by Rue Vespers
He duly added the scale to his purse, hoping it would earn him some dough.
Some time had passed and he’d made little progress in this disaster of a laboratory, but he didn’t want to throw out something potentially useful by accident. Dragging the rubbish bin along, he swept up pile after pile of junk and sorted through it methodically by hand.
“What the fuck are you collecting that shit for?”
Jenner whirled around at the barking baritone, so shocked he almost dropped the broom, but nobody else was there in the lab. “Hello?”
Silence.
Then he heard footsteps.
Two men in black robes entered the laboratory. One was young and unattractive due to his hugely squashed nose, green braids going down the front of his robes; the other man was much older, with a horseshoe of gray hair around his head, and he had deep purple braids down his robes and encircling the sleeves.
Wizards! Jenner got out of their way hastily and bowed his head. They ignored him to inspect the milky contents at the bottom of a certain beaker. The solution was still, no stinky gas rising from it and no fire appearing below.
The younger man was presumably a student and the older man was his instructor. They mumbled back and forth, talking over one another as Jenner stood to the side with the broom. He wasn’t sure if he should keep cleaning or just stay still.
“It should work-”
“We can’t bet on should-”
“We can buy some-”
“That creates a trail. Better to make our own-”
“They don’t know what they’re making-”
“Stop!” The command came from the instructor, who threw up his hand to block the student from tapping his wand upon the beaker. “Is that wand new?”
Defensively, the student retorted, “It’s witchwood with rune scroll dipped in clearwater just this morning and I’ve only had it two days-”
“Break it and get a new one!”
“But they last a week-”
“Not with the demonic influences here and what did I tell you about witchwood? We can’t have anything corrupt this solution!”
The student snapped his wand and dropped it on the floor. The instructor finally took notice of Jenner, snapping, “What are you doing in here, scuttle?”
Jenner bowed his head lower. “Alvus sent me to the lab to clean, sir. Would you like me to come back later?”
“Well, be smart about it and don’t touch anything on the counters! In fact, don’t go near these experiments! Stay right over there!” The instructor waved his wand about in vicious swipes. All of the remaining garbage soared out of the aisles and formed a five-foot tall mountain in front of Jenner. The feathers collapsed down the sides of the mountain like an avalanche of snow. “There! Stuff it into the rubbish bin and get the hell out of here!”
“But the clearwater is supposed to make it last longer,” the student said sullenly.
The instructor rounded on his pupil and smacked him upside the head in fury. “You fool! Get back to the festival so that people witness you out and about!”
The student shuffled off to the doorway; the instructor gave a poke of his wand to the beaker. Some of the solution vanished and reappeared in a vial suddenly within the older man’s hand. He shoved it into his robes and followed the student out of the lab.
Jenner listened to the footsteps until they faded away. Then he rushed over to the place in the huge garbage pile where the student’s wand halves had landed upon a gob of hair and a moldy piece of bagel.
He tapped the first half against his palm with no result, but a rolled-up piece of very thick parchment slipped out of the other half. Unfurling it, he stared at runic script written in black, sparkling ink.
You have found a common rune scroll! Frequently used by intermediate wizards, these rune scrolls have a short shelf life and are most often used in disposable wands.
Someone sighed in exasperation.
The parchment rolled back together. Jenner looked around keenly as he put it in his purse. “Is someone there?” he called.
A small, pink-and-white object moved beyond the nearest stack of cages. They were piled up unevenly, the object jumping rapidly from the lowest stack to the next tallest until it was eye level with Jenner upon the highest.
It was a teacup. A teacup that was moving all on its own.
The teacup was painted in pink roses and had a spoon rattling around inside. Two dark eyes about the golden handle stared piercingly at Jenner. “Do you know what that crap is worth?” it snapped, the very manly baritone coming out of a rosebud mouth. “You idiot scuttle! You’re surrounded by a treasury of gold coins and you ignore it all for handfuls of pence! Capricorn teeth, bah! Juvenile dragon scales, bah! Rune scrolls, bah!”
