Phony Potions

Chapter 2

-15 YEARS LATER-

"You sold me a phony potion, Azark!" The accusation drew me from my drink, which I had been waiting to get all day. My hands tightened around the wooden mug, its surface smoothed by the hundreds of tavern patrons who had drank from it before me. I lowered the mug to the table, the amber liquid's piney scent fading.

I studied the man. The rest of the tavern, already shooting discreet glances in our direction, now had license to gape openly at the confrontation that had ignited. There were so many customers over the last several months, it was hard to keep everyone straight. I usually learned all of their names the first few days after entering the town and mentally dumped them on the way out to make room for the next batch. After all, I can't appeal to each potential customer's weak spot without knowing a few pages of their life story.

Behind me, card games were being played, and based on the angry mumbling I kept hearing, someone with a bad temper was losing. Further off, the high-pitched chitter of women's voices cut through the general murmuring din, catching my attention. With them was a gurgling babe, its erratic coos and giggles a stark contrast to its mother's worried words. The mother and her friend were discussing a series of red welts on the baby's hand. The mother sounded frantic, and I had to fight a smile as her friend began to talk about me. But the mother cut her off, insisting she hadn't even a fraction of a coin to spend on magical remedies.

They were unable to see me. The smoke of the cooking fires from the kitchen behind the counter rolled out along the ceiling and settled down, leaving a meat-scented fog around everything. Even if conditions had been ideal, they probably would have been fixated on the Moon Giant hunkered next to me instead. But this man had seen me. He saw me and he wanted to expose me in front of the entire tavern of potential customers.

I glanced down at the man's leg. It hung limply from his hip next to the cane planted on the floor for support. He had bought a potion to heal his crippled leg. Not today, though. I knew everyone from today. What was his story again...?

"Oh, it may seem that way, and for that I am quite apologetic my friend." I stalled. "As I said during the sale, it would take three doses a day over one month before you'd start to feel effects..." I began with my prescriptive speech about why he wasn't getting the results he desired, unable to summon his particular backstory to my mind. He cut me off.

"I bought it a month ago!" he said. He took out a glass bottle from beneath his moldy old jacket, caked dirt from traveling flaking off as he bent the fabric. I recognized the bottle. I'd bought a set of them from a sorcerer's Assistant. She'd been throwing out her Master's bottles in Kittsburg. She had uttered something stupid about them being 'out of fashion'. I knew my non-discerning clientele would never know the difference, so I'd bought the whole lot off of her for a dozen eggs. I'd got the eggs from trading a vial of supposed acne-banishing potion that morning to a particularly dimwitted farmhand.

The bottles were fat bottomed with ornate swirling patterns around the tapering necks. The corks for them were micro-sized, meaning it came out more as a piddle than a pour, even when one tried to dump out the potion in one gulp. I had sold the last potion I packaged in that bottle... over a month ago. I was now onto using the bubbled potion bottle design for most of my wares. So this man was telling the truth. Hex it.

"Oh! I see. Why, that isn't the model I sold this week, but are you quite sure it's been a month? I know when I am so excited about something, such as the promise of health, I lose track of days. So eager to get to the good parts of life, and who isn't guilty of that, my friend?" I asked with good humor. He did not return my smile as he waved the potion bottle in the air. My questioning his common sense hadn't deterred him at all.