Tilly hopped on with a bow and a my-lady, and settled into the seat next to Natty’s, scroll in hand.

Ari caught a glimpse of a lyre, a bunny and a unicorn.

‘Is that a nice story?’ she tried. She’d met Miri at a similar age. It couldn’t go much worse than that.

Tilly frowned. ‘It’s not a story, milady. Granny Gertrude’s asked me to learn heraldry. She says I’ve got to know it before I go to the Royal Academy, else I might offend someone mighty important. Here,’ she pointed to the bunny with its legs outstretched, ‘corny currant.’

That sounded like an unfunny fruit.

~Coney courant! Courant! Running! As in a running hare.~ To Tilly, Claribel said, drawing from her well of patience, ‘That is a useful one to learn. Do you know the story of Ninus and Moracea? Some believe they turned into rabbits and lived happily together. That is why the shields and flags for House Valery, where they supposedly left their human forms behind, are painted with two coneys courant, in azure. Marquis Valery is a dear friend to Aquilon.’

Tilly’s eyes lit up. ‘Is that the story where he thought she’d been bitten by a snake at their meeting point and killed himself, but she wasn’t actually dead, and she had to kill herself because he was? They’re a bit silly, aren’t they? I sat with my Ma for… for a long time, until I was sure that she was never coming back. They were grown-ups. They should have known better.’

Ari laid her hand on top of Tilly’s trembling ones, so tiny, yet already rough and cracked against Claribel’s smooth, soft palms. ‘They are silly. Even if she’d died, he should have tried to live on. That’s the only way to honour her memories.’

*

She’d planned to draw a map of all the places of interests on their way to the apothecary. Much to Claribel’s chagrin, she’d even prepared a pot of ink, a roll of parchment and a quill for the journey.

Instead, she spent it in silence, holding the hands of a child who’d been nothing but a stranger a day ago. She gazed upon the child’s face, upon her downturned eyes and button nose, echoes of her dead mother, and wondered if she’d killed a woman much like Beatrice before. Pull the trigger, and another one gone.

The city of Eirene had come alive again under the morning sun, turned feeble and grey by a mountain of clouds. A butcher, wiping his hands on his blue-striped apron. A sailor, driving a bargain with the cobbler for a batch of his black wax. The owner of The Queen’s Arms, polishing his sign. Sighing, squabbling, smiling, whistling a tune.

Four, eight, half a dozen. All dead by the end of her first mission, as long as they were the other side.

*

It was a flash of red that snapped her out of her reverie.

A wagon rattled past them, taking advantage of a wider turn. Though its canopy was cut from undyed cloth, and its wooden frame had seen better days, the horse that pulled it loomed a head taller than Claribel’s carthorses, and its chestnut coat had been brushed to a gleam.

The wagon driver nodded politely to Claribel’s, looking as haggard as she’d remembered. Hesperus. Finn sat in the back, clutching at the frame that sat above those creaky wheels, craning his neck at a most peculiar building outside.

It took a moment for Ari to realise that they were looking at the Guild of Mages, because it’d looked not much different from the Guild of Barbers just yesterday.

The Master complaining about the banality of the Court of Assistants would be hard pressed to find fault with the Guild’s décor today; instead of a building, it looked more like an oasis in the middle of a desert of cobble and dust. Blush pink climbing roses, living and blooming, covered the walls, and wisteria blossomed in a perfect arch, flowers swaying in the wind. Bluebells and daffodils carpeted the ground, along with a scatter of poppies and pansies, all paying no mind to the seasons.

But she mustn’t be distracted by the same sight as Finn. She had things to do here, people to befriend and betray.

‘Finn!’ she called from her window.

The boy paid her no mind, absorbed by the snowdrops that lined the–

Tilly gasped, clambering over her to the window, all propriety gone with the glimpse of the flowers. ‘Is that really the Guild of Mages?’

The girl’s voice finally cut through to Finn.

‘Yes it is!’ he cried. ‘And it’s going to be my guild. I’m going to be the Guildmaster one day, you see.’

