Cleaning up the shop floor and our rooms took almost no time at all.

The shop floor wasn’t entirely the starkly empty expanse that it was when I’d moved in, but it wasn’t far from it. We had one rack of potions out facing the road, with one each of the Basic Set potions just as a statement that we had them in stock, and a few more racks inside that held the stuff people were actually buying.

Well, buying might have been pushing it. I hadn’t put in the labor or the ingredients for any of these; they were the village stock, mostly predating my arrival. That meant I didn’t have the right to charge the half-crown—fifty scepters, the smallest amount of money that qualified as a transaction—that I otherwise would. As to why they were even at my shop, instead of just distributed from a warehouse or from the guardhouse?

Well, people were swinging by to pick up the potions in person, obviously, and they were doing it in my shop. Ledgers were being filled out that would provide me with statistics to analyze, small talk was leading to acquaintances and even friendships being struck up. Adventurers and Guards were lobbying me for what kinds of combat potions they thought I should work on, and the various civil professionals of Kibosh were doing the same for their own needs.

I took copious notes and made no commitments.

Elaneir—Yarovi singer/chanter, feuding? with Ketka, I’d written, requests are salves for singing (practice without injury, recover faster). Elaneir had alternated between being flowery in speech and being matter-of-fact to the point of being brusque, and he’d come with a teammate and requests from others, mostly mundane but at least one of which was… baffling, inasmuch as it was something that only one person was asking for.

Elemental dagger oils that are “more interesting”, speed enchantments, elemental affinity/attunement increases, anything that gives damage resistance / absorption for someone who tanks hits, not dodges them, short-ranged teleportation in a bottle that moves you when you would be hit.

And there was the last line of my notes on Elaneir’s team: “witchy stuff” but also “sword shit, whatever”, separately.

Teasag Alleaclaíodh was tall and tattooed over every visible inch of her body, corded with muscle and darkly, bitterly hilarious. Her sword gleamed from hilt to tip with subtle sigils that both fascinated and intrigued Kelly, and which Spark described as workings not within the realm of the familiar. The latter wasn’t all that surprising, since Spark hadn’t seen all that much in the way of enchanting regardless, but the former was; it was the first I’d seen of Kelly having any interest in weapons—or, for that matter, anything related to fighting and killing.

A name of mysterious origin and an incredibly magic-dense sword whose inscriptions got Kartom to admit that their understanding, much less creation, as he put it, was beyond him. Incredibly vibrant red hair in a thick, plaited braid down the center of her back and hazel eyes that changed shade depending on her mood.

Everything about her screamed “protagonist energy”.

Still, she had the right to her secrets, and I had no reason to think that just looking like that would make you a magnet for cataclysms that would hone you to a razor’s edge.

Her requests were… fascinating.

Teasag’s sword absorbs elemental energies, my notebook read. Can’t use imbued oils. Absorbs them even in a suspension. Could experiment with a layered suspension that has a metal-philic layer that bonds with a lipophobic layer. Witchy stuff more interesting, totally unrelated to sword. How to define? Runs on vibes, social bonds, consumption of reagents, ideals, what?

Elaneir and Kelly had been visibly, if silently, astonished about our conversation. It had been a few hours afterwards that something she’d said, in hindsight a pun, unraveled for me and I, laughing, told Kelly about it—and Kelly told me in turn that Teasag had generally been way more closed up with new people.

Apparently I was relatable, or relaxing to be around, or something; and I didn’t really know how to feel about that.

The third delving team hadn’t come by at all, though I was pretty sure I’d met a couple of them at meals or around the town. Everyone on Ketka’s team—Iōanna’s team, kind of, but formally Ketka’s team—had swung by, though. Under the guise of chatting, they probed for details about who I was, that I should be getting lessons from Ketka in archery and Yarovi culture.

The bit where they apparently had a betting pool about how many years it would take for me to make something they wanted to buy was… well, meant as a challenge, and taken as one. A good-natured challenge, probably, and I knew that. But ultimately, while I was fascinated with Beyin and their understanding of biology and combat microbiology, and while Deoro, Sayyad, and Iōanna were interesting, they weren’t particularly interested in being friends.

