by Guy Antibes
Sam couldn’t help but smile. Renatee was a Mechanical Science professor who lived on accurate documentation, and he delivered something that Sam generally had to pull from his interviews in the past.
“Who also knows these people? Someone to help us so you can continue to work on your projects?”
“I am dining with a person who is on both lists tonight. Perhaps you might join us?”
Plantian waved off the invitation. “We don’t want to interfere if she is a woman.”
“No matter. Okanna Simmarin is an understanding person.” He took another page and scribbled on it. “This is where we will be eating. I will send a message to include four more diners. It will be a shatteringly good time,” Renatee said.
Renatee also arranged rooms at a nearby inn, so they would have more than enough time to prepare for their dinner. Sam and Mito took Glory out to buy some presentable clothes. What she had was not suitable for Hizor. Sam had left most of his Hizorian wardrobe behind, and it ended up in storage at the academy, so he was able to lend Mito the items that fit better on the shorter Lashakan.
“I’m not sure I like what they wear in Hizor,” Glory said when they went into a women’s clothing store, and Glory looked through the cacophony of styles on the racks.
“A foreign lady?” a female clerk said approaching her. “I have a section of more conservative clothing over here.”
Sam could see the clerk’s definition of conservative would be different than Glory’s, but she found two outfits that she liked.
With that mission complete, they picked up Plantian, waking him from a nap, and headed to the restaurant.
They walked inside to see Renatee standing at a table set for six, arguing with a woman. Sam had seen few Zogazin argue in public, and the pair was drawing everyone’s attention.
Sam walked up. “Perhaps we can share a meal with you another time,” he said apologetically.
Renatee and the woman broke into laughter. The tension in the room evaporated as others joined in. Sam had suffered through another Zogazin joke, the kind perfected in Hizor that he didn’t like. Mito, Plantian, and Glory forced smiles, as did Sam.
“Sit, sit. Let me introduce you to the ever-lovely Okanna Simmarin.” He introduced Sam and his friends to Okanna, who was rather striking in a mature kind of way.
Plantian sat next to the woman. “Where have you been all my life?” he said, grinning.
Renatee cleared his throat. “That might be better said to Glory, here. Although for most of your life, she hadn’t been born.”
“Ah, well,” Plantian said, blushing.
Renatee laughed. “We have been parted for too long, Plantian.”
“I do believe we have.” Professor Plunk gave Renatee what appeared to be a genuine smile. The two had been friends in Tolloy for years. “It fills me with awe to be at the wellspring of Zogazin humor,” he said.
“Every Zogazin is their own wellspring,” Okanna said, laughing.
Sam could agree with that. They ordered.
Plantian and Sam shared their spice bags with Glory and Mito, much to the amusement of Renatee and Okanna. Sam guessed it was time to get to business.
“Did Proctor Dinik mention why he invited us?” he said.
Okanna put her index finger to her face, posing as if thinking. “Something to do with spying, subterfuge, and subversion?”
“Any or all of those will work,” Plantian said.
Sam told her of their suspicions of a network of Zogazin working for Viktar Kreb in Hizor, but he stayed silent about the extension of that network in Alloren.
“So who would want to forward your secrets on to Kreb? Why would he even show an interest in you?” she said.
Sam took it as a put-down, but he went on. “I insulted the Dictator, and he took it personally,” Sam said. “I believe that Kreb can be a petty man.”
Okanna looked sideways at Renatee. “All men are petty,” she said smiling.
“I am the worst,” Renatee said. “The absolute worst.”
“No. I think Sam is right. Kreb is the worst on Polistia. I can think of a few people, but you must understand I can’t get involved in your snooping,” Okanna said.
Sam was disappointed with her response. “I just need names and some idea if I am barking up the wrong tree.”
“Barking?” Okanna said. “Renatee said you brought a Great Sanchian along.”
“We did,” Sam said. “She is munching on a piece of raw meat right about now.”
“Served Zogazin style with no seasoning. Your dog does it right, and you?” Okanna smiled and shook her head slowly. “You feel impelled to disguise the subtle flavors. That is something I just don’t understand.”
