Arm Of Galemar (Book 2) (31 page)

“If it had been on that thick,” the girl countered,
“it never would have gone off.”

“That floor is worth more than both your lives!  Do
you have any idea how much black marble costs?  It was imported all the way
from
Vyajion!
  And donated to the academy by the seventh king!”

To judge by their expressions, the knowledge did
little to impress the children.  “There’s nothing to do!” the girl said in
defense.  “Everyone’s gone out today.”

“Then I’ll give you something to do!  Go get a water
bucket and
mop every bit of this off the marble!
  If it’s not gone
within the mark, you’ll be in deeper trouble than you are already!”  He reached
into the plants to withdraw a steel bucket and cloth-strip mop.  “As soon as
Rellanda gets back tonight, she and I will be discussing this.  And I’ll keep
the rest of this in my office.  Now get moving!”

The bear directed his full glare at the twins until,
grumbling, they strode away amidst a cacophony of bangs.  Only then did he face
Dietrik.  He took in the mercenary’s battle-ready posture and drawn weapon and
asked, no less forcefully, “And what do
you
want?”

Dietrik abandoned his edge.  After struggling to
re-sheath his blade one-handed, he said, in an effort to be civil, “I came in
hopes of finding Head Gereist.”

“You found him.  What do you want?”

“I need your help with a matter,” Dietrik replied.  He
would have approached Gereist, but he hesitated to move.  “A lady directed me
to you.”

Gereist scowled, clearly irritated.  Probably that was
residual from the children and whatever they had done.  “Come into my office,
then.”  The bear-like alchemy head returned to the door from whence he had
emerged, noticing his exploding steps not a single whit more than the first
time.

Dietrik gingerly took one step.  Despite knowing what
would come, his skin still flinched.  He could feel the explosion’s shock
through his boot.  With so many steps taken in the last few minutes, the lobby
reeked strongly of bitter smoke.

Gereist waited in his doorway.  Impatience wafted from
him.  Dietrik ignored the bangs as best he could but achieving the nonchalance
of Gereist was beyond him.  He sighed with relief when he finally left the
danger zone.

The alchemy head’s office was simple.  A desk occupied
one end, the rest of the room filled with shelves holding books by the
hundreds.  Gereist was obviously a scholar.  Dietrik never would have guessed
if he had seen the man on the street.

Head Gereist dropped the bucket and mop beside his
desk.  A quick glance inside told Dietrik that a small amount of liquid sloshed
in the bottom.

“Well, what do you need help with?” Gereist asked as
he dropped into his chair.  Though the room held no windows, his head found
light to glint in from the roaring fire and the desktop oil lamps.

“Ah, before I get to that, may I ask what exactly just
happened out there?”

Annoyance replaced the dominant impatience.  Still, he
decided Dietrik had the right to know.  “That idiot Perkin thought it would be
amusing to play that trick on those brats.  The man has no brains, most days! 
After that, they pestered him to show them how to make the toluene derivative until
he gave in.”

“Tolu-what?  I’m afraid I couldn’t follow that.”

A bear-like sigh escaped Gereist.  “It’s not very
difficult to make, which is why I should hang Perkin from the rooftop
flagpole!  You only need to take coal-tar and petroleum and derive enough
toluene from the two.  After that, you can mix it with few different acids into
a liquid.”  He gestured at the bucket.  “Once it dries, it’s not very stable
and explodes under mild pressure.  A footstep is enough to set it off.  If you
slop it across a solid surface, then let it dry, the result is what you saw. 
As you can see, it’s easy enough to produce, but dangerous in the hands of such
reckless children!”

None of it seemed simple at all to Dietrik, but he
said, “And they have access to such…items?”

“They’re not supposed to!  But they’ve lived in the
academy their whole lives, and know secrets about the place I can’t so much as
guess at.  If Rellanda doesn’t take her kids into hand, then they’ll go too far
one day.  It’s bad enough the apprentices spend half their lives destroying the
workrooms without those rats helping!”

