Herb-Wife (Lord Alchemist Duology) (30 page)

In
the basement, he rummaged in the storage room until he found the jar
of mindbright, marked with its brewers' names. He smiled, seeing
they'd added Dayn's; they'd said they'd sent him looking for
ingredients. That'd also been the day the threesome had uncovered
signs of pilferage.

Iathor
still didn't know who was responsible, but was glad he'd offered
rewards for the thief's identity. That'd stopped the loss of valuable
metal salts
before
anyone could plausibly accuse Kessa of
taking them; she'd had few enough occasions to have been there alone,
and with his personal attention . . . No. He'd been
able to assure everyone, from suspicious apprentices to his own
brother, that Kessa wasn't to blame.

He
paused, and examined the jar's seal. Unbroken, but the preparation
would've been set to simmer with various other brews, and anyone who
wanted to implicate "that half-breed" might've found
opportunity . . .

Opening
the jar was easy enough. Silver sparks seemed to touch the inside of
his nose, melting like phantom snowflakes. He pulled his sampling
spoon from its pocket and dipped out a taste. It made bubbling
patterns in his mind: bits of memory turned sharp and clear,
surfacing at random. Childhood flashes of his home. Night patrols. A
dull meeting of the guild's masters.

Deliberately,
he used the last traces of the potion's effects to remember kissing
his wife, just after the wedding. The silver memory had taste,
sensation, the scent of skin and hair and soap.

Not
poisoned. Good.
It'd be a shame to feed the attackers poison by
accident.

He
signed his name at the mindbright's entry on the inventory sheet; his
students the makers, and he the Guild Master, meant the potion was
essentially his, and the ingredients' cost deducted at month's end.

Keli's
office was on the second floor. He'd barely turned the corner from
the basement stairs, heading for the ones leading up, when he came
face to face with Iasen, being followed by one of his own dramsmen.
Despite his younger brother's carefully-trimmed beard, orderly hair,
and neat clothing, there were deep circles under Iasen's eyes and a
general air of haggardness that undercut his normally-handsome looks.
His red-haired servant looked little better.

"Stayed
up all night, trying to get drunk?" Iathor tried for blandness
to rival Thioso's.

"And
good day to you, brother." Iasen bared his teeth slightly in
what was perhaps intended to be a smile. "I see the pleasures of
matrimony haven't kept you from work."

Iathor
declined the opening sally. "I'm running an errand for the
watch, and taking the opportunity to ask the Herbmaster something.
What brings you here, Iasen?"

"Some
of us have to work if we don't want to rely on a pittance of a
stipend, and my workroom is full enough of my own projects."

"Oh,
bah." Iathor snorted. "The barony provides little more
income to me than to you. I put in time brewing general potions when
I can." The army, in particular, had need of healing draughts
and ointments. Most masters had their apprentices and journeymen work
to supply the stock, and claimed coin for the time.

"When
you're not too busy running the guild, and collecting your cut of the
dues. Of course."

"Going
to be late with yours again, Iasen? Or are you just testy from lack
of sleep?"

"You
seem well-rested. Send your wife off to her bed early?"

He
could have borne well-meant assumptions of an enjoyable wedding
night. Snide presumptions of an unsatisfying experience was a mockery
of Kessa's pain. Iathor bit off the ends of his words. "We were
both disinclined to exacerbate her discomfort."

"I
hope she's not been lying with horses, to be unsatisfied with mere
humans."

Anyone
else, Iathor might've been shocked and silenced, thinking,
He
couldn't have said that.
But ever since they'd been children,
Iasen'd delighted in pushing to see how far he could go. This was too
far, and the spreading ice in Iathor's chest could've been more
emotions than he cared to analyze. He almost wondered that his breath
did not fog with cold as he said, "Iasen, if my bride had been
any
more
a virgin, she'd have been innocent of her
moon-flows
,
let alone men. While there's enough blood upon my sheets to prove her
virtue, if I'm forced to show it to you, I will demand your apology
to her upon your bent
knee
, before the masters of the guild.
And should you continue these base lies and implications, it
will
go that far."

