Read Writers of the Future, Volume 28 for Free Online Page B

waning in his wake. Lan had been screamed at that night, for daring to get so close. He raised his hands, remembering the heat, but he’d ignored it in his fear that Haigh would never come back out.
    “You really think other towns will want my work as well ? ”
    Jaddi shrugged. “They did with Haigh.” As if that meant anything.
    But in the following days as a mild autumn kicked up cool winds that tugged upon his latches, he found himself lost in work that included towns close enough to Otaor to hear the news that the Apothecary was back up and running. He became happier in his work, though much busier than he’d ever been with Haigh, and the ache in his head was forgotten more often than not.
    When he wasn’t mixing or cooking, he delved into Haigh’s journal pages, painstakingly going through each and copying them into new journals where he added all the details he remembered from the experiments. He surprised even himself with as much as he did remember, noting even how many baskets he’d had during most of the experiments.
    There were a few that baffled him, using a coding system he didn’t recognize at all. Until he stumbled across one with what had obviously been a bright red seal stuck to the bottom of the page. A lopsided sigil pressed into the wax, drooping from where it had been reheated, much of it trying to escape from the page.
    The queen’s seal. Her royal approval of his work.
    Lan stared at that seal for a long time before going back through some of the experiments he’d found with the odd coding and reclassifying them under a new pile. Those he’d have to go over later. Right now he needed the pieces he could actually read and understand if he was going to continue going forward with Haigh’s work, taking the results of the experiments and creating his own recipes.
    So, lost as he was normally, and perhaps just a bit too trusting, he didn’t even pause when the workroom door opened one day. “Jaddi, I think I’ve managed to figure out how to take away the side effects of this . . .” He trailed off when he turned around.
    Jaddi did stand there, her eyes wide with worry and her mouth a thin line, but next to her stood a woman in a regal traveling robe, her arms crossed and a scowl affixed upon her face. Before and behind the woman stood four guards, all with the same sigil Lan had seen in Haigh’s notes stitched into the shoulder of their uniforms.
    Suddenly he felt as if he were only one or two baskets big, and feeling his distress, anything even remotely alive within him became quite agitated. “Can I help you ? ” His words came out stuttering, sounding childish to even his own ears.
    The woman strode forward, her cloak grazing the floor. He was suddenly glad he always kept up on the cleaning.
    “I hear you have something of mine,” she stated, stopping about a foot in front of him. She was shorter than him, by about a head, not even as tall as Jaddi. Despite that, Lan felt as if she was standing twice as tall and it was he looking up at her. The queen. Queen Yula was standing in his workshop. It made his baskets shrink slightly thinking about it.
    “I don’t think so,” he said. He glanced about the room. “I have never even been beyond Otaor. How could I have taken anything from you ? ”
    “Were you Haigh’s . . . assistant ? ” She said the word as if it wasn’t the one she wanted to say. Lan recognized the tone well enough. It hadn’t happened much as he got older, but when his baskets had been fewer and people less accepting, he’d heard that tone well enough conjoined with much worse descriptions for himself.
    “I guess.”
    “His created assistant with enchanted woven baskets where only it can remove the contents ? ” At his hesitant nod, she added, “A perfect hiding place, don’t you think, for something a man wishes to never see the light of day as proof of his betrayal.”
    “I . . .” Lan couldn’t think of a good response that either didn’t insult the