Alric placed the cask on its side. Carefully, and from behind it, he removed the bung before retreating to a safe distance. Whatever had been in there was fine on day one. On day two it had developed some odd smells. By day four, he knew it had gone very wrong, in the quiet, thoughtful way problems often adopted just before becoming memorable.

  The foamy liquid began to drain into the river. Alric watched it go, quietly grateful to be both upwind and upstream, two facts which, taken together, felt less like luck and more like mercy. In the distance, he heard a dock worker shouting and Alric quickly retreated behind a wall. If there was one thing this world took seriously, it was stink, particularly when it arrived unannounced and carrying enthusiasm.

  He tried to rank the smell. Somewhere between the cooper’s breath and dockyard fish soup, he decided. If this world had stink Olympics, he was not sure it would win a prize, but it would certainly earn an honourable mention after receiving a personal review from a dock worker. He had, after all, contributed to the field, and it seemed only fair to acknowledge that.

  Once it had finished draining, he rinsed the cask as best he could. He glanced at the river. Water was definitely the problem. There was no doubt about it. Whatever caused this to go bad so quickly had to be in the water, because everything else he was doing had at least the decency to fail slowly.

  This world was a long way from glass being cheap enough for fermenters. Plastic was even further away, somewhere beyond optimism and wishful thinking. The only pottery he had seen was with the merchants, and none of it was glazed. Barrels would eventually contaminate his beer, but that would take at least a month by his reckoning and he had been cleaning them constantly with boiled water, which suggested the barrels were innocent for now, if only by comparison.

  He put his hands on his hips and stored the cask in his item box. Distilling equipment could solve the problem, but that would be a massive pain and a serious bottleneck, and he suspected it would introduce several new problems that all believed they were improvements. Evaporation would have the same issue, and it would strip out the minerals as well. That left filtration, which at least sounded honest.

  He glanced around. River sand might work. He began collecting it, storing it in his item box, gathering both coarse gravel and fine sand, because if one thing failed, it was usually polite to have a second thing fail differently.

  Back in the warehouse, he tried to imagine what new problems this would introduce, and failed, which he took as a worrying sign. He still had a small amount of charcoal left from clearing the place out. Maybe that would work, at least for a test. Charcoal, after all, had a long and respectable history of being involved in solutions people did not fully understand.

  He grabbed the funnel he had gotten from Stromni and packed it with layers of charcoal and sand. He would need to boil the sand properly, he knew, and eventually have a specialist tool made. For now, he was only testing, which was how most serious undertakings began, right before becoming permanent.

  He moved over to the well barrel and immediately spotted another problem. The bung sat halfway up the side of the barrel, which was a design choice that suggested the barrel had never expected to be useful in this way. He would need some way of using the bottom instead. Preferably something resealable. For now, he placed a pot on the floor beneath the bung, positioned the funnel, and pulled it free.

  Water flowed through the makeshift filter. He watched closely. A little sand escaped into the pot, which he noted for later concern, but the water itself looked cleaner. He replaced the bung and carried the pot outside for a better look. The cloudiness he had noticed before was gone, or at least had been convinced to leave.

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  To be sure, he poured some unfiltered barrel water into another pot and held both up in the sunlight. The difference was obvious. He still would not drink it without boiling, but it was a marked improvement, and improvements were not to be dismissed simply because they stopped short of perfection.

  He returned inside, placed the cask he’d emptied into the river into a quiet corner, marked it with Xs in charcoal, and left it there where it could reflect on its actions. Then he sat at his desk. He would need a drawing for Stromni, something long and thick, a proper filter that could hold layers of gravel, sand, and charcoal, and preferably did not develop opinions.

  Satisfied, he set off for Stromni’s forge. He only got lost once, which suggested he was finally starting to learn the place, or at least had learned where not to go.

  Walking in, he noted he was not alone. A large man stood on one side of the counter watching Stromni. The man glanced at Alric, appeared to perform a quick threat assessment, and ignored him, having evidently reached a conclusion.

  Alric moved closer, observing the man out of the corner of his eye. He wore thick leather armour, with a large metal pauldron on one shoulder. The rest of him was mostly leather, reinforced with metal plates at his thighs, forearms, and shins, arranged in a way that suggested he expected trouble and had met it before. He turned his attention back to Stromni, who was sharpening a large axe with the relaxed focus of someone who trusted sharp things.

  After some time, Stromni lifted the axe, tested its edge, and approached the counter. He handed it over.

  “Here you go, Gron. Sharp as anything,” he said.

  The stranger tested the edge. “Thanks, dwarf. What do I owe you?” he asked, frowning.

  “Sharpening my own work is more of a pleasure. You can buy me a drink next time I’m at the guild.”

  Gron nodded and left, saying only, “Thanks, dwarf,” on his way out, as if punctuation was expensive.

  The exchange bothered Alric a little, but it was not his place to comment. Both he and Stromni watched Gron leave, the forge feeling marginally quieter for it.

  When Alric approached and produced his drawing, he noticed Stromni’s manner change. His interest was immediate, which for a craftsman was roughly equivalent to excitement.

  “So the water’s my problem. It’s really bad. I need to clean it,” Alric said, passing over the drawing.

  Stromni frowned at it. “Alric, you clean with water. How do you clean water?” he asked, with the careful patience of someone who suspected the answer would be inconvenient.

  “With something like this. This needs to be fairly big and fairly wide,” Alric said, gesturing with his hands. “I’ll pack it with different cleaned sands and crushed charcoal so the water flows through and comes out cleaner. And copper, please.”

  Stromni shook his head. “You know, if I wasn’t pressed for work or interested in better beer, I’d turn you away,” he said with a sigh. Then he flipped the page and began redrawing it properly. “Still don’t know how this cleans water. You’ll need to show me later.”

  “I know this isn’t typical work, Stromni, but that’s not really true,” Alric said with a grin. “I saw you light up after that man left.”

  Stromni scowled, but did not deny it, which was as close as he came to confession.

  “I also need something else. Also copper.” Alric drew a long, badly curved tube.

  Stromni finished the first drawing and handed it back. “This is tricky, lad. How do I forge-weld the middle of this?”

  “I think the easiest way is to use a piece of iron bar stock,” Alric said. “It doesn’t need to be perfectly round. If you take a flat piece of copper and wrap it around, it should work. Wrap it twice so it holds.”

  Stromni tilted his head. “How do you know things like this, lad?”

  “It just makes sense to me. You could also use a wooden stave if you don’t make it too hot. When you’re done, burn it out.”

  Stromni sighed. “All right. Now how many of these are you going to want? You always ask for one, then you want ten more. I’m still making those seals.”

  “This,” Alric said, tapping the filter drawing, “either works or it doesn’t. I just need one. These, though, I’ll need several. If they can all be the same length, that would help. For now, six. No, seven. Six long and one very short.”

  The dwarf nodded slowly, as if bracing himself.

  “Lad,” he said, “this is starting to look less like beer and more like alchemy.”

  “Who said beer can’t be alchemy? And I’ll need to borrow a few tools, if you don’t mind.”

  “No issue,” Stromni said without hesitation, gesturing toward the workshop. “Just point to what you need.”