by Guy Antibes
“Sure they are,” Val said, lifting a corner of his mouth in a wry smile and shaking his head. “Sit down and give us a hand, will you?”
Kelso followed Val’s suggestion and took a chair opposite Pol and Val. Pol didn’t trust Kelso, but he seemed intent enough as Val brought the Captain of the Guard up to date.
“And Paki?”
“Malden took care of him, so he will recover,” Pol said.
“I am glad to hear it. I would feel most awful about the boy. How can I help?”
“If you could talk to your guards about these two entries. We are pretty sure that the later one had an unconscious Paki riding along.”
“Why wouldn’t they just dump him in the hayloft, like his father?”
“Would you link the two beatings?” Val said.
Kelso shook his head. “You know I wouldn’t and you wouldn’t either, unless you were sending some kind of message.”
“But they could have just put a knife into him,” Pol said. “They didn’t have to beat him up while he was unconscious.”
“That’s the message,” Val said. He looked at Pol. “They probably thought they beat Paki, but not enough to kill him.”
“They only succeeded not killing him because of the lady that found him.”
“A lady of the night?” Kelso said with a twinkle in his eye.
His comment embarrassed Pol, but he had another idea. “There is a pattern. Siggon wasn’t killed either.”
“Not immediately,” Kelso said.
“Then that is the link, beaten within an inch of their lives. Not killed. To kill would have indicated an assassination, and whoever hired the attackers, told them not to kill. The attackers, both times, might have been a bit over-zealous. That’s what happened to Pol, as well, and Prince Landon was in on that,” Val said.
“I suggest you share your theory with Malden. He’s more acquainted with the mental aspect of this kind of thing,” Kelso said.
“He’s helped you in the past?” Val said.
Kelso nodded. “But the magician is in a ticklish position here because one of the siblings probably ordered it. The castle a is unsettled about the King’s pre-occupation with Listya. It shows in his actions more than King Colvin thinks it does.” Kelso looked at Pol. “You know this, don’t you?” he said a bit uncertainly.
“I know he’s in a ticklish position,” Pol said, confirming Kelso’s statement.
“Then let’s keep him out of the ticklish position, at least for now. Our goal is to find the thugs first.” Val glanced at Pol, and then again at Kelso.
“Do you know the men who took both carts out of the castle?”
Kelso looked down at the log. “I wouldn’t, but we can talk to the guards. I don’t mind interrupting their sleep. Let’s go.” He grabbed the logbook and exited his office, leaving Pol and Val looking at him.
Pol and Val caught up to Kelso as he began walking up the stairs to a dormitory. Ten beds were lined up on each side of the barracks. Half of them were occupied. Kelso went to each man and uncovered their faces, and then covered them again. Midway through he found one of the guards and pushed him onto the floor. He did the same with the slumbering guard just one before the last bed in the row.
“Up, you two,” Kelso said.
The men blinked and rubbed their eyes. They rose a bit unsteadily and stood next to two unoccupied beds. One kind of stood at attention, and the other just sat on his bed, struggling to keep from falling asleep.
“The Horstel boy was kidnapped last night, hidden in one of the garden carts. Neither of you realized that the cart belonged to the gardeners. Here are your entries. Do you personally know the men who accompanied the carts?”
Both of the men shuffled over to Kelso and looked down at the entries.
“Tilbon Carter and Ferad Placer. I know them. They picked up their cart from the kitchen. They came in with a load of hardwood and the cooks sent them away before unloading, not wanting disruption to their cookery and were told to come back after it later. Right?” The one guard looked at the other, who nodded.
“You’ll probably see an entry before midday noting them coming in the gate. Tilbon’s about seventy and Ferad is his son-in-law, thin as a rail,” the other guard said.
“That was the earlier entry. What about the other?”
Both guards shook their heads. “Their cart was a manure cart. Every so often the stable master has too much manure for the gardens and has it removed. It typically leaves the castle later in the day, just before all of the horses are stabled. I never saw the men before except for one. There were four of them. I know I’ve seen the man who talked to us before.”
Val nodded. “Did this man take out manure that last time?”
The guard shrugged. “It wasn’t recently.”
“And you didn’t check the cart?”
“For manure?” The first guard shook his head and made a face. “No.”
Pol thought of a question. “Did they bring the cart into the castle?”
Both of the guards looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.
“So if this cart didn’t come into the castle with the identified man’s name, then those are our culprits. We can go arrest at least one of them.”
Kelso put his hand on Pol’s shoulder. “Not so fast, My Prince. That is probably a false name.”
“Oh,” Pol said. “I didn’t think of that.”
“Anyone who would abduct Paki from the castle won’t care about lying about his name, will he?” Val said.
Pol could feel his face turn red from embarrassment. “No.”
“But your point about checking if the cart came in will just about prove it’s the garden cart. The manure was probably thrown over something covering Paki. I don’t know a guard who would be bold enough to dig very deeply into the load.”
That was enough for Kelso. “You may be called to identify any of the four men, so get thinking about what they looked like. Don’t make up any stories, though.”
