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The woman who runs the apothecary seems nice. It’s a shame Bren has to rob her. But needs outweigh nice, and Bren needs many things. Components for spells. A potion for the itch in his arms that won’t go away. Food for the ache in his belly that never seems to fade.
The last, at least, has already been provided. The halfling woman had taken one look at Bren swaying in the doorway and slammed a head of day old bread down on the counter, like this was a bakery and not a worn-down apothecary on the edge of the Empire.
“Well?” she’d said, when Bren had only stared at her in mute confusion. “Customers don’t do me any good if they pass out before they pay.”
Bren chews on the bread now, memorizing the drawers of ingredients behind the counter as the halfling woman buzzes around the shop. She’s got dark circles under her eyes and a harried rhythm to her step, but then most people do these days. Wars are never kind to the common folk.
At the stove, the woman measures out herbs and powders with unexpected exactness. It’s the way Bren remembers measuring out soot and sulfur, before—Before.
“You a student or something?”
Bren shakes the smoke out of his head and tries to focus on her words. He dons his best smile, puts on the face of a well-meaning fool. “Pardon?”
She smiles with too many teeth. "You seem like the type who might know your way around a potion, is all."
Knows, she knows, a dark voice whispers. She knows and she’ll tell. She’ll tell and they’ll find you. They’ll find you and—
Bren takes another bite of bread and spends too long chewing. His arms itch. His throat burns.
“I’ve no knack for the arcane, I’m afraid,” he says, once he’s swallowed down the taste of terror and ash.
The woman hums. “Shame, I’ve been looking for an apprentice.” She gives him another once over. “You any good with a mop?”
Despite everything, Bren is still his mother’s son. “Yes, ma’am,” he says, before he remembers he’s supposed to be robbing this woman.
The halfling woman scowls. “Ma’am,” she spits, like it’s an insult. “Call me Veth, or don’t call me anything at all.”
“Veth,” Bren agrees. He should be halfway down the road with incense filling his pockets.
The halfling woman—Veth—nods her approval and turns back to the stovetop, where the potion she’s been brewing has started to bubble. “And what should I call you?”
“Caleb,” he says, one of a dozen names he keeps in his pocket. “Caleb Widogast.”
Veth hums, ladling the sum of her work into two iron bowls. With a sudden aching hunger, Bren realizes it is not a potion, but soup.
“Well, Caleb Widogast,” Veth says, sliding a bowl over the counter to him. “You looking for a job?”
*
It’s not for long, Bren tells himself. Just long enough to get some copper in his pocket, some bread in his belly. A few days, and Felderin will forget him just like every other town he's passed through.
It’s nice to work with his hands again, reshape the world not through magic, but by action. To end the day smelling not of smoke and blood, but sweat and dust. Veth has him sweep floors, wipe counters, pull ingredients from the hard-to-reach shelves.
“I don’t mind climbing on the counters to get something,” she tells him, after a customer has left, bundles of arnica and olisuba wrapped in little muslin squares. “But some people like to get upset over nothing.”
Bren can’t help but grin. Astrid had done the same, before she’d learned mage hand. Veth grins back, and it takes longer than it should for the memory to curdle from fondness to hurt.
*
It’s easier than it should be for Bren—Caleb—to slide into place here.
The shop is built for two. There are two sets of alchemist’s tools in the drawer, two burners on the stove, two step stools behind the till. In the storage room, there is an apron that’s never been moved from its hook, the name Yeza Brenatto stitched on it with golden thread and too many buttons.
Bren’s curiosity, both his best and worst trait, simmers inside him like a tincture on the burner. But Veth hasn’t asked Bren any questions about Caleb, so Bren doesn’t ask her any questions about Yeza.
*
Alchemy is not so different from spellwork. There are components, cut and measured and mixed and manipulated, and if you are careful and clever, you can will them into something greater than the sum of their parts. It is not the weave of the universe, but it is a small piece of the world that is theirs alone.
Theirs.
Bren is not sure when he started thinking in terms of our and we. It should scare him more, probably. Sometimes it does. Sometimes he wakes and cannot breathe for memory of what it means to trust, what caring can cost. Other times, Veth will smile at him over her mortal and pestle, then smear arrowroot powder across his cheek and laugh at him. Those times are not so bad. Those times Bren thinks he would not mind being Caleb Widogast.
*
There’s a secret drawer Caleb pretends not to know about. Veth pulls it open one night, after they’ve locked the door and settled the books.
