by Damien Lake
Shelves lined every available inch along the walls. Posts were set in the center of the tight room, long planks nailed between them to serve as further shelf space. Filling all were boxes for the most part, though jars, sacks and small pouches in piles were also present. Words had been written on the shelves’ two-inch thickness beneath the contents. In cases where no words were readily visible, parchment bits folded so the words upon them were visible rested close by.
From the low ceiling hung a bell on a string where the door could strike it. At its jangle, a youth younger than Marik rushed out through a curtained doorway behind a desk. The desk sat near the shop’s rear, on one corner of the O formed by the shelves constructed in the middle of the cramped shop.
Ilona cast him a hard, sidelong look before walking forward to speak with the eager shop tender. Marik was left at odd ends. She did not want him interfering with whatever ploy she had in mind, but he felt uneasy leaving their interests in another’s hands. Relying on his comrades in the midst of battle was entirely different from letting an outsider ask his questions for him. He would allow Ilona her head for a short while before wandering over to join in.
Marik shrugged his shoulders to loosen the tight fit of the strange robe while he meandered around the shop. He felt naked entering a possibly hostile environment sans sword. His nerves were heightened, ready to interpret the slightest breeze across his skin as the breath of a hidden enemy. To take his mind off it he inspected the stock lining the shelves.
One box bore a square board with a wooden knob as its lid. On the shelf below, the words sulfur 4c/oz. had been inked. Marik lifted the top to find the box contained a yellowish powder. A smell of old eggs wafted out. He dropped the lid back and looked at a jar beside the sulfur box. Four or five dozen thin black sticks protruded from the squat pot. Marik read, charcoal 3c/stick.
He wandered while Ilona spoke softly to the young man, who seemed enthusiastic to help her in any way he possibly could. Marik found dozens of different components. Most of what he found he could not imagine a possible use for. At the row’s end in the corner furthest from the desk, he discovered a rack with dozens of empty glass vials. Beside them were small ladles and several large, round bottles with mouths as wide as their base. Each bore labels and held vast amounts of different oils. Noted on the each label was a statement saying that vials were four additional coppers each. The top shelf contained six different oils derived from various flower seeds. Below were oils harvested from corn, olives, avocados, peanuts, pecans and even hayseeds. This last was not in a large jar, but in tiny three-ounce bottles. 3s/bottle, according to the shelf.
Marik could hardly believe that, despite repeated readings of the words inked into the shelf. What possible reason could anyone have for paying an entire silver for one ounce of oil?
Leaving the oils behind, he poked his nose into a barrel filled with salt. At 1c/oz., it was easily the cheapest item in the shop. Above were several lidded boxes. Their labels also identified them as salt, except at different prices. Curious, he opened one. The salt grains inside were much larger than any he had ever seen, nearly the size of dried peas. Closer examination of the boxes revealed further words written on each. Southern sea salt 3c/oz. Stygan salt 3c/oz. Rubian cavern salt 11c/oz. Why? Salt was salt, right? Why pay eleven coppers for salt simply because it came all the way from Rubia?
The opposite shelf in the room’s center overflowed with different herbs and plants. This much seemed useful to him. He might not know how to use the nine types of lichen or the chokeweed or comberry or any of the rest, but someone knowledgeable could surely produce useful medicines from the stock.
Marik drifted closer to the desk. He waited beside an open barrel full of limestone chunks, 20c/lb., listening before entering the conversational fray. Ilona had one foot propped against the desk’s base and was leaning forward on one elbow. The young man, with a small stubble patch under his left cheek missed during the last shave, babbled an answer to whatever she had asked earlier. His words stumbled twice, both events accompanied by lightning movements of his eyes when they darted down to her exposed cleavage.
“But surely you know how to make it.” Her sweet tone caressed in a way she had never graced Marik with.
“Oh, yeah.” Quick glance downward. “I mean, the formula is simple enough, but I can’t…” Glance. “It’s that it’s illegal under the king’s law, you understand. Distribution without authorization, you know.”
