by Deck Davis
Faei looked like she was getting cross. “Who the hell is gonna know if you deal us a little?”
“The emperor has his birds everywhere,” said Fingers. “Honestly, I check the privy before I take a dump in it, in case there’s one of his spies hidden inside. They want to get rid of independent traders and only let emperor approved ones have licenses. I have to watch meself; they’ll use any excuse to stitch me up.”
Just then, Jake noticed that Yeldarb the Cock Imp was crouched in the doorway, as if he was listening to the conversation. Could Yeldarb be a spy?
No. Impossible. Fingers’ paranoia was infecting him.
All the same, he walked across the shack, closed the door and then rejoined Faei and Fingers.
“Listen,” he said. “I get that you’re worried. And you don’t know me, so why the hell would you trust me enough to trade something that’s illegal? But I really need to make some bombs, Fingers. Not for anything to do with the emperor, just for protection. If I tell you something about me that could get into trouble, can I trust you to keep my secret? That way, you’ll know you can trust me, since you’ll have something over me.”
“Jake…” said Faei, in a warning voice.
“We really need the casings,” said Jake.
Fingers scratched his chin. “What are you thinking?”
Here goes, he thought.
“I’m not from Sarametis. I came here through a portal from a place called Earth, and it seems that people are hunting me. I’m pretty sure that the same people also kidnapped Cason, and we’re trying to get him back. The more people who know who I am and where I’m from, the more trouble I’m in. So, you can see the leap of faith I’m making in telling you that.”
“I’ve heard of you portal dwellers,” said Fingers. “Never believed it. Always put as much trust in it as a fart from a sick horse with a bad belly.”
“I still don’t agree with him telling you that,” said Faei, “but surely you trust us now?”
Fingers clicked his fingers, which was all the more impressive since he did it with his ring and middle fingers, and then pointed them like guns.
“What’d ya need?”
“Okay. I need bomb casings, explosives, and fuses,” said Jake.
Fingers turned around. The door was still closed. He said, loud enough for anyone outside to hear, “I DON’T SELL THAT KIND OF THING. I TOLD YOU.”
“But what-”
Faei nudged Jake. She handed him a small scrap of paper. “Sorry, I forgot to tell you. Cason used to use this.”
It was a list titled ‘Secret Trader Codewords.’ He scanned down the list, then spoke to Fingers again.
“I’ll take some pumpkin pie, string beans and spice mix, please.”
“Whatever you’re making sounds delicious,” said Fingers. “It’ll cost you, though. Ingredients like that are rare, and they’re dangerous to cook with.”
“How much?”
“Let’s see…one pumpkin pie is thirty gonils. String beans will set ya back 5 gonils and six solils for a pack of five, and spice mix is six gonils per handful.”
Jake looked at Faei. She shook her head. “We’re not even close,” she said.
Right now, the sum total of their fortune amounted to around seven gonils and thirteen solils. They had a few old things to trade, but nothing that’d come even close to the thirty gonils they needed for pumpkin pie.
“Can you do us a deal?” said Jake. “For your old pal Cason.”
“That is a deal. Sorry, bud, can’t do more than that. Got two greedy little grubbers to feed back home.”
Now what were they going to do? Faei was nowhere near as effective using her weaker bow hand, and Jake’s only decent offense were dissolve and brittle bone potions, which were just as likely to hurt him and Faei as they were the enemy. The bombs would have added so much more to his arsenal. They were essential.
He’d banked on getting the bomb stuff, practicing, and then being ready to set out in a few days’ time. The longer they waited, the worse it’d be for Cason.
“We’ll get you the money. If we summon you again, you’ll come?”
“I have near instantaneous travel to places with trader flags. Don’t sweat it on my account.”
“Then why do you need the wagon?” asked Jake.
“I can’t lump all my stuff around with me, can I?”
“How are you going to get the money?” asked Faei.
Jake shrugged.
“Guess I’m going to have to take potion orders, just like Cason did.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
That night, hours after Fingers had left on his wagon to answer another trading summons, Jake and Faei sat on the roof of the shack. Jake had a bottle of Cason’s moonshine next to him, the effects of which were already working through his brain. He took a sip and offered it to Faei.
“Live a little,” he said. “Everything’s quickly going to shit, we might as well face it rat-ass drunk.”
“It’s more important than ever that I keep control now,” she said.
Sitting on the roof gave him a wide view of Reaching Crest, since the shack was already perched atop a hill. There was a storm in the air tonight, but this was no normal storm. This, Faei told him, was an ether storm. In many ways it resembled thunder and lightning, except that the ominous rumbles of an ether storm were usually followed by flashes of red light the eviscerated anything they touched.
Unlike lightening, ether bolts were attracted to warm blood, rather than metal. Were it not for Cason’s sophisticated arrangement of ether vanes, which warded away bolts, sitting on the roof would have been a stupid idea. Now, though, Jake was enjoying the breeze. Ether storms brought a humid air with them, and in another place at another time, sitting on a roof on a hot night and having a drink would have been relaxing.
Out in the distance, maybe twenty miles east of the shack, he saw a field. A herd of cow-like animals were herded in the center of it, and seemed to be huddling together. Nearby, a smaller, younger animal played in the grass, leaping and bounding amongst the overgrown stalks. Every so often, ether bolts flashed down near them, getting closer and closer each time.
“How come it isn’t hitting them?” asked Jake.
“Ether bolts seek blood, but it doesn’t have to be something big. A mouse or a bird can draw a bolt.”
He eyed the grazing animals warily. Soon, unless it stopped, the storm was going to hit them head on. Best to focus on something else.
“Let’s see where we are with things then,” he said. “We don’t know where Cason is exactly, except a vague idea he could be in a forest aptly named Widow Leaf. There’s only two of us, and you’re the only one who was even half-capable at fighting, and you’ve hurt your bow hand. I can probably, with practice, make bombs, but we can’t afford the materials. On top of that, someone named Eric Cratter came here to kill me. Anything I missed?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure you haven’t bathed in a few days,” said Faei. “And you’re almost out of moonshine.”
That was probably a good thing. His head was starting to sway a little.
“If only Cason wasn’t so bent up on making sure he didn’t leave any hairs or anything behind. One follow potion would lead us right to him. Why was he so anal about it?”
“For the exact reason you need his hair,” said Faei. “Mages and alchemists can use parts of people to make potions against them. A mage with great powers and a dark mind can torture someone a hundred miles away using one of their fingernails. Cason was paranoid about that kind of thing.”
The ether clouds rumbled louder than a hungry giant’s stomach. Seconds later, a red ether bolt blasted the field in the east, this time just ten feet away from the grazing herd.
“Back in Steel Pike,” said Faei, “once it was pretty much set I’d be one of the cast offs, I lost most of my friends. My brother Mort still spoke to me, of course, but even he held back a little. It was like they didn’t wanna get close to me, because they knew
I’d be gone soon.”
“Must have been tough.”
“I’m not one to let stuff get me down. But it got a little lonely, sometimes. There was this ferret that used to skulk around the village. Little ratty, dirty thing. It always used to try and steal scraps from the baker. I wanted it as a pet, but it’d always hiss at me when I went near it. But whenever there was an ether storm, the little runt would sneak into our house, into my room, and get under my bedding with me. Then, when the storm was gone it’d be aloof again. I wonder how it’s doing now.”
“It’s probably dead,” said Jake.
“Thank you, Mr. Sunshine.”
“I feel like we’re taking too long here. We need to go and get Cason, like, tomorrow.”
“Steady on. If we rush in, especially into Widow Leaf, we’ll both die.”
“I know, I know. I just don’t like hanging around. I was never any good with free time.”
Another ether bolt crashed into the field. This time, it was barely three feet away from the herd. The animals didn’t move, but instead huddled even closer together. It was as if they’d accepted that they were going to get hit by it.
Jake took another swig of moonshine, then corked the vial. His head was swimming. That’d be his last moonshine for the night.
“Okay. A plan,” he said. “I’ll level up. Not just my alchemy, but in general. Get stronger. I’ll get the gonils for bomb stuff, somehow, and I’ll learn to inscribe runes, while I’m at it. We need protection. I’m not sure how yet, but I’ll figure out a way.”
“Solid strategy. But there’s something more pressing. I didn’t wasn’t to bring it up. I was hoping Cason would just turn up at the shack like nothing had happened, but that’s not going to happen.”
“What is it?” asked Jake.
Another ether bolt crashed down. This time, even from miles away, he heard the squeals and shrieks of the grazing herd. Lashings of blood and guts flew up in the air and then showered down on the field in a sea of crimson. The herd had been destroyed down to the last animal.
Jake hung his head. It was a pitiful sight.
And then he saw that one of the herd had survived. It was the baby animal, who’d been playing not far away. It stopped playing now and looked at its dead family. It was alone now.
“I need potions,” said Faei. “I’m almost out of demogoth antidote. I have enough to last maybe a couple of weeks, but after that, I’m more screwed than an overworked brothel mistress in a sailor port.”
Damn. That was the most urgent thing, then. Without her potions, Faei would slowly surrender to her demogoth affliction and turn into a blood-thirsty beast. Danger aside, he didn’t want her to change. She was nice to look at; a flame-haired beauty in the dreary landscape of Reaching Crest. He’d never have dared tell her that, of course.
“There’s no telling when we’ll get Cason back, even if we were to set out tomorrow,” said Jake. “There’s nothing else for it. I’m gonna have to learn how to brew it.”
