By the third morning, I could stand without pain in my ribs. That was how Silas decided I was fit for work. He slapped a bundle of dried stems onto the table, pointed at the mortar, and said, "Grind. Fine. If I see chunks, I charge you rent." I tried. The stems were pale grey and fibrous. Bone-knit, willow bark, something with red veins running through the leaves. I broke the bundle apart and started grinding. Across the cave, one of the goblins was trying to lift a water bucket with one hand. The other goblin smacked him on the back of the head, seized the handle, and they both ended up wrestling over it in total silence. Silas didn't even turn. "If either of you spill that," he said, sorting vials by size, "I will pickle your ears and sell them as love charms." The bucket steadied instantly. I kept grinding. The pestle worked the fibers down into damp threads, then powder. My wrist settled into a rhythm. Twist. Press. Lift. Twist. Press. Lift. Silas drifted past, pipe in his teeth, glanced into the bowl, and kept moving. "Adequate," he said. Coming from him, that was applause. He had me boil the powder in a narrow iron pot with a measured amount of water, then reduce it over a low flame until the liquid thickened and darkened. "Not too fast," he said. "I know." "You don't. That's why I'm saying it." I held the heat with Ignis under the pot, small and steady. Silas watched for a few seconds. Then he reached past me, tossed two pinches of crushed white root into the mixture, and stirred with the stem of his pipe. "Now," he said, "what are we making?" "Restorative draught. No mana binding." "Good. And why are we making the boring version?" "Because my ribs would like to remain attached to me." Silas took the pipe out of his mouth and pointed it at me. "Because," he said, "it keeps customers alive long enough to come back with more coins. The mushrooms are for emergencies, idiots, and ambitious dead men." He leaned over the pot, peered into the steam, and grunted once. "Bit more reduction. Then cloth. Then bottle. If you scorch it, I make you drink all of it." I reduced it. Filtered it. Bottled it. Three small brown glass vials sat on the table in a neat row by the time I was done. Silas lifted one to the crystal light in the wall, squinted at the sediment line, then gave the faintest tilt of his head. "There," he said. "You have successfully boiled leaves without disgracing us both." * * * By noon we had six more. Two restorative draughts. One anti-rot wash for animal cuts. Three bitter stimulant tonics made from black root, salt, and a powder Silas kept in a corked clay jar with no label. "What is that?" I asked when he added the powder. "Profit." "What is it made from?" "Things with names." "Helpful." "I know." He corked the last bottle, wiped his fingers on his apron, and looked down the line of finished vials. "These go south. Tree market. Quiet trade." He pointed the stem of his pipe at me. "You are carrying them." "Why me?" "Because if anyone catches me with six unlicensed formulations and a satchel full of undocumented reagents, they get excited. If they catch you, they think you stole medicine." He smiled. "I'm kidding." One of the goblins gave a low click from near the entrance. Silas glanced over. "No, you can't come. Last time you bit a cooper." The goblin clicked again. Offended this time. "He shouldn't have shouted," Silas said to me. "Shouting upsets them." I looked at the goblin. The goblin looked back. Then both goblins clicked in the same rhythm and went back to sorting firewood into two stacks by size. I watched them for a second too long. Silas noticed. "Don't start," he said. "Start what?" "Thinking. You always make that face before trouble. Pack the bottles." * * * The hollow oak was empty when we got there. Silas deposited two stimulant tonics and one restorative draught inside, then stepped back and rested both hands on the top of his walking stick. "Now we wait," he said. "How long?" "If we're lucky? Five minutes. If we're unlucky? An hour. If we're cursed? A tax clerk." We got lucky. An old man in a patched cart-driver's coat came down the slope from the village path with a sack of turnips over one shoulder. He never looked at us directly. He set the sack down by the tree, crouched, reached into the hollow, and swapped the bottles for a wrapped cloth purse. Then he stood, grunted, lifted the turnips, and walked away. "That's it?" I asked. "That's the whole miracle of commerce, yes. Product. Coin. Walking." Silas reached into the hollow, pulled out the purse, and spilled the contents into his palm. Seven silver. Three coppers. He gave me two of the silver pieces. I looked at them. "For what?" "Your excellent personality." "Two silver for six bottles?" "For the batch you helped make. Try not to faint." He dropped the rest into his own pouch. "The ingredients were cheap. The labor was yours. The customers are frightened villagers with weak bones and bad luck. If we charged Guild prices, they'd die on principle." He started back toward the ravine. I fell into step beside him. "You could make more," I said. "Obviously." "Then why don't you?" "Because making more attracts