Renatee’s girlfriend was a proper Hizorian through and through, and Sam took a quick dislike to the woman. Maybe she thought her comments were witty and joking, but all Sam saw was a haughty, rude woman. She didn’t feel trustworthy to him.
He turned the discussion back to his request. “Here are some names that we came up with.” Sam gave her the list re-written in his own handwriting.
She pursed her lips and glanced quickly at Sam for the barest of moments before she returned.
“I know them all,” she said. “Does that make me the culprit?”
“Does it?” Mito asked. It looked like he was as fed up with the woman as Sam.
“No,” Okanna said, holding her lips in an ‘o’ shape for a few seconds more than needed. She placed two pollen dots on the page next to names that Renatee saw and nodded.
“I might have guessed them,” the proctor said.
“I would turn to these two,” Okanna said. She handed the page to Sam.
Sam figured the names were of a man and a woman. One was before Okanna would have access to Sam’s letters and another, the man, after.
Sam looked it over and added the dots to the names he had already secured in his memory before giving the page to Renatee. “Could you provide us with a home address and where these people work at the academy?”
Renatee nodded. “You don’t mind, dearest one?”
Okanna flitted her hand as if the effort was nearly too much. “Not at all. I agreed to talk to these wonderful people, didn’t I?” She smiled the kind of smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
Plantian began to reminisce with Renatee. Sam found it interesting for a while, but then it turned tedious. Glory fidgeted in her seat, so Sam stood.
“We will leave you to enjoy old times together,” Sam said. He bowed to Okanna who gave him a very gracious, cat-like smile, and then he left with Mito and Glory.
“If she isn’t the culprit…” Glory began.
“If she isn’t the culprit, what will you do?” Mito said with a real smile.
“I’ll shave my hair off!”
Sam looked at Glory’s rather short hair. “You won’t have much to shave.”
“Kreb’s army. They make the women cut their hair to chin length.”
Sam had always seen her with chin-length hair, so he didn’t join in Mito’s teasing.
“I will still include her as a suspect,” Sam said. “She is the prime example of why I didn’t want to stay in Hizor. There are too many people in the city just like her. The joking elsewhere in Zogaz is generally good-natured stuff, but everything in the capital seems to contain barbs.”
“Renatee didn’t seem that way,” Mito said.
“He joined in with their staged argument, didn’t he?” Glory said.
Sam thought it looked a bit staged, too, and wondered if Okanna paid attention to the more rumpled Mechanical Sciences professor because of his connections to Banna Plunk. That would give her access to Sam’s whereabouts, as well.
“You can go back to the inn. I think I will do a little snooping, the hard kind.”
Sam checked his wand. He could now make a pretty dense sword, if he chose. He took his coat off and created a chest plate of armor with the overlapping scales that he had seen in Wollia. Those would enable him to be more flexible
.
He smiled. There were some advantages to wearing armor out in the open without anyone the wiser. Sam took up a position in a doorway that looked like it hadn’t been used in decades as the sky began to darken.
He waited for over an hour, checking his watch just as Plantian left Okanna and Renatee at the restaurant. Instead of following Plantian, Sam kept an eye on the hat Okanna now wore. The feathers around the brim stood straight up, reminding Sam of a crown of feathers.
She wasn’t hard to follow as lamplighters began to ignite the lamps in the city. Hizor was the only Zogazin city to sport the gaslights. Sam continued to trail them until they stopped at the stoop of a yellow building. This one had figures painted as if they were looking around the corners.
He heard Okanna giggle. It sounded phony from Sam’s perspective. He continued to hear their voices, but he could only catch a word or two in the Zogazin language that they spoke.
Okanna raised her hand. It was a signal, that was for sure. Sam made a pollen sword in the same shape as his Lashak and held steady for another moment as four men converged on the couple.
The lamplight lit unfriendly faces, and Renatee didn’t even have the time to look like he was about to be attacked.
