Lord Summoner's Freedom Philosophy: Grimoire of Love-Chapter 573: The Strange Mission (2)

"My employer," he said carefully, "has very... discerning... senses. He can be blunt. It is a provincial habit."

The larger of the two bodyguards took a slow step forward, broad shoulders filling more of Lyan’s peripheral vision. The thinner one’s hand drifted toward his belt.

Kora’s fingers tightened on the edge of the counter. Her eyes flicked to the shelves as if calculating how many vials would break if a fight started.

Vargan regarded Will for a long moment.

"You claim," he said softly, "to know my proprietary product by smell."

"I claim to know snake oil when it wafts past my nose," Will shot back. "If this is your best work, I’d be ashamed to stock it." 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

Lyan wanted to sink into the floor.

(You brought him here.)

Eira’s tone held frozen judgment.

(You knew what he was like.)

"Yes," Lyan thought back bleakly. "That is the problem."

Aloud, he lifted his hands slightly, palms open.

"There may be some misunderstanding," he said. "Perhaps this is just your basic line, for less... serious concerns. Our clients require something more specialized. We are willing to pay for true strength."

Vargan’s eyes sharpened at the word.

"Specialized," he repeated. "For... special customers."

His fingers tapped the table twice.

There was a series of soft clicks. Lyan’s gaze flicked to the door in time to see a metal bar slide down into place over it. The lantern light caught the faint gleam of shutters snapping shut over the windows. Outside, boots scuffed as shapes rearranged in the street.

The air went from tense to brittle.

"The difficulty, Master Thatch," Vargan said, voice still gentle, "is that only competitors or lawmen talk like that in my house. Which are you?"

Will opened his mouth.

Lyan’s foot found his under the table and pressed down warningly.

"We are merchants," Lyan said. "My employer apprenticed under a back-alley alchemist who liked to cut costs. He can’t help recognizing mixtures. He forgets some people are... proud of their recipes."

Will, forced back into the script, nodded vigorously. "Good nose," he said. "Bad manners."

"Clearly," Vargan murmured.

His gaze slid to Will again, lingering now not on his face but on the way he carried himself, on the instinctive straightening of his spine, the reflexive expectation that people would move when he shifted.

"And where," Vargan said, "did this alchemist of yours work?"

"Near the east roads," Will said. "In... ah... River—"

He almost said Riverhall. A royal summer stop.

"Riverside," Lyan cut in smoothly. "A nameless pit outside the customs post. Full of flies and men who try to sell you ’rare spices’ that are mostly ground chalk."

Vargan tilted his head, listening to the slip under the correction.

Kora quietly began moving the most fragile glassware off the front shelf.

Lyan felt his neck prickle. The spirits were quiet now, watching with him.

"This is why we rehearse," he muttered under his breath.

"How was I supposed to know he’d be a counterfeit pharmacist?" Will hissed back.

"He runs a crime syndicate," Lyan whispered. "Of course he’s a counterfeit pharmacist."

Vargan’s fingers stilled.

"If you question my honor as a businessman," he said softly, "in front of my people..."

His eyes flicked to Kora, to the bodyguards, to the shadowed doorway where more shapes had begun to gather.

"...you do not leave without repayment."

He gave a small, elegant nod.

The big bodyguard moved first.

He came at Lyan with the straightforward confidence of a man used to ending fights in one hit, thick fist flying toward Lyan’s jaw.

Lyan pushed his chair back and let the punch whistle past his nose, the air of it stirring his hair. He stepped sideways, pivoting on the balls of his feet, and brought his forearm down sharply on the man’s elbow. Not enough to break, but enough to jolt.

The thinner guard lunged for Will, hand diving under his cloak.

"No blades," Lyan snapped.

Will reacted on instinct. He grabbed the man’s wrist with both hands and yanked, pulling him off balance, then drove his knee up into the man’s stomach. The guard wheezed and doubled over.

Chaos bloomed.

The big man swung again. Lyan ducked, reached back blindly, and grabbed at the nearest shelf.

"Apologies," he said to no one in particular, and yanked.

Wood groaned. Bottles rattled, then tumbled. A rain of glass and liquid crashed down onto the floor and the combatants. Colored fumes exploded upward—green, blue, lurid pink—smoke and glitter and something that smelled distinctly like old socks.

