And they’ll have the sense to hide the cash, whatever they do , I thought. My mother had had a habit of hiding cash her husband didn’t know existed. I didn’t blame her. It had been all that had kept us alive during the long cold winters. It will give them a chance to do something with their lives .
Simon nudged my arm. “Do you want an escort back to the shop?”
I shook my head. “I’ll be fine,” I said. “Thank you for coming.”
“It was the least I could do,” Simon said. He bowed, as if I were a great lady. “Be well.”
He walked off. I turned and headed in the other direction, looking around with interest. South Shallot was nowhere near as fancy - and expensive - as North Shallot, but it was still well ahead of Water Shallot. The men and women on the streets were respectable merchants and businessmen, not people living on the margins. I walked past a group of laughing schoolchildren and felt a twinge of envy, mingled with contempt. Had my life ever been so carefree? I’d been working, in one form or another, practically since I’d been able to walk.
The apothecary itself was located in a fairly respectable street, close enough to Brewers Lane to be sure of attracting clientele from the Potions Guild as well as Jude’s and the remainder of South Shallot. I stopped outside the shop and looked up, silently admiring the banner flying over the door. Master Travis had never bothered naming his shop - everyone already knew who he was - but I thought he’d like my banner. I’d named the shop after him.
Ginny waved to me as I stepped into the shop. “Hi, My Lady.”
I felt my cheeks flush. “I’m just a shopkeeper,” I protested, as I shrugged off my cloak and hung it from the hook. “What are you doing here?”
Ginny smiled. “The Hiring Hall wants someone to try to sell you on a new shopgirl,” she said. “Are you interested?”
“Not yet,” I said, as we walked up the stairs. My new apartment was right over the shop. I thought Master Travis would have approved. “Jill can handle almost everything, for the moment.”
“How unfortunate for my boss.” Ginny’s smile grew wider. “And now ... what happened? One moment, you’re a maid; the next, you have an apothecary of your very own.”
“Long story,” I said, mischievously. I gave her the official version, then filled in a handful of the blanks. “Did you get in trouble?”
“Oh, there was enough confusion over what actually happened to avoid anyone getting in real trouble,” Ginny said. “The guy I bribed to write you a character left the city a month ago. It seems that he had a few enemies of his own and decided it was better to run than risk getting caught. Thankfully, the character looked perfectly valid. No one realised that he’d been bribed to write it.”
I allowed myself a moment of relief. If Ginny had been fired because of me ...
“I got promoted,” Ginny said. She clapped her hands together. “And if you want to go out and celebrate ...?”
“Tonight,” I said. “I'm supposed to be meeting my new teacher this afternoon.”
“Good luck,” Ginny said. She looked around the apartment. “Do you really need training?”
“Yeah,” I said. I had a talent for potions - Master Travis said I had strong instincts for potions - but I knew that there was quite a lot I didn’t know. Some of the recipes in the notebook - now concealed within the ironhold - were beyond my comprehension. I wanted to figure out how to make them work. “It would let me start a career of my own.”
“It strikes me that you’ve already got one,” Ginny said. “Tonight at eight, then?”
She paused. “Oh, I saw your young man,” she added. “He was hanging around outside when I arrived.”
“He isn’t my young man,” I said, crossly. I’d spotted Clive a few times myself, although he’d never dared enter the shop. I wasn’t sure if he was mooning after me or keeping an eye on things for his boss. Either way, I didn’t care. “If you see him again, tell him ... tell him to go away.”
“As you wish,” Ginny said, as if she were humouring a child.
She stood. “I’ll see you tonight, Rebecca. You’re buying.”
I waved as she hurried down the stairs, then took a long breath. The apothecary didn’t quite feel real , even though it was mine. It felt like a dream. An ironhold crammed with ingredients, a workroom to brew potions, bedrooms for Jill and myself and anyone else I chose to hire, a small collection of textbooks ... it felt like a dream come true. I stood and paced into the next room. Master Travis had never bothered erecting a shrine to his ancestors, leaving me to wonder who his ancestors actually were. If he’d had a small fortune he’d never touched ...
He might have been an illegitimate child too , I thought. If he’d been disowned ...
It was believable, I supposed. I could easily see someone as stiff-necked as Master Travis loudly declaring that he’d sooner starve than take money from a family that had kicked him out, but ... there was no room for such pride in Water Shallot. No one asked too many questions about where the money came from when the answers might only upset them - or worse. I knew too much about what some people had done for money - and why they’d needed the money - to feel anything but pity for them. Master Travis could have made himself very comfortable without draining his bank account dry.
And he did make himself comfortable , I reminded myself. The apothecary hadn’t been as comfortable as Bolingbroke Hall, but it had been heads and shoulders above my stepfather’s house. He didn’t need to spend the money .
The Kingsmen hadn’t been able to recover much from the wreckage, according to the report Simon Bolingbroke had passed to me. Master Travis’s body was nothing more than ashes, so intermingled with the remains of the shop that there had been nothing left to bury. His collection of tools had been melted to scrap, rendered utterly beyond recognition. The notebook and the pieces of the necklace - and the small collection of papers in the bank - were all I had left of him. And yet, they weren’t the sort of things that could be put in a shrine.
Master Travis would probably approve , I thought, as I dusted the tiny shrine. His very life revolved around potions .
I took a long breath as I studied the shrine. My family antecedents were as confused as ever. My biological father a mystery, my stepfather no more my flesh and blood than a random man off the streets ... my mother was no longer, in some sense, my mother. I shared Cyanine’s cellular structure. I’d grown used - again - to looking at my face in the mirror, but I had no idea what would happen when I had children. They might not look half-caste ...
It didn’t matter, I told myself firmly. Master Travis had adopted me. He, not my father or my stepfather, has raised me. He was my father, in every way that mattered. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t sired me. He’d taken me in and taught me everything I needed to know to build a career for myself. And I was definitely never going to go back to Water Shallot.
“I’m proud to call you my ancestor,” I said, quietly. I could barely remember how to pray. Master Travis had certainly never encouraged me to pray ... in hindsight, it was another hint he didn’t have ancestors of his own. “And I miss you.”
I drew a long breath. I had won, but it felt like I’d lost. I’d give up everything I’d earned over the past few months if it meant seeing Master Travis again. I wished, bitterly, that Reginald had never entered our lives. Neither of us had had any reason to care if Reginald succeeded his father or not. It would have been so much better if we’d never heard of him.
But we did , I thought. And now the time has come to bid farewell .
I bowed my head. “I will always remember,” I said. “Goodbye.”
The End
The World of the Zero Enigma Will Return in:
The King’s Man
Coming Soon!
The Alchemist's Apprentice Page 41