“Okanna!” he said. The rest of his comment was far beyond Sam’s ability to interpret, but the body language was plain to see. Renatee had been used to draw Sam and Plantian to Hizor, and now, perhaps, the proctor was useless to Okanna.
Sam ran across the street and threw pollen blocks on two of the attackers and on Okanna before he faced the other pair, who already had their swords drawn.
“I am an old fool,” Renatee said in Polistian. Sam threw manacles around one of the men before he reached Renatee. He confronted the last of the thugs with two weapons in his hand.
“This is the boy?” the thug asked Renatee.
“He is just an academy friend,” Renatee said, but so unconvincingly that Sam thought the proctor would have done as well to have kept quiet.
The man took a swipe at Renatee but missed. Sam could tell that was a ruse before he turned the swipe into an attack on Sam. The thug was good. He advanced on Sam with a flurry of blows.
He fought like a pirate, Sam said, and that brought to mind the pollen impediments Captain Darter’s men used along with the pirates when they fought.
Sam created a solid block behind his attacker and began to flail sword and wand. The thug had enough strength to cut Sam’s pollen sword in two, but he stepped back as Sam began to thrust with the sharp tip of the wand.
The thug tripped and struggled to get up with the pollen block underneath. He rolled over, but Sam hit the man over the head with his wand, and the thug crumpled to the ground.
Amidst the complaining and cursing of the men and Okanna, Sam walked over to Renatee who had sat down to watch.
“I am not anyone’s fighter,” Renatee said. “You use unconventional methods I haven’t seen before.”
“Aren’t you glad?” Sam said.
“As a matter of fact, I am. Help me up.”
An awful thought popped into Sam’s head. “You take care of these,” he said as authorities were seen just entering the street a few blocks away. “I don’t think you will be safe in Hizor for much longer if there are more Kreb sympathizers,” Sam took off running toward the inn after tossing the remaining half of his pollen sword away.
He ran as fast as he could, gasping on his way to the inn. He put his hands on his knees to catch his breath before plunging into the building. He was tempted to remove the heavy pollen armor, but then he heard sounds of fighting.
Sam ran up the stairs two at a time. The corridor was filled with people gawking at the fight on the other side from Sam.
“Excuse me,” he said in Zogazin. “Excuse me, excuse me,” he said again and again before he emerged from the press of the onlookers. Plantian held Glory in his arms as an attacker approached. Sam tossed his wand. He had practiced hundreds of times, and it sank into the man’s back. Sam nearly tripped on a sword at his feet. Poor steel was better than good pollen, he thought. He picked it up and frowned. Maybe not.
Mito held off three attackers as he bled from everywhere that Sam could see. One of them noted that a colleague had gone down. He turned to look at Sam.
“It must be the boy,” the assassin said.
“Do something to help Mito!” Sam called to Plantian.
“Oh!” Plantian said as if awakened from a dream. “Of course.”
Sam never kept his eyes off his opponent as they faced off. Sam sidestepped and pulled his wand from the dead thug’s back. The move prompted the assassin to attack. Sam tried to beat back a blow and felt the edge of the man’s sword slide off his head and hit his pollen armor.
The man’s look of surprise was all it took for Sam to run him through. Poor steel still could do its job.
“Invisible armor? What kind of claptrap is that?” One of the remaining pairs of thugs turned and advanced on Sam.
Sam couldn’t use that trick again. Pollen armor was still pollen armor, Sam thought as he parried a thrust with his wand. He tried to do the same to his opponent, but the man was faster than Sam thought, and his blade slid along Sam’s hand, breaking the skin along his knuckles. Sam gasped and dropped his sword. He waved his wand in front of him.
The man’s eyes grew large as he fought to keep his balance. Sam struck the man’s face with all his might. The man went down, his feet tied together with tight pollen manacles. Plantian gave Sam a weak smile as he shrugged.
Mito’s man was finally down, and the Lashakan slid down the wall to sit on the floor. Blood stained the hallway. Mito was a mess. Glory had a gash in her head that stained her new dress. Even Plantian had taken a cut to the shoulder, and Sam’s hand had begun to sting.
