“I still don’t know if this is such a good idea,” Leopold said as they entered the large market square. It was easily several hundred yards to a side and absolutely crammed with covered stalls. Willow doubted that this Geoff would be set up in a stall, but she had no idea where else to look.
“We’re just going to take a peek,” she said. “We’re not marrying the guy.”
“What if it’s against the rules? You know I never did really read through all that scrollwork they threw at me when I signed admission.”
“Well I did,” Willow said. “A student is not to, under any circumstances, misrepresent themselves as a fully licensed mage. Such is an expellable offense, and prosecutable by the full weight of the Mage’s guild.”
“It says that,” Leopold paled. Willow laughed and pulled him along. She was getting used to her strong right hand and how she could actually use it without the pain in her muscles flaring. Carl said it was because her muscles had begun to reverse the process of atrophy.
“But I’m not misrepresenting myself, am I,” Willow asked as she pulled him up to a covered stall. Within sat an elderly lady who was selling all sorts of leather and brass tools. Willow saw several hammers hanging up from the awning, a steel awl, and a book of needles. Perhaps this was a leatherworker’s stall?
“Hello dearies, how can I help you,” the old woman croaked.
“Sorry, but I’m looking for someone named Geoff,” Willow said. “You wouldn’t happen to know where he’d be, would you?”
The old woman leaned forward and squinted at them, which served to make her already wrinkly face nigh unrecognizable as anything more than a bundle of crepe. She looked down the aisle of stalls, toward a wall of shops.
“You’ll find Geoff down that way,” she said. “The shop with the anvil shingle.”
“Thank you so much,” Willow said, and prepared to take off down the aisle, but the old woman stopped her with a hand.
“You’re students at the Arcanum, aren’t you,” she asked.
“What gave it away,” Leopold sighed. The woman gestured to them as a whole, as if it was obvious.
“Don’t let him gouge you. He’ll haggle. Don’t leave unless you’re paying half or less of his asking price.”
“Wow, thanks,” Willow said. The old woman nodded, then sat back in her chair. Willow yanked Leopold down the colorful aisle of awnings toward the wall of shops. Leopold groaned.
“If he’ll haggle down fifty percent, how reputable could he be,” he asked. “Why are we even doing this, you’ve got enough money without lodgings, right?”
“Enough money for now,” Willow said. “But next year things are going to be tight, even without lodgings. I always planned on getting a job in the city, I just assumed I’d have to work as a seamstress or something equally debilitating. If I can use my magic to make money, that’s wear on my body I’d gladly give up.”
“R-right,” Leopold said, and she felt his hand flush with sweat under hers. It was so easy for him with his perfect body to forget how hard things were for her. Even with this burst of morning energy her feet were already aching, and her left hand was smarting something terrible from managing the cane. Magic would be the only way she’d be able to make anything of herself in the world, and she was eager to start.
The shop was easy enough to find once they knew what they were looking for. It was a wide-set wooden and white-plaster building, like many of the structures in this part of town, with an anvil and sparks displayed on the swaying shingle above the open door. Willow led the way into the dim interior, dragging a reluctant Leopold in behind her.
“I thought you said you wanted to take me shopping,” she whispered to him in the dusk. There were objects of every sort hanging up from the ceiling and mounted on the walls in racks. Freestanding tables held an assortment of strange odds and ends. There was a dagger beside them which shone with a brightness not easily attributable to the light coming in from outside.
“Yeah, for trinkets, or snacks,” he said. “Maybe even some flowers.”
“We can buy flowers later, romantic,” she said, but his grip on her hand tightened as he froze. There was a large-set man sitting behind a wooden counter watching them in the gloom. Willow made her way across the showroom, her arm around Leopold’s waist.
The corpulent man smiled at them. His nose was fat and pocked and as red as a tomato, like his veiny cheeks. Willow looked upward as they approached and saw inscribed lights set into the ceiling.
“Hello there,” the man said. “Welcome to Geoff’s. If you’re in the market for artifacts, there’s no better place in Durum, and I’ve got the best prices. And the best pieces. But you can judge for yourselves. What are you in for?”
Willow tore her gaze away from the inscribed lights and pointed up. “Your inscriptions, who powers them?”
“Ah, you must be scholars,” he said, and smiled as if he were looking at a particularly naive couple of marks. “I have a contract with one of your fellows to top them off every couple of days. Always work to be found for the enterprising student.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” Willow said, and disengaged from Leopold to hobble over to the counter. Geoff took a quick look down at her cane, then scanned her body with an appraiser’s eye.
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His eyes flicked back to hers, and a small smile touched his lips. “Are you new in the city. Here for the term?”
“Yes, first year,” Willow said.
“I don’t have much work that a first year could do,” Geoff muttered. “Besides refreshing inscriptions. You must’ve come in on a caravan.”
“I did,” Willow said, a bit confused.
“Was it an eventful trip?”
She looked closer and saw his narrowed eyes. He knew something, something about the attack. And then she realized: of course he did. He’d been recommended to her by a guard on the wall. He probably knew all of the caravan guards, he might even know Bryan.
Willow nodded. “Deathworm attack. I almost lost my hands.”
He looked down at the hand clutching her cane. “Looks like you got all healed up.”
“Lucky for me, my guard had some favors to call in.”
“It hasn’t affected her spellwork,” Leopold interjected. Willow knew he was trying to be helpful, but she felt that something else was going on here. Geoff was angling for something.
“You wouldn’t have had anything to do with that worm, would you,” Geoff asked, his face entirely placid. It was only his eyes that told her he was itching for the answer.
