The elixir of inheritanc.., p.11
The Elixir of Inheritance, page 11
“Exactly,” Ibram said. He walked to the desk and moved behind the big chair. He set his good hand down on the chair’s back, and stared out at the office. The view from Savoldyn’s erstwhile throne was not illuminating. He took a breath and stretched out his hand over the desk, ignoring its trembling.
“The shaypot was here,” he said. “Savoldyn sat here, and there was naught but papers elsewhere. The daughter…” He pointed out to Ahksell’s right, where the little table and chair stood. “She was there.”
“Mistress Ignalle?” Ahksell asked. “You didn’t mention that.”
“Does everyone know this family but me?” Ibram asked, and tugged on his hair in the back of his head.
Ahksell laughed. “You know what gossip does to a small village,” he said.
“Small village,” Ibram muttered. “Might as well live on the same street for all the privacy.”
Ahksell turned to the low table. “And she drank as well?”
Ibram rubbed his opposite thumb into his palm, trying to massage some feeling into his hand. “She did not.”
“I suppose their relationship was bad enough,” Ahksell said, “but that seems a bit too rude not to offer her something.”
Ibram paused. “Not if she were uninvited.” He thought back, angling himself so that he could picture the office as it had been only this morning. In his mind’s eye, he saw Mistress Ignalle’s short fingers and square palm reach out. “I didn’t see another cup.”
“So, if it was poison,” Ahksell said, “only Master Savoldyn had the means to drink it. Could she have put something in the pot?”
“Would he have let her fiddle with his shay in the first place?” Ibram frowned. “Or she arrived after he had been served, and was simply not offered any. After all, I arrived late in their argument; her cup might have been on the way from the kitchen.”
Ahksell played with the ring on his middle finger in thought as he looked about the office. Ibram pointed at it, and then let his hand drop. It still tingled, making his fingers feel almost as if they were about to cramp.
“When did you get that gewgaw?” he asked. “It’s handy.”
“Hmm? Oh, this,” Ahksell replied and showed Ibram the ring. “I took one for my exam from Mentor’s storeroom just in case my locating light overloaded again.”
Ibram winced. He’d acted as Ahksell’s testing subject while he developed his work for the exams. Many agents did so, especially as victorious Attendants often passed on the spoils of victory as a reward for their help. Ahksell’s little button shield had gone through several variations before he’d landed on a rechargeable beacon.
“How would that help?” he asked. “And why was I not allowed one?”
He turned his back, and began to check over the bound books and stacks of scrolls in their nests on the shelving. He pulled one thin volume down and flipped open the cover. It was merely an old ledger, not even from five years ago; he returned it to its place. The second was a more recent accounting of a trip down the river Sig to the port at Junibrite.
“It’s an active energy exchanger,” Ahksell said, behind him. “You have to be able to align the fluorospar with the nucleus of containment, and then…” He made the pulling gesture again. “It takes practice.”
“Well, then why didn’t you have one during your experimenting?” Turning, Ibram put his hands on his hips, and then immediately dropped them. When had he become his father? “I was seeing two of you for a twelve-day!”
“Runner’s corns, I didn’t know I would need it!” Ahksell spread his hands. “And I wouldn’t have been prepared except for, you know, when that happened to you.”
“How glad I am,” Ibram said, “to sacrifice for alchemy.”
“They used to be standard issue for all of us,” Ahksell said, and frowned down at the ring. “But there hasn’t really been a need since the last alchemaster cabal was thrown down.”
Ibram considered the empty space where the alembic had stood on the shelf. “Let’s hope your keeping that on you was a happy accident.”
“Anyone can buy an alembic,” Ahksell reminded him. “They’re quite fashionable to have in the house these days, you know. I’d say most folk with a hefty enough purse could afford to buy them.”
“I will admit that natron by itself is not suspicious,” Ibram said. He flexed his hand. “If you’ll admit it’s a strange household with one maid of all work who still takes the trouble to clean out an object which supposedly has never seen any use.”
Ahksell raised his hand up. “We don’t know it was even cleaned recently! The alembic could have been washed years ago, and simply left upon the shelf.” He sighed, and looked around the room again. “Really, I don’t know what I should be looking for, in any case.”
