He placed his hand on his sword hilt to emphasize his seriousness, even while a part of his mind wondered what he was doing.
The two men stared at him in shock. The older man’s eyes narrowed in displeasure, and Marco didn’t hesitate to pull his sword upward, showing three inches of the steely blade.
“Well, of course,” the man said after a moment. “We only want to be fair.”
“The scales are behind you,” Marco pulled his sword free and pointed it at the table where the scales sat, clearly unused in previous visits by the intruders.
The more heavily-set man immediately moved towards the scales, intimidated by the sight of the sword, and his companion followed him reluctantly, as Marco lowered the sword and joined them.
“You’re a new apprentice, you say?” the taller man, the apparent leader asked, as they all gathered around the scale a moment later.
“I am,” Marco answered, irritated by the question and its tone.
The man emptied a pouch onto the scale, creating a pile of light flakes of plant material, then placed a pair of small weights to counterbalance.
“It’s a half ounce of ginseng,” the man said.
Unexpectedly, Marco reached out and grabbed the pouch, then tilted it and caused a substantial portion more to pour onto the scale.
“It looks more like a full ounce of mandrake root,” Marco said. “That’ll be five silvers by itself,” he told the pair in a no-nonsense tone.
“That price is outrageous!” the man exploded, ignoring the fact that Marco had corrected his mis-stated description of the material.
The price was what Algornia had paid to buy some mandrake, and Marco was confident of his memory. “You don’t have to pay it then,” he said with deceptive mildness, “I’m sure you’ll find it somewhere else for less.” He reached over and lifted the plate of material, tilting it so that it slid back into the empty bag.
“What’s next?” he asked, leaving no room for argument. He felt like he wanted to fight the two men. They had clearly intended to steal value from Gabrielle, and had probably been doing so on a regular basis for some time. “All the other prices are going to be similar,” he said pre-emptively. “I think they’re close to the market price, and since this is so convenient for you, I’m sure you don’t mind paying a premium for having such an easy source.
“And if you want to go elsewhere, I understand, and there are no hard feelings,” he wanted to kick them out, to punish them for their greed and dishonesty.
“Well, Marco, I see you’ve met our friend, Applied,” Gabrielle’s voice spoke from the doorway. “Your breakfast is ready.”
“Gabrielle dear,” Applied’s voice was oily niceness, “you shouldn’t offer food to your apprentice. It’s against our code among alchemists. But since you’ve prepared his meal for him this time, you go ahead and take him along, and we’ll tally up what we owe you. We’ll just do everything quickly while you take care of young Marco,” he drawled out the name.
“I am so sorry, I didn’t know there was a rule about feeding him,” Gabrielle expressed her regret. “Come along, Marco, and eat this meal while it’s hot,” she said, then turned and left the doorway to return to the kitchen.
“You just run along boy, and enjoy your one meal,” Applied sneered at Marco.
It was the gorgon blood that was driving him to want to battle, he realized. Just touching it had allowed the potent material to enter his bloodstream and begin to drive him to anger and conflict. Even as he realized why he was acting so aggressively, he felt his hand sweep his sword up, and then bring it slicing down, grazing along the front of Applied’s shirt so that a pair of buttons was sheared off and fell to the floor.
“We’ll all leave together, right now, empty-handed unless you want to pick up those buttons,” Marco said through gritted teeth. He swung the sword again, within a fraction of an inch of both men’s faces, cowing them further.
Without comment, the two of them fled from the room, running for the door and leaving the building within the moment.
Marco followed them to the door, and with a mighty application of self-restraint, forced himself not to follow them out beyond the shop.
“Marco, are they gone?” he heard Gabrielle’s voice call down the hallway.
He closed the door and threw the latch, then walked back to where the sweet lady stood. “They left. They decided they wanted to start buying their things from the markets instead of borrowing your material,” he lied to her. “And they decided that feeding apprentices might not be such a bad idea, and they said to keep doing it,” he added with a grin.
“I was going to anyway, rule or no rule!” Gabrielle told him in a mock whisper. The two grinned at one another, then walked down the hall to the kitchen, where Marco sat and hastily gobbled down a plateful of food. He drank two large tumblers of water, hoping to flush the gorgon’s blood from his system before he had another reason to grow angry, though he felt that his anger with the two men would have been justified under any circumstances.
He left the kitchen and went back to open the front door, then returned to the work room and started again on the task of cleaning up, organizing, and learning the supplies that were available. He heard Gabrielle go to the front of the shop to also re-open the door to the public. And for the rest of the morning there were no interruptions – no customers came at all. It was quieter than Marco could remember Algornia’s shop ever being.
Sometime after noon, Marco had all the worst of the mess in the work room cleaned up, and he was preparing to start scrubbing the tables when he heard Gabrielle speaking to someone else who had a very low voice. The conversation was noticeable for only two minutes when he heard Gabrielle call him to the front of the shop.
