Between the Lines, page 6
Fiona made her way across to the forge. Here she suspected she’d find something suitable for Soots to travel around in safely.
There were a few shops of metalworking, weaponsmithing, and the like, but a small one she had never seen before caught her eye. The new sign was by far the wordiest:
PESTLES AND MORTAR, BOTTLEMAKER, BOOKBINDER, SMITH OF METALS, CREATOR OF CONCOCTIONS AND TINCTURES
Intrigued, Fiona opened the door to take a quick look into the shop. An imposing tunic-clad smilodon, much taller and broader than Dodger, blocked most of her view. The orange fur stood high on the back of her neck, and dark vertical stripes rippled across her muscular arms. She pressed her thick feline body against the wooden counter as she pointed at a small-horned golden-skinned faun cowering behind it. Though the smilodon’s hands were bandaged, Fiona could still tell that the claws were out.
“I’m not messing around, you copper-headed dimwit. Vials. Now.”
“I’m sorry. So sorry, Petronia. It’s not ready yet. It’s-it’s making its way now. I mean to boil. It’s making its way to boil now. It’s a very specific formula, you see, so it has to be watched. And-and it’s slow going. Otherwise there would be flames and a big boom and, you see, the shop—”
“Stop blathering, Gaili,” Petronia said, her furry jaw clenched. “I’ve had enough of it to last years in the dark edge.”
Gaili looked back toward a large cauldron sitting over the fire. “I-I can’t guarantee it will work right now. The-the potion might wear off faster or-or not work at all when you get there.”
The smilodon grabbed the front of Gaili’s brown leather apron, pulling her closer. “Vial now. Or do you need to lose what little you have in this dump to motivate you?”
Gaili’s eyes widened.
Fiona cleared her throat, announcing her presence, and all eyes swiveled to her. “I should hope you are jesting, because that sounds like a threat.” She’d be damned if she wasn’t going to butt in.
The smilodon eyed Fiona warily. “What business is it of yours?”
“As a concerned citizen, of course,” she said demurely to the tigress, “it would be terrible to discover that there are those of ill repute threatening merchants when they don’t get the answer they like. But I know I misheard.” She smiled wide, taunting the tiger.
Gaili took a few steps back from the counter, eyes moving between the two women. She looked as if she didn’t know who to speak to—or if she should really speak at all.
Petronia turned around slowly, crossing her arms and flexing. “Did you now? Well, maybe you also misheard the part where I said this was none of your business.”
Fiona figured by the looks of the smilodon that she often ended confrontations in one of two ways: beating people up or getting what she wanted. That wasn’t exactly how Fiona saw her day going, so she needed an exit strategy that wouldn’t get the faun hurt.
There were no doors behind the counter, no windows toward the back. The shop was really small. It would have to be the door she just came in. She summoned up all the guile she had in the world, hoping that she had read Petronia right. “No, no I quite heard that part. I just didn’t care. I tried, and then I immediately failed. What is it that you need in such a hurry that you can’t possibly wait till it’s finished?” She moved a step back toward the door, fingering her scarf. “I bet it’s a lovely potion that lets you go someplace. Turner, I presume? That’s the only real reason to shake down an alchemist.” She took another step, her back to the door as she prattled on. “Or is it a brain tonic? You do seem to be missing some parts.”
The smilodon rushed her, but Fiona had gotten her scarf loose enough to pull out her whip and lashed out at the tiger, wrapping it around her bandaged arm. Petronia froze momentarily but then tried to regain her ground and slashed at Fiona with her claws. Fiona took that moment to leap backward, jerking the smilodon forward. With the speed from Petronia and the quick-footedness from Fiona, they both went tumbling out the front door.
While it seemed like a good idea at the time, Fiona found that having a very angry tigress on top of her wasn’t the best way to keep breathing. A few people had stopped to stare at them, and she pulled on her whip trying to move Petronia off of her.
Petronia for her part gathered her wits about her and dug her claw into Fiona’s shoulder. “You’re not very clever.”
“Well, I never thought I was particularly clever,” she said, grimacing from the pain. “I just thought fighting out here in the open, where everyone could see you, would be much more enjoyable.”