‘Who? You?’ Tilly scoffed, no trace of the girl who trembled at the tale of Ninus and Moracea to be found, nor the one who’d stood begging at the steps of the Guild of Barbers. ‘A scrawny boy like you, born in the rat’s arse of nowhere?’

Finn whipped his head around and glared back. ‘No one cares what a baby has to…’ His eyes widened when he caught sight of Ari. ‘My lady…’

‘Good to see you again, Finn. I was trying to call out to you. This is Tilly by the way. I see you’re getting along nicely.’ Good that she’d abandoned the plan to make the two befriend each other.

‘I… I didn’t know you had an apprentice, my lady. Look! Hes! It’s Master Claribel again!’

Hesperus bowed his head at her and glared at her through familiar eyes, set in an unfamiliar expression. ‘Where are you headed, my lady?’

‘Just to the apothecary,’ said Ari.

‘So are we!’ cried Finn.

But Hesperus’s frown deepened. ‘Since when did you start going to Master Strond? He always visits you at Wingshill House, does he not?’

~Told you this was a bad idea…~

It came more naturally to Claribel than Ari.

‘I have spent another sleepless night in my manor. It holds many memories of the now departed Malory, may the Fated One savour her. I needed some time away from those memories, as much as I cherish them. Have you ever met her?’

He searched for something in her face, and shook his head. ‘I haven’t had the pleasure.’

‘You would have liked her. She was… truly likeable.’ Ari took a deep breath and grasped for a more concrete likeable trait. An extremely foul breath. Unfortunately, it was because they’d reached their destination.

‘And there’s your second reason,’ she said. ‘I’d heard that the place had gone for an unusual look. It is not advisable to blindly believe in rumours, for many are mere falsehoods, so I wanted to see it with my own eyes, but alas, it appears to be true.’

A man who looked like a medieval painting of baby Jesus come to life was swearing up a storm at a boy who scrubbed away at the window of a shop.

‘Master Strond looks to be in a foul mood today, for equally foul reasons.’ Raising his voice, he said, ‘Master Strond, please, show some restraint. I have a child in the wagon.’

‘For fuck’s sake Hesperus, you stay out of this,’ said Master Strond in a nasally voice, without sparing a glance in their direction. ‘Do you see what they’ve done to my shop? This! Do you know what this is?’

He jabbed at the brown sludge that covered the entire window, barely allowing the shelves upon shelves of bottled liquids and jars of herbs to peek through. From the stench that reached Ari, she had an unpleasant answer to the question.

‘It’s shit!’ screamed Master Strond, confirming her suspicions. ‘Somebody’s smeared shit all over my shop window! If they were to do it to a blacksmith’s, then fine, carry on, but I’m a apothecarist! Sick people come here! They come here to get better, not to throw up, for fuck’s sake. There’s so much of it as well. Did the sick fuck have diarrhoea, or did he go around looking for other people’s donations? It’s probably because of this stupid thing!’

The apothecarist flung a picture of a dark-skinned man with a cross through his face to the ground and stamped on it.

Hesperus froze. If he’d glared before, his eyes now pierced Master Strond’s: two shards of blue flame. ‘Looks like your sources are better than mine. I did not expect this kind of look from the shop. Mayhap we should go to another apothecary, my lady. You are many things, Master Strond, but I didn’t take you for a man who’d put up a sign against Khurammian customers.’

‘Wait… My lady…?’ The apothecarist finally tore his gaze away from his shop and took in the carriage behind him. ‘Lady… Claribel. Fuck me sideways. I mean. Don’t. Not that you would. It wasn’t addressed at you at all. Oh shit.’

‘I am sorry to see the state of your shop,’ said Ari, placing a hand on Natty’s trembling arm. He’d be way sorrier to see the state of his shop if she wasn’t here to hold back her friend, but it wasn’t worth dirtying Natty’s unstained jester’s hands on people like these. ‘I am referring to the sign, not the excrement.’

