Herb-Witch (Lord Alchemist Duology) (9 page)

Blight
it. They'd had a good apartment.
But Laita'd sickened again, for
all that Kessa'd made healing brews. Jontho couldn't steal enough to
cover the rent, not without risking too much; it needed the earnings
of the most beautiful tavern lass in the dock district.

They'd
been too proud to move Laita in with Kessa, though she'd insisted she
could get a blanket and sleep out front. She couldn't force them. She
couldn't pay for their apartment, either, so they'd tried to keep the
good rooms with a loan without questions, as Kessa'd gotten from
Darul before.

Kessa
would've helped Jontho buy an apprenticeship, but he didn't have the
training to back a forged journeyman's certificate – and a
real apprenticeship, even to a master who paid wages for his
students' scutwork, couldn't buy what Laita needed.

She
wiped at her eyes, and cursed whoever'd put another blighted potion
in blighted Darul's blighted tea. It would've been perfect, if only
he'd woken up sane, thinking Laita "a sickly wench, beneath his
notice."

Her
Guild Master was too quiet. She leaned to see him better. He sat
there, his fist wrapped around the glow . . . around
the
Incandescens
stone. She could make out dim redness
outlining his fingers; her beast eyes weren't beast-sharp, but they
worked as well as any other woman's in darkness.

He
shifted closer to her bed and sat again, silent.

What's
he doing?
Surely he couldn't sniff out her hidden stores? There
weren't many, and they were in jars. It was only her imagination that
she could sometimes catch whiffs of them from her bed.

He
stood. Paused.

The
Lord Alchemist moved to the corner of the store-room, below where
she'd hidden her accounting books . . . and the
remaining sweetflower. He leaned on the wall, and her breath stopped
a moment. Had he
scented
it?

Could
she, if she tried?

She
called, "Is something wrong?" It was a natural question.
He'd been looking in her shelves, and her ceiling wasn't one. (For
all that his hands might be fine enough to get into the niche, too.)

He
looked around the doorframe. Kessa looked back for a moment.
Is
his nose better than mine? Or could he teach . . .
Foolish thoughts. She slapped them with memory's heavy hands. Even
the easiest of masters would wonder at her family: thief and
courtesan, smuggler-thug and fagin . . . But they were
her family, and she'd not give them up.

He
answered, "I hope not," and for a moment she was confused
by her own thoughts.

"Mm,"
she grunted, feeling trapped and tiny.

Almost
as conversationally as he'd first spoken in the prison, he said, "I
trust that whatever else is in here, you don't intend to make . . ."
He paused. "Disreputable brews."

"I'm
not–"
hiding anything
, finished instinct;
that
stupid
, finished her outrage. The conflict helped her strangle
both. "No. Master Kymus." She didn't know if the title were
accusation, surrender, or both.

"Thank
you." He walked to her. His clothing rustled, as if he reached
to touch her shoulder or hair.

She
twitched, as much from her own confusion as from wariness. She
supposed she could fend him off if he became some base thug (he was
built like a clerk, not a dockworker) but he'd his men. Surely he'd
no taste for force, or he'd have used it already. She'd never rate a
lust potion from anyone, not like Laita . . .

Her
Guild Master sighed, perhaps misreading her flinch. "I found
nothing that smelled to be part of the other three potions. You
offered only half his blighting."

Had
I known what other potions Darul had, I'd have offered all his death,
and a better plan for it.
She barely saw the counter she stared
at, barely thought of who listened. "He blighted himself
entirely."

But
it wasn't Jontho's rich voice – nor Burk's deep one, nor Tag's
near-whine – unhappily asking, "Are . . .
Will you be all right?"

She
looked up through her hair, confused. "Why not?"

He
paused. "Indeed." There was bafflement to match hers in his
voice. "I'd best find my men and depart, then."

How
does that follow?
But no reason to delay him. "There's a
tavern at the end of the block."

He
opened the door, cold air drifting over her feet. "Which would
apparently send mugs with patrons, if paid enough." He looked
over his shoulder. "I'll be by in the morning, with more food."

