The Echidna's Scale (Alchemy's Apprentice)

by Quyle, Jeffrey

  Marco gave an inward sigh of relief, glad to have not had to reveal more about the group’s strange plans, though he was sorry for the missed opportunity to spend time with his friends. They would not have believed a tenth of his tale if he had told them, Marco knew.

  They proceeded through the city and soon reached the brightly lit environs around St. Agnello's church. Lanterns hung from ropes tied above the street, and crowds filled the area, sitting at numerous tables set up in the road and on the sidewalks and inside the church courtyard, where a band played music.

  “Marco! This is so energetic!” Pesino told him enthusiastically, still holding on to his hand as they looked for a table to claim as their own. “Do people with legs do this all the time?”

  “Not every day, but often,” Marco replied as they squeezed onto the stools around a small table. Marco and Kate left the two merpeople there while they went and bought bread, cheese, wine, juice, and sausage, then returned to the table with their arms full, and distributed their wares among the others.

  “Yech!” Pesino spit out the first bite of sausage she tried, and surprised Marco with an unladylike description of its taste.

  Cassius took one sip of the wine, then drank no more, though Pesino enjoyed both the taste and the effects of the alcohol. She grew less inhibited in her comments, and started asking questions about the clothing that the other women at the festival wore.

  “Why does that one have such bright colors? Why does that one only reach partway down the legs? Why does she show everyone so much of her chest?” Pesino asked about the various outfits that caught her eye, as the foursome watched people enjoy the festival.

  When the evening grew later, a few couples pushed some empty tables aside and began to dance, which elicited a new set of questions from Pesino, and eventually, a demand that Marco take her dancing.

  “Let’s wait and see if they play something slower,” Marco suggested in the midst of the frenetic swirling that occupied the dance floor.

  The next song was a slower one, and both couples joined the many others that crammed into the opening, bumping one another as they jostled their way in time to the music. At the end of the song, a quicker-paced tune began and as Marco prepared to walk off the floor, another man grabbed Pesino’s hand and began to pull her into the fast-paced dance.

  Marco stopped and watched, while Kate and Cassius left the floor. Pesino laughed, and moved her feet rapidly, though not in the proper steps, while her new partner laughed with her. She waved Marco away, and he stepped off the dance floor and returned to his table keeping an eye over his shoulder to watch as Pesino’s venture carried on in front of the band.

  Cassius asked Marco about the sausage they had eaten, and Marco, who had a friend who worked as an apprentice in a butcher shop, tried to explain how sausages were made.

  “Marco,” Kate interrupted him as he was in the middle of his story.

  “Marco!” she repeated, putting a hand on his arm. “Go out there and stop her right now!”

  Marco turned around to see Pesino, then immediately stood up and ran towards the dance floor.

  Even though autumn was well advanced, several flying insects remained alive and active in the urban core of the Lion City. Drawn by the light of the hanging lanterns, many of them had circled around in the air above the festival, and one large moth had taken an inadvertently well-aimed plunge down into the cleavage of Pesino’s blouse.

  The girl had interrupted her dancing with her partner, and immediately unbuttoned the front of her blouse, then fanned it wildly to expunge the moth from her clothing. Marco reached her as quickly as possible, grabbed both pieces of fabric and pulled them shut.

  “That’s not the way they do it here,” he advised her, just before her erstwhile dance partner roughly grabbed Marco’s shoulder and wrenched him away.

  “I’m dancing with her; you stay out of this,” the man snarled at Marco, and he pulled a knife from his belt.

  Marco looked at him in surprise, but before he could pull his own sword free to defend himself, the man lunged at Marco with the knife. The two were at close quarters, and Marco reacted instinctively to protect himself from the jagged blade of the knife. His golden right hand reached out and closed around the knife blade, closing in a tight clench as he seized the weapon and wrenched it away from his assailant.