When he entered the public room he found Gabrielle around on the other side of the counter, standing very close to a poor mother with a very ill baby. The woman’s clothing was not only colorless, but the material was thin in places from age and use, stained and frayed and torn. Her skirt was short, only reaching just below her knees, and she wore shoes that had split seams. The woman had long, stringy hair that hung like a curtain around her face, and she kept her face turned down, so that Marco could make out no features until she finally looked up in response to a question from Gabrielle. Her face was severely ravaged with acne scars and open sores, and the wear and tear of an already hard life disfigured her looks even further. Yet Marco judged from her figure that she was at most only a few years older than he was.
In her arms she held a baby, an infant only a few months old, and one that appeared unlikely to live much longer. Its skin was beyond pale, bearing a gray color that was marked only by blue lips. The child was limp, except for one leg that twitched spasmodically, the only real sign that the baby was still alive.
“The doctors say there’s nothing they can do, and the other alchemists say there’s nothing they can do. Can you save my baby?” the woman asked.
“What did the doctors say was the problem?” Marco asked.
“They say there’s a build-up of poisons. I began giving her some scraps from a butcher shop for just a week to start her on solid food, and she starting turning worse and worse over just the past two days,” the mother answered.
If there were a build-up of poisons, then the baby’s body needed to be purified, and purification was the fundamental principal of alchemy, Marco reasoned. It was based on the premise that the removal of impurities would free a person to achieve many great things. In this case, the question was, what kind of impurities were present?
He looked at the baby absently, as his mind raced through all that Algornia had taught him, and all that the book on the island had imprinted upon him. There were four formulae that he thought of that might be related to poisons that turned the skin gray.
Algornia’s formulae involved a mix of largely green plant materials, and Marco didn’t think that it was a plant-based problem, if the meat from the butcher was the cause of the illness. That lef
t the three formulae from the book of Hermes, and the three were similar for more than three quarters of the items needed to prepare them.
“I think I can try to produce a concoction that will improve the baby’s health,” he said slowly, hesitant to publicly declare his intention to tackle the incurable disease. “It will take me a couple of hours to prepare,” he said as his mind ran through the list of ingredients that were common to all three cures, and the ingredients that made the differentiation among them. He had seen everything he needed in the work room, except for one material he would need if he were to use the third iteration of the formulae from the book.
“Come back in two hours,” he said in an affirmative voice.
“Does my baby have two hours?” the mother asked in a teary voice.
“I don’t know,” Marco admitted. “But that’s the fastest I can work in. I’ll go get started right now,” he turned and trotted down the hall to the work room.
He would mix together the items and ingredients that were common to the two formulae he intended to pursue, then separate the base mixture in two, and customize first one of them, and then the other so that he could offer both options for the baby.
He got out the pestle and mortar, and began to grind the first two ingredients into a fine powdery mixture, turning and pressing until his wrist was tired. He set the product aside, and rinsed out the mortar, then mixed together a set of crystals, some sea salt, and a drop of solution. He processed those ingredients and parted them evenly into two bowls as well.
There was one last step in the preparation of the mutual items needed for the two medical options, and Marco worked through those preparations. He set aside the two bowls, then started on the items for the first medicine. It was a medical mixture that relied on items from the sea – extracts from sea water, from sea plants, from fishes and other sea animals. When that was finished, he turned to the terrestrial version, mixing and purifying the various items.
“You look just like Marches, the way you sit there working so intently, unaware of anything else in the world,” Gabrielle spoke, startling Marco, and he wondered how long she has stood there. “The mother is back with her baby, and the twitching is worse.”
“Has it been two hours already?” Marco asked in surprise.
“Nearly,” Gabrielle confirmed.
Marco mixed together all the elements of the sea-based cure, following the necessary steps so that a series of reactions occurred in the proper sequence. The result was a small beaker of cloudy blue syrup. Marco rushed the beaker out to the front room, where the mother and baby stood.
“I have two things to try,” Marco said. “Here’s the first one,” he held up the beaker.
“Take your finger and rub some of this around in her mouth, just a little at first,” Marco suggested.
“What’s the baby’s name, dear?” Gabrielle asked.
“She’s Sybele,” the mother looked up momentarily, then looked down and began her task. She moistened her finger hopefully, then slid the tip of the digit between her baby’s lips, and swirled the finger slowly. She dipped the finger again, and administered another dose, then looked up at Marco.
He examined the child closely, looking for any sign of improvement. The baby whimpered once, then resumed its silent suffering, as the moments of observation stretched out.
“Let me go prepare the other mixture,” Marco blurted out. “I don’t think this is working,” he said, unable to look into the mother’s face where he knew disappointment had to be evident. He turned and left the shop, and hastily began to work his way through the steps in the workroom where he formulated the terrestrial-based option to completion, and carried the dark-colored syrup out to the shop front.
“This is the only other answer I can come up with,” Marco said.
“Thank you for trying,” Gabrielle said. “It feels good to have a real alchemist back in the shop, almost like when Marches was here.”
