A Snoop Without Magic, page 22
“Is this true?” the constable asked Kened, who shrugged.
“I don’t speak court language. I don’t know what you are doing here, but Effian is about to have a match,” Kened said.
“Go ahead,” the constable said.
As Sam stepped up onto the square dueling platform, he heard Worren pleading with the constables. Sam had to take this sudden unpleasantness out of his mind. He faced a competent duelist for his last match for the day. In his estimation, there were more duelists in the Apple City tournament than in Dale, despite what Kened had claimed.
After clearing his mind by going through a few Lashakan forms, Sam concentrated on the matter at hand. His opponent was worthy of Effian Walk, Sam thought, as he still beat the man three touches to two, for the Apple City tournament counted a win as three touches won. As he shook his opponent’s hand, Sam walked off the platform and was told he was to be taken away.
Worren took Sam aside before the constables came for him. “You will be taken to the political prison on the south side of the city. Stefen will stay here while Kened and I try to find where Harrison and Faddon are.”
“Don’t bother,” Sam said. “I can break out of the prison any time I want. I’ve already been inside and know what to do. I’d rather you find a lawyer. I didn’t come home only to lose all hope of staying free. Find a legal way. You said Lord Hand didn’t have jurisdiction in Apple City. If that is so, then why am I being arrested? I’d rather you do that.”
Worren gazed at Sam for a moment. “You are right. Lord Hand can’t put you to death here. I was a bit hasty.”
“Don’t be. I’ll find a way to survive, if you can get me out legally. I have a tournament in Baskin to win.”
Worren nodded. “I will do what you ask. Just make sure you don’t get killed in prison. It isn’t just the other prisoners you have to worry about. Lord Hand can bribe guards to kill you.”
Sam hadn’t thought of that. “Thank you for telling me that. I might have trusted them.”
Worren clapped his hand on Sam’s shoulders. “Good luck.” He turned to the constables. “He is yours to take.”
The constables slapped pollen manacles on Sam and led him out of the tournament hall. Kened and Stefen walked beside him as he went.
“I will get you more clothes,” Kened said, taking the sword still buckled to Sam’s waist and slipping Sam’s gold-washed spectacles into a pocket. “Stefen will check for messages every day. The constables said the rules in that prison are a little more relaxed and told us not to worry until the trial. If I were you, I would continue to worry.”
Sam nodded. “I’ve had enough advice,” he said as Effian. After he was ushered into a constable’s wagon, Sam sat back and felt very alone. Of all places in Toraltia, he had to be arrested and taken to the prison where he had been seen. Ladd Distance, the officer who had the most familiarity with him, was dead, but some guards might remember him. His thoughts were interrupted when the constable who spoke court language sitting next to him began to ask questions.
“Where were you born?”
“Tolloy, the capital of Vaarek,” Sam said.
He asked him where he currently resided. Sam gave him the address of Dickey Nail’s townhouse and called it a temporary residence. Sam said he intended to get a permanent place to live after the Baskin Trials, if he wished to stay in Toraltia.
“Why did you leave Vaarek?”
“I didn’t want to get involved in the continuation of a civil war. My time in the army was over as a result of the death of Viktar Kreb, and I decided to seek my fortune elsewhere. The Baskin Trials has a bigger purse than the open tournament in Tolloy.”
“So you are here for the money?”
Sam nodded. “And since I am a foreigner, for the notoriety. The Toraltian nobility speaks a version of Vaarekian, so I thought this would be a good place, and I do have a great aunt in the capital. Now I’m not so sure. Vaarek doesn’t have nobles who can cover up a son who can commit murder and mayhem with impunity.”
“You are talking about Lord Hand, I presume?”
“I am. If you do some investigation, I am sure you will find the son has been involved in all kinds of altercations. What was his name, Rikard?”
The constable nodded and then wrote a few notes. “I think we will do that,” he said.
“Are you a snoop?” Sam asked.
“I am. Why do you ask?”
“Do you know Dickey Nail or Faddon Bentwick?”
The constable looked surprised. “I have met both of them. They are good men.”
“They will vouch for me. That address I gave you is Dickey Nail’s townhouse. I may not be easy to get along with, but I do not lie. It is beneath me.” Sam cringed inside as he couched his honesty declaration while pretending to be someone else.
“I will send a bird to Baskin.”
“Faddon Bentwick wasn’t serving in Baskin when I left the capital a few weeks ago, but Dickey Nail lives there with his noble wife.”
“I have met Lady Grate, as well,” the constable said.
Sam was tempted to tell him who he really was, but folded his arms and stayed silent for the rest of the trip. He had hoped his haircut and trimmed beard would be enough to make him look a bit different. His clothes were certainly of a finer cut than the ones he wore the day he had rescued Faddon and Harrison, but there were enough people who saw a bearded intruder.
They rode through the gates to the prison and stopped at the main entrance, a place that Sam had never seen. They stepped inside and proceeded to the warden’s office. Sam got his bearings when they approached the alcove where the warden’s assistant worked.
The constable ushered Sam inside. “I will leave Effian Walk with you,” the constable said in Toraltian. Sam pretended not to understand.