“Yes sir,” the guards straightened up for attention.
“Back to sleep. That’s an order.”
“Yes, Captain.” The two of them saluted and quickly returned to their beds.
~~~
Chapter Twenty-Three
~
AFTER TALKING TO THE STABLE MASTER, who claimed he had never ordered a cart in the first place, Val asked Kelso to get written descriptions of the manure carters when the two guards woke up.
“One more stop before we go out into the city and look at the scene in the daylight,” Val said. “Let’s see Paki.”
They stepped into the infirmary and found that Paki hadn’t regained consciousness, but Malden had kept the boy under on purpose.
“Where are the boy’s clothes?” Val asked the healer. The one that attended to Paki at first had gone home, since her shift had ended.
“In a bag. It will have a tag on it,” the healer said.
Pol and Val followed the healer to a closet. Inside were shelves with burlap bags. Val began looking at the tags. “Here it is,” he said.
Pol untied the string while Val knelt down on a knee and put his face into the opening.
“Blood, sweat, and manure,” he said.
“So now we know what happened. There was a pattern to the robbery, but how will we find the attackers?” Pol said.
“Back to the alley,” Val said. “We might find something in the daylight that we missed last night. My magic fire is a poor replacement for the sun, you know.”
Pol went back to where Paki recovered and stood looking down at him. “We are trying to find the criminals, Paki. I don’t know if we’ll be successful, but we are making the attempt. I’ll tell you all about it when you wake up.”
On their way out, Pol passed Paki’s mother going into the infirmary.
“How is my boy?” the cook said, worrying her hands. “I can never stay with him for more than a few minutes.”
“Better, but still not awake. Malden
wants him to stay asleep for a bit.”
She nodded grimly and walked inside, leaving them standing in front of the infirmary.
~
The alley looked much the same to Pol, except he could see that there were new footprints all over the place.
“How can we find anything since the dirt has been walked on?”
Val frowned. “We won’t find anything at all if we don’t look, My Prince.”
“Oh,” Pol said, considering his bodyguard’s words. “We still might find something?”
After a shrug, Val knelt down by bloodstains on the wall where Paki had been found and poked around with the same metal rod he had used the previous night. “This is the place. Can you see a pattern? Remember part of reconstructing an event consists of seeing the structure of the actions. That structure is the pattern. They brought Paki here, of all places. Why? What made them think of using manure to hide Paki in the cart? We just keep asking more stupid questions until we find something odd or out of place.”
“Does this happen every time?”
Val shook his head. “There are enough times when there aren’t sufficient clues to lead to something else, and then you can’t go any further.”
“So someone gets away with whatever happened, even if it’s a death or something nearly as bad?” Pol asked.
“It’s a sad fact,” Val said.
Sad for whom? Pol thought. If every criminal knew they would certainly get caught there would be a lot less crime or rebellious acts or whatever one wanted to call what happened here. He tried to imagine what happened during Paki’s abduction. “Maybe they chose this place at random, or they wanted to dump Paki in an area away from where they lived. The manure in the cart might mean that the attackers knew how the stable master operated his stable.”
“Those questions are a start,” Val said, still looking at the streaks of blood. “Some tracks remain, but still no signs of a struggle. That’s what we saw last night, and it is confirmed in daylight. It looks like they just propped Paki next to the wall and beat on him. No handprints on the wall or smears from Paki’s clothing. See where no one has walked right by the walls?”
“Who would beat an unconscious person and not kill them?” Pol said.
“I think the pattern that we built holds up, even today. The beating must be a statement.”
“But they could just do the same to me.”
Val lifted the side of his mouth in something resembling a smile. “Not with me around, they wouldn’t. That is the difference.”
That made Pol feel even worse about being responsible for Paki’s current condition. Pol moved over to the wall and forced himself to look at Paki’s blood. He stepped on a rock, or was it?” He furrowed his brow and bent down to find the object.
“What are you looking for?”
“I stepped on something. Right there.” Pol pointed to the spot. “It’s probably a pebble.”
“Pebble in this alley?” Val took his rod and began to stir in the dirt. A corner of yellow metal poked out of the thick dust. “What’s this?” He picked up a tiny, nearly-square block of gold. “You know what this is, Pol?”
Pol shook his head. The object was about as big as the tip of his little finger.
“This is a South Salvan Lion. It’s a cube-shaped coin that is only traded in South Salvan. A hired thug would never leave one of these to throw us off, but that also says that the attackers were locals. South Salvans carry these around in special leather pouches where these are stacked one on top of another in a purse with leather tubes. It’s too easy for these to work their way through a pocket, if they are new as this one is. A Borstall local might just put one of these in his pocket, not knowing that it is a coin that can quickly rub a hole in a pocket.”
“A break in the pattern?”
Val held the Lion in his palm and moved it with his finger. “This one is new, so someone brought these unspent into North Salvan.”
“King Astor?”