For
once, Iasen seemed taken aback, blinking in shock at Iathor's furious
scowl. "But . . . She must've used a healing
ointment, then!"

"
When?
"
Iathor snapped. "She used her moon-blood to brew dry tea, Iasen!
I found her in the collecting of it, at her shop! I saw the
catch-basins before that. And even if she
had
been raped –
as if I should think less of her virtue? – all she had of
healing at my house was a Brado's, for her throat. Give over this
fantasy that she's some babe-murdering, copper-leaf courtesan! Unlike
some
nobles
, my wife has valued her chastity in truth and not
name alone."

Iasen
actually took a half-step backward. "You can't be sure she'll
not saddle you with mongrel whelps."

"Spares,
perhaps, but she carries my heir now. A potion that was
her
idea, and not mine, I note." He was suddenly fiercely proud of
Kessa and her foresight.

"That
vixen," Iasen hissed, almost to himself, before snarling, "She's
just securing her place. She'll only lie to you, and pretend she
cares about you and your get."

"Me,
perhaps," he said, so the barb would not catch and twist in him.
"But a child? I think she'll love him more than she cares for
her own life." Kessa had shown consideration for a feckless
apprentice who'd forgotten his coat, friendship for Nicia,
protectiveness toward a roof-rat child . . . Iathor
couldn't believe she'd be any less nurturing of a helpless babe.

"They
don't, you know," Iasen said. "The tribes around Cym leave
their infants out on hillsides whenever the hunting's bad, or sell
off their girls to the first person with a shiny coin."

"But
Kessa," Iathor said, "was raised here in Aeston, not in any
savage tribe. She's as much a Cymelian as any other herb-witch,
merchant, or noble. Prince Tegar himself suspects bleached barbarians
in his marchlord heritage, and you don't claim
he
has no more
civilization than a barbarian warlord."

"
He
looks a proper citizen. Not like anything that mongrel will birth."
Iasen tried a pleading tone. "Brother, think of what trouble the
boy'd have. She's not quickened yet – just dose her with
Purgatorie, and say she's barren. You'll have your immune wife, and
you can get a bastard on someone proper, that the city-prince can
legitimize."

Who,
Talien?
He doubted that noble vixen would relinquish her
shallowly wicked amusements for as long as it took to have a child –
and certainly not go into the sequestering a noble's bastard would
need. "Even
I
am appalled you'd suggest such a thing in a
hallway, Iasen. How many journeymen and apprentices are crowded
around the corners? Or is this deliberate, in the hopes my wife will
miscarry and you can claim I took your advice?"

"Blight
it, Iathor, I'm just trying to keep you from making a mistake."

The
only mistake I made was to propose too early, before I took her to my
warm house and fed her. Before I told her why I needed an immune
bride.
And, possibly, testing her immunities without explaining
what was in the tea he'd given her. "Look to your own wedding
prospects, Iasen. Mine are sanctioned by the city-prince."

Iasen
stood, fists clenched. "I'll not let you destroy the guild like
this."

"And
what should I do?" Iathor said, nearly snapping again. "Risk
diluting the immunities to mere tolerance? Search and search for some
immune noble's girl until the Vigeur fails me and I die of old age?
Or just till some accident claims my life as it did our mother's?
You've
never wanted the responsibility of being Guild Master!
You've never even been confirmed!"

"Father
wouldn't do it!" Iasen shouted, like a potion that went from
simmering to boiling over. "I
asked
him and he refused!
He said Mother didn't want both her sons at risk, and he'd an heir,
so it wasn't necessary to waste another draught on me!"

"
I'd
have brewed it for you!" Iathor replied, startled. "Blight,
I'd have done it after mother died and father moved to the barony.
You think I was too enamored of the responsibility to share it?"

