The inn had been busy since morning, which meant it was functioning exactly as Seren wanted and not at all as Alric preferred. He was, however, grateful Seren was handling it.
People moved through the common room with bundles, buckets, folded linens, small crates, ledgers, and the particular urgency of workers who had been told that an important guest was arriving and that nothing about this should become embarrassing. It was not chaos. Seren did not allow chaos. It was merely activity arranged in such a way that anyone not holding a list felt they might be in the way.
He shifted a half-step behind a stack of folded tablecloths.
Seren looked up from her ledger. Alric looked innocent.
She stared at him for another heartbeat, then returned to her notes.
He considered that a victory. Margaret arrived shortly after midday.
She stepped inside wearing travelling clothes that somehow managed to look severe despite the dust. Behind her came two porters with trunks, followed by another carrying a locked case that he held with both hands and a level of fear usually reserved for sleeping snakes.
Margaret looked around the inn.
She did not smile. But her eyebrows moved slightly, which Alric was beginning to understand counted as praise from her.
“This is better appointed than I expected,” she said, gesturing to the common room furniture.
Alric shrugged. “It was expensive enough.”
“That does not always help.”
“No,” he said. “But Seren does.”
From across the room, Seren looked up from her ledger without changing expression. Margaret inclined her head, accepting that explanation as entirely sufficient.
“The rooms are ready,” Seren said. “Your trunks will go upstairs. The locked case can remain with you unless you want it stored.”
“With me,” Margaret said immediately.
The porter looked relieved to be told he would soon stop holding it.
Alric watched the case for a moment, then decided not to ask. There were only so many dangerous objects he could care about in one week.
Margaret turned to him. “My cousins will arrive in two weeks.”
She reached into a satchel and withdrew a folded document, sealed and marked in a way that suggested several clerks had taken turns being important at it.
“The atelier is registered.”
Alric took it. For a moment, he only looked at the seal.
There it was. Official. Ink, wax, name, permission. Another piece of the strange thing he was building had moved from idea to fact.
Brewery. Inn-turned-still house. Inn-turned-personal house and headquarters. Atelier. He grinned before he could stop himself.
Margaret noticed. “Do not look so pleased. Registered things attract attention.”
“Attention was coming anyway.”
“Yes,” she said. “But now some of it will bring forms.”
That reduced the grin slightly. Seren closed the ledger with a soft clap.
“If you are finished being pleased with the existence of paperwork,” she said, “we should show Lady Margaret her rooms before the trunks arrive in the wrong order.”
Alric looked at her. “There’s a wrong order?”
“There is always a wrong order.”
Margaret’s expression suggested this was the first sensible thing anyone had said since she arrived.
They followed Seren toward the stairs. The inn was still moving around them, though somehow the movement bent away from Seren before it reached her. Workers stepped aside with trays, sheets, boxes, and one unfortunate young man carrying a small table that was almost certainly too wide for the corridor.
He saw Seren, judged his chances, and turned around.
“Good lad,” Alric said.
“He is learning,” Seren said.
Margaret glanced between them. “You have trained the staff quickly.”
“I have frightened them efficiently.”
Alric nodded. “It saves time.”
The suite was on the upper floor, set at the end of the corridor where the noise from below dulled into a warm murmur.
Margaret entered first. Then she stopped.
Alric had seen enough people look around expensive rooms to recognize the small pause where expectation met reality and had to adjust itself.
It was not a bedroom. It was closer to an apartment.
A small lounge sat beyond the entrance, with a low table, two chairs, a writing desk, shelves already built into one wall, and a narrow hearth that had been swept so clean it looked eager. A larger bedroom opened to the right containing, amazingly, a bed. Two smaller rooms stood opposite it, both empty except for rugs, bare tables, and the smell of fresh wood.
Margaret walked into the lounge and looked around slowly.
“This is nice?” she said.
Seren’s shoulders lowered by the smallest possible amount.
“It is adequate,” she said. “You will be teaching, storing materials, receiving professional visitors, and remaining here for some time. A normal room would be inconvenient.”
