Page 140 of Turncloak

“But why would an apothecary be colluding with the Whitewings?”

“Why does anyone collude with them? Threat, blackmail. Violent coercion.”

“I’ll rephrase—why would the Whitewings want to violently coerce an apothecary?”

Nissa raked her hands through her jasmine-scented hair. “You’re not in a rush to get to bed after our shift ends, are you?”

Though exhaustion burned behind Auria’s eyes and a migraine was turning screws at her temples, she shook her head. “No, why?”

“I think perhaps we should take a trip to the apothecary district.”

The eagle emblem hanging above the door of Etherstone’s matched the boy’s earring perfectly.

Business hours were not yet in swing, but a shadowy shape stirred inside, ambling behind teal awnings and frosted windows. A hunched old woman, weighing and measuring, straightening displays and polishing scales. The two detectives watched in silence until she turned the small, gold-plated sign from Closed to Open.

They were not the first patrons to step inside, however. A short, barrel-shaped man in a plain black cloak appeared from nowhere, shuffling over the threshold with a familiar nod to the shopkeeper. His ears were filled with wiry gray hair, and he walked heavily on one foot. Auria and Nissa followed him inside.

Etherstone’s was a neat, ordered place, its air scented with dried rosemarroa and clove, with fernroot and slainearth and something metallic Auria couldn’t place. The eagle emblem was everywhere—stamped onto every neat product label and engraved in every brass ingredient scoop, even emblazoned on the faded wallpaper.

The shopkeeper standing behind the weighing counter lowered her monocle as the detectives entered, a smile sweeping across her aged face. Her skin was pocked with moles, and her soft hazel eyes held a kindly twinkle. There was a tension there too, Auria thought, in the deep ravines of the woman’s smile lines, the knotted muscles on her high forehead, the frazzled mess of her long gray hair.

“Detective Naszi,” the shopkeeper said, appraising Nissa’s silver cloak. “Rare to see you in uniform.”

Nissa nodded in greeting. “Morning, Ila.”

Auria stepped forward with an awkward palm wave. “I’m Detective Marriosan. We were wondering if we might ask you a few questions, if you have a moment?”

“I’m being taken in for interrogation?” The old woman looked part-terrified, part-relieved at the prospect.

Auria shook her head, fixing a warm expression on her face. “Here is fine, though if you’d rather somewhere more private…”

The old woman’s throat bobbed as she surveyed the apothecary. “This is as private as we’re going to get.” She gestured toward the barrel-shaped Mage Practer who’d entered the shop the moment it was open. “That’s just old Filan Ferrow—he’s here browsing every day. Deaf as a post, but deep pockets. Buys all sorts, spends hours here. I think he just likes the scents. They say, don’t they, that if you lose one sense your others become stronger?”

The shopkeeper looked at Filan Ferrow as though he were a shield standing between her and an enemy approaching on a battlefield, but Ferrow seemed completely oblivious to the entire situation.

To the untrained eye, it might seem as though he hadn’t heard a word anyone had said—he was running a gnarled finger over the labels in the Claws & Talons section—but Auria’s eye was far from untrained. There was something unnatural about his ignorance, a completeness that was rare to find in the real world. Deaf or not, the human eye was drawn to movement, and Ferrow hadn’t so much as glanced at Nissa, who was stalking around the apothecary as though searching its nooks and crannies.

But the old woman wanted to talk here, in front of Ferrow, and Auria didn’t think it was wise to escalate the situation by insisting they question her alone.

“Very well.” Auria pulled a fresh scroll of parchment and a quill from her satchel, then enchanted the quill with a transcription charm, so that it would perform the note-taking on her behalf. “Perhaps we could start with your name?”

“Apoth Ila Zamorin.”

Auria fought to keep the surprise from her expression. Apoth was an honorific used for apothecaries of the highest order. The babbling crone in front of them was a veritable genius.

“We’re investigating a spate of crimes attributed to a criminal organization called the Whitewings. Are you familiar with the name?”

The Apoth stilled almost imperceptibly, which is precisely why Auria used the transcription charm in scenarios like this. She’d have missed it otherwise.

“It rings a bell,” Apoth Zamorin said carefully, color draining from her cheeks. “You hear things, when you serve as many patrons in a day as I do. Most of my customers are rather lascivious. Gossips and scoundrels, the lot of them.”

“Have you ever knowingly served a Whitewing in this establishment?”

Apoth Zamorin became very busy measuring and chopping an unfamiliar gray-blue plant root on the wooden block before her. “They wear white cloaks, do they not? In which case, I don’t think so—the only white-cloaked patrons I’m familiar with are cadets from the military or the Silvercloak Academy. Though my memory isn’t what it was.”

“Does anyone else work here with you? A young man perhaps, tall, teenaged?”

Old hands froze over the chopping board, began to tremble. “That would be Relar, my grandson.”