“Fascinating,” said Jynn firmly. “And it may have many practical applications, such as… well…”

“Raising an army of hellish, demonic creatures using the souls of the dead?” asked Gorm.

“World domination?” said Heraldin.

“What exactly are you implying?” demanded Jynn.

“It’s just that… it all seems a bit… ah…” Heraldin pursed his lips as he searched for the right word. Failing to find it, he went with the obvious one. “A bit evil.”

“A bit?” Gorm prodded the dead imp with a gloved finger.

“Bah.” Jynn waved the argument away with his gloved hand. “I’ll not be governed by the whims of the public and their outmoded labels.”

“And who does that sound like to ye?” asked Gorm.

“Well, I… I… Oh.” Jynn’s eyes glanced to an ornate case set on a cabinet across the room, where a long, purple crystal sat on a rune-encrusted stand under a glass cover. “Yes, I suppose it does sound a bit like my father.”

“It’d be a perfect impression without all that hair and flesh on your face,” said Gorm.

“Aha. Well, an unfortunate turn of phrase on my part.” The wizard’s grimace was fleeting and rueful. “I suppose we all take after our parents in some ways.”

“It is vitally important that you, in particular, do not,” said Heraldin.

Gaist nodded.

“Fair enough, but to study is not to follow, is it?” Jynn set the runestone on the table, placed a wire tripod with a porcelain dish above it, and reached for a spiraling glass tube. “I’m no more a liche than a botanist is a tulip, or a herpetologist is a toad.”

Gorm snorted. “Every liche used to be a mage. Ain’t never met a toad who used to be a wizard.”

Somewhere above them an explosion thundered. Panicked shouts and arcane chants rang out from the classrooms above.

“Then you haven’t spent enough time with amateur omnimancers,” Jynn hissed through his teeth. He pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes shut and brows furrowed, and began to count down from ten. An omnimancer somewhere upstairs rang the all-clear before the archmage got to six.

“Still, if ye ain’t trying to dominate the world or be immortal, why look into your father’s work at all?” Gorm pressed. “What would people say if they knew what ye were doin’?”

“What would the guild or the bannermen say about this experiment you requested?” The archmage nodded to the hunk of blackened wood. “Do you have the proper manifests and contracts to show that you’ve rightfully looted construction debris on your adventure?”

“Uh—”

“Yes, unsanctioned and illicit, just as I suspected,” said Jynn, twisting the last pipe into place. “And yet I trust your judgment, to the extent that I will do you this favor, and you trust my discretion. As former colleagues and old friends, I hope I can expect the same from you.”

“What would Laruna say?” asked Heraldin.

The faintest flicker of concern crossed the wizard’s features, a hint of remorse that barely registered before he steeled his expression. “I trust your discretion as well.”

“Aye,” said Gorm, shooting a warning glare at the bard. “Aye, you can.”

“Good.” Jynn broke off a piece of the charcoal, dropped it into a bottle, and poured a vial of blue liquid on top of it. Then he inserted a glass pipette into the container, set the whole ensemble on the table, and wove threads of fire and water over the complex apparatus. Fluids bubbled through twisting tubes. Steam whistled from a copper device. Pipes and vials trembled as a thick, purple goo formed a viscous droplet on the end of a delicate spigot, and the whole table shuddered when the oily substance finally dropped onto the porcelain plate above the stone rune. It bubbled and writhed on the white enamel, like a shapeless leech in its death throes, until it suddenly went rigid and deflated with a sad little pfert.

“Hmm,” said Jynn.

“Is it supposed to do that?” asked Gorm.

The wizard didn’t answer. Instead, he added another lump of charcoal to the bottle, poured in another vial, wove the same spell. The alchemical show began an encore; bubbling, whistling, trembling, shuddering, writhing, pfert.

“What does that mean?” Gorm was growing impatient for some hint of interpretation.

“We can rule out sorcery with a high degree of certainty, but also mundane combustion,” said Jynn, his brow furrowed. “Even a campfire has enough arcane structure bound to the weave to indicate a topological pattern in a manifested thaumatic gel. There are very few ways to leave no signature.”

“Speak plainly,” said Gorm.

“This wasn’t burned by natural or magical fire.” Jynn looked up. “But more, it was burned by something so destructive that it… uh…” The wizard worked his fingers as he grasped for an apt metaphor. “It cauterizes the weave, so there’s no way to tell for sure what caused the fire. It’s almost like it was made for secrecy.”

“Aye, see, that sounds like Arson’s Friend,” said Gorm.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Arson’s Friend,” the Dwarf reiterated. “Potion that was popular with the rogues back in the day. Comes in little, bright red vials, if I remember correctly. Doesn’t burn especially big or hot, but what it did burn couldn’t be traced back to any source. The chemical seared out all the traces.”

“It could be that,” said Jynn slowly. “But it could technically also be disruptions in the weave, or sorcerous interference within my laboratory, or just a fluke of the test.”

“Aye, that’s why people use Arson’s Friend,” Gorm affirmed. “Ye knew what it probably was, but ye couldn’t be sure. Hard to track. Hard to make stick at court or a guild tribunal.”

“It sounds like a definite possibility,” said Jynn.

Gaist nodded thoughtfully.

Gorm’s brow knit. “But… if I remember, Arson’s Friend burns itself out quick—too fast to spread unless ye throw more than a few vials around. And the rogues and thieves I worked with said it was more pricey than gemstones. They didn’t use it for startin’ big fires as much as destroyin’ evidence and such. It’d take a barrel of the stuff to burn down a whole village, but I’ve no idea where someone would get even a vial of it.” Gorm grimaced. “Ain’t like the General Store is going to advertise a potion used to dodge the law.”

“Well, not advertise, no.” Heraldin rolled a pair of green glass globes in one palm, grinning as he watched the chemicals within them swirl. “If you call it ‘Arson’s Friend’ they’ll throw you out and call the bannermen on you. That’s its street name. But any reputable alchemist would sell it as Imperial flame olive oil.”

Jynn’s eye locked on the bard. “Imperial flame olives?”

“Yes. Small red olives imbued with fire.” Heraldin pinched his fingertips together as if holding up one of the fruits. “People use them in drinks, funnily enough, but they’re in high demand because⁠—”

“Come with me!” The archmage started for the door. Patches leapt from his bed and trotted after his master in case the sudden activity meant that there was about to be a treat, a walk, or in the very best of cases, both.

“What?” said Heraldin, his fingers still holding the imaginary olive.

“Where are we going?” asked Gorm, hurrying after the mage.

“To my office!” said Jynn, already pushing out the door and into the dim hallway beyond. “Come on! Hurry!”

“Not sure what the rush is. Always a rush for me, always somethin’ terrible if I don’t hurry,” grumbled Friar Brouse. He scratched his thin beard. It was the only part of Brouse that could be referred to as thin, and one of the few bits that wasn’t covered in the heavy yellow robes of a theological support friar. “Everyone always comes callin’ with a so-called emergency, and I says ‘is it really an emergency,’ and then they says ‘of course it is,’ but then it’s spilled jam on the altar or sommat like that. Sommat like this,” he added accusingly.

“It’s an emergency,” said Sister Varia. The priestess of Al’Matra was wearing a long green and white robe, accented with simple silver jewelry. “It’s very concerning.”