RATCHETMARE: Chapter 6: House Tour (Patreon)

Author’s note: Hi guys.

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I took some sweet time to do some last minute edits - hence the delay. :D

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Enjoy the chapter!

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Chapter 6: House Tour - Link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/98219207

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Chapter 6: House Tour

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“As I’m sure you’ve noticed, this is the store. This is where you will spend most of your time. Now - I’ll show you the rest of the house. Follow me, Miss Ratchetmare.” Without waiting for my response, he turned on his heels and sauntered through the doorway behind the counter into the inner part of the building. Naturally, I trailed behind him, entering a narrow corridor that ended in a door leading to the courtyard. On the right was a staircase that led upstairs and down to the basement. Two doors on the left.

“The staircase is self-explanatory. Over here,” he gestured theatrically to a door near the shop, “is the storage room for items that did not fit on the shelves. The other door is the toilet.”

“Um-hmm,” I nodded in feigned understanding, hiding the curiosity bubbling inside. Was there a latrine, a chamber pot that required routine emptying, or perhaps - a flushing toilet? It was rumored that all the wealthy in the city had this luxury.

“I turned my part of the courtyard into a greenhouse. Lawrence, my former assistant, had an outstanding gardening talent - I can’t say the same for myself. It’s a bit overgrown now. Any flair for gardening, Miss Ratchetmare?”

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

“What a shame. Having a few of those plants on hand was very handy and saved me a lot of talons. But fear not, there’s always room for enlightenment. Don’t you think so, Miss Ratchetmare?”

What? He wanted me to learn gardening? Did he forget what I did for a living? In fact, I had never watered a plant in my life. “Yeas, there always is - a room to learn something new.”

“Marvelous! Let’s go downstairs first.”

All my annoyance with the alchemist left me the moment I caught a glimpse of his workshop. The place was amazing, buzzing with a controlled chaos of tools and vials. The shelves, lined with neatly labeled jars, held exotic ingredients - crystallized moonroot, phoenix feathers, I read from the one closest to me - and various instruments of varying sizes. The air carried the scent of rare herbs and bubbling concoctions. An ornate brass distiller hissed softly as an elaborate contraption analyzed some of the ingredients. Brass and copper instruments gleamed on a cluttered workbench, yet each had its place in this organized chaos. Despite the apparent disorder, every vial, every piece of equipment, had a purpose in this alchemist’s sanctum.

“As you might deduce, this is my workshop. This is where I brew potions, mix powders, and make salves. This place, like the rest of the house, needs cleaning. That will be your job, Miss Ratchetmare.”

“Even here?” I asked, to be sure. This place was a treasure trove. Just the crystallized something in the jar would surely fetch me more talons than a month’s work in the coal mine.

“I know what you’re thinking, and I appreciate your candor. Nevertheless, I will take the liberty of warning you. Should anything go missing from here, and should you be behind it, I’ll make sure you regret it greatly.”

“I’m not a thief, I assure you, sir.” I never was. Even in the grip of hunger, I never stooped to stealing a loaf of bread or any such nonsense. I worked for it.

To my surprise, Faulkner cracked a smile. “I’m aware of that fact. I checked with the authorities, you see.”

Well, well. Turns out he didn’t pick me for my injuries or my looks. Nurse Hargrave wasn’t the only one he questioned. Fuck! It wouldn’t be surprising if he even took a stroll down to the Greymare Coal Company to dig into my past. Did it piss me off? A tad. Odd that a guy knew as much about me as I did. On the flip side, it meant I wasn’t some random gal. He wanted to make sure I was right for the job.

Or perhaps he aimed to ensure no one would be looking for me, in case... well, better not to dwell on that.

“That said. When you clean this place, always put the items back where they were, no matter how impractical their placement may seem to you. I’d rather not accuse you of stealing just because I couldn’t find something.”

“I’ll do my best not to make that mistake.” Been there, done that. Nearly gave myself a heart attack once when my pickaxe wasn’t where it was supposed to be - by the door. For whatever reason, I had dragged it all the way to the bed the night before and shoved it underneath.

“I hope so. Now, as you can observe, this is not where I conduct my research. My notes could easily be damaged here, and this place is far too dark for proper thinking. Believe it or not, Miss Ratchetmare, I find daylight quite stimulating for my brain. If I could, I would set up a study in the attic where the shadow of the city cannot reach. But my feet would hate me.”

Huh? “Your feet? I don’t follow?”

“I make far too many trips between my study and my workshop to climb four flights of stairs.”

“Ah,” I said, not quite sure how to respond. Instead, I scanned the room once more, my gaze falling on the large metal box. “What’s that over there, sir?”

“The vault, obviously. It houses some of my most prized ingredients and elixirs. Elixirs, the list of which you will receive and share with fitting patrons, but their sale will warrant my scrutiny. Is that clear?”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“Before we proceed to the first floor, down here, under the stairs,” he gestured to the door there. “...is a coal and wood storage.”

