Dorrimin frowned, although not at Tommick.“Well,” he began slowly, “we have decorations for the house.We could put those in the window after we buy some fresh garlands.”
“Yeah?”Tommick blinked several times before fidgeting with his scarf again.“A wreath on the door is also pretty.And you could get your mother to arrange displays that aren’t about toilet and chamber pot scrubbers.”
“Those are consistently good sellers!”Dorrimin objected heatedly.
Tommick grinned.“But not something to give as a present, or even something on anyone’s mind right now, unless they are planning on guests.”He shuffled in place slightly.“Or, if she’s busy, I can do it.We can make a night of it, you and me.If you want.”
The bells chimed.
“Tommick,” Bartin poked her head in the door, “we’re freezing our asses off out here.Dorrimin.”She nodded to Dorrimin and then gave Tommick a look, eyebrows raised so high they nearly disappeared under the brim of the hatshehad the sense to wear.
Tommick whirled around to whisper furiously at her, then briefly whirled back to give Dorrimin what was a far too earnest look from someone about to go drinking.“I’ll see you later.”
The bells chimed behind him a moment later, and then the three of them passed out of sight.
Dorrimin stared after them, and then at the empty shop, before opening the book of received shipments again to stare at the doodle in the margin.
The blue bottle of toilet cleaner had been shining in the morning light.Dorrimin had thought it was pretty.
He didn’t think that was poetry and he didn’t see how it was math.But he looked at it for a while anyway.
Part Two
Hehelpedthreecustomersas the afternoon became early evening, the second one indeed buying some toilet-scrubbing solution.Dorrimin couldn’t wait to mentionthatto Tommick when he came back.But when the third, and apparently final, customer of the day stayed at the counter to complain about the weather and the incoming storm the watchers off the coast had reported, as well as all the tasks he needed to get done before it hit them, Dorrimin stopped doodling in order to glance outside.
By the time that customer finally left, Dorrimin was at the display window, where he could just see the end of the lane.The winds had picked up.Judging from how quickly the people outside moved, word of the approaching storm had spread.
There was no sign of Tommick.
“One beer,” Dorrimin mumbled.
“What was that?”his mother asked from the second counter.That counter, against a side wall, was usually for consultations about specific requests or where packages were wrapped before delivery, but his mother sometimes worked on labels for the bottles there.Right now, she was merely straightening her work area while waiting on whatever she had going in the kitchen.
Dorrimin turned toward her and made himself stop chewing his lower lip.Two weeks from Midwinter was too early to decorate, at least for the family.The business was another matter.If there was one thing Tommick took seriously, it was business, even if his family didn’t appreciate it.
His mother was good at prettying up the bottles and jars.Tommick had been correct to think she could do something even more special for holiday sale items: new labels, or ribbons, or colored wax seals.That did raise the price, but if Tommick’s family’s emporium proved one thing, it was that people appreciated spectacle.
And Tommick went to parties.Where people wanted to look their best.To lookpretty.
Dorrimin wasn’t pretty.He was plain, all things considered.Ordinary, and a bit dour when he was taken from his work to be at the counter.Technically, he was an apprentice, but he would attain his official Mastery soon.He liked measuring and boiling and extracting, liked developing new concoctions even more.Custom requests were a fun challenge and often ended up becoming regular products.
The family’s most quality products—and often the most expensive—were even sold in the Fortune Emporium.Items Dorrimin had personally made were on shelves and tables in the store so famous it attracted visitors from other cities.The emporium had some lesser quality stuff too of course, from makers who did not have Guild marks on their doors—marks which guaranteed better ingredients, better preparation, and repercussions if the products failed to work or turned out to be harmful—but joining a Guild was expensive if you didn’t happen to be related to a Guild member in whatever Guild you were trying to get into.Dorrimin thought Guilds ought to sponsor more people, especially the wealthier or more glamorous Guilds, but the city Magistrate and the Guild heads were never going to listen to an apprentice, even one from a respectable family.
When he thought about it, it was funny that he hadn’t met Tommick in the emporium, but then again, the emporium was a very large store, and he suspected that Tommick didn’t visit it much.Really, it was for the best that they hadn’t met there.Dorrimin would have been stiffer than usual and awkward in a nicer suit, and Tommick would have been in a far more expensive suit and not at all interested in a storkish Guild apprentice.Especially not one gawking at bottles of tonic on a table decorated with a tablecloth embroidered with the signature emerald-greenFEfor Fortune Emporium.
Instead, Tommick had been dressed in his usual, much more unassuming student clothes when they’d met.He might have been anyone from a comfortable home, and he’d come into the shop with a list, as if he’d been sent out on errands.No one would have assumed he was a topper at first glance, though Dorrimin still flushed to think of his mistake.
“I was told to come to this shop specifically,” Tommick had said, gazing up at Dorrimin with expectation, as if Dorrimin would be able to translate the scribbled handwriting on the list any better than he had been able to.
He hadn’t been the one to make the list, he had gone on to explain, although Dorrimin hadn’t asked—he’d been too busy staring down into the nicest, warmest brown eyes when they hadn’t been hidden by fallen waves of shining hair.
“She’s feeling poorly,” he had continued, just a college boy with nice eyes then, and not yet Tommick.“Our maid.One of the maids,” he’d added, the first indication that his family was a little more than “comfortable.”“These are part of her duties, but she’s not well, and I was coming down here anyway to meet some friends, so I offered to get the stuff on her list.But I don’t know what these words say, much less what they mean.I should have looked before I left the house.”
“Themansion,” Dorrimin had corrected, not snippily, but he did prefer to use the correct terms.Anyone with several maids was probably quite rich indeed.But he’d taken the list from the boy’s suddenly motionless hands and examined it again.“What is your maid’s name?Or describe her if you don’t know.”
That hadn’t been snippy either.He’d swear to it.
The boy had blinked several times, then floated up to the edge of the counter.“Millia.Of course, I know her name.”