  The man looked at Marco in astonishment as people around them screamed and scattered from the outbreak of violence, and then Marco swung his fisted hand – knife hilt protruding from it – at the man’s face and struck him squarely in the nose, knocking the drunken dancer backwards with a thundering crash into a table and chairs behind him. The man slumped down to the floor and passed out, his nose bleeding freely onto his upper lip.

  Marco raised his hand and looked at it in astonishment.

  “Marco!” he heard Kate’s voice shouting.

  He opened his fingers, and saw that the blade had done no damage to his fingers or palm. There was no blood, no sliced flesh, no tendons exposed.

  He threw the knife down, then looked over at Pesino. She had both hands clutching her blouse closed, just as Marco had left her, but her eyes were bright with excitement as she looked at him.

  “Marco!” Kate came over and grabbed his shoulder with one hand, as the other hand led Cassius after her.

  “The gendarmes are on their way! We need to leave. Get her and follow me,” Kate instructed, as she wormed past him and headed towards a back exit from the church yard.

  With his left hand Marco reached out and grabbed Pesino’s wrist as he started running after Kate. He felt Pesino start with a jerk, unprepared for the quick acceleration on her feet, and she started to fall.

  There were shouts nearby, and Marco felt panic start to rise in his soul. He stopped, turned, ducked and slung Pesino over his shoulder, then started awkwardly running in the direction Kate had departed.

  “Marco!” Pesino cried. “Put me down!”

  He ignored her until they were beyond the church, in a crowded street where crowds from the festival were milling around, and he stopped to place the girl on her feet.

  “Button your shirt,” he hissed at her as he tried to angle her body towards a wall and place himself in front of others to block the view of her open garment.

  “Why? Is it a problem?” she asked.

  “Yes, it is a problem. Please, Pesino,” he begged.

  “Is there some problem here?” a pair of people walking by asked, sensing that Marco might be coercing the girl.

  She looked over her shoulder at them, then glanced at Marco. “No, no problem. My shirt just came undone,” she said as she started pressing the cheap wooden buttons through the matching holes.

  “Let me see your hand,” she said as soon as she was done.

  Marco turned her and started walking with her back towards the harbor front, where he expected to catch up with Kate and Cassius. He absently placed his hand out in front of her, and felt, then watched, as she turned it, poked it, stroked it, and examined it carefully by the light of the streetlights they passed.

  “There’s not a sign of damage,” she told him as she looked up at his face.

  “It’s,” he paused, “it’s special,” was all he could think to say. He had grabbed the slicing blade of his assailant’s knife and gripped it tensely, yet there was not a single mark upon his ensorcelled appendage.

  “Here,” he reached out and began to unbutton her shirt with a gentle touch, making her eyes grow large, and then he rebuttoned them so that the buttons were with their matching button holes.

  “I don’t know what all it can do,” he said. “But we’ll find out. Now, let’s go back to the harbor and find Cassius and Kate.”

  They walked side by side after that, without holding hands, until Pesino felt composed enough to talk. “That thing we did with our feet and our bodies,” she began.

  “Dancing?” Marco guessed.

  “Yes, dancing,” she agreed. “That was fun. Do you do it o
ften?”

  “It happens every time there’s a festival,” Marco said. “Some folks are good at it, and some folks aren’t,” he grinned. “I’m not.”

  “It’s so much fun!” Pesino said. “Since I got these legs, it’s the closest thing I’ve had to being in the water.”

  “You’ve only had legs for a few hours,” Marco said dryly.

  “Don’t be practical Marco!” she lightly slapped him on the shoulder. “And tomorrow, I want you to get some clothes for women for me to wear. “I don’t think I should dress like a man. I don’t look like a man, do I?”

  “No, no you don’t,” Marco agreed, as they reached a corner in the city.

  “Look,” Pesino whispered, clutching Marco’s hand to stop him in his steps. She gestured towards a bridge that crossed a canal just ahead of them.

