"That's already about one and a half times the stipend the civil service gets. I was an administrator there. But if you continue to be disproportionately useful a raise is not out of the question. It kind of burns that your full price was less than half a year's wage, though."

"I was underpriced. The reseller thought something might be wrong with me because they got me cheap because the fellow who sold me had to do it quick."

"Well. After you wash off the tattoo, I'll give you your first week's pay and your next assignment. It'll be another shopping run. The ingredients I need to make aspirin, I really want some, such a frustrating day gave me a headache. And I want to refine and maybe practice the tattoo-removing process a bit before applying it to anyone else. Invest effort now to save effort later. Do you think you can find anyone who's free but still has their tattoo? And can be trusted to reasonable levels of secrecy?"

"I don't have anyone I know well enough that I can vouch for them personally, but I can certainly find a selection of manumitted slaves and filter them as best I can."

"Impersonal judgment will have to do. Tell whoever you find I'll pay 15 seo for them being a test subject for a few minutes. I'll give you that 15 too, if you like. If you can, find someone who intends to leave town. I don't think vague rumors of two former slaves' tattoos disappearing in two different cities will make much splash. But I want to test the quickened process on a willing target."

It takes some fairly insistent scrubbing, but after a few minutes there is no further trace of the tattoo.

She was kind of surreptitious about the whole thing and confines herself to stifled giggling on her way back to the room. She changes into her new dress and awaits her shopping list.

"Um - I'm not sure. Some of it I might have to find growing if the age is this specific. Probably less than thirty seo though."

"Finding them growing would be good. The problem is the important ingredient in them decays very quickly once they're no longer attached to a live plant. I'll be working on the magical tools I need to process it. If it looks like the plants will take a while, it'd probably be best to bring the other stuff back here first and then keep looking. Please write down how much you spend on what. Here's 30 seo."

Aya takes the pen and goes on her way. She is back with some but not all of the items just past nightfall and goes to bed.

The next morning, Steel tells her, "I've made a miscalculation. I was basing your pay off the schedule of work I'm used to back home, which is six hours a day, four days out of every five. I'm going to want more work from you to get the Aelare's blessing done, and of course more work means more pay. 14 seo a week for eight or more hours of work per day, every day. Is this acceptable?"

"Yes."

"Very well, then. Here's the difference for your first week's pay. Do you know how one would go about selling a new kind of medicine?"

"Buy or rent a storefront and put up a sign. It'd probably be courteous to inform people that it's experimental."

"Aspirin is not experimental. It's been around for more than thirty years. Except I'm embroidered, which means nobody will trust me or anything I produce, doesn't it? That could be a problem long-term."

"People will probably still try it, and then you can build on that. You're obviously functionally embroidered, and it would be - hardly impossible, but a little less likely, for you to come out with both useful magical powers and detailed knowledge of how to manufacture poisons that you're under the impression are useful medicine."

"If I give out the first few doses for free, that would probably help. The chief advantage of aspirin as a painkiller is that it is nowhere near as addictive as opium. It's weaker, but it's also easy to make. And if you keep to reasonable doses the only negative side-effect is stomach pain and a tendency for wounds to take longer to close if you take too much."

"...A painkiller with pain as a side effect?"

"If you take excessive amounts, like eight times as much as you need, it can hurt the stomach. The other painkillers available here are worse, trust me."

"Well, I hope you can make it work, then."

"I hope so too. Oh, I should mention, some people react differently to some drugs. A very few people will have bad side-effects from it, but nothing lethal probably. And once they know that they can't take aspirin without it making them sick, they can just avoid it. At any rate, how goes the shopping?"

"I got a lot of it done last night and should be able to finish today. I can make us breakfast first."

"That would be great, thank you. You're also on the lookout for someone to test a faster version of tattoo-removing on, right? I think I'll have it worked out by the end of today."