An Apprentice Without Magic, page 14
part #2 of Magic Missing Series
They exited the Retch mansion and stepped out onto the street from the driveway. Sam pointed to an edge of a pillar.
“Pollen repairs from here to here,” he said.
Dickey cleared his throat and pointed to a park with his chin. “There is a bench. Let’s use it while you tell me about your assignment at the Piper Club.”
Once seated, Sam opened the envelope and withdrew his instructions. He looked through all the pages, amazed that they were all written in court language.
“Is this a joke?” Sam asked. “I can barely read this.”
Dickey shuffled through the documents. “I think that’s the point. If you can complete the application, you qualify. I imagine the method keeps the riffraff out.”
“I am riffraff as far as the nobility is concerned,” Sam said.
“Giving up?” Dickey asked.
“You wish. I won’t get this done immediately, but I’ll have it done by tomorrow morning.” He folded the paperwork and tucked it back in the envelope.
“You get to write another report, but in Toraltian,” Dickey said. “Other than that, it looks like we continue with our current strategy. The key is the Piper Club, and you are the only one who can penetrate it.”
“But Banna Plunk knows I’m in Baskin.”
Dickey laughed. “Do you really think she perceives you as a threat?”
Sam frowned. “I thwarted her in Mountain View.”
“You, or Harrison Dimple, or Chief Constable Bentwick, not to mention General Torrent?”
Dickey made it sound like Sam hadn’t contributed.
“I played my part, and without my, uh, perspective, we wouldn’t have come so close to catching her.”
His partner smiled with half his mouth, as usual. “Without you, the revolt might have cost more lives, but the King’s forces would have eventually prevailed.”
Sam wasn’t so sure, but he did know when the armies fought, he played a minuscule part. “I still helped.”
“And it is very possible that she knows you helped, but do you think she feels threatened by a fifteen-year-old?”
It did sound a little ludicrous, but Sam still knew his worth, and Dickey didn’t know the entire story. No one else had saved Harrison’s life. He kept his mouth shut, although his mind accepted the fact that perhaps Banna Plunk saw him as an irritant.
“So it doesn’t matter if my being a snoop apprentice will bother her?”
Dickey chuckled. “It might more than you realize, but she doesn’t know you are connected with me, right? She saw Emmy and you at the market in Baskin. All she knows is that you are in town.”
“And if I show up at the Piper Club, and she works there in some capacity?”
“Then you work there.” Dickey shrugged. “Don’t worry about her. Worry about finding out who is administering the sheep and deer pollen to hapless nobles. I can’t think of a better place to snare a feckless Lord.”
Sam sighed. Dickey had led him on a merry mental chase, but at least he knew his assignment was still in effect.
“After I fill out today’s report, I’ll deal with this.” He patted his coat behind which the court language documents were tucked away.
“Good. You can spend the afternoon at Antina Mulch’s shop, but don’t yield to temptation and have her do your work for you.”
Sam hadn’t even thought of doing that, but it was a good idea. “She can get me through the rougher parts. Is that acceptable?”
Dickey just smirked. Slapping his hands on his thighs, he stood up. “There is a carriage-for-hire. Time for a little report writing, eh?”
~
Sam stacked the five pages of his report to Chief Constable Bentwick and yawned. It was still early afternoon, and he had time to visit Antina and start on his application and read the other documents. Dickey had gone out on another investigation with two other snoops, leaving Sam alone in the office.
Mark Leadback, the friendliest of the apprentices, poked his head in. “No other snoops about?”
Sam shook his head.
“Are you recovered?”
Sam wasn’t about to ask what from, but the injuries from the beating at the hands of his fellow apprentices had faded after the first week. That attack had happened more than a month previous.
“Fully. I get new bruises every morning at the hands of merciless constables.”
“We heard about that. A few of the boys think it is a punishment.” Mark said it lightly enough.
Sam laughed. “Sometimes it feels that way. I can only beat a third or so of the constables,” he said. “I don’t get to spar with them anymore. I’m just exercise fodder for the better constables.”
“You don’t win every time?”
Sam shook his head. “Whoever said that? I’m always beaten.”
Mark exhaled. “Good. Some others say you are the best swordsman in the constabulary.”
“They have that wrong,” Sam said. “Kened Rider told me he put me with the regular constables because my style suits theirs better.”
“Oh, well, I’ll see you around, then.”
Sam wanted to tell him he was going on an assignment in disguise, but he didn’t. He thought Mark was apologizing to him, in a way. It wouldn’t do to upset his fellow apprentice’s efforts.
“I’ve got to get going.”
“Sure,” Mark said.
Sam hustled out of the constabulary, with the court language documents still in his coat pocket. Along the way, he thought about Mark’s words. The apprentices didn’t really understand what Kened Rider was doing putting him with the constables. Sam wondered if he really did. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of apprentice worries as he ran court language vocabulary through his mind.
Antina took her time getting into the shop from her apartment. Sam looked at the ornaments sprinkled around the place. He kept looking at her merchandise through his spectacles and then without them. Most of her work had pollen gems. He thought of Lady Retch and her dislike of pollen jewelry. In a way, he pitied her. The situation the Lord and Lady were in precluded real jewelry, evidenced by all the cheap pollen repairs around the place.
He was wondering about how many nobles had to put up appearances when they didn’t have the money to back up their lifestyle. Speaking court language didn’t pay the bills, he thought.
“I’m sorry. I had an important commission to finish,” Antina said as she placed a brooch in a cabinet.
Sam nodded. “He should be showing up tomorrow; at least that’s what he told me.”
“Now, what shall we do today?”
“Translation. I have to do most of it, Dickey Nail’s orders. It is my application to the Piper Club. I have to fill it out in court language, and the instructions are the same.”
“You don’t want me to read it to you?”
Sam shook his head. “If Dickey wanted me to do that, he would have done it himself. He knows how to speak like a noble.”
Antina rubbed her hands with a grin on her face. “Then let’s get started.”
Sam spent the next two hours poring through the instructions. Antina didn’t give him any direct answers but hints and asked him questions that would lead him to the right words in his dictionary or how to puzzle out a particularly difficult phrase.
He would tackle the application last in case the Piper Club put something at the end of the instructions to trip applicants up. Sure enough, Sam found the clause towards the end of the instructions that permitted him to complete the application in Toraltian. He sighed when he puzzled that out.
He showed his work to that point to Antina. “Dickey didn’t say you couldn’t check my work.”
She smiled. “Finish with your translation, and I will check it.”
Sam continued to the end and groaned when the instructions restricted the Toraltian to the last half of the application. Some people certainly liked to play games.
“Tricksters,” Antina said when she finished. “Not nice, but I can see their point. They want someone who is smart enough to read court language and persist through to the end. Look on it as a test, Sam. It looks to me that you passed.”
Sam nodded. He would present his finished application to Harl Plaster, the manager of the club, when he was done. It wasn’t quite the end of the typical Baskin workday, so he left Antina and quickly walked to the Piper Club.
“Master Plaster is inside,” said a grizzled old man washing the diamond-paned windows in the front door.
Sam slid past the man’s work and entered a dark establishment. It smelled of smoke, liquor, and some kind of flowery scent, presumably meant to hide the other smells. To Sam, it was close enough to the smell of the typical tavern, without a few objectionable hints of men losing control of their stomachs and their bladders.
“Master Plaster?” Sam said to a thin, bald man addressing a stack of bills.
“And you are?”
“Sam Smith.” He handed over his application.
Plaster looked it over. “No more Master Plaster. Paully gets a kick out of saying it. He’s what passes for the day janitor here. How is Faran?”
“Faran Rubble? He is fine, as far as I know.”
Plaster put up his finger. “This is the last we will talk about my friend. Understand?”
Sam nodded and said, “I do.”
“Good. A fine piece of work here. Did someone else translate all this for you?”
“No,” Sam said. “I had a lady I know check it. I had to work on all the instructions.”
Plaster smiled a smile of self-satisfaction. “Like my little test?”
“I wouldn’t call it ‘like,’ sir. But I was elated and then let down a little when the Toraltian part was reduced. Court language doesn’t come easily to me.”
“But it appears you’ve done an adequate job.” Plaster looked up at him. “What is my name?” he said in court language.
“Harl Plaster, sir,” Sam said, using Vaarekian pronunciation of his name.
“Good. You were taught by a native speaker?”
Sam nodded.
“A she. Antina Mulch? I can think of no better person. I don’t know the woman personally, but her name gets bandied about as someone who can make inexpensive jewelry.”
“It’s not that cheap,” Sam said.
“Compared to the real stuff, it is,” Plaster said. “Do you know what your job entails?”
Sam shook his head. “I am to wait on tables, I imagine.”
“No. The lords like ladies with low-cut blouses to do that. You will fetch and carry when they require something else. It might be cards or dice or a pillow to rest their drunken heads.”
Plaster tested Sam by asking him questions a lord might ask. Sam could interpret most of the words.
“They don't expect any sort of fluency, not from my employees, but even the serving ladies must know a bit of court language. You start tomorrow night. Be here at four after noon.”
Sam thought he would be working a day shift. Perhaps Faran misinterpreted early shift to mean during the day, but as he could see, looking across the dim dining room, the club wasn’t open during the day. He groaned inside. He would be working late, very late for him.
Plaster scribbled something on a piece of paper. “Get some suitable clothes from this man. They will be used, of course, and ill-fitting, but the lords like it better that way. Be off.”
“My pay?”
“Pay? Our mutual butler friend said you’d be working for free.”
“I guess I work for free.”
Plaster winked at him. “That’s the style, lad, although you might receive a tip or two. You get to keep those.”
Chapter Seventeen
~
S am showed up at the appointed hour. His clothes were more like a costume, wearing an old-style scarlet coat with tails nearly down to his knees and mustard colored breeches with long black stockings. The coat was to be buttoned all the way up his neck, so he wasn’t given a shirt to wear. Shoes were whatever he could put on his feet. He took a deep breath, adjusted his spectacles, and plunged inside.
“You look a sight!” a serving maid said. “New, tonight?”
Sam nodded. “Is Harl Plaster here?”
“Not a chance, dearie,” the young woman said. “He won’t show up until most of the lords do in about four hours.”
“So what do I do in the meantime?”
“Anything Shilla asks.”
“Shilla is…”
“The real manager of the place. Some say she might be the real owner since Harl certainly isn’t. Shilla is in the kitchen. We do have a dinner trade, but the tables don’t get active for a while. What is your name?”
“Sam.”
She smiled at him. It seemed genuine, but Sam couldn’t tell for sure. “See you around, Sam,” she said and sauntered off, leaving Sam to look at the place.
He remembered the brothel in Mount Vannon. It looked great until he took off his spectacles, and then the veneer of pollen-made objects couldn’t hide the squalor beneath. The walls and hangings here weren’t made of pollen, and the place looked the same looking through spectacles and without.
Whoever owned the Piper Club decorated the place like a noble would. Sam imagined the lords that inhabited the club would feel right at home. The furnishings were fancy. There were carpets on the floor, rather than the bare floorboards that were typical in the taverns he’s been in before. He spotted someone carrying a covered tray from the back and headed to where they emerged, since the kitchen would have to be on the other side of the door.
He passed a few alcoves and hallways leading to other rooms. It seemed that some activities were in the open, and others were behind closed doors. How could he spy on those places?
The kitchen looked like any other kitchen he’d been in. A tall, prematurely white-haired woman issued instructions to a shorter, stouter woman dressed in the white uniform of a cook. She glanced at Sam, standing by the door.
“Smith?” she said with a pained look on her face.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Go out and find one of the server ladies. She can tell you what our valets do.”
Sam nodded and left the kitchen, not happy with the rejection he got from the woman who had to have been Shilla. He found the server who first talked to him.
“Evidently Shilla has nothing for me to do except finding out what I’m supposed to do from one of the server ladies. I am guessing that you are one of them?”
The woman flashed a brilliant smile at Sam. “Of course I am. I wouldn’t go out in public like this.” She glanced down at her bosom.
Sam tried not to, but his eyes followed her gaze. He could feel his face flush.
“Get used to it, dearie. All of us show a bit more than is proper.” She smiled again. “Have a seat, and I’ll let you know what is expected of a boy valet. After that, you can help the rest of us get ready for the members. All the tables need to be covered with tablecloths, and we have little machines that help us tidy the carpet.”
Sam sat and listened. The job didn’t take much training, it seemed, even for the hand signals the lords used. They raised their hand above their head and snapped their fingers to summon a boy. There were two or three valets a night who sat on stools scouring the floor for finger-snappers.
They were to knock discreetly on the doors to the private rooms at regular intervals and at the entrances to the alcoves. If no one told him to enter, he didn’t. Then it was doing whatever the lord wanted. Most of them had valets summon the serving ladies or clean up messes that they made. Sam was to carry a clean towel draped on his arm at all times.
It seemed tedious, but Sam reminded himself that they hadn’t gotten sufficient evidence other than pink pollen on any of the thefts.
Mandy, the friendly serving lady, introduced him to the others, who were now working on making the place ready for the influx of members.
Sam was told never to refer to them as customers, but members, by a few more of the serving ladies. He learned their names. They all seemed nice enough, but none were as good-natured as Mandy. He was glad to pitch in and help. He would rather do that than sit and wait like the other two valets that sauntered in while he used one of the roller machines to pick up lint from the carpet.
“The machines were invented in Norlank,” Mandy said. “We have to import them. The king only allows noble houses to use the things, but the club has a special dispensation.” She made a face. “Silly, isn’t it?”
Sam nodded but didn’t say a word with others listening in. The king seemed to be an unpredictable kind of ruler. Not everything the king did made sense to Sam. He didn’t know if it was him, or if there were other citizens who felt as he did.
Shilla finally emerged from the kitchen and began to adjust a tablecloth here and peer under a table. She brushed her hands together and spotted Sam. She used the crook of her finger to summon him.
“When do you react to a member’s call?”
Sam raised his hand and snapped his fingers. “That is the call. I come to the table and ask if there is anything I can do.”
Shilla nodded. “If the member requires a towel?”
“I give him mine and ask if there is anything else I can do.”
“And then?” Shilla said imperiously.
“I do it, within reason. If the member asks me to do something untoward, I can talk to a serving lady, Harl Plaster, or you.”
“Can you refuse?”
Sam paused. “I don’t know. I suppose I use my best judgment.”
Shilla laughed. “The judgment of what, a fifteen-year-old?”
“It might be better than that of a drunken lord,” Sam said. Mandy had told him to hold his ground with the women.
Shilla nodded. “Good answers. We will let you work tonight and succeeding nights if you deserve continued employment.”
Sam wondered if Harl Plaster had told the woman of his arrangement through Faran Rubble, the Pitch’s butler, but that wouldn’t change his behavior.
“I will do my best, ma’am.”
