Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore by Emily Krempholtz - 8

Market Day meant more foot traffic, and Nathaniel wasn’t about to turn it down. He was contentedly explaining to one of his customers the differences between ginger and peppermint to ease nausea when the bell above the door tinkled again.

“Be with you in one moment,” Nathaniel said to the newcomer, and finished measuring herbal tea, tossing in a sample-sized packet of candied ginger for free after his customer paid. As she left the shop, he turned to the new arrival and the display of skin creams he’d been examining.

“Did you change the scent on these?” the man demanded. “The old one was better.”

Nathaniel suppressed the urge to admit that the pearlflower petals he’d used for the scent had grown too expensive, so he’d substituted the ingredient in his grandmother’s recipe for another, cheaper fragrance.

“We’re trying a seasonal change,” he finally said, forcing a stiff smile to his lips.

“Seems like lots of changes being made around here.” The customer looked pointedly at the wall that separated them from the workroom turned rental.

“We don’t need all the space,” said Nathaniel as casually as he could. The unfinished follow-up to his sentence— we don’t do enough business to merit it —hung in the air like an apple on a branch that both refused to pluck.

It was no secret in Dragon’s Rest that Marsh Apothecary was struggling, and Nathaniel knew what he looked like to the people who had shopped here for decades. He’d been gone too long. He was too different now. He didn’t belong here in this town the way he once had.

When Nathaniel Marsh was nine years old, he’d decided he didn’t want to be an apothecary. He was on a trip with his mother to select new stock for the shop directly from the merchant ships that docked in Lokoa. The great port city had enthralled Nathaniel as much as it had scared him with its staggering sheer cliffs and floating docks that rose and fell hundreds of feet with the dramatic tides of the three moons. Dragon’s Rest seemed outdated and tiny by comparison.

He’d stuck close to his mother’s side as she bartered for rare herbs and ingredients that he’d never heard of and watched in awe as a gray-haired woman in dark robes swept past him to a stall that sold stranger items—faceted crystals, feathers that shone gold, and delicate leaves that looked made of glass.

“Mum,” Nathaniel had asked. “What is that?”

His mother had glanced at the stall with derision.

“Alchemists,” she said scornfully. “Pretty showmen turning one thing into another. They could be of such use—put their skills to making medicines more powerful than any tincture of mine!—yet all they do is craft baubles for the rich and tools of war for the Queen.”

Nathaniel had watched as the man behind the stall poured a concoction onto an onyx hair comb and ran it through the woman’s hair. As the comb passed through her locks, it turned the silvery gray to a lustrous chestnut brown. She beamed, looking at least ten years younger.

“I think it’s beautiful,” said Nathaniel.

“Pah!” his mother spat, and he felt burned by the sudden acid in her voice. “Parlor tricks and criminals.”

She led him away, but Nathaniel couldn’t get the alchemist out of his mind.

“Why is it so bad to make things that are pretty?” he asked her that night over a hearty bowl of beef stew at the inn where they were staying.

His mother put down her spoon. “Well, darling, it’s not. But they rarely stop there. I had a sister who was an alchemist, did you know that?”

“Aunt Althea.” Nathaniel nodded sagely, as though he knew more than just the hushed whispers he’d gleaned from adults around him.

His mother’s nod was curt. “She made pretty things once. But pretty things have sharp edges, and other people can wield you like a blade if you’re not careful.” Her voice caught. “Althea died, Nathaniel. Do you understand me? Her alchemy was dangerous and she paid the price. Better to be of use, to be able to help people with something real . That’s us, my love. We do good. We do something of substance. Not like her. Not like them.”

He wasn’t clear on who them was, but the conversation stuck with him, a constant flame burning just this side of too hot even as his aspirations grew. At nineteen, he told his parents he wanted to join the Crucible, the royal university where the Queen’s alchemists trained.

“I want to make it useful,” he pleaded to his mother. “I want to apply alchemical practices to make our medicines more effective. Create cures and methods to make our family’s business unlike any other. I don’t need power. I don’t need baubles. I just want to help.”

Da smiled and congratulated him, but his mother hesitated.

“It will change you,” she said mournfully. “Five years you’ll be gone from us at that school, and then you won’t want to come home.”

“That’s not true, Mum,” he said, feeling confident. “I’ll experiment and send back ideas for ways to help the shop, and when I’ve finished my education, I will come home and we’ll bring Marsh Apothecary into a new age.”

But his mother had only smiled sadly. “We’ll see, my love. We’ll see.”