“You want one?” she asks, as she pours herself three fingers of whiskey. It’s a decent bottle, well aged. The kind of thing his parents would have had to save up all year to buy; the kind of thing Trent would have wrinkled his nose at.
“Ja, okay.”
It burns on his tongue, but it’s a good burn, the kind that cleanses instead of kills.
“Today is our anniversary,” Veth says. She finishes her glass, pours herself another. “Was. Is.”
Caleb does not ask who. He does not need to.
“They took him from me. Start of the war. Said they ‘needed him.’ Like I didn’t need him?” Veth says they, but all Bren hears is you. He pushes away the dark voice and its whispers. She doesn’t know, and if she did—Caleb is not so sure she’d tell, anyways.
“My father was a soldier,” Caleb offers, the first truth he’s spoken since his mind became his own again.
“Yeza wasn’t,” Veth says.
The both finish their drinks in silence.
*
With an aggrieved groan, Veth slides the ledger over to him. “You’re good with numbers,” she says. “And if I have to carry one more zero or whatever, I’m going to stab someone.”
The thing about Veth is that Caleb does not think that’s hyperbole. And as the person currently in stabbing distance, it seems prudent to comply.
He tallies the column of expenses with one hand while the other fiddles with a round bit of polished quartz. Veth had given it to him on his third day, when she noticed his antsy fingers. Bren had not asked her where she got such a thing; Caleb is grateful for it now.
“So?” Veth asks, setting down a bowl of stew for both of them. “What’s the verdict?”
The margins are tight. It’s not hard to tell which new expense is straining the shop budget: food and salary for one apprentice.
“Perhaps three weeks before expenses will exceed revenue.”
Veth nods a grim sort of determination on her face, and bites into a roll. “O’ay,” she says, mouth full of bread.
“Okay?”
Veth swallows, then nods again. “We’ll make it work. I’ll make it work.”
*
Veth disappears into the back workshop more after that. At first, just for a few minutes at a time, then for hours, then once for an entire day. She comes out as Caleb is locking up the register, stinking of ozone and earth. Curiosity pulls at him like a griffon against its reins, but Caleb reels himself in. Veth trusts him. He wants, very desperately, to trust her too.
*
Dawn is just creeping through the windows when the door to the apothecary swings open.
“Ah, we’re not quite open yet,” he says, squaring away the last of the register's silver for the day.
“I am here for Mrs. Brenatto,” says a voice like ice.
Caleb’s heart stutters in his chest, frost spreading through his veins. A mage stands in the doorway, red-robed and imperious. A face he knows well; a face he can only hope does not know his.
Vess DeRogna stands in the doorway, between Caleb and freedom. Between Bren and all the things he swore he’d never do again.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Veth says. “I’ve got what you want,”
She knew. She told. She knew.
Veth’s hand slides to the secret drawer and draws out a single silver vial. Caleb’s watches mutely while his mind hovers a few feet above his body.
She told she told she told.
Veth walks over to the Archmage of Antiquity like it’s nothing, like Caleb Widogast’s entire existence is does not rest in her hands.
She wouldn’t she wouldn’t she wouldn’t
Fire flickers under his fingertips. His mind races through his mental map of the cabinets; every poison, every powder, every vial waiting to become an inferno. He can do it now, should do it now. Should take what he needs and run, like he should have all those weeks ago.
Vess raises a hand—but not to cast. Instead, she takes a single vial from Veth’s outstretched palm and holds it up to inspect. Her eyes flare with arcane light, and then she nods. “Very well.”
The vial disappears into her cloak, traded for a coin purse, fat and heavy.
Then, with barely a word, she is gone in a twist of magic.
Veth closes the door and turns the lock. It is only now Caleb notices her hands are shaking. It’s three steps to draw the curtains, then twelve to the register, another two to hop from her stool to the countertop.
Veth tosses the coin purse down, and gold spills across the counter. Caleb doesn’t need to count it to know it’s more money than either of them have ever seen in their lives.
Caleb could still run. Take the purse and the coin he’s just spent the morning counting and go. He might even make it out of town.
Instead, he takes Veth’s hand. It is warm, like the sun in springtime.
They need to discuss this. Vess, and the gold, and the potion, and whatever it is they’re doing here.
Caleb closes his eyes and leans his head against Veth’s. She smells like ozone and whiskey and nettle and home. Veth squeezes their fingers together, her puffs of breath soft along Caleb’s neck.
Bren would have run.
Caleb stays.