Alric had just finished setting aside one of the last casks for the adventurers’ guild for the coming week. He fitted the liquid seal and set wax over it, sealing it shut. A week from now it would be strong beer. Unable to help himself, he gave the cask a brief pat. It sat in a neat row with four others. Hal carried the last one over and repeated the same process, even giving it a pat as well. The cask did not appear to mind.

  Alric grinned. This was far easier now with staff to assist. Mara turned to him.

  “Don’t know if you heard, but the harvest festival was announced. Thirty days from now,” she said.

  “Hm?” Alric replied. “I don’t know anything about it, other than you won’t be working on a festival day.” He paused, checking if that was the concern.

  Mara shook her head. She explained that the autumn harvest festival was largely about bringing in the bounty. In the city, that meant fruit in large quantities. Hal added that in the countryside it was more about meat and feasting, but here it was fruit. In Avengard, this translated into quantities that suggested optimism, denial, or a firm belief that apples did not bruise.

  “The innkeepers’ guild and the tavern keepers’ guild do host a cider competition, though. Are you going to enter, Mister Alric?” Hal asked with a grin.

  Alric grimaced. “Not for me. Sounds like a pain, and I want nothing to do with guilds. The merchants’ guild is enough trouble already.” This was the tone of a man who had not yet realised he was already involved in several. He hesitated. “So that means summer’s over?”

  “Soon,” they said. “Not quite yet.”

  Alric nodded. His eye caught Mara’s darker apron, what she had “won” from the wheat beer trial. It was darker than Hal’s. Alric claimed that was the prize, though it had been invented on the spot. Hal had taken it well, though Alric had noticed him glancing at it from time to time with the careful resentment of a man trying to be gracious.

  Between the two beers, Mara had followed the process carefully and taken no unnecessary risks. Hal had used too much wheat for his batch, leaving it tasting more like bread than beer, heavy with malt. Mara’s smugness was obvious, and Alric couldn’t blame her.

  A loud banging at the wagon entrance cut through his thoughts. Alric frowned and headed over. When he opened the door, the scent hit him immediately.

  Apples.

  “Ya apples’re here,” the wagon driver said, jerking a thumb toward the back.

  “Bit early, surely? A week early?” Alric asked.

  The driver shrugged. “They only pay me to deliver ’em.”

  Alric sighed. There was little to be done. He opened one of the bags. The apples looked like apples, which was not the reassuring statement it sounded like. It was a quiet moment where Alric accepted a limitation in his understanding of fruit. He could not visually identify a good from bad apple although these looked a little thin. He began moving them into his item box, blinking as the familiar weight sensation settled in. He suspected there was a limit somewhere. The universe usually had one. It just rarely bothered to post a sign.

  The wagon was emptied quickly. When Alric returned, the driver had fallen asleep on a bench, unaware his wagon was bare. Without discussion, the staff agreed this was not a problem requiring their involvement.

  It was too early in the harvest, and too early for Alric as well.

  The screw Stromni had finished sat on a nearby shelf. It now had a long handle. Alric remembered how angry the dwarf had been about that addition. Forge-welding it on could have warped or twisted the screw. Thankfully, it hadn’t. The other parts of the press were ready: the reinforced wooden barrel, the load-distributing top, the layered inserts. Only the base was missing. Stromni should have it finished before next week, when Alric expected the next apples.

  He turned back to his two staff members, who stood watching him expectantly.

  “Ready to start on some apples?” he asked.

  They nodded.

  Alric shifted things around. The new washtub would serve as the apple tub. He placed it in the breeziest part of the warehouse, opened the doors, set out chairs, and brought out the peelers. He emptied several bags of apples into the tub and checked them.

  Each of his staff reached in, took an apple, and began peeling.

  “How many wagon loads are we expecting, Mister Alric?” Mara asked, already on her fourth apple while Alric worked on his second.

  “Eight wagon loads. Seven now,” he said.

  “Eight?” She blinked in the way people did when numbers stopped being information and became weather. “Shouldn’t we get more help? With these knives, it’s easy work.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Alric said, peeling steadily. “With the item box, they won’t spoil. They could keep us going through winter.”

  After finishing his first apple, Alric realised he should have designed something to core and quarter them. Then he looked again at the fruit. Their shapes varied so much it might not have been possible anyway. He sighed, dropped the peeled apple into the water, and reached for another.

  He lifted a particularly lopsided one and paused. If they spent all day peeling apples, they weren’t doing the work that mattered more.

  “I think you might be right,” he said at last.

  It was a week later. Shipments were arriving steadily. After a single day of peeling, Alric’s fingers could take little more, and he gave Mara the go-ahead. He walked over to the five peelers.

  “Everything going well? Anyone need anything?” he asked, smiling.

  They shook their heads quickly. “No thank you, Mister Alric,” said the eldest. The rest, who had been chatting moments earlier, fell quiet. Sensing the awkwardness, Alric gathered the peeled apples into his item box and emptied more bags into the apple water.