“What does a Hessele’s Cage do, exactly?”
Ahksell paused, and then tilted his head. “It accesses the weave of causation and targets disturbed threads of correlation.”
“Well,” Ibram said. “Do that.”
“Just be a Hessele’s Cage?” Ahksell asked, and snorted in disbelief. “Why not just apply for my mentorship now? I’m sure no one will be surprised at my ambition.”
“Oh, it can’t be that hard, to be sure,” Ibram said. “Look at the size of you! You’re brimming with alchemical verve.”
“That is not how alchemy works!”
“Just look for a warped thread, or a knot, or something!”
Ahksell rolled his eyes. “How can you have gone all through the Bedris school and yet know so little?”
“My talents were required elsewhere,” Ibram said. “Now please take a closer look at the fabric of reality.”
Ahksell groaned. He took his introrse pendant out of his belt pouch and strung it by the end loop on his left middle finger, letting the iridescent trimstone arrowhead hang down on the braided copper length. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and then slowly began rubbing his palms together. The pendant twisted in the air. Ibram had seen Ladyship do this before; it was a common centering position before a training drill. Usually, it heralded some kind of tumbling formation. The air grew hot.
Ibram shrugged and tugged on the neck of his gambeson. He grabbed a tightly bound scroll up from the nearest tray, and sneezed. He frowned, and then sniffed the air. He sneezed again. Kandrilat cedar? And something else, a jellied scent like lillia, but more sickly.
Ibram considered the scroll in his hands. It wasn’t paper after all, now that he had hold of it, but a spiral of delicate wooden slats bound in silk and tied closed by a length of leather cord. The blue wax seal on its knot was broken, and bits crumbled underneath Ibram’s fingernails.
“The threads around the desk are stretched thin,” Ahksell said. “But there’s nothing demonic in it, nor divine for that matter. I would say he was troubled by something, but I have rarely met an untroubled merchant.”
Ibram chewed the corner of his mouth. Not many secular folk had bound slat scrolls, since paper worked perfectly fine for their sort. Alchemists were the ones who often found their formulae and treatises dripping off the parchment as the ink refused to dry, or moldering in vellum half a day following the first transcription. Still, it didn’t have to mean anything. There had been a fashion some years previous to bind poetry and songs in slat scrolls with tassels and ribbons on the ends. Some of the Vissilian pantheon used them as well, like the Speaker. Ibram couldn’t remember if the Navigator was one such deity, however.
But Master Savoldyn had not struck him as a poetical man, nor a religious one. Ibram pursed his lips. Mistress Savoldyn was, as Amota Viran had said, a woman of sentiment. Perhaps it was hers? The ledgers he discounted, even though the trip to the river Sig had ended as a loss, according to the figures. As expenses went, a man with this many bound books was not likely to be in financial trouble, even this close to the living mountain. Still, the records keeping tallied with a man of business. He unrolled it, and wrinkled his nose immediately.
“What do you have there?” Ahksell asked from behind him.
Ibram coughed as he rolled the scroll back up again. “Nothing much,” he answered. “Caravan romances. I think Master Savoldyn thought of himself as a poet.”
“Any good?”
“Not at all,” Ibram said. He thrust the scroll back on the stack and turned about. “Barely a limerick, and not even funny.”
Ahksell stood with his head tilted, unblinking. He held both of his hands in front of him. Ibram frowned. The air twisted in the center of Ahksell’s palms, like fabric revolving upwards beneath the trimstone arrowhead pulling the copper braid taut. No, not the air—Ibram felt no wind—but the light turning in on itself as if in the center of a kaleidoscope. He swallowed heavily.
“Find anything?” Ibram repeated and leaned casually away.
Ahksell nodded and looked past Ibram to the bookshelf. “May I?”
“Are you certain you wish to stop…whatever it is you’re doing?” Ibram asked.
“No, not really,” Ahksell said. “But I believe the real…”
Ibram waited, but Ahksell had fallen silent and still. Ibram glanced about the empty room, and eyed the door; no telling when they might be interrupted. He cleared his throat loudly, and poked Ahksell in the shoulder with two fingers.
