There were no hovels in Sweetwater. Bassin Barrode had insisted upon it and his successors had taken him at his word. He said that if the city allowed slapdash or temporary structures to go up then people would very quickly forget that they were supposed to be replaced and they would stay until they fell down, usually with the tenants inside. About the worst you could say for the housing was that sometimes there were two many people for the space available.

So the home that Makare Maroun took Djet to definitely wasn’t a hovel. But it was on the rung of the housing ladder that would have been occupied by hovels if they were allowed. It was small. It wasn’t too small for one adult and one teenager but it wasn’t much bigger than Makare’s dressing room in her father’s largest house.

It wasn’t even a proper house. It was a single floor, self-contained extension that someone had slapped onto the side of a real house a generation ago. When it was built there was a receiving room, a bedroom, a study and a kitchen. There had been a bathing room and an outhouse both reached from the tiny garden.

Now the bathing room and the outhouse had been added to Sweetwater’s gravity fed plumbing system and part of the garden had been roofed over so that they were connected to the house. Makare slept in the old study. The kitchen had become the receiving room. The receiving room had become her mother’s Alchemy workshop and consulting room. Though the Alchemy did tend to spill over into the kitchen, and even what was left of the garden.

Makare settled Djet onto the garden bench and went to get the tea things and the spirit stove. Her mother heard her bustling about in the kitchen and came out of her workshop.

“Do you need any help?” she said.

“No. It’s nothing difficult. I’m just making tea for a classmate,” said Makare.

“You’re making friends, that’s what you’re making. See I told you if you just stuck with it you’d get the hang of talking to people.”

“Do you want me to introduce you?” said Makare, praying that the answer would be no.

Her mother glanced out of the kitchen window, towards the bench, as if sorely tempted. “No. I really should get back to this client. I only came to check on the noise to give him a chance to decide if he’s actually going to tell me what the problem is.”

“Another one of those,” said Makare.

Her mother was a more than competent Alchemist but she wasn’t well known in the city and she was technically only just a Journeyman. Those clients made up about a third of her business. They were the coy clients. The ones who needed something discrete in a plain bottle or packet and would never just come out and say that they needed something to help them keep their hair, or clear their skin up, or cure bad breath; or to keep their lover loyal, keen, or satisfied; or if they needed something to end a pregnancy, prevent one from occurring or to ensure the safety of the foetus. There had even been one who needed something to explode violently but only under certain predefined conditions. Mother had sent him packing because he wouldn’t tell her how close people were going to be to said explosion.

#

When Makare brought the tea tray out to the garden Djet seemed lost in another world. He was staring in rapt attention at the flock of brightly coloured birds that perched, and screamed, and sang, and chased each other in the trees between the tightly packed houses. Makare put the tray down on the battered old crate that served as a table and sat on the rickety stool opposite the bench.

Djet didn’t react to her presence until she struck the flint to light the spirit stove that heated the kettle. His head snapped round as if he was startled.

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“Sorry, I was distracted by the doods,” he said, as if that explained everything.

Makare’s blank expression must have tipped him off that she had no idea what he meant.

“The birds,” he said, waving in the general direction of the flock. “They’re called doods. They’re from the southern jungles originally. They’re popular pets with the Pygmy sky sailors. I didn’t realise there were so many wild ones in the city.”

“They are very distracting,” said Makare, while she waited for the kettle to boil. “Are they like parrots? I hear a lot of sky sailors like parrots.”

“The only similarity is the bright colours. Parrots are intelligent life-long companions. Doods are dummer than a box of rocks and only live for a few years.”

“They fly so beautifully though,” said Makare as she warmed the teapot and measured out the tea leaves.

“That’s why the Pygmies are so fond of them. They say the greatest helmsmen study the flight of the Dood. Presumably they stop studying right before the Dood flies headfirst into a tree at top speed and breaks it’s neck,” said Djet.

Makare concentrated hard as she poured the boiling water over the tealeaves in the teapot. Her mother’s method required quite a concentrated tea in the kettle so it was crucial not to add too much water. “I don’t know,” she said as she put the lid back on the teapot. “You can learn a lot from failure.

She spooned honey into the bottom of the tall tea glasses and added a thick wedge of lemon. “At least I hope you can. I’ve made a lot of very bad tea.” She lifted the lid of the teapot and sniffed. There was a faint smell of tea. Almost ready. The trick was not to get distracted at this point. With such a concentrated tea there was a very fine line between not infused enough and completely stewed.

She smelled the tea again. This time it was floral and earthy. Close enough. She poured the tea into the two tall glasses. There was only a couple of fingers of the concentrated tea in each glass but she added hot water from the kettle and stirred to dissolve the honey into the hot liquid and release the flavour of the lemon.

She turned the handle of one glass towards Djet and took the other glass herself. Djet eagerly pounced on his glass while she was still savouring the smell and trying to guess if she’d got it right.

Djet slowed down for the kind of cautious sip common to everyone who has drunk tea too quickly and burned their tongue. The first sip was quickly followed by a second, slightly less cautious one. Djet closed his eyes and looked, for all the world, like he was actually enjoying the tea.

Makare sipped her own tea, braced for disappointment. It wasn’t as good as her mother’s tea but it was still pretty good. If she’d let the tea infuse for just a little longer she would have captured more of the flavour of the tea but she’d definitely erred on the right side. This was drinkable. If she had left it too long it would have been unbearably bitter and foul.

“This is excellent,” said Djet.

“No,” said Makare, “It’s competent. You should taste my mother’s tea. Her tea-parties were legendary back in Hathorth. The were probably the only reason Father tolerated her Alchemy workshop. She told him that she was perfecting more teas. I’m sure he wouldn’t have believed her if she hadn’t kept coming up with new tea blends.”

“This is what I don’t understand,” said Djet, drinking the tea slowly and will all the signs of deep enjoyment. “With all the things you’ve said about your Father, all this stuff about how the nobility shouldn’t have any practical skills, why would he marry an Alchemist?”

“He wasn’t supposed to marry my mother. He was betrothed to her older sister but she caught some plague and died very suddenly. My mother, as the younger sister, had been afforded the freedom to study so she could make a good marriage from amongst the scholars of the city. My Father was only willing to put up with an educated bride because so much of the marriage contract was already negotiated. My mother brought some excellent land as part of her dowry. I think he convinced himself that she wasn’t really an Alchemist because she was only an apprentice.”

“But she’s a Journeyman now?” said Djet.

“Yeah. She had a contact in the Guild here who sponsored her to prove her competence as soon as we arrived.

“And that would explain why my ears are burning,” said Makare’s mother from behind her. “I’m finished for the day. I thought I’d come and see how you two are getting on.”

Makare froze, unable to think of a coherent answer because she really just wanted to tell her mother to go away.

“Nice to meet you, Mistress Maroun,” said Djet. “Makare has just made the most delicious tea. I hope she’ll be willing to take charge of the hot drinks when we’re camping with the school.”

“Camping with the school. That sounds fun,” said Makare’s mother.