A Scholar Without Magic

by Guy Antibes

  Sam heated up the forge and pulled a few blanks of stock from the shelves. The bars had been ordered from a local blacksmith, but they had all been too long for the size cart Sam had designed. He cut the leaves and followed Professor Dinik’s instructions, working from the diagram the two of them had devised. The process had just about created the first of two leaves, one for the top and one for the bottom, when Lieutenant Kelch walked in.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything important,” the lieutenant said. “I have something that Sam needs to work on for me.”

  Professor sighed rather dramatically and looked at Sam’s work. “I think I can take it from here. Go on, Sam.”

  After Sam washed up, he met Lieutenant outside the laboratory.

  “You were at a forge?”

  “My name is Smith.” Sam realized that the man didn’t know that his last name wasn’t what Vaarekians called a smith. “My father was a blacksmith,” Sam finally said.

  The man nodded his head knowingly. He wasn’t the smartest man Sam had met.

  “We have a problem,” he said. “The food in the main commissary is becoming inedible.”

  Sam broke out in laughter. “What can I do with that?”

  “It is a mystery. It requires a snoop to discover why.”

  Sam smiled. “Don’t they know the food they serve?”

  “Come along and talk to the man who runs the place.”

  Sam followed Kelch to the back of the commissary and into an unexpectedly fancy office.

  “Is this your wonder snoop?” the man behind the desk said. Sam could tell the man was chiding Lieutenant Kelch.

  The guard nodded at Sam. “You can tell him what you told me.”

  “You promise not to let this spread?” the man said. “I am Otto Bralk, the owner of the commissary.”

  “You own the southern one, as well?” Sam asked.

  “No. This one is enough for me.” Bralk cleared his throat. “Someone has been tampering with our food suppliers.”

  “You said, suppliers? That means students are getting sick from different foods?” Sam asked.

  Bralk looked at Kelch and nodded. “Yes, they are. I need someone from the outside to look things over. Kelch said you could come up with some kind of excuse to go poking around where your nose shouldn’t be.”

  “Let’s call it a school project. I will talk to Professor Hanla about learning about cultures through food.”

  Bralk shrugged. “That is your affair, not mine. I want you to snoop around and find out what is going on. I don’t want to have to sell out because of sabotage.”

  “That is what you think this is?”

  “No doubt. I just need to know who, so Kelch can do something about it.”

  “I have to return to class, so I’ll get everything set up and show up tomorrow.”

  “After lunch, if you don’t mind.”

  Sam would miss his dueling class, but Professor Grott would understand.

  ~

  “The tainted food comes into the commissary from different sources,” the chief cook said to Sam. “We have tried to find the culprit, but we definitely know it isn’t someone in the kitchens.”

  Sam frowned. “How can you be so certain?”

  The cook gave Sam a pained look. “Are you trying to tell me how to do my business?” His gaze turned to Lieutenant Kelch. “Can you help me here?”

  “Sam is the snoop. Answer his questions, please.”

  After sighing rather dramatically, the cook nodded. “After the third case of food poisoning, or whatever it is, we began testing the food as it was delivered. It came in tainted and from different suppliers.” He winced. “I can’t have my people getting sick testing our products.”

  “I understand that,” Sam said. He thought a bit and decided it would be useful to make a grid of the evidence like he had done in Baskin. “I’d like to know what suppliers, what food, and when the food comes in, so I can see where there is a linkage. There has to be one.”

  “We’ve already tried,” the cook said, visibly unhappy at Sam’s request.

  “Then it should be easy to assemble the information for me. Then just tell me when the next tainted food comes in. I’m here to do the snooping, and you are paid to do the cooking,” Sam said. “So we can both do what we do best.”

  “A teenage investigator?” the cook looked at Kelch again.

  “And he is a good one,” Kelch said.

  “I can only try,” Sam said, sloughing off the lieutenant’s compliment. “I need the data.”

  The cook grunted. “Wait here. I’ll find it.”

  “This data will solve the mystery?” Kelch asked.

  Sam shook his head. “It gets me started. I want to find out where someone could put in the poison or whatever it is.”

  The cook rushed up to Sam. “Another bad order,” the man said. “You can see the celery before we toss it out.”

  Sam nodded and followed the cook. A woman sat in a chair with a bucket on the floor in front of her. “I hope she didn’t eat it all,” Sam said, looking at the bucket. “I wouldn’t want to search through that.”

  Kelch grinned. “Neither would I.”

  “Over here,” the cook said, shaking his head.

  Sam looked through the entire order of celery. “It always comes in separated?” Sam asked.

  The cook shook his head. He asked the woman the same question. She frowned. “No,” she said in a rough voice. “I thought it odd, as well.”

  Sam took off his spectacles and re-examined the produce. He could see a faint line of white powder on the very first stalk. He tried with his spectacles on, and the line disappeared. Someone had gone to the trouble of applying a pollen patch to the celery. Sam retrieved his gold tip and put it on the celery, watching the line appear, along with a few of the cooks and Lieutenant Kelch.

  “A pollen patch,” Sam said. “It hides the powder, and whatever the powder is, it makes a person sick.”

