My snoring remedy wasn’t quite an overnight success, but it was close. Glen and Daniel bought a healthy supply. Then they told their friends, who bought even more of the stuff. After some initially good feedback, I put a few vials out on the next market day and found they had all been snatched up by lunchtime. There was definitely demand. Tea may or may not be to your taste, but snoring is a universal bane of humankind.

I played with the recipe of my new flagship product a few times, adding this and dialling back that. One batch was a bit on the weak side, and I had to refund a couple of customers to keep them coming back. On the next batch I overcompensated wildly, and I had to refund a couple of customers to keep them from calling the city guard.

“I’d like to chat to you about your snoring remedy, madam?” a red-faced gentleman with a moustache that met his sideburns said one afternoon.

I was busy bagging up a hefty sack full of tea for another client, so I was probably a bit blasé when I said, “Not strong enough, sir? No problem, I’ll sort you out with a free pouch of midnight to help you settle in tonight. The combo works wonders.”

“I daresay it does. My wife had the very same combination after dinner last night. As a result of which, she promptly fell asleep in her pudding,” he fumed.

“Ah.” I knew I shouldn’t ask, but I had to know, “Did she snore?”

Apparently she didn’t, but she did almost drown.

I refunded that one and handed out a bunch of freebies and apologies with it too. Luckily, I hadn’t sold too much of that particular batch, so the backlash wasn’t too dreadful. I put the rest of the unsold vials away in storage, labelling it “Hush Now”.

The setbacks were a little frustrating, but I learned a lot. I’d tested every batch myself before putting it out for sale, but all I could really tell was whether or not I slept, and, crucially, whether or not I woke up again. I asked Mirra and Alicia if they heard any snoring, of course, but I definitely needed to take a more scientific approach to these tests. Maybe I could find a volunteer with very low self-esteem? No, probably better to have someone observe me trying the products first. That felt like the responsible thing to do.

I debated testing my new recipes out on Clive, but even with his personality that didn’t feel ethical. Although, if I could train him to take notes — and not murder me in my sleep — then he might make for a semi-decent assistant. Food for thought.

With the snoring remedy perfected — basically back to the original recipe — our reputation around the market grew. There were still plenty of naysayers around, who knew us for relatives of Iffan’s, but for every person who harumphed as they walked past, there were a dozen more who rushed forward with coin in hand, ready to buy our bench clean.

“Morning, Mel!”

“It’s actually afternoon, Mr. Brarrager.”

“Is it? That just shows how well I slept!”

You gentleman, Mr. Barrager. “More of the snoring remedy today?”

“Please, and I’ll take some of that tea in the red linen; smells divine.”

“Thank you! I grew the berries for it myself.”

This was a pretty normal interaction these days, with spitting at my feet becoming increasingly rare.

Now that I’d had my first successful dalliance with alchemy — and not killed anyone in the process — I felt I had licence to finally start making some of the incredible remedies Iffan had cooked up over the years. I’d been gathering the ingredients for long enough, it was time for Curious Mel to come out and play.

And play I did… Well, work. It just happened to be fun.

If Alicia and Mirra thought the end of the snoring project would see me settle back into a routine that saw me spend more hours with my sheets than at work, they were sorely mistaken. I whizzed around my little lab at all hours, cooking, mixing, mashing, boiling — the works. With the ingredients I had in stock I was able to cook up eight recipes from Iffan’s old books, including a headache tablet and a pretty handy foot cream. It was such a thrill to see my little pantry of poultices grow.

Of course, what I made came down to what I could make, which at times was a bit limiting.

“Mirra, you don’t happen to have a stutter I’ve never heard, do you?” I asked my nanny turned colleague.

She blinked at me. “Why?”

I ran my thumb over the jar of syrup I held. “Iffan reckoned this would help stutter sufferers, but I have no one to give it to.” I tutted. “No stutter then?”

“N—No.”

“Aha!”

“No,” she said, as firmly as Mirra says anything.

“Dang it.”

So, yeah, they weren’t all big money-spinners. The headache tablets were by far the most useful, but I lacked the tools to make them in an appreciable quantity. Still, I had nonupled my range of medicines, even if some of them were duds. I couldn’t make the rest of Iffan’s portfolio without some specialised equipment, though. That meant seeking outside help.