“It could even be our pea-shooter. A smart man wouldn’t pay the thugs off until after the job had been done, but that obviously wasn’t the case. They didn’t trust the payor, so they demanded payment up front. We can make a guess that the entire crew was made up of local men. It doesn’t help us find them, but it’s a possible piece of the puzzle.” Val got to his feet and gave the Lion to Pol. “Do you have a leather purse or pocket?”
Pol nodded and put the Lion in his purse. “Are we finished here?”
Val looked at the bloody wall one more time. “I think we are. Let’s see if Kelso has come up with anything.”
“Could we see how Paki is doing?” Pol desperately wanted Paki to wake up and would have preferred to spend the day by his friend’s side, but he had to admit that finding those responsible for the beating took priority.
“That’s on our way,” Val said.
Pol knew that the infirmary and the headquarters of the Guard were not in the same direction, but he appreciated Val’s comment. To Pol, it made Val more of a person on his team rather than a hired bodyguard or just a tutor in odd military techniques.
They walked in silence, but Pol could only think of the South Salvan Lion in his pocket. What if King Astor had funded Grostin’s efforts? He still thought that Landon would have joined in on an abduction. That was the pattern he saw if his eldest brother had participated. Grostin wouldn’t care to dirty his hands with such a mundane task.
Pol wanted to talk about the situation with Val some more, but as they approached the infirmary, Val seemed to be lost in his own thoughts.
Val lifted his head up into the sky and smiled. “What would you do if you lost a valuable coin?”
Pol shrugged, but then thought of the possible patterns of behavior a person might go through. “Look for it?”
Val nodded. “You go see to your friend, and I’ll get Kelso to put some guards in various places to see if a stranger goes looking around at the ground for something.” Val quickly walked off in the direction of the armory, so Pol would have to wait to talk to Val for a while.
Pol stepped inside the infirmary and ran into Malden. “How is Paki?”
The magician grinned. “You can ask him yourself. He’s awake and out of danger. I’ll talk to Valiso and you later, but I’m already late for a meeting with King Colvin.” Malden clapped Pol on the shoulders and rushed out of the infirmary.
After opening the door to the ward, Pol heard his name. Paki had been moved to a different bed. He sat up, still wrapped up in places like a corpse.
“How are you?” Pol said. He couldn’t keep from smiling.
“I’m sore all over. Malden said his work speeds healing, but it’s not without pain.”
Pol rolled his eyes. “I know that well enough.”
Both boys laughed. “If I sit up or move my head quickly, I still get a bit dizzy, but that’s getting better by the minute. If it wasn’t for Malden…”
Pol didn’t finish Paki’s sentence. “We’ve been out trying to find who did it.”
“Any luck?”
“We’ve assembled more information than I would have thought possible. Pol pulled out the Lion and showed it to Paki.
“My Dad had one of these. He said it was worth a few months’ wages, but he said he would keep it until the need came. It didn’t look like that. The corners were worn down. That looks new. What does this have to do with me?”
“One of your abductors had this. This coin is so new that the edges probably cut a hole in his pocket, and it fell out while he beat you. You can add this to your collection once we are done with looking into your kidnapping.” Pol then told Paki what they had found and how they had made their discoveries.
“I wish I could have gone with you.”
“So do I,” Pol said. “But then we wouldn’t have needed to go anywhere if you weren’t injured.”
Paki laughed. “That’s what I would prefer, not to have to look for anyone, but you’ve learned a lot?”
Pol nodded. “I did
n’t know that looking around for criminals required a process. It’s like learning a complicated new game. There are rules and practices to follow. We’re not done yet, but it looks like you aren’t in the kind of shape to join us.”
“Another week in here and a week at home before I can go back to gardening.”
“So another week, and then you can join us. This is mostly ‘think’ work.”
Paki looked sideways at Pol. “I’m not good at thinking. You know that.”
Pol nodded. “I’d like you to learn as much as you can. It seems that even dumb questions are encouraged.”
Paki brightened. “That I can do.”
It felt good to laugh with his friend again, thought Pol.
~
Buoyed by Paki’s recovery, Pol felt relieved and looked forward to meeting with Val and Kelso. He found both of them in Kelso’s office examining a large, well-worn map of Borstall laid out on Kelso’s table.
Kelso looked up at Pol. “The cart was abandoned behind a blacksmith’s shop hidden amidst a number of broken carts in line for repair.”
“The blacksmith didn’t know of it?”
“No. He’s well enough known to the guard who found it,” Kelso said, looking back down at the map. “They found it here.” He pointed to a spot on the map. “The alley where Paki was beaten is here.”
“So since the blacksmith’s shop is so close, does that mean this is more evidence of a local band?” he said.
“Why?” Val asked. Pol thought back to Mistress Farthia’s classroom. This was no different.
“Someone not familiar with the city would have a hard time finding the blacksmith’s. I’m not sure I could,” Pol said.
“A decent assumption, and it fits into the pattern that the group were made up of local thugs,” Val said.
Pol looked down at the map and wondered what else might fit the pattern that had emerged. “At least one local person who isn’t a noble. They knew about the manure carts, they found an alley, although they could have just chanced on one that wasn’t all that far from the blacksmith’s shop,” he said.