The Guildhall of the High Synod Apothecaries smelled of dried angelica root, rotten-egg brimstone, and bitter almond oil.
It was an austere, vaulted structure of damp river granite built directly against the inner ring-wall of the Second Terrace. Overhead, heavy oak rafters were strung with hundreds of drying bundles of healing herbs. Pale feverfew, bitter valerian, wormwood, and poisonous monkshood hanging like shriveled bats in the shadows. Along the outer edge walls, thousands of glazed clay pot jars, green glass carboys, and lead-stoppered flagons stood in regimented ranks, their labels inscribed in elegant Latin calligraphy touched with gold leaf.
Ren Vale slipped through the unlatched back kitchen window, his leather-soled cobbler’s boots landing soundlessly upon the damp slate floor tiles.
Behind him, Scribe Ren squeezed through the narrow stone opening with surprising agility for a man in his forties. He pulled his silver chatelaine tight against his black velvet doublet to silence the clink of bone folders and scrapers, right away pushing his wire-rimmed bifocals up his nose.
“Pedestrian,” Scribe Ren whispered, surveying the jars with open disgust. “Common sulfur, diluted turpentine, and boiled horse hooves. These charlatans wouldn’t know a true potion-made flux if it bit them on the wrist. They sell chalk and lavender water to superstitious dukes and call it medicine.”