“There is intent here,” Ahksell announced, abruptly. “A weave of a particular color, like copper when it rusts… I think there is a lot of effort in those bookshelves.”
Ibram paused. “Of course,” he said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ahksell took a step forward, crowding into Ibram’s space, and shook his head. Ibram obliged Ahksell and stood aside. Ahksell approached the bookcase, wavered by the little table, and then lowered his first finger. The pendant curled upwards as quick as a striking snake, and wrapped itself twice around the furthest end. The arrowhead shifted restlessly, up and down the shelf with the stack of scrolls.
Ahksell tugged his left hand, and the pendant reluctantly uncurled. He snapped his pendant back into his palm, stepped back, and took a deep breath as if he were surfacing from deep water. He nodded, mostly to himself, and then caught Ibram’s eye, still not quite present.
“We should see about that,” he said.
“As you say,” Ibram said. He frowned down at the little pile of slat scrolls. “What do you mean when you say ‘effort?’ Is it Savoldyn’s anima, or something?”
Ahksell smiled. “Yes,” he said. “He’s placed a lot of time and energy in these objects. They have become a part of his energetic sphere.”
“Must be fading by now,” Ibram said.
“Oh, it is,” Ahksell nodded. “And something—a strong impression, but a recent one—is decaying quickly, too. But he died amongst his belongings, and thus…”
“They have resonated for longer, as does anything else directed to him.”
“Lucky you brought me to the office quickly enough to perceive the connection.”
Ahksell was grinning; Ibram frowned. “I do remember my lessons,” he said, and smacked Ahksell’s arm. “Stop making that face.”
“I’m merely pleased to know you were listening!”
Ibram smacked him again, but Ahksell refused to change the expression on his face. Ibram huffed and tucked his hair behind his ears.
“I remember it well enough!” he said. “Lead may not become gold, but alfrin and copper might marry to produce it. The focus of reality describes its presence.”
Ahksell’s grin became a proud beam. Ibram narrowed his eyes and glared.
6
Ibram turned back to the half-emptied bookshelf. “Yilka the Green is laughing at me with all three of her mouths,” he said, as he poked the stack of scrolls.
“There must be thirty such things here,” Ahksell said. “It’s a small fortune.”
Ibram waved the open ledger in his left hand. “And him with a lost ship out past Layaline Harbor.”
“Indeed?”
Ibram gazed down at the ledger in thought. A ship with all its crew and cargo meant a significant outlay for a merchant. A success could herald two years of high living, but failure should have meant penury. Perhaps it was not so odd that the household was reduced to a skeleton crew of servants. Ibram shifted his attention down to the rest of the scrolls. He gathered them up one by one, tucking them into the crook of his elbow until their tray was empty, and then piled them in Ahksell’s arms.
“The rest are mixed in with vellum,” he said, and stared at the next stack of scrolls, obviously constructed of delicate wooden wands and silk. Their tassels were tangled together. Yilka’s megrims, were they all Savoldyn’s work?
Ahksell sat down on the floor, cross-legged, and dropped the scrolls before him. He picked one up and unrolled it; holding the parchment before him. Ibram’s attention snapped to him, caught by the movement. He watched as Ahksell’s face slowly slackened in astonished horror as he read; his lips moved, Ibram hadn’t noticed that before. He chucked the ledger to the floor.
“You’re right,” Ahksell said, at last, as he tossed the scroll behind him. “This is tripe.”
Ibram chuckled. “Is it too spicy for you, Attendant?”
“I don’t mind spice,” Ahksell retorted. “But this poem is nothing but salt and fat.”
Ibram’s mouth curved upward, but he directed most of his attention to the bookcase. “I doubt he performed them,” he said. “A man of business in the street for coin?”
“Maybe he just wrote them for himself,” Ahksell said.
Ibram heard the sounds of another scroll being revealed before Ahksell tossed it aside just as quickly. “I don’t know,” He jerked his head towards the other wooden slat scrolls. “It’s a lot of money to throw after something so personal.”
