A Snoop Without Magic, page 10
“I’ve never seen pollen like this. Is there a use for it?” Ommie asked.
“Maybe,” Winnie said, trying to hold in the laughter.
Ommie tossed it on the fire, and it burned brighter than ordinary pollen. ‘Still stinks,” he said.
Sam laughed, and then the other two did. His breakfast seemed to taste better with the good humor.
Chapter Twelve
~
T hey approached Apple City without any problems, taking side roads and even riding over fallow fields. Winter hadn’t quite loosened its grip, so the ground wasn’t particularly soft.
Sam and Winnie rode ahead, leaving Emmy behind to ride in Ommie’s wagon. They needed more information about Apple City and the location of the prison they hoped Harrison and Faddon were in.
Sam walked into a village constabulary. He still had his constable’s token, and he figured he looked more like a constable now.
“Baskin Constabulary,” Sam said. “Investigative Division. I have to pick up a prisoner at the prison, but someone stole the bag with my paperwork. All I have is my token.” He handed his token over to the constable on duty.
“This is genuine, all right.” The constable laughed at Sam. “A bit ironic isn’t? A snoop being a victim of a crime. I’m surprised you didn’t find the perpetrator.”
Sam withstood the ribbing. “I would have snatched the criminal, but I need to get to the prison. I need directions. All I know is that it is on the south side of Apple City.”
“Outside of Apple City. Didn’t you read them?”
Sam looked crestfallen, even though he was very nervous. “I’m new to this part of Toraltia.”
The constable examined Sam’s token. “This isn’t a particularly new token.”
“A friend gave it to me. I saved his life.”
The constable looked repentant. “I’m sorry. Let’s see, I think I have a map that will work. He walked to a thick folder and pulled out a map. “It is here.” He marked a crossroads. “You need to be careful approaching the prison. Stay on the road. The woods surrounding the place are warded to keep prisoners in or anyone who would be so bold as to try to free them, out.”
“And Apple City?”
The constable laughed and pulled out a map of the general area. “Here. You are only ten miles away.”
Sam forced blood into his face while the man was turned. “I’m embarrassed about all this,” he said.
“We all make mistakes. Be on your way.” He shook his head and returned to reading something on his desk. Sam exited the constabulary and spotted Winnie sitting on a bench across the street.
“Sometimes it pays to be bold,” Sam said. He told Winnie about his foray into the constabulary.
“I’ll say. Warded. Now you’ll wish you had taken Glory instead of me.”
Sam shook his head. “No, I don’t. I can show you how to detect wards. They will slow us up, but they won’t stop us,” Sam said.
~
Their little army camped in a remote spot to the south of the prison. It was a large building surrounded by a twenty-foot wall. Guards walked along the parapets.
“Aren’t you concerned you won’t be able to get in?” Winnie said.
“I am not invincible, but I can do things others can’t,” Sam said. “I have the scars to prove it.”
“You don't have to show me. I believe it,” Winnie said.
“You can show me,” Ommie said, laughing.
Sam ignored him. “We have to make a path through the warded forest first. That will happen in the morning. I will need a bag of bright pollen stakes to mark any wards I can’t remove.”
Sam hoped he could remove them all, but he could always put a thick pollen plank over them at the very least, especially if they weren’t any more complicated than the ones Glory had learned in the Toraltian army before she was kicked out of the country or deserted or whatever had happened to her. Sam could never get a consistent story about how she ended up in Wistall and a member of Ziggy Smallbug’s band of students.
He bundled up as it began to snow. He had to hurry, or he wouldn’t be able to detect the wards. With the weather worsening, Sam set out and took an insistent Emmy with him. The snows began to swirl around him, and the morning light turned into more of a twilight. Sam had just found his first ward when Emmy growled, and he nearly walked into two sentries. He quickly retreated behind a tree and followed the two men. He looked around and saw blazes in the branches of the trees. The field of wards was already mapped! He wouldn’t have to mark the way at all. He followed the men and turned back to see the same blazes going in the opposite direction. Sam returned to the camp.
“Emmy deserves some meat,” he told Ommie. “She stopped me from walking into two sentries, and it is a good thing, or I would have strolled into the waiting arms of my enemies. At least today they are my enemies.”
He talked about the blazes.
“That is like leaving a key in the door,” Ommie said.
“Indeed it is, but I’m not sure the pathway is blazed all the way to the prison, and I have discovered that there are sentries.”
“We can take care of those,” Pyron, Sam’s former dueling opponent, said. He raised his hand to stop any comment. “And I know we aren’t here to kill Toraltians.”
Sam smiled. “Right. Winnie, Pyron, and I will free the prisoners.”
“What about me?” Ommie said.
“Emmy likes you best of all. Take care of her. She is lousy at climbing a rope.”
Winnie whispered. “I’m not so good, either.”
Sam laughed. “Don’t worry about that. We will leave just before midday,”
The snow let up long before they left the camp. After a warm midday meal, Sam, Pyron, and Winnie left the camp. Ommie was prepared with treats for Emmy to keep her occupied.
The snow had begun to melt, so they were careful where they stepped to keep from making their footprints too obvious. Sam created walkways out of invisible pollen in places to keep from making tracks.
