Mark of the Fool
Chapter 451: The Baker's Tale

“My name’s Troy,” the baker sighed, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. He was bent so low over a table, that he looked about ready to collapse. “Troy of Tauberurg, from the Rhinean Empire originally, and now the very last person employed at the Mermaid’sCakes Bakery.”

“Alex Roth,” the young wizard said, inspecting the man’s welts. “Originally of Alric, in Thameland, and now a student at the university and a Junior Crafter with Shale’s Golemworks.”

“Well ain’t you a fancy one,” Troy snorted. “Don’t know how we’re any ‘brothers’, what with you having a fancy job like that.”

“Oh, trust me, we’re brothers alright,” Alex insisted. “A little over two years ago my arms regularly bore welts just like yours. If you want, I can heal them for you.”

“If you can, have at it.” Troy held his forearms out.

Concentrating through the Mark’s interference, Alex slowly cast Mana to Life, pouring power into Troy’s body. In an instant a change came over him: his skin flushed with vigour, his eyes brightened as the angry welts on his forearms shrank and faded.

“Well I’ll be damned!” The shocked man swore, examining his arms. “As good as new. I think you even took a crick out of my back while you were at it. Thanks. But why?”

“Selfishness, if you can believe it.” Alex patted the man’s arm. “I only did for you what I wished someone could have done for me every night for years. I couldn’t tell my family what was happening because they would have taken McHarris to task and he would have fired me as easy as breathing. Maybe I’m healing my past self, in a way.”

Troy squinted. “Well, all that fancy babble type university talk’s going over my head, but thanks I guess. I’d fix you something to eat in return, but there’s nothing that's even fit for a dog in here.” He looked around the bakery with distaste. “I just feel sorry for the poor wretch the boss sells this place to.”

“The worst, though you sound like you know something about that.”

“Do I ever. So, I used to work for a man named McHarris—” Alex told Troy an abridged version of his time at the bakery in Alric. A very abridged version; if he were to go into the whole story, they’d likely still be sitting at the table three evenings from now. Troy nodded along with the tale, his expression growing darker and darker, though his eyes softened in sympathy as Alex talked.

He eventually burst out laughing when Alex reached the part of the story where he’d sic’d the guards on McHarris. The man was laughing so hard, he went completely red in the face, coughing and gasping for breath as tears streamed down his face. “Ah, that’s great! I’d give an arm to see the boss end up like that. Or at least a finger.”

“Yeah, now and then I dream about it,” Alex chuckled. “Those are some of my best nights. But uh…one thing I have to give McHarris, he knew how to run a bloody business for the most part: his bakery didn’t look like a haunted house. What happened here? And what’s this business about ghost hunters?”

“Ah, well, now it’s time you hear about my woes, my baking brother,” Troy laughed. “Now, I’m going to say something that sounds like I’m some bragger, but let me tell you, it’s fact: ten years ago, the Mermaid’s Cakes was one of the best bakeries in the whole district. Maybe the best.”

“Big claim,” Alex said, “I’ve eaten at quite a few good ones here.”

Troy shook his head. “None of them could hold a candle to us. Was a time when even your big friend there—” He nodded to Claygon “—would have agreed we were the best. And he doesn't even have a mouth to eat with, or a nose to smell!”

‘Father…is this…humour?’ Claygon asked.

“Yeah, you’re getting it, buddy,” Alex said, glancing at Troy’s confused expression. “Yeah, Claygon’s just learning humour. Just gained sapience, like I said.”

“You university people and your big words.” Troy rolled his eyes. “But I get ya, though the point still stands. This was the best bakery, back when old Master Beerensteyn ran the place.”

“Oh…” Alex paused. “New management, then? Someone bought it?”

“Worse, inherited it,” Troy snorted. “His son. So it went like this. A decade back, the Mermaid’s Cakes was the best place you could go for food in this entire district, and one of the best places to work too if you knew your way around a kitchen. Master Beerensteyn insisted on one thing: quality. And that didn’t just mean the food. He took the time to hire good workers, paid them well, kept the place looking great and took his time making the food. The secret was the ingredients and how he prepared them.”

The bakery worker smiled, caught up in nostalgia. “He used to soak his fruit for days—sometimes weeks, depending on the dish—for all sorts of preparations. His favourite was a mixture of rum, golden sugar and certain spices. Oh, that infusion was just perfect. We’d have customers lined up for blocks, and he had applications everyday from folk looking to work here. Blast it, most days we were sold out of everything shortly after lunch: couldn’t even make it to dinner. And the prices! Oh, the prices were about as low as the guild would let him make them. He wasn’t exactly warm and fuzzy, but that doesn’t matter too much when you’re making the best pies for miles around.”

“But then…” Alex tapped the table. “...something happened, I take it? Something with his children?”

“With his son,” Troy spat the word like he was spitting acid on a cockroach. “A brick-headed jackass who’s as useless as teats on a bull. He had some magic in him, or so I heard, and Master Beerensteyn sent him to the university to get all trained up. Ugh, he was back in just under a month. Never confirmed why, rumours say he might’ve cheated and got caught. Or it could’ve been just plain laziness: After that, Master Beerensteyn sent him off to learn half a dozen trades. The boy just waited for his parents to leave for work in the morning and then snuck back into their townhouse to sleep, or chase girls all day.”

Troy threw a venomous look at the baker’s counter. “So, Master Beerensteyn put him to work here, greeting customers and seating them. Bastard just used to read dirty books under the counter. You know the ones? Cheap, short and raunchy. In the end, me and the rest of the staff just took to ignoring him.”

