The Sorcerer and the Witch-King's Heir

Leon woke up, covered in blood and disoriented. As usual. What had happened? Oh right, the caravan. He jolted upright, suddenly awake. Oh shit, the caravan! Then he remembered, and relaxed. There had been a fight, yes, but they'd made it to the rendezvous, and his clients were now in the company of paid, heavily armed guards and no longer his problem. As much as he wanted to know that they had made it to their destination safely, he had done his part of the job, and if he didn't get back to his shop soon people were going to notice. The straw he had slept in was sticking to the dried blood that covered him. It was mostly his, but other than a few aches and pains from sleeping in a barn, he didn't seem to be in any pain. So the wounds had healed already. Which was good. It meant no one had used any poison or, gods forbid, magic. He shuddered at the thought. His cloak was where he'd left it, big enough and dark enough to cover the suspicious looking blood stains as well as his conspicuously large sword. It was just beginning to lighten outside and if he hustled, he could make it back home before anyone noticed he was gone. Home. He thought about tea and a bath and the warmth of the fire and suddenly didn't feel tired at all. Leo reached his street just as the sun was starting to peek between the narrow rows of shops in Merchants Alley. He breathed a sigh of relief as he reached his door, fumbling for the latch. He almost had it, was almost clear, when he heard the unmistakable creak of the shutter opening in the window over the shop directly to his left. "Leo Oswald," said a shrill, creaky voice. "Whatever are you doing coming home this late?" Mrs. S, the weaver next door, peered down at him, adjusting her spectacles. "Drunkenness?" she guessed. "Debauchery? What poor young fellow have you degraded this time?" her gaze sharpened. "Is that blood?" "Not mine, Mrs. S," Leo said wearily, squinting up at her. "Just had some trouble with bandits on the road." "Road? What road?" "I went into High Gate yesterday. Needed some redwort and you know how difficult that is to get around here." "Hmmm," said Mrs. S, frowning. "No debauchery?" "None, I assure you." "Well, more's the pity. Will you be opening the shop today or will I explaining to customers all day why it's closed?" "As soon as I get cleaned up and have my tea, Mrs. S." "Hmm," Mrs. S said, and slammed the shutter closed. Leo went inside. He shed his torn and blood-stained close and cleaned up as well as he could from the basin. He changed into respectable merchant attire -- linen shirt, brown trousers, green tunic. The somewhat-ruined blacks were only for his side work; wearing them every day would make people think of certain other characters who notoriously wore black; would make them ask too many uncomfortable questions. The mercenary work was risky already as it was, but the apothecary didn't exactly make enough to live off of, and he needed the opportunity to get away from the civilized life once in a while and do what he was born and trained and live to do. If he had to be Leo the Herbalist forever, he might just die of suffocation. The bell over the shop door tinkled. He'd forgotten to lock it behind him, and now his first customer was here a little earlier than he would have liked. With a sigh, he headed downstairs to face the public. ** By noon he had sold a love potion (Anise, rosehips, and lavender), a healing tonic (lemon, ginger, and cloves), and a ward against garden insects (lemongrass and basil). He'd also restocked the redwort (he hadn't been lying about picking some up from Highgate while he was moonlighting as a mercenary bodyguard; the best cover stories were actually true), and started brewing a new batch of bitterseed extract. Bitterseed was finicky stuff - let it cook too long and it got dark and tarlike and no one would touch it, no matter how desperate they were. Don't let it go long enough and it was ineffective, and there was nothing to ruin an herbalists reputation faster than an ineffective laryngitis tonic. (Except for the love potion: those poor fools always came back. If there was such a thing as a real love potion it wouldn't be ethical to provide it, but a tea with herbs that had magical properties associated with love was always a safe and profitable alternative). He had to babysit the pot, carefully monitoring the heat, while his grumbling stomach reminded him that he'd skipped breakfast and it was now well past lunchtime. The bell chimed again. Squinting through the smoke and bundles of dangling herbs, Leo could make out a head of curly golden hair atop a blue-eyed, fresh faced young man in a lavish blue tunic. It was like the sun had broken through the dingy windows and descended personally to bless him. "Hello?" the angelic man called out. "Is anyone here?" "Here," Leo croaked, then cleared his voice and tried again. "Can I help you?" He couldn't get up; the potion was reaching the critical point and if he walked away now it would be ruined for sure. Potions were like that, waiting for the moment of distraction to suddenly go from "almost there" to "oops, you abandoned me and I died, you heartless bastard" in the amount of time it took to use the privy. The sun-god smiled, and somehow the room got even brighter. "Are you the herbalist?" "That's me," Leo managed. Then remembered his name. "I'm Leo Oswald. Is there something in particular you're looking for? I can help you in a moment, I just need to-- ow!" The potion had started boiling, and it had spattered his hand that had stopped stirring. It was done. He snatched up the nearby towel he kept for this purpose, and carefully removed it from the fire, placing it in a basic of water to siphon off the heat and stop it from cooking any farther. Then he glared at the red splotch on his hand. Bitterwood came by its name honestly. "Sorry about that," he tried again. "How can I help you?" "What are you making?" the sun-god asked. "Bitterwood tonic, good for laryngitis," he explained automatically. "It's a finicky business, and it can get spiteful for no reason." "Spiteful?" said the newcomer, intrigued. "Is that because of the magical properties?" "It's not magic. Just herbalism. It was a...a figure of speech." "Fascinating," said the young man, then held out his hand. "My name is Michael. Michael Alden. It's a pleasure to meet you." Leo wiped his hand warily on the towel, and shook the proffered hand. "And what can I help you with today, Mr. Alden?" "Oh, just Michael, please," Michael said, and laughed. "I'm looking for something very rare. My sources said you might have it." Something about the way he said sources made the hair on the back of Leo's neck go up. He had a feeling he wasn't going to like what came next. "What is it? Maybe I have it, maybe I don't." Michael leaned in and whispered something into his ear. He had been correct: he didn't like it at all. "That's illegal," he said shortly. "Yes, that's why I came to you," Michael said. "You're the sorcerer, aren't you?" "I am nothing of the sort," Leo snapped, with practiced testiness. "I am an herbalist, a licensed apothecary; everything legal and above board." But he had said the sorcerer, not a sorcerer. Like he wasn't just looking to source illegal, magical substances; he was looking specifically for Leo. "Of course," Michael said hastily. "Of course you are. But you can get it for me, can't you?" He could. But that was beside the point. The whole thing smelled like a setup, and he said as much. "Oh no, no, no," Michael protested. "Marsha sent me." Marsha sent him most of his clients. But even she didn't know about the sorcerer thing. Or if she suspected, she never said it out loud. She said things like, someone who can handle that problem for you, and nobody asked uncomfortable questions about exactly what methods he used to get the job done. And most of his jobs were bodyguard positions, and all the dangerous and illegal sorcery bits happened outside of the city limits. His clients didn't usually care much how he saved their lives, and all evidence of alleged illegal practices usually evaporated by the time anyone found the bodies. And no constable was looking that hard into the deaths of a few bandits. He wasn't a smuggler, he didn't trade in illegal substances, and he found it hard to believe that Marsha would have implied otherwise. But somehow, this radiant stranger knew her name, knew to come to his door, and called him to his face by a title that could never be his. "I'm not a sorcerer," he repeated. "I'm sorry. I can't help you." Michael hesitated a moment, then smiled again. "My mistake," he said. "Perhaps some other time."