  Cassius and Kate were standing at the top of the bridge’s gentle arch. Cassius’s head was bent over Kate’s, and the two were sharing a kiss.

  “That’s the Bridge of Kisses!” Marco gasped as he realized where they were.

  “What’s that mean?” Pesino whispered as they stood in the shadows and surreptitiously watched their companions.

  “It’s a superstition,” he whispered back. “If a couple has their first kiss on that bridge, they’ll have many more kisses to follow,” he explained.

  “I used to stand there and hope a pretty girl would come along and kiss me,” he confessed to her, drawing a laugh so strong and sudden it came out as a snort, which made her laugh more as she slapped her hands over her face.

  Kate’s head moved out from under Cassius’s at the unexpected sound, and after a moment the couple slowly walked off the bridge hand-in-hand.

  Chapter 9 – Departure from the Lion City

  The foursome awoke in the morning in their cubby under the pier, sprawled about and covering most of the floor space of the small room. Marco led them out of the room for the beginning of their day, a day which he hoped they would end outside of the Lion City, on their way towards whatever adventures awaited them.

  Marco had no doubt that Kate would be traveling with them, after seeing her and Cassius kissing on the Kissing Bridge. He believed the superstition that a first kiss on the bridge would lead to a longer relationship between the two. And the girl had shown common sense and quick wit already; after the brief skirmish at the dance, she had known to flee via a back exit from the church, so Marco felt that she would provide a useful companion.

  Yet he had some worries. He didn’t want to lead her into a dangerous situation. For that matter, he didn’t want to lead Cassius or Pesino into a dangerous situation. He momentarily grinned; he really didn’t want to go to a dangerous situation himself, if the truth be admitted.

  And he worried about the dynamics of their little group. If Kate and Cassius became a couple as they traveled, he and Pesino would almost be forced to be a couple as well, no matter how much he might want to place constraints of the level of their relationship; they would walk together and talk together and interact in the vacuum created by Cassius and Kate focusing on each other. Marco didn’t intend to be unfaithful to Mirra, but it would take more will power than he had expected.

  He still had a good amount of money left from the ten gold florins the Doge had given him. He had paid Sty for the materials in the merpeople’s transformation formula, and he had paid for dinner last night, and clothes and a couple of small knick-knacks, but he had plenty left. Of course, he had to outfit four people for the journey ahead now, instead of just himself.

  They all were up and walking off the pier, when Marco decided to take them all to Algornia’s shop for breakfast and advice. He had to talk to the master alchemist, to discover where to go, or at least how to start in the right direction, and what to expect along the way.

  The group traveled through the city. "I recognize this; we walked through this area last night, didn't we?" Cassius asked.

  "We did," Marco agreed, impressed by the merman's memory of their route. "We're going right over there this morning," he pointed as he led them to the front door of Algornia's shop.

  Inside, the front of the shop was empty at the early start to the business day, but back inside the workroom Phillipe was at work already, grinding together ingredients in a pestle.

  "This is where you used to work?" Kate asked.

  "He sat here all the time and he worked here half the time," Phillipe said with a grin.

  Marco shook a fist at him in mock anger, then led the others past to the kitchen, where Sarah graciously agree to prepare a meal for the visitors. They sat together at the kitchen table and Cassius and Pesino watched in fascination as the food was prepared.

  "No sausage for me, please," Cassius requested as Sarah began to assemble plates for her guests; Marco suspected that he remembered Marco’s description of watching sausage being made.

  They all ate quickly, for Master Algornia entered the room, and took a breakfast pastry with him as he went back to his study. He invited Marco and the others to come join him after their meal, which rushed them to hurriedly finish their plates, thank the cook, and then follow Marco to the small room that Algornia called his study.

  “Here, all of you gather around,” Algornia told them as he spread open a rolled-up map atop the desk.

  “So Sty’s transformation formula worked?” Algornia asked, looking around the table. “Which two of you formerly had tails?” he asked.

