by Adam Dreece
“Look—a letter,” said Mounira, pointing to an envelope tacked to Nikolas’ front door.
“Oh. I wasn’t expecting anything,” he said, walking up the steps to free it. “I wonder if Maxwell is still stuck on how to properly vent the unneeded heat…”
“Is Maxwell the steam engine inventor?” asked Tee.
Nikolas nodded. He was about to put the letter in his pocket when he noticed something about the handwriting on the envelope. “Tee, Mounira, come here. What do you see when you look at this?”
Mounira put down the bag she was carrying and took the letter. She looked at it for a moment, and then shrugged. “I just see the directions where the letter was to be sent, and also that it was sent by an M. Watt, from another place.”
Nikolas smiled. “Well, you should already know that there is something more to it than that. You’ve been with us for a while. Tee’s had a couple of years of practice at this. Tee, what do you see?” he said, opening the door and taking in the first of the bags.
Tee put her bags down, and Mounira handed her the letter. When Nikolas came back out, Tee was about to answer, but then Nikolas noisily cleared his throat and nodded in Mounira’s direction before vanishing into the house with more bags.
Tee held the letter so she and Mounira could both see it. “See the ink, here?” said Tee, pointing to the upper left corner.
“It’s messy,” replied Mounira, annoyed. She felt like she was being talked down to, though suspected it might just be her imagination—Tee had never talked down to her.
“The man who sent this is an inventor. My Grandpapa tells me he is a very good one. He does things on purpose. If you look at how he wrote his name and address, what does it tell you?” asked Tee.
Mounira thought about it. She accepted that Tee was genuinely trying to teach her. “He—” she started, hesitating. “He… wrote it, and it smudged, which means… he didn’t let it dry. He wouldn’t usually do that, right?”
Tee smiled. “Exactly. Plus, I’m sure Grandpapa sees that this was also delivered by a short man, with a heavy wink in his right eye, and one arm—” said Tee sarcastically. She’d stiffened upon realizing what she’d said, and looked at Mounira uncomfortably.
“What?” asked Mounira, puzzled.
“I said—” replied Tee, her face scrunched in angst. She couldn’t repeat it.
“One-armed?” said Mounira, pretending to be horrified.
Tee nodded. “I’m sorry! I—”
“Oh my—how could you? You said it, didn’t you?” said Mounira, starting to laugh.
“One-armed,” said Tee in a squeaky voice. “I’m sorry.”
Mounira gave her a frank look. “So what! Should I make a weird face if I say two-armed?”
It dawned on Tee that Mounira was not sensitive in the slightest. Tee had forgotten her common sense and had instead reacted like her Aunt Gwen, an expert in bad reactions and being hypersensitive.
“I look like an idiot, don’t I?” said Tee.
Mounira laughed. “You said it—not me. I would never be so rude to say that, but… I won’t disagree with you.” She put her chin up high. Tee burst into laughter.
Nikolas returned, reclaimed the letter, and asked the girls to bring everything else to the kitchen. He sat himself down atop the steps leading to the front door, opened the letter, and then carefully read it.
“Hello? Grandpapa?” repeated Tee. Nikolas had been preoccupied with the letter.
“Oh, sorry,” he said, standing up. “Tee, I need you to take this letter to your parents.” He placed the letter back in the envelope and handed it to Tee. “It should have arrived three months ago. It’s curious that it arrived at all.”
Tee was surprised. “Do I need to take it now? What’s so important?”
“Yes, now, please,” he said, giving her a quick kiss on the forehead. “The letter tells me that my dear friend Maxwell Watt had sent his son to me with—if I understand his coded language—his finished plans for the steam engine. His son should’ve been here by now. He isn’t. Your father is good at getting the word out to the right people. We’ll need everyone looking for young Watt.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Of Spice and Substance
“Captain Archambault, sir, do you have a moment?” asked the guardsman running up the downtown street in Minette. The sergeant, in his late twenties, was scrawny and out of uniform. Elsewhere, the man probably wouldn’t have been permitted to serve, but Captain Archambault didn’t care who applied. Rather, what mattered was whether an applicant could complete the training, and be useful.
