Skate took in the room, then. The heat from the main room’s fireplace had not made it down to this hidden part of the house, and she was not sure it ever would, even if the fire were kept burning for days.
This room was roughly half the size of the room they had entered from, though it looked slightly larger than that for the lack of bookshelves lining every wall. Instead, there were three workbenches with open shelving overhead for each one. Directly in front of each workstation was a metal tube with a single handle that hung down about two feet from the ceiling.
The work surfaces were mostly clear, though each one held a bizarre instrument or two that she did not recognize. Metal canisters, stunted bottles, and other sundry oddities were stacked and lined up in rows along the high shelves. There was a hole in the wall, under which was a sizable basin. A considerable amount of dust covered everything in the room.
“I haven’t been down here in years,” Belamy remarked in reminiscent tones. He took a deep sniff, seeming to savor the smell. Skate tested the air a bit more gingerly, and wrinkled her face in distaste. The room smelled like something sour, and the peculiar aroma stung her nostrils.
Belamy went to each workstation and pulled its handle. Skate heard a grind of metal within each tube as he did so. “Probably better to open the vents now that we’re down here.”
Skate looked around at the different tools and containers, some of which were empty, some of which were full. “I don’t get it,” she said, shrugging.
“Oh, let me give you a demonstration!” Belamy walked to the foot of the slender staircase and shouted, “Rattle! Water in the lab!”
A few moments passed as Belamy took a pair of small bottles from a nearby shelf and poured some of the contents of one onto the surface of a workstation. It looked like salt. Water began to trickle from the hole in the wall into the basin, presumably from upstairs at Rattle’s direction.
Belamy then added some of the contents from the second bottle onto the first pile. Skate saw that the second bottle’s contents were also granules of whitish stuff, though of a slightly darker hue than the salt stuff. The old man swirled the two together with his finger, then pushed the mess he’d made back into a respectable and thoroughly mixed pile. He took an empty glass from a shelf and dipped it into the small pool forming at the bottom of the basin. “Ready?” he asked, and Skate nodded, not sure what she was looking at.
Belamy poured a small amount of water into the mixed pile. For about two seconds, nothing happened, and then there was a flash of yellow light and a small bang. Skate yelped at the sound. In the enclosed space, she could feel the sound of the small explosion in her chest as the shockwave traveled across the room.
“That’s alchemy,” Belamy said with a chuckle. There was little left on the workbench after the blast—a black mark and a smattering of granules that got swept by the old man’s hand onto the floor. “Mixing reagents together to get a reaction. Most of it can be done without any magic whatsoever. There are several practitioners around town, though they’re all under contract with the Baron and the Guard, and they don’t offer services to the public except for special exceptions, or ameliorative antidotes and balms. Anything dangerous like this”—he casually gestured at the black mark—“would be out of the question. However,” he said with a conspiratorial air as he lowered his voice, “some of the more extravagant merchants of the city have an eye for impressive defensive measures when they travel. I’ve made stocks for several families across the years, all for a handsome profit.”
Skate had sufficiently recovered from her shock to ask, “How does it work?”
“Scholars disagree. There’s plenty of speculation among those that study and work with the practice. Some say it’s spirits within the ingredients that long for or detest one another, causing the violent or combining reactions we see in the course of the work. Others say it is an act of God, or of gods, who cause the reagents to form something new upon mixing. Still others say that the question is meaningless or totally unanswerable because it’s some quality of the reagents themselves; the reaction occurs because that’s what the reagents do, just as a stone is solid and water is wet. I’m not sure where I stand on that question.” He thoughtfully crossed his arms and looked down.
“So you can do other stuff with it?” Skate asked, seeing that he was lost in thought and unlikely to snap out of it on his own any time soon. “Not just explosions?”
“Oh, yes. Artificial antidotes to poisons, traps, torches that work underwater, powerful acids, lubricants, adhesives—all sorts of useful tools and tricks. One must be very careful, however,” he added, his eyes wide with warning, “because any slip-up could be disastrous. Had I grabbed the wrong bottles just now, the room could be filling with deadly fumes or full of burning tar—or any number of other horrible fates. Alchemy is not to be entered into lightly or carelessly. It’s much like magic in that regard.”
“So this is how you made your money.”
“Yes. Well, this and offering my services as a wizard to those able to pay.”
“Is there anything behind here, or is it a storage closet?” she asked, moving toward the one door in the room. She tried the handle and found that it would not budge.
“That is the room that I use to dispose of dangerous leftovers from the alchemical processes. Best left locked when I’m not working. Come on, let’s get back into fresh air,” Belamy said, moving to each metal tube and pulling the handles back to their original positions.
Something about Belamy’s demeanor struck Skate as odd. He seemed perfectly at ease as he spoke and moved, but there was an artifice to it, as if he were putting on a very convincing but still unreal show. She had herself done the same thing when she needed to sell a lie; and so long as the person she was trying to deceive was not focusing all of their attention on her at the time, it usually worked great. However, Belamy was commanding her whole attention, and not just because he was the only other person in the room; she was watching for signs of one of her greatest fears, after all.
Belamy smiled as he brought another light into being out of nothing, and began walking upstairs.
“Should we shutter the lamps?” Skate asked as she moved behind him, looking back at the locked door. She did not really care about the lamps, but wanted an excuse to look back in the room for a little longer. Boss Marshall’s granite-filled voice echoed in her head. Find the best thing he’s got and then get him for all he’s worth by taking it away. She had a sinking feeling that the locked room might have something like that behind it.
“No, don’t bother,” he said, moving fluidly up the steps—much more gracefully than a man of a hundred and seven years should be able to, she noted—carrying the ball of white light in his open palm. “They’ll just get stuck again. Besides, being down here brought back an itch to work in the lab. I may come back down here later, and I don’t want to have to mess with the lights to get started. By the way,” he added as he reached the landing back into the main room of the ground floor, “have you thought of where you’re going to be getting your next book from? By my count, you’ve got about six days to work on it.”
Skate followed him out of the narrow tunnel of a stairway. “Yeah, a little.” The truth was that she hadn’t thought much about it, but she now realized she needed to. Her best bets were Belamy’s other two friends, Gherun and Gemhide. However, it was unlikely that Belamy had another helpful meeting planned to get either of them out of their homes. She needed to begin scoping one of the places out to try to get a handle on the target’s habits, his patterns, his schedule. She had six days, but she needed to use that time to study the next mark instead of sitting around talking with Belamy about magic and alchemy and history and whatever else the old man decided was worth wasting his time on. There was also another pair of questions she wanted to ask him, but she was not sure she would be able to.