The Adventurers’ Guild had a way of making everything look accidental and an event at the same time.
At first glance, it was noise. Adventurers moved through the hall in uneven flows, some arriving with mud on their boots and others leaving with the expression of people who had just agreed to do something slightly regrettable for money. Weapons clinked. Leather creaked. Someone was arguing with a clerk over whether a missing boot counted as equipment loss.
Alric paused just inside the entrance.
It smelled of leather, sweat, oil, old wood, and beer. Not enough beer to make it a tavern, but enough to remind him that the Adventurers’ Guild had been one of his better customers for some time now.
Branick walked beside him, looking entirely at ease. Two other adventurers trailed a few paces behind. They were not crowding him, exactly, but they were near enough that anyone wanting to stab Alric would have to make it a group activity.
A young clerk looked up and straightened.
“Mister Alric?”
“That’s me.”
“Guild Master Pavise is expecting you.”
That still felt strange. Being expected. Having appointments, arriving with documents. It was suspiciously close to being respectable.
He followed the clerk through the hall and up the stairs. The stairs did not creak, which Alric noticed immediately. In this city, silence from wood usually meant expense, maintenance, or someone with a strong interest in surprising armed men from below.
Pavise’s office overlooked the main hall.
The guild master sat behind his desk with a collection of papers arranged into piles that looked disorderly only until one examined them. Then they became worse, because they were clearly organised according to a system known only to him.
Pavise looked up and grinned. “Alric.”
“Pavise,” Alric said, returning the grin and taking a seat.
His eyes dropped to the documents under Alric’s arm.
“Those the papers?”
Alric set them on the desk. “Atelier documents.”
Pavise did not take them immediately. He leaned back first, studying Alric with the expression of a man who had learned that paper could be more dangerous than knives if given enough witnesses.
Then he picked up the first sheet.
For a while there was only the sound of pages moving.
Alric waited. Branick took up a position near the door and performed a very convincing impression of a man not listening.
Pavise read slowly.
His grin returned by degrees. The look of a man watching someone build a bridge over a river that had not yet admitted it was in the way.
“Well,” Pavise said at last.
Alric waited.
Pavise tapped the documents once. “Are you trying to become a military power?”
“Eh? No.”
Pavise’s grin widened. “You understand why I ask.”
“I can guess.”
A recognised atelier. Legal authority, workers, students, guards, mages.
“The temple watching you. The palace watching you. The magery likely pretending not to watch you while watching you.” He lifted the papers slightly. “This is a lot for a brewer.”
“The main point for me is bypassing the magery,” Alric said.
That changed Pavise’s expression. Not much. Just enough. “Ah.”
Pavise set the papers down. “What do you need from us?”
“Do you have something like a… I don’t know the word here, I guess a catalog?”
Pavise waited. Alric waited back.
“A what?” Pavise asked.
“I guess something like a book or a list of everything you sell… you acquire. Everything the guild can provide.”
Pavise tapped his chin for a moment, looking at the ceiling.
Alric pressed on before the silence could take hold. “Monster stones, magical materials, herbs, monster bits that do something I guess? Things adventurers bring in, sell, store, or can be paid to collect.”
Pavise looked at him. “You want a list of everything?”
“Yes.”
“We have records but I don’t think it’s the same thing.”
“They could be.”
Pavise looked at the desk, chewing his bottom lip for a moment. “This will cause a lot of clerk suffering.”
Alric nodded. “I’ll pay for the suffering.”
That got a laugh.
Below them, someone shouted something about boots again. A second voice shouted back that if he wanted to keep both boots, he should not have stepped where the map said swamp.
Pavise ignored it.
“Most clients know what they want before they come here,” he said.
“That’s the problem. I don’t know what might be useful until I know it exists.”
Pavise’s humour faded slightly.
Alric leaned forward. “If I only ask for things everyone already uses, I get things everyone already understands.”
“And you want things people do not understand?” Pavise asked, tilting his head backward slightly.
“I want things people have decided are useless because they were asking the wrong questions.”