The mother applied the next formula to the baby’s mouth with her fingertip again, making a first application, then pausing to watch for results. Nothing in the baby’s condition changed, and she dipped her finger a second time, then offered the finger to the baby to suckle on again.
All three of them stared at the baby’s unchanging appearance for several seconds, then the mother began to cry.
“Thank you for trying Marco. It was a good effort,” Gabrielle said consolingly, as she placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.
And then the baby belched, and passed gas, and began to cry, as its color grew slightly less gray.
Marco held the beaker to the mother, who quickly dipped her finger in the syrup and offered it to the baby, who then proceeded to suckle the finger greedily.
“How long since you fed the child?” Gabrielle asked.
“More than two days,” the mother answered.
“Here, smear this on your nipple and tend your child,” the elderly woman advised.
Without a moment’s hint of modesty, the mother shifted the baby and lifted her shirt, then reached over and took the beaker from the embarrassed Marco and poured several drops on her breast, and offered the child a chance to feed. The baby began to eagerly and noisily suckle, and the mother wiped away her tears with her forearm.
“Will she be alright? Is she going to live?” the mother asked.
Gabrielle looked at Marco.
“I can’t make any promises, but the syrup you have is strong, and seems to be the right answer. Try to feed it all to her today, and let her feed and rest,” he advised
“I can’t thank you enough,” the mother looked at both of the other two with bright eyes, and a smile emerged for the first time, for a second. “I don’t have any ready money, but I promise I’ll pay you whatever I can.”
“Dear, we don’t need to try to take money you don’t have. I have a better idea; are you a good cook?” Gabrielle asked.
“I am,” the girl answered. “My mother is the best tavern cook in the entire city, and all her customers are happy. I learned a lot from her.”
“Instead of me getting my tired old bones out of bed early every morning, why don’t you come here of a morning and cook breakfast for Marco?” Gabrielle asked.
The baby fussed momentarily, and the girl lifted the other side of her shirt, poured a few more drops of Marco’s syrup on her breast, then shifted the baby nonchalantly to continue feeding the infant. “I could do that, easily!” the girl answered. Her face was shining with pleasure at the thought. “With Sybele here I’m out of bed early anyway,” the girl answered. “I’ll start tomorrow, if you wish.” Marco looked at her shining eyes and her sudden smile, and thought about what pretty features they were in the otherwise unhappy face.
When Gabrielle agreed, the two of them walked together towards the back of the house to see the kitchen, as Marco returned to the workshop. When he entered the shop he carefully closed the door behind him, then he started dancing a jig of celebration, throwing his arms and legs out heedlessly with joy over the success of the alchemical formula he had prepared. He had saved the baby’s life! He had used only the incredibly, inexplicably imprinted memory of the book he had read just a few days prior, and he had given life back to a baby girl who was surely going to die otherwise. It felt like the greatest achievement of his life – better than rescuing the girls from the pier in the Lion City, better than meeting Kreewhite even. He wished he could tell Algornia about the success, to share his victory with someone who would appreciate the magic of using a formula that had perhaps not been used for hundreds of years.
He finished his celebration, but maintained a wide smile as he began to put away the containers of all the ingredients he had used to develop his cure for baby Sybele.
“Marco?” Gabrielle called from the doorway, and he looked up to see the old lady and the new cook.
“Mirra will be here tomorrow morning to prepare breakfast for the two of us, so don’t chase her away the way you did to Applied,” Gabrielle said.
“And I look forward to serving you,” the girl said in an almost coquettish fashion. Her baby was no longer feeding, but was resting quietly in her arm, snuggled up against her shoulder. “Thank you so much, again, master Marco.”
And with that she was gone.
“So how does it feel to be a hero?” Gabrielle asked when the two of them were alone, as Marco finished putting away the last of his items.
“It felt good,” he grinned. “I’m so glad that worked; I didn’t want to see the baby die. But I’d never actually used that formula before; I’d read it in,” he paused, “a book,” he lamely explained.
“If you can find a way to save people’s lives just by reading a book, then you have a bright future ahead of you,” she praised him. “Marches would be so proud of you. I know he’s looking down from heaven with a smile on his face because you used his workshop to save that baby.”
She left him alone then, and Marco spent the rest of the afternoon moving back and forth from the shop front to the work room, reorganizing a few articles in the work room and tending restlessly to the empty shop front. No other customers came to seek any products, and Marco studied the layout of the shop. It was similar to Algornia’s shop, dark and mysterious on the inside, invisible from the outside.
He liked the look of the other shop, the bright shop he had seen in Barcelon, a shop with open windows and sunshine. While he trusted all things Algornia said and did in terms of alchemy, he wondered if the presentation was attractive to customers, if something different would make them want to come in.
As the afternoon waned, and evening started to fall, Gabrielle came to the front of the shop and closed the doors on business for the day.
“Would you mind if I left for a little while?” Marco asked.
The Gorgon's Blood Solution Page 16
