An Apprentice Without Magic, page 33
part #2 of Magic Missing Series
Sam shook his head. He hadn’t thought of anyone in Cherryton but Addy in a long time. “I’m getting new clothes, so you can leave my stuff alone. Return the books Antina left me. Lady Keeta has enough to keep me going on my Vaarekian. I don’t have much else to do. Dickey and I have talked about our next steps, but it is all conditional on how Minister Bolt acts.”
“Antina has let a few people know she is doing some decorating, consulting with Lady Grate, so she can keep you informed,” Tru said. “I have one last thing to say before I must go. We are both sure that we are being observed. That is why I must go now. I hope this unfortunate turn of events will turn out in your favor, Sam. Take care.”
He got up and told Sam to stay. If people were watching Lady Grate’s house, they might watch Sam see Tru off. Sam hadn’t really looked at Dickey’s and his plight as an unfortunate turn of events like Tru termed it, but as he reflected, his brother was absolutely right.
Dickey was soaking his ankle in their wing, so Sam put his book away and told his partner about Tru’s visit.
“How are you feeling?” Dickey said, once Sam had told him about the observers.
“Much better,” Sam said. “I think the bump on my head has even hardened up. It was a little tender, but not now. My aches and pains are about gone, too. How about you?”
Dickey smiled. “I’m getting better, but not as fast as you. My ankle swelling is starting to shrink. Tomorrow we will be able to go into action. We haven’t really talked about what we will do next. I’d like to know if Banna has moved back into the Teri Punch house. I’m leery about asking the Chief to check on that. All we have to do is walk past, a nighttime stroll.”
“Maybe I can do that by myself tonight,” Sam said. “They might be looking for two of us. All I need is a way to get in and out of the mansion without being seen.”
“If you are careful,” Dickey said, “it may save us a day’s work.”
“I’ll find Lady Grate.”
Sam left Dickey to his ankle bath and found Lady Grate admiring Tru’s gift.
“Your brother has become a renown artist,” she said.
Sam nodded. “Antina thinks so, too. I have something to ask you. Is there a way to leave the mansion grounds without being seen?”
Keet frowned. “No.” She put her hand to her chin. “Actually, yes. As a club member, I can have one of my servants summon a hired carriage. The front door is not in sight of the street. You can hide if you don’t mind smelling my feet,” she said giggling.
“Anything to help Dickey and me out of this mess,” Sam said, smiling himself.
“After dark? That would be better.”
Sam gave her the address and what he was going to set out to do.
“I can have Stefen do that, and you won’t have to risk anything. He can leave and hire a carriage and do a little snooping for you. All you are seeking is if the house is occupied?”
Sam nodded.
“He can go to the door and ask for one of his friends, he has many, you know, and see if anyone comes to the door. Stefen is completely trustworthy. I’ll have him seek you out when he returns with our specialty groceries. Everything else is delivered, you know.”
Sam didn’t know, but he nodded. “That would be preferable. I’ll tell Dickey.”
~
The servant’s door opened. Sam sat on the stairs waiting for Stefen to return from reconnoitering Banna Plunk’s townhouse. The servant walked in shivering.
“It’s a cold night to be out,” he said in Toraltian.
“Was it a productive night?”
“A woman lives in the house, that is for certain. A foreigner, if I’m not mistaken.” He described Banna Plank. Her face didn’t match, but everything else did. “She said she’s lived there for months, so my friend couldn’t have just moved in.”
“I apologized profusely and quickly left. I had had a couple of beers before I went to check, and I staggered a bit more than I needed to,” Stefen said. “Alcohol is an easy excuse some of the time.” He winked. “It was tough duty.”
“You can take the rest of the night off, Stefen,” Keet said from the top of the stairway in court language.
“I thank you, Lady Keeta.” Stefen nodded to Sam and bowed to his mistress before leaving them.
Sam could smell the beer on his breath. He guessed that Stefen might have had more than a couple. “Banna has moved back in,” Sam said, “if she ever moved out.”
“With you two out of the way, I probably would, too, if I liked the place,” Keet said. “Let’s tell Dickey.”
Sam trudged up the stairs, and they both heard Dickey snoring away in his room.
“We will tell him tomorrow,” Sam said. “He needs his sleep to recover.”
Keet nodded and left Sam, who followed Dickey’s lead.
In the morning Dickey knocked on Sam’s door before barging in. “Well?”
“Banna is living in Teri Punch’s house. Stefen described her perfectly, except for her face, of course.”
“Of course,” Dickey said. “Today we will start our preparations.”
“For what?” Sam asked.
“We will be observing Banna Plunk.”
“That is how we were arrested,” Sam said. “That will happen again if we aren’t careful.”
“We will be more careful because we need to be. Without Minister Bolt’s intervention, nothing would have come of our investigation before. The problem, however, is that we can’t proceed without the Chief knowing,” Dickey said.
“And how are we going to notify him?”
Dickey shrugged. “Antina? Your girlfriend Winnie—”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Sam said.
He shrugged again. “Then Mrs. Bentwick. They can get a message to him.”
“Mrs. Bentwick,” Sam said.
Dickey nodded. “I think you are right.”