The blazes began to show on the trees. All three kept their eyes and ears open for sentries. Pyron looked dubious. “Are there really wards here, or is it a hoax to keep people out?”
Sam looked at a patch of soil just off the track where the snow had melted, leaving the soil undisturbed. A dappling of sunlight appeared, brightening the spot.
He got down on his haunches. “This is a ward.” He pointed to a shiny disc barely poking through the dirt. “Have either of you seen one before?”
“It nearly looks like a soap bubble. What is the word? Iridescent,” Ommie said.
Sam nodded. “That is it. Wards are iridescent. I can see it clearly, but you might if you used these.” Sam gave his spectacles to Pyron.
“I thought you two were pulling my leg, but I can make it out. It is about four inches round?”
“That is it,” Sam said. “Watch as I disable it.”
He took out a gold Lion and held it above the edge until the ward began to shrink. In a few minutes, it was gone.
“You were going to do that all the way to the prison?” Pyron said.
“One needs to be patient with wards.” Sam gave them each a gold coin. “This will soften pollen. If we are separated, or they put pollen manacles on your wrists, apply this gold coin to the pollen, and it will soften the manacles enough for you to remove them.”
“Like the gloppy pollen you showed me?”
Sam nodded.
“If you can’t wait to disable a ward, make a two-inch thick plank, and you should be able to walk over it.”
“I like that ‘should be,’” Pyron said. “But if one has to beat a hasty retreat, I can make a plank in a few seconds.”
Sam patted Pyron’s shoulder. “You do what you have to. Let's hope it doesn’t come to that. If I have to toss wards along this path to stop pursuit, I will cut two blazes into the trees entering the safe path.”
“So we can blow ourselves up?” Pyron said.
Winnie shook her head. “Think a little more positively. You can make pollen planks all the way to the edge of the forest and then try to keep the guards from following our tracks back to the camp.”
Sam grinned. “Right, now let’s get going.”
The pathway made for quick time, despite the efforts they took to cover their footprints. They stopped once to take cover while a pair of sentries walked past them. Soon they stood across a stretch of winter-killed grass from the woods to the prison walls.
“And how do you propose scaling a twenty-foot wall?” Pyron said.
“I have to agree,” Winnie also said. “Emmy is really better at climbing a rope than I am.”
Sam gazed at the wall while he thought. He turned to them. “Can you walk upstairs?”
“I don’t see any stairs,” Pyron said.
“You never will. My pollen is invisible.”
They waited for twilight before Sam spotted the walls clear for a shift change or something. He quickly made invisible planks all the way to the wall and then created steps jutting out from the wall, just like the walkway Banna Plunk had created when she broke into the Royal Depository in Baskin. Only a pollen magician could do such a thing so quickly. They scampered up the wall, hugging the stone, When they reached the top Sam lifted his head to see if the coast was clear. It wasn’t.
For once he wished he knew how to create pink or green pollen, but this was not the time for boldness. That might come when they were escaping, but not now when Sam didn’t even know if Harrison or Faddon were in the prison.
The guards finally left the parapet, prompting Sam to urge Pyron and Winnie over the edge and onto the walkway. A quick look told them they were above the stable yard. Sam created steps down to the ground. No one could see them but him; however, Pyron and Winnie had no trouble following Sam down to ground level.
The stable was dark with only a single lamp lending a little light to break up the murkiness. He led them through an open side door. He guessed the guards thought the wall was enough security.
Sam looked for a passageway to the front of the building or to a desk with a list of prisoners. There had to be something for the guards to reference, he hoped. Voices spoke up ahead. The prison was, thankfully, filled with nooks and crannies. At least it smelled decent for such an institution.
The voices came closer.
“In here,” Pyron said. He created a false wall. “It should be good enough to fool them in the dark.”
Sam removed his spectacles, so he could see through the wall and looked on as the light came closer. The men were talking about some woman one of them had met at a tavern in Apple City. Sam tried not to look at Winnie, who might have been embarrassed by their discussion. They drifted past them, and the light disappeared.
After removing the thin ‘wall’ that Pyron made, Sam complemented the Gruellian. “You are a pollen-artist and a great swordsman,” Sam said.
“We all have our good points and our bad. I get more respect for my blade than my magical talent,” Pyron said. “You beat me there, too.” The Gruellian patted Sam on the shoulder and grabbed it, indicating his comment was positive.
“I couldn’t do what you just did.” Pyron’s wall would be transparent, but visible.
“Neither could I,” Winnie said.
Pyron grunted and said, “Lead on, Smith.”
They continued on their way and soon found their way to a lit corridor. The walls were paneled in wood, and that meant they might be close to the warden’s office.
Sam looked around a corner and spotted the office door leading from an alcove with an empty assistant’s desk. They slipped into the warden’s office. Sam looked around, using the lamp across from the corridor shining through the glass of the door for light. The room was too clean.
“Does the warden even work here?” Winnie asked.
“The assistant’s desk must have the roster,” Sam said. “I’ll go look. You two stay in here.”
With nothing in the warden’s office, Sam sat at the assistant’s desk, looking for the file for cell assignments.. He expected a prisoner list would be something referred to often during the day.
