Chương 168: Chapter 163 - Another Headache

Alric read through the final page of his herbal notes again, though there was nothing new to find in them. The wickleaf from Rosa was still drying near the cellar vent. Impatience didn't change that, even if it made waiting increasingly annoying. The delay would have been easier to accept if he had spent the previous afternoon doing something useful. Instead, he had been putting the cellar back together after the king sent a royal brandy thief to inspect it.

Before Calvern arrived, every herb, stained cup, strange residue and piece of equipment that might interest a politician had gone into Alric's item box. The prototype still had disappeared from the worktable along with the casks beside it. Once Calvern had finished counting the brandy and taking four casks, everything needed to come out again. It had been tax, legally speaking, but four casks still felt close enough to theft that Alric saw no reason to improve the description.

He looked down at the last useful note. Acid destroys the mana-holding effect. Try the opposite. The opposite meant something alkaline, but it also needed to be safe enough to drink. Alric had asked the kitchen to collect eggshells and wood ash because those were the only possibilities that came to mind. Eggshells contained calcium and carbon. They were safe enough, but putting crushed shell into water was unlikely to achieve much. Stromni wants me to look into this, I just don't know.

Wood ash was more promising and much less safe. Ash water could become lye, depending on how it was prepared, and Alric did not want to discover the correct strength by having someone swallow it. He needed something alkaline, not a useful beginning for soap. But how alkaline? Alric rubbed at his jaw and added a small question mark beside the word eggshell, which he had recorded earlier.

He could test both once the kitchen finished collecting them, though he suspected one would do nothing and the other might do far too much. A knock came from the office door.

"Do you have a moment?" Seren asked, leaning inside while keeping one hand against the edge of the door.

"Hmm, sure," Alric said, pushing the herbal notes aside and gesturing toward the chair opposite him. Seren entered and closed the door. She crossed to the desk and sat, settling her hands together across her lap.

"Margaret was looking for you earlier," Seren said, adjusting her skirt.

"Alright, I'll go find her… wait, I was here all along?" Alric said, giving Seren a perplexed look. Seren shrugged and gave a small shrug and head tilt; she did remain seated, though. Alric put the charcoal down, sat back, and watched. Seren had another reason for coming, and she seemed to be deciding how to begin; otherwise, she would not have sat down at all.

"Do you know any other ways to improve the bread?" Seren asked, resting one palm over the other as she watched him. Alric leaned back further and searched his memory. Better flour helped, as did proper kneading, enough water, and not baking the loaf until it became suitable for defensive work, although with the carters' flour there was no helping that. Seren already knew most of that from the bread they had made together.

There were other ingredients, though, and one of them had been common enough in his old world that no one thought much about it.

"Bicarbonate of soda, or bakin..." Alric said, rubbing two fingers along his jaw before the unfinished word caught his attention. He pulled a clean sheet from beneath the herbal notes and began writing, his eyes wide. bicarbonate of soda! baking soda sodium bicarbonate! Bicarbonate!

"Uhm… Mister Alric?" Seren asked, leaning forward enough to see the unfamiliar writing.

"Just a minut… a moment," Alric said, raising one hand toward her while keeping the charcoal pressed against the paper. He added another line beneath the formula. Bicarbonate. Alkaline. Safe to consume. Alric stared at what he had written. Bicarbonate was not simply another word for alkaline, and the chemistry was more complicated than the note suggested he knew, but none of that mattered yet. Many bicarbonates were safe to consume. Sodium bicarbonate was exactly the sort of thing he wanted.

The problem sat at the beginning of the name. Sodium. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Salt contained sodium, but it also contained chlorine, and Alric had no useful way to separate them. There had been industrial processes for turning salt into other sodium compounds, but what remained in his memory was a collection of pipes, tanks, and chemical names that had not seemed important until recently. Soda ash? The ash of coastal plants? Or was it seaweed?

That might give him what he needed if he could remember the rest of the process, find the correct plants and somehow solve the much simpler problem that they were nowhere near the coast. Metal sodium crossed his mind, and he rejected it immediately. He didn't know how to make it, couldn't make it safely, and had no wish to create a metal that reacted badly with air, water, and the world in general.

Producing sodium metal so he could eventually make baking soda felt like taking apart a burning building to get warm bricks. There must be another route? He made another mark beside sodium, then noticed Seren still sitting opposite him.

"Sorry, I just, I remembered something, might matter," Alric said, lowering the charcoal and rubbing the dark dust from the side of his finger.

"I was asking about the bread," Seren said, tilting her chin toward the sheet while her hands remained folded in her lap.

"Uh… see that's what I was writing down, there is a thing, but I don't know how to make it," Alric said, tapping the end of the charcoal beside the formula.

