Part One #2
Tommick nodded. “Proportions and ratios, Dorri. Wouldn’t you love to know more?”
A clang from the dumbwaiter startled him before Dorrimin could answer, the mechanisms protesting the cold weather or needing to be cleaned and oiled. Dorrimin dragged his attention from Tommick to walk over and open the dumbwaiter doors. On the tray was a plate of honey-and-cassia cookies.
His mother’s voice echoed down from the kitchen, which was upstairs on one of the residential floors of the house.
“Ask Tommick if he’s staying for dinner.”
Dorrimin grimaced to imagine how much of their conversation had echoed up through the dumbwaiter or the heating vents; his mother had no magic, as almost no one did, so that had to be the reason. But he only sighed as he picked up the plate to bring it to Tommick.
“I think she likes you better than me,” he complained, shoving two of the still-warm cookies in his mouth at the same time.
“Is that what you think?” Tommick said, continuing to smile, and accepted a cookie, which he ate slowly, breaking it into pieces first. Dorrimin liked the way he did it, precise and neat, even if it was probably topper manners.
He swallowed. “If you weren’t from the top, she’d probably ask you to work here.” He didn’t even have to consider it. “You’d be good at it.”
Tommick’s smile changed. “I…. Oh. Thank you.”
Dorrimin, about to remark on Tommick’s family business being in his blood, stayed silent because Tommick had that tone again. The one that said his family didn’t think well of him, or perhaps didn’t think of him at all.
One of Tommick’s friends tapped on the glass. Tommick and Dorrimin both looked in that direction, then Tommick waved them off.
Dorrimin narrowed his eyes. “They could just come in.”
“They’re trying not to get in my way,” Tommick declared loftily.
He glanced up, then, when Dorrimin nodded, took the last cookie.
“Anyway,” he said after one small piece had been neatly consumed, “I could say the same for you: You could go out. You know, leave the shop once in a while to have some fun. Which is why I came.” He had another piece.
“I like your baking too, but your mother bakes with something special.”
Baking was chemistry. There was nothing special to add, unless Dorrimin’s mother really did have magic.
It was more likely that she was holding back some sort of secret ingredient or step.
Which would be like her; she felt that apprentices, even family members learning how to run a house, had to learn to ask for new knowledge when they felt they were ready for it.
“Anyway,” Tommick said again, his eyes on his task of tearing a cookie apart, “did you want to? It won’t be long. Just a drink or two at a pub a few street levels down where Bartin says the beer is superb.”
Bartin being the curvy one outside the window, if Dorrimin remembered correctly.
“It’s expected to snow this evening,” Dorrimin answered, frowning over it.
“Maybe heavily.” The winds were picking up, he’d heard it from a customer earlier.
Eladia was known as the Windswept City and so it was, with turbines and mills on the westerly side of the mountain to provide power enough to keep lights on and trains running.
If a resident said the winds were picking up, it meant people should prepare to hunker down for a storm and perhaps lose some shutters.
“Yeah,” Tommick waved that off, “but we wouldn’t be out all night. Only long enough to talk a little and have a beer.”
If the winds or snow increased to what were considered risky levels, the trains and even the horse-drawn busses and carriages would stop talking passengers.
If they reached dangerous levels, the city would essentially be closed for the next day or two.
Tommick knew that, and Dorrimin was probably a scowling stork now, so he didn’t say it.
“Are your exams actually over?” he asked instead, crossing his arms.
Tommick paused, glanced away, then licked a crumb from the corner of his soft mouth. “I have one left. But it’s History from Before the Third Wall and I don’t care about that.”
“Your parents will care.” Dorrimin spoke without thinking and winced.
Tommick merely glanced away again. “Will they?” He dusted his hands on his expensive coat.
“Well, if you don’t want to go, as always…
.” He muttered that, a little sour himself, as he pulled out his gloves to put them on.
“And if the weather does intend to trap us inside for a night or a day or two, then I shall have my drink with the gang and then come see you before I head up.”
“My mother wants you to stay for dinner.” Dorrimin muttered back at him, uncertain why his tone was, for lack of a better word, cranky.
“Just your mother?” Tommick wondered, lofty again, fitting his gloves and then fiddling with his scarf.
“If the wind worsens or it snows as heavily as they say it might,” Dorrimin persisted, still cranky, “you should go straight home. You don’t need to come see me.” He wasn’t worth the risk of freezing or being stuck on a pub floor overnight with anyone else trapped by the storm.
Tommick raised his head. His gaze was serious. “I know that, Dorrimin.”
His tone was ever so slightly condescending.
Dorrimin sat back down on the stool, arms crossed, probably all elbows and knees. Thoroughly ridiculous looking even without glaring down his nose.
“It might not be safe,” Dorrimin protested anyway.
Tommick brightened like a brand-new show-light in one of the Fortune Emporium’s display windows. “But then I might not see you for days.”
Dorrimin stared at him. He stared at Tommick for what was probably an uncomfortable amount of time and was acutely aware of how rapidly his heart was beating.
“But you’ll live,” he argued at last in the gruff voice of an old man.
