by R N Skye
With enthusiasm Ari decided to see if he could thwart any pending assassination attempts on the prince without the prince or the assassins knowing what he was doing. Realizing that crown prince’s often had their own security as well as intelligence, they would in all likelihood be aware of any known threats and he would need to be very careful lest he did anything that would likely get in the way of their efforts “and” slash “or” have himself mistaken for the quote-unquote enemy.
As the day for the inspection neared it seemed to Ari that there had been no preparations made to increase security. No one had tried to verify the loyalty of those working the dig and there had been no advance preparations from the capitol to assure the princes safety – the Army that guarded and transported the artifacts were the only personnel that could be considered properly vetted as secure. That left hundreds of civilian magetechs, archeologists, and laborers. The only advance team that had arrived prior to the inspection was an snooty Attaché that introduced himself as the royal event planner, and a staff of courtiers and assistants that accompanied the supply train of accoutrements necessary to make the visit bearable for the royal guests.
Ari began preparing immediately by gathering a number of useful artifacts. Magetech may have bored him, but he was quite adept at their use, especially those artifacts that he found interesting. He began by placing what he termed “snooping” artifacts, - artifacts he had previously cataloged and found useful in his hobby of thwarting smugglers; very small video senders that could save and view on a projection device that he kept in his quarters. He carefully camouflaged them in the hostelry, the supply area, and other round about locations where many of the less than savory individuals congregated for clandestine conversations. In his quarters he would monitor and note those that seemed to be in on the conspiracy to attack the prince.
According to regulation he should report findings of this nature to the higher command. To his consternation Ari found that in lieu of the upcoming inspection that he was the current higher command; all of his superiors were at the Capitol and would be traveling back to the dig with the prince, the governor and their entourage.
Making up his mind that the evidence was clear enough to use lethal force he devised a plan that included several very poisonous spiders indigenous to the area, a bee stinger, and a straw – it was said if you mixed the spiders venom with venom of a bee stinger that you could die in seconds; the stinger would provide the injection method and the poison under the cover of a bee sting would do the rest. - Maybe it was a scorpion’s sting. He would have to try both.
By the morning of the arrival of the inspection party he had eliminated all but one of the conspirators. No one the wiser, even though he had constantly been interrupted by the ever present Attaché who was constantly bumping into him making all sorts of frivolous requests. The bodies were all decomposing nicely in the bottom of a recently buried latrine pit; after all a fresh pit needed to be dug for the crown prince didn’t it? He had had a good chuckle requesting that the Attaché have his staff cover it up and dig the new latrine.
Assisting the Attaché, Ari helped with the organization on a post-inspection luncheon. As the seating arrangements were decided Ari made suggestions keeping the remaining conspirator in mind. To Ari’s pleasant surprise the often snooty Attaché was surprisingly agreeable to his suggestions.
The remaining conspirator, he had found, was an archeologist from Jehhet. Ari was certain that if someone were to dig deeply that the archeologist was likely in league with a competitor to the King’s artifact company rather than a foreign assassin. Whatever the reason the man’s title and role at the dig was sufficient to merit him an invite to the luncheon.
A pavilion had been set up to counter the afternoon sun and provide shelter should it rain. Chairs and tables adorned with some of the more sparkly artifacts were set up as centerpieces on the tables. The camp cooks, at Ari’s and the Attaché’s insistence had out done themselves in preparing a veritable feast - in all likely hood the VIP’s would consider it nominal fare but the soldiers and permanent staffers of the dig were enthusiastically excited and licking their chops in anticipation of the leftovers.
With little time to prepare Ari readied his final removal – all he needed was a rope another honey bee and some venom from one of his precious little black spiders and just for good measure some scorpion venom.
The Governor and the Prince were not quite what Ari had expected. They were most congenial and very complimentary to the soldiers and other staff that they met with as they made their rounds through the especially prepared locations at the dig; locations that showed off the talents of the teams as well as the recently discovered chambers and glyphs that the archeologists used to find locations most likely to contain artifacts. A couple of these locations had artifacts intentionally left un-removed so that the prince and the governor could lay claim to uncovering an artifact of their own. Soon the tour was over and the group convened to the pavilion.
Sitting around the tables the prince, the governor, the commandant and various other members of the cadre were laughing and smiling as they verbally patted each other on the back regarding the success of the dig. Amidst the laughter and chatter a musical tinkling sound not unlike a music box suddenly began to play. The conversations ceased as everyone began to look around the pavilion to locate the source of the music.
“What an incredible device,” the prince said as he spotted a small square box with a projection of a girl in a flowing dress twirling round and round, on a table at the far side of the pavilion.
“It is a special artifact that I was saving for your highness,” spoke an older man dressed in the frock of an archeologist. “I had hoped…” The man paused and gulped; a strange look on his face. “I beg your pardon your highness, I think I just swallowed a bug.” The crowd in the pavilion all chuckled as the man paused, opening and closing his mouth smacking his tongue and swallowing a couple of times before continuing. ”…I had hoped, your highness, to present it earlier to you but alas your rounds did not make it to the vaults that I was supervising,” he continued dismissively.