On the day he left for Lokoa, she told him, “Remember there’s more to it than pretty tricks and flashy explosions. You, and only you, oversee your destiny, Nathaniel. Never forget it.”

“Five years, Mum,” he promised.

It was the first big lie he told his mother.

Once Nathaniel was happily settled in Lokoa, his fingertips blackened with ink and soot, his leather apron smelling of magic and science and all the things he loved most, he was never quite sure how to tell his family that he’d fallen in love with school, and with the city.

He finished university at the top of his class, and with a twinge of guilt, he accepted a research role in the Crucible developing new alchemical solutions for the Queen. He immersed himself in a world of innovation and scholarship, drinking deep from the chalice of knowledge in a quest to quench his ever-worsening thirst.

Before he knew it, ten years had passed in the blink of an eye, and his youthful naivete had evaporated like a decoction left too long on the flame.

If he’d known from the start that his parents would take out a second mortgage on the shop to pay for his schooling, would he have chosen differently? If he’d realized the harm he was causing with his experiments, would he have left the Crucible sooner? If he’d known the violent, disastrous results of his work, would he still have gone? If, if, if…

Now, as Nathaniel wore a mask of pleasant goodwill in front of surly customers who knew he didn’t belong, knew what he’d done, he wondered at what a waste his education had been. Here he was anyway peddling the same tea and herbs his parents had—only his parents had been able to keep the business afloat.

“If you’d like the pearlflower scent back,” Nathaniel said now to his customer, “I can put your name on a list and let you know when we have it in stock once again.”

“And when might that be?”

“Ah, well.” Nathaniel cleared his throat. “Shipments have been delayed since Shadowfade’s defeat—merchants aren’t sure what to think.” This wasn’t a lie, or at least not quite. Several merchants had indicated that they worried news of the sorcerer’s death was some kind of trick. Unfortunately for Nathaniel, it was a sentiment that had been accompanied by a steep increase in their prices; now that they were no longer forced to trade in Dragon’s Rest with the sorcerer himself, they were giving his town a wide berth until they could determine where the dice had fallen—and what sort of entity might be picking them up in Shadowfade’s absence.

To his relief, the customer’s expression softened. “Aye, you and everyone else in town,” he said. “I work down at the inn, and the brewer from Shadow Springs, where we get our ale, told us we can come and get it ourselves but he won’t be delivering to us for the foreseeable future. Now our options are a day’s journey to Shadow Springs every other week or purchasing from the Barrel.”

Nathaniel sympathized—the Rusty Barrel was the only brewing operation in Dragon’s Rest, and its beer was about as appetizing as its name promised.

“We’ll come through the other side of it,” Nathaniel said with more conviction than he felt. “Now that Shadowfade’s gone, Dragon’s Rest will find its balance.”

“We should tear down his bloody castle,” muttered the customer, heading for the door without making a purchase. “That would prove to everyone he’s gone for good.”

Shadowfade had made his mark upon the town, and Nathaniel would be lying if he said it wasn’t part of the reason he’d fought to get away from Dragon’s Rest.

He looked around the shop, his eyes lingering on the too-wide spaces between products on the shelves and the jars that were nearly empty. Like all of them here in Dragon’s Rest, those merchants were holding their breath because they knew change was on the horizon.

And just like those merchants, Nathaniel was terrified of what that change would bring.

As he waved goodbye to his customer, his eye caught on a now-familiar head of curls just outside, watching the market stalls in Wingspan Green with a certain wistfulness in her eyes. He couldn’t forget his suspicions. Something about Violet Thistlewaite was off somehow, and like a kernel stuck between his teeth or a stubborn stain he could not scrub out, Nathaniel had become fixated. She was a distraction he did not want or need, especially at a time like this when he should be focusing on his business—but she presented the exact sort of puzzle he couldn’t resist, the kind that urged him to pull out paper and ink to start cataloguing hypotheses, to put on his best gloves so he could carefully measure and examine to determine exactly what it was about her that drew his attention so.

Nathaniel told himself that he watched her so closely because he wanted answers. He wanted to know how she was so powerful and why someone with her abilities would open a flower shop in a town as small and sad as Dragon’s Rest. He told himself it had everything to do with his own self-interest and nothing at all to do with those amber eyes or the way she always seemed to miss a few strands when she tied her hair up out of her face. It was about the survival of his business, not the high, clear sound of her laugh, which had shocked him like lightning only that morning when Pru ran into her outside the apothecary. He didn’t need to make her laugh. It was perfectly acceptable that Violet liked his sister better than him.

Nathaniel Marsh had grown accomplished, over the years, at telling himself lies. Most of the time, he even believed them to be true.