Chapter Text
Marn dreams of pharmacy on the road to her assignment. Not in the literal way, where sleep sends her off to images of melting forests or a parade of mushrooms and berries. But in her spare hours, sitting on the side of the road with her pack off her shoulders, she dutifully recites names and identifying features. Numbers of leaves, textures of bark, colors of shells, temperatures and steeping times and granule sizes. She is acutely aware of the small chest she carries, mortar and pestle, handcrafted matches, carefully wrapped envelopes of premade powders. High quality tools, but heavy for it. There's no way around it though. The Keen back home at the Telluricists Union had packed only what she needed, and she was unlikely to find another wagon to bargain for passage on. So she just kept walking.
The details of the assignment were thus: the apothecary at the town of Sedgefield had wandered into the pines three weeks ago, leaving the settlement without any form of medical expertise. Enough time to still be sending search parties, but enough time also to send their fastest shrimp and rider back toward the Telluricists to call for a replacement.
Marn had quickly volunteered. Fresh from her thesis, brain full of minutia, she needed something to do. Something to make that freshly earned "Keen" sit more comfortably on her shoulders.
So here she was, sweaty and footsore and only a few more hours from her destination. She shifts her shoulders under the weight of the straps, peering up under her hand at the two suns in her field of view, as the third dips below the horizon to the east. Good. If she can keep up the pace, she’ll have at least a half hour of daylight from the final sun once she makes it to town. Fewer candles to burn that way. Whistling a raggedy little tune with her spare breaths, she trudges onward down the path.
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Her arrival to town is uneventful. A rider meets her a short ways out on the road, giving her a much-needed but short break before they cross into the main square. Marn spies the council house quickly after entering, the one two-story building in a street full of low-leaning structures and houses.
She meets the mayor, a cheerful but officious human, and the three other council members. It's all simple pleasantries and names that Marn does her best to commit to memory. Stick them somewhere between the mnemonics for poultice mixing and rash cures, maybe.
She gets simple traveler's quarters. A tavern with spare rooms and warm food. Communal showers, with much weaker water pressure than the ones at the Union headquarters. Then, blessedly, a bed with clean dry sheets, though she at least has the energy to stretch properly before collapsing for the evening. Young as she is, she knows not to leave her body angry at her after such a long journey.
The real business all begins the next morning. She meets the mayor again for breakfast, before getting a general tour of Sedgefield. The town is quiet, the streets slowly emptying as assorted workers walk off to the bog farms or into the pines with their saws. Marn feels their curious gazes on her, nods politely in return. They pass the temple, the general store, and the mayor gives a brief rundown of the neighborhoods before finally ending at the place Marn would be stationed for the next year and change.
Two large display windows dominate the storefront. A set of old painted wooden signs advertise the ‘TONICS, PHARMACEUTICALS, LOZENGES, ASSORT. CURES’ lining the wooden shelves inside. Dusty dry herbs hang in small bundles in the window. The shelf labeled ‘PICK UP’ sits empty. A single gallon-sized flask full of light blue liquid sits on the other sill. Marn breathes a quiet sigh of relief. Good, no curses or plagues ongoing. The mayor unties the key from her belt loop and lets them both in.
Despite the fresh daylight filling the street outside, the apothecary’s walls are muted. Not dark, or drab, but something inexplicable in the air. Like cobwebs spun over the eyes, dulling the color of things and the writing on labels. Perhaps, Marn reasons, this was the fault of distance. The shelves were stacked high along the wall, and the counter loomed to an inconvenient height. Belatedly she remembers that her predecessor was a fairly tall Ojantani.
The mayor clears her throat awkwardly. "Anyway. This is the place. We can discuss the legal affairs later today, once you have had the time to get familiar with it?"
"Yes," Marn says, noting the dismissal. She takes the key and stares thoughtfully at the densely packed shelving. Okay. Maybe the backroom would have space for her belongings and spare equipment. At the very least she could rifle through the drawers for ledgers, inventory, chalk for the wall slate.
But first, sourcing wood for a stepladder.
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The local carpenter worked out of an old barn littered with her pet projects. It was a quick enough trip, aside from the new-in-town gossip. Marn suspects she'll have about 3 hours before curious passerby begin coming through the apothecary doors.
No matter. So long as none of them have dire medical needs, she'll be able to familiarize herself with the location of all the basics by the time they arrive. Already she is refining the to-do list in the back of her brain.
First, the general shelf layout. Marn putters about the shop front, scanning through the contents. Bottles of every color, about a third of them empty and two-thirds labeled with abbreviated names. Not names she knows off-hand, but she can pick out a few notable ones. Most interesting are the ones labeled solely by ailment. Her predecessor must have been experimenting. This bodes well for the prep room, although she dearly hopes he had recorded the recipes.
She'll have to do a proper count later, but most of the basic stock appears to be in good supply for the week. In principle she knows what bottles are used for what substances - syrups versus tinctures versus master mixes and reagents. Ingredients for herself, but also the more enterprising types in town. The more volatile or caustic things would be kept off the shop front, where their chaos would be contained.