He sighed. Nothing on the desk remotely looked like a list. He pulled open the right-hand drawer and there it was, right on top. Sam opened it up. Harrison and Faddon shared a cell on the second floor.
“Second Floor, Cell Seven,” Sam called out to Winnie and Pyron.
“Who’s there?” A voice punctuated the alcove. Three men approached Sam, with swords drawn. None of them had brought a weapon.
“I am,” Sam said, getting to his feet. “I was looking up a friend.”
“Oh, and who is that?”
“Faddon Bentwick. He is the father of a friend,” Sam said.
“How did you get in here?” the guard with the fanciest uniform said.
“I walked in, like everyone else.”
The guard peered at Sam. “If you are so intent on visiting Bentwick, you can visit him for a year or two.” The officer looked at the prison record. “Where is he located?”
“Second Floor. Cell Seven, it says.”
The man laughed as one of the other guards put pollen manacles on Sam. “You would have been deeply disappointed. They have just been moved. Come with us. The warden will take care of your case tomorrow.”
“How did you know I was here?”
The officer looked surprised. “I didn’t. You are one unlucky person. Most people break out of a prison, not in.”
Sam looked dejected. “So where are you taking me?” he said, standing outside the warden’s office.
The man laughed. “Only three doors down from what was listed on the roster.”
Sam was pushed forward. He had expected that Winnie and Pyron were listening as the three of them walked away. The stairway was on the other side of the lobby, and this was one of the more populated areas of the prison in the middle of the night.
The second floor wasn’t any better lit, and that would help Winnie and Pyron reach him if they took another stairway. Pyron had some talents, but Sam didn’t know what Winnie’s were, other than the fact she always had her wits about her, and she was pretty. He suspected she had other abilities, but Sam tossed that thought from his head.
He gazed about him, looking for anything that might help them escape. There wasn’t much. A bench occasionally sat outside the cells, but the corridors were mostly empty. Sam stood in front of Cell Four and was pushed inside.
“They caught you!” Bentwick said, rising from his bed. Harrison sat up, rubbing his eyes.
Sam made a face, shaking his head curtly. The chief constable nodded his head.
“He won’t be with you long,” the officer said from the still-open door. “The boy is a visitor, but tomorrow he will likely become a prisoner, just like you two.”
The door finally shut, and Sam could hear the key moving in the lock.
“Here I am. I have reinforcements, so I hope they won’t get caught. At least I know where you are.”
Harrison chuckled. “You certainly do. What is your plan?”
Sam shook his head. “I don’t have one, yet, but we will come up with one. We have to get you out tonight. I have fifty Gruellians ready to help beat a hasty retreat.”
“I’m not going to Gruellia,” Harrison said.
“I didn’t suggest that,” Sam said. “Winnie and I decided we needed a few men to escort you to a safer place than Apple City’s fine prison. Is that a real window?”
“It doesn’t have much of a view,” Harrison said. He yawned and put on a pollen robe. “There are worse prisons, but a cell is a cell, no matter how it is decorated. What kind of plan are you thinking of?”
“Do you have any idea how often the guards come round?”
Bentwick nodded. “About once an hour. They are rather regular, you know. Prisons are generally run well, and this one is no exception.”
Sam walked over to the window and tested the frame. There weren’t any bars. “What keeps you from making pollen rope and escaping from here?”
“The window looks out on an exercise yard. It is surrounded by two three-story walls and the corner of the prison block’s walls,” Harrison said. “They even let us open it to look around. It is too cold to have the window open for very long.
“Good. We will escape out the window as soon as my friends arrive. You might want to wear a breastplate of armor in case the guards get a little anxious with bows and arrows,” Sam said.
Bentwick put his finger to his mouth. “I hear a sound.”
The door sprang open, showing Pyron holding the lock to the cell.
“Another talent,” Sam said quietly. “Can you make it look like it is locked from the outside?”
Pyron nodded and closed the door.
Sam sealed the door shut with a patch of invisible pollen.
“We will wait for the guard to come by and then leave. Get dressed and bring anything you need. Where are your constables or whoever your men were?”
“Not here. There is a compound on the north side of the city where they are kept. It is an old army camp.”
“We will head there once we have you out,” Sam said.
Harrison put his clothes on while Winnie looked in the other direction. “You still have a plan?”
“We are going to walk out, basically the same way we came into the prison,” Sam said.
“You did, daughter?”
Winnie nodded. “Sam is full of surprises.”
“I’d rather have Sam surprise me than the guards,” Harrison said, “although we have been treated well enough. That wouldn’t be the case if we were caught in Baskin.”
“I’ve been in two Baskin prisons,” Sam said. “I agree.”
They waited for footsteps while Pyron and Harrison had a quick, quiet conversation sitting on the healer’s bed.
The footsteps came and went. Sam threw open the window and proceeded to create a pollen ledge. “Follow me. Don’t lean over to look down. If you fall, we fail,” he said.
They were all out in the cold. A frigid wind blew into Sam’s face while he built block after block. They had to stop once for guards on the walls to pass, but then they were up to the wall and over the side.