Captain Archambault dismissed the other guardsmen around him and turned to the one approaching. “Sergeant… Bertrand.” Gabriel had made a point of knowing each name and face that reported to him, after having been fooled, months ago, by LeLoup.
Sergeant Bertrand stopped in front of the captain, smiled, and nodded. “Yes, sir. Do you have a moment?”
“I do, if you walk with me,” Gabriel said. “I haven’t eaten lunch yet… Let me see what time it is.” He looked up at the position of the sun. “Two o’clock.”
The sergeant pulled out his pocket watch and flipped its silver cover open. “Sir, yes—almost two. That’s impressive.”
“Oh, it’s a survival skill,” grumbled the captain, walking toward his favorite restaurant. “Broken too many watches in my time. It’s been good, though. I’ve come to learn the patterns of people at different times of day. I know the sounds birds make at different times of day in spring versus the fall. Telling time by what’s happening around you is a lost art—almost.”
The sergeant pushed back his long, dark bangs. “Oh, by the way, congratulations on your daughter’s promotion, sir.”
Gabriel stopped and glared at the sergeant. “I’ll have you know I had nothing to do with that,” he said. “The Magistrate decided, on the advice of a committee. No congratulations should be offered to me. She has done extraordinary work since she started. Whatever sentiment and compliment you care to pay, you should pay to Sergeant Archambault directly.”
“But I thought—”
“That I’m her father? Not when I’m on duty—and, as you know, I’m on duty a lot.” Gabriel started walking again, annoyed. He looked back at the sergeant, who didn’t know what to say. Gabriel thought perhaps he’d been too hard on him. “Come on, Bertrand, keep up.”
“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant, hurrying.
Gabriel continued, “We’re halfway to Guido’s and once I’m there, the only thing that will have my attention is their special of the day. Hmm… funny thing about Guido’s… it’s owned by a woman named Teresa. Never had a husband or anyone in her life named Guido,” he mused. “Well, I’m sure you didn’t come to hear me talk about this, or breaking watches. What do you want?”
“Well, sir, I was enjoying my couple of days off in Mineau when Captain Charlebois found me this morning and asked that I deliver a message to you immediately, in person.”
Gabriel slowed, looking seriously at the sergeant. Gabriel hadn’t spoken with his Mineau counterpart since Solstice, four months ago. They rarely spoke more than once a year, and it was never by sending a guardsman with a message. Gabriel wiggled his thick, gray mustache. “What did Matthieu say, Bertrand?”
“Sir, Captain Charlebois said you should come down, with Monsieur de Montagne, right away.” He looked nervously at the captain. “Something to do with… cooking, I think. Sorry, I ran all the way from where I had the cart let me off. Oh, I—ah—had to commandeer a horse and cart.”
“That’s fine. Part of our job,” said Gabriel. He put his hand over his scrunched up face as he tried to imagine what Matthieu could’ve been referring to. As it hit him, his eyes widened and his face paled. Gabriel grabbed Bertrand by the shoulder and pulled him in close.
“When you say cooking, might you mean an herb or spice?” said Gabriel. He hoped he was wrong.
“Yes!” said Bertrand, snapping his fingers. “Ginger! Somet
hing about ginger. Sir.”
Gabriel straightened himself, and smoothed his mustache. “That will be all, sergeant. Thank you.”
Bertrand was confused by the sudden change in his captain’s tone and body language, but nodded and left.
Gabriel, having lost his appetite, turned away from Guido’s and headed back to his office. When he spotted the Yellow Hoods across the street, he paused. The three were with the new girl, Mounira, whom he’d met twice. They were acting like typical teenagers, laughing and goofing around.
When Richy met Gabriel’s gaze and offered a smiling nod, Gabriel’s blood chilled. He forced himself to wave back. He thought of Matthieu’s message, and how what it meant tied back to Richy, some ten years ago. Gabriel was certain the boy still didn’t know.
