An Apprentice Without Magic, page 31
part #2 of Magic Missing Series
Chapter Thirty-Six
~
“M oving day,” Fork said, pulling the covers off Sam. “Get up and get out.”
Sam looked over at Dickey who rubbed the sleep from his eyes before looking at the three City Guards in the room.
“Your girlfriend, Lady Grate, will not have access to your new residence,” Fork said.
“Do you have paperwork for the transfer, or are you stealing us from the king?”
Fork waved a rolled-up piece of paper at Dickey. “Grab what you can in two seconds.” The captain yawned. “Hurry, I want to get back to bed.”
Sam had just enough time to grab his spectacles and put on his coat before Fork gave him a shove towards the door. They descended to the ground floor and were taken to a waiting wagon and manacled again. So much for the protection of the royal jail. This time the windows were blacked out. No guards accompanied them inside, and they sat in total darkness.
Sam took off his spectacles and looked at lights passing by. “The curtains are made out of pollen.” The carriage stopped. Sam slid over. “We are at a city gate. Do you know which one?” Sam looked out again. “It is a small gate that opens onto a grassy plain.”
Dickey said, “We are being taken out of the South Gate of Baskin, and that isn’t good, not good at all.”
Sam sat back. “Are there prisons out here?”
Dickey grunted in the darkness of the wagon. “No. We are being taken to a residence or to oblivion.”
“They would kill us? Fork had papers. Chief Bentwick would be able to trace our leaving the royal jail,” Sam said.
“Did you read the paperwork? Have you ever heard of bribes?” Dickey said. “Do you think Captain Fork is an honest man?”
“No,” Sam said. He remembered the constables in the hill country that were in the thrall of Banna Plunk and the revolt. Anything could happen to them.
“Should we try to remove our manacles?”
Dickey chuckled in the darkness. “Already done. Sit next to me, and I’ll remove yours, but you’ll have to put them back on, loosely, when we arrive at our destination.”
Sam did as his partner asked. He had no idea how Dickey could do such a thing in the dark.
“Take these,” Dickey said, pressing a pollen object into Sam’s palm.
“Keys!” Sam could feel the pollen soften with his touch.
“There are only six keys that will unlock all the manacles in Baskin. I found the right one on the third try, and luckily our manacles used the same key. See if you can toss the key out the window.”
Sam thought for a bit. “I can’t do that,” he said. “If I touch the curtains they might soften and look funny.”
“Can you see if the bars are pollen?” Dickey said.
Sam sighed. “A quick touch will do it.”
Lights flitted past. Sam touched one of the bars with his finger. They were pollen-made. “They are.”
“Do you have any gold on you?”
Sam had a gold tip tucked inside his waistband. He hadn’t even told Dickey about it and had tried not to think about it while incarcerated. “I do.”
“That’s my apprentice. I don’t care what the guards think, work on the bars. We might have to make an escape, no matter what our chances.”
Sam didn’t need any further prompting and began to work on the bars. They were denser than other pollen objects Sam had held, but the bars couldn’t withstand the gold in Sam’s grasp. Soon all three bars in the window could be twisted to allow them an exit if needed.
The carriage began to roll over rough ground and then stopped. Dickey and Sam didn’t hear a word from the guards. They didn’t even talk to one another.
“We are close to the ocean,” Dickey said. “They are going to dump us in the sea. When the carriage begins to roll, grab onto other bars than the one you just worked on. We will stand a chance if we can get out. Take off your manacles.”
Sam did as Dickey instructed. “The moon just came up. There is a window to your left,” Sam said.
“Got it.”
Sam could hear the jingling of harnesses. They had unhitched the horses. “No horses.”
“We are going for a very rough ride.”
Sam nodded as the carriage picked up speed. They were heading downhill, and then the carriage dipped forward as the rough ride stopped. In the silence, Sam closed his eyes and held on tight for an instant until they plunged into the sea. The carriage hit the water and then crashed into rocks below the surface. Sam ripped the bars from the window.