  The woman cook raised her hand. “I’m proof of that,” she said, looking miserable.

  “Gold uncovers the patch?” the cook said.

  “A gold coin will work as well as this little souvenir,” Sam said. “I’m pretty good at removing pollen, so it may take you a bit more time.”

  “It is better than having students get sick,” the cook said.

  “I’m not here to discover how the taint was delivered,” Sam said. “I’m here to find out who is doing it. I will need to consult with a pollen specialist. I will take one of these stalks.”

  Sam easily found another patched celery and wrapped it up in some real paper before putting it in his pocket. “Do you have your list?”

  “No. I’ll have to add this one. Four is better than three. Yes?”

  “Yes,” Sam parroted.

  He found that Plantian was teaching, so he went to the professor’s class and slipped into the back. Sam already knew what the professor was teaching, so he pulled out the cook’s list and examined it.

  The next step was to put everything on a chart and then start looking for correlations. It was sort of boring work, but as Sam got closer to finding comparisons, he always got more excited. He only had four to track, so he put the chart into his notebook. He listed location and made a note to trace the journey from the supplier to the university.

  By the time he was done, Plantian stood above him.

  “I assume you had something to tell me?”

  Sam looked up. He had lost himself in work and didn’t even notice the class emptying out. He pulled out the celery stalk.

  “There is a pollen patch on this,” Sam said. “Can you see it?”

  Plantian took the stalk and looked at his closely. He closed his eyes and hummed. Sam smiled while he hummed since that meant the professor was calling up his pollen magic. Sam didn’t need to do that.

  “Here it is,” Plantian said. “There is a trace of powder beneath it.” He looked up from the celery stalk. “Did I pass?” he said, grinning.r />
  “You did. Who can make a patch like this? Is it common in Tolloy?”

  “Why? Why do you want to know?”

  “That powder makes people sick. It has been coming in on various shipments of food to the university’s main commissary.”

  Plantian snapped his fingers. “I knew there was a reason I’ve tried to stay away from that place!” He put his hand to his chin and stared at the celery stalk as if it would tell him something.

  “A patch like that doesn’t need a pollen magician, but at least a pollen-artist would have to have made a patch so well that it can’t be detected with the naked eye.”

  “Except for mine,” Sam said.

  Plantian nodded. “Of course. I can get a list to you, although some of those with this kind of ability work for the government.”

  “If you would. I have some additional investigation work to do while you get the list.”

  Sam spent the next day with a large map of Tolloy that he had to buy at the university’s bookshop. He needed help locating where the vendors were. They were all towards the southern side of town. Sam traced probable routes and had Professor Grott check to see what routes would likely be used by the tradesmen. After verifying that, he found a certain area where the paths converged from that point all the way to the commissary.

  He concluded that if the orders were tampered with, they would be along that route. Plantian finally gave Sam his list while on a visit to Emmy. It had more than fifty people on it.

  “I don’t know if I have the time to go through all these,” he said to Plantian.

  “Plot their addresses on your map. You should be able to whittle your list down.”

  “But what if they travel to put the drug in?”

  Plantian shrugged. “You are the snoop,” he said.

  Sam sat down and thought about the list. “Where did you get this list?” Sam asked. “Maybe whoever put it together might have more information on the pollen makers.”

  Plantian pursed his lips. “It came from the Vaarekian Intelligence Agency, and it wasn’t assembled for me, so I can’t divulge where I got it.”

  Sam always knew that Plantian had his connections, but it appeared Sam would have to do a lot more snooping, and he didn’t have the time to interview fifty people. He thought about the Intelligence Agency, and Captain Gortak popped into his mind. He was decent enough at the dueling tournament. Perhaps he could enlist his help.

  Sam smiled because he felt he might be walking into the jaws of his enemy, but that didn’t have to be the case. “I know what I will do. I’ll say goodbye to Emmy and be on my way.”

  “Where are you going?” Plantian said.

  “I cannot divulge where I’ll be,” Sam said with a smile.

  ~

  Sam knew his way around Tolloy much better than the time he had been whisked away by the Intelligence Agency for a bit of intimidation. Thoughts of the experience almost drove Sam to turn around, but he won the battle with his fears and stepped inside the imposing building.

  “Captain Gortak. Is he in?” Sam said, hoping for a ‘no.’

  The man at the reception desk snapped his fingers. A youth in uniform not quite Sam’s age hurried to stand next to Sam.

  “This young man would like to speak with Captain Gortak.” The man behind the desk looked up at Sam. “I assume you have an appointment?”

  Sam could feel his face get warm. “No, but I met Captain Gortak at the last dueling tournament of the season.”

  “Oh, dueling. Very well.”

  Sam remembered the hallway and the office where he had first met the captain. The youth took Sam to an aide’s desk. “To see Captain Gortak.” He spoke much more quietly, “Dueling.”

  “He is free. Just knock on the door and enter,” the aide said. “Name?”

  “Sam Smith. I’m a university student.”

  The aide jotted down Sam’s name and the time. “Go on in.”

  Sam knocked, his palms wet with sweat.

  “Come in.”