He entered the administration building. The attendant, who served only to stop people from coming to see the captain without an appointment, looked up. He had been doodling at his desk. “Take the rest of the day off,” Gabriel told him. He then entered his office, and locked the door.
After carefully moving aside the bookcase where he kept his most important files, Gabriel reached into a hole in the wall and pulled out one of the notebooks he kept hidden. He carefully moved the bookcase back, situating it precisely where it had been before. Satisfied, he sat down at his desk with the old notebook.
Blowing the dust off, he slowly moved his fingers over its title: Regarding the Ginger Lady and abducted children — Lt. G. Archambault. The captain felt proud of certain cases in his career, especially those that had made him a better investigator and a superior guardsman.
Then, there was this one.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Abbot of Costello
The boat came to a stop, and Franklin Charles David Watt looked around nervously. The foggy dock of the small town of Herve was before him.
“Off you go, lad. You didn’t pay for a tour, just a trip across,” said the captain of the two-crew sailboat. “We’re heading further down the coast. If you changed your mind and want to come, it’ll cost extra.”
“No, I’m fine,” said Franklin, his voice breaking with fear. Stomach in a knot, he stepped onto the dock. He’d never been to another kingdom. While the primary language in Freland was the same as in Inglea, he feared everything would feel alien. He stood and watched the departing sailboat quietly get swallowed up by the thick morning fog. He shivered under his ratty fur cloak.
It had taken him weeks to find someone willing to bring him across, but by then he didn’t have enough money. He’d tried gambling, thinking his superior intellect would help at cards, but instead he lost most of his remaining money. Under a fake name, he started working at the docks. Despite being robbed twice, he finally saved enough for the crossing.
By afternoon, he felt more settled, having rented a room from a kindly, grandmother-like innkeeper. She had generously fixed him up with some warm soup, and had drawn him a rough map of the town and the path to Minette.
Franklin figured he probably still had two weeks of travel ahead, and by coach—which would be expensive. He only had two days’ worth of money.
Walking around the town, Franklin got a lot of stares. His clothes were worn, torn, dirty, and out of place. When he tried talking with locals, many of them waved him away, or else flipped him a coin, thinking he was a beggar.
Franklin was frustrated. Even with his level of genius, things were unbelievably hard. He was scared that he was going to fail his father and prove, as his mother often said, that he wasn’t as smart or as capable as he liked to believe.
He was also worried about his father, and wondered whether he had made it to Eldeshire, as planned. At one point, the weight of everything was too much, and Franklin leaned against a brick wall and slumped to the ground in despair.
“Oh, that’s just perfect,” he said to himself, feeling his bum was wet. “Not a puddle anywhere—except where I decide to sit. Just perfect.” He hung his head in defeat.
“Hello there, young sir,” said a short, plump, long-mustached man in puffy sleeves and bright stockings. He wore a black coat that went to his knees, making him look rather like a clown of distinction.
Franklin looked up at the man and rolled his eyes. “Do you live in a museum? I haven’t seen anyone dressed like that, outside of paintings.”
“Excuse me?” snapped the man, twirling his long, thin mustache. Franklin quickly remembered where he was, and his situation.
“Yes, sorry,” he said, jumping up and quickly brushing himself off.
The man nodded repeatedly. He twirled his mustache and then said, “I am the Abbot of the nearby monastery, at Costello. We wear such attire when we leave the monastery—our tradition for more than a hundred years. Now, my rude young man, does your name happen to be Watt?”
“Pardon?” said Franklin, trying to understand the man’s accent. It was clear the man wasn’t speaking his native language.
The abbot frowned and looked around to make sure no one was listening. “I said Watt.”
“Pardon? I don’t understand your question.” Franklin looked around as well, trying to understand who in the world could possibly be interested in them. He was certain that looking around, all paranoid, at people walking the streets was a suspicious thing to do.
Rubbing his double chins, the abbot said, annoyed, “No—I said Watt. Is your name Franklin Watt?”
“Well, not exactly,” said Franklin. It was a point of pride for Franklin that his name was not simply Franklin, but rather Franklin Charles David Watt. He carried the names of his grandfathers, both of whom had been men of distinction back home.