  Cassius and Pesino both spoke up. “We did, sir,” Cassius told him.

  “And how do you enjoy having legs now, and walking upon the land?” he asked.

  “I miss my tail,” Pesino answered. “I miss the water and the freedom. But I love dancing! And Marco has been such a treat to get to know,” she said as she grinned at him.

  “And you, how did you get mixed up with this motley collection?” Algornia turned to Kate.

  “Marco rescued me from the Corsair raid, so I knew I could count on him,” the girl said with a glibness that impressed Marco.

  “Ah,” Algornia said in a non-committal tone that Marco knew implied more.

  “So Marco, you and your intrepid band are all going to make this journey, this difficult and dangerous journey, all the way, together?” Algornia’s question was clearly intended to lead Marco to disavow such a plan.

  “I know what the spirit of the island told me I have to do,” Marco said. “These others are coming along, though they do not have to, and I wish they would not put themselves in the way of danger.”

  “We originally were planning to come along out of our duty,” Cassius said, “but now I think we’re actually fond of young Marco, and we’ll travel with him as friends.”

  “I’m traveling along as a friend as well,” Kate said.

  “There’s still time to decide the limits of friendship,” Algornia said.

  “Here we are,” he directed their attention to the map on the desk. “We’re in the Lion City, here in the northwest coast of the Sea of Dalamia. The first stage of your journey will be an easy one, as you travel over to Trestle, a port city on the northeastern coast of the sea.

  “The weather will remain relatively mild as you travel close to the sea, but once you reach Trestle you’ll have to turn inland and follow the Amber Trade Road due north, up through the gap in the mountains to reach the tributary of the Great River. From there you travel a short distance down river to where Boheme sits at the confluence of a pair of tributaries, and the Great River properly begins.

  “Then,” Algornia said, “by then you’ll be in winter proper, in case you don’t figure that out going through the mountains, and you’ll need to travel along the great river to Fortburg. “That’s where you leave the river and go due west to the Nightshade Mountains, and Clovis will be on the north end of the mountains.”

  “What will the journey be like?” Marco asked as he studied the map on the desk.

  “Cold,” Algornia said. “Going through the Glacial Mountains will be extremely cold. The roa
d is well-traveled in good weather, but you’ll need to make sure everyone is well-outfitted.

  “From Boheme to Frostburg you can travel the easy and expensive way and travel by riverboat, or you can save money by traveling on roads through the lands along the river. There are several small duchies along the river, some of them not much more than a castle on a hill looking over the river, and it’s a bit unpredictable what you’ll run into. And then from Frostburg,” Algornia hesitated.

  “Yes?” Marco prompted.

  “It’s wilderness,” Algornia said. “I’ve never traveled that way, so you’ll have to learn more when you get to Fortburg, and travel carefully.

  “Which is the best advice I can give you,” he added.

  “Don’t forget to pick up your clothes at Abrianna’s shop,” Algornia added, reminding him of the clothes he had ordered just two days earlier, two days that seemed filled with a week’s worth of activity in the city.

  “And one more thing,” Algornia reached beneath his desk and pulled out a leather pack. “This is supplied with a collection of small amounts of several unusual and atypical ingredients and elements that you might need if you find you have to practice alchemy in an emergency situation while you’re traveling.”

  Marco looked at Algornia in surprise, then impulsively reached out and squeezed him in a gentle hug. “This is so generous! So wonderful! I hadn’t realized how much I missed practicing alchemy until I walked back in here. I hope I don’t have to use these things, but I feel much better for having them.”

  “Now I imagine you all need to move along,” Algornia said, removing the weights that held the curling paper map in place, as they all watched it close upon itself.

  “Be careful Marco, and come back here if your adventure to Clovis doesn’t provide the information you need,” the alchemist said as he escorted them to the door, and then he watched with a feeling of hope and fear as they told him farewell and walked away from the front of his shop on Chemist Square.