You've Got It Wrong
"I dislike it when my meal grows cold."
The man held his tongue a moment, then smiled. He showed no intention of setting down the chair her foot was blocking. One of the companions who had come up behind him laid a hand on the empty chair and answered in his place.
"Then talk while you eat. It's not as if we're asking you to feed us."
He laughed by himself, pleased with his own remark. Vespara regarded his face, then dabbed the corner of her mouth with her napkin. An invitation to join them, and a refusal, had already passed between them once each. She could not see why the same exchange needed to be held again.
"When you sit a lecture, do you select which parts of the answer you will deign to hear?"
"Pardon?"
"I said I would eat here. Did I call you to this table?"
The man looked down at the hand still resting on the chair. Vespara shifted her glass aside from the plate and went on, in a voice not greatly different from the one she used when marking the flawed step in a proof a student had submitted.
"You may address someone first. But once they have declined, what follows is that you withdraw. Putting the same question again until you hear the answer that pleases you is not a conversation."
"We only meant well..."
"Whether I accept that good intention is mine to decide. Do not settle it for me."
The smile of the man who had led them turned awkward. Talk from the other tables thinned a little. The woman taking orders started toward them, then stopped some two paces short.
Only then did Vespara lift her foot from the chair. When the man moved to draw it out again, she gave a slight shake of her head.
"And none of you is my type. So there is no need to wait for some other answer."
A short laugh sounded from behind them. The man shot a glare that way, then pushed the chair back in. One of his companions tapped him on the shoulder and said they ought to go. Vespara did not stay to hear the rest of what they muttered to one another; she took up her fork.
The meat was still warm. She wiped up the last of the sauce with her bread until the plate was clean, finished her drink, and gathered her notebook. The woman who had taken the order came to clear the empty plate.
"I'm sorry about that. I should have said something sooner."
"It is not yours to apologize for. The food was excellent."
The woman's expression eased. Vespara settled the bill and drew on her coat. Only after adding that she would try another dish next time did she turn toward the door. She felt eyes on her back, but she had nothing further to say to them.
The street beyond the door was a good deal louder than it had been before she entered. A cart loaded with goods rolled past, and in front of a shop a merchant was spreading newly arrived cloth for display. Vespara stepped aside to the edge of the road and took out her small notebook. Beneath the heading lunch, the names of the dishes met her eye.
This time she called up a travelogue she had read long ago. There was a place in the Kingdom Central District she had marked as one she wished to see. She had eaten; she might as well go and take tea. That she no longer needed to return by any set hour still sat a little strangely with her.
Where memory led her, a shoe shop stood in the teahouse's place.
Vespara checked from the upper windows of the building to the fountain across the street, one after another. She did not think she had misremembered the address. She read the sign above the door several times, and at last spoke to the clerk arranging the display.
"There was a teahouse here, was there not? A place known for its tea with dried fruit."
"It's been a shoe shop ever since I started working here."
The clerk asked the owner inside. The owner cocked his head, then said he thought an old man from the house across the way had mentioned something of the sort, long ago. Neither of them knew when it had closed.
"I see. Forgive me for the trouble."
She stopped a short distance from the shop and opened the notebook. Vespara wrote the name of the teahouse as she remembered it, and beside it added closed. The travelogue had not been a new book even when she bought it. She had read it and then put the visit off for several more decades; perhaps this outcome was only to be expected.
The next place she sought was gone entirely — the building itself. Where a small hall was said to have offered music in a narrow garden, newly raised shops now stood in a row. Vespara opened the notebook once more before them.
"At this rate I shall have more to correct than to see."
Looking about, she found plenty of signs she had never seen on the opposite side of the street. A board in front of one shop announced baked sweets filled with fruit. Better to step into a place that was open than to go on hunting for those that had closed, was it not? With that thought she pushed the door, and a sweet scent rolled out to meet her.
She bought one small pastry and took it in its paper bag. If she was looking for an old shop nearby, the clerk said, she ought to try the magic tool shop in the next alley. Vespara was listening to the directions when the name made her look up.
"Barret's Workshop, you mean?"
"Yes. I've heard that one's been around quite a while."
She remembered the name. It was a place she had visited several times while she was at the academy, to commission experimental apparatus. A man came back to her who, asked to alter a measurement by only a little, would grumble about why she had not stated it exactly from the start. He grumbled — and he made what she ordered exactly right.
The workshop remained. The weathered sign was close to memory as well. But when she opened the door, the person seated at the workbench was a middle-aged man she had never seen. He set aside his magnifying lens and greeted her.
"What are you looking for?"
"Is Barret within?"
The man studied Vespara's face a moment before he answered.
"If you mean the master, he has passed away. I keep the shop now."
Vespara looked at the portrait hanging on one wall. The beard that had been black in her memory had turned white within the painting. The mouth, pressed firmly shut, was unchanged.
"You were his apprentice."
"That's right. Did an elder of your house do business with the master?"
Vespara took a moment choosing her reply, then nodded. Explaining a transaction from long ago while wearing this face would make for a longer conversation than simply looking over the wares. Following her gaze, the man set out the instruments from the display case.
"These are pieces we've made since the master's time. These days the newer form beside them sells better."
Vespara laid the two pieces side by side and studied them. On the familiar one, the part that held the mana stood proud of the body. The other had drawn that part inward and added a cover. The joints had been simplified as well — the same function, fitted into a smaller body.
"Carried like this, it would not catch on things. Easier to store, as well."
"That's right. You do have to open the cover to service it, though. People who know the structure sometimes still ask for the old ones."
"Barret would have said you made it a nuisance to maintain."
