabbed one of Cleb’s socks and used it to snatch up the only toy that remained—the female spy lying prostrate on the floor. I tucked it in my pocket.
I slapped him on the back and led him out of Cleb’s room. I turned to head down the stairs, but Waev didn’t follow me.
“We need to go to the stables,” I said.
Waev still didn’t move. He might have been wearing concrete boots. He looked over at me, but his attention was somewhere else. His eyes darted back and forth, warring with an argument in his head.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“I just…” he said.
I’d never seen him so anguished before.
“How serious are you about this plan?” he said.
“It’s a good idea,” I said. “I think it might lead to something.”
That settled the argument battling in Waev’s head. He came to a decision and turned to me.
“Ever since I came here, you’ve been very respectful of my privacy,” he said. “You never asked what I did before I came here. I never bothered to tell you either. I was good at my job and you didn’t care. But there’s something in my past that’s a little… dark.”
“You’re not a serial killer, are you?” I said.
Waev snorted.
“No,” he said. “It’s not that dark. If you’re serious about this plan of yours, and if you really do think this is how we might find them, I need to ask you a favor.”
“Of course,” I said. “What do you need?”
“I need your word that once we’re done with this, whether we find them or not, you’ll never mention what you might see me do tonight,” he said.
His eyes were intense and I could swear the temperature dropped ten degrees.
“What kind of things?” I said.
“Things that might aid us in finding Bianca and Cleb—if your idea does bear fruit,” he said. “I never want you to ask me about my past, never discuss it with any of the other servants. I like it here. I don’t want anyone to think any differently about me.”
He had to be desperate to ask for this favor. And it was my complete trust for him, my absolute and total regard for his character, that I nodded without even a second’s thought.
“You have my word,” I said.
“Then I’ll need my things,” he said.
I followed him down the hall to his room. He disappeared inside while I waited outside. He was out within five minutes. He wore a camouflage jacket, special boots, and a bag slung over one shoulder. A far cry from the prim and proper perfectly turned out servant he’d been these many years.
I admitted with some shame that although he lived and worked in my home, seen all my things, and knew better than I did how I lived my life, I knew next to nothing about him. With the promise I’d made earlier, I supposed that was never going to change.
He nodded at me and led the way. It was not the nod of someone who carried out my requests each day, but the nod of an equal.
In the predicament we currently faced, I thought that was a good thing.
We hurried down the stairs. The house was empty of workers. They were out looking for our lost friends. We threw the doors open and sprinted across the clearing toward the stables on the other side.
The lights were on and the doors were pinned open. Waev glanced at me. It was unlikely the guards would have missed searching the stables but the kidnapper could have doubled back on himself when he saw the net closing in.
Waev gripped his bag in both hands, prepared to swing it around at the last moment like a club. He jumped around the corner.
“Argh!”
It was the stable master, Ejam. His arms shook as he lowered them from his face.
“What are you doing creeping around in the stables?” Waev said, relaxing his tensed muscles.
“I work here!” Ejam said.
His teeth still whistled and clicked but my ears must already be tuning in to his odd way of talking as I understood every word he said.
“I was very sorry to hear about the lady and the little lord, my lord,” he said. “My wife’s out looking for them right now.”
His wife worked in the kitchens and was an exceptionally good cook when it came to cakes and pastries.
“There’s a dangerous man on the loose,” I said. “I hope she isn’t out searching by herself.”
“She’s with her sister,” Ejam said. “I hope they do run across the kidnapper. He won’t know what hit him.”
He shook his head wearily as if he was glad to be away from them for a while.
“What brought you to the stables?” I said.
“Whenever I used to run away as a lad, it was always to the stables,” Ejam said. “I’ve always had a good friendship with beasts. I thought maybe Bianca and Cleb might have taken refuge here for some reason. I checked but they’re not here.”
That was a shame. It would have saved us a heap of trouble.
“And we heard the rumor about Bianca being the one who took the little lord,” Ejam said, his top lip curling into a sneer. “But neither of us believe that, my lord. Anyone who met her and saw how good she was with the little lord would know that.”
I was glad I wasn’t the only one who thought that way.
“Is there something I can help you with, my lord?” he said.
“Tell me, do arjaths smell as well as they hear?” I said, thinking back to that day we went riding. The arjath could hear its friends easily through the dense forest foliage.
“Better, my lord,” Ejam said proudly.
I extracted Cleb’s toy spy. I unwrapped it and held it by the sock so the creature wouldn’t mix my scent with the toy’s. I held it out to the stable master.
“Could it stiff this and track where the other toys are?” I said.
“I don’t see why not,” Ejam said. “They’ve been known to track more difficult things.”
He led us down the long row of stable doors, each with an arjath poking out of it. They watched as we passed, their nostrils flaring. We came to the room at the far end.
“Snorter has the best nose,” Ejam said. “The only trouble is, he lost a leg some time ago. I didn’t have the heart to put him down. Sorry about that, my lord,” he said, and he looked at the ground to conceal his shame. “I’ve been sharing my food with him. He hasn’t cost you anything extra.”
“If you put him down, we wouldn’t have the opportunity to find the kidnapper,” I said. “And in future, take whatever food you need for these animals. They should eat well. The same can be said for you.”
Ejam’s grin spread from ear to ear.
“Thank you, sir!” he said.
He extended the toy to Snorter, who leaned so far out of his stable Ejam had to take a step back. Snorter breathed in hard and almost sucked the tiny toy out of his hand.
“Easy there, Snorter,” he said, running his other hand over the creature’s long nose. “We need a favor from you. Some friends of ours have gone missing. We need you to use that magical smelling skill of yours to track them down. Do you think you can do that?”
I shared a look with Waev. We were both a little apprehensive. Were we really going to trust the word of a man who talked to animals?
Then the animal bobbed his head. I could have sworn he was nodding.
“There’s a good boy,” Ejam said, smacking him good-naturedly on the neck.
Snorter reared up on his hind legs and slammed his front legs on the stable door.
BANG! BANG BANG BANG!
The other arjaths picked up the drumbeat, thumping hard on their stable doors.
“Looks like he can smell him all right,” Ejam said. “Step back!”
He opened the stable door and immediately waved his arms in front of the creature to calm him down. Snorter tried to sneak past him but the stable master wouldn’t let him. He ran his hands down the great animal’s neck and over his thick fur.
“Woah, boy,” he said. “Steady. You’ll get to go find him. Don’t worry about that. But you know the rules. Harness first.”
He slipped the harness on over Snorter’s head.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to ride him. He seemed too active for my taste.
“Are you sure it’s safe to ride him?” I said. “I wouldn’t want to hurt him with his missing leg.”
“He’ll be fine,” Ejam said, putting the saddle on his back and giving him a treat. “He could do with a little time out of his stable.”
It wasn’t him I was worried about.
Ejam opened another door and prepped a second arjath for riding.
I rubbed Snorter’s nose and made sure the others weren’t watching.
“If you can find Bianca and Cleb, I swear to the Creator himself you will eat nothing but treats all day long,” I said. “Your stable master will be given the same. So, what do you say? Will you find them for me? I miss them a lot.”
Snorter bobbed his head again and pawed at the stable floor with his front foot.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said.
My heart swelled at the thought that every member of the guard, every cook, every maid, every neighbor, every single one of them had answered the call. None had to. It was the middle of the night. Many would be taking time off, sleeping, but they hadn’t hesitated to lend their hand to help. I made a mental note to thank them all personally and have a huge celebration.
