Chapter 14: The Bitter Copy

"Someone is selling your name with pepper in it."

Thessia placed the bottle on the bar at an hour when no decent problem should have been awake. The common room was between lunch and supper, mostly empty except for old Pero near the hearth and a pair of farmers arguing quietly over seed prices. The bottle was squat, badly corked, and tied with a strip of red thread. On the side, in uneven ink, someone had drawn a crescent cup with four dots instead of three.

Lina stared at it. "That is not mine."

"I know. Your handwriting is better, your bottle is cleaner, and you are vain enough to center the mark."

Tamsin came from the kitchen with wet hands. "Where did you find it?"

"East market. A man with a blanket stall and the moral posture of damp straw. He called it Lina's Fire."

"Describe him."

Thessia's fingers tightened on the false bottle. "Tall enough to think height was an achievement. Gray coat, green scarf, trimmed beard, not local. He had three bottles displayed and one hidden under the blanket. When I asked why there were four dots on a three-drop cordial, he told me the fourth was for serious customers."

Tamsin's mouth flattened. "Serious customers."

"The crowd liked that. They liked it especially because he said the Chalice version was softened for timid wives, old men, and anyone afraid of a real night. He said stronger as if it were proof instead of bait."

Lina could hear it too easily: men laughing, women deciding not to object because the whole market had turned its face toward them, young fools hearing challenge where they should have heard warning. Counterfeit was not only a stolen mark. It was a stolen story, and this story made care sound weak.

"Did you buy it from him?"

"I confiscated it with market authority."

"That means stole."

"That means I wrote the word evidence in my ledger before taking it. Civilization rests on such refinements."

Lina's stomach turned cold. "Did anyone drink it?"

Thessia's expression sharpened in a way that answered before she spoke. "One confirmed. Adult man, thirty or near enough, named Kell. He thought buying the cheaper version made him clever."

"Where is he?"

"My office. Sweating through my chair."

Tamsin grabbed the cooling cloths. Lina grabbed water, charcoal powder, and the notebook. Old Pero stood halfway.

"Sit down," Tamsin told him.

"I was going to offer help."

"If help becomes necessary, we will need fewer opinions and more clean buckets. Prepare accordingly."

"I have always said you would make a terrifying priestess."

"Buckets, Pero."

At the door, Lina stopped and turned to the few people watching with the wide-eyed hunger that made any trouble into entertainment.

"The common room stays common," she said. "No one follows. No one repeats Kell's name as a joke. If I hear anyone selling the story as spice with supper, I will remember who laughed when the bill comes due."

One farmer looked at his boots. The other suddenly became fascinated by seed prices again.

Tamsin's voice was quieter and sharper. "False heat is not a show."

That sentence did more than Lina's threat. It made the room look ashamed of itself.

Thessia's office sat behind the market stalls, small and brutally organized. Kell was on a bench by the wall, shirt open, face flushed, eyes unfocused. He was broad-faced, sandy-haired, and visibly aroused, but the sight carried none of the chosen heat Lina had seen in Mira, Dain, Marra, or the room-five session. His hands kept rubbing his thighs as if trying to scrape sensation off.

"Itches," he said as Lina entered. "Inside. Gods, it itches hot."

Tamsin knelt in front of him without touching. "Kell, my name is Tamsin. You drank a false cordial. We are going to help you cool down. You are not in trouble unless you start lying."

Kell's eyes struggled to focus. "Wanted... wanted the good one. Cheaper man said same fire."

"How much did you drink?" Lina asked.

"Cup."

Thessia closed her eyes. "Of course."

"Full cup?" Lina asked.

Kell nodded miserably. "Bitter. Burned. Thought that meant strong."

Lina smelled the bottle. Pepper first. Cheap plum wine. Feverleaf under it, sharp and green. Not pearlroot and not hearthwater. Nothing of hers except rumor.

"No more touching yourself," Tamsin said, still calm.

Kell's hand froze near his open trousers. "Need to."

"No. Your skin is lying loudly right now. If you rub more, you will hurt yourself and still feel unfinished."

"Please."

The word was wretched, but it was not consent to pleasure. It was distress.

Lina mixed charcoal into water. "Drink."

"Will it stop?"

"It will help pull the worst of it. Then water, then cloth, and then you tell us who sold it."

Kell drank and gagged. Tamsin pressed a cooling cloth to the back of his neck. He shuddered, hips jerking once with a false wave of arousal that made him groan in shame.

"Do not apologize for symptoms," Tamsin said. "Save apology for decisions."

Thessia made a small sound that might have been admiration.