He didn’t see Dickey in the water, but he frantically felt around the inside of the wagon and found soft flesh. Sam pulled Dickey through the bars as his head began to throb. He must have damaged it again, but he had to ignore it as the grabbed Dickey’s coat. He tried to swim upward, but his own coat seemed to drag him down.
Sam’s lungs were about to burst as he ripped off his coat and then his partner’s. His efforts finally gained purchase in the swirling waters. He swam towards the light of the moon on the horizon, and as he was about to give up, he broke through the water’s surface.
He cradled Dickey’s head in his arm as he tried to keep afloat and move away from the waves breaking on the rocks. He spied a white band in the distance and began to struggle with Dickey. His partner sputtered and vomited as Dickey began to fight Sam off.
That would mean the end of Dickey, so Sam kept hold of him even though the man’s blows pummeled his face, neck, and shoulders. The beach became closer, but Dickey raised his fist and pounded Sam on the head. He couldn’t hold off the blackness that engulfed him. He took a breath of water.
~
The rising sun assaulted Sam’s eyes. He opened them, surprised he was alive, and retched. His eyes stung from the saltwater and the bits of sand that he had to blink out. He felt awful.
The tiny sand shingle was empty except for a body half in the water on the far side. Sam tried to get up, but couldn’t muster the energy, so he rolled and crawled to Dickey. His partner still breathed. They had made it through the crash, but only barely survived the swim to shore. Havetta must have lent some of her power to the ocean to deliver them both from its depths.
He managed to drag a comatose Dickey up the shingle and out of the water. Sam sat up and looked out to sea. He didn’t know who had won on his first encounter with the ocean. Perhaps it was a draw.
His stomach began to protest again, and Sam retched. As he did so, Dickey rolled over on his side and returned more seawater to the beach.
Dickey turned over. “You are alive, too? I hardly remember anything once we hit the water. Did I hit you? Your left eye is swollen.” He shook his head. “I’m only left with impressions.”
“You hit me again and again,” Sam said. He touched his eye. It wasn’t just the sand and the saltwater that made his eyes hurt. “You hit me on the head with your fist, and that was that. The tide saved us and washed us up here.”
Dickey struggled to sit up with Sam. His gaze turned to the cliff above them. “We have to get out of sight,” he said. “With dawn will come those who will want to see the scene of their crime.”
“Our murders,” Sam said.
Dickey made something that looked like a broom out of pollen. “Precisely. We can use this to brush the sand and cover our tracks. I’ll rake, and you sweep the sand to make it look as natural as possible.”
Sam gave Dickey a half-smile. “I lost my spectacles when I tore off my coat. I can’t see what you’ve made.”
Dickey thrust something into Sam’s hands. “Watch what it does to the sand. You’ll get the idea. We will have to work fast, so your broom will last long enough without disintegrating before it obliterates evidence of our being on this beach.”
They forced themselves to make the beach look unused. The tide was rolling in, and by the time they had reached an overhang in the cliffs, Havetta had the tide do naturally what they toiled to do in their weakened state.
Sam woke hearing voices above him. Both of them had dozed at the very foot of the cliffs, far from the current water line. He wanted to look up, but he remembered Dickey’s warning about murderers wanting to see their work.
He shook Dickey awake and pointed upward. “Voices,” he whispered.
Dickey nodded and sat up. He yawned and groaned in silence. Sam thought he could hear Minister Bolt’s voice, but that could have been his imagination. The voices finally faded away.
“We need to stay here for a day,” Dickey said. “Regardless of the cold, Bolt could have men stationed all around to see if we survived.”
“Or he might not. Maybe he found our coats.”
Dickey rubbed his arms. “Yes, coats. We can’t chance a fire either. I can make a pollen coat for me, but not for you.”
“Keep making them. I hadn’t noticed the temperature until we stopped our climb up the beach.”
“I’ll make a tent. Then we can share each other’s heat.” And so he did.
