An Apprentice Without Magic, page 28
part #2 of Magic Missing Series
“I know the place,” Tru said. “Potter had a contract to put grills up and fix some of the iron fencing. I got to do the fencing along with the apprentices. They have all kinds of animals waiting for slaughter, not just sheep. They even have antelope, elk, and deer penned up. I guess those are for noble hunters, so they can bring home meat that they never killed.” Tru chuckled.
“Deer? You said deer?” Sam said.
“I did. Do you fancy venison? I’d guess it would be rather expensive. They have deer from all over the world.”
“I have something else in mind,” Sam said.
Chapter Thirty-Two
~
“W e are supposed to be interviewing locals,” Dickey said, “and you want to take me to a feedlot?”
“They stock exotic deer.”
“So?”
Sam grunted. “Deer, as in Vaarekian red deer pollen. I always thought she created the pollen, but maybe Banna isn’t making pollen that mimics what deer produce. If that is the case, she has to have a source. There are sheep at the lot, as well. We will have to talk to Antina to see if there is a way to harvest that kind of pollen. I’ve never asked her.”
“I’ll admit it beats seeing if people noticed a woman walking a large gray dog, but if we don’t get any results, we return to your neighborhood to see what direction she took.”
“Sure,” Sam said. “Let’s go now.”
The driver of the hired carriage knew of the place, and forty minutes later, they stopped in front of what looked like a farm, but it smelled worse than any farm.
Dickey walked through a new iron gate. Sam wondered if Tru had made it. The office was more orderly than Sam had thought it would be. That raised his expectations that the owner would keep track of what went on in his establishment.
“Can I help you?” a young black-haired woman said, walking up to the short counter in the small lobby.
“Dickey Nail. I’m a constable investigator.”
“Snoop,” she said smiling. “That is okay. We run a clean business, despite the smell.”
Dickey nodded. “We have an unusual request to make. Is there a woman who visits here often? She would be spending time with your Polistian deer and your sheep.”
“Not buying meat?”
Dickey shrugged. “Perhaps, she might buy live animals. You sell those, too?”
The woman smiled at Dickey and then at Sam. “We sell our inventory, on the hoof or on the hook. A little butcher joke.”
Dickey’s mouth worked into one of his smirky grins.
“There is a man that I know of,” she said. “He has been coming here since late summer. Says he is doing research for the Royal University. He doesn’t look like a farmer.”
“Short for a man?” Sam asked.
The woman nodded. “Short and slight, but he pays well.”
“Do you have a name?” Dickey said.
“Is it an offense to work with animals?” she asked.
A man with freckled face and hair turning white entered the room. “Hello, gentlemen. Is there anything I can help you with?”
“You are her father?” Dickey asked.
“I am, and owner of this establishment. We are licensed by the king, I’ll have you know.”
“I’m not here to impede your business, sir,” Dickey said, pulling out his constable token. “I’m asking questions about a person of interest.”
“The professor,” the daughter said, looking at her father.
“Is there something wrong with what the man has done?”
“Not at your feedlot,” Dickey said. He looked at Sam. “Tell him your suspicions, Constable Smith.”
Sam stammered a bit before he began. He had expected his partner to do the interrogation. “Some unusual incidents, including theft and murder, have been aided by someone who has knowledge of the use of certain pollens produced by animals.”
The owner nodded. “We know about sheep pollen.”
“Do you know about Polistian red deer pollen?”
The owner looked perplexed. “I haven’t heard of such a thing.”
Dickey smirked. “Because the deer have eliminated a few seconds of your memory with their pollen. It exists. I’ve seen it.”
“And this man collects it?” the daughter asked.
“He does, and uses it as a tool in committing crimes,” Dickey said
“You have proof?” the father said.
“Of the pollen being used?” Dickey nodded. “The constabulary does. In fact, the apprentice’s dog was recently abducted using the same technique and leaving the same evidence. That is what we are investigating.”