A small crowd of people had gathered around them. The smilodon’s eyes bounced from person to person, but she tugged her bandaged arm, pulling Fiona closer. A hint of a thick sky-blue stripe tattooed on her chest peeked out from beneath her rumpled clothes.
Fiona said, “Maybe you’ll be famous after this. Petronia, wasn’t it?” She smiled, hoping to hide her agitation and calculating that someone like the tigress didn’t like to have an audience she couldn’t fight off.
Growling, Petronia let her go and bounded off and away. Her tail whipped out, smacking Fiona in the face as she tried to sit up, but before Fiona could react, she was halfway across the square. A couple of jackets walked briskly toward the tigress. Petronia looked back once at Fiona, smirked, and leapt to the roof of the faun’s building, then jumped to the next building and beyond. The crowd of people gasped, and the jackets split off giving chase.
Fiona got up gingerly and dusted herself off. It was typically gauche for people to do things like running on buildings and attacking shopkeepers. What had happened to her sweet little corner of the Book while she’d had her nose in work these last few weeks?
Shaking her head, Fiona went back through the swinging door of the shop. The faun, Gaili, was nowhere to be seen. “Hello,” Fiona called out. “Sorry about that. She’s gone now, on what I hope is a brief chase away from some jackets. It’s just me.”
Two black horns and a crown of curly rosy-pink hair appeared from behind the counter as Gaili got up from her hiding spot. “Oh! You’re bleeding.”
Looking at her torn doublet and undershirt, Fiona winced. Rusty blood stained all the way through and the tangy iron scent of it filled her nostrils. Damn it, this had been her best doublet too. There was no way she’d be able to get the velvet repaired. Still, she moved her arm, a bit relieved that nothing appeared to be broken; she had only taken a few cuts from the claws. A few bruises from the brute landing on her. Not enough to damage anything internal. Just enough to get Petronia’s message. She would be happy if she never saw her face again.
“Here,” Gaili said, moving over with a wet cloth and bowl. She applied the cloth to Fiona’s shoulder .
It burned, and Fiona yelped, moving away. “Are you trying to hurt me more?”
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. No, absolutely not. It’s simply some vinegar to wash the wound. I’m sorry. I should’ve warned you first.”
Fiona sighed, controlling herself, and said softer, “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so rude. Thank you.”
Gaili took a deep breath and a step back. “That should stop any bleeding at least. Rub this on it twice a day and it should look like it never happened.” She pulled a small jar from one of the many shelves.
“I appreciate it,” said Fiona, eyeing the pot warily. She didn’t understand much about concoctions, but Gaili seemed alright enough. Her wound had in fact stopped bleeding after the initial burn. She sniffed, wondering if there was now a moldy smell coming from shoulder, but determined that wasn’t the source. She looked up, saying, “I hate to deliver bad news, but your pot is boiling over.”
Gaili shot over to the brew spewing over onto the small fire. The faun bent over the boiling pot and fanned the smoke. Grabbing mittens and tongs, she eased the pot off the fire and onto an iron rack. “Oh, cracks and crucibles. It’s definitely gone off now. There’s no way I’m going to be able to save this but for the grace of Larrakane.” She cast off the mittens and palmed her face in her hands, her golden skin deeply contrasted by her small black horns. Stamping her hooves, she started to mumble to herself: “But if I can cool it and mix it with a little powder, it may at least be a half-time potion. Yes, I—” She cut off and started to whizz around the room pulling bottles and plants from shelves and chucking them into the pot.
Fiona watched with wide eyes at how fast the faun could move. She held her tongue, not wanting to distract Gaili from what was obviously an important affair, and shifted her focus to the shop itself.
By the door were several overstuffed shelves of bottles, vials, and what Fiona assumed were vaporizer pumps, their squeeze bottle handles dangling. On the walls hung various contraptions of metal, though what most of them did she couldn’t even guess. A long sword looked particularly lethal until you got to the end of the blade, which seemed to be dripping something that looked an awful lot like blueberry juice. An anvil and hammer sat next to the fire on which cooled something flat and metallic. Between the smoke, the lack of windows, and the oil lamps flickering, it was hard to tell what anything was. Not the most customer-friendly shop in the artisan quarter by far.