In minutes, Sam sat, hugging his knees, looking out towards the ocean. Dickey couldn’t see past the pollen tent, so he lay down and went back to sleep. The inside of the tent stunk, but they were warmer. Eventually, exhaustion finally forced Sam to lie down and join his partner in slumber.
~
The sun didn’t slam into Sam’s eyes when he woke up the next morning. The pollen tent somehow muted the sun’s rays. However, Sam tried to sit up, and his body protested. Suddenly bruises and bumps from his fall off the cliff began to ache, and his joints were stiff. He had to crawl out of the tent, avoiding Dickey’s slumbering form. Hunger pangs began to add to his discomfort. Sam surveyed the tops of the cliffs, but he couldn’t detect any watchers. That didn’t mean no one was looking, but they might be asleep, just like Dickey.
The tide was out, so Sam peeked in tide pools. Sea creatures moved in the clear seawater, but they couldn’t chance a fire, and he had no appetite for raw seafood, no matter how fresh. He walked back to the tent and grabbed the misshapen broom-thing Dickey had made the previous day and brushed his tracks out of the sand.
He peeked inside the tent, and Dickey grunted at him.
“Did you keep your gold tip?” he asked.
Sam hadn’t even checked and smiled when he found the lump in his waistband. He nodded.
“Get to work on the tent and on that sand brush. If they climb down to check for bodies, we don’t want them finding any traces. I need to walk for a bit. I’m stiff and sore all over.”
“So am I,” Sam said. “I guess a fall off a cliff does that to you.” He hoped Dickey would provide a smirk, but he ignored Sam’s comment, so he went to work as Dickey hobbled around trying to get his body moving.
“That is enough. I found a hole that can take care of the rest,” Dickey said.
They clambered over rocks. Neither of them was nimble, but they rid themselves of the pollen and began to climb up towards a copse of trees that leaned over the cliff. Dickey found a runnel in the cliff face that provided steps, since the soil was currently dry. Up they climbed. Dickey followed Sam, but he gradually fell behind.
After considerable effort, Sam used a root to pull himself over the edge. He rolled away from the cliff and looked up at the sky through the lacy intertwining branches, breathing heavily. Dickey hadn’t yet made it, so he crawled over to the edge and saw Dickey struggling to make it the last few feet.
“What is wrong?” Sam said as quietly as he could.
“Ankle, if you must know. It’s not broken, but it is twisted and swollen.”
Sam wished he could have spun a pollen rope for his partner, but all he could do was wait until Dickey grabbed the root that helped Sam up the last few feet.
He helped Dickey onto the turf. He winced and crawled on hands and knees, so he could lean against a tree trunk. Sam endured Dickey’s colorful language for a while.
“Why don’t you make a pollen boot?” Sam said. “That is what Harrison did for his patients. A pollen cast.”
“I said I don’t think my ankle is broken.”
Sam sighed. “But we can’t make it anywhere if you can’t walk. If you immobilize your foot, you might be able to endure less pain. We don’t have to climb anymore, do we?”
Dickey shook his head. “I’m leaving my boot on.”
“I’ll tie it tighter for you,” Sam said. “It will give you more support.”
Dickey let Sam do that and covered his lower leg in a pollen cast that Sam couldn’t see. Sam helped him up and gasped as Dickey winced, but his partner found he could stumble along. They walked through the wood, and Sam found a fallen branch that Dickey could use as a staff.
“That’s better, and now I have a weapon, of sorts. You should find one for yourself,”
The pair of them walked a little farther when Sam suddenly smelled smoke.
“Campfire,” Dickey whispered. “We will have to go around them.”
Sam followed Dickey’s lead as they headed farther south to the edge of the wood and passed the searcher’s camp close enough to verify that they were Bolt’s men. Dickey grunted and groaned his way to the end of the wood and into a field. They rushed to get over a hill, so they would be out of sight from the wood and a coastal road that ran towards Baskin.
The farmland dipped down towards a stream cutting into the ground, littered with boulders. They sat down to rest.
“We are going back to Baskin,” Dickey said, “but we won’t be going through the same gate we came out. Something directly west.”