Ketka, on the other hand, was betting on under a year and getting three-to-one odds on it… and cutting me in for a third of it. So really, it was just as well I wasn’t friends with the others; even if I didn’t think I’d be making anything more combat-relevant in my first season in Shem, a year was a nice long amount of time.

A year, I figured, was plenty of time to figure out how to make ammonium perchlorate, and do something exciting with it.

For now, though, I was more interested in industrial applications of alchemy. It was… familiar, comfortingly so, and I did always prefer building things to breaking things.

Improved metalmeld for blacksmithing was at the top of my list, though the Stone Team at Kibosh was apparently beyond the point of needing alchemical help—metalmeld, name notwithstanding, let you weld stone as easily as steel. Quicktan was something of a disaster waiting to happen when I worked on it, but there was an advanced recipe that used calcium oxide, which was going to make it very much Kelly’s job to do the handling—quicklime was not to be fucked around with. A derivative, or maybe precursor, to Gentle Repose could be used to safely anesthetize small animals, and a different one could be used to anesthetize large ones.

The list went on, but my time reading it did not, because Kelly plucked my divine miracle of a notebook out of my hands.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Hey, what—”

“Sophie.” Kelly cut off my exclamation with exasperation, dropping the notebook onto the counter next to me and taking a steady, controlled breath. “I’ve been trying to get your attention. You were ignoring me.”

I bit back a number of things, not a single one of which was fair—or maybe they caught in my throat until I had time to engage my brain. “I’m sorry,” I said instead. “I… wasn’t aware, obviously, got caught up in thinking about… what’s next, I guess.”

“What’s next is lunch, Sophie.”

The use of Skills for the analysis of chemical structures and pathogenic microorganisms necessitates caloric intake.

“Well, sure.” I glanced at the notebook on the counter, studiously ignoring Spark’s burgeoning expertise at weaponizing its earlier dryness. “But then what? I guess I could do some patent validation stuff. The… experience would be useful, in getting… levels, God give me grace, I’m still struggling to take it seriously. But it’s new recipes, so that’s useful.”

“Or,” Kelly said, “you could take seriously the fact that it’s the Fourteenth! Tomorrow is Ease, and today is the runup to Ease, and you are going to talk to Counselor Mera while I help Hitz wrap some stuff up and clean up.”

“Fuck.” I sagged against the countertop. “I forgot about… all of that. The whole not starting any projects thing, but mostly Mera.”

“Lunch first! Or, well.”

“Yeah,” I said, manifesting a weak grin. “Lunch, and probably Mera during it.”

Kelly paused to cock her head to the side and clasp her hands together in a gesture I knew I should recognize, but didn’t. She gave me a beat, and then waggled her eyebrows in a gesture that tasted of the Skills she leaned on to use body language I was familiar with, which—oh, for fuck’s sake.

I gave her the best harrumph I could muster as I walked out the door, hands over my face. She fell in with me, striding side by side, grinning at me wickedly as she bumped hips with me, and I gave up being embarrassed and bumped her hard enough to send her stumbling.

“That would be totally unethical,” I said sternly, in vaguely her direction. “Totally unethical! She’s my therapist, I’m her client. Not happening.”

“Mmhm.”

“A total and unmodified nope, not even thinking about it.”

“Of course not.”

I looked over at Kelly and stuck my tongue out at her as we both lost at least a little bit of our composure. I started snickering, and she giggled wonderfully, which made me laugh more.

We wound up leaning against Rise’s wall—or Rise’s refectory, or Levali’s, equivalently, but for some reason Rise’s wall wasn’t the eastern wall of Kibosh’s eastern district, called Rise. And that was fascinating, and most importantly, it wasn’t thinking about the scarred, subtly clever and cleverly subtle woman who was my therapist, whom I’d be sharing that unexpectedly complete emotional intimacy with.

That thought got me a tickle in the back of my brain, a little piece of impulse born out of some mixture of my observational Skills and some sensory perception I hadn’t noticed.