“If you have the money, it might not seem so much of an expense,” Ahksell said. He picked up another scroll and frowned down at it. “An ode to coupling,” he muttered, before tossing it aside. “And he wasn’t spending anything on his daughter.”
“Or his household,” Ibram said. “I’m going to take on a few more of the ledgers.”
Ibram pulled three thick cloth-bound books from the shelf and settled opposite Ahksell. He glared down at the stack, while Ahksell snapped his copper and trimstone pendant into his palm. He clenched his fist, and then stuck it out over the scrolls on the floor.
“They heat up,” he muttered, “but nothing resentful. More studious.”
“Well, he liked himself, clearly,” Ibram said.
Ahksell sent his equipment swirling over the stack of bound wooden slats again, and the air crackled. Ibram’s back crawled. He cracked open the ledger on top of his own stack, and drew his finger down the splotched figures. It began neatly enough, but as the figures continued the lettering became a messy affair, with blots and trailing lines in the margins. Savoldyn had dated the pages clearly at least; they stood from a twelve-day ago.
“These are contracts for the next shearing season in Hobilat,” he muttered. “But it’s a very bad hand. Do you think we shall find the cost of the scribe in here?”
Ahksell pulled the ledger out of his hands. Ibram leaned back, frowning. Ahksell ignored him, and held the ledger in his left hand with one of the scrolls on his right. He shook his head.
“No, it’s the same writing,” he said. “Here.”
Ibram leaned forward as Ahksell tilted the book and scroll in his direction. “Did this one heat up for you?” he asked.
“It’s about alembics,” Ahksell said with a crook in his smile. “He must have been inspired.”
Ibram frowned. “How so?”
Ahksell let go of the ledger and turned the scroll towards himself. He cleared his throat. “On my travel so I saw two still pots disordered/no frail rope to tether their use—Well, how could there be? You connect still pots to the condenser with a lyne arm.”
“I think he was being poetical.”
“You can be accurate and poetical.”
Ibram laughed. He looked over their pile of scrolls and breathed out through his nose before settling back on his heels. Ahksell dropped the scroll, and then rubbed his temples like he was fighting off a headache.
“There can be an innocent explanation,” he said. “For the handwriting, I mean.”
“But if he was being poisoned over time,” Ibram said and pointed at a particularly mysterious symbol in the ledger. “Then this could be proof of his deterioration.”
Ahksell’s face turned a bit grey. “It’s a heavy sentence,” he said. “It’s death, they’ll question the servants, and the lady of the house, and how much money did he make anyway? It’s no doubt a job for the warders—”
“First,” Ibram said, cutting Ahksell off and staring up at him until Ahksell began to focus. “It’s me who will be questioning the servants, and you know I am the soul of discretion.”
Ahksell’s mouth widened in a sudden grin. Ibram pointed at him. “That was a different matter,” he said, quickly. “And I thought we agreed never to discuss it.”
Ahksell nodded with a jerk of his head. “Nothing even crossed my mind.”
Ibram squinted at him severely, but Ahksell only blinked placidly back. “Secondly, Savoldyn was rich, but he wasn’t noble. The warders won’t even notice he’s gone until we send them a notice for the official records.”
“But if he’s very rich,” Ahksell said, “then they’ll have to get involved on behalf of the guild.”
Ibram shook his head. “To that point, I don’t think he was that rich. If these ledgers are correct—and the penmanship says more than Savoldyn’s figure were off—then I think our merchant may have gone down with a few of his transport ships.”
Ahksell’s mouth pinched. He nodded. “We should look at the rest of the books in this office.”
Ibram felt the back of his head begin to ache. Figures had never been his favorite occupation. Oh, he could add and take away with the best of them, but the time it took to make sense of the economies Ama and Father dealt with in the family business had always made him itch for the outdoors. It was just as well he’d been born first; had he been Father’s heir instead of Katka, the family would be suffering. He left the first book to Ahksell and settled the next ledger in his lap. This one marked the trading expeditions Savoldyn had sponsored overland, which then gave way to river barges and ocean-vessels. They were all of them moderately successful. How then the lack of servants? Ibram frowned.
