Void's Tale by Christopher Nuttall (ebook reader wifi txt) 📕

I glanced into the water closet and frowned.  There were a handful of jars resting by the sink, but nothing else.  A bucket of stagnant water sat beside a metal tub.  Mistress Layla hadn’t needed more than a simple tub to wash herself, apparently.  There was no hot or cold running water.  The chamber pot had been cleaned, then abandoned.  I swept the room quickly, then walked back into the bedroom.  There should have been a sense of her magic, perhaps even her personality, lingering where she’d slept.  But there was nothing.  It was hard to believe the room was hers.

The bed has clearly been used, I told myself, firmly.  There were definite signs of her presence.  Most magicians knew better than to leave their blood lying around, particularly women, but hairs could be just as useful.  I collected a handful of red hairs and concealed them in my cloak, then continued the search.  She lived here before she vanished.

I was starting to lose heart, but I kept searching anyway.  The drawer under the bed contained a pair of old chemises, both cleaned and pressed and then simply abandoned.  I checked underneath them and found nothing, save for a little dust.  The rest of the room was just as uninformative.  Mistress Layla had been completely devoted to her art.  She hadn’t spent any time, as far as I could tell, doing anything else.  And yet, why hadn’t she been researching instead of working in her shop?  It wasn’t as if she didn’t have the intellect.  Or the resources.

She could have hired a couple of shopgirls and put them in charge of the counter while she did her research, I mused, as I checked the final room.  It was completely empty.  Did she spend all her time on the counter?

I shook my head slowly.  It made no sense.  The apothecary had clearly been doing very well.  I found it hard to imagine the owner not hiring help.  There were plenty of spells that could be used to enforce loyalty and discretion ... hell, the local womenfolk would probably be glad of the job.  The whore I’d helped would jump at a chance to earn a better living.  Why had she wasted her time?  Perhaps ... perhaps she hadn’t.  Perhaps she’d been up to something ...

I probably need to find someone who knows her, I thought.  It wouldn’t be easy.  The community was clearly on guard.  Did anyone know her well?

The thought bothered me as I made my way downstairs.  The magical community wasn’t very tight-knit.  There was no shortage of magicians who simply walked away to set up on their own, unmonitored by anyone.  Mistress Layla could have done the same, yet ... why abandon the shop?  She could have sold it to an up-and-coming apothecary, if she wished.  It would not be hard to find a buyer.  And yet ...

Someone must have come here, after she vanished, and searched the place, I thought.  It was hard to imagine the guardsmen not taking the money, while taking the ingredients ... why had they taken the ingredients?  They hadn’t just taken the expensive or dangerous jars, the ones they might be able to sell; they’d taken them all.  It wouldn’t have been easy to empty the apothecary without being noticed.  Someone would have seen something ... surely.  They came, they searched, they stole ... and then they set up the wards.

My eyes narrowed as I put the pieces together.  Someone - a magician, probably more than one - had raided the shop.  They were either responsible for Mistress Layla’s disappearance or they’d moved to take advantage of it before word got out.  They’d taken everything they could carry, including jars that were worth far more than the money in the counter, and then set up the wards to cover their tracks.  It made a certain kind of sense.  Magicians would know the scrolls in the back room were useless.  And stealing the clothes in the bedroom would be pointless.  They were just too plain.  No one would pay for them.

I found the ledgers and scanned through them.  Mistress Layla had kept very good notes - something all alchemists had in common if they wanted to survive.  The shop had been bringing in plenty of money, easily enough to hire a shopgirl or purchase some of the rarer and more powerful ingredients.  It looked as if Mistress Layla had been a purchasing agent as well as an alchemist, obtaining supplies for some of the other sorcerers in the town and selling them at a handsome price.  If I was reading the ledgers correctly, she’d managed to double her profits time after time.  I made a careful note of the names, of who’d purchased what.  They were prime suspects, although ... I snorted.  It was hard to tell what - if anything - they might be doing.  I had a list of what they’d purchased from the apothecary, but ... there were just too many possible combinations.  If I’d had those ingredients, I could have churned out anything from a lust potion to a regeneration brew.

And they probably bought more ingredients elsewhere, I thought.  There were three other apothecaries in town.  They could have hidden what they wanted by sourcing their ingredients from multiple shops.

Something rattled on the door.  “This is the guard!  Open up!”

I jumped to my feet, cursing under my breath as the door began to shake.  I’d been seen.  Somehow.  The neighbours must have noticed me or ... perhaps I’d missed something when I’d unpicked the wards.  Whoever had cast it might have sensed my intrusion and alerted the guards, keeping me from completing my mission.  I darted to the stairwell and braced myself, pulling the shadows around me as the guardsmen crashed into the shop.  They looked alert, clubs at the ready.  I forced myself to think as I grabbed the ledgers and shoved