make the perfect cure. One tiny leaf too many, one drop too much of something, can make the difference between medicine and murder weapon. I spent moons being given whole potions and deconstructing them, testing them by scent and colour, for acid and alkali and their reactions to the humours. I broke down the elements of the entire one hundred cures listed in the Materia Medica and listed every single ingredient in each one precisely. In the dream, the man asked what I was working on, and it’s this. My mind was clearly telling me to do it. If Silas knew anything about apothecary he’d know I’d be able to do the same to the vial he gave me. I might not be able to make it, but I’ll be able to tell what’s in it. And that might be enough to point me in the direction of a recipe.
I decant one precious drop into a glass dish and put the rest of the bottle aside for my mother, depending on what I find. Then I cross to the unlit fireplace and sweep out the ashes, before lifting up the bottom of it. When we first came here there was no bottom to it; it was a pit in a dirt floor. I begged Lief to find a tray and grate for it, saying I didn’t think it was safe to light a fire without it. But I wanted the space beneath it to hide some of my apothecary kit, things that were useful to a fully fledged licensed apothecary, not an amateur potion peddler. I was supposed to sell them to raise money for rent, my beautiful Materia Medica, all of my glass dishes and pipettes, notepads and measuring glasses, but I couldn’t do it. I knew my father wouldn’t have wanted me to. So I hid them. And now I need them.
I smell the contents of the bowl and pull a notepad towards me. I write down “rose” as my base point; my nose is good and I know I smelt it. I leave the bowl and pull my old charts out from my chest, searching for “rose”. I find it in thirty-eight of the known cures. Thirty-eight is too high; I need to narrow it down to be able to do my work properly. Salt is bound to be part of it – it’s the great purifier – but that doesn’t narrow it down either. There’s something else, something like the smell after a taper has been blown out, a hint of smoke, but not so sharp. Looking back at the charts, nothing springs out at me, and I frown, sniffing again. Roses, salt, something smoky. I pull the Materia Medica towards me. I can do this.
But it turns out that I can’t, at least not as quickly as I’d thought. At lunchtime I take bread and soup to Mama, my eyes roaming over her, looking for signs of further improvement, or relapse. If it weren’t for the pink tinge to her eyes and her cobweb hair, you’d think she was healthy, recovering from a fever or injury. She looks like the lie I told to Unwin and Kirin. She sighs as I plump the pillows around her and I pause, turning sharply to her, but she closes her eyes, dismissing me. I leave a mug of water by the side of the bed and I’m about to lock the door when I stop and stare at her hands. Her fingers flutter on top of the blankets, one-two-three-four tapped over and over again on her stomach, like Silas when he’s agitated, and an old memory flashes across my mind.
All four of us sitting at the table, my mother’s fingers silently marking a tattoo on the tabletop while Lief and my father droned on and on about the pros and cons of a particular seeding method. I see it again, her drumming lightly on the counter, staring out of the window at the rain that lashed down and prevented her from going to have tea with a neighbour. She does it when she’s bored. Like Silas’s tapping, it’s involuntary; I suspect neither of them know they do it.
My mother is bored.
I don’t stop to wonder what it might mean. I race into the main room and scoop up the book of stories from the bed. I take it to her and place it in her lap, not daring to breathe in case I ruin whatever this is. Her