Ari had intentionally arranged for the tour to miss the area where the conspirator was working. His suspicions now confirmed. Ari’s current plan was to make sure that the assassin died in front of a crowd as he attempted to kill the prince so that there would be witnesses and the princes guards could assist if it ended in an overt attack. From his spying Ari suspected that the assassin would likely use a slow acting poison that would not affect the prince until the killer would be long gone. If Ari was correct the musical artifact was likely coated with a poison of some sort that would accomplish such a deed.
“Bring it forth,” commanded the prince enthusiastically. “We are pleased that you would save such a unique item for us.”
The archeologist rose and strode from the rear of the pavilion with a toothy grin, holding a felt pillow with the artifact centered neatly in the middle. Suddenly his feet were tangled in an unseen rope that everyone would later swear wasn’t there probably due to its sudden disappearance after the assassins fall – That and because their attention was on the pillow with the artifact. Almost in slow motion the archeologist fell. With a cross between a thud and a whack he landed face down with a grunt, onto the ground.
Whether by reflex or on purpose the archeologist had held on to the pillow; perhaps trying to cushion his fall. Whatever the case his actions caused the artifact to sail through the air and crash onto the ground breaking into several pieces.
Ari and the Attaché were the first to respond. The flustered Attaché gasped as if in exasperation and quickly bent to pick up the broken bits of the artifact begging his prince’s pardon and that he would have the mess cleaned up shortly gushing that he wouldn’t want his highness to cut himself on a fragment. “Use a napkin,” Ari prodded the Attaché; handing him a square piece of linen. “There are a lot of sharp edges you might cut yourself.” Quick as a wink the Attaché grabbed the of
fered cloth napkin and began gathering up the several broken pieces of artifact. Ari moved just as quickly to the fallen archeologist as if to help him to his feet. The archeologist made as if to kneel but suddenly collapsed. Ari turned the man on to his back. The archeologist’s eyes remained open but his chest was dramatically still; his breathing ceased.
“This man is dead!” Ari exclaimed in feigned surprise.
The room exploded into a maelstrom of activity. The prince and the governor were rushed from the pavilion amidst a heard of royal guards. Tables overturned, dishes fell, people were yelling.
“Lieutenant Ari,” the commandant hollered to him. Cordon off the pavilion area. We need to investigate what happened here.
“Yes sir,” responded Ari with a salute as he dashed away to set up a perimeter of guards.
By the time the sun had been down an hour the body had been removed, the pavilion disassembled and the prince the governor and the royal guard were packed and long gone. The staff healers could find no cause of death. Their only guess, without more specialized equipment which they didn’t have in the field, was that he must have had a heart attack.
With the commandants decision that it had just been a bizarre accident and that the prince hadn’t been in any real danger, Ari was done for the day and with a tired stride walked back to his to his billet for a good night’s sleep after a very long day.
Ari entered his quarters - A small wood framed canvas structure with one room, a bed, a foot locker, and a small desk with a comfortable padded chair. Ari activated the switch near the door for the light crystal. As the room brightened, Ari was surprised to see the prince’s Attaché sitting comfortably at his desk, arms behind his head with a smirk on his face.
“Cut it a little close didn’t you, Captain?” The man smiled.
Realizing that the man was obviously more than he seemed and not merely a flamboyant event planner, Ari took a seat on his bed and began unlacing his boots. “I didn’t want to step on your toes if you had a plan of your own,” he replied tiredly, “and its lieutenant.”
“It’s probably for the best, I was just going to trip him and intercept whatever weapon he had. It turns out the artifact that he was presenting was covered in a slow acting poison. Thanks for suggesting the napkin; you saved me from a nasty couple of rounds of who’s got an antidote.” The agent paused and stretched. “Your method was very admirable, to the point of elegance. How did you do it?”
Ari yawned as he kicked off his first boot and began unlacing the second one. “That’s a long story,” he yawned again. “Beg your pardon,” he said as he tried to stifle the second yawn with his hand across his mouth.
With the Attachés continued silence and a nod that he should go on, Ari continued his explanation. “Well, as you may or may not be aware there have been very few if any artifacts smuggled or stolen from this dig. Mostly because I got bored and I get a kick out of outsmarting the less than brilliant criminal element that seems to be attracted to this place.” He paused and kicked off his second boot. Wiggling his toes he resumed his story. “When it was announced that the prince would be paying us a visit I realized that this is a pretty civilian heavy operation and that the only trustworthy security were the soldiers – most of them support or subject matter experts like myself. Frankly we don’t have any intelligence, and minimal dedicated security personnel. This deployment is your basic dig it up, wipe it off, write it down, and ship it out operation. I didn’t see any advance security from the capitol so for fun I applied the techniques that I used in finding smugglers and artifact thieves towards finding plots against the prince. As it turns out I found several; seven to be precise. About the time of your arrival I was in the process of eliminating them. By the time the Inspection party had arrived I had eliminated all but the archeologist.”
“What happened to the first six?” the agent asked casually.
“Does it really matter?” Ari asked back curious as to why that might be important.
“It might,” the agent replied with the tone of a veteran of many a debriefing. This dig will be here a while. It wouldn’t be good if long dead bodies started turning up a couple of months from now.”