  Gortak’s eyes were on paperwork on his desk. He looked up and gave Sam half a smile. “Sam Smith, the Toraltian duelist. What brings you to my office? People generally don’t volunteer to see me.”

  “I have a problem, and your agency might be of some help.”

  “Sit and tell me all about it. I can’t promise you anything,” Gortak said.

  Sam told him about the situation at the commissary.

  “That isn’t something we generally deal with. Are there spies involved?”

  Sam shook his head. “No, but you probably track pollen artists and pollen magicians.”

  Gortak snapped his fingers. “That’s right, you associate with the illustrious Plantian Plunk. Maybe I should listen to you. We have an interest in the Plunk family.”

  “No, nothing like that. The professor helped verify that the celery stalk contained a pollen patch. I brought it with me. You might know what the drug is that made students ill.” Sam had transferred the stalk to a long paper envelope and handed it over to the captain.

  “I see,” Gortak said after looking closely at the pollen patch. “How many stalks?

  “I found three stalks easily. There could be more.”

  “You? Didn’t you need Professor Plunk to identify the patches?” Gortak asked.

  “I can see them with these,” Sam touched his gold-tinted spectacles.

  “Really?” Gortak put out his hand for the celery. He examined the patches. “You must have good eyesight, Smith. I can barely make out the margin of the patch. Are you a pollen magician like Plantian Plunk claims to be?”

  Sam shook his head. “Quite the opposite, but those spectacles seem to help me see pollen better than others.”

  “Gold-washed?” Gortak looked at the spectacles and wrote something down in a notebook.

  Sam wondered if Viktar Kreb would soon issue them to his army, but Sam knew that they would only help a little bit, except for him.

  “So what is it you want from me?”

  “I’d like to find out who is poisoning the commissary’s food.”

  Gortak sat back in his chair and laughed. “Why, we are, of course!” He leaned forward. “Do you want it to stop?”

  Sam nodded. “Our students are getting sick, and no one can trust any of the food. I imagine many of them will find other places to eat, even though they will lose the convenience.”

  Gortak nodded. “I didn’t start this project, but I have known of it. I would say the experiment worked. The powder is from a plant that makes people sick for a day or so. No one was seriously ill?”

  “Not that I know of,” Sam said.

  “I will stop the project if you write up what happened from your side and send the report to me.”

  “I can do that.”

  “One other request. You can’t tell anyone that the Intelligence Agency was behind tainting the food.”

  Sam thought about that. He would lose a little face, but his only purpose was to stop the poisoning. “I’ll do that if I can talk to a few people on a list that you give me and say that my investigation must have scared off the poisoners.”

  Gortak nodded his head, obviously thinking about Sam’s proposal. “I can do that. It won’t be a big list, and those you contact will not be our people.”

  “I agree.”

  Gortak put both of his hands on his desk. “Now that we have that unpleasantness behind us, let us talk of dueling. How much has Grott’s team been destroyed?”

  Sam was honest about the devastation. “Norna Hawkal and I are there because we are foreigners, but Professor Grott thinks the conscriptions will continue.”

  “I’m not privy to that. The army isn’t as pleased with Grott’s swordsmen as they are with Grott’s making them into duelists. Dueling is quite a bit different than fighting in the field.”

  “I know, Captain Gortak. I was in a battle once. It is quite different if you want to survive.”

  Gortak’s grin didn’t make it all the way to his
eyes. “You have learned a valuable lesson. Let us hope you remember it at a vital moment in your life. Now, I have other work to do. I will have a list of ten names delivered to you at your dorm. You may go.”

  “Don’t you want to know which dorm?”

  Gortak’s full grin returned. “I already know.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  ~

  S am made his inquiries. All but one on Sam’s list was also on Professor Plunk’s. He planned the interviews so that if Captain Gortak or anyone else followed up, he would see that Sam was asking the right questions.

  His meeting with Gortak gave him a few nightmares in the next week, but it appeared that the Intelligence Agency’s experiment was over, and the food poisoning stopped with one more occurrence the day after Sam had talked to the captain. The experiment made Sam more uneasy about living in Tolloy.

  When Sam delivered his report to the front desk at the Intelligence Agency, Kelch ordered him to his office. He shut the door and asked Sam to sit.

  “I guess you intimidated the right people,” Kelch said. “The problem was solved.”

  “I don’t know if I would use the term intimidated, but I think I did talk to the right person. Are we done with this?”

  Kelch nodded. “We are, but stay prepared. I might call you again when I get a problem that the university guard can’t solve.”

  Sam walked back to his dorm and ended up smiling. In a very real sense, Sam was able to stop the poisoning by talking to the right person, Captain Gortak. He was able to halt the experiment by whoever conducted it.

  His good humor didn’t last long. He walked into the practice hall. It was empty except for Professor Grott, examining the practice swords.

  “Do you want your favorite dueling blade?” the professor asked.

  “Doesn’t someone else want to use it?” Sam asked.

  “The fencing classes are shut down as of today. The university’s dueling team has been dissolved.” He looked at Sam with sad eyes. “Actually, it stops with me,” Grott said. “I am to report to the army in a week after my current affairs are completed, and part of that is disposing of my inventory of swords.”