For the next few weeks, Taliana kept her eyes peeled for Ilyan’s secret.

Turns out, he had quite a few.

What was with the menagerie of objects in his front display cabinets? Customers gawked over them, studying them from every angle, peppering the old man with questions. Each day the answers changed. The mirror mobile, alone, had more than half a dozen explanations. “Keeping the mirror suspended wards off bad luck from broken glass.” “The mirror reflects the many dimensions of the unseen realm.” “A wandering mage gave me this mirror with the promise that I would never let it touch the ground.”

More intriguing, however, were the various ingredients on the mixery shelves that Taliana had never seen in other labs. Sulfic rock. Magnolia blossoms. Over a dozen jars of rosewood powder. What did Ilyan use them for? She never saw him touch them. And yet . . . sometimes, when brewing batches, he would send her into the sellery or out to his herb garden to fetch something. Was it a cover? Was he adding secret ingredients when she wasn’t present?

On a couple occasions, when Ilyan was deep in conversation with a customer at the counter, Taliana snuck into the mixery and peaked into corners. Her discoveries only yielded more questions. What was the mysterious stack of ledgers with each entry written in code? Why was there a trapdoor in the floor, leading only to an empty crawl space? And what was up with the crossbow hidden behind one of the storage shelves?

And then there were the passables. A couple times a week, someone would come by, flash the metal token, and disappear into the mixery to talk with Ilyan. One frequent guest was a korrik—a stocky, reptilian race, with hard scaly skin and claws on their hands and feet. This korrik had lost an arm at some point, and walked with a limp. He would stump into the shop, carrying a crate under his remaining arm, and flash his passable to Taliana with an inaudible grunt. He would meet with Ilyan only a few minutes before stumping out again.

Another frequent visitor was a tall, thin man in a green vest. Ilyan would talk with him in the back room for up to an hour, their voices too low for Taliana to overhear. She peaked in once to see them both leaning over one of Ilyan’s coded ledgers, until Ilyan spotted her and waved her off.

Marian, the aristocratic lady, had a passable as well. The next time she came by, she spent a good chunk of the afternoon in the mixery, talking and laughing with Ilyan like old friends.

One morning, a young man stepped inside the shop. He was short for a human (though still taller than Ilyan), with a round face and curly brown hair. He poked around the front of the room, peering at each item in Ilyan’s odd collection. Two different times, Taliana reminded him not to touch anything.

Shortly after another customer arrived, the young man approached the counter. “Passable,” he said, flashing a token. Taliana glanced over and opened the counter door for him as she kept talking with the other customer.

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Only once the other customer had left did Taliana notice the voices from the mixery were louder than usual. Scarcely a minute later, the young man hurried out. “Please reconsider,” he said over his shoulder. “You are leaving a fortune on the table.”

Ilyan followed a moment later, walking more briskly than Taliana had ever seen him move. “Show your face in my shop again, suborner, and I’ll call the city guard!” he snapped. Ilyan escorted the young man to the door, slamming it behind him so hard that the mirror mobile toppled over in its case.

“Master?” Taliana said.

Ilyan closed his eyes, letting out a deep breath. He fixed the toppled mirror, then walked slowly over to the counter.

“Taliana,” he said, holding up the young man’s emblem. “Examine this.”

Taliana did. She felt the difference at once. “There’s no groove on the reverse.”

“Forgery,” Ilyan said, pocketing it. “And an excellent one. Visibly, it was passable as a passable. That’s why you must always physically handle it.”

“What did he want?”

Ilyan hummed to himself for a bit before answering. “He offered a sizeable sum of money for some confidential information that I flatly refused to provide.”

Taliana stared at him in shock. “He tried to buy your secret?”

Ilyan blinked. “Did I say that?”

“In more words.”

“Hmm. Are you sure you were never a scribal student?”

*****

MISTAKES

Taliana always arrived three hours before the shop opened to the public, to help Ilyan mix potions and restock the shelves behind the counter.

Today, she was preparing a batch of aquaheal, a cream prized for its ability to treat minor wounds and soothe burns. The process was meticulous, requiring the perfect balance of seaweed extract, sheep’s milk, and ground dandelion fluff, simmered gently over a low flame for exactly forty-three and a half minutes.

“Stir it constantly, Tavacado,” Ilyan reminded her from where he tended a different cauldron. “We don’t want the mixture to curdle.”

“I am not going to let it curdle,” said Taliana, who had only paused for a moment to re-tie the sash of her lab coat. The thought made her curious. “In all your years, Ilyan, what’s the worst mistake an apprentice has ever made?”

“Well, I once had an apprentice spill a whole bag of peppermint seeds.”

“Ha. Ha. Not funny.”

Ilyan thought for a moment, tugging absently on one of the many loose threads dotting his coat. “I once had an apprentice confuse serafloris powder with seraferous powder while making a tonic for the winter flu."

Taliana’s eyes widened in horror. “What happened?”

“The customer was very confused when her children, who had been bedridden with high fevers, suddenly jumped out of bed and started dancing.”

“Really?” Taliana exclaimed. “Seraferous-induced euphoria cures fevers?”

“Not at all,” Ilyan said. “Soon as the potion wore off, they were right back in bed, worse than before due to the overexertion. Took them five more weeks to recover. Always double-check your ingredients.”

They stirred their cauldrons in silence. Taliana checked a terramantic timepiece in the corner. Twenty-seven more minutes. She switched the spoon to her other paw.

“And what’s the worse mistake you’ve ever made, master?” She grinned up at him, expecting a story that would be unforgettable. But Ilyan’s face had grown suddenly tense.

“That,” he said, staring into the depths of his cauldron, “is a story for another day.”

The next twenty-six and a half minutes passed in silence.