Nomusa and Xaron didn’t take well to the change of plans. “But we just finished a job,” Xaron complained as he lay back on the divan. “Can’t it wait a day? I had big plans to stuff myself and practice my juggling.”

Nomusa snorted. “You think that’s important? I was going to see what I could catch at the taverns. If this is what it sounds like, I might not have another chance for a span — faresh, perhaps even longer!”

I crossed my arms. “He said the earlier the better. I’ll be waking you both before dawn.”

Xaron sat bolt upright. “Before dawn?” he exclaimed, sloshing wine over the already much-stained divan in his violent protest. “That’s preposterous!”

I only smiled in response.

True to my word, I roused my wine-logged companions in the gray light before dawn, and with much cajoling and promising, managed to herd them to Maesos’ shop within the turn of the sandglass. It was gray and drizzling outside, but my mood was better than it had been all during the season. Xaron, on the other hand, gazed out miserably from the hood of his cloak. “Did it have to be so early?” he complained for the tenth time. “It was supposed to be a day off.”

“If you don’t want to feel bad,” I chided, “you shouldn’t drink a barrel of wine at a time. You’re not Nomusa.”

“I wanted the record,” he muttered as Nomusa smirked at him. Unlike Xaron, she was as alert and ken as ever. As far as a night of wine and revelry went, last night had been a tame occasion for her.

I raised my hand to knock again, but it opened and revealed a familiar grinning face. “Well, if it isn’t my favorite Finches!”

“Your only Finches, I hope,” I said with a smile, entering as he stepped aside. I would have hugged him, but he had on his glass smithing gear, and I wasn’t keen on smearing ash and sweat over myself. As Xaron and Nomusa entered after me, I studied my old friend. His white hair stuck out at odd angles, seared gray at the ends where he hadn’t been careful with hot tongs. His shirt, ragged and ridden with holes, hung loosely from his thick body under a dirty apron. But his kindly eyes had always been his best feature and made all the rest endearing.

“Sit down, sit down.” Maesos gestured to a few chairs he had out for customers. Xaron gratefully complied, and I politely followed suit, while Nomusa continued to stand. Maesos shook his head with a small smile at her. “Always so stubborn. But no matter — I know you’re allergic to small talk when there’s interesting business about, Airene.”

“Yet here you are, chattering away,” I said with an arched eyebrow.

Maesos bellowed a laugh. “Guilty indeed! Well then, here’s what I have.” He cleared his throat and leaned forward. “Late yesterday, I received word from an acquaintance that a certain patrician, one Agmon of Iris, fell dead in the middle of the evening worship.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Xaron protested. “People fall dead all the time. Especially old people.” He raised his eyebrows irreverently at Maesos.

The glass smith chuckled. “Indeed they do, though don’t expect it of me yet! But it was the manner in which he died that made this curious.” He cleared his throat again. “It appears that his, ah, stomach burst open.”

“Burst open?” Nomusa said with a frown.

“That’s right. And what’s more… Red pyrkin spilled out.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

I narrowed my eyes. “Hold on. Agmon of Iris… Wasn’t he portly, liked styling his beard, particularly fond of red robes lined with gold?”

Maesos nodded. “The very one.”

“He owned a glass shop himself, didn’t he?” I pressed. “Was it the glassblower who warned you?” Before Maesos could answer, my mind galloped ahead to its own conclusions. “Oh, Eidola above. He’s worried that people will think it was you? Some kind of sick way of trying to get ahead of the competition?”

The glass smith laughed nervously. “Sharp as usual, Airene. My dabbling in pyrkin seems to be causing me issues once again.”

I glanced around at the man’s pieces of glass on display around us. He enhanced the look of his glass through the use of pyrkin, organisms that were like moss but glowed with their own light. It was this feature that gave them their name, as it was assumed pyrkin somehow drew the energy for their luminescence from the Pyrthae. Most Oedijans used pyrkin cultures to light their homes, as it was much cheaper than wood or candles.

But though they were widely used for illumination, pyrkin weren’t supposed to be used in other ways. Even including them in glass was skirting the laws that forbade any meddling into the Pyrthaen elements, which had been put in place a century and a half earlier after a period of rule by wardens — as those who channeled magic were called — when a certain group of them had used their powers to brutally rule over the polis. Since their overthrow, wardens had either been confined to the Acadium, which amounted to a prison masquerading as a place of learning, or they were hunted down as feral beasts. Like Xaron would be if he were ever discovered.

Playing with pyrkin wasn’t on the same level as being a warden. But if something came along to draw attention to it, it could be just as dangerous.

He cleared his throat. “It was not the glassblower who told me, but another commercial associate of Agmon’s. I may not have mentioned him before, as… well. His practices are even more suspect than my own.”

I was taken aback by that, and I studied Maesos in this new light. It was disconcerting to hear he kept secrets from me. Yet as little as I liked it, I supposed he was allowed to hold back whatever he liked. “We’d best hear of them now at least.”

“Ah, yes.” Maesos wrung his hands. “You see, his trade is… tinctures. With its primary ingredient being pyrkin.”

That set my mind spinning. Before I could decide which question I wanted to ask, Xaron said incredulously, “Tinctures? He makes drinks with pyrkin? And people actually buy this stuff?”

“There are many strange properties to pyrkin, Xaron,” Maesos said, his brow drawing down. “It has the appearance of moss, yet moves as if it were a creature. Most strains emit light constantly and need only water to survive for many years. To say nothing of the unique qualities that each individual variety possesses. So yes, Xaron, people buy and drink his tinctures. And many say they’ve seen the changes they’ve desired from them.” He touched the balding pate on his head. “By the Eleven, but I could use one for hair growth myself.”

Xaron held up his hands. “Fine, fine. But that still has to be illegal.”

The glass smith nodded. “Indeed. Which is why I’ve kept it hidden from you all this time.” He glanced at me, an apology in his eyes now. I nodded to him. When he kept a secret to protect a friend, I couldn’t hold it against him.

As the moment started to stretch, I asked, “What is the name of this apothecary?”

Maesos hesitated a moment. “Eazal,” he said finally. “Eazal of Sandglass.”

“Wait,” Xaron said, his eyes scrunched up. “Eazal… I know that name.” His eyes widened. “Oh. That explains a lot.”

“What?” I demanded.

My fellow Finch looked at me. “I’ve actually met Eazal before.”

“That seems unlikely,” Nomusa observed drily.

Xaron ignored her. “You know how my mother used to dabble in mixtures herself, right? Well, before her accident, she would meet with apothecaries and other people who created mixtures from around Oedija. One of the few she actually respected for his craft was Eazal.” He shook his head. “He didn’t strike me as a criminal sort, but I guess I was twelve at the time and wouldn’t have known.”

I frowned. “I don’t suppose you know where he lives?”

Even as Xaron shook his head, Maesos spoke. “Even if you did, he doesn’t reside there any longer. In his message, Eazal informed me that he was going to flee in light of everything, as he would be held in the highest suspicion by the Tribunal should his association with Agmon come to light.”

I mulled over that. If the Tribunal, the branch of government responsible for administering justice, was already on his trail — as well as, perhaps, whoever had killed Agmon — maybe Xaron’s acquaintance with our mysterious apothecary could come in useful. If we could find him.

“While we discover where he’s hiding, we may as well visit the sanctuary he died in,” I reasoned. “Can you point us in the right direction?”