AFTERMATH

Fetching the night watch proved to be quite useless.

To their credit, they tried. Ilyan was a well-known and well-respected shopkeeper, and an attack on his shop was an embarrassment to their job. They putted around the store, helping him tidy up and vowing to catch the men responsible. But privately, the watch captain confirmed what Ilyan and Taliana already knew: Any investigation would be in the pyromancy guild’s hands, and the guild protected its own.

After the night watch left, Ilyan and Taliana assessed the damage. The locks to both doors would need replaced. Nearly all of Ilyan’s ledgers had been burned. Luckily, most of his recipes were written on baked clay tablets, which had survived the fire unscathed. Most tragic was his triple-beam balance, smashed to pieces in the fight.

“I was an idiot,” Taliana said, as she hopelessly tried to reassemble the broken and bent pieces of metal. “Replacing this will cost a fortune. I’ll work an extra year for free, to pay it off.”

“Don’t be selfish,” said Ilyan. “Stay on another year? And rob another student of their chance for an apprenticeship?”

“Then I’ll pay it back,” Taliana said. “Soon as I have the money, I’ll—”

“It’s not your fault,” Ilyan said, kneeling next to her. “I mean, it sort of was. But you had good intentions, even if your execution was as ill-conceived as a horseradish-eating contest without milk on hand.” He stood up. “I’ll order a new scale. It will take several months to arrive, so in the meantime we will need to double-weigh everything on two separate balances to approximate its precision.”

Of course we will, Taliana thought with a sigh.

*****

THEORIES AND REALIZATIONS

Rumors quickly spread of the attack on Ilyan’s shop. For a couple days, there was a steady stream of visitors—both tourists, gawking at the melted lock on the front door, and many of Ilyan’s loyal customers coming to give their condolences.

For a week or two, there was a great deal of bluster between the city chancellery and the pyromancy guild. Ilyan’s was a well-loved name, and public pressure demanded justice. The guild paid Ilyan a “handsome” sum (two hundred shekels, a tenth of the price to replace his scale, not to mention the rest of the damage) and promised it would investigate. There were some high-profile arrests of various pyromancers in the city, until within a day each had proven their innocence with an alibi and were released. The guild promised that its investigation was “continuously unfolding.” Taliana took that to mean it was written on a piece of paper that was unfolded by a clerk once a month or so, laughed at, then folded and put back in a drawer.

Things gradually returned to normal—except that with the extra time it took to measure everything twice, Taliana had to come to work a half hour earlier.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

She did notice one change: Ilyan’s one-armed supplier started coming by more often.

She brought it up one morning.

“You find it odd?” Ilyan responded.

“I find it coincidental,” Taliana responded, watching him for any clue in his facial expression. “Oddly coincidental.”

“Hmmm,” Ilyan hummed.

When it was apparent no elucidation was forthcoming, Taliana cleared her throat. “I have a theory.”

“Hmm?”

“About your secret.”

Ilyan flipped both lenses of his spectacles up to look at her. “You were there when I was interrogated,” he said. “You know my secret now.”

“That’s just it,” said Taliana. She gestured to the shelf of rosewood bottles. “I’ve been here seven months now. I’ve helped you make every batch we sell. Yes, often you send me out of the room as we reach the end of a recipe. But there’s always been batches where I’m present from start to finish. And normally I’m out of the room for only a few seconds. There’s no way you’ve been sneaking rosewood powder into our recipes for seven months without me noticing. Especially since I know you would never add some without weighing it out to the hundredth of a shekel first.”

“Hmm,” Ilyan said, a hint of a smile appearing on his face.

“There’s more,” Taliana said. “I’ve done the calculations. With how much rosewood you said you add to your recipes, you should be only going through a bottle a week. Yet your ‘supplier’ has replaced twenty-five empty bottles with full ones in the last month. Twenty-five bottles in a month? That’s a lot of rosewood powder.”

Ilyan’s smile grew slightly bigger. “So your theory?”

“It’s a ruse,” Taliana said. “A complete and total lie. Rosewood powder is practically useless. But you did a great job of talking it up. ‘Titrophilic coefficient’? That’s a fringe aquamancy theory that was debunked over seventy years ago. ‘Layline interference’? Another controversial theory, popular only among unified model proponents.

“You invented the rosewood powder as a cover. And I’m guessing this isn’t the first time you’ve leaked it. Throughout the city, several different aquamancers must be buying bottles of the stuff, all trying to figure out the magic ratios that will make their potions as effective as yours. Your ‘secret’ demands they need rosewood powder specifically from the Emerald Lake, and I’m guessing there’s only one source in the city where they can get it—the one-armed korrik.”

Taliana glanced at the bottles of powder. “You need a cover, to maintain the illusion. So the one-armed supplier uses your store as a depot. When he gets a new shipment, he drops it off here. Then as he distributes individual bottles to your competitors, he drops off the empty bottles here and exchanges them for full ones. Anyone observant enough will see him visiting your shop and assume he’s selling you the powder, and lots of it.”

“Impressive deduction, Tapioka,” said Ilyan.

“There’s just one thing I don’t get,” said Taliana. “Of all the substances out there to claim as your secret, why rosewood?”

Ilyan stared into the crucible he was stirring. “Four reasons. First, rosewood is completely harmless. It is one of the few substances that can be added to pretty much any mixture with near impunity. Deceiving my competitors is one thing, but I would hate for any civilians to suffer for it.

“Second, rosewood is known to occasionally suppress common side effects. But it’s completely random. No one’s been able to find any pattern to it. So my competitors go crazy, tinkering with the dilution amounts, getting just enough random positive result to keep them from giving up. Some have been experimenting for decades now.

“Third, rosewood is an expensive ingredient, but not too expensive. Pricey enough to hurt my competitors’ pocketbooks, but not so pricey as to bankrupt them.

“Fourth and finally . . . the supplier agreed to give me a cut of the profits for every rosewood bottle he sells. It’s become quite the source of extra income.”

Taliana stared at him, in shock at how brilliantly manipulative the old man was. Then she fell off her stool laughing.