“I’m not going to stand in the way of a murder investigation. Lori, collect Professor Corlan’s records.”
“Corlan? You even know his name?”
The owner smiled. “I don’t allow free research.”
Dickey and the owner chatted about the price of his products and his clientele until Lori returned with a file.
“We keep accurate records,” she said. “The king can shut down businesses if we don’t pay the proper taxes.”
“What part of the king’s administration would do that?” Sam asked.
“The Ministry of Justice certifies our license,” she said. Lori looked at her father, who pursed his lips.
“You aren’t looking for a little extra for the constabulary, are you?” he asked.
“A bribe?” Dickey bluntly said. “Not at all. Is that what the licensing people do?”
“You didn’t hear me say anything,” the owner said.
“No, I didn’t.” Dickey took the file and gave half the papers to Sam and took the other half for himself.
The counter was soon full of the file’s contents, although there wasn’t much to see. Sam entered Professor Corlan’s address and the visits made. They were as often as weekly. Lori even documented the animals visited.
“You want a description?” Lori asked.
“What did his hands look like? Was his voice high-pitched or low?” Sam asked.
“Slight,” Lori said, glancing at her father. “Do you think Corlan is a woman disguised as a man?”
“We wondered about that, just between the two of us,” the owner said.
“The short answer is yes,” Dickey said. “The longer answer is that Corlan is a pollen artist and can create uncannily real pollen disguises. We would still like a detailed description.”
“A pollen artist you call her? There aren’t too many butchers that are,” the owner said. “Is there anything I can help you with?”
“The description is all we need for now. Constable Smith has copied your documents. Please don’t destroy these records.” Dickey pulled out one of his cards. “Send a message to the constabulary when she shows up again. We can’t arrive soon enough to apprehend her, but I’d like to know if she is still actively collecting pollen.”
“We can do that. Do you want us to deny the woman access to our animals?”
“No. If you can make a bit more money from her, that’s to your benefit. However, our job is to stop her.”
“I understand,” the owner said, examining Dickey’s card.
On the way back to the constabulary, Dickey redirected the carriage to the Royal University. Sam followed Dickey through the pathways, arches, gardens, and lanes that defined the university’s layout.
He walked up the steps of a building that said Agriculture in court language carved into a stone space by the door. Dickey seemed to know where he was going. He stopped by a door with more court language lettering. It said, ‘Staff Only.’
“Don’t say a word, and act like you don’t understand court language, understand?”
Sam nodded as he walked just behind Dickey into the room. A man sat at a tall desk. It looked like the desk sergeant’s perch in the foyer of the constabulary.
“Nail! What are you doing here?” the man said in court language. Sam tried to look blankly at the man and then stared off at the walls as he listened in. “You don’t look young enough to have spawned a son that old.”
“He’s an apprentice at the constabulary. I have to drag him along wherever I go.”
“Commoner? No prep school?”
Dickey nodded. He leaned closer. “I have a job that requires some discretion. Can I rely on you?”
“As always,” the man said. “Do you have some discretion on you?” He looked a bit nervously at Sam, who tried to give the clerk an indifferent glance, but he had never seen his partner bribe anyone.
Dickey smirked. “I do indeed.” He pulled out his purse and set a large silver coin on the counter that was quickly snatched out of sight.
“The name is Professor Corlan.” Dickey spelled out the name.
“He is an employee,” the clerk said. He looked down at his desk. “Corlan is currently lecturing in Room 204.” The man pointed to the ceiling. “The room above this one.”
Dickey nodded and said to Sam in Toraltian. “One more visit, and then we can get something to eat. A little patience, if you please.”
Sam noticed Dickey look at the clerk and roll his eyes in exasperation. That was a very uncharacteristic thing for his partner to do.
They exited the staff room onto a corridor, suddenly flooded with people.
“We have to move quickly, or Corlan’s class will be gone.” Dickey ran up the stairs, leaving Sam struggling against the oncoming tide of university students. He did notice, however, that most of them spoke court language.