“Do I look like a person who would use it like that?” She brought her other arm closer to her chest, apparently to tap her chin in thought. It made her cleavage bulge further.
“No! No, not at all, I never thought you might be!” A lopsided grin marred his expression in what he must have hoped was a winning smile. “It’s just that certain people would.” Glance.
“Still, the formula can hardly be a military secret. Anyone could make it if they had the correct ingredients, couldn’t they?”
“Oh, sure! All the components are common enough. The coal tar alone might darken the steel, but it gums up the blade and upsets the balance. That’s why you alter its properties.” Glance. “The properties coal tar. In mixing.”
Marik thought the youth was too wrapped up in admiring Ilona to realize his words had lost coherency. It annoyed him the way the punk’s eyes kept darting down and back up.
“So you could tell me which would be the right ingredients I need to make the weaponblack. Maybe you can’t sell it, but you can tell me the ingredients I would need.”
“Of course! That’s easy!” He suddenly become aware of Marik. “Oh, hello! I…um…oh! Umm…good afternoon, master magician.” The youth took in his robe, losing the fool’s grin that had been twitching his lips. “Can I help you find any components you need? We’re not usually…that is to say our shop is mostly set up with alchemists in mind. We don’t have much by way of…um, I mean we don’t carry many spell type components. Though I’ll be happy to sell you anything you have an interest in!”
“Oh yeah?” Marik’s tone drove the air temperature down. Heavy. Iron on a winter morning. A blizzard-frozen pump handle.
“M-Most assuredly!”
“That makes me happy. I like being happy. I’m usually hard to deal with otherwise.” He arched his eyes at Ilona, who angrily fired back a message with her own. “Isn’t that right?”
“I can vouch for that,” she acknowledged through a not quite clenched jaw.
“So then….ah…what can I help you with, master magician?” He glanced at Ilona. The look held a wary hesitancy absent until that moment. “If we do not have what you need in stock, we might be able to acquire it. I think. We’d need to make sure with father first.”
Ilona reasserted herself, dripping sugar and honeysuckle. “Would we now? He usually runs the shop, then?”
“Yes,” he confirmed, trying to fill his vision with Ilona while absenting Marik. “I’m looking after things today while he’s at the tournament.”
“Actually, I hoped to talk with him,” she stated with disappointment. “A mutual acquaintance told me your father could help with a special order I need.”
“Oh, I can help you with that! Surely! What do you need?” Glance.
Bang! Marik dropped the heavy lead weight from the counter’s scale that he had been fiddling with. The noise when it hit the flat countertop startled the youth badly.
“My apologies,” Marik said, sounding utterly unrepentant. He met the young man’s gaze eye-to-eye. It satisfied him to see the punk turn away first. “We,” he intoned with a harsher edge, “are looking for an item a…colleague of mine crafted.”
“An item…um. You mean one of our scales?” He nervously gestured to a shelf behind him displaying several measuring scales. “They are very fine quality. Never off at all and finely balanced.”
“No,” Marik growled before Ilona overrode him with, “I’m afraid not.” A furious glance at Marik followed. “My friend told me your father might have received a f
ew items of jewelry created by a master craftsman. There was a particular bracelet I was interested in.”
That confused the young man. “Jewelry? No, we never carry stock like that. We only sell stock to alchemists.” A nervous flick of his eyes at Marik. “And any magicians who come in, now and then.”
Marik glowered. “Yeah? Is that right?”
Swallowing, the youth held fast. “Yes. Other than the scales, we only sell the chemicals you see on the shelves.”
Ilona drove Marik away under the force of a clear, silent message. While she worked to regain her rapport with the youth, Marik resumed wandering the small shop. Common enough stock, no matter that it originated from the other side of Merinor. Crushed leaves and powdered clays and bars of dried, if still pliable, tar.
She gained nothing else from her spooked admirer. After waiting long enough to receive the written instructions for making weaponblack so they would not seem more suspicious than they already did, Ilona tugged Marik out the door.
“I don’t know why I expected anything else,” she muttered low enough that Marik suspected the words were meant for no one’s ears but hers. Louder, she demanded, “Have you any idea what ‘delicate’ means? Is it a word you’ve ever run across before?”
He glowered back at her. “If delicate means having a shopkeeper fresh out of swaddling clothes drool all over your…uh…yourself, then I’m sure I don’t.”
Ilona tore into him as Dietrik noticed their exit. She jabbed a finger into his unprotected gut. “In this city, you can get your throat cut for sneezing at the wrong time! Don’t presume to second guess me! If you continue groping around like a blind man, you’ll get us both killed! I’ll not have you making a dog’s breakfast of everything!”
Dietrik came within earshot when Marik, his dignity needled, heatedly countered with, “And if you keep dallying along like a reluctant mule, we’ll never get through the whole list of shops!”
He instantly regretted the sharp comment. Her eyes flattened. Marik reexamined all the different ways his last comment could have been interpreted. “Rushing in and calling attention is the death of fools and the addled,” she hissed. “Do what I say at the next shop or I will leave you in the street. I am perfectly capable of seeing to my own affairs unaided.”
“I don’t suppose,” Dietrik asked drolly, Ilona stalking off down the street like an angry she-bear, “that you are going to tell me what happened in there any time soon, are you? I only ask because I have the strangest feeling you upset her in some manner.”
“Shut up,” Marik snapped, but then began relating the events while they followed Ilona.
“So what you are saying,” Dietrik summed up three streets later, “is that I can’t cross this shop off the list yet. The boy’s father might be running hot stock direct out of the back room without letting on.”
Marik shrugged. He had not given it much thought, his concerns primarily on weathering Ilona’s wrath. “The son seemed to know as much about the shop as anything else. But no, I guess you’re right. Better keep that one listed as questionable.”
A full mark had passed since leaving the Standing Spell. Given the average time required to travel anywhere within the city, Marik quickly gave over the faint hope they might finish that afternoon. Unless they struck gold with the next few shops, they would need to continue tomorrow.
Watching Ilona’s back, Marik decided there were worst turn of events. Unless you succeed in continuing your magnificent campaign of irritating her as much as possible. She might refuse to search with us tomorrow.
The thought of her refusing to join them felt as black as the notion of failing in his duty to safeguard Hilliard. Convincing her to remain with them became a crucial element. Finding the lair of the Spirrattan assassins, assuming all their postulates were correct, probably would not be possible without her. They might as well try to make a candle when they had nothing to serve as a wick. Can’t be done.
His mind articulated it all in feelings rather than coherent words, too busy was it studying the inch or so of her lower spine that was revealed every nine or ten steps. When they arrived at the next shop a half-mark later, it culminated in the grudging resolution to submit to whatever methods she determined to use. It would keep her content. Hopefully.
No bell dangled behind this shop’s door. It hardly needed one as the shopkeeper, along with four friends, were perched around a small table only feet away. A small iron stove burning split logs squatted near the corner between the table and the wall, driving the temperature into a range seldom found outside the Kello-beii desert. Marik felt the hot air hit him as though he had walked head-on into a tree.
He might have questioned the shopkeeper about the reason for keeping his stove lit during the summer months, but one look at the group argued against him opening his mouth for any reason. If his sword were not stuffed away in a brothel across the city, his resolve would have a steel backbone to help it stand taller. Ilona was welcome to take the lead she so desired.
None of the five men were large, most no bigger than he. What stoked his alertness was an air of hostility around them. He knew men in other squads around Kingshome who struck him the same way, as though throwing a dagger at you or dropping you from the wall might be the most amusing thing they had ever seen. His chainmail’s absent weight made him nervous.
Three men shifted their attention to the two trespassers interrupting their game of trident. The other two were in the midst of a grab. Marik was keenly alert to the scrutiny they were subjected to, and to the higher level of interest Ilona garnered. In an attempt to seem unmindful of their study, he centered his attention on the two still playing.