“Wood, sir?” If he had coal, why did he need wood?

“There’s a variance in the way it burns,” he explained, swinging the door open for me to peer inside. There lay piles of coal and various types of wood, each meticulously labeled. “And that can have a significant impact on product processing. Most of it is for my own use, as you might have guessed. For use in the house is the largest pile of 5 grade coal.”

“So, there are some stoves in the rooms upstairs?”

“Unfortunately. The house is not equipped with central heating. A thing Lawrence complained about, especially in the winter months. I hope that won’t be too much of a problem, given your previous employment?”

The irony of fate almost choked a chuckle out of me. Silly me, thinking I’d bid farewell to the grind of the coal mines, only to find myself back here carrying baskets of coal. Except, instead of trekking through Gears knows what weather to the Collector, here I had to climb several floors in a heated house. Honestly, not too bad. “Not at all, sir.”

“Then let me show you the first floor,” Faulkner said, and walked up the stairs.

The first floor mirrored basically the ground floor. Instead of a door to the inner yard, a window overlooked the greenhouse, and the entire floor was occupied by the alchemist’s study instead of a shop. It felt akin to a miniature library. Almost every inch of wall space was lined with bookshelves, and where there weren’t books, maps decorated the walls. In the center of the room, a large globe depicted the entire planet, showing Terreth in all its faded, lost glory. Contrary to my expectations, no piles of books littered the place, only clusters of dust and grime. The only mess lay on the huge desk under the two front windows overlooking the street and was scribbled on the three chalkboards in the study.

“The same rules as down in the workshop apply here. You are not forbidden to come in here, on the contrary, this place is in need of cleaning like others in the house, but what you pick up, you put back where you found it. Also, let me remind you, no looking at my notes.”

If his notes were anything like the cryptic scrawls on the boards, I’d be at a loss even after staring at the pages for hours.

“Any questions?”

“What’s in the room in the hallway next to the toilet?”

Faulkner smiled, obviously glad he didn’t have to explain. “Merely storage for my study. Clean papers, ink, and sundries. On occasion, I may send you out for supplies, and this is where you’d store them. Now, to the second floor.”

This one differed a bit. Firstly, the window in the hallway now gave an overhead view of the greenhouse and the rest of the courtyards of the surrounding buildings. Secondly, in addition to another toilet and storeroom, there were two other doors instead of one.

“On the right is the kitchen, on the left is the reception room”.

Cogs and Gears! “Reception room, sir?” A useless room in my eyes. Only aristocrats used to have such things. Or was it something common in the houses of the rich?

“Not a frequent occurrence, but on occasion, I do entertain visitors. You see, Miss Ratchetmare, not everything can be resolved in the shop, and I can hardly let an outsider into my workshop or study. However, I don’t mind if you use the room, as long as you keep it clean. Lawrence used to take his lunch there, for instance.”

“Ah, all right...you don’t eat there?”

“I usually eat in my study. Speaking of food. The stock in the pantry is pitifully scarce. Given the hour, I’d wait to go shopping. They usually have the freshest food in the morning. Do you cook, Miss Ratchetmare?”

Well, I knew how to boil potatoes. “I can’t say that I do, sir.”

“No matter, I have a collection of excellent cookbooks in my study.”

“If I may be so bold - you cook, sir?” I mean, why else would he have those cookbooks, right? Not that I’d ever ask him to cook for me. Although the thought of a good cooked meal did make my mouth water.

“In theory,” Faulkner cleared his throat. “Cooking recipes aren’t vastly different from alchemical ones.”

“So... you don’t actually cook.”

“Correct deduction, Miss Ratchetmare. I find it a waste of my precious time.”

Yeah, right, his precious time. Frustratingly, not as arrogant bullshit as it sounded. With his knowledge, talent, and skill, his time was indeed more precious than mine, and better spent making potions than cooking food. Still, even alchemists needed food.

Hold on! No way!

As an alchemist, he couldn’t eat pretty much what I eat, could he?

“So, there’s a restaurant nearby?” Honestly, it might be staring me in the face right across the street, and I missed it in my mad dash to get here.

“Same issue, perchance worse. You have to venture there, pay to wait for your meals to be prepared and carried to you. By preparing it yourself, you’re at least sharpening your skills. Don’t you agree, Miss Ratchetmare?”

I bit my lip and balled my hands into fists to refrain from uttering something regrettable. The bastard wanted me to play chef for him, and he worded it in a way that made it practically impossible to wiggle out of it, even though there was no mention of me cooking in the contract.

Or…maybe there was a way to...

“Yeah, I agree - perhaps you could find inspiration for potion recipes while cooking.”