“That’s what I was worried about,” said Faei.
Jake took one last look at the surviving baby animal, and decided he’d seen enough for the night. He gave Faei a friendly slap on the back, and then climbed down from the roof. The ether clouds rumbled above him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The next morning, he decided to take stock of Cason’s alchemy supplies to see what had survived. Most of the potion vials had been smashed, and of the few that were intact, he had no idea what they did. Lucky, a large supply of herbs and ingredients had escaped the wrath of whoever had broken in. Using his gauge skill, which involved a lot of studying, sniffing, and even a tiny, tiny bit of tasting, Jake found out what they did.
Bitterroot
Properties: Raise intelligence
Stark Bee Wax
Properties: Cure poisons and blights
Arowana Gills
Properties: Water breathing
If only ‘gauge’ worked on potions! It would have made things a hell of a lot easier. Maybe it did work on potions, but only at a higher level. Once they found Cason, he’d ask him. At any rate, his gauge skill levelled up to four, making herbs easier to identify and giving him slightly more information on what they did when he found them.
As well as the herbs, he’d already found Cason’s alchemy tools. This was a sure sign that whoever broke in had no interest in money. Cason’s tools were exquisite; he had a knife that looked sharp enough to slice atoms and had an ivory-like hilt, and metal pincers that would withstand even the fires of hell. It was much better than Jake’s kit, and was likely worth a weight in gonils. Shame that Jake’s alchemist level was too low for him to use them.
He laid his own tools out on the counter. He gathered his herb supply and arranged the leaves in neat piles, and he placed the burner and potio powder nearby. With that done, he needed to find Faei. It was time to brew her a demogoth potion. He didn’t have a damn clue how, but he wanted to impress her by doing it.
He went outside. To his right, tied up by a long rope, was the baby cow-thing he’d seen when he was on the roof. The night of the ether storm, Jake had found that he couldn’t sleep, so he’d hiked over to the fields to rescue it. He didn’t know what he’d been thinking at the time; going out alone at night was dangerous as hell, but he couldn’t help himself.
“You’re getting more like Cason every day,” said Faei.
She had just walked around the corner. She wore a brown apron that was stained with bird poo and had a few feathers stuck to it.
“In what way?” asked Jake.
“Collecting animals. He’s got a soft spot for them too.”
Jake shrugged. “I don’t remember asking you to take care of the birds, so you must not be so cold-hearted yourself.”
“We could really use him being here right about now,” said Faei.
“We’ll get him back, don’t worry. I’ve been thinking. If we’re going to Widow Leaf, we need a party. You know, like on quests.” After saying that, he realized that although Sarametis was governed by levels and stats, Faei would have no idea what a quest party was. He corrected himself. “It’d just be safer to travel with a couple more people.”
“It’s hard finding ones to trust, that’s the problem.”
“You seemed to trust me pretty easily.”
“Cason trusted you. So, I had to play along. For a while, I thought you were an ass. I don’t now, but you haven’t been ass-free for long.”
“You might have to revisit that opinion someday. Anyway, I think you know what time it is.”
“Dinner time?”
“Time to brew your potion.”
Faei looked at him warily. “I realize that I need it. No question. And I only know two alchemists, one of whom is missing. That leaves you. But still…Cason told me the potion is risky. If it’s brewed wrong, it’s lethal.”
“Don’t you trust me?” asked Jake, in mock hurt.
“About as much as I’d trust a cock imp to give me medical advice.”
“Don’t worry. I found Cason’s old herb reference book. It’s a kind of beginner’s guide, and he’s scrawled all over it. He must have actually written stuff down back then, so I don’t know why he has such disdain for it now.”
“Don’t question his ways. He’s so old most of his habits have been ingrained into him. I doubt even he knows why.”
Then, a thought occurred to him. He remembered the letter he’d found hidden in Cason’s bed. The letter had been written to him rather than by him, but maybe it was part of an ongoing correspondence. Maybe Cason had used to write letters to someone special, or something like that. Then what? Had things gone wrong? Maybe he should have read the letter.
No. Can’t do that.
“Come on. Let’s get started.”
“Well if you’re sure,” said Faei. “I don’t really have any other choice.”
“I’m sure. Let’s brew this thing.”
He and Faei sat in the main room of the shack and
faced one another. Truth be told they were sitting so close that their faces were barely five feet apart. If Faei was uncomfortable with the proximity, she didn’t show it. Jake enjoyed it. Even with her hair half cut, she looked great.
“So…” said Faei.
He realized he hadn’t said anything yet. He’d just sat down and stared at her.
“Sorry. Just trying to gauge your complexion. It’s…important alchemist stuff. It helps decide what ingredients go in your potion.