A rat that had been scuttling along the wall took a direct hit from a small, uncorked vial. It glowed a brilliant gold for a heartbeat, squeaked in apparent transcendence, then flopped gently onto its side and began snoring.

"This is fine," Lyan told himself.

Will snatched up the nearest glass jar and hurled it at a thug charging toward him.

It shattered against the man’s chest. A thick, oily liquid splashed over his face. There was a brief, stunned silence.

Then a magnificent, full moustache erupted across the thug’s upper lip in the span of two seconds, curling at the ends like something that demanded its own chair.

The thug blinked cross-eyed at it.

Will pointed, breathless. "That one’s harmless. We used to prank sergeants with it."

Kora let out a strangled scream that sounded like someone slipping on a ledger. "My inventory!"

Vargan still had not moved from his chair. He watched, fingers steepled, as if assessing a new investment.

Lyan stepped onto a fallen shelf to avoid a spreading puddle of something that smoked when it touched the air. His boot slipped anyway on a streak of oil, and his balance went out from under him.

He grabbed at the ceiling for purchase and his hand closed around a dangling chain of dried herbs. The bundle tore free, but it slowed his fall enough that he twisted, landed in a half-crouch, and rolled instead of cracking his head open on the counter.

A thug behind him was not so lucky. He slipped in the same spot and went down with a yelp, knocking his own companion into a stack of crates.

Someone, somewhere, grabbed a bottle in panic and gulped it.

A moment later, a string of bright orange sparks burst from his mouth when he tried to shout. He hiccuped, and another shower of sparks rained down on his shirt.

"Stop drinking things!" Kora yelled. "That’s experimental stock!"

"Then why is it on the front shelf?" Will demanded as he ducked under a wild punch.

He backed into a corner. The thin guard, recovered, loomed in front of him, fists up.

"No blades, you said," the man growled.

"Right," Will said. "No swords. No knives. No—"

The man lunged.

Will’s fist came up, too slow to stop him. Instinct flared. A small coil of heat gathered in his palm, begging to be used.

He hesitated for half a heartbeat.

Then he let it spark.

Fire danced across his knuckles as he drove his fist into the man’s side. Not a blaze, not a full spell, just a sharp, concentrated burst. Cloth smoldered. The guard yelped and stumbled back, swatting at his smoking shirt.

"Sorry!" Will gasped, already moving past him.

Vargan’s eyes lit with interest.

"Interesting," he murmured. "Not just stupid merchants, then."

Lyan saw the look and cursed inwardly.

(He’s seen too much.)

Hestia’s mental voice crackled like flame.

(Then stop playing with them and leave.)

She wasn’t wrong.

Lyan kicked a nearby crate of powder. It burst open, sending a cloud of fine shimmering dust into the air. The particles hung for a heartbeat in the lamplight.

"Will," he snapped.

"I know, I know."

Will thrust both hands forward, a brief flare of fire-born wind pushing the cloud outward like a shockwave. It swept into the faces of half the room.

"Don’t inhale the blue!" Kora shrieked.

Too late.

The big bodyguard inhaled a lungful of sparkling azure and froze. His eyes crossed. When he opened his mouth to roar, what came out was perfect, rhymed verse.

"I’ll break your bones and twist your head, I’ll— wait, why am I... rhyming?"

He blinked, horrified.

Another thug started giggling uncontrollably every time he swung, laughter bubbling up between curses.

Lyan seized the moment. "Back door," he said.

They shoved through the chaos toward the rear of the shop. The door there was heavy and, as he’d suspected, barred from the other side.

Lyan slammed his shoulder into it. The wood groaned but held.

"Front, then," he said, panting.

"Through the people trying to kill us?" Will demanded.

"You wanted catharsis," Lyan said. "Here it is."

They spun and plunged toward the front instead.

A chair flew past Lyan’s ear and exploded against the wall. A bottle burst under his boot, splashing his trouser leg with something that smelled like cinnamon and regret.

Will grabbed the moustached thug by his newly impressive facial hair, yanked him into the path of another charging man, and apologized as they collided.

"Sorry. Very nice moustache. Wrong place, wrong time."