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

‘My lady, please! I don’t give a shi… I don’t give, er, much care for things like these,’ he said, pointing to the crumpled drawing, and leapt back as it burst into blue flames. ‘Ouch! Yes, yes burn it. See? I don’t care, but some of my clients are threatening to go elsewhere unless I put it up! Seriously, my lady, I have been serving you since you first started at the Academy, haven’t I? You know me. I don’t care who hops in bed with whom, and I don’t care if you come from Ventinon or Khuramma. As long as gold keeps hopping into my purse, and people want to come here for their potions and herbs, I’m a happy man.’

‘Luckily, there are two competent master apothecarists in Eirene. I shall hop over across the road and give Master Clement a visit,’ said Hesperus.

*

Where Master Strond’s apothecary was dark, Master Clement’s was bathed in light. He’d painted his shop in white, perhaps to emphasise that it had not been covered in shit. A swathe of green silk proudly nested a crest that he displayed in his window, next to a small fuchsia rosette that she couldn’t place, showing the world not that Khurammians were unwelcome, but that his shop had royal patronage.

For a moment, Ari doubted her memory. Had it really been Master Strond who’d brought up Leolin in the days before kingship, or had the book mentioned Master Clement instead?

~It was Master Strond.~

A boy dressed in jester-like balloon sleeves held the door open as she stepped into a room brighter than the outside.

The walls were tiled with a smooth white stone. A strange blue flame seemed to come from within, shifting under the surface, trapped within the stones.

‘You’ve acquired a whole lot of white mana stones,’ Hesperus marvelled.

‘Yes, yes, don’t touch it. I don’t want grubby hands dirtying my walls.’ The man who must have been Master Clement looked down his nose at him, then turned to Ari and dashed her a toothy smile. ‘Welcome! I see you have finally seen the light, my lady. There is a reason that His Majesty has bestowed his royal patronage on me. You shall not be disappointed.’

‘I think I already am.’

Behind Master Clement, the hairless head of Master Keating peeked at her. Today, instead of his guild robes, he wore a fur-trimmed half-cape, along with an orange pair of leggings that’d look tolerable on Duke Aquilon.

‘I bid you a good morning, Lord Keating.’

‘And a good morning too you too, Lady Claribel.’ He lounged on a cream leather bench, draped in ermine. ‘I see you are having a little reunion today. Just what I like to see! My alumni, getting along, sharing ideas… Master Clement, don’t just stand there. Get Hes and his boy some tea and a seat as well.’

‘But–’

‘He is a friend of mine, and a friend of Lady Claribel’s. Neither of us take kindly to our friends not getting their due respect. Do you know who that man is? He is Hesperus of the blue flames!’

The seat, the tea and an apology arrived immediately. Master Clement personally presented them each with a satin-lined box of a white mana stone, embossed in gold with a baby that looked suspiciously like Master Strond. ‘Beautiful, aren’t they? I guess it’s not much to you, Lady Claribel. After all, it is thanks to you that we have use for white mana stones at all! I bet all the walls in your manor are heated by them already.’ They were not. Despite the wealth of, well, everything else, Ari hadn’t seen any of the stones in Claribel’s manor. ‘Well, I still marvel at them daily. These are from the mines in Auster run by the Temple of Merta. Top quality stuff.’

Claribel took hold of Ari’s hands and pushed the stone away. Her voice grew cold and quiet. ‘Have you ever been to one of their mines, Master Clement?’

‘Oh yes! It was quite the pilgrimage. The mountains offered quite a view. You could even see a sliver of Lake Una in between two of the peaks. It was a little hard to breathe though. I had to drape myself on a donkey when we climbed to the top.’

‘I see.’

‘Feel it! Once the stone is charged by a fire mage, they keep the place as warm as springtime in the depth of winter. I am planning to set some in the floors. Then you can dance along my shop floor bare foot, should the fancy take you.’

‘I am here for medicine, not dancing. Your shop looks very bare. Where are your herbs?’