The head scholar fumed, which Dietrik headed off by
leaving the topic of the children behind.  “My reasons for searching you out
are, to say the least, pressing.  A street gang tried to assassinate a visiting
noble who came to the city for the tournament.  One assassin was slain during
the effort, and this was found on his clothing.”

Gereist, unimpressed with the tale, accepted the cloth
Dietrik handed to him.  “You with the guards, then?”

“Not the cityguard.  I am employed to bodyguard the
intended victim.  This might or might not be part of a larger plan, or it might
simply be a random case of persistent blighters.  In the interests of safety,
we’d like to know about whatever those flecks are.”

“Why bother me with it?  You could have taken this to
any good alchemy shop in the city.”

“I am not from the city.  How would I know which shops
were good, and which less savory?  If the assassin had dealings with these
shops, I would rather not wander into it unprepared after having killed their
mate.”

“You wouldn’t want to wander into most of them,
period.  I can think of seven right off the top of my head that the academy
refuses to deal with.”

“Is that so?  Why might that be?”

Gereist snorted.  “Alchemy shops sell to two types. 
Alchemists, which means at least a third of their business is conducted with
the academy, and magicians.  Magicians don’t grow on trees, but there’s enough
of them around to keep a handful of shops in the uppers.  We like chemicals,
magicians like components.  As alchemists, we don’t have much use for bird
feathers and frog dung.  Those magic types
can
use them, as well as most
of the chemicals
we
need.  Most shops stock a mix of the two, but a few
focus on the magic component business.”

“And those are the seven?”

“No, well…some of them are.  Magicians can do damned
strange things, but they need damned strange things to do them.  Several
components are illegal under the king’s law, except there’s always those few
willing to take a risk for gold.  You don’t want to walk alone into a shop
selling human tongues under the counter.  Not unless you’re a fool or confident
in your own strength.”

“These shops, do you suppose they are likely to have
dealings with the dark guilds of the city?”

“I’m sure most do.  Most are probably pipes for the
black markets.”

Dietrik nodded.  “This sounds like the right trail for
me, then, whether I like it or not.  I guess I need to find a chap who knows
which shops are bad for my health.”

Gereist snorted again.  “Didn’t I tell you the academy
knows all the shops in the city? 
I
can tell you which shops the guards
keep a closer eye on.”

“That is very generous of you,” Dietrik replied,
congratulating his cunning mind at the same time.  As he had hoped, the
scholarly side in this bruiser of a man had taken an interest in the situation.

Gereist spent a moment fingering the fabric, then drew
it to his nose.  With a thoughtful expression he told Dietrik, “Wait here.”

The man left, leaving the door cracked open.  From
outside, Dietrik heard him suddenly shout, “Did I say you could waste more of
the academy’s stock?  Give me that alcohol!”

“Hey, that’s not fair!” the boy’s voice cried back. 
“It takes forever to dissolve this stuff with plain water!”

“That’s
your
problem!  Get back to work!”

Intermingled with all this were bangs as the head
scholar crossed the lobby.  Soon after, a fresh volley announced his return. 
He carried a small glass bottle filled with white powder, revealed when he
opened his massive hand to deposit it on the desktop.  Gereist took a pinch and
compared it to the fabric, and went so far as to taste small samples from both.

“I thought so,” he concluded.  “Phosphorus.”

“Is that a chemical?”

“Yes.  Phosphorus is used in any number of things, and
unfortunately for you, I can’t think of a single shop which
doesn’t
carry it.”

“Hmm.  I hoped it would be a bit rarer than that.”

“You’re out of luck, then.  All the shops have a
healthy supply.  Even a few non-alchemy shops might carry it for various
reasons.”

“Still, the shops with connections to the dark guilds
strikes me as a promising lead.  I’ll take that information back to my fellows
and we can decide our next move.”