Sam had assumed they would, anyway. “But Captain Fork is commander of the western division of the City Guard.”
“I’ll think of something,” Dickey said. “First we have a very long walk ahead of us.”
They had rested enough and took the opportunity to fill their bellies with stream water. Dickey couldn’t walk very fast.
“Can you make the staff into a crutch?” Sam said.
“What?” Dickey said. “Oh, of course.” He shook his head. “I’ve never had a leg injury, and I’m obviously not thinking as clearly as you are, Sam.”
Dickey took Sam’s shorter staff and made a pollen pad for the crutch. He put it under his arm and began to walk more smoothly. “Pain is sometimes a relative thing,” he told Sam. “Right now it is relatively better, but it still hurts a lot. We can’t do anything until I recover.”
Sam knew that. “Maybe if we converse in court language, it will help distract us. Neither of us can run anywhere.”
That comment earned a smirk from Dickey, and oddly enough that made Sam feel better. Sam told him about life in Cherryton in greater detail than he had in the past. Dickey asked some penetrating questions along the way. They entered into another wood, a few miles inland.
“Your mother is the most to blame,” Dickey said. “She supported your brother all along; any moron could see that.”
“I did see that,” Sam said.
“But not until she kicked you out. Your father was more consistent.”
Sam had already come to that conclusion, but he guessed that the distraction wasn’t for him, it was for Dickey. “He was, and in the end, he showed that he cared; while my mother didn’t, at all.”
“Mark manipulated her, but it seems she was already inclined to support him. The pressure she put on your father to hire him, even though Tru was already working, shows me that. You really are a poor sod, aren’t you?”
Sam shrugged. “I was. But here we are. We’ve caught the attention of a Toraltian minister. I’ve been to the houses of the nobility and can even count a few nobles as friends. I wouldn’t be doing that if I had stayed in Cherryton.”
“Nearly at the cost of your life, and the danger isn’t close to being over,” Dickey said.
“But we aren’t dead yet,” Sam said. “As long as we still breathe, there is always the hope for another breath, and another, and another.”
The smirk appeared on Dickey’s face again. “I’ll agree with you. So what should we do to keep breathing, apprentice?”
“We need a refuge, so we can recover. Neither of us is in shape to do anything,” Sam said. “I need to get another pair of my spectacles.” The breeze picked up. “And a coat. I need a coat.”
“Should we try to make it to Lady Grate’s mansion? Our houses are probably being watched if I know Captain Fork.”
“We could hire a carriage, but I don’t want to part with my golden wand tip.”
Dickey smirked again. “Never fear,” he said. “Let’s rest on that fallen tree up ahead.”
When they sat down, Dickey asked Sam to take his good shoe off. “Pull back the liner out of the heel.”
Sam did as he was told and saw a collection of silver coins crowded into the heel. He tried to pull them out but they wouldn’t.
“Use your gold tip. The coins are encased in pollen that you can’t see. I’ll have to put more pollen into the empty space,” Dickey said.
Sam felt better about their chances now that they had the means of re-entering Baskin and traveling through the streets in a carriage, rather than exposing themselves walking across town.
They moved around the edge of a village, but Dickey caught sight of a mail coach stop and pulled on Sam’s sleeve. “We will ride into Baskin. It will take a week with us hobbling our way to the capital.”
Sam couldn’t contradict Dickey’s plan, and soon they were ensconced in the mail coach. There weren’t any passengers, so Dickey and Sam had to share the cabin with boxes of letters, in addition to a full boot of mail heading towards the center of the city. The driver said he was happy to make some money on the side. In a few hours, the City Guard waved the coach through with Sam and Dickey crouched down. They had successfully returned to Baskin.
The pair alighted along a city crossroads where a road led a few blocks from Lady Grate’s residence. Dickey gave the carriage driver a false address, and soon the pair tried to minimize their shambling along the streets where nobles lived, keeping to alleys where they could until they found the rear of Lady Grate’s modest mansion. They slipped inside the back gate after Dickey expertly picked the lock.
