Chapter 36: Who do you trust?
They walked in silence, and Kalim spent an entire match. The rain didn't stop, and Cyril was happy that at least there was no wind. Walking naked on a night street was not a pleasant experience, but breaking into someone else's house for warm clothes? Cyril has not yet fallen so far in his eyes.
"My house is not far from here." Kalim said.
The cart overturned in a slum area. The broken road squelched under their feet and slid between bare fingers. Cyril grimaced as he stepped into another puddle, but the news of a warm house was welcome.
Nodding to his thoughts, Cyril turned to the alchemist:
"What do you know about the capital clans?"
After all, he still wanted to know more about where he was. Although his ability to see in the dark helped him walk steadily and avoid seemingly dangerous bumps in the road, Cyril needed knowledge more than cat eyes. Kalim seemed to know the way like the back of his hand and didn't need any light.
"Well, the Clean Heel clan founded the city." The alchemist replied, and wondered why Cyril didn't ask for a new match. He decided not to think about it, not wanting to face another wave of humiliation. "This is the oldest clan. It's funny that they don't weigh much in the political scales right now."
Cyril nodded.
"And what do they do besides building baths?"
Cyril saw Kalim step aside to avoid a rock jutting out of the ground.
"They started with founding water sources and building a town around any oasis." The alchemist began to explain. "Yes, it all started with this. There used to be a steppe here, but the clan found one source after another. Excess water has led to what you see. Dense forests and unstable climate. Now the Clean Heel clan maintains traditions and practices ancient magic, but their members are becoming fewer and fewer. Power in the country is shared by all three clans and the Royal family."
"I heard something about a clan war." Cyril recalled a conversation in the bathhouse.
Kalim chuckled.
"The clans have always fought for power, it's business as usual. By the way, we're here."
Kalim entered the ramshackle ruin, which was hardly a house, and lit a couple of candles inside. Cyril followed him inside, trying to close the rotting wooden door as quietly as possible. Seeing the state of the house, he was just afraid to ruin it.
"What a mess." Cyril thought.
There was only one table and a narrow bed piled high with books. The books seemed to take up the entire space, rising to the ceiling. Although waterdrops fell from the ceiling from time to time, Cyril was afraid for the fate of these books.
"Half of these books are forbidden." The alchemist said, rummaging along the far wall.
One candle in his hand shook dangerously with the flame inches from the spine of the nearest book. The second candle stood on the table, having found some space among the stacks of forbidden writings.
'I don't want this bookworm to burn us down here.' Cyril thought, unconsciously walking back to the door. 'It can be paranoid, of course, with frostbite, but first he sent me into the woods where anyone could die, then he threw us off the cart, and now he's preparing to set fire in a remote slum.'
Kalim continued to rummage along the far wall, sorting through stacks of books and unfolding scroll after scroll.
'By the way, I don't know if I can resist the flame yet.' Cyril added to himself. 'The bookworm is strange, but the devil knows. What if he wants to burn us down? From the beginning, I didn't want to trust him.'
"Where are the retorts and everything?" Cyril asked.
He reasoned if Kalim called himself an alchemist and not a herbalist or a bookworm, he should have a laboratory. He remembered a documentary about an alchemist from the middle ages, the wise man evaporated his urine through a complex system of tubes and glass spheres.
Kalim rustled another scroll, threatening to burn down the house, and turned. In the half-light, his gambling smile seemed ominous, making Cyril shiver a little.
"My lab is in the basement." The alchemist smiled.
Here, in his home, he had removed his hood and could not hide his face. To be honest, Kalim was shy of people, and even more so, he trusted very few of them.
In the entire city, only two other alchemists and one person in the king's court knew he was practicing alchemy. This man helped him to take well-paid orders from wealthy aristocrats, as Kalim could remain in the shadows.
Still, Kalim couldn't just keep up with orders from the aristocracy. As a scientist, he needed to constantly search for creative ideas, and one of them was the creation of a resurrection potion.
"Why do I trust you with my secrets?" Kalim asked, realizing that he had just revealed Cyril the location of his treasury.
"I guess you do it for the same reason as I collected herbs for you." Cyril replied. "By the way, you hid the fact the forest was alive."
"Yeah." Kalim nodded. "Otherwise, no one agreed to help."
"How many did you ask before me?"
"Maybe five. Probably ten." The alchemist smiled awkwardly. "I've lost count. To be honest, you were the only one who managed to come back from the forest and gather the herbs I needed."
"Wanna talk about trust?" Cyril chuckled.
'Just as I thought, he's a sly fox.' He added to himself, leaning against the doorjamb. 'Maybe I'll burn out after all.'
The feeling of the cold wall behind him, even though it was unpleasant, helped him feel more confident here, where every detail of the interior threatened to collapse.
Kalim made an inarticulate but clearly satisfied sound and straightened up with the scroll in his hands.
"Since you found out what I do and took the job, we've been kind of in the same boat." He said, smiling happily under his blond hair. "And from your questions, you don't know anything. Here is the map."
Kalim walked over to Cyril, nearly burning a stack of books to his left, and handed him a brownish scroll of rather old-looking paper. Cyril accepted the scroll, again feeling the fear that it would fall apart in his hands.
"I'm sorry." Kalim said. "I have no other clothes, and I can't give you my hoodie either."
He came out of the house with a candle in his hand, so as to give some light to the road. Kalim shielded the flames from the rain with his hand and waited for Cyril to carefully close the door. He had no fear for the safety of the books in his house, because everything he read at least once could be stored in his memory.
But the safety of the laboratory was a vital priority for him. Kalim knew that even if someone wanted to follow him to retrieve the precious artifacts, it would be difficult to get to them. No one would have guessed what was hidden in the basement of this shack.
"I can stand it." Cyril snapped, beginning to dance and wishing he'd set the fire himself.
'At least, I could keep warm in the fire.' He thought.
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