Snooping over the counter, Fiona noticed blankets, a pillow, and a smattering of hay tucked into the bottom shelf. It looked like a hastily unmade pallet. Fiona frowned but said nothing. If Gaili was living here, that explained why it was so jam-packed. Possibly everything she owned was here. An unexpected tug of sympathy pulled on Fiona’s senses, and she watched the faun working so hard to recover the potion in thoughtful silence.
Finished with saving as much as she could of the brew, Gaili turned her attention back to Fiona with a bright smile. “There, settled. So sorry for delaying you. I’m sure you have somewhere important to be. What can I do for you?”
There was an oily smudge above her eyebrow, and Fiona wondered where it came from. Shaking her head back to the matter at hand, Fiona glanced around the small room and rapped her knuckles on the counter. In here wouldn’t do. “It might be better if I showed you.” She walked outside, the door jingling behind her, and called out, “Soots.”
Feeling a bit warm, she loosened her scarf as Soots came flying down toward her and Gaili.
:Fiona,: said Soots, emanating happiness upon her return.
“Soots, I’d like you to meet Gaili. She’s going to be helping us out today. Hopefully.”
Gaili moved past and looked at the creature. She took out a pair of spectacles, perched them on her nose, and got a bit closer. “Oh goodness! Look at you. You’re a flame sprite, aren’t you? Well, you know what you are. Why am I telling you? Amazing. I’d love to help. Any way I can.”
“I need to be able to travel around Spine with Soots and not have them…sort of…burst things on fire,” said Fiona, waving her hands as if they were exploding.
“Burst things?”
“When Soots gets happy or excited, easily flammable things tend to combust.”
“That’s magnificent,” Gaili said, clapping her hands together.
“Yes, it’s a lot of things,” Fiona said delicately, not wanting to hurt Soots’s feelings again, “and although Soots isn’t a turner, I’d like to be able to take them a few places.”
“Hmm, so whatever they’re using will need to survive many pages.”
“Not too many. There’s no taking them to Depths, of course.”
“Yes, yes, certainly.” Gaili stroked her cheek.
Gaili and Soots eyed each other in a sort of circular dance. As Gaili watched and looked over Soots, they spun in a circle around her a few times before coming back to where they had stood.
Gaili divested herself of her glasses and nodded. “There’s nothing I have on hand that might work, but that does not mean I can’t make something.” She grinned brightly. In impeccable Claire, she said, “Do you like to be this shape, or are there others?” The words sounded like crackles and pops as she spoke.
Soots danced, shifting from a ball of flame to a thin scorching line and finally into a small humanoid figure.
“Marvelous!” Gaili marched back into the shop without a backward glance.
Fiona could hear the clank of metal, pots, and tongs. “Soots, give me one more moment, okay? And then we’ll be heading back to Blaze. I want to get started on the Ashborn’s request today.”
Soots twirled and bobbed toward the smoke coming from Gaili’s chimney. Fiona supposed they could be comfortable on the brick and not burn anything, and she headed back inside.
“Do you sell Blaze breathing potions here?” Fiona called out.
Gaili snapped her head up, hitting the counter. Wincing, she nodded and rubbed her head. “Of a sort. I think potions are a little mundane really. Why, you could do so much more and make them easier to transport!” She smiled sheepishly. Opening a jar, she pulled out a wiggly cube that shimmered with gold dust. “This uses the same ingredients but it’s more delicious and you can carry more in a box, jar, or bag than a bunch of small clunky glass vials.”
Fiona raised an eyebrow at the odd cube but said, “I do dislike the bandoliers most turners wear to carry potions. I’ll give it a try.”
“Really? Oh great!” Gaili put the small cube in a pouch and handed it to Fiona. “I call them jelly breaths, but I’m still working on the name. I’m sorry that it’s the only one I have left. A lot of turners taking to Blaze these days. I even had an earth elemental asking for some.”