“We leave now,” Sam said. “Okanna was the spy, of course. Maybe others joined her, but she set up an ambush for Renatee, and maybe me, too.”
Angry words in Zogazin were heard at the far end of the corridor.
Men in uniform directed the onlookers to return to their rooms or the common room downstairs. A peeved-looking woman in an apron stared at the mess made to her hallway.
“Sam Smith?” the constable with more flashes on his uniform asked.
“That is I.”
“Come along. My officers will help your friends. We are going to the hospital first and then to the Hizorian Constabulary.”
So much for a quick escape, thought Sam. He helped Plantian up, but Mito had already slipped into his room.
“Let us get our valuables out of our rooms.”
The constable nodded, but officers accompanied them. Mito was caught trying to climb out of the window. He was weakened, so he couldn’t put up much of a fight.
“Are we under arrest?”
The constable looked at the thugs. “No. You should be congratulated for ridding Hizor of these vermin, but we need you to answer some questions, and then you can leave.”
Sam exhaled. He didn’t think they would last long in a prison of any kind with Kreb’s assassins around. He lifted up the mattress to his bed and pulled out his money and his papers. His Lashak sword leaned against the wall. He took that, too.
The woman in the apron was already directing maids to clean up the blood around the fallen thugs. Sam was relieved that none of his group had joined them, but Glory was still unconscious with a head wound.
More constables arrived, and the four were bundled into a constabulary wagon and carted off to a hospital. They all were treated in a four-bed room by healers and nurses.
All they could do for Sam’s hand was apply healing salve and wrap it up. The wound stung even more. Plantian needed a few stitches and Mito needed a lot. He had wounds all over his torso and arms. Most of the attention was on Glory. Her hair was shaved off around the wound, and her scalp had to be stitched together.
Glory finally woke up. “I am alive? I thought I wouldn’t wake up at all,” she said. “The last thing I saw was t
he edge of a sword.” She touched her head. “Bandaged up?”
“You were struck in the head,” a nurse said.
“And lived to tell the tale,” Glory said. The healers and nurses laughed. It was a Zogazin thing, Sam thought. All he thought was that Glory was fortunate not to have joined her friend, Tera, wherever she was in whatever heaven.
Mito hobbled over to her. “We both made it,” he said. “I wasn’t so sure until Sam showed up.” He looked over at Sam. “They were after you and Plantian.”
Sam nodded.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
~
“A nd that is exactly how it happened,” Sam said to the Captain of the Constabulary. “Okanna Simmarin was in charge, as far as I can tell.”
“She is only part of it. We took advantage of your fighting to roll up an entire network active in Hizor. You weren’t the only targets of Viktar Kreb’s ire. The government couldn’t commit to the alliance with the rest of Polistia until we did what we did. You can take that message back to your headquarters on the Ristarian border,” a government official who wasn’t introduced said to them. The man looked at the Captain. “The government won’t prosecute you for fighting in a public venue.”
The captain smiled, and then both of them laughed. Sam would never be able to fully comprehend the Zogazin sense of humor.
Now that they were free to go, Sam suggested a day for Glory and Mito to recuperate. Plantian didn’t object, since he looked more tired than Mito. Sam had some business to conduct, meeting with another government official, getting a more official version of his graduation certificate, collecting everything he had brought with him from Tolloy, and a trip to his bank. After another check-in the next morning at the hospital for Mito and Glory, they trundled out of Hizor towards Alloren, with Sam the only person healthy enough to ride a horse. The government sent along a detachment of ten soldiers to discourage any lingering assassins. They would replace other men stationed at the garrison in Alloren. Sam hadn’t even noticed there was such a thing in the Order of Ren’s town.
The trip to Alloren was without a problem, other than two days of rain. Sam created a pollen canopy for Glory, one he couldn’t touch or adjust. Two of the soldiers did that. When they reached the place in the road that looked down at the valley that held Alloren, Sam unwrapped the bandages on his hand and flexed the tender newly-healed skin. The pain had departed the previous evening when they had stayed at a roadside inn.