Gratitude.
Autumn was a bad time to be indebted. She watched her counter. "I
suppose I'll try to be awake, then."

"Good
evening to you, Tradeswoman Kessa." As if it'd been a social
call, with innocent tea and little biscuits.

"Good
evening," she made herself say. "Master Kymus." She
still didn't know if that were surrender or a slave's accusation.

Kessa
waited until the carriage left. She checked her brew and frowned. The
preparation was fine. The situation . . . was
something she couldn't handle alone.

Perhaps
there was another reason to wear the pants and tunic of cutpurse
black. The coat, fastened, was heavy enough to obscure her gender.
She didn't have any suitable preparations in it, though. Probably
good; such things weren't approved of by "reputable alchemists,"
and she wasn't thinking straight about whether she wanted to be
reputable.

She
dug the clothes from under the bed, changed, and slipped into the
night with her dagger outside her clothes. She remembered how to
move: half swagger, half stalk. It was harder, to glance around with
narrow eyes that didn't care who flinched. It helped to be angry.

Not
that she could vanish into the shadows, and accept the recipe of a
life she'd thought she'd escaped. Someone else might've, with
anonymous light hair, paler skin and eyes. Not Kessa the half-breed
and dog-eyed. Not Kessa the immune, with her Guild Master's notice.

She
skipped into an alley only once to avoid guards; where she was going,
guards didn't bother with more than token patrols.

Kelp
Street meandered along the border between the docks district and the
rat-maze of unnamed slum streets that'd grown up outside the
long-neglected city walls. Taverns dotted it, like chipped glass
beads on a necklace. Most had names like "Drunken Mermaid"
or "Riverman's Brew."

Out
back of one called "Shark Reef," she found a stick and
poked at its brickwork. Nothing snapped, so she took a deep breath,
and put her hands and feet into the niches the different-colored
bricks concealed. Happily, no sharp bits of glass or metal greeted
her, and she made it to the attic shutters. She hit them with the
heel of her hand. Thump, pause, thump-thump, pause, thump.

Then
she hung in the cold, listening to a drunken bard playing in the
tavern below, and hoped old haunts hadn't changed too much.

She
was about to get her knife and try opening the shutters from the
outside, when a voice finally came, high and reedy. "Who's
there?"

"Kellisan,"
she growled. "Looking for Tag."

"Ain't
here."

"So
find him. Tell him I'll be at his sister's," Kessa said, and
climbed back down. No need to wait for the sounds of someone running
on the errand. Either someone'd draw short straw and go tell Tag –
in which case she'd give him coin to pay the messenger – or
they'd not, and she'd be back to see if she could thump them around.
That was the way things worked.

Jontho
and Laita didn't live on Kelp Street, or even as close to it as
they'd gotten to Kessa's shop, but getting there took only a brisk
walk in the darkness. And though the building went three stories, two
in honest brick and one in wood . . . Kessa stepped
over a rotten stair-tread. She trailed her fingertips across the wall
beside her and wondered how many drafty cracks it'd reveal, come deep
winter. Perhaps Jontho could fetch wood or brick to put under her
cot's legs, enough to make up a pallet underneath? Put Laita on the
cot, herself on the pallet, beds built atop each other like stores
and apartments . . .

She
tapped on the third door along, in a pattern that meant "safety,"
and waited.

She
was in luck; Jontho opened the door, a rushlight haloing him from
behind. "Kess-kess?" he asked, though she'd not rapped out
"danger."

Kessa
said, "'Sall right, Jonno. No one's followed me."

"Let
her in, Jontho," came a voice behind him, and he remembered to
stand aside so Kessa'd not have to duck under his arm with roof-rat
manners.

Inside,
the rushlight seemed brilliant after the thin moonlight. Laita sat up
on the cot in the corner, the ragged mattress next to it showing
Jontho's bed. Despite the light making her eyes more visible, Kessa
took a long look at her crèche-sister, fretting.