“I suppose that’s one side effect of being able to access more of it now. Anyone else interesting buying up your stock?” If she could get a sense of the people going to Blaze, it might help in her investigation. “What about Petronia?”
“Oh, no. No, not her. But I had a couple of elephas in here yesterday, a bunch of humans, but that’s about it.”
“Hmm.” Fiona nodded, rubbing a thumb on the counter.
“If this keeps up, I might have to go in myself to visit, although I wouldn’t want to leave the shop while I did it. And then where exactly would I go? And I’ll have to make equipment, of course.” Gaili went on moving clutter from one side of the shop to the other.
“Yes, I wondered about your sign. You are quite multi-talented.”
Gaili moved to a side shelf, starting to rearrange bottles. “I only do what everyone else does.”
Fiona could sense the faun’s mood shift and wondered why the bubbly woman suddenly closed off. “Most alchemist focus on potion making. Did you take a variety of lessons or simply have a natural gift for inventing?”
“I studied a bit,” Gaili said, rotating a bottle and then absentmindedly moving it up a shelf.
“Well, your signboard certainly worked for me,” Fiona said, seeing she was making her uncomfortable. To close the subject, she pulled papers from her scarf and handed them out to Gaili.
“No, no need. The jelly breath is yours for free. You’ve done more than enough to earn it. In fact, if you want to make any paper, I am always looking for ingredients for my experiments.”
“What kind of things do you need?”
“Small items from the pages. Plants, seeds, that sort of thing. If you’re not squeamish, animal droppings would be great.”
Fiona wrinkled her nose. “Animal droppings?”
“You wouldn’t believe what you can make with elemental animal droppings,” said Gaili, eyes shining.
“No, I bet I wouldn’t.” She thought of the jiggly square she had just received. “Alright then, if I come across anything, I’ll get them.”
“Excellent.”
“Feel free to drop by when you’ve gotten an idea for Soots,” Fiona said, taking out a small card with her house address on it.
Gaili took the card and nodded, a faraway look in her eyes at the reminder.
Fiona shrugged; she never did understand inventors much, but they were certainly useful. “Well then, welcome to Spine. Nice to have met you.”
“You as well, Fiona.”
With a quick nod she left Gaili scribbling behind her.
Now that the matter of Soots’s clothing—if that was the right word—was settled, Fiona made her way to the official Blaze pagemark outside of the artisan district. The Ashborn had shoehorned a deadline into their laborious speeches, she had noted. Why they needed the stone retrieved by the end of the week was beyond her, but the sooner she started, the better. Her first step was to talk to the salamander clan council. There were four large sets of salamanders in Blaze, and the clan council held representatives from each area. She hoped she could get a sense of what they knew about the theft and what they thought of the Ashborn.
Soots and Fiona followed the signs directing their way to the pagemark. Pagemarks could be as massive as a mountain plateau, as small as a clearing in the woods, or even the size of a city street. It depended on where they were going. Travel was typically dangerous to another page, not from. Official pagemarks of the Guild had jacketed stations to pay the fee and were marked off by the Travel Guild insignia: an open book with various species footprints above it. It was a messy metaphor of a symbol, but people got the gist.
This pagemark was at the entrance of Fire Bowl, where most of the fire denizens, even the handful that were turners, lived in Spine. It lined up directly to what used to be a flaming forest on the edge of the salamander realm.
Fiona sized up the jacket, a small green salamander with a snug-fitting vest sitting in a blocky stone stall bearing the insignia of the Travel Guild. Above the stall was a sign with the fire rune, a wavy upturned fork, burned into it, signaling the destination. The salamander was eating what looked like a frog, if the legs were any indication, and appeared to be completely oblivious to the world around him. Approaching, Fiona cleared her throat, but the salamander barely glanced an oversized side eye at her.
“Where, who, and why?” he said, nodding to the open bound register in front of him. It too was surrounded by stone.
Fiona paused at this new addition to the process. “Since when does the Travel Guild do anything besides taking money?”
“New regulations to better the access to the great Book for everyone,” the jacket said in a rote voice. The frog legs quivered in his mouth as he spoke. “Just a few questions and you can be on your way.”
