CHAPTER 70: 70: THE STRANGER RETURNS XII

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Fizz looked at John with a question in his eyes and a joke on his tongue. He swallowed the joke and asked quietly in his ear instead.

"Do you want to write to someone from that family, let’s find out information about your mother." Fizz said. "We have coins now. We can pay a servant and ask about your mother. We will pretend to be strangers. We can ask about your mother. We can ask where she is. If she is dead we will find her grave."

John did not expect the question from fizz and to hurt his chest. It did anyway. He set the cup down and looked at the edge of the table as if the grain there might rearrange itself into something useful.

"Maybe..," he said. "Not tonight. I got plans. I will tell you later." he whispers to Fizz’s ears.

Fizz accepted that without a fight. "Tomorrow then. I will bring you ink that does not run when you put your face on the page."

Nobody heard what they were talking about.

Meanwhile, Sera spoke in a voice that had the slightest thread of command in it. "We will need to lock the street side windows. If you are building a lab, you cannot have children tossing pebbles through your wards. Or thieves thinking your bottles look like festival oil."

Gael laughed. "Thieves who put a hand through his window will pull back a story where a hand used to be. Lord Fizz will bite the hands before it can take anything."

John rolled the pencil once under his finger. "I do not want stories. Or Fizz biting anyone. I want quiet. And work." He paused and looked at Fizz.

Fizz was getting ready to protest or mock or sing something. John quickly added to make Fizz happy, "And pancakes for fizz. Lots of them."

Fizz’s face lit up like a lantern. He forgot about everything, "At last. He remembers his debt."

"Tomorrow," John said. "We will buy flour and syrup and declare a private holiday for Fizz."

"I will write a proclamation," Fizz said. "Hear ye. Hear ye. The First Pancake party at John’s Yard. Attendance required. Hats encouraged."

Sera tilted her head. "Can I also attend this pancake party thing?"

"Yes," Fizz said. "You may even hold a plate. I will make the syrup by myself."

She looked at John. He gave the smallest of nods. "I will be there," she said.

Gael took the pot and poured himself another half cup of tea. "You will not make the syrup yourself, Lord Fizz. Last time you set the pot so hot the sugar knew fear and turned black."

"I can learn," Fizz said.

"I will help you do it, Lord Fizz." Gael said, "Just instructions will do. I follow whatever you say."

Fizz spun slow circles above the table and hummed a victory theme that belonged to a hero made of syrup. "You will be my cooking assistant."

John finished marking the first plan and began the second. This one had fewer lines. It was not a room. It was a list in a small hand.

He wrote leather and then scratched it out and wrote good leather. He wrote crystal feed for mk. 01, the grade must be good. He wrote salts and sand and chalk, wax, wire, and copper banding. He wrote a name he thought he might use for the Spitter once it stopped being a problem child. He wrote a second name in case the first was bad.

Sera drained her cup and set it down with care. "There will be trouble," she said.

"There always is," John said.

"I do not mean the usual trouble," she said. "I mean the kind that looks like a man passing you on the road and then looks again."

"I saw it," John said.

"Good," she said. "Then we will not pretend we did not. You have your secrets."

Fizz made a small unhappy noise and drifted lower. "I can be bait if you want. I can hover near the back door and sing a very loud song about secrets."

"You will not sing," John said.

"At least let me hum," Fizz said.

"You may hum when no one hears you," John said.

Fizz nodded and hummed anyway. A few moments...

Night walked forward and put its hand on the window. Shadows stretched across the floor in long even boards. Gael dismissed his boys with the wave of a hand and a growl that sounded like gratitude. Sera gathered the cups and rinsed them with one quick splash at the trough. She dried them with a cloth that had been too clean to be a forge rag. It must have come from her own pack.

"Lock the front," she said. "I will take the back."

They shut the place like men who liked their house. Bolts slid. Bars dropped. John checked each window latch with a thumb and then a shove. He set a little wire snare inside the sill of the office window and hid it behind a pot of nails. It would not stop a thief. It would tell the truth about one.

Fizz flipped the sign at the door to close with a flourish. "Our fortress."

"It is a forge," John said. "Tomorrow it will be a lab half made and a forge still hungry."

"And a kitchen," Fizz said. "Do not forget the spiritual center of all true work. Food is very important."

Sera tied the cloth back on the cups and slipped them into her bag. She looked at John. "Do you want company for the first watch?"

He almost said no. He almost said he was fine, that he liked quiet, that he liked the sound of the forge and the sight of plans on paper. He looked at her face and did not say that.

"Yes," he said. "Sit. Gael snores when he tries to be silent."

"I do," Gael said cheerfully, already halfway to the pallet in the back room. "It is a gift."