“Interesting idea, but I highly doubt that. Nonetheless, if you’re inclined to broaden your - knowledge, I won’t hold you back from consulting those cookbooks.”

“Now, since time flies,” he said, pausing with a glance at his pocket watch as realization flickered across his gaze. “You’ll need one of your own. Keeping track of time is of the utmost necessity. I believe I have one or two older ones lying around somewhere that still work. Later, though. We should head up to the next floor now.”

Me - having my own pocket watch? Well, that hadn’t happened even in my wildest fantasies, and I dreamed of living in a house like this one day.

“Miss Ratchetmare?”

“Oh, pardon me, I’m coming,” I said, realizing too late that I hadn’t even gotten a glimpse of what the kitchen and reception room looked like.

The third floor was different. Sure, there was a toilet tucked away in a corner, but no door to the storage room. The corridor was longer and led to the heart of this floor. Two doors.

“At the end is my bedroom with a private bathroom. This,” Faulkner jabbed a finger at the door to his left, “is the guest room with a guest bathroom across the hallway. Rare as it is to have someone spend the night here, I’ll expect the same care for this room and bathroom as you’ll give my quarters.”

Nodding back, I couldn’t help but wonder. If this floor was just his bedroom and the guest room, clearly no place for me, where the fuck was I supposed to lay my head? On the cold, hard floor? Sure, I’d done it plenty of times, but with the whole house at a fancy address and nice clothes, I expected at least a simple straw bed.

Hold on! He didn’t expect me to share a bed with him, did he?

“Marvelous. Now, the attic - that’s where most of the stuff needed to maintain the house is stored. I’m aware that it’s rather impractical; Lawrence has been kind enough to remind me of that many times. You will find there, among other things, buckets, rags, and cleaning products of my own making, all properly labeled.”

“You make detergents too?”

“Not for sale. It’s a nice exercise for my mind. For example, a floor cleaner will give the hardwood floors more shine, and you won’t get your hands soaked so quickly.”

“Ah, isn’t that something that would sell?”

Faulkner’s expression hardened. “All my products sell. However, cleaning products are not something I want to sell in my atelier. Do you understand?”

Did I just step on his toes? Was selling cleaning supplies beneath the dignity of an alchemist? Rather than piss him off further by asking, I lowered my head. “I apologize; I meant no disrespect.”

“I’m aware you didn’t. But you see, I have a certain reputation to uphold. Hence my need for an assistant, Miss Ratchetmare.”

“I-I see.”

“Very well. You will find your quarters upstairs as well. As it says in the schedule I gave you, I would advise you to withdraw to them and collect your thoughts. I can see how overwhelming all of this is for you.”

He wasn’t wrong. The fact that I had my own room brought such a relief that even my eyes got wet. I didn’t cry, of course. That would be embarrassing, a sign of weakness I didn’t want to show. Yet I did, in a way, anyway. As I took the first step up the stairs, my legs almost buckled. I didn’t fall, nor was there any need for Faulkner to catch me. But I cursed myself for being so happy to be here.

“When you feel up to it, I’d appreciate it if you’d make cleaning up the shop downstairs your priority, Miss Ratchetmare. If you have any questions, I’ll be in my workshop for the rest of the day.” Without another word, he executed a bow, turned and vanished down the stairs.

As for me, I took my time before heading upstairs. The attic, as Faulkner so eloquently put it, was essentially a glorified storeroom, stuffed to the rafters with shelves and closets under a sloping roof. Yet, even up here, there was a door right across from the stairs, next to the tiny courtyard window - shedding light on the entire space.

“Cogs and Gears!” I let out a breathy gasp as I found a cast-iron bathtub and a stove for heating the water alongside the bronze toilet bowl behind the door.

Another shock awaited me as I strolled across the attic to the front of the house and laid eyes on my room, mercifully separated from the storeroom by a wall. A cozy looking bed beckoned on one side, under a ceiling that threatened to knock the sense out of you every morning, while a hefty wardrobe stood guard on the other. In between, beneath two modest windows - smaller than those on the lower floors - that offered a breathtaking view of the city’s rooftops and the distant countryside, sat a table and chair.

Sure, everything was covered in a layer of dust, but who gave a damn? My folks always came back from the mines covered in that black shit, and I had been dealing with the deadly stuff myself for a few years. No, the dust was the least of my concerns. What mattered was that I wasn’t sprawled out in a hospital bed fading away. Instead, I found myself in a room to call my own, with a view that could make even the stone-hearted crack a smile... and hey, was that a tiny stove over there?

This was like one of those fantasies I had. I just hoped that some nightmare wouldn’t creep into this one, as was usual with my dreams.

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Author’s note:

I hope you enjoyed the house tour - not very detailed, but given that the main point was to get a glimpse of what Nika can expect (from the house and Faulkner), I think that was good enough. :)

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