‘Cleanliness is goodliness. That is my motto,’ said Master Clement, bobbing his head at her. ‘Quite a difference from Master Strond’s apothecary, I should imagine. I keep all my herbs in the backroom, neatly stored in drawers, away from any form of faecal matter.’

‘Then bring me one dram of your finest turmeric.’

‘I…’

Claribel tossed two coins onto the table, and the balloon-sleeved boy fetched the turmeric at once. She dumped a spoonful into her cup of water and swirled it, gently. It frothed near the top, staining the water dark yellow.

‘I hope you did not pay for the finest turmeric, like I have just done.’

‘What do you mean?’ Master Clement sniffed at the yellow powder. ‘It smells like turmeric. What else could it be?’

‘It has been mixed with some other powder and a yellow dye. Starch, if we are lucky, or chalk, if we are not. This is not pure turmeric. I cannot have it added to my medicine. I hope you can forgive me for asking, Lord Keating – as I do owe you a debt from being short with you at the meeting yesterday – how have you been feeling since switching to Master Clement’s service?’

‘Much the same… though there’s always a dosage increase that comes with my age. I guess young ones like you and Hes will find it difficult to understand. Once you live past your thirties, your body starts making an enemy of yourself. Just yesterday, my knee creaked. I had to ask it, “Are you a door?” Unfortunately my wife thought I was talking to her, and thought I was making a jab at her for being nailed by the carpenter, so I had to spend all evening explaining to her that if I were to make a jab, I would most likely injure my shoulder.’

‘Then I would like to inspect your finest cumin seeds, and the bark from your cinnamon too. After all, we have two fire mages, both dear friends of mine, and I have heard from my own Cook that the spice merchants have been getting more untrustworthy as of late.’

‘Ooh, ooh, ooh, can I do this one?’ Finn clutched the cumin. ‘Do I put it in my water?’

‘This one is easy. Just scrunch up the seeds in your hand, then show me.’

Finn crushed it, and dusted the sorry seeds into his cup. ‘Eww. My hand’s gone black.’

‘Cumin mixed with grass seeds stained with charcoal.’

‘Surely not!’

‘And this is not cinnamon,’ she said, tapping the bark against the table. ‘It is cassia. It is easy to be fooled by the beautiful boxes and silks that they use to wrap their spices, but alas, for us mages, it is the contents that truly matter. Until you are able to acquire a new supply of herbs and spices, it is with a heavy heart that I must leave your clean white walls behind and go and reason with Master Strond.’

‘You’re not serious? You’re going back to Strond?!’ cried Master Clement.

‘That’s the trouble with Lady Claribel,’ said Master Keating, gathering the ermine from his bench and rising to his feet. ‘The depth of her loyalty is, at times, unfathomable.’

‘Are you leaving too? But… But you’ve always come here!’

‘And the depth of my loyalty is not much different from this patch of spillage.’ He flung Claribel’s cup of lumpy turmeric water onto the floor. ‘Orpiment, alum and lime water. Is that what is making the yellow? Poison?’

‘I… I…’

‘Are you coming, Hes?’ Master Keating held the door open for him.

‘I have followed my lady’s recommendations in apothecarists for ten years, and it has served me well.’

~What? When did that happen?~

‘It seems I was right to trust your advice, my lady, as your knowledge when it comes to detecting contaminations is–’

‘It’s like you’re an old lady at the market!’ cried Finn. Hesperus’s mouth fell open, and he regained his wits too slowly to stop the boy digging himself into a deeper hole. ‘“Hey, you! You say your chicken’s ten pounds? I’ll tell you what’s ten pounds. The stones you put in its tummy! Why would you do that? Do you have rocks for brains? Poor bird.” That sort of thing. It’s amazing!’

*

Ari was prepared this time, and held her breath as they crossed over to Master Strond’s side.

‘And this is me!’ cried Natty, slinging her knapsack over her shoulders. ‘I don’t think I can walk into that shop, even if he’s sorry.’