“Not exactly, what?” said the abbot, at a loss as to what Franklin meant.
Apologetically, Franklin said, “No, it is Watt. It’s just—”
“Stop it! Is your first or middle name Franklin, or isn’t it?” growled the man, fists clenched. “This is absolutely ridiculous,” he muttered.
“Yes,” said Franklin, nodding.
“And is your family name Watt?” asked the abbot.
“Yes,” said Franklin, nodding again.
“Good,” said the man, relieved. He sighed and unconsciously rubbed his belly. “Well, then, I’ve been looking for you. If we can skip further nonsense, I’d like you to—please—come with me.”
“Who sent you?” asked Franklin. It suddenly dawned on him that the men who were after the steam engine plans may have discovered that he, and not his father, had them.
“Pardon?” said the abbot, not expecting the question.
Franklin then spotted some armed guardsmen coming toward them and got a bad feeling. He started running.
He made it back to the inn, ran up the stairs, and fetched his belongings. He rifled through his backpack and pulled out a bulky, metal armband. It had a thin rope attached that led into his backpack, and a bolt tip sticking out the other end. He yanked up his right sleeve and strapped on the armband. Just then, the door burst open.
“We need you to come with us,” ordered one of the three guardsmen.
“Sorry, gentlemen,” said Franklin, stepping toward the open window. “I’m… oh, forget it,” he said, unable to think up anything witty. Sweat beaded down his forehead as he thought about what he was about to attempt.
Pointing his right arm out the window, Franklin slapped the armband’s one button. A mini-crossbow bolt shot across toward a higher, neighboring building and the attached cable whistled as it came out of his backpack. With a satisfying thunk, the bolt embedded itself. Franklin hit the armband’s button again. Immediately, the cable started to retract, pulling him out the window and toward the anchored bolt.
“What the devil was that?” said one of the guardsmen.
“Trouble—that’s what.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Clutches of the Ginger Lady
Ten years ago, Gabriel Archambault had been asked to work, temporarily, with his Mineau counterpart, Lieutenant Matthieu Charlebois. The magistrates
of both cities had wanted their future captains to start building a strong working relationship. While Gabriel and Matthieu had met before, they’d never worked together. Each was to spend three months in the other’s town, as a partner. Unfortunately, their first collaboration resulted in the initiative being cut short, as neither wanted to be reminded of the experience—or each other—for a while.
Every morning, even before the roosters would crow, Gabriel would awake and get himself ready. He’d kiss his sleeping wife and his nine-year-old daughter, and then hitch a ride to Mineau with one of the merchants heading down for the day. In the evening, he’d hitch another ride back, and enjoy the summer sunset.
By the time Gabriel would arrive in Mineau each morning, Matthieu would already be at the Deuxième Chance café, where fresh coffee and pastries were waiting for Gabriel.
The fourth morning, after they’d chatted a bit, Gabriel proposed an idea.
“Matthieu, I’d like to get to know your town better. Over the past days, we’ve been glued together. Do you mind if I walk around town alone today?” He sipped his coffee and smiled. No one made coffee like the owners of Deuxième Chance.
Matthieu stroked his goatee. “Actually, I was going to say that I’ve got to spend most of the day dealing with paperwork. So, yes, I think that’s a splendid idea.”
A while later, Gabriel walked the busy streets of Mineau. He’d visited Mineau before, as a tourist, but this time he was on duty.
He noticed one nervous-looking man leaving and entering several stores suspiciously. Gabriel monitored him, up until the man found what he’d been looking for—his lost cat. He spotted a boy bumping into people deliberately, and caught him in the act of pickpocketing.
After a peaceful lunch with a couple of guardsmen, he took a walk on the eastern edge of town. The archways that defined the official entrance and exit matched those of Minette, though Mineau’s were older, and larger.
While at the town’s edge, he noticed a panic-stricken woman. After watching her pace back and forth, he deduced that something so profound had happened that her mind must’ve been caught in a loop. He straightened his uniform and approached.