The cup blew a raspberry in disgust.
“You’re a teacup,” Jenner said incredulously.
“Oh, you’re an observant little asshole! With brains like that, you should be a troll.” The teacup hopped along the top of the cage. “Well, don’t let me stop you from earning your pennies, garbageman!” The cup jumped away to the sill, where it booted the skull off to stare out the window. The skull chattered at it in dislike and slid off into the lab.
Jenner began dismantling the giant pile. The work went much faster with all of the trash concentrated in one place. Most of his gleanings were Capricorn teeth, his purse plumping out with hundreds of them as the hours passed. The juvenile dragon scales numbered in the dozens, and the rune scrolls were his rarest finds. By the time the mountain diminished to a lowly foothill, he had only discovered three scrolls in total. The first one had the most brilliant ink; the second only sparkled a bit and the third less than that.
Quitting the window, the teacup returned to the cages to watch him toil. “Oh, good, another fucking fish tooth! Can’t miss any of those!” it said with sarcastic cheer as Jenner tipped yet another tooth into his palm. “Was that a dragon scale mixed into those feathers you just put in the bin? Shit! Maybe you should put your hand in after it and see if you can throw yourself out, too! If I had hands, I’d swipe that unicorn hair on the wall and buy myself a big-”
“China cabinet?” Jenner joked.
“Fuck you!” The spoon rattled around in wild circles as the cup hopped temperamentally in place.
Dumping feathers and crumpled papers into the bin, Jenner said, “I didn’t realize you could get scrambled into a teacup.”
The cup ceased its angry hopping to chuckle with evil relish. “No, one of those idiot new wizards created me by accident with a corrupted wand. The instructors have spent months trying to catch me and blew up all of the fucking pillows in the fucking Reading Corner just yesterday after I shouted out all the answers to their fucking exam. Too late! I was already through the mouse hole by then. They made the students ball up the exams and toss them on the floor.”
Tapping out one more dragon scale, Jenner collected it. “Why did you do that?”
“What else am I supposed to do?” the teacup returned. It jumped over to a counter and knocked a rack of test tubes into a sink, where they broke. Then it jumped back to the cages, mumbling in deep disgruntlement.
Jenner swept up the last of the feathers and papers and scooped them into the bin. Then he looked around for anything else. The lab was finally clean, so he returned the rubbish bin to the corner. Green footsteps appeared at once upon the floor, leading out of the laboratory and presumably back downstairs.
“Where are you going after this?” the teacup inquired.
“Back to the Rundown. It’s been a long day,” Jenner said. A long day, but a good day.
“Take me with you,” the teacup demanded.
Jenner laughed in astonishment. “No.”
“Come on! Living in a wizards’ lab has gotten boring and I can be very useful to you.”
Jenner didn’t see how an enchanted teacup could be useful. “No. Hey, maybe I’ll get a job here again sometime. I’ll stop by the lab to say hello.”
&
nbsp; The teacup looked disappointed as Jenner followed the footsteps out the door. When he looked back to the cages to wave, the strange talking cup was already gone.
Chapter Seven
It was a beautiful evening in Talvenor, the sky a royal purple overhead and strewn with clouds. Jenner sat down wearily in the wagon and pocketed the fifteen pence that Alvus gave him after performing the anti-theft spell.
He also had his dinner. Draining the goblet of water first, he unwrapped a generous ham sandwich and gobbled it up while the scuttle janitors mumbled about their findings and devoured their own meals. “So many Capricorn teeth and juvenile dragon scales!” a man exclaimed in disappointment. “Hopefully, a better college will need janitors tomorrow. What about you?”
“A chipped vampire fang in a third floor classroom,” a woman responded. “A witch will pay nicely for that.”
Everyone looked envious.
“What did you find?” a different woman asked Jenner.