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  Mara had quickly involved her family, all eager for the work. Alric suspected that made them nervous around him. Deciding Mara had it in hand, he moved away without comment.

  Regardless, it was time for the press. They finally had everything they needed. He nodded to Mara. She knew. Hal nodded as well and left to fetch Stromni. They had been waiting for the afternoon.

  Alric began assembling the press. He showed Mara how to place the bags into the wooden slats, crush the fruit with the large pestle, add a separator, and repeat the process. At last, he set the cap piece in place and positioned the screw.

  Stromni entered with Hal. They stepped closer to the press, Stromni studying it in silence.

  “All right. Ready?” Alric asked.

  “Aye,” Stromni said, eyes fixed on the mechanism.

  Alric pulled. The screw rotated, driving the plate down. Clear apple juice seeped through the bags, ran along the wooden slats, and poured into the collection tray before spilling into the wash tub. Alric pulled again, increasing the pressure. Stromni’s face stayed blank.

  Then he exploded.

  “A month of work! A month, lad! All my iron! Ta crush fruit? Ya made this bloody thing ta squash apples? Someone fetch me my axe!” he roared in mock outrage.

  Someone did not, in fact, fetch an axe.

  Alric laughed and ran, Stromni on his heels, shouting for it anyway. They circled the warehouse once, drawing laughter from the peelers. When Alric brought him back to the press, Stromni was laughing too.

  Stromni pressed a hand to his head and stared at the press. “Explain this thing ta me before I smash it,” he said, pointing.

  Alric explained how turning the screw left it only one direction to travel, guided downward by a small notch that kept it aligned. The wooden top was reinforced, but built to fail before the metal did.

  “Aye,” Stromni said at last. “I’d never have thought o’ this meself. I’ve seen presses ta crush rock, but not doin’ it like this. An’ ya were right. If you’d laid all this out at the start, it’d have been too much ta take in.”

  He sighed. “Still. This bloody fruit crusher had me turnin’ others away.”

  “Turning others away?” Alric asked, startled.

  Stromni shrugged. “This was more interestin’. An’ it didn’t feel like bein’ blamed for someone else’s problems, lad. Ya know?”

  Alric stood silent. He remembered how common such devices had been in his old world.

  “You know nobles would buy something like this,” Alric said at last.

  Stromni kept examining the screw. “Aye. So?” He turned the handle again, feeling how it settled, like a man acknowledging that something dangerous had teeth.

  “I know a merchant who’s looking for things to sell,” Alric said. “Could I arrange a demonstration, with you here?”

  Stromni shrugged. “Sure. Shouldn’t turn away coin before. Certainly won’t now.”

  “All right. I’ll set it up,” Alric said, hoping he had eased whatever harm he’d caused.

  Hal had said nothing throughout. He watched the clear juice flow and remembered something from his youth: people dancing in great vats of grapes, laughter and clapping echoing over stone. The press had creaked only slightly when turned.

  Alric crouched beside the washtub, nearly full of apple juice.

  “All right, this is the last part of the process before we cask it,” he explained to his staff.

  He wrapped a heating stone in cloth that had been boiled earlier, returned it briefly to the pot, then lowered it carefully with the tongs into the vat of juice.

  “I didn’t charge the stone fully. We want to heat it gently. Hot, but not boiling. If it boils, we’ll get a cooked apple flavour, and we don’t want that,” he said. This would pasteurise the juice. Alric had also prepared a cask of strong apple juice for yeast, marked for testing. With the precautions he’d taken, it should work.

  “After that, we use this jug. Scoop the juice, lay the cloth over, pour it into the cask, add the starter from the one marked with apples once it’s cooled, and seal it. Then we get cider.”

  He had them repeat the process when banging echoed again at the wagon entrance. Alric straightened and headed over. This would be the fourth load.

  “Ya apples?” the wagon driver said, stretching as he climbed down.

  Alric nodded and shuffled over. Opening one of the bags, he noticed the apples were rounder, healthier looking. He’d taste one later, see if they were sweeter.

  He began moving the apples into his item box when the sensation changed. It felt like his soul belched, like it wanted to throw up. This was it. It would take no more. Half a load remained, with four more still to come.

  “Shit,” he muttered, forcing himself to focus. The wagon still needed unloading. “Mara, Hal!” he called.

  They came at once. Alric passed them bags as fast as he could. “Put them near the peelers for now.” The driver helped as well. It was over quickly, and Alric stepped down from the wagon. Hal approached.

  “It’s nothing. My item box is full. I just need a minute,” Alric said, retreating to his office.

  It was absolutely something.

  He opened the inventory screen. Apples and grain filled it, crowding everything else out. Grain would last longer than apples, but even so, the buffer was gone. A cat lay curled on his desk. Bob cracked one eye open, then settled again.

  Alric returned and motioned Mara and Hal closