The woman winced. “Everyone calls me ’Shilla’ and nothing else. See that you do the same.” She turned on her heel and left the main salon, as Sam now knew it.

  Mandy walked up to him. “She is tougher on you. Is there a reason for that?”

  Sam thought for a bit. “I got this job through someone I know. I imagine she isn’t very happy about it.”

  “Obviously not. Don’t worry. We employees stick together.” Her vision swiveled to the two other valets talking to each other. “Except for them. They only see someone who will reduce the number of tips they get.”

  Sam didn’t care if all his tips went to the other valets, but that wouldn’t be in character, so he just nodded.

  “The first member!” someone called, and everyone scurried to their stations.

  The valet seats were spaced around the room, but Sam noticed the other two valets were seated closer to him than when he had arrived. It appeared they had already taken measures to get more tasks. More tasks would mean more tips for them and more time for Sam to observe.

  The member found a seat on the other side of the main salon, far away from Sam, so he had nothing to do for a while. More members began to drift in, and soon the main salon was half-full of men busily eating, drinking, and chatting away.

  The boisterousness of a tavern didn’t carry over to the Piper Club, but the serving ladies did get touched and pinched as much as any barmaid would.

  The first arm went up in Sam’s territory. He hustled to the lord’s side. “Get me another serving maid,” the man said in court language.

  Sam spotted Shilla observing as she leaned against the wall, now dressed in a more formal gown.

  “That lord wants a different serving maid. Who makes the assignments?”

  “I do. Good thinking. You may tell him that one will presently arrive.”

  Sam did as he was told. He knew his diction was good, but he probably mangled the reply despite all his efforts to learn. The lord gave him a small silver piece that he had never seen before. He put it in his pocket and returned to his seat. Just after he left a different serving lady arrived at the man’s table. The lord pinched the woman’s bottom. Sam guessed he wanted to try out another server.

  The rest of the night was much the same, except the call for towels and messes to clean up increased. Sam asked Mandy, who passed by carrying an empty tray, if the valets cleared the tables.

  “No. It isn’t done. Maids in their houses clean up the dishes, and so we do it here. At least we get tips,” she said grinning, “and they don’t.”

  Sam took his spectacles off to clean them. The room looked the same, except some of the serving ladies looked older or had stretched skin from pollen patches. Mandy still looked young, and her smile was still genuine.

  “Time for you to take a turn of the private rooms, Smith. Do it now,” Shilla said.

  Sam knocked on the doors, trying to be as discreet as possible. He heard an ‘Enter’ in court language from inside one of them. He pried the door open.

  “May I be of assistance?” Sam said.

  Three men sat at a table with a woman Sam had never seen before. They held markers to a game Sam had never seen and were in various stages of undress.

  “Terry spilled more wine than he should. Clean it up and be quick about it.”

  Sam nodded. He used his towel to clean the mess up and had to grab two others from a cabinet in the corridor to finish his work. “Shall you need a serving lady to replenish your drinks?” he said in more halting court language.

  “None of your business, boy,” one of the men said. He flipped a large silver coin to him. “Be gone.”

  Sam didn’t like being treated so poorly, but he’d never been paid for it before, and no one cared if he could manipulate pollen or not as long as he could fetch, carry, and clean up the members’ messes.

  The hour was late when the last member departed with two of his friends, swaying and staggering as they left the building. Sam had to help one of them. He observed them tumble into their own carriages.

  The other valets passed him on the way out, grunting their goodbyes. Sam looked at the serving ladies talking in a group. Mandy spotted him and left the others.

  “How was your first night?”

  “Is this a noble brothel?” Sam had to ask. It had been a question all night since he had seen the half-dressed lady in the private room.

  She laughed. “Not quite. Shilla would never likes things to go that far.” The way she said it indicated that she sometimes did. “Did you intrude on someone in a private room? If you do, you are supposed to go straight to Shilla. There are other places men can do such things, but not in the Piper Club.”

  “And who takes care of your bruises?” Sam said.

  “Those are bought and paid for. I earn five times what a barmaid makes. Lords are a bit better behaved in the main salon, where most of us do our serving. The ladies who entertain come and go by a side entrance, if that’s what you mean. “ She stopped and put her hands to her hips. “Are you that naive?” She giggled. “But I forget, you might be at your age.”

  “Naive about some things and not about others,” Sam said. “I suppose it depends on what you encounter while you grow up.”

  “That is a rather mature statement for a fifteen-year-old, if I’m correct.”

  “You are,” Sam said.

  “Find a safe place for your tips. The night can breed thieves. I keep my tips here and fetch them during the day.”

  “Can I do the same? Is there a place safe enough here?”

  Mandy nodded. “Certainly.” She showed him to a row of chests of drawers. “Pick one with a key sticking out. Shilla has the master and will take a few coins out for a storage fee, but it is safer than getting accosted by night crawlers.”

  Sam took her advice and left the club. He made it home after being chased only twice on the way. He thought one of them might have been a fellow valet.

  “You are in late,” Tru said, showing up at Sam’s bedroom door. Sam had just about finished getting ready for bed.

  “It was the first night of my new job.”

  “The one that requires you to speak the court language?”

  Sam nodded in the dim light of a hand-held lamp set on his bedside table.

  “How did you do?”

  “I was told I could return tomorrow. That is an accomplishment.”

  Tru nodded. “I hope there are more.”

  “So do I.”

  ~

  Sam dragged into the Piper Club after twenty-two days of playing nursemaid to a bunch of lords. He had to admit his court language had significantly improved, and he no longer had to wince when he talked, fearing he was saying the wrong thing, and to his surprise, he began to experience periods when he could think in court language just as Antina said he would.

  Antina continued to work with him on diction and vocabulary. Sam wouldn’t consider himself fluent, but he knew enough to function at the Piper Club. Dickey continually told him that if he didn’t discover something soon, Sam would be pulled from his assignment.

  The night started as most of them did. Halfway through the evening, he made a sweep of the private rooms at Shilla’s request. He entered at the request of the lord inside.

  “Fetch me a buckle board, and make sure you bring along the game tokens,” he said, slurring just a bit.

  Sam did as he was asked and set up the board, as he had been taught, on the table. The lord was alone with a single woman. The lord made an expansive gesture and knocked some of the pieces to the floor. Sam stooped to pick them up and spied an open packet of yellow pollen in the woman’s bag.

  He rubbed his eyes to see if she was disguised, but Sam was disappointed the woman wasn’t Banna Plunk. He played clumsy and knocked the purse over on the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You clumsy fool,” the woman said in Toraltian.

  “Please!” the lord said. “No common tongue.”

  Sam found a packet and quickly unrolled it to reveal pink pollen before he sealed it.

  “I’ll be on my way,” Sam said in court language.

  “See? Even the boy can speak with a civil tongue,” the man said.

  The woman had shed her amiable face for a moment. “No tip for him,” she said in roughly accented court language.

  Sam just bowed and left. The woman had given him a huge tip, and she didn’t know it.

  He passed Shilla on the way out and turned around. “The woman in room seven. Is she a regular?” Sam asked.

  “Do you take a fancy to her?”

  Sam shook his head. “She reminds me of someone.” It wasn’t her appearance that reminded him of Banna Plunk, but the two kinds of pollen did.

  “She comes from time to time. Her name is Millie Canker if you must know,” Shilla said with an amused look. “You won’t get anywhere with her or any of the other girls, young man.”

  “Of course.” Sam bowed and returned to his seat. He moved it over so he had a direct view into the corridor where he could see if the woman exited.

  An hour later she left the lord and walked out the back. Sam deserted his position. He told Mandy that he had to leave for a bit.

  Sam ran out of the Piper Club and saw Millie Canker walking in the opposite direction. He crossed the street and began to follow her. There were just enough people about that Sam hoped the woman wouldn’t notice. She crossed the street in front of him, but he was careful to pause in the shadows of the street lamps.

  Sam kept the woman in sight, and after five blocks she stepped up to a townhouse door and pulled out a key, disappearing from view. Sam made sure he got the right address and returned to the Piper Club.

  “Did you follow Millie?”

  Sam’s face grew hot. Shilla kept a sharp eye on her staff.

  “I did, but I didn’t have the nerve to talk to her. I was afraid she would reject me,” he said.

  “There is an excellent reason for that. She’s at least ten years older than you.” Shilla said. The half-smile returned, and Sam relaxed.

  “I give up,” he said. “I’m sorry I left my seat.”

  “No harm,” Shilla said, “unless you do it again, and then you will be finished here, understand?” Her voice was hard, and the half-smile had disappeared.

  “I understand, Shilla.” Sam bowed and returned to his seat. The lord who Millie Canker entertained had left while Sam followed the woman.

  Sam grabbed his tip money. He also withdrew his wand, which he had secreted in the cabinet drawer with his tip money. He hired a carriage to take him home since he carried a substantial sum.

  Tru was sound asleep when Sam crept up the stairs to bed. He’d hardly talked to his brother, who had spent his daytime moving his forge and working at Antina’s work yard.

  Before he turned in, he drew Millie Canker’s face and wrote down the directions to her house.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ~

  “Y ou decided to grace us with your presence?” Dickey said as Sam rubbed his eyes after too little sleep sitting in the chair across from Dickey’s desk. “Do you have something to report after all this time?”

  Sam nodded. He tossed the sketch of Millie Canker across the desk to his partner. “She entertained a single lord and had packets of deer pollen and sheep pollen in her purse.”

  “Do you know who the lord was?”

  Sam shook his head.

  “Two robberies have occurred while you were waiting on the masculine nobility of Toraltia,” Dickey said. “I didn’t tell you about them since it was better for you not to show your face.”

  Sam nodded. “That is the woman, and that is her address.”

  “Let’s see Bentwick.” Dickey didn’t wait for Sam, who had to hustle to follow after his partner.

  Bentwick wasn’t in his office, so they chased him to the Head Constable’s office. Issak Bolt twisted his head when Dickey and Sam were shown in.

  “Nail, Smith,” Bolt said as the pair moved into the room to join Bentwick and the Head Constable, whom Sam had never formally met.

  “You have something for me?” the Head Constable asked.

  “Actually, sir, I have a strong lead to discuss with Chief Constable Bentwick.”

  “We are all constables here, even Bolt,” the Head Constable said with a smile. “Go ahead.”

  Sam could see the reluctance on Dickey’s face, but he could also see his partner had to reveal their investigation.

  “It is the jewelry thefts, Chief. Sam went incognito and confirmed how the thefts were conducted.”

  Bentwick sat up straighter. He looked at the Head Constable and Issak Bolt, the Minister of Justice. “Very good. Go on down and wait for me in my office. I’m sure these men wouldn’t be interested in common thievery.”

  Good for Bentwick, Sam thought.

  “I am interested in anything Sam Smith does,” Bolt said. “Did you take Emmy along with you?”

  Sam nearly barked out a laugh with the thought of his huge dog sitting next to his chair in the Piper Club. “No, sir. I just sat most of the time.”

  The Minister of Justice looked at the Head Constable and smiled. “I’d like the details of something that would bring the illustrious Dickey Nail up to the Head Constable’s office.”

  Bentwick waved his hand with a look of defeat on his face. “Tell them everything, Constable Nail.”

  Dickey stood straight and delivered a concise summary of all the thefts and the investigation. He left out Sam’s pollen malady, but he did mention that the gold-colored spectacles that Sam wore were instrumental in detecting the deer pollen. He finished with Sam’s undercover work and his discovery of both kinds of pollen in Millie Canker’s purse.

  “You base your heavy breathing on the contents of some woman’s purse?” Minister Bolt said. “And from an apprentice?” He looked at Sam. “No offense, boy.”