“Lots of Capricorn teeth and dragon scales, a few rune scrolls.” He wondered too late if he should withhold that last piece of information, since he didn’t want to attract thieves. Fortunately, several scuttle smiled and nodded that they had found rune scrolls, too. While clearly preferable to the teeth and scales, the scrolls weren’t anything to get very excited about, or worth the effort of stealing from anyone else.
The woman with the vampire fang had a blade tucked into her boot. Although Jenner really wanted a wand, needs trumped wants and he needed some basic weapons and finer clothes, possibly armor, so he could eventually go to the Fortune Islands. Then he could buy a wand from that store in the Rundown.
As he polished off the last of his meal, the wrapping and goblet disappeared. So did the white robes. Then the wagon was on the move, leaving the college grounds for the ever-shifting terrain of this wizarding stronghold. This time, he didn’t look up until they passed beneath the archway.
The streets were quieting on the way to the dock, and the dock itself didn’t have a soul in sight. The fish gutters were gone; the scuttle pen was empty; boats bobbed in their moorings. Even the fat cats had vanished. The driver stopped there and everybody piled out in good cheer, talking about favorite taverns and brothels, comparing inns and their nightly rates.
Jenner was the last to climb down. As the janitors broke apart upon the muddy road, he noticed one fellow slip furtively to the artifact exchange. The security guard stopped him from entering until the guy showed him something hidden in a kerchief, and then they both went inside.
Congrats! You have earned a merit trophy for A Hard Day’s Work!
“Thanks,” Jenner mumbled.
The apothecary was still open in the distance. He started for it. Light foot traffic was all that remained upon Road of Royals, people heading into inns and taverns or leaning against the walls to smoke cigars. The food vendors with drums were nowhere to be seen, nor were there any more wagons and buggies.
A few strange looks were shot Jenner’s way as he walked along. He probably had feathers in his hair. Giggles broke out from above and he looked up to prostitutes hanging out of a window. He smiled to be polite and ran a hand sheepishly through his hair to knock the feathers out.
No. They weren’t looking at him. They were looking at something behind him.
He spun around, lifting his fists and ready to fight for his purse.
No thief was creeping up on him back there. It was just the talking teacup from the lab, which was veering around a mud puddle to hop after Jenner. “Slow down, asshole!” it yelled. “This road is a fucking cesspool!”
Jenner glared down to the teacup. “You followed me?”
“I rode along on the back of your robes all the way out of the college, staring up to your cute little ass the whole time, and you never even noticed. Hogdoor’s saggy green nuts, kid, you need me!” The cup made a mighty leap over another puddle.
“No, I don’t need a teacup, for fuck’s sake!” Jenner cried, embarrassed as the giggles grew louder. He flapped his hands at the cup. “Shoo!”
“Shoo yourself, Gramma!” the cup yelled in umbrage. “Really, who else says shoo? Where are we going?”
“I am going to the apothecary. I don’t know or care where you’re going.”
“Great! You have one good instinct. Let’s hit the apothecary and I can make sure you’re getting a fair deal.” The teacup bounced onto his boot.
Jenner tried to kick it off, but the cup launched itself up to his forearm, and then his left shoulder. Settling down there, it said, “Always take your findings from any of the wizarding colleges immediately to the apothecary. Once the scales, teeth, and scrolls are out of the wands, their power begins to fade. It’s a slow bleed, but every minute you spend dilly-dallying is money you’re losing.”
Jenner had been readying to flick the cup off his shoulder, but suddenly he had second thoughts. “Is that true?”
“Yes, it’s true, you twat-waffle! Ask the chemist at the apothecary,” the teacup said crabbily. “Scavengers get caught short all the damn time, eating or sleeping or getting laid first, or else they save up their bits of wand crap for days until they feel like they have enough to make the errand worth it. The joke is on them! Why are you running?”
Jenner had worked too hard today to sacrifice a cent unnecessarily. He charged up the road to the apothecary, the teacup scolding him for overreacting and somehow clinging to his shoulder without any feet.
Congrats! You have made an ally of ###4590X####ERROR.
