Chapter 2: The Guild
Gently, he lifted his mother back onto the bed, her skin cold and pale underneath his hands, but she’d been pale ever since the sickness took her. It meant nothing.
He hoped it meant nothing.
He pressed his finger under her nose and waited, adrenaline making it difficult to differentiate from still or moving air. Finally, though, a small puff of breath hit his finger, and he drew it away with a sigh. Thank creation for small miracles.
From the floor, he plucked an ink-drenched journal, and a shattered inkwell—whatever his mother was working on, ruined. The inkwell was still dripping, so he grabbed the rag he’d been using to dab at his mother’s forehead and wrapped it up before placing both items near the bell and half-eaten stew on the bedside table.
Okay, this was fine. He could handle this. First, he’d need to throw away the inkwell and put the bowl in the cooling box. Then he’d need to boil some rags in water for the ink on the floor and his mother’s hands—
Speaking of, he should probably place something under his mother’s inky hands so she didn’t stain the bedspread. He grabbed another nearby rag and lifted her mother’s hand; her sleeves drawing back to reveal her forearm. Etta gasped. Don, quite used to people’s reactions once they witnessed what had become of his mother’s veins, did what he set out to do.
Wrapped inkwell and bowl in hand, he turned to Etta, who hovered in the doorway, eyes wide as if having witnessed a murder.
“Let’s let her rest,” he said.
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“What happened to her?” asked Etta.
Don struck flint against steel. They were in the backroom, potion ingredients floating in jars or otherwise jammed into wicker baskets and 15 cauldrons stacked atop each other in a precarious tower. Though he was only boiling water, Don opened the windows and vents out of habit after the kindling caught flame.
“I told you, she’s sick.”
“That’s not sick. That’s- I don’t know what that is, but I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Don wondered if it was better or worse he’d gotten used to the sickly purple color his mother’s veins had turned to. “Neither has anyone else, apparently.”
“Did she eat something bad? Drink anything polluted or poisonous? Was she cursed?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know. She just got sick one day. Collapsed while making a batch of potions. A few healers thought it was exhaustion at first, but then her veins started doing that and now she… now they think she might not make it to the end of the year.
Outside, a tree shook, its bare branches scraping against the stonework. Fall had already come, and it wouldn’t be long until…
“It’s gonna be fine if she dies, you know,” said Etta matter-of-factly. “People die all the time. Your dad died.”
“My dad disappeared.”
“Right,” she said, doubtfully. “Either way, he’s gone, and you got over it. So when your mom dies, it’s not going to be the end of the world.”
She was trying to comfort him, Don knew, but after the day he had, he didn’t want to hear it. He turned to her, his chest heaving.
“My mom is the only family I have left. I had a dad and a mom and my dad is missing and my mom is disappearing in front of my eyes, and you think it’s okay because ‘all people have to die sometime?’ Just because you’re fine being an orphan and going where the fuck you please doesn’t mean I will be.”
“I didn’t mean that you won’t be sad when she dies, it’s just that it happens to everyone—“
“Leave.”
A frightened look crossed her face, like she knew she messed up badly but didn’t know how to correct herself. Don didn’t care. Her mouth gaped stupidly open.
“LEAVE!”
He grabbed the object nearest him, a ladle, and chucked it at her head. It struck the stack of cauldrons behind her with a clamorous thud, sending the tower clattering toward the floor. So consumed with these sudden flames consuming his chest, he didn’t realize she’d fled until the door’s bell rang for the last time that day.
It wasn’t long later, after righting the cauldrons into a more reasonable three stacks of five, that his mother’s bell rang upstairs.
Great. His hissy fit woke her up.
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His mother was struggling to rise from her bed by the time he arrived. Her arms, which once were toned from cauldron stirring, shook from supporting her own upper body. At once, he was at her side, easing her up.
Stolen novel; please report.
“I heard a clatter downstairs. Is everything going all right?”
“Oh, yeah. Had to drive away some customers. The Fuck U Ups. You know how it is.”
“Oh gods,” she closed her eyes and smiled. “Please tell me you banned them once and for all.
“You wish.
“I do. Every day.” She opened her eyes, cloudy blue looking out from under black lashes. “How did the reopening go?”
“Good,” he lied.
“That’s great. That’s good. If you’re ever having trouble,” her hand reached for the journal, but as her hand met black, ink-stiffened pages, she retracted it and frowned. “Oh, I’m going to have to start from scratch, aren’t I?”
“Not all the pages are ruined,” he answered. “Mom, I told you not to work on anything. You’re too sick to take on new projects.”
“Oh, but it’s for you. Your father left you a journal and I want to leave you something, too. It’ll help you with running the shop.”
He wanted to correct her. Tell her that dad didn’t leave a journal for him; he left a journal behind and it ended up in his hands. He wanted to tell her having journals to remember his parents by instead of actual parents was a shit replacement, but that sounded whiny even in his own head, and he’d had gone through enough temper tantrums for one day.
“Do you want anything to eat?” he asked.
Confined to her bed, his mother smiled as she asked, “More stew, please?”
“Coming right up.”