I went to Fealux with some names and drawings of apparatus I could make use of, and received a lengthy lecture on how inter-city trade works. It finished with, “In short, it is not lucrative for me to do your shopping.” That told me. Fealux was a generous sort, though, so he offered to take me to someone who could help: Walsh.

The idea of meeting Walsh frightened me. I knew already that he considered me his competition, which did not inspire me with confidence, but there was a lot more to my misgivings. Nobody had actually stated the fact, but I was pretty sure that Walsh was a druid. That made him the first and only druid I’d met, other than Iffan. On paper, that’s a chance I should jump at. However, Walsh was not just a druid, he was a druid who had failed to come to the aid of Iffan and his friends. He was a druid who turned his back on other druids.

Stolen novel; please report.

A full week ticked by before I took Fealux up on his offer. That week was full of a lot of soul searching.

I asked myself over and over again if I would have helped Iffan fight back the floodwaters, knowing it would have exposed me as a druid: something I had been striving my whole life to hide. If Iffan had asked me, uncle to niece, then yes; I would have definitely helped. If I hadn’t known him? If I had a successful life here in Magalat, maybe with a family of my own to think of? Possibly. Possibly not.

It was with this realisation at the forefront of my mind that I decided to meet Walsh, and try my best to give the man a fair chance.

Fealux took me over to the West Bank when next he was in town. To get there, we crossed an ornate bridge, most notable for having a wrought iron railing of twisted, woven strands. Such a quantity of metal must have cost Magalat half the forest in lumber. This set the tone for the rest of my excursion to the West Bank.

We arrived in a district called Lofton, that was neither high, nor built in someone’s attic. The name was instead well represented in the way its residents walked with their chins adjacent to their foreheads. Everyone’s clothing was pressed, their hair was coiffed, even their pets looked like they’d been valeted. I thought I’d picked up quite the sense of style in Magalat — what with colour now featuring regularly in my wardrobe — but Lofton sent me straight back to feeling the Braxus peasant.

Of course, the lairds and ladies of Lofton didn’t dare get their shoes muddy, so the roads were not just cobbled, they were tiled! Little rectangles of blue and brown stone interlocked to make patterns that I honestly wouldn’t mind on my bedroom wall. To protect their princely and princessly pates, latticework of fine ebony wood shaded the streets, draped in brightly dyed cloths that were so blemish free they must be changed on a daily basis. It was all ridiculous, but the ebony irked me the most — it doesn’t grow locally! All Magalat has is wood; why in the Glade would you import more?

At least some good came from my awkward amble to Walsh’s shop: by the time we got there, I was quite sure he didn’t really think of me as competition.

“Ah, here we are,” Fealux said, looking as comfortable in Lofton as he did in our Osston. “Are you ready?”

I looked at the door. It was set with twin panels of stained glass. “I don’t know. Is there some kind of, like, etiquette I need to observe? You know, herbalist to herbalist.”

He leaned it. “There is a secret handshake you will be expected to perform. Only then will he know you for what you are, and permit you to speak with him.”

“Really?”

“No.” Fealux’s pointed teeth made a mosaic of his grin.

“That was mean,” I rebuked.

“Just be yourself, Mel. He is just a man. You have nothing to fear.” Then he opened the door.

We were greeted in the doorway by an attendant. The shop wasn’t a shop at all, at least not in the fashion I was accustomed to. You did not come here to browse, then take your goods to the counter to be bagged up for the homeward journey. This was a place where one’s servants came to place an order with Walsh’s servant, which would then be dropped to the desired address by yet another servant.

I hadn’t even met the man, and already Walsh and I had experienced a culture clash.

The servant went off to inform his master about the odd pair of visitors who had arrived unannounced — so rudely, if I gauged the attendant’s expression correctly — which allowed Fealux and I to look around a bit.

Seeing as the shop was not a shop — at least not in what I would consider the “proper” sense — Walsh had plenty of leave to give over the ground floor of his property as a warehouse. It was a well organised warehouse, but it was essentially just a warehouse. An apothecary’s warehouse is far from a boring place for a burgeoning mixologist, though; I was in heaven.