‘Wait… Where are you going?’

‘I was always going to leave you around here. There’s a popular bathhouse down the road. Don’t panic! I always bring a towel.’

‘You’re… going to the bathhouse?’

‘I’d ask you to come with me, but–’

~No! Certainly not!~

‘See? You wouldn’t enjoy it either. You have to be a hundred percent naked in there, not just ninety-nine.’ Nowhere to hide a dagger. Ari shuddered. ‘Anyways, I deserve a long soak in the hot spring water after being this close to a shitbag. Don’t get too close. You won’t be able to shake the stink.’

The stink found them. Before Hesperus had even reached for the door, Master Strond flung it open with a full-body bow.

‘My lady… My dear Hesperus, oh please give me another chance! I beg of you! It’s been a difficult time for me, and it’s inexcusable, I know, I lost my way. It’s just… as you well know, I lost my royal patronage despite all those years of looking after His Majesty, but you know, His Majesty’s decisions are no doubt wise. Some of my previous loyal patrons refused to frequent my humble apothecary after that, so…’

‘He lost all the families sworn to Carnell after saying that Duchess Carnell’s big toe looks surprisingly like a turnip.’ Master Keating cackled.

‘Keating! You! What are you doing here?’

‘It’s Lord Keating to you today. Trying to outlive my wife. It’s not easy when she’s near twenty years younger and not a mage. Master Clement is apparently not helping by mixing grass seeds and charcoal into my cumin.’

‘Fucking idiot. What if you lost control? The whole of Eirene might burn.’

‘Calm down. I’m not Hes. It’s quite simple, really. Master Symonem would bury me, and Master Rodber would enjoy it very much. A bit rich of you to call Master Clement an idiot when you’ve managed to piss off Lady Claribel though.’

‘Look, it’s just… The only other major patron I’ve got left is Lady Langsley, and she won’t go in a shop unless it’s got a no-Khurammians sign. You know how she is about them. It’s been difficult to meet the monthly payments to La Petite Mort, so in a moment of weakness, I… I just…’

‘Why are you making monthly payments to them?’

Racketeering. Once upon a time, there’d been a man big enough to dwarf Goliath who’d made his living that way, sitting on a throne of bones of men he’d robbed of life. From femurs to mandibles, he’d created a mask-like face on the back of his seat. ‘Are you here to look for a piece of your friend? He had beautiful clavicles. I have found a space for him near the right brow.’ Only the left eye was made from nothing: a hollow waiting for the ultimate secret.

‘Where is it? The stone that’d grant eternal life?’

‘Are you mad?’

‘Looks like I’ll have to break your jaw a second time for you to tell me.’

‘Do you think we live in a world with magic and elves or something? Because we don’t. If I had a stone that could grant eternal life, do you really think Max would be dead right now? Do you?’

Cain shrugged. ‘[Redacted] told me everything. Told me I could beat it out of you. He’s not mad. You know it.’

‘… Who’s [Redacted]?’

‘Everyone is!’ Master Strond’s nasally voice cut through the buzzing in Ari’s head. ‘Even Master Clement is wise enough to display their rosette. Their golem-enhanced guards are very… well-trained. No one needs pay them gold, of course, but it certainly does help to keep your shops safe.’

Just then, the door swung open, and Master Strond squeaked in alarm. ‘Don’t smash my shop! Don’t beat me up! I am but a harmless old man! I will be paying Madame Lucretia, I promise!’

A messenger boy dipped inside, stomping his feet and huffing into his palms. ‘Lady Claribel! They did say you might be here. Sir Edwin sends his greetings from the crematorium, which, I have to say, is almost pleasant now that winter’s starting to bite.’

‘I hope he has not sent you just to report a new way of keeping warm. I have been recommended a floor of white mana stones this morning already.’

‘I’m afraid it’s something about the body, my lady,’ said the messenger boy, clearing his throat. ‘Sir Edwin would like to inform you that he has made a new discovery this morning. Would you like to see it before the body’s cremated?’