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After the depressing first opening day, the rest of the week fared little better. Oh, they had customers, but they mostly brought small, inconsequential items, either in a show of support or because nothing on the shelves interested them. Meanwhile, he spent daylight hours manning the shop, spent moonlight hours creating potions or enchanting what he could, and spent every other minute looking over his mom.
His mom, who was looking sicker by the day. Meanwhile, their financials were steadily plummeting.
Don needed more money. He needed better inventory. He needed customers. Which was why, when Camue came around, he closed the shop and decided it was best to revisit the shop’s connections.
Every good shop wasn’t just a shop. It was its employees, its suppliers, and its advertisers. Strictly speaking, the Happy Cure-All only had four main suppliers and advertisers: the guild, the Sharp anvil, Elanis, and Agnes’ Garden. Since Agnes had been visiting nonstop, he felt it to say he didn’t need to revisit that connection, and Elanis never accepted visitors on Camue. That just left the Sharp Anvil and the guild.
Since the guild was closer, he headed that way first.
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Exiting the Happy Cure-All was like shedding a layer of heavy armor. It was still early in the morning, the shadow cast by Dragonrend Mountains still comfortably long enough that Shade Walkers were about. After locking the door behind him, Don made his way eastward, drawing his coat closer against the cold and walking past the marketplace until the guild came into view.
Where Agrivik was mostly one continuous piece, carved from the ground itself, the guild was a mixture of hewn stone and wood. Where its neighbors had flat or sloped roofs, not taking more space than needed, the guild’s roofs were a sprawling series of points and triangles, mimicking the mountain peaks in the background. Add the Merinmast kingdom’s flags—two perpendicular rapiers atop a deep blue shield with 10 stars floating in the circle—and the guild truly was one-of-a-kind around these parts.
Don entered, memories of his youth as a delivery boy coalescing as he approached the receptionist. There had been a time when he could barely look over the front desk as he hefted scrolls atop, but that had been years ago, and in the interim, he’d grown. The desk reached around mid-thigh now and the whittled statues lining the edge of the desk, while still fine craftsmanship, no longer caught his attention.
“Hello,” said Clarissa. She flicked her dark hair behind her shoulder. “How can I help you, Don?”
“Yeah, I was just checking in. Did you know the Happy Cure-All has reopened?”
Her smile, which had been amicable, turned sour. Don knew that smile well. It was the smile of someone trapped in a retail nightmare.
“Oh yes, we’ve heard. I’m so glad you’ve reopened.”
Don didn’t want to put her under pressure, but alas…
“You’ve been redirecting customers are way, right?”
“Well,” she shuffled the papers on the desk and fiddled with her quills. “Well, you see—“
“We do have a contract,” he said, pointedly. “Just the other days, I gave a discount to some guild members.”
“Yes, the contract. About that… With your mother sick—“
His face must’ve either been thunderous or close to tears, because she hurried to explain, “It’s just business, Don. We don’t know if you can handle the guild’s needs. When your father left, a lot of orders went unfulfilled, and the contract your mother offered guaranteed a baseline of potions that haven’t come in.”
“I’ll get working on that then. How many potions do you need? I can brew what we’ve missed and then some—“
“We’vealreadycontractedsomeoneelse!” blurted Clarissa, her eyes squeezed shut as if that would help her escape the roiling pit in his abdomen.
“Who?” he hissed. “It’s not Arlis, is it?”
She nodded.
Arlis. Fucking Arlis. The guy was their chief competitor and had been stalking their heels since forever. The pit kept rising, but he let it go on an exhale.
“Fine. Whatever. Arlis is a copycat, but at least he’s competent.” He slapped his hands against the desk—a bunny statue fell over, but he gave it no mind—and leaned into Clarissa’s face. “Speaking of competence, why the fuck do the Fuck U Ups have gold rank?”
In one fell swoop, Clarissa’s smile turned from ‘handling a customer’ to ‘oh god, let me tell you about my shit customers.’ “I know. I didn’t want to believe it either, but Guild Master Rorych approved it himself. I wanted to ask questions—their statistics aren’t anywhere near the standard gold quota. Trust me, Edward’s complained about it to me enough times—but Guild Master Rorych said they went on a mission that puts them at gold rank, so…”
“So either they did actually go on an important mission or something’s going on. Great. I gave them a gold rank discount when we don’t have a contract anymore.
Clarissa, at least, had the decency to appear wrong-footed. “I’m sorry. I should have told you before you reopened.”
“Yeah,” he said, thinking of the long struggle that lie ahead of the store, “you should have.”
Clarissa fluttered her hands uselessly, as she always did when she was overwhelmed. Don wore his own retail smile because as ballistic and off-the-wall as he felt, he had enough sense to realize severing a connection with the guild was a bad idea.
“Thank you for your help, Clarissa. I’m sorry the Happy Cure-All couldn’t help the Guild, but I’m sure once we’re back on our feet, we might renegotiate…?”
She put her hands down. “Yes,” she said, “once the Happy Cure-All’s back on their feet, I’m sure Treasurer Edward would be thrilled to renegotiate your contract.”
At the mention of the guild’s resident dark elf negotiator, Don shuddered.