He sighed. “Then one sad day a few years back old Master Beerensteyn keeled over with a heart attack. His wife went a month later. Tragic business, made even worse by the fact that their stupid son inherited everything: including this business, which he suddenly took an interest in. Maybe he thought he had his own coin pressing factory here, I dunno. It doesn’t matter.”

Troy threw a sad look at the baked goods on the counter, wrinkling his nose. “You know, I’m so used to the smell of those things that I don’t even notice it anymore. But anyway, the first thing that he changed was of course: the quality of the ingredients. We went from using fresh sweet apples, to those really sour ones that sell for cheap by the roadside. Not even good enough for Borgia’s Square.”

“Ooooooh,” Alex winced. “That’s uh…ohdear, I see where this is going.”

“Don’t assume, because it gets worse,” Troy gave a dark laugh. “No more soaking ingredients—he thought that was a waste of time—and he started keeping things longer than he should have. Was the milk getting blue and furry? ‘Not a problem!’ He says. “Just scrape the mould off the top and use the rest.”

“No!” Alex cried, more offended than he’d been since…well, since a giant invisible monster had tried to kill him a few days back. “You can’t be serious? That’d kill people!”

“Oh, it quite nearly did.” Troy shook his head. “A few times. But it gets worse. He started asking us to take unsold goods—and there were a lot of those at this point—and just doll them up and resell them for days on end. Stale? Sour? It didn’t matter. Well, it actually did because customers started to go away veeeeery quickly. But the nail in the coffin came from the ghost hunters.”

“...do I even want to know?” Alex asked.

“No, but I’m gonna tell you anyway.” Troy grunted. “Around the second time we poisoned someone with bad food, the staff started leaving faster than rats off a sinking ship. Maintenance wasn’t being done and actual rats…and roaches…and flies…and bats…started moving in. The place began falling apart and it looked so haunted, that these ghost hunter types—folk who find ghosts and just…well I don’t know what they do except stand around claiming they’re sensing spirits—showed up here going on about how the spirits of old Master and Mrs. Beerensteyn were haunting the place. To be honest, I wish they actually were: might’ve taught that boy a lesson. Anyway, customers dried up after that.”

“Yeah, I can see why,” Alex said. “The threat of ghosts is no joke, especially when the food might actually turn you into one. Well, that’s…a depressing story. So, then what makes you stay, Troy?”

The older man grumbled. “I thought if I stayed long enough, I might see this place rise again. Become what it once was. But bah…now he’s going to be selling it. The last straw was the upstairs tenants leaving: which drops the coin coming in from this place down to zero.”

Alex paused. “Tenants…is this a townhouse?”

“Oh yeah.” Troy nodded. “Used to be a nice cosy little home upstairs, but…agh, now that’s all done. The place is unlivable.”

“Right…” Alex’s eyes narrowed. “So now he wants to sell it?”

“Ya, but who’d be stupid enough to buy it?” Troy gestured to the cobwebs. “We’ve got a roach infestation. Flies. Rats. Bat infestation. And the spirits only know what else. Plus, the bakery’s reputation is ruined. This place ain’t even worth the wood and stone it’s built from anymore.”

“Uhuh…” Alex looked around, his mind calculating. “And does anyone know it’s for sale yet?”

“Not unless someone saw me painting the sign,” Troy shrugged. “But it’ll be no use, like I said, no one’s gonna buy it.”

On that point, Troy couldn’t be more wrong, Alex realised.

This place…well, charitably, it could be called a garbage dump. But that’s exactly what would make it so valuable: property in Generasi was at a premium price, but this place—in the state it was in—wouldn’t sell for half of what it was worth. Maybe even less. Now the sheer amount of repairs needed was…intimidating, but to an enterprising business person with a team of competent labourers, or one resourceful wizard, the place could be fixed up in months.

Maybe even weeks.

The key would be examining the soundness of the structure…but even if there were structural issues, having a place to tear down and land to build on in such a valuable location in the city would bring investors running.

They’d buy it for cheap, fix it up and even if they didn’t want to run a bakery, they could use the place as a rental property for graduate students from the university. Or they could even fix it up then resell it at a much higher price.

In either case…this was a rare find.

“Troy…would you mind showing me around a bit?” Alex asked.

“Why? …you’re not thinking of buying this trash heap are you?”

“Let’s just say that you’ve piqued my interest,” the ambitious young wizard said. “Is there a basement?”

“Ya, but it’s useless,” the bakery worker’s voice rose with worry. “Look, the damned thing’s just filled with a lot of stored crap the boss couldn’t be bothered to dispose of, or sort through. And there might actually be a family of dire rats down there, judging by the squeaking sounds.”

“Right…” Alex said.

A cleaned out basement would make a great place for a workshop. The bakery itself could provide an income if it was brought back to life, and the townhouse could be a perfect starter home for his little family.

It was close to the university, right across the street from work and—hells—he now made enough money to also hold onto their apartment in the insula, if he wished. He would certainly need to while he was cleaning the place up…

Wait.

‘I’m really considering buying this, aren’t I?’ He thought. ‘...how much of this is from wanting to ruin another shitty baker, Alex? Oh probably fifty percent, but that doesn’t matter, this still makes a load of sense.’

“You know, I really would like that tour,” Alex said.

Troy shook his head. “Even just looking around would be foolish, you know?”

The Thameish wizard smiled. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time someone’s called me that. And it probably won’t be the last. Show me around, would you? If I get my way, you’ll be very happy with where things could be going next. Your boss, though? I don’t think he’ll be so pleased.”

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