Or, the thought floated through my head as I turned, those, married to the assistance of an intelligence which bridges, among other things, gaps in understanding.

“Mera.” I nodded at her. “Your timing’s impeccable. As always, I’m guessing.”

“There’ve been a few times,” she said dryly, “when it didn’t turn out that way.”

“I’ll leave her in your hands,” Kelly began, “and—”

Mera moved fast, cutting Kelly off from the door with a sort of casual grace that belied the fact that she quite literally blurred in motion. “Join us.”

“I… okay?”

“Good talk.” The counselor, acting as though she hadn’t done anything at all out of the ordinary, patted Kelly on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. You’re a good girl, and everything is fine.”

“Excuse you!” Kelly flushed, brushing at the hand on her shoulder. “Naga’s Oath, I will punch you, Mera Taphtala.”

“Please don’t. It would hurt your hand, and Rafa would get mad at me.” Mera smirked at my friend, not moving the hand from her shoulder. “But it’s good to see some—”

“Counselor Taphtala,” I interrupted levelly, “my friend has made it clear that she doesn’t want your hand on her shoulder. Kindly remove it.”

“Of course.” The hand was gone without any hint of motion, like it’d never been there. “So, let’s—”

“Mera.” I interrupted her again, voice soft. I’d stepped forwards, into her personal space, and my right hand was resting on her shoulder in exactly the same spot where she’d rested her hand on Kelly’s. “I just want to be clear about something. Using other people to provoke reactions from me or get through to me is not acceptable.”

Her mouth opened momentarily, then shut. Her head tilted just a little bit and twitched, which made her step back and scowl, leaning against the wall. “Fine. Fine!” She threw her hands in the air, just the slightest bit off in the motion—one hand didn’t quite rise high enough, and it moved slower. “You probably wouldn’t be any fun while picking the fight, I bet. Fine. Let’s just forget it. Kelly’s not my client right now, anyway, no point in rubbing her nose in how much she enjoyed that.”

“Mera!”

“I would not,” I said, grinning despite my best efforts, “be any fun. I would just tell James that I didn’t have confidence in your professionalism, which is true—”

“—ouch, judgment from the babies—”

“—and that I’d like to see the senior Circuit Minder at their convenience. No rush, since I have a long and quiet time in Kibosh ahead of me to look forward to.”

Mera’s jaw snapped shut as her entire body stiffened. A genuinely fascinating range of emotions surged across her face and body language in quick succession, slowed only by her wounds and whatever neuropathy she was suffering from. Kelly cackled behind me, an uninhibited release of mirth that was rooted in discomfort—and, yeah, obviously some other emotions too, from the tone of it—and I smiled at her a little after a beat.

Not enough to make it seem like a joke, but enough to make it something she could treat as a joke, if she was minded to make that mistake. And mistake it would be, since I was genuinely not okay with Mera’s violation of Kelly’s boundaries, especially as a tactic to get under my skin; my implication that I’d rather see nobody for counseling than see someone who’d do that was nothing but the truth.

“If you should at any point feel,” she said, slow and serious, “that you’d rather see Mom, please don’t hesitate to tell James that. No judgment, I’m absolutely serious. Walk up to him, say you’d like to see the senior Minder, that’s a great way to phrase it, don’t bother beating around the bush.”

“And if I don’t, in fact, want to see her? If I’d rather you just not do that?”

“I won’t do anything less than my best to fulfill my duties.” Mera gave me another one of those infuriating smirks, the ones that smugly made the claim that she’d maneuvered me into wherever we were in the conversation. “You have an absolute right to ask for a different therapist, and Mom’s a triple. I’m competent, maybe better than she was as a double, but she’s got a century on that. Practically psychic, right at the edge of being a Minder in the old style.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up and let’s go eat,” I groused at her. “You know my buttons way too well; you couldn’t possibly have made that sound so unappetizing by accident.”

I ignored the way her smirk broadened as I walked past her, and equally the edge of uncertainty and regret in it. Instead, I hooked my elbow around Kelly’s, and we promenaded into the refectory, leaning on each other as much physically as we were off-balance emotionally.