I danced through row upon row of Walsh’s creations, marvelling at the range, the ingenuity, the complexity of the ingredients, the way he managed to get those stubborn little bubbles out of his tonics. If there was a problem, Walsh had conjured up a solution to it. It was astonishing. I felt out of my league in the best possible way. I felt like there was so much potential. Anvil, the things I could maybe one day achieve. The things I could make!

“He will see you now,” the attendant said, indicating a spiral staircase to the floor above.

Now I was nervous for a whole different reason; I was about to meet my brand-new idol.

“Ah, Walsh! How lovely it is to see you again,” Fealux said to the apothecary.

“Fealux,” Walsh greeted concisely. “This is highly irregular.”

That was the last and only time I saw Walsh standing still. With the bare minimum of hospitality completed, Walsh went straight back to work. He zipped around from bench to bench, stirring here, stoking there. I thought I’d started to multi-task, but Walsh was an entire assembly line.

“You have had too much of the regular, I think.” Fealux chuckled. “It has made you old and boring.” He had that cheeky tone he employs with Alicia — he must know Walsh well.

“Hm,” Walsh replied.

Perhaps not that well.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Walsh. I’m Mel,” I decided to try.

“From Iffan’s shop.”

“Yes.” He was not making this incredibly easy. “Sorry I haven’t introduced myself until now.”

“Not sure why you would have,” he said over an enormous bag of sugar.

I took a moment to get a good look at the man while he worked, and found it impossible. Part of the problem was that Walsh never stood still long enough to get a good look at him, but there was another issue to contend with.

Walsh gave every impression that he was a gaunt, beak-nosed, white-crowned scholarly sort, with high cheekbones, and glasses balanced so precariously that they were more use to his nostrils than to his eyes. The trouble was, Walsh wore no glasses, had some nondescript hair colour, was average to chubby, and I couldn’t say any more about his nose than that he probably had one. Still, every time I blinked, his image reset, and he was the straight-backed parrot wizard again.

“Mel is getting Iffan’s shop up and running again,” Fealux said, to a chorus of zero interest. “She could do with a few specialist supplies to make some of the advanced recipes.”

“Bad business to supply the competition,” Walsh said.

“Come now,” Fealux laughed, “Merchant to merchant, you and I both know there are more than enough headaches and boils to go around.”

“Bad business indeed,” Walsh repeated. He turned his back to us. “I make few teas. Stick to tea.”

Stick to tea? I felt my jaw ache from clenching. He was talking about me like I was a child.

Fealux could see my temper rising, and made a last attempt to get in there before it spilled out of me. “Please, old friend. I know you cannot seriously be threatened by a little healthy competition. Look at this place. You are a successful man. You cannot expect Mel to make a living on tea alone.”

“She will do fine with the tea.”

Oh, so it’s because I’m a woman, is it? Is that how it’s going to be, Walsh?

I could see Fealux floundering. “Walsh, come. What if I were to give you a little discount on your next transaction? Would that sweeten the deal?”

“Sir, lady,” Walsh said, halfway through flambéing a husk of some fruit, “as you can see, I am terribly—”

I couldn’t take his attitude anymore. I filled my lungs and near shouted, “What kind of a dr—”

“Anvil and Forge, are you mad!” Walsh snapped.

He was looking at me for the first time since our brief, vile conversation began. That’s fine, I can death stare with the best of them, Walsh.

“Sir? Everything alright?” the attendant called from the base of the stairs.

“Fine,” he shot back.

The fruit husk burned to an ash. I carried on staring.

Then Walsh swept the ash to one side with an almighty grunt of annoyance. “Leave the list with my attendant. He will deliver what you need, after you have paid the invoice.” Then to Fealux, “Five percent off my next shipment.”

“Two,” Fealux said automatically.

Walsh didn’t even need to say he was in no mood to haggle.

Fealux sighed, “Five. Just this once, mind.”

“Mm,” Walsh dismissed us with.

And there it was, my first interaction with a druid who wasn’t my uncle.

Not a great advertisement.