Pavise studied him for a moment.
“Give me an example.”
Alric looked toward the wall. “I don’t know. A magic stone that spins or something.”
Pavise stared. Then he chuckled. Then he laughed.
“A stone that spins?”
“It was an example.”
“I know of no such thing. If something like that existed, every wagon in the kingdom would have a bunch of them.”
The laughter slowed.
Alric shrugged. “Or would someone have found one, decided it was a strange stone that turned itself around on a table, and sold it to a noble child?”
Pavise’s mouth closed.
“That’s my point,” Alric said. “I don’t need it to look useful to the person who found it. I need to know it exists.”
The room became quiet in a different way.
Pavise tapped his chin again. “You think there are valuable things sitting in guild stores because no one knows what to do with them?”
“Well, the heating stones for one.”
“They were already useful.”
“They were expensive bath warmers. Now they make most of the city’s beer.”
Pavise conceded that with a tilt of his head.
“You did find a use for them,” he said. “A loud, steamy one that has made half the city dependent on not upsetting you.”
Alric shrugged at that comment, “Speaking of that, I need thirty more heating stones.”
Pavise somehow became very still.
Branick, by the door, looked very carefully at the ceiling.
“Thirty?” Pavise said. “Heating stones?”
“Yes.”
“They are still twenty silver each.”
Alric winced. He had known the number. It still hurt when spoken aloud.
“I know.”
“That is six gold.”
Pavise stared at him. Alric shrugged, each boiler was earning roughly a gold coin a week. They were running five of them.
“The damn magery charges a gold coin each,” Alric said.
Pavise winced too.
There were prices one expected from the magery, and there were prices that made experienced men briefly consider arson as an economic model.
“That,” Pavise said, “I knew it was bad, but…”
“I consider it robbery but I also don’t have the words.”
Pavise just nodded slowly, considering it.
“I need them for the new project. Some for the atelier, some for experiments, and some spares.”
“Spares?”
“If one breaks, I don’t want everything stopping.”
“That is not how most people buy things.”
“I am buying what I will need when something goes wrong.”
Pavise rubbed his jaw. The guild master glanced toward a shelf of ledgers behind a small locked grate.
“We don’t have thirty here.”
“How many?”
“Six not already assigned. Maybe eight if I upset people.”
“Am I not worth upsetting people for?”
Pavise laughed before it turned into a sigh. “I can send ravens. Mountain branches may have some. If I send messages today, replies in a few days. Stones in two weeks if the roads behave.”
“Do it.”
Pavise nodded before pulling paper toward him. He read the words out loud as he wrote them. “Thirty heating stones. Buyer understands price and has chosen suffering.”
“I don’t think that last part needs to be official.”
“It’s for me.”
Alric sat back. “Do you have anything for cooling?”
Pavise’s hand paused.
“Cooling.”
“Yes.”
“Like ice?”
“Like making things cold. Or moving heat away. Or moving air. Anything.”
Pavise looked at him with the expression of a man being asked if the guild kept spare winters in storage.
“Never heard of anything that makes things cold, I understand that is impossible.”
Alric nodded, thinking. Pavise watched him.
“There is one thing,” Pavise said slowly.
Alric looked up.
“I do not like that expression.”
“What expression?”
“The one where you spend money before I tell you what the thing is.”
“What is it?”
“A sea monster. Nasty thing. Attacks boats from below. Blasts them somehow, makes a lot splashing. From what I’ve been told, it can crack hulls.”
“It has a stone? Like the heating stones?”
“Yes. In water, its stone moves water. Violently. In air, it moves air.”
Alric went still for a moment before shuddering. It sounded like a monster that attacked with water pressure. He glanced back at Pavise.
“I want two.”
“I have not said we can get them.”
“I want two to test.”
“Of course you do.”
“Initially.”
Pavise leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment.
“Initially,” he repeated.
“If it moves air, it could be useful.”
“For what?”
“Loads of things, Pavise. Bellows, for one. Cellars, grain drying. Do you know how much trouble air is?”