attention. Attention attracts uniforms. I became an outlaw specifically to avoid forms." He glanced sideways at me. "That, and poor people breed gratitude. Rich people breed complaints." He tapped his pipe against his teeth. "Also, I need steady buyers. Not dramatic ones." That part I understood. Steady silver beat heroic schemes. * * * When we got back, the goblins had built a crooked shelf near the rear wall. One side leaned lower than the other. Five jars sat on it in a line, all sliding toward the floor. Silas stopped dead. He looked at the shelf. The goblins froze. "Gentlemen," Silas said quietly, "what am I looking at?" The taller one clicked and pointed at the shelf with obvious pride. "I see that." Silas set the walking stick aside and moved closer. "What I see beyond that is failure, insult, and a personal attack on geometry." He pressed one finger to the lower brace. The whole thing collapsed. The jars hit the floor and rolled in different directions. Both goblins flinched so hard their shoulders nearly touched their ears. I bent, caught one jar before it smashed, and set it upright. Silas looked from the fallen boards to me. "Marshal," he said, recovering instantly, "since the workforce has failed me, you may earn your supper. Rebuild that. Properly." "With nails?" "With stone," he said. "Wood has had its chance." So I did. I cut sockets into the wall with magic, lifted a slab from the floor, trimmed it flat, and slid it into place. The gestures came easier now. Turn. Press. Lock. A little too much pressure at first. I backed off. Smoothed the lip. Set the second support. Then the third. By the time I finished, the shelf sat flush with the wall, level and solid. Silas ran both hands along the surface. "There," he said. "A shelf. A real shelf. Civilization returns." The taller goblin crept forward and cautiously set one jar on the stone. Both goblins clicked at each other in rapid, excited bursts. Silas rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes. Applaud the mason." Then he reached into the pocket of his coat and tossed me something black. I caught it. A shard. Thumb-length. Oily-dark at the core, with a rough grey rind around the outside. "Crack off from my old one," Silas said. "Spent. Mostly. Try not to swallow it." I turned it in my fingers. Cold. "What do I do with it?" "Ask a better question first," he said. He crossed to the far wall and unlatched a narrow cabinet built into the stone. Inside were trays of crystal shards sorted by color. White. Blue-white. Pale red. Clouded yellow. And, wrapped separately in cloth, three more black pieces. I looked at the shelves. "You've been hiding that." "Of course I have." He picked up a red shard between thumb and forefinger. "Question." I held up the black fragment. "Why is this different?" "Better." He lifted the red shard toward me. "This one is heat. Low grade. Dirty cut. Good for warming a bedroll, keeping ink from freezing, lighting coals if you're patient." He tossed it to me. It landed warm. Not hot. Warm. Like it had sat by a hearth. Silas picked up a pale blue shard. "Cold. Same quality. Butchers like them. Brewers too. People with meat and sense." He set it beside the red one on the table. Frost crept over the stone in a thin web. Then he took a white shard no bigger than a fingernail and rapped it against the wall. It lit. A steady pearl glow filled the back of the cave. "Light," he said. "Children, miners, smugglers, husbands sneaking home after midnight. Everybody likes a lamp crystal." I turned the warm shard over in my palm. "And the better ones?" Silas grinned. Gold tooth. "The better ones stop being trinkets and start being infrastructure. Clean heat crystals go into forge arrays, military foci, ship furnaces. Fine cold stones preserve cargo. Strong wind crystals go into lift assemblies, pressure chambers, propulsion cages, all the expensive nonsense that keeps airships from becoming very memorable accidents." He plucked the white shard back off the table and pinched out the light between two fingers. "Same principle. Quality decides whether you've got a hand warmer or a guild monopoly." I looked down at the black fragment. "And this?" Silas took it back from me, held it delicately, and tilted it toward the cave crystals. The wall light dimmed by a shade. Not much. Just enough to notice. "This," he said, "is a different breed. Elemental crystals hold a frequency. Black crystals hold a sealed interior. A pocket. A pressure box. A place where things can remain separate from the world outside." "Mana." "Mana, yes. But not only mana." He rolled the shard across his knuckles. "Impressions. Echoes. Patterns. Sometimes memory, if the thing you're plugging it into has enough cracks in it." I kept my mouth shut. Silas saw that and smiled around the pipe. "Still sore about that, are you?" "It cracked in my hand." "Mine too," he said. "Very rude of it." He set the shard back on the table and pulled one of the wrapped black pieces from the cabinet. This one was smaller than the mine crystal and larger than the cracked fragment. Egg-sized. Dense. Light-drinking. He used tongs. That told me enough.

Chapter 32: Threads and Shards