“A normal room would have been cheaper,” Alric said.
Seren did not look at him. “A normal room would have become three rooms within a week, badly.”
Margaret touched the edge of the writing desk. It was sturdy, wide, and placed near the window where the light fell properly in the afternoon.
Margaret gave Seren a longer look.
Alric watched it happen with interest. It was rare to see two women communicate respect without either of them softening their faces.
“The bedchamber is through there,” Seren said. “There is a private washstand. Hot water can be brought up in the mornings and evenings unless you prefer another schedule. The hearth will be laid before supper. Meals can be taken downstairs or sent up.”
“Downstairs,” Margaret said.
Seren made a note. Of course she had produced a small slate somewhere between the corridor and the door. Alric had stopped asking.
“And the empty rooms?” Seren asked.
Margaret crossed to the first one.
It was narrow but clean, with enough space for shelves along two walls and a worktable under the window. She stood there for a moment, measuring it with her eyes.
“This one will be storage.”
“For clothing?” Seren asked.
“No. Books, tools, and reagents that are not dangerous unless fools handle them.”
Alric looked at the empty room again.
“That feels like a very specific category.”
“It is the largest category in magic.”
“Comforting.”
Margaret ignored him. “I will bring a lock. A magical lock.”
The pause lasted only a breath.
“Will it interfere with the building?” Alric asked, giving her a sidelong look.
“That depends on the lock,” Margaret responded with a small grin.
Alric turned his head slowly. “That is not the answer I was hoping for.”
Margaret gave him the look of a woman who had taught too many people not to lick things.
“It will not interfere with the building,” she explained with a small huff.
“I will also need shelves,” Margaret began. “Deep shelves. Not decorative ones. No carved edges. No polished nonsense. If a shelf cannot hold a box of mineral salts and three books thick enough to injure a student, it is not a shelf.”
Seren wrote that down.
Alric, unfortunately, understood the principle.
“The second room?” Seren asked.
Margaret went to it.
This one was larger, though still plain. It had no shelves yet, no table, and no decision in it. Just walls, light, and possibility.
Margaret stood in the doorway for longer this time.
“Clothes, I guess,” she said.
Seren looked up. “Clothes? No servants?”
Margaret turned sharply. “No, I couldn’t afford them, unless… that’s a no.” She had glanced at Alric’s expression during the pause and found her answer.
Seren only nodded and wrote it down without comment. Alric leaned one shoulder against the doorframe.
“I can dress myself, pour my own water, and find my own comb without help,” Margaret said, looking around again. “I will be honest, this is more than I expected.”
Seren lowered the slate. “I will have shelves priced and measured. Strong ones. The first room will be arranged for secure storage.”
Margaret studied her.
“You really do run this place.”
“I run the parts that need running,” Seren said.
“That is all of them,” Alric said.
Seren ignored him with professional ease.
Margaret’s mouth twitched. It was not quite a smile, but it threatened to become one if conditions worsened.
“This will do,” she said.
Seren accepted the words as if they were high praise.
From the corridor came the sound of careful footsteps, followed by a muffled curse and a porter whispering an apology to a doorframe.
The first trunk arrived with the defeated dignity of a large object that had been carried up too many stairs. Two men brought it in, set it down where Seren indicated, and immediately looked to her for the next instruction.
Not Margaret or Alric. Seren.
Alric noticed that. So did Margaret.
“The larger trunk goes in the bedchamber,” Seren said. “The narrow one near the writing desk. The locked case remains with Lady Margaret until she decides where it goes.”
“With me,” Margaret repeated.
The porter holding it nodded with the desperate eagerness of a man willing to agree with anything that ended in him not holding it.
Then came another sound. A slower one. Wood creaking under strain.
Several men breathing with the focused misery of people carrying something fragile, expensive, and unfairly shaped.
Alric looked toward the corridor. Seren noticed. Margaret noticed Seren noticing. Then Margaret noticed Alric still looking. Her expression changed.
“No,” she said.
Alric blinked. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You looked.”
“I am allowed to look.”
“You look at tools the way hungry men look at pies.”