“Bottom of a latrine pit,” Ari smiled. “Don’t worry.” He added at the look of surprise on the agents face. “If you’ll recall shortly after you arrived I had your guys dig a fresh pit to help make the prince’s visit more pleasant and had them fill the old one, with a lot of big rocks if you recall. It isn’t likely that it will be re-excavated. Even if someone tries to dig there again, with all the big rocks it will encourage them to dig elsewhere.”
The Attaché chuckled. “I can’t believe you got that by me.”
“I’m sure it was luck, that and you likely just thought of me as an inexperienced junior officer,” Ari replied. “Come to think of it I sure did bump in to you a lot, when did you figure out my little prevention plan?”
“Actually I never did. I was mostly snooping around to see who was responsible for the increased deterrent of theft and smuggling. That is something worth replicating. – I was trying to figure out the security as it related to the inability of the usual suspects not being able to steal even so much as an old fork out from this dig. Oh I suspected that a certain junior officer was involved and the suspicion was that you were probably saving the graft for yourself. It was a bit of a letdown to find out you were honest and that there were no hidden stashes to be found. It wasn’t until I saw the way you started insisting on your meticulous seating arrangements in the pavilion for the luncheon that I suspected you were implementing security measures; you did it perfectly might I add, that’s why I didn’t try to adjust them. One would have thought you were the event planner.” The Attaché smiled. “Then I watched how you handled the assassin and I thought that we should definitely get acquainted. Speaking of your assassin number seven, how is it you were able to remove him in front everyone so smoothly.”
Ari shrugged, “I made a missile from a bee stinger infused with bee venom and two of the most deadly poisons I could find locally. Seeing how you are probably going to ask I’ll tell you; Scorpion and Black spider venoms. I know, I know… there are a lot of black spiders. I haven’t a clue what it’s called. The locals just say it’s deadly and I took them at their word. What do you know, they were right.” Ari pulled a small hollow tube from his shirt sleeve. “I launched my missile using this – I was able to put the stinger right down his throat. Of course that was an accident I was going for his neck but my aim was a little high and he happened to open his mouth at the right moment. Back before the prince got here I had been doing my usual snooping around and had discovered that the assassin was going to present an artifact to the prince so I just had to make sure I got to him before he did. When he started with his speech it worked out perfectly. I figured that my back would be to those behind me so even if they weren’t engrossed by the artifact they wouldn’t be able to see what I was doing; those to the side of me would be distracted as well; worse case they would have only seen me with a straw in my mouth; lastly those in front of me not only were watching the artifact but had their backs to me, so I was pretty much invisible to them.”
“Like I said you cut it pretty close. He had walked half way towards the prince before he fell. What if he hadn’t have died before he got to the prince?” The Attaché asked once again in his debriefing tone.
“Actually he didn’t die. At least not as quickly as I’d hoped,” Ari said matter-of-factly. “Luckily I had a rope rigged to trip him as a backup. If the poison failed my plan was to stop him and then use whatever means I could to subdue him until the poison either kicked in or I had to openly kill him.”
“Rope?” the agent queried. “There wasn’t any rope found at the scene.”
Ari smiled. “That was my most fun preparation. While everyone was on the tour, I figured the prince was fairly safe, mostly because he had his guards and I knew the tour wouldn’t be going anywhere near the part of the dig where our
villainous archeologist was laboring. So while that was going on I took a long rope tied it to a horse and a tree. This prevented the horse from wandering away until I needed it to. I then ran the rope to the edge of the pavilion where I dropped the end. I then tied a piece of thread to the end of the rope which I let rest on the ground leading up to my chair. After I launched the dart and the archeologist got up and began walking toward the prince, it looked like it was time for plan B. I pulled my thread in thus bringing me the rope – my hope was that the rope was dirty enough so that no one would notice it until the assassin tripped and by then it would be long gone.” Ari took a breath then continued. “Just as the archeologist was stepping in front of me, I pulled the rope tight; this tripped the archeologist at the same time loosening the slip knot that had the horse secured to the tree, also at the same time dropping several pots and pans on the horse’s rump. The archeologist went down, the horse spooked and took off, pulling the now unneeded rope with it, and in the confusion the rope disappeared. I had a second line tide to the horse so it couldn’t run more than fifty feet or so. Later while everyone was investigating I went and gathered up the rope and the horse and returned it to the hostelry.”
“Well…” the Attaché stood. “All I can say is it must be pretty boring out here.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Ari responded somewhat despondently.
“Once again, nice job, Captain,” the Attaché held out his hand. Ari stood and shook it firmly. “The prince’s last moment and spontaneous decision to take a trip out here caught many of us off guard. I was the only specialist available,” the Attaché emphasized the word specialist in a way that indicated that there was a lot that he left unsaid. “I suppose that I should introduce myself seeing how you are going to be working for me,” the Attaché said. “The name is Shew, just Shew. No first name no last name. My rank is whatever is required. The only person I salute and bow to for that matter is the king. I’d like to formally offer you a job. If it’s any consolation you’ve already passed the interview.”