Lina examined his pulse, his pupils, the sweat on his skin. She was no priestess, but she knew enough from the first days of testing to see what was wrong. The brew did not bring wanting closer to choice. It dragged the body forward and left choice stumbling behind.

"This is not intensified desire," she said.

Tamsin looked up. "What is it?"

"Irritation pretending to be arousal. Feverleaf heats the blood, pepper burns the mouth, cheap wine loosens sense. He is not opened. He is inflamed."

Kell gave a humorless laugh. "Feels poetic."

"It is not," Lina said. "It is lazy."

That made him blink.

Good. Anger could sometimes hold a person steadier than comfort.

"Did the seller name me?" Lina asked.

"Said same as yours. Said inn version watered for women and old men. This was stronger."

Tamsin's face went flat.

Thessia wrote something in her own ledger with the pressure of a knife.

Lina took Kell's hand before he could scratch at his thigh. "Listen to me. Stronger is not better. Stronger without rules is just someone charging you to be harmed in public."

His eyes filled. "I feel stupid."

"You were stupid. You are also alive, adult, and able to learn before your pride kills you. We will take that as a bargain."

Tamsin looked at her. "You are becoming me."

"Only professionally."

It took an hour to bring Kell down. He shook. He sweated. He cursed the blanket seller in increasingly useful detail. He did not come, because no one let the false heat turn treatment into spectacle. When his skin cooled, shame hit harder than the fever.

He told them the seller had promised a cup would make "any woman grateful and any man tireless." He had said it loudly enough for two apprentices to whistle and one older woman to spit near his blanket. He had claimed Lina watered her brew because an innkeeper needed repeat customers more than satisfied ones.

Lina wrote every word with a hand that wanted to tremble and refused the courtesy.

"Did he say where he brewed it?" Thessia asked.

Kell shook his head. "Said he had a friend who knew your kitchen girl."

Tamsin went very still.

"He lied," Lina said before Tamsin could turn that stillness into damage. "No one in my kitchen helped him."

Kell swallowed. "I know that now."

"Know it publicly later."

"I will."

Tamsin replaced the cloth on his neck with a fresh one. "If fever comes back, you go to Isolde at the temple. You tell her everything you drank and you do not dress it up to protect your pride. Priestesses have heard worse and charged less for silence than stupidity deserves."

Kell gave a weak, embarrassed nod.

"What do I owe?" he asked.

Thessia answered before Lina could. "Coin for the chair, testimony for the market, and enough humility not to buy medicine from a blanket because the blanket winks."

Lina held up the false bottle. "I am keeping this."

"Evidence," Thessia said.

"Warning."

Tamsin touched Lina's elbow. "And threat."

Back at the inn, Lina placed the false bottle beside her approved mark. Four dots instead of three. Bad crescent. Bitter copy.

Garron arrived before supper, summoned by market rumor or whatever invisible cord brought practical men to trouble. He looked at the false bottle, then at Lina.

"Need something broken?"

"Not yet."

"Shame."

Tamsin, exhausted and angry, laughed once.

Lina uncorked the bitter copy again and smelled it. Pepper. Feverleaf. Wine. Theft without understanding.

"Someone is going to hurt people with my name," she said.

Thessia, who had followed with her ledger, replied, "No. Someone tried. The distinction matters because now we make the name harder to steal."

"Wax seal changes tonight," Tamsin said. "Three dots stay, but we press them with the crescent cup while the wax is still warm. No loose thread, no bottle leaves without a receipt number, and no cup served outside the inn unless one of us marks the customer's hand first."

Lina met her eyes and felt the room narrow to that choice. "You have been thinking."

"I have been angry. We covered this."

Garron picked up the false bottle and turned it toward the light. "I can make a small stamp. Copper face. Harder to copy than ink."

"How much?" Lina asked.

"Later."

"That means too much."

"It means I am deciding whether to charge the woman being counterfeited before supper."

Thessia closed her ledger. "I will post a market notice. Approved brew bears three dots, crescent stamp, receipt number, and seller witness. Anything called Lina's Fire is counterfeit until Lina decides whether she likes being named like a tavern dare."

"I do not," Lina said.

"Excellent. Anger clarifies branding."

Old Pero arrived with two clean buckets, late but proud. "I heard no one needed me, which is the usual moment people realize they should have."

Tamsin took one bucket. "Put that by the back door, and if anyone asks you about Kell, you say the Chalice treats fools better than counterfeiters do."

Pero straightened. "That line is good enough to be expensive."

"Then spend it carefully."

Outside, the market bells rang. Somewhere beyond them, a seller with a blanket and a bad bottle had already vanished.

The first counterfeit had arrived before the first full bottle.