“Dorri.” Tommick clapped his hands together, the sound muffled by his gloves. “All this means is that in the spring, you are coming to the pub and I won’t take no for an answer. It can be just the two of us, if you want. If the others are intimidating you.”
“I’m not….” Dorrimin trailed off when Tommick moved toward the door, only to pause by the closest of the shop’s two street-level windows.
“Midwinter is approaching, but there’s not a sign of it in here yet.”
Many other businesses, especially the pubs, decorated early for the Midwinter holidays, with garlands of greenery and berries, or pine cones, or bows, or flowers. Some even spent money on candles or extra lights.
“We are not a place to buy gifts,” Dorrimin answered in confusion. “Or an emporium like yours.”
“Oh, I know.” Tommick inclined his head and smiled before glancing back to him. “But you know that seeing reminders of the holiday makes people want to spend money, right? I’ve heard several pub owners say sales go up the moment they start putting out the wreaths and garlands.”
“But that’s for a good time.” Dorrimin was no less confused. “We make elixirs to get cleaner sinks and to polish pots and pans.”
Tommick gave him an almost exasperated look.
“And softeners for hair, and oils to make it more manageable. Lotions for after baths.” He paused, lowering his voice.
“Ointments to aid in pleasure.” In public, most people called those products Marital or Intimacy Aids.
Hearing Tommick say the word pleasure made Dorrimin’s skin prickle.
Tommick said it as if he knew all the best ways to use such products, as opposed to Dorrimin, who used a dab to help him sometimes in his room at night if he felt like doing something differently, but who mostly took care of his business in the morning so he wouldn’t get restless during the day.
Tommick probably used them with other people.
No, Tommick definitely did. That’s what the gleam in his eyes said as he went on.
“People might want those as gifts. Or want to look their best for Midwinter parties.”
“Parties?”
Tommick turned enough to study Dorrimin from his puzzled frown to his throat and the collar that, while still unbuttoned, now felt too tight. “Yes, you stick-in-the-mud,” he agreed fondly. “Parties. Which I will continue to invite you to.”
Unsure if he meant more gatherings with his college friends or something up top, Dorrimin could only stare back.
Guild members were well-regarded in the city but they were not usually toppers.
They could live or do business on any level of mountain, but rarely that one.
He wouldn’t have anything to wear, much less anything to talk about unless they wanted to discuss the problems of the shelf life of facial creams with scents added to them.
It would be the same with Tommick’s college friends, almost certainly.
He could hear his mother and Tommick both telling him that if he took classes at the college, he might be able to discuss poetry or the stars. Or even the History Before the Third Wall.
“I’m only a Guild apprentice, Tommick,” he said quietly, in a voice that his father would not have liked to hear.
“‘Only?’” Tommick scoffed. “You’re smart and skilled and growing more skilled by the day. And most of the products in my family’s store are made by Guild members—including your family’s products. They’ll take you more seriously than they’ll ever take me.”
The Fortune Emporium, occupying nearly an entire level halfway up the mountain, served all people of all classes of Eladia, from the farmers out beyond the Second Wall to the toppers.
It offered local products and goods imported from other cities, even from across the sea, as well as luxuries and everyday household staples.
People went there to shop for items they couldn’t get on their levels or for items of the very best quality.
Or just to see what was new and gawk at the display windows or all the attractive, neatly dressed counter help.
A few months ago, Tommick had mentioned that he’d suggested his family add a small restaurant so that customers had another reason to linger in the store.
Some customers already made a day of it to travel to the emporium, but they had to leave the store to eat and rest. Tommick had never mentioned the restaurant after that one time.
Dorrimin assumed Tommick’s family had either dismissed the idea or not bothered to listen in the first place.
Dorrimin frowned, although not at Tommick. “Well,” he began slowly, “we have decorations for the house. We could put those in the window after we buy some fresh garlands.”
“Yeah?” Tommick blinked several times before fidgeting with his scarf again. “A wreath on the door is also pretty. And you could get your mother to arrange displays that aren’t about toilet and chamber pot scrubbers.”
“Those are consistently good sellers!” Dorrimin objected heatedly.
Tommick grinned. “But not something to give as a present, or even something on anyone’s mind right now, unless they are planning on guests.” He shuffled in place slightly. “Or, if she’s busy, I can do it. We can make a night of it, you and me. If you want.”
The bells chimed.
“Tommick,” Bartin poked her head in the door, “we’re freezing our asses off out here. Dorrimin.” She nodded to Dorrimin and then gave Tommick a look, eyebrows raised so high they nearly disappeared under the brim of the hat she had the sense to wear.
Tommick whirled around to whisper furiously at her, then briefly whirled back to give Dorrimin what was a far too earnest look from someone about to go drinking. “I’ll see you later.”
The bells chimed behind him a moment later, and then the three of them passed out of sight.
Dorrimin stared after them, and then at the empty shop, before opening the book of received shipments again to stare at the doodle in the margin.
The blue bottle of toilet cleaner had been shining in the morning light. Dorrimin had thought it was pretty.
He didn’t think that was poetry and he didn’t see how it was math. But he looked at it for a while anyway.