Laita
was beautiful as always, though her bones showed more than Kessa
liked, in the flickering shadows. A heart-shaped face with pale eyes
that caught the color around her in silver and blue, framed in
curling white-blonde hair. The curve of a bosom enough to be a
handful and a little more, in the opinion of the boys Kessa'd spied
on as a boyish brat herself. Laita was everything Kessa wasn't. It
made her angry that her sister couldn't find a patron who'd keep her
the way she should be kept: silks, satins, potions for the least
cough or headache, and enough food to pad her ribs so they didn't
show beneath her breasts.

But
Laita'd not found anyone, and instead of being a pampered
concubine . . . She was a freelance courtesan, living
in a drafty rooftop apartment with her brother, relying on her
crèche-sister for cures. It pained Kessa. She knew her life would be
hardscrabble; she was a half-breed, likely some tavern-wench's
accident for lack of good dry tea. It wasn't right that Laita, who
looked like a noble's daughter, had worse.

Laita's
eyes were worried, wide in the way she'd been taught so her face
wouldn't wrinkle. "Kessa, what's happened?"

She
scrubbed at her face and sat on the foot of Laita's cot. "I've
asked Tag to come. I . . . need help."

"Jontho
said you'd been arrested, but brought out by your Guild Master."

Kessa
rubbed her face again. "Yes. That. Let's wait till Tag's here,
or I'll have to explain it all over again. And I don't want to know
how things went. Truth potions . . ."

Laita
patted her cot's edge. "Can you at least say what happened, that
you were
arrested
?"

"Yes.
Bunch of Weavers' guards. Don't know why they needed half a dozen men
for one herb-witch. They . . . offered no harm."
One'd made suggestions, but she'd looked him in the eye, and though
he'd had horse-dark eyes himself . . . He'd put his
spear across his body and said nothing more. She didn't want to speak
of that. Kessa pulled the orange from her belt pouch. "Here."

Jontho,
come to lean against the wall beside the cot, said, "Where'd you
get
that
, Kessacat?"

"My
Guild Master. He's been feeding me. I'll explain when Tag gets here.
How've you been?"

Laita's
smile (Kessa looked) lit up the room as much as the rushlight, it
seemed. "Better to know you're all right."

If
there were justice in the world, a spirit of rain would come from the
clouds and swear she was a daughter of the Sun himself, child-sworn
bride to be taken to a palace . . .
"I'm glad
you didn't fret yourself into a fever," Kessa said, and
collected the orange peels. There might be something she could do
with them, if she dried them carefully. At the least, they smelled
good; a last breath of summer, this close to harvest and frost.

They
talked about little things: Laita'd been able to dance the night
before, earning a few copper trees after the tavernkeep's cut;
Jontho'd stepped out for midnight cargo-hauling with Burk last night,
and the biggest brother of the crèche was doing well; the weather
looked to continue fair, they thought, though nights grew chill.

Finally,
there was another safety-patterned knock and Jontho opened the door.
Tag slipped in, still a weedy young man, but no scrawnier, or more
stooped, than when Kessa'd seen him last. The rushlight didn't show
the deep blue of his eyes that let him be almost charming when he
laughed, but the shadows emphasized how his face was thin while his
nose was long, and his ears stuck out; he'd pulled his knitted cap
down behind rather than over them. A few wisps of light brown hair
escaped from under it.

"Hey,"
he said, and came to sit by the cot and filch the orange slice
Laita'd saved in her lap. He batted at them as they reached to tug
his cap over his ears. "Gah, women! When'd
you
start,
Kess?"

"Herb-witches
are healers now and then," Kessa said. "And frostbite won't
make your ears go away."

"Fine.
So what's wrong that you've got all but Burk here?"

Kessa
dug her fingers into her knees. "You heard I got arrested? There
were two potions in that moneylender's cup, and only one mine. They
combined, left him a madman, and the watch arrested me. My Guild
Master got me out, though I don't know why he was there." She
took a breath. "He gave me a brew . . . He said
I've an alchemist's immunity."