The warden narrowed his eyes. “What are you here for?” he asked Sam.
“The boy doesn’t speak Toraltian. He is a Vaarekian duelist, seeing if he can match up to the best that Toraltia offers,” the constable said. “I saw him in the Apple City Tournament. He won in the quarter-finals, and then I brought him here.”
The warden looked at Sam. “Want to show me how good you are? We let the prisoners play with dull pollen swords,” he said in court language even harder to understand than the constable.
“Could you repeat what you said?” Sam made the warden repeat his comment three times before he played like he understood. “I would be happy to oblige. I have to stay in shape,” Sam said.
The warden called the assistant in. “Get him a decent cell and take care of the orientation. I’ll accompany the constable to his wagon.”
The two men left Sam standing in the warden’s office. It looked as clean as the night Sam visited. Evidently, the assistant did everything.
“Did I overhear correctly that you speak court language?” the assistant said. He looked like a reasonable person, and he spoke court language better than the warden or the constable.
“Actually, I speak Vaarekian,” Sam said. “It is a little different, mostly in vocabulary and idioms.”
“I can hear the difference,” the assistant said. “I suppose you speak the mother tongue.” He chuckled a bit.
“Most people speak Vaarekian, although in other countries it is called Polistian,” Sam said. “The differences are less than between Vaarekian and court language.”
“I see.” The assistant grabbed a set of keys. “First floor. This way.” They walked in the opposite direction that Sam had when he broke into the prison. “This is more of a holding facility than a prison. We have nobles, wealthy men, but no murderers, cutthroats, or thieves. I didn’t read your charges. Are you a murderer?”
“Have I killed? I have, but always in defense of myself, my country, or my honor.”
“So you are in here for killing someone?”
“Alas. I was stabbed in the back by one Rickard Hand, the neer-do-well son of Lord Hand. He oversees a village some miles southeast from here. Before he could stick me again, I twisted and slashed.” Sam made the motion. “He died, and I was treated by a healer before I might have joined him. Lord Hand refused to accept that his son was the aggressor and wanted to execute me without a proper trial. I eluded him, but not the constabulary in Apple City.”
“Sounds like self-defense, but with a noble, you never know. It has only gotten worse. Have you ever heard of Harrison Dimple?”
“I have,” Sam said.
“He was in this very prison with Faddon Bentwick, the chief constable of the investigative division of the Royal Baskin Constabulary. They escaped,” the assistant said with the hint of a smile. “I have never seen an attempted prison break where no one was killed,” he said. “There was another one that same night and there were plenty of deaths. Our night officer was even killed.”
“You were the lucky ones, I suppose.”
“We are still short-handed. Quite a few of our guards left us to join whatever Harrison Dimple is planning.”
“What can Dimple do against the might of the Toraltian army?”
The assistant laughed. “He can convince them to fight for a freer Toraltia. You might do the same after your experience with Lord Hand.”
Sam shrugged. “I am but a simple duelist.”
The assistant pursed his lips and smiled. “Be a good prisoner. You are allowed to wash up and eat three times a day. The guards will show you where. When your trial comes up, you will be notified.”
Sam hoped that would be sooner than later. “When will that happen?”
The assistant chuckled. “In a few days or never. I have some people who have been residents for more than five years.”
Sam couldn’t help but gasp. “I won’t make it to the Baskin Trials if I have to wait any more than a month.”
“Spring will be in full bloom by then,” the assistant said. “At least you will be able to practice. We have a large exercise yard.”
Sam nodded. He had seen it from above when he escaped the first time.
Chapter Twenty-Six
~
T hree days later, Sam worked through the Lashakan forms that didn’t need a sword. An inmate sauntered up to him.
“So you think you are really something, eh?” the man said. He was approaching middle-age. He might have had a powerful physique, but his musculature seemed to have softened. He bumped into Sam on purpose.
“I don’t speak Toraltian,” Sam said with as thick of an accent as he could muster.
“You are noble?” the man replied in court language.
Sam shook his head. “I am recently from Vaarek.”
“The Vaarek that is about to invade all of Holding?”
“No longer,” Sam said. “The insurgency killed Viktar Kreb, whose force of personality created the dictatorship in the first place. I didn’t want to be around in such an unstable situation, so I came to Toraltia to practice my new profession, dueling.”
“You weren’t a duelist in Vaarek?” the man said with a disbelieving look in his eyes.
“Oh, I was, but I was conscripted into Kreb’s army before I was able to make a name for myself. There are more tournaments in Toraltia than in Vaarek, although I didn’t know that until I arrived in Baskin.”
“What ship did you take?”
Sam looked at him. “Are you one of what they call snoops in Toraltia?”
The man smiled. “And if I am?”
“Even if you aren’t, I won’t answer any more of your questions,” Sam said and walked away.
“Not so fast,” the inmate said. He created a pollen sword. “Prove to me you are a duelist.”
Sam withstood the man’s glare. “I am not going to fight you. The last time someone wanted me to prove something, he stabbed me in the back when I walked away. I hope you don’t repeat what he did. I lived, and he didn’t.”