He finally caught up to Dickey standing at the open doorway to Room 204, looking at the head of the class. A man well over six feet in height stood over a valise, stuffing notes inside. They walked to the professor.
“Corlan?”
The man looked up and then down at Dickey. He was very tall and burly. The man’s hands were thick and strong. Sam had hoped Banna Plunk had created a professorial identity, but she had just stolen the man’s name.
“That is my name. What’s it to you?” he said in poorly accented court language.
Dickey pulled out his constabulary token. “Captain Nail of the Investigative Division. A person of interest has been using your identity in Baskin.”
Corlan laughed, a booming deep-rooted kind of laugh. “Oh, that. Another new professor, instructor actually, asked me if she could use my name for a project she worked on. Something to do with horsehair or something. She is pretty, so how could I resist?” The man shrugged.
“Is she still teaching at the University?”
Corlan nodded. “She mostly does research, so I think she teaches one class on animal pollen. Not much to talk about, but she manages.”
“Do you know her real name?”
Corlan smiled. “Teri Punch. Pretty. Give her my regards.” He suddenly looked alarmed. “Has she done something wrong? Am I in trouble?”
“I need to ask her a few questions about a missing dog.”
“A dog, huh?” Corlan shrugged. “Then I don’t need to worry?”
“So far, so good,” Dickey said.
Corlan eyed Sam. “Does he speak—”
“Court language? He’s fifteen-years-old and a trainee. Where would he ever get the chance?”
“And you are university-trained? Your accent is excellent.”
“I am,” Dickey said. “Thank you.”
Dickey left the room, tugging Sam along with him. “Back to my friend, I’m afraid. Plunk doesn’t like making things easy, does she?”
“Nope,” Sam said.
The clerk was off his perch, drinking tea, looking out the window. “Did you catch Professor Corlan?”
“He gave me another name.”
The clerk rolled his eyes. “What is it?”
“Teri Punch. Teaches animal pollen.”
“Oh, her. She is an odd person and keeps odd hours. One class, once a week, and the rest is research. She has a grant from the Justice Ministry of all places.”
“I’ll need to know the time and place of the class and her personal address.”
“Of course,” the clerk said. “Perhaps with some additional discretion?”
Dickey glared at the man. Sam was reminded how intimidating his partner’s glares could be.
They walked out of the building.
“The Punch woman teaches in two days,” Dickey said. “But we have her address. It is time to make a report first and then make a visit to her house. If she’s keeping Emmy anywhere, it might be there.”
~
Sam and Dickey approached Teri Punch’s house. It was a fashionable townhouse not far from Hander Pot’s residence.
“She has a nice house for a part-time college instructor,” Dickey said. “At least we shouldn’t have to put up with servant nonsense.” He used the doorbell pull.
Sam could hear jangling inside the house. He looked up and noticed a woman looking down at them from a window. Sam couldn’t tell if it was Banna Plunk or not, but she abruptly pulled back.
“She might be heading out the back way!” Sam said.
“You stay here, and I’ll cover the back door.”
Sam waited and waited at the front door. He pulled on the doorbell a few times. Nothing.
The wait was too long. He ran to the back and found Dickey out cold on the ground. Sam, wearing his spectacles, spotted pink pollen on his neck. He had no tweezers, but he plucked it off and stuffed it in Dickey’s pocket, along with a wad of sheep pollen. He wondered how Banna had disabled his partner so quickly, but she had done it.
Dickey didn’t seem to need immediate care, so Sam quickly inspected the path leading to the townhouse. The back garden was much bigger than Sam would have guessed. He found Emmy’s extra-large paw prints in the dirt. The evidence was good enough for him.
He ran back to Dickey, who was rousing from his forced unconsciousness.
“Are you all right?” Sam asked.
Dickey put a hand on the back of his head. “No. The woman ensorcelled me with that pollen, I think.” He shrugged. “I can’t remember a thing past arriving at this gate.”
“She attacked you with sheep and deer pollen. I put it in your pocket.”