“Apparently I killed it,” Willow said, and gripped the cane so hard in her right hand she felt a twinge of psychokinesis along her wrist. She forced herself to take a breath, and the twinge went away.
Geoff nodded. “I’ve heard of you. Shut the door, young fella, and run the bolt. I’d like to see you both in back.”
🜛
With the door shut, the display room was much darker. The inscribed lights in the ceiling were barely enough to see by, but the workroom behind the counter was lit by a much denser constellation of inscriptions, and Willow noticed several oil lamps mounted to the walls too. Apparently Geoff needed to see clearly in this place, whereas the gloom in the front of the shop probably worked to his benefit.
Once they were in the brighter workroom, he motioned toward a thick wooden table set into the wall and they gathered along the edge of it. He turned to them.
“I haven’t properly introduced myself. Geoff,” he said, and held out his hand. Willow was surprised when his handshake didn’t crush her, although she was using her right hand to squeeze back. Leopold shook too, and Geoff retrieved a sheaf of papers from a high shelf among racks of tools.
“Apparently you saved the guard on your little caravan,” Geoff said. “He was very impressed with you.”
“Bryan talked to you about me,” Willow asked, astonished. Geoff nodded.
“It isn’t every day that something gets the jump on a caravan guard. It’s good money for a reason, and Bryan’s one of the more careful sort. He’s got a kid, he’s got to be.”
“Benny, I know. I’m staying with them now.”
“You are, are you,” Geoff asked, and she saw a smile touch his fat cheeks. There was some kind of relationship between him and Bryan, more than she’d suspected. She supposed it might work in her favor.
He turned to the papers on the desk. “I’ve got a set of jobs here, pretty standardized. Refilling essence in inscriptions, probing artifacts, they each have a payout associated. It’s not much, but it’ll be a little pocket money for you in school.”
Willow looked at the sheet and was unimpressed. Refilling ten light inscriptions paid only five copper, probing unknown artifacts was two copper a piece. When a meal was easily fifteen copper if she wanted to eat something that Margaret hadn’t made, it was even less than pocket change.
“I was told I could make more than this,” Willow said, and Geoff laughed.
“By who? Aye, if you were a second year, I’ve got more on the docket. Inscribing, repairing artifacts, you name it. You can make a lot from that, but you can’t do any of it yet, can you?”
Willow hunched her shoulders, feeling slightly offended. “I’m in an inscriptions class now.”
“If you’re not specializing, there’s little use I can get from you in inscribing. I’m not selling trinkets here. The best artifacts in Durum, that’s what I offer, and that’s what I have. Some I get from the caravans coming into the city, found in the wilds, but most I have made custom. Things nobody else has.”
Things nobody else has. Willow slid the sheet of paper away, leaned her cane against the worktable, and cupped her hands. She barely had to concentrate now to envision the concepts, to affect the flow of essence through her good hand. It was still too strong by far, but not for this.
“And how much for this,” Willow said, and held out the pale, solid magelight. Geoff reached out and, surprised at first, accepted the physical spell. “I guarantee you nobody else has anything like it.”
“Willow,” Leopold whispered into her ear, but she shook him off. It felt good doing something. Being useful. Being more than a cripple. Being special in a way that meant something.
“What in the seven—” Geoff began, then cut himself off with a cough. He held the magelight up to the inscribed lights above and turned the perfect sphere this way and that.
“It’s not very bright,” he said, and tapped the surface with his fingernail. “How long will it last?”
“I don’t know,” Willow admitted, and Geoff hummed to himself as if he’d suspected as much.
“I’ll give you fifty copper for it,” he said. “It’s really very pale, it probably won’t last the day.”
“It’ll definitely last the day,” Willow said, remembering the constellation of magelights that hovered against the ceiling when she and Leopold awoke together that morning. “And you’re fleecing me.”
Geoff shrugged. “Take it elsewhere then. Nobody else will know what to do with it, I guarantee you that. Fifty is generous. It’s barely shining at all.”
“I can make brighter ones, brighter by far,” Willow said, and found that she was seething at his insinuation. She was proud of her magelight, it had guaranteed her admission into the Arcanum. She felt personally invested in it.
“Well, I’d love to see them,” he said, and held out his hand.
“Fine,” Willow said, and cupped her hands in the spell-form.
“Willow,” Leopold said, louder this time, and shook her shoulder. It was like a cold splash of water in her face, and she remembered the silver glove back in her room, how Carl had warned her not to attempt casting magelight without it. The result, he’d said, could be disfiguring.
Willow forced her hand into a fist, then lowered it to take hold of her cane again.
“Not yet,” she admitted, and felt Leopold’s frenzied clutch on her shoulder slacken.
“Well, fifty’s the best I can do.”
“Seventy-five,” Leopold said from beside her, and she turned to look at him.
Geoff laughed. “You don’t have room to bargain, first-year. I doubt I’ll be able to sell this as it is.”
“Seventy-five, and you get exclusive purchasing rights to the solid magelights, even the brighter ones,” Leopold said. “That is, assuming you’ll buy them.”
Geoff’s face as he calculated something in his head. Willow wrapped an arm around Leopold’s waist and squeezed him in appreciation. He squeezed back.
“Nobody else gets them,” he said. “Nobody.”
“You’ll be the only one,” Leopold said, and Geoff held out his hand toward Willow. “And we’ll renegotiate for the brighter ones.”
Geoff hesitated for a moment, then extended his hand fully. “You’ve got a deal.”
Willow took his hand, and his grip was much stronger this time. She forced herself to squeeze back as hard as she could, and met his eyes as they shook.
“Deal,” she said.