Sam turned away and didn’t look back immediately. He was wearing invisible armor in case the man decided to attack, but Sam paused to see all the guards watching them. The last thing he wanted to do was show his invisible pollen. The guards wouldn’t have missed that fact from his escape. He continued on his way and returned to his cell, convinced the man had staged the confrontation to test him.
He continued his workout in his room, which wasn’t quite big enough for all the forms Sam practiced with. He created a heavy pollen sword and worked until the midday meal bell rang. He pushed the invisible sword under his cot, joining his armor, and left the room.
No one on the first floor had locks on their doors. Conceivably, Sam could walk out of prison, but he would have to get across the courtyard and past the prison’s gates. He continued to the commissary. The food wasn’t totally mediocre. There were flashes of flavor in a sea of blandness. To an extent, it reminded him of the kind of food served in Zogaz.
The man who tried to intimidate him in the exercise yard carried a tray and plopped it down across from Sam. “You are a brave soul,” the man said.
“Does that mean you are a foolish one?” Sam asked. “The guards along the walls were looking at us. Surely, you aren’t that dumb.”
The man narrowed his eyes. “Do you think I am dumb?”
“I already said you aren’t.”
The man’s face relaxed. “You did, at that. You think I am a snoop?”
Sam peered at the man’s eyes. “You aren’t a prisoner looking for a match.”
“You are correct. I’m not a prison guard, either.”
“A royal snoop? You work for the Court of Nobles?” Sam asked.
“You know a lot about Toraltian politics for a newly-arrived swordsman.”
Sam shook his head with dismay. “How can I miss it? Toraltia is worse than Vaarek was under Viktar Kreb.”
“Then why did you fight in his army?”
“I didn’t have a choice. The Intelligence arm of Viktar Kreb puts you Toraltian snoops to shame,” Sam said. “They knew everything about everyone.”
“And we don’t?”
Sam shook his head. “You wouldn’t need to be probing into my background. You would already have it.”
“And what if I already do?” the man said looking very confident.
“Then I wouldn’t be in here. You would know I fought in self-defense.”
The man smirked. “What if I was to say the law is different for nobles?”
“Not that much different,” Sam said. “Once I removed myself from Lord Hand’s domain, I was a free man until Hand pressed false charges against me.”
The man raised his eyebrows nonchalantly. “You have a point.”
“It comes at the end of my Vaarekian dueling sword,” Sam said.
The warden’s assistant entered the room and walked directly to the snoop interrogating Sam. “We have a situation the warden would like you to take a look at.”
The man looked at Sam. “Want to see how Toraltians investigate?”
Sam shrugged. “I suppose so. I have eaten enough of this,” he looked down at his half-finished meal. Sam was still hungry, but he had to play Effian Walk for the two men.
He followed them up to the third floor. Two guards stood outside an open cell. Sam could smell blood. It wasn’t pleasant right after lunch. They walked in the room to see a prisoner on the floor just about spread-eagled with his throat raggedly cut.
Sam’s snoop instincts rose within him. He looked out the window. This was another room looking down at the exercise yard. He checked the sill for signs of an abrasion on the wood that a rope would have made, but the blood was very fresh. The throat was probably cut while Sam was going through his forms below.
He put on his spectacles, on the lookout for pollen objects. He didn’t find anything out of the ordinary.
“What are those?” the snoop asked.
Sam’s face was already burning from having to put on something that could have incriminated him, had they known about Sam Smith and his spectacles.
“I can’t see things close up,” Sam said. “The gold wash is common in Vaarek for those with sensitive eyes. It keeps people from knowing my weakness,” Sam admitted. He bent over to look at the wound and saw a few flecks of pollen sticking to the skin.
“What do you see that I can’t?” the snoop asked.
“Evidence of pollen on the wound. It isn’t surprising that the neck was cut with a pollen knife, is it? Look how ragged the cut was. A pollen blade isn’t as sharp as steel.”
The snoop had to get closer than Sam. “You are right.” He looked at Sam with inquisitive eyes. “Have you done any of this before?”
Sam shrugged. “I solved a few mysteries at the University of Tolloy. We are more adept at pollen magic than Toraltians. I am, perhaps, a little better than most.”
“So who did it?”
Sam examined the dead man’s hands. “Not much of a fight, if there was one. So what might that mean?”
“They were friends?” the snoop said.
“Or one of them was a guard. There is too much blood for the murder to have been done anywhere else. Right, Master Snoop?” Sam said.
The snoop nodded, still examining the victim’s hands.
Sam looked around the cell. “No footprints, either. I don’t see much in the way of evidence.”
The snoop narrowed his eyes and looked at the assistant warden who shrugged. “I wouldn’t have come up with as much as you have,” the assistant said.
“Walk’s been doing all the talking, and I have been nodding along.” The snoop’s eyes swiveled to Sam. “What would you do at this point?”
“You could look for a prisoner or a guard with blood on his clothes, but the killer would have had to pick the lock, am I right? These cells are locked?”
The warden’s assistant nodded.
“So the blood is probably washed out or fresh clothes put on,” Sam said. “So, I would start looking for enemies. Finding someone who wanted this man dead might be the only way to solve this.”