Sam thought he intended to use Bentwick’s wife all along, but wanted to needle Sam about Winnie. Sam liked Winnie, but he felt much the same way she did. They would need to know each other better before they developed a real relationship. Sam wasn’t so sure he believed in relationships at fifteen, but he remembered Addy having boyfriends when she was Winnie’s age a year or so ago.
“So, what are you going to ask the Chief?”
“Permission to bribe someone in the house on either side to allow us to listen to what goes on in Banna Plunk’s house.”
“You mean drill a hole in the wall?”
Dickey nodded. “Exactly that. It has been done many times before, but the Chief needs to be notified and approve of the act.”
“The sooner, the better? Can your ankle handle it?”
“Other than getting there, we sit, and sit, and sit, and then sit until she shows up. Banna Plunk might not say anything of interest, or anything at all for days.”
“But we don’t have anything else we can do.”
“Not in the short term, and I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to.” Dickey looked at the door leading to the corridor.
Sam guessed Keet was still pursuing Dickey. He didn’t quite understand the dynamic, but he knew enough to know that his partner might be softening under Keet’s relentless good cheer.
At breakfast, she readily agreed to call on Mrs. Bentwick in the morning. Dickey wrote out a detailed letter and left it unaddressed and unsigned.
By late afternoon, a messenger arrived at Lady Grate’s with a delivery. Sam stood just inside the door as she accepted the box and opened it. Bentwick’s reply was inside.
To whom it may concern,
Dickey Nail and Sam Smith, both constables in the service of the king, have my permission to perform a deep observation on a certain Teri Punch until their observation yields information or yields no information.
Signed,
Faddon Bentwick
Chief Constable of the Investigative Division of the
Royal Constabulary
Here it is. I will leave it here with you, Keet. If Issak Bolt catches us, it will be destroyed along with the two of us.
“Very well. Are you sure you two are willing to do this?”
“I’m not ready to stay dead forever,” Dickey said. He turned to Sam. “Are you?”
Sam shook his head. He could leave Baskin and never return, but Sam couldn’t desert Dickey Nail or Chief Constable Bentwick.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
~
M id-morning the next day, Sam and Dickey hid in a carriage that Lady Grate hired. It dropped them off close to Banna Plunk’s townhouse. They took up a position and observed the townhouse and both structures on either side.
Banna was either inside or had departed earlier. They looked on as the house on the left disgorged two small children and a mother out the door. Dickey made a face. “That leaves us with only one choice.”
No one came or went. Dickey sent Sam to knock on the door. He removed his spectacles and threw up the collar on his coat, covering most of his face. His cap covered the rest of his head.
When he got to the door, he noticed a little placard. H.Q. Lump, Realtor. It gave an address not too far away in Sam’s estimation.
“I think the house is unoccupied,” Sam said.
“Really?”
Sam nodded. “H.Q. Lump, Realtor.”
“As it happens, I know Hale Lump from an old investigation. I know where his office is. Let’s visit him,” Dickey said.
They walked through the crowds separately. Sam kept his distance behind Dickey since his partner’s ankle wasn’t fully healed. He felt like he was walking naked through Baskin’s streets and that he could be nabbed at any time by Captain Fork’s City Guard, but Dickey had thought that a remote possibility since the City Guard didn’t have jurisdiction so far from Baskin’s gates. Sam nodded his head when Dickey told him that but didn’t remind him that Fork and his guards had captured them at the constabulary.
The walk really wasn’t very long, and Sam waited a bit after Dickey to enter the little office.
Dickey sat with his back to the window, and Sam did the same.
“People think we are dead, this lad and I,” Dickey said. “We are working on a delicate case. The woman next to the house you have to let is a suspect. I would like to rent the house for a month, no more. The constabulary will pay.”
“But I have an offer on the place. The owner will want something extra.”
Dickey pursed his lips and leaned over Hale Lump’s desk. “You and I both know that is a crock, Lump. Tell me you’ll make an honest coin.”
The real estate agent nodded, looking very intimidated.
“Good. Give me the key,” Dickey said.
“One month only,” Lump said.
Dickey laid out more than a month’s worth of rent. “This is what you get for one month only.”
Sam didn’t think they could stay out of the clutches of Minister Bolt for that long, but that was what Hale Lump asked for. The realtor shoved the money into his desk drawer and went to a cabinet. “Two keys.” He gave them to Dickey.
“Thank you,” Dickey said. “This is a secret investigation. If it gets out, the constabulary will not be happy, do you understand?”
Lump nodded. “I learned my lesson.”
“Remember it,” Dickey said as he left.
Sam looked at Lump for a moment. “I’m afraid to work for him.” He shrugged as he hurried after Dickey, who was half a block away, hailing a hired carriage.
“We have time for some tavern food before we have to be back to the pickup point,” Dickey said. “Let’s treat ourselves to the kind of food that Lady Keeta doesn’t think to serve.”
That meant spicy meat and sweet pastries, Sam thought, and he was correct. Dickey and he bought extra and left in time to catch Keet’s carriage.
“This is my second pass,” she said. She made a face. “What is it I smell?”