She pauses in her bottle perusal. Oh, actually, she should go check on those cabinets first. Three weeks was not long enough for things to get explosive, even if her predecessor was the type to use particularly esoteric ingredients, but she'd need to learn about her upkeep tasks sooner rather than later.
The prep room dominates the back half of the building. Yet more shelves, taller somehow, lined with bottles and packets of powders, jugs of oil and alcohol, sugar and natron and charcoal and willow bark and plenty of other less identifiable ingredients. The medicinal oven sits in a corner, lid cracked as if to air it out. The black bench top is tall, but Marn can still see the clutter of a workspace lain over top. For a brief second she remembers the experimental workshops back at the Union and the pang of homesickness locks her in the doorway. She shakes off the feeling as best she can. Focus. She needs to find his notes.
The bookshelf, it turns out, holds the keys to the kingdom. Three large boxes of documents, written out in a careful hand. Marn flips through the first stack of sheets briefly. No recent inventory list, as far as she can see, but plenty of ledgers. In the midst of the boxes is a journal. Something high quality and well bound, with a bare leather cover. On the inside, Marn finds the name of her predecessor. Ezgi Monaphar , it says, in faded ink.
She had not known this man. There were no portraits or sketches, certainly not back at the Union. Nor had the mayor been inclined to discuss a missing man's appearance. Despite herself, Marn tries to imagine him in this space. A vague shape of an Ojantani man, curving horns and careful hands, to have writing this neat. Compressing pills into shape with the hand press, sifting chalk powder, distilling an oil until the bubbles inside hummed and shimmered just so-
The clatter of a wagon outside banishes Marn's already-faint vision. She shakes her head roughly and takes a deep breath. Right. She was the apothecary now, or at least the person responsible for it. She’d have to do all these tasks now. What mattered right now was not the man, but the work left unfinished.
She takes out her own notebook, fishing for her pen. She will have a lot of reading to do.
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As expected, lunch brings curious passersby. Most linger by the window, tipping hats or waving back when she looks up and waves at them. A few make luck-signs at the window flask, which Marn smiles privately at. Even if she is still a stranger to the town, she can at least bring them good news.
Other visitors are more forward, sending the doorbell ringing with their entrance. Marn makes conversation, reels out a polite rundown of who she is. Keen gets her some more excited questions, a request to come visit with her rods and sharpening block. A devil woman in a muted green dress brings her a quarter loaf of fresh bread, which Marn squirrels away gratefully. The sooner she can make trail rations a faint memory, the better.
As she gets back to annotating patient records, the bell dings once more.
“Hello!” she says, waving from behind the counter. She stands on a makeshift stool, to boost herself into better view. Maybe she should ask the carpenter to install a little ledge across the whole counter. “I’m Marn Ancura. What can I do for you?”
“You’re the new apothecary?” asks the townsperson. They’re dressed like a woodcutter, with thickly woven pants, suspenders, and tired dark eyes. They cross the floor but stop a ways back from the counter.
Marn straightens up a little more. “Yes, I am. Are you looking for something? I was just going through the medication records.”
“Nathaniel’s cough has come back.” They look down at the floor briefly. “We’ve run out of whatever curative he gave us last time.”
Marn grabs a nearby ledger and begins jotting down the details for an order. “Certainly. The second shelf from the left has a few lozenges-”
"Not the mundane cough," the townsperson says, impatiently. "It's a curse-cough. The air curdles in him, the blood comes up solid."
Marn's hands still. "Oh. Um. Well, Mr. Monaphar kept his curse breaking notes elsewhere."
The human looks at her, faintly unimpressed. “Okay, so how long will it take for you to find them? Can’t you give me something in the meantime?”
Marn tries to page through her options in her mind. Nothing but the textures of paper or the vague shape of a petaled-ginger root. She doesn’t want to keep them waiting but there’s no telling where in the stack of papers she’d find an answer, if it was written down at all. “Um. Okay, I can give you something to help ease the throat and keep his airway clear. I’ve never encountered this kind of curse before, but if you don’t mind a house call or coming back tomorrow, I can have something more useful then?”
Her cautious hope fails to reassure them. “I guess, but only Genburi knows how long this latest jag will be. We need something , Keen."
Marn swallows down her nerves. Stay calm. Stay professional. “I promise,” she says, trying to project confidence. “I will take care of it. Now may I ask a few questions about Nathaniel and this curse, please?”
“Alright.”
To their credit, they gamely answer everything she asks, even very basic or menial questions. When she finishes and thanks them for their time, they nod once before turning around and marching out the door. She can see the harsh set to their shoulders as they walk out of sight.
Grimly, she checks the daylight outside. Already the first sun is setting, and the stack of papers loom behind her from their box. She goes to the door and flips the sign to CLOSED. Her first day is looking to be quite long indeed.