  The Minister’s interest in Emmy had made Sam think he was a friend. The man’s last comments made that a false assumption. Bolt deeply disappointed him.

  “Yes, from an apprentice,” Bentwick said. “He was handpicked by me because of his proven abilities to snoop. Proven, Minister, and backed up by Harrison Dimple’s recommendation.”

  Bolt raised his eyebrows. He looked evenly at Sam. “Harrison Dimple. You travel with noble company.” The Minister looked at the Head Constable and said, “Still the opinion of a woefully inexperienced boy,” in court language.

  The Head Constable looked at Sam, and then Bentwick. “I trust your judgment in this. I don’t want upset nobles breathing down the neck of the constabulary unless they are guilty.”

  Dickey stepped forward. “Only if they are guilty,” he said. “We’d best be off.”

  Bentwick had joined them by the time they reached the snoop’s offices.

  “Bolt finally showed his true colors,” Bentwick said once he shut the door to his office.

  “Again,” Dickey said.

  Bentwick nodded. He looked at Sam. “You understood what Minister Bolt said in court language?”

  Sam nodded. “Still the opinion of a woefully inexperienced boy, or something like that. He was quite dismissive.”

  Dickey snorted. “We were lucky to come out of that office giving them as little as we did.”

  Bentwick sighed. “Unfortunate I was called away. I don’t trust Bolt, and I don’t quite trust the Head Constable. Are you sure of what you inspected, Sam?”

  “I am. It was pollen, a pink packet and a yellow packet. I’ve seen more of it than anyone.”

  “That you have,” Bentwick said. “I’ll get a warrant signed, and we will take Miss Carbuncle…”

  “Canker, sir,” Sam said.

  Bentwick cleared his throat. “Canker will be taken in for questioning. We will see if she will admit to anything. At least we have confirmed our suspicions. Good work, Nail, Smith.”

  Sam and Dickey assembled a team of constables for serving the warrant, but it wasn’t until after lunch when permission arrived. They hurried to the house only to find that Millie Canker wouldn’t be exposing any secrets. She had been strangled in the hallway, wearing a robe covering a nightgown.

  Sam looked around for signs of pollen and found a few threads in the woman’s purse on the kitchen table.

  “Evidence!” Sam said.

  Dickey produced two envelopes, and Sam used tweezers to put the threads in the envelopes under the witness of Dickey and another snoop.

  “Is our investigation over?” Sam asked.

  Dickey shook his head. “Just beginning. Miss Canker links us to the perpetrators. We didn’t have a commoner to investigate before, so now we won’t have to bother the nobility other than accept reports like we have.”

  “The murder is because someone found out I identified her?”

  Dickey pursed his lips. “Anyone might have been able to patch your running out of the Piper Club and the disappearance of the Canker woman.”

  Sam’s pursuit may have resulted in the woman’s murder. He sighed. It wouldn’t be the first, he thought. He recoiled at the hardness of that thought, but it was true. He had an idea.

  “Can we have someone find out what the time of her death was?”

  “Within a few hours,” Dickey said. “Oh, quick thinking. You don’t want to be accused of killing her?”

  “No, I don’t,” Sam said.

  They waited for a doctor, who was called as soon as they discovered the death.

  He knelt at her side and worked her limbs and felt her neck. “No more than a few hours. The limbs are still flaccid, but just stiffening. She isn’t quite cold either.”

  “She couldn’t have been killed in the early hours of the morning?” Dickey said, looking at Sam.

  “Not possible, well anything is possible but highly unlikely.”

  “Please write that up in your report,” Dickey said.

  “I would anyway.” The doctor went about his business, made a few notes, and left.

  Sam and Dickey headed back to the constabulary. Sam’s mind whirred with questions.

  “Could someone have tipped off the perpetrators when Bentwick got the warrant? It was late coming, wasn’t it?”

  “We will have to ask the Chief.”

 

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