Gereist shrugged.  It was all the same to him.  “You
came on the right day.  The rest of the eightday I don’t have any spare time. 
I’ll make you a list.”

It took longer than Head Gereist originally
anticipated, requiring he dig through papers he stored in a desk drawer, but
within a quarter-mark, Dietrik departed with his list.  When he left the lobby
of the Alchemy Wing, he hugged the walls to avoid the floor’s center.  He heard
the twins gracing Gereist’s door with several unflattering comments while they
scrubbed hard with mops.  They did not sound in the least repentant.  At the
entrance he looked back in time to catch the boy wiping a booger onto the
head’s doorknob.

Bloody little toerags,
he mused as he wrestled the heavy door open. 
They
would make good mercenaries.

*        *        *        *        *

Dietrik’s news was not welcomed with banners and
fanfares when he returned to the Swan’s Down.

“Well
that’s
no help,” Marik growled.  “There’s
too many maybes and possibilities in this whole mess.”

“So we have to hunker down,” Kerwin stated.  “We’ve
gone as far as we can with the info we’ve got.  Next roll of the dice is
theirs.”

Marik hated that, and made it plain.  In response,
Landon asked, “Do you see any other options?  No?  Until we know further, even
if we found the right shop, supposing they
are
operating out of an
alchemy shop, we might never realize it.  For the moment, the best plan is
Kerwin’s.  We still have seven days until the tournament begins.”

Before anyone could respond, Hilliard asserted his
thoughts on the matter.  “I object to this!  I have training to attend to
before the events, and I
will not
have my schedule dictated to me by
terrorizing killers!”

The young noble stood, surrounded by a bubble of
righteous steadfastness.  Marik decided to burst it.  “Yes, you better believe
you
will!
”  He stepped forward nose-to-nose with Hilliard, and the youth
back-stepped hesitantly against his will.  Ever since Marik’s revelation of
mage talent, Hilliard never looked him fully in the eye.  Hating himself as he
did it, Marik used that uneasiness to bully the younger man.  “You aren’t a baron
yet.  You have no duties or matters to attend to.  You are free of obligation
to your fellow peers.  You have no reasons at all to draw you outside.”

“I need to prepare for the first event!”

“Riding.”  Marik advanced another step.  Hilliard
shied away.  “The only mount you have access to is stabled across the city. 
You couldn’t practice in the city anyway, and we
are not
entering and
leaving Thoenar every day.  The risk is too great. 
We
have the final
say in anything you do as long as we’re contracted to your father.  Since
that’s the case,
we
say we’re holing up in these rooms until we know
what’s going on.”

Hilliard realized what he was doing and straightened,
facing Marik with dignity.  “It is a matter of principle,” he declared.  “Once
you give in to threat the first time, it is that much easier to give in to it
the next.  Galemar was not built by cowards kowtowing to brigands and thieves. 
It was built by men who stood up for justice and all that is right.  To
preserver, new men of strong will must continue to hold back those chaotic
forces.”

“I won’t argue that,” Marik replied in a quieter
tone.  “But men aren’t born strong, Hilliard.  They earn their strength over
the years of their life.  If you want to take a place among them, you have to
stay alive through your own weaker years.”

Hilliard considered that.  Whatever conclusions he
reached, he tucked them under his belt.  “I’m going to bed,” he announced.  He
left through the connecting door from Marik’s room, leaving the other four
alone.

“That was interesting,” Kerwin chirped while Marik
sagged into a chair.  “We’d better see about nailing his window shut.”

“He won’t do that,” Dietrik countered.  “Our young lad
is the sort who will spend all his time working to convert us to his views, but
would rather die than sneak around behind our backs.”

“I hope so,” Marik sighed.  This turn in his
relationship with the young noble since the attack dismayed him.  “Why don’t
you go find those guards Walsh reported to tomorrow, Landon?  They might have
new information.”