The man laughed.
"Those were his exact words. In the end he revised it with me."
Vespara lifted the new apparatus and looked it over again. While she had gone on mending the same device in her laboratory, someone else had made an entirely different thing. Barret, too, must have argued with his apprentice over this until he grew old and died. She could guess the face he would have worn when he opened the cover.
She listened to the explanation for a while and confirmed how it was used, then set the piece down. It was not something she strictly needed today. When she said she would come again the next time she replaced the instruments in her laboratory, the man inclined his head.
"Come by whenever you like. It's good to meet someone who remembers the master."
Outside, Vespara called the face in the portrait to mind once more. The Barret who had taken her last order still had black hair. She could not remember what farewell she had given him when she left. Most likely she had said she would return when she needed something.
Had she ever once considered that, by the time she came again, he might no longer be there?
She stood a moment, then opened the paper bag. The pastry she had bought had gone cold, but when she bit into it a fragrance of fruit rose from within. Vespara looked at the remaining half and took out her notebook. Beside the name of Barret's Workshop she noted that his apprentice was keeping it.
There was no need to record only what had vanished. She wrote down the pastry shop she had learned of today as well.
The sun declined as she walked the streets further. She stopped in at a clothing shop, looked over garments comfortable for travel, and asked how long the alterations would take. The merchant told her to come again tomorrow, and she agreed as a matter of course — only afterward realizing she had not decided where she would sleep tonight.
She could return to the laboratory. A familiar bed waited there, and clothes to change into. Yet there was no particular reason to go back now. If she meant to return here tomorrow, it was better to spend the night nearby.
"Is there an inn nearby fit to stay in?"
The owner of the clothing shop named several. Vespara chose the one that also served breakfast. It amused her that she confirmed that before the bed. Recalling the lunch she had eaten, she found herself curious what tomorrow morning might bring.
When she stepped out of the shop, the stalls that had stood open through the day were folding up one by one. Lamps came on in the windows, and from the main road came voices calling in the evening custom. Vespara walked the way she had been told. By the time she found the inn's sign, most of the shops around her had already closed.
Hurried footsteps sounded at her back.
She turned to let someone pass. Recognizing a familiar face in the dark, and taking the blow, happened almost in the same instant. The ground tilted beneath her feet, and the paper bag in her hand fell.
Before she could grasp what was happening, someone seized her arm. She opened her mouth, but the words she had formed did not come out as they should. The tail of the formula she had called up in her mind unraveled. Her last memory was of trying to turn — and then consciousness broke off.
What reached her again was the voices of men.
"So where are you going to send word?"
Vespara heard it without opening her eyes. At first she thought someone was carrying on in the restaurant. But in place of the smell of food there was dust, and old wood. What met her back was not the back of a chair, but a wall.
"We just have to find that out. When she wakes, we ask."
"You didn't even get her name? You talked to her forever earlier."
"I told you. Did that woman introduce herself?"
Vespara started to move her hands, then stopped. Her wrists were bound. She lifted her eyelids a little and took in the room: a few crates, a worn table, a lamp upon it. The three men from the restaurant were gathered in front of it.
The man who had spoken to her first rubbed his face. The smile from the afternoon was gone. The one beside him kept glancing toward the door, and only the remaining man went on talking.
"Once we get the money, it's over. You think a house like that pinches coins looking for one daughter?"
"Which is why I'm asking which house."
"She didn't so much as blink when she heard your family name. Wouldn't even say where she was from. Must be because she's far above us."
At those words Vespara looked at the man's face again. He was the one who had laid a hand on the empty chair and smiled that afternoon. He was not smiling now. His lips seemed dry; he kept wetting them with his tongue, looking from one companion to the other.
"Did we have to go this far just for money to pay your debts?"
"Did I say I'd keep it all? We agreed to split it."
"That was drunk talk! I never thought you'd actually drag someone off..."
"You were right there with me! Don't think you can drop out now."
The talk broke off. In that silence Vespara recalled the conversation from the afternoon. The reason they had approached her and the reason they had brought her to this room did not seem to be the same. What they had kept watching, even after the courtship failed, had not been her looks alone.
They had thought there would be a house willing to pay.
She shifted her head a little and checked her coat. It was a garment she had worn a long time, but she had kept it well, and mended the loosened buttons and the frayed places. That, it seemed, had been added to the fact that she had shown no particular reaction to a family name she was hearing for the first time.
She had simply not known whether the house was a great one or not.
Vespara drew a slow breath and steadied it. The memory she had lost ended in front of the inn. She checked, in turn, whether she could move her hands and feet, and her mana. That the body would undergo Restoration, and that one would not be seized by others, were entirely different matters. Today she had learned that fact in an unpleasant way.
One of them spoke in a low voice.
"Can't we just let her go? We haven't even gotten any money yet."
"She's seen all our faces. I told you, she's a noble. If we just send her off, what are you going to tell your father?"
"And once we take the money, she's going to forget our faces?"
Silence fell again. Vespara opened her eyes fully. On the table lay her purse and her notebook. She could not tell whether the men had gone so far as to check the money inside the purse.
She straightened a little from where she leaned against the wall. At the sound of movement all three men turned at once. The one who had approached her first opened his mouth and closed it again, and the man who had kept talking about the money took a step forward.
"You're awake. Don't scream — hear us out first..."
"...If this is about a ransom, I have heard it."
Vespara cut him off. Looking from one face to the next, she recalled the counsel she had given that afternoon. The habit of reaching a conclusion among themselves, before they had heard the other party's answer, had not changed.
"But you have got one thing wrong."
"What?"