Dickey told her, and she made another face. “Eww. That is awful food.”
“Awful for a noble, a source of delight for commoners,” Dickey said. “Don’t complain when we may go to our deaths tomorrow. At least Sam and I will be happy now.”
Sam was surprised at Dickey’s words. It seemed a bit out of character, but then looking at Keet’s face, she looked sympathetic, and he didn’t hear another complaint from her all the way back to her mansion.
“We will need some tools,” Dickey said as they stepped into Lady Keet’s residence.
Stefen arrived in the library where Sam and Dickey put together a floor plan of Banna Plunk’s house, as best as they could. Her sitting room was on the right side, and her bedroom was on the right side, so they would turn those into their little windows into Banna’s life.
“I need to drill from one house to another. A small hole about the size of my little finger should do,” Dickey said. “I also need lockpicks. I don’t suppose?”
“I have a set here at the house. Lady Grate has locked herself in and out of rooms before,” Stefen said, somewhat sheepishly.
“But won’t Banna see the holes?” Sam said after Stefen left to fetch their tools.
“Not at all,” Dickey said. “We make a pollen plug that will take on the color of the surface around it. If the wall is a pattern, it could be detected, but not if there isn’t a color change. Constables are taught the technique at the constabulary. Apprentices don’t learn it.”
Sam nodded unhappily. He couldn’t help Dickey with that part, but he could still listen to the post upstairs or down. He guessed that Dickey would get the main floor because of his foot.
~
They spent the better part of a night preparing the holes on their side. The rest would happen once Banna Plunk had been spotted leaving her house in the morning. Sam finally spotted the woman leaving. He clambered downstairs and told Dickey.
The rest wasn’t so difficult. The holes were drilled. Neither house was made of masonry, so their work wasn’t very difficult. Dickey did something to the pollen he created. “No pattern in the sitting room. Time for upstairs.”
The upstairs bedroom was a different story. “Something is covering the hole,” Dickey said.
Sam took a look and didn’t see anything. “No, there isn’t.” But then he thought. “There is a pollen decoration on the wall,” Sam said. “I can take this hole. I’ll be able to peep into the room,” he said.
“All the better. We start observing now,” Dickey said.
Sam took his supplies upstairs. He had water and two meals to keep him going until Banna retired for the night. The house was sparsely furnished, but Sam found a chair to sit on. He pulled out a Vaarekian novel and sat back, waiting to hear something.
“She’s on her step,” Dickey yelled up from below.
Sam prepared to listen for something useful, but all the woman did was hum while she undressed and put on a nightgown. Once her light was off, Dickey and Sam left from the front door and returned to Keet’s residence.
An entire week continued in the same manner. The woman didn’t talk to herself. Sam was wondering if they should confront her, but Dickey discouraged such a thought. Sam liked the observation part of snooping the least. He was bored, bored, bored, and even Vaarekian novels didn’t help make it any better.
On the ninth night, Banna brought a visitor. Sam looked out the window. It was a man, but from his angle, he couldn’t tell who it was. He slipped down the stairs and listened with Dickey. Sam jerked when he heard Bolt’s voice. They were arguing as soon as they entered the house!
“Teri, you will not steal gold from there!” the minister said. “Most nobles in Baskin have either gold or shares, including the king.”
Banna’s voice took on more of an accent as her emotions rose while talking back to Bolt. “And just how are you going to stop me? I have as much on you as you have on me, Issak.”
Silence punctuated her comment as Sam pictured the minister grinding his teeth.
“You steal that gold, and you can’t stay in Baskin. Bentwick and his snoops would catch you,” Bolt said.
“But you would have to protect me.”
“Not if the king demands an investigation. He can overrule me, you know,” Bolt said. Sam could hear his voice become more confident. “Don’t you use that witch pollen on me,” Bolt said. “It doesn’t last forever.” There was more silence. “You really shouldn’t do that, dear.” The minister’s voice suddenly lost all anger. “Do whatever you want, and I’ll do my best to support you.”
“I will share enough of the gold with you, so the theft won’t ruin my little minister,” Banna said.
“That would be so kind of you, Teri.”
Dickey began making faces, and then he sneezed.
“Who are you?” she said.
“She’s looking right at the hole,” Dickey whispered.
“Stick this against the wall,” Sam said, pulling a crude painting off the wall.
Dickey quickly bound it over the hole. “Time to leave,” he said.
They bounded out the front door and bumped into three men waiting outside Banna’s townhouse.
“Chase them, you fools!” Bolt said, rushing out of Banna’s door. “Find out who they are.”
At first, Dickey outran Sam, but then he began to fall behind, as his ankle started to hurt.
“I can’t go any farther. We will have to fight them.”
Sam pulled out his wand, removing the gold to reveal the pointy end. Dickey pulled out his sword. They fled into a narrow alley before Bolt’s men caught them.
Three against two. With a healthy Dickey, Sam would have had confidence they would prevail, but with Dickey’s ankle, Sam wasn’t so sure, especially not after his hobbling through the streets of Baskin.
“You distract them,” Dickey said. “We can’t tarry long in this alley. Bolt will eventually call more of his thugs out to capture us.”