Pavise stared at him before shaking his head.
“No,” he said. “I cannot say I have ever thought of air as trouble.”
Branick made a small choking sound near the door.
Pavise did not look at him. “Don’t.”
Branick became professionally silent.
“We do not have any here,” Pavise said. “Coastal guilds might. They may not sell. Those stones can be dangerous.”
“Well, try, I’d like two to experiment with.”
Pavise made another note, with the care of a man trying not to become involved in his own handwriting.
“Two hull cracker stones. Testing purpose.”
“Air movement purpose.”
“I am not writing that.”
“Why?”
“Because a clerk will ask questions, and those questions will end with me explaining you.”
Alric accepted that. It seemed fair. Pavise set the page down and regarded him properly now.
“I don’t know what to make of you, Alric. You have an atelier, guards, heating stones in bulk, sea monster stones, and a request for every strange thing the guild has ever ignored.”
Alric nodded. Pavise waited.
Alric frowned. “Was there a question?”
Pavise laughed once.
“No. That’s what worries me.”
“I’m just trying things.”
Pavise’s expression shifted at that. It sounded harmless until Alric said it.
Below, the boot argument had apparently evolved into a debate over whether swamps should be marked more aggressively on maps.
Pavise ignored that too.
“You aren’t saying goodbye. What else?”
“Do you have books on herbs?”
Pavise began rubbing his temples. “Herbs?”
“Field guides, local plants, uses, that sort of thing. Anything adventuring herbalists use.”
“We have some. Herbalists keep their own notes mostly. They charge for knowledge the way smiths charge for steel.”
“I am interested in magical herbs.”
Pavise did not answer immediately. That pause was different.
“Magical herbs?” he said.
“Yes.”
“What for?”
“I’m not sure yet. I want to find out.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is. I want to learn what they do. How they behave. How they are stored. What happens when you dry them, heat them, soak them, ferment them, distil them, grind them, burn them, grow them near other plants, grow them away from other plants.”
Pavise’s face had gone still.
“Are you making potions?”
“No.”
“Working with someone who makes potions?”
“No.”
“Planning to start?”
“No.”
Pavise studied him.
“I have been warned,” Alric said. “Alchemists guard potion production. Kings back them. Nobles buy from them. I understand that pond has teeth.”
“That may be the most sensible thing you have said today.”
“I have no intention of making potions.”
“Then why magical herbs?”
“Because if something has an effect, that effect might be useful outside medicine.”
Pavise rubbed his face with both hands.
It was the gesture of a man watching a simple answer escape through a window.
“Give me an example.”
“A plant that keeps insects away. One that slows rot. One that speeds growth. One that changes colour in bad air. One that preserves meat. One that makes water safer. One that absorbs moisture. I don’t know.”
“You think like an alchemist.”
“No. I think like someone who wants fewer headaches.”
Pavise stared at him. “Then why are you giving them to me? No, wait, don’t answer.”
Pavise stood and moved to the shelves. He unlocked the grate, removed a dark leather ledger, and brought it back.
“Herbalist commissions,” he said. “Two years of them. Common things mostly. Antidote moss. Feverleaf. Bloodroot. Silvercap fungus. Marsh lanterns. Some magical, some not.”
Alric leaned forward. Pavise turned the ledger slightly away.
“Not yours yet.”
“I was looking.”
“You were looking like a man who forgets ledgers belong to other people.”
Alric sat back.
“I can have harmless sections copied,” Pavise said. “The rest will require permission. Some names have agreements attached. Some have warnings.”
“And adventuring herbalists?”
“Three in the city. One expensive. One mad. One expensive and mad, which usually means competent.”
“I’ll speak to the competent one.”
“You’ll speak to the one who agrees.”
Pavise wrote again.
The page was becoming crowded.
“I also want the directory to include strange storage items,” Alric said.
Pavise raised his gaze slowly. “You understand discretion costs extra and I am guessing you want a lot of it?”
Alric nodded. Behind him, Branick scoffed.