"You
never offered!"

Iathor
gave up entirely on having a
private
scene, rather than the
public ones his brother generated. "You made yourself scarce
enough whenever father lectured on guild matters or politics! I
thought you didn't
want
the burden. You forget your guild
dues, you forget to pay your entertainers, you run off and leave a
journeyman to blight your workroom and get himself into debt for gold
leaves – what shall I think? That should I give you
more
responsibility, you'll suddenly become my heir in truth and not name
alone, who I can rely on? That you'll marry and have a son to inherit
the title and duties?"

"
You
were father's favorite! He never
wanted
me around! I was only
good to keep mother happy when he dragged you off to lessons or the
offices to meet the other masters." Iasen's face was a blotchy
red, and his glare was . . . a crystal blue anger,
holding nothing comparable to Kessa's feral rage.

Iathor
shook his head. "If you thought it would be
fun
 . . .
I learned what my duties would be. My
responsibilities
. I've a
job, I've things I must do, for the good of the country and the
guild. It's not all the title and trying to impress important men in
alchemist gray, Iasen!"

"If
you don't
like
it, why
do
it?" Iasen snapped.

"Someone
must." Emotion peeled away from his mind to the bare metal
crucible of his soul. "The Guild Master, the Lord Alchemist,
must be immune. It is my duty, as it was our father's, and his
father's, and his father's before him – and as it will be my
son's."

"Duty,
duty . . . Mother
cried
when father took you to
be confirmed in your immunity. Did you know that? You were
her
favorite, too. Firstborn heir, so perfect, always doing what Father
wanted."

"If
Mother wanted to save you from the risk of the draught, however
small, I hardly think
I
was her favorite." He shook his
head again. "Iasen, this is foolishness. If you wish more
responsibility, then fulfill the duties you already have and cease
disputing how I fulfill mine."

"You're
just like Father. Your way or not at all, is it?"

Iathor
took a large step forward, making Iasen's dramsman flinch and twitch
behind his brother, and leaned close. With his voice low and quiet,
he said, "Kessa did not wish to marry me when I first asked. If
you'd been my heir in truth, with an immune son of your own, I'd not
have persisted in my suit, and she'd have been my student –
nothing more. But you sport with the nobles and their children,
shirking your duties to the guild, and I need my son. No matter who
was favorite of whom, our parents are dead, and the country and the
guild need a Lord Alchemist who understands his
duty
." He
stepped aside. "This conversation is over."

As
he walked past, he heard Iasen say, "I understand my duty to the
guild."

Iathor
did not look back.

He
strode past several more apprentices and journeymen in the corridors,
but they said nothing, and he didn't trust his voice until he was
close to his office. Then he reached out and stayed the first lad who
dared try to slip by. "Please see if Herbmaster Keli is here,
and if so, ask her to come to my office at her earliest convenience."

"Yes,
Master Kymus," the boy squeaked, and fled.

Iathor
went and sat at his desk and thought of nothing at all until Brague
put his head in. "M'lord, the boy says the Herbmaster's taken
today as light-work and is at her home."

"I
see. My thanks." He stood. "We'll deliver the mindbright to
Thioso now."

Chapter
XVII

A
t
one of those dinners before the wedding, Laita'd gotten Iathor to
talk about his parents.

"According
to family tradition,"
he'd said at one point, pretending he
wasn't talking to Kessa,
"none may enter the lady's bedroom
without invitation. This includes unruly sons and annoying husbands.
Further, if she deigns to grace the lord's chamber, and argument
occurs, it's hardly appropriate for her husband to order her out, nor
continue to inflict his presence upon her."

Likely
a tradition rooted in the reality of dramswives . . .
with high resistance, who could make life miserable if infuriated
enough. Or, Kessa supposed, attempt scandalous suicide. Laita'd
asked,
"Where would he go, then?"