“You touched it?” Dickey said.
“I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t want to leave it on you any longer than necessary.”
Dickey pulled the wad of yellow and pink threads from his pocket using his handkerchief. “I can see where your fingerprints touched the stuff.” He held it up, and there were indentations where Sam had handled the pollen.
“Did you find Emmy?”
“Paw prints. I’ll show them to you.” Sam helped his partner up, and they examined the garden and found other evidence of Emmy’s.
“How could she keep her in the garden? I would think Emmy could jump the fence,” Dickey said.
“Pollen. It works on animals, too,” Sam said. He walked up to the door and tried the latch. It opened. “Shall we go inside to see if there is anyone still in the place?”
Dickey smirked. “You really did spook the woman.”
They entered. The furniture wasn’t new, so the townhouse had to have been rented furnished, like Sam’s house, but much higher quality.
Sam entered a bedroom filled with racks of clothes. Dickey examined them more closely that Sam.
“For her disguises,” Dickey said. “I’ll bet she wears a different collection depending on who she is impersonating. Two of these racks are men’s clothes and this…” He held up a black knit outfit that looked more like underwear than an outfit. “She probably wore this when she burgled the Royal Recorder’s.”
Sam thought that Banna Plunk was an expert of disguise, but his appreciation of her talents increased, as did his sense of how dangerous the woman could be.
“She is pretending she’s a younger woman,” Sam said. “Older ladies wouldn’t wear something like this.”
They moved to another room with a large mirror on top of a vanity. To the side was an empty picture frame. Dickey rummaged around in the drawers and pulled out a file. “One of these goes in here.” He put a detailed drawing of a man’s face through a slot at the top of the frame.
“Her disguise patterns. We should take those with us.”
Dickey shook his head. “Sam, we could be accused of trespassing. Remember, she has the ear of Issak Bolt. He could arrest us.”
Sam frowned. “Then we should leave.”
“Indeed,” Dickey said.
They exited from the back and walked a few streets away before hailing a hired carriage.
Sam pulled out his notebook and began to sketch faces. “I tried to memorize as much as I could. I think I can reproduce the general look of all her disguises.”
Dickey grunted. “A lot of good that will do us. If she can tell we rummaged through her house, then all she has to do is buy new clothes and change the faces. Banna Plunk is a slippery woman. I want to talk to Antina Mulch.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
~
“I ’m sorry you had to wait so long,” Antina said. She waited on three customers before she could talk to them. “How can I help you?”
Dickey pulled the wad of pollen out of his pocket. “Don’t ask me how Banna Plunk applied this stuff to me, but I was about to stop her from running away and the next thing I knew, Sam was helping me to my feet. There has to be more to what you Vaarekians do with pollen that we don’t know about.”
Antina blushed. “Of course there is. Why do you think no country on Holding has ever tried to invade the Polistian continent?” she said. Antina looked at Sam. “You didn’t read my little book, yet, right?”
Sam nodded. “I was going to, and then Banna Plunk stole Emmy.” He pulled the little volume from his coat pocket and showed her.
“Make sure you read the book first, and then give it to Dickey to read. It may explain why Banna Plunk is so adept at pollen magic.”
“What about Dickey’s faint?” Sam asked.
“I don’t know how she made him faint, but the forgetfulness isn’t a trick of any kind. Just slap the pollen on Dickey’s skin. It could have been a handshake and then she would have put a larger patch on his neck. The skin on someone’s neck is especially sensitive. Even Banna Plunk can’t produce much of neural pollen, unless she is a pollen magician, like what the book describes. It is apparent that Banna Plunk knows how to mix and match pollen effects and has no compunction about using them in unethical ways,” Antina said. “And that makes her extremely dangerous. If she practiced pollen magic this way in Vaarek, she would currently reside behind bars.” She looked at Dickey. “I would be concerned she has made Issak Bolt her own creature, from what Sam and you have told me. In a sense, she could be the one controlling the Ministry of Justice.”
