Page 6 of Bound and Tide

“This is meant to make you turn out all your innards.” She reached beneath the counter and swapped the bottles out. “I have something better for you, and it’s cheaper too. Take this before you eat dairy.” Or avoid the dairy altogether.

Pleased, the woman began counting coins as Evangeline wrapped up the rest. “I really do think you should get yourself some help, dear. Then you could go outside and not have to spend the day tromping through the brambles and the brush looking for flowery whatzits and slimy fungi.”

While it might have been nice to see something other than the undersides of ferns and rocks, Evangeline just handed off a neatly wrapped package and smiled. “The shop’s important.”

Madam Orr took her things. “Well, as much as it will frazzle me, I do hope someday you find something even more important. And maybe a helper or two.”

Evangeline chuckled and wished the woman well. Her visits were getting more frequent, and while she wasn’t getting any younger, Madam Orr didn’t need most of what she bought. The woman had the coin—she had a lot of coin, in fact—but Evangeline wasn’t in the business of wringing anyone dry.

Maybe I can concoct something that doesn’t do much of anything but sell it to her as a fix-it-all? Evangeline scrunched her nose up at the thought. Even if it was in the woman’s best interests, she didn’t feel quite right about that. At least she could keep switching out the severe choices for less abrasive tinctures.

Alone for the first time since unlocking the doors that morning, Evangeline took a deep breath of the marjoram and ruby weed bubbling on the hearth across the shop. The woody, sweet smell filled her lungs, and she returned to the half-crushed vanneanip seeds in the mortar on her workbench. Grinding the seeds was one of the first apothecarian tasks she’d ever learned, and while she hadn’t been strong enough back then to get a very good paste, her mother happily accepted every lumpy mess she was presented with.

Muddling things was much quicker now with Evangeline’s muscles and know how, a good thing since all the work was up to her alone, but if she sat quietly enough, she could almost hear the memory of someone else moving about the shop, jars clinking, herbs torn from their stems, and the gentle stirring of a pot on the hearth.

The chimes above the door dashed away the fleeting memory, and she turned with a grin to greet her next customer. “Good morning,” she lilted in the warm tone she had learned from her mother, but her smile fell sharply off.

“Hello, Angie.”

“Horace,” she huffed, trite and already tired.

The dark-haired man strode across the apothecary, giving it that look he always did: suspicion mixed with desire. His light eyes never lingered on any one thing, as if the pieces didn’t matter. He didn’t care about herbs or healing—he was only interested in the place as a whole, and that always rubbed Evangeline the wrong way…just like his hand once when they were awkward teens. She gagged at that misjudgment, one he never let her live down.

“How’s business?”

“Same as last week and the week before, which is to say, marvelous.” She turned back for her mortar and gave the seeds an extra good pounding. “Can I help you with an ailment? Diarrhea maybe? Or boils on your nether?”

“Interested in my nether again?”

Her jaw tightened. “What do you want?”

“Same as last week,” he said in that mocking lilt.

When she turned back, she set dead eyes on him to silently say, No, I will not give you an extra moment of my time. Because, really, Horace Terrin didn’t give a shit about her time or the hand he kept asking for or even her damn shop. Marriage was a means to an end for the Terrins and always had been as there was little to no love between any of his family. Coupling was simply a business deal to them, and it would have been a very bad deal for Evangeline, not least of all because she didn’t like Horace all that much—or even a tiny bit on a very good day.

After a long enough silence to convey her disinterest, she gestured for the door. “So, since I’m not for sale, and there’s nothing else you need…”

“The year is coming to an end.”

The last vestiges of autumn always endured longest on the shop’s street, but Evangeline spent enough time out in the wilderness to know winter was swiftly approaching. “And?”

Whenever the grin slid off Horace’s face, it never surprised Evangeline, but it did make her shudder. There was the real Horace, the one he showed so few, the man who felt nothing but wanted everything. “Licenses require renewal, taxes need paid, and prospering shops are often called in to have their books inspected. Could be tough for one little woman to carry out all that on her own.”

Evangeline pursed her lips. For ten years she had been running this shop, each just as adequately successful as the last. Who in the Abyss does he think he is to suggest I couldn’t—

Well, Horace didn’t think, he knew. It was maddening to admit, but the Terrins held sway in Bendcrest. It was a dying sway, hence why he was always sniffing around, but dying things grew desperate the closer they got to keeling over.

Horace grinned then, snapping back into the man he always pretended to be. “Election’s coming up soon, isn’t it? I’m sure the new guy will be forgiving of any little mistakes, but I’ll check in on you again, just in case you need anything. See you around, Angie.”

Evangeline’s mind filled up with the closing of the shop’s door. Her ledgers, her savings, the el’erium—they were safe, she knew, but the fear of their hiding places being exposed grew cold in her belly.

The head of Bendcrest’s exchequer, a woman who had been fair and reasonable, had dropped dead the moon prior. Bad fish stew, it was said, though she’d never known anyone capable of stomaching enough bad fish to actually be killed by it. The election for her replacement would be held soon, and while instituting elections rather than relying on bloodlines and lordly appointments was progress, Bendcrest’s advancement was still tenuous. A corruptible official meant that the Terrins could buy their way into power yet again just when the rest of the high harbor families were falling out. Horace could forge anything then.

As anger burned up over that cold fear, a hissing sizzle filled the shop, and Evangeline flew around the counter to the hearth. She gathered up her skirt and used it to protect her hand, removing the boiling-over pot to set on a cool stone. There was a batch of Fever Filter, ruined. At least she had the coin and the ingredients to replace it. For now.

Chapter 5

REMEDIES FOR ABYSMAL BEHAVIOR

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