“That seems unfair to pies.”
“It is unfair to tools.”
The men came into view carrying a wooden frame packed with straw. Inside it was glass. Not one piece, but several: bulbs, tubes, curves, narrow necks, odd little chambers, all tied into place with enough care to suggest it was either valuable or very good at punishing carelessness. All the glass was very dark, with a green tint.
Alric’s attention sharpened.
A third porter followed behind them, carrying another section of glassware wrapped in cloth.
Margaret sighed. Seren looked at the frame, then at Alric, then at Margaret.
“Where is that going?” she asked.
“The side room downstairs,” Margaret said. “The one I asked to have cleared.”
Seren’s slate rose again. Alric was already moving. Margaret followed him, because she was not an idiot.
Seren came too, because if something was going to explode in her inn, she preferred to be present for the beginning of it.
The porters carried the glass back down with the sort of care usually given to royal infants and unstable curses. They took it into a side room that had been cleared and scrubbed. A sturdy table stood in the centre. Shelves lined one wall. A small brazier had been set up near a stone surface, along with clamps, ceramic bowls, and several stoppered bottles.
Alric stood in the doorway.
“That’s distillation equipment,” he said carefully.
Margaret looked at him. “You know glasswork?”
“I know the shape.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No,” he admitted. “What is it for?”
“Mana potions,” she said.
Alric looked at the glass again. There were moments when the world said something casually that deserved several follow-up questions and possibly a chair.
“Mages make their own?” he asked.
“Basic ones. Often. The method I use is widely known among trained mages. It is taught because relying on the alchemy guild is expensive and inconvenient. Mostly expensive.”
“The alchemy guild makes better ones?”
“Much better,” Margaret said. “Stronger, cleaner, far more stable.”
“How expensive?”
Margaret looked at him as though weighing whether the answer would cause trouble.
Then she said, “Five large silver for a proper guild mana potion.”
Alric blinked. He did the conversion automatically. Five large silver. Five wagonloads of grain. For something someone drank and then did not have anymore.
“That’s five wagonloads of grain,” he said.
“For you, yes,” Margaret said. “For a noble mage who has exhausted himself shielding a wall, it is the difference between living and dying. For an adventuring party, it may decide whether their healer stands back up. For a household with money, it is security.”
Alric rubbed his chin. The glassware gleamed in the light. It was fragile, clumsy but interesting. Very interesting.
Margaret’s expression hardened.
“No,” she said again.
“I still haven’t said anything.”
“You are thinking too loudly.”
“That keeps happening today.”
“If you are thinking about mana potions, stop.” Her voice had changed. It had lost the dry irritation and settled into something flatter. More serious. “The alchemists guard potions fiercely. Not with old men collecting dues and pretending to matter. Fiercely.”
Alric looked at her.
“They are backed by kings,” Margaret continued. “Contracts, battlefield supply, noble medicine, temple arrangements, mage colleges. Potion production touches health in too many ways to be treated like another trade. In many places, the alchemy guild controls who gets to recover, who gets to fight again, who gets treatment quickly, and who waits.”
The room felt quieter after that. Even the porters seemed to move more carefully.
Margaret held Alric’s gaze. “Do not wander into that because the glass is interesting.”
Alric lowered his hand from his chin.
“I have no intention of making potions,” he said.
Margaret studied him.
He meant it. Completely.
He had enough people annoyed with him. He was not about to step into the business of healing, battlefield recovery, noble medicine, royal contracts, and whatever else lived behind the word alchemy.
Also, potions sounded like exactly the sort of thing where one mistake killed someone important and created paperwork with swords attached.
“No potions,” he said again.
Margaret did not relax. Not entirely.
“Good,” she said.
Alric looked once more at the glassware. Bulbs. Tubes. Heat. Vapour. Condensation. Separation.
Not potions. Something else.
Margaret saw his eyes move and closed hers briefly, as though asking patience from any god currently willing to lend some.
“Alric.”
“What?”
“You are still looking.”
“I’m not making potions.”
“That was not as comforting as you think it was.”
Seren looked from one to the other.