Uh-oh! You have encountered a game glitch. Whoops! A message has been sent to the INTC.
Congrats! This glitch has been deemed harmless by the INTC. You are allowed to keep the glitch until your next scrambling.
Congrats! You have earned a merit trophy for Glitch Finder!
“OFF!” he yelled, thrusting open the door to the apothecary.
Nobody was inside save a man behind the counter. Not a man, or not quite. His face was distorted, his chin and ears comically stretched into points, his cheekbones so sharp that they could have sliced their way out of his pallid skin. His hair clung closely to his scalp, a mottled orange-and-yellow cap reminiscent of cat fur. Organizing ampoules within a rack, he called in a snake’s hiss, “Tremaine Wizarding College, yes?”
“Yes.” Jenner took out his fat purse, assuming this odd fellow was the chemist.
The teacup leaped off his shoulder to the counter. “Don’t you play fast and loose with the pay-out!” it scolded the chemist. “The kid doesn’t know any better, but I do.”
The man gave the teacup a curious look, but decided not to comment on it. He patted the countertop and Jenner upended his purse. Fish teeth and dragon scales and rune scrolls ran everywhere. Plucking out his pennies, he put them away as the chemist sorted through Jenner’s findings to gather up the Capricorn teeth.
“Capricorn teeth are valued by weight,” the teacup explained as the chemist piled them up upon a concave balance hanging by chains from brass weighing scales. “They’ll be put together with all the rest that come through the door today and ground down to sparks.”
The balance dipped down under the weight of the teeth. The chemist dropped marbles upon the empty balance, each with the number one printed on the side, until the balances were level. “Five pence, yes?” he asked.
“That’s it?” Jenner exclaimed.
“Chump change, Capricorn teeth,” the teacup said, hopping in annoyance. “I told you not to bother with those!”
“Five pence, yes?” the chemist repeated.
“Yes,” Jenner said in aggravation.
Now it was time for the dragon scales, which were separated by the quality of their shine into five rows ranging from bright to dull. Tapping his finger beside the rows, which were roughly equal, the man said, “Three pence. Four pence. Six pence. Eight pence. Ten pence. Yes?”
“Each?” Jenner asked. That was more like it!
“No, for each row, dumbass,” the teacup snorted. “That
’s thirty-one pence plus the five pence for the teeth. They would be worth a little more had they come from a different college. And yes,” he added to answer the chemist’s question. “That’s fair.”
“Why are they worth less?” Jenner inquired.
“It is because of the demonic corruption,” the chemist explained. “Anything from Tremaine has to be specially treated to separate and remove the corruption before the sparks can be used in other wizard products. Most apothecaries pass the cost along to you. There are, however, demon-owned apothecaries who do not consider it to be a corruption, but you will have to walk all the way to the Whittler to find one.”
“And in that time, these stupid fucking teeth and stupid fucking scales will be worth less anyway, so it’s a stupid fucking wash,” the cup concluded.
Thirty-six pence still added up to well over twice of Jenner’s pay. But he had forgotten his three rune scrolls, which the chemist was now loading into a centrifuge. It whirled around exuberantly, the scrolls opening and flattening against the sides.
A spark rose.
Jenner watched in fascination. The twinkling spark rose higher and higher, the chemist affixing an upside-down funnel above the centrifuge to catch it. The spark went into the funnel and reappeared within a clear tube, which carried it down to a beaker of water. It drifted about within the fluid as more sparks lifted from the centrifuge. Several of the sparks had shadowed centers; others were brilliant all the way through.
“Two silvers,” the chemist announced once the last spark dropped into the water. “Two silvers for the rune scrolls, thirty-six pence for the Capricorn teeth and juvenile dragon scales, yes?”
“Yes,” Jenner replied. He was pleased as punch about the silvers. This job had turned out to be worth it!
A heap of coins was pushed over the counter. He dumped them into his purse. The teacup landed once again on his shoulder and Jenner did not complain about this: he might have made a very good ally in the teacup after all.
