Grand Chief Alchemist Voran did not stop laughing until Kaelen reached into his bruised burlap sack.
“What is that?” Voran mocked, pointing with his soot-blackened sleeve. “Did you bring your dirty laundry to the examination dais?”
The spectators in the upper balconies leaned over the carved balustrades, their laughter rolling across the quartz peaks. Guild masters nudged each other, pointing at the wrinkled cloth bundle resting against Kaelen’s cot.
“The boy is delusional,” an elder from Moon Three scoffed. “He thinks this is a vegetable market in the mortal gutters.”
Kaelen untied the hemp string with two fingers, his movements completely unhurried. He reached inside the rough burlap and pulled out a handful of battered, discolored herb cuttings.
There were broken stalks of nine-frost grass, chipped roots of glacial ginseng, and bruised white leaves salvaged from the discard crates of Barnaby’s shed. Some had clods of dirt clinging to the roots. Others looked as though a hungry goat had chewed on them before spitting them out.
Down in the front row, Barnaby Holt froze in pure horror.
“The rabbit greens,” Barnaby shrieked, clutching his wooden ladle with white knuckles. “He brought the discount scrap pile! I told him those cuttings were only good for fertilizing the turnip patch!”