The dice on the table showed a green three and a red four. They rested on either side of a leather tube, from which over forty thin wooden stick tips emerged. Presumably, it was the man on the left’s turn. Across sat his opponent, whom the first had chosen from among the other players.
So chosen, the second man uncovered his five sticks down to the third notch. His fist concealed the lower marks carved at the three successive notches below while his other cupped hand shielded the view from the others. With a quick snap, he completely covered the sticks by closing his cupped hand over the tops so only the tips protruded. The four seconds required by the red die to reveal his hand had expired. Still ignoring Marik and Ilona’s interruption, the first chose which stick he wanted and pulled it free of the former owner’s grasp. He made a distasteful grimace after seeing the prime symbol carved under the last notch. Apparently he had not received the stick he hoped for.
He hid the stick away with the rest of his hand under one leg, at last glancing sideways to them while the second player drew a replacement stick from the tube. Marik had the fleeting impression the man examined him from head to toe in an instant, pausing only to pass a judgement on his robe. Whatever conclusion he arrived at, Marik felt it boded ill for them.
“And what do you want?” There was no hint of the polite manner shopkeepers usually greeted prospective customers in. “Oh, let me guess. You’re after components, eh? And hard to find ones at that.”
“Well…” Marik began. Ilona cut him off in a tone far less sugary than used on the previous shop’s proprietor. “We might be. This is a shop, after all. That was the prevailing impression the building gave me from outside.”
The man propped his elbow on the small table to rest his head on his hand. His friends grinned, suggesting a familiar routine was about to commence. “Did it, then?” He addressed the nearest of his comrades. “Why is it that my poor little shop always seems to attract these types?”
His friend shrugged, still grinning. “Dunno’, Reed. Maybe you need to paint your widow shutters.”
“Perhaps that’s it.” Reed faced back to the pair. “So tell me what you fancy. I can tell you aren’t with the guard. They always come dressed in showy silks when they think I’m double-shuffling merchandise through my stockroom they might be interested in. I suppose that makes you
somewhat trustworthy.”
“What makes you think I have any interest in illicit components?” Ilona asked with heat while Marik’s mind raced.
He knows I’m not a magician! Or at least, he suspects I’m not. What’s he up to? He must deal with enough legitimate magicians to recognize me for a fake. It must have been this robe!
Reed only gazed musingly at her. “Types like you never wander through my door by chance. You always get directed to me. One of these days I’ll have to nail down who keeps sending you people here.”
“So long as it’s not today, Reed,” said one of the others. “I’m not letting you squidge out of the game when I’m ahead for once.” The speaker rose from his chair to retrieve one of several cups filled with water sitting on a countertop separating the business floor from the shop’s backrooms.
He’s getting into position. Marik’s fighting experience recognized the move for what it was. After emptying the water from the glass, the man continued standing near the counter, which lay mostly behind his and Ilona’s field of view. Reed thinks we’re up to mischief. Does he know? No, that’s impossible. He doesn’t think I’m a magician, because of how awkward this robe is on me. Or maybe he sees it’s no fit robe at all for a proper magician. Does he think I’m a hedge-wizard then?
Ilona played it sly. “Well then, as it happens, there is an item or two of interest to me, which I hoped you could help me obtain.”
Reed nodded before shifting his gaze to Marik. “And he’s with you, undoubtedly. A peculiar pair, I would say. He must know a spell or two that helps you get into places others would have you stay away from.” The man smiled as though he doubted it.
A second player rose, ostensibly to join the first for a sip of water in the shop’s blazing heat. That might be it. He thinks I’m probably a hedge-wizard struggling to master my magical abilities. Others like that might have come to his shop before, looking for illegal components they thought would enable them to cast powerful magic. Reed looks like a sharp one; low enough to prey on the weak and mean enough to do it. The type of hedge-wizard who goes after illegal components must have gathered a few items of value by the time he wandered in here. Reed’s probably collected enough gold by preying on weak magicians to make taking the risk worthwhile.