"I know what we need, but I have no idea how we get it." Seren looked at the page for a moment, though the formula could not mean anything to her. She accepted the answer with a nod.

"How would you feel about opening a bakery?" Seren asked, sitting a little straighter as she studied his reaction.

"A bakery here in the city?" Alric asked, drawing back from the desk and resting both hands against the chair arms. Seren nodded, which left Alric considering the number of ways bread could become a colossal pain in the ass, because he had thought of it before. The bakers had a guild, and unlike taverns and inns, they dealt in something people expected to buy nearly every day. Grain prices were sensitive enough that Calvern had warned him not to let Maggie cause a bread riot.

Using his new authority to ignore the bakers immediately afterward seemed like a good way to have more awkward conversations with the king.

"The bakers have their own guild, don't they?" Alric asked, folding his arms as he looked toward Seren.

"Being a royal factor does not mean... This isn't a fight I think is worth fighting…"

"We could open it through the guild," Seren said, turning one hand upward between them. Alric winced before she finished lowering it.

"That sounds like an even bigger pain, you know I don't like guilds," Alric said, letting out a deep breath and sneering.

"Oh, that we know," Seren said giggling at his expression, bringing both hands together again.

"Vale and I have discussed it. We would find someone in the guild willing to enter a partnership, then arrange the bakery through them." Seren had said Vale's name, which meant the idea had already survived questions about cost and profit. Vale did not object to new businesses, but he preferred knowing about them before Alric filled a cellar with the result, as Alric had recently discovered.

"What would you need from me? Isn't Vale busy getting the distillery books in order?" Alric asked, leaning forward and placing one forearm against the desk.

"The stuff you have been putting into the bread to make it soft," Seren said, touching two fingers to her chest before lowering her hand.

"I think Vale wants a business he's part of from the start, if we run it together though, Vale can arrange the accounts and agreement. I can find staff and manage the work." Alric looked between Seren and the herbal notes. The bread they had made together had been far better than what people in the city ate. They had made the bread a few times now and every time it was eaten quickly. The guards always got excited for it, particularly when butter and cheese got involved.

A bakery using the same yeast would have something worth selling before Vale found other ways to improve the numbers.

"That would occupy two of my most capable staff," Alric said, tapping his finger against the desk.

"Only as winter handiwork," Seren said, giving him a reassuring nod.

"You will be busy with the distillery and well… You keep yourself busy. Vale and I can manage the bakery during the winter, just to see how it goes." Alric studied her for several moments. Seren did not appear to be joking, and nothing in her expression suggested she considered the proposal particularly ambitious.

"You and Vale want to run a bakery because… you worried you'll be bored on winter evenings?" Alric asked, tilting his head and giving her a side eye.

"Yes, so not right now, in a few weeks," Seren said, holding his gaze while giving another small nod. Alric looked at all his herbal notes on the side of the desk, between the distillery and that were his major winter plans. Perhaps his understanding of winter handiwork had been too limited. He had thought of carving, sewing, maybe making reed baskets or something. Still, the arrangement could work.

If it kept Alric away from the Bakers' Guild, gave Seren and Vale something of their own, and required little more from him than yeast he could produce whenever it was needed.

"There is one thing you need to be careful about," Alric said, leaning forward and raising one finger between them.

"You must keep control of the yeast, that's the stuff that makes the bread soft. It can be used for brewing as well as bread."

"We will be careful with it," Seren said, inclining her head while watching his raised finger. Alric considered pressing the point. The bakers would learn yeast made better dough, but that did not mean they understood what it was. They had no reason to know about selected strains or mother cultures, and even the brewers treated good yeast as foam taken from one cask and passed into another.

Someone stealing a little dough would still need to recognise why it mattered, keep the culture alive and understand that it could be used in beer. Seren was careful, and Vale understood the value of anything that could affect the brewery.

"Speak to Vale and find out what kind of terms we are talking here," Alric said, lowering his finger and resting his hand on the desk.

"I do not want any of us joining a guild or such."

"I will," Seren said, pushing herself to her feet and straightening her sleeves.

"The kitchen has the ash you wanted."

"Thanks, I'll get it but it's not urgent," Alric said, nodding as his attention returned to the bicarbonate notes. Seren stepped away from the chair, but Alric was no longer watching her. The word ash had settled beside the first line on the page. Wood ash meant potash, and potash meant potassium. Alric pulled the paper closer and picked up the charcoal again.

"Potassium bicarbonate," Alric said, bending over the page as he wrote that beneath the sodium notes. He did not need sodium if the ash already provided potassium. He spent some time writing everything he could remember about Potassium bicarbonate and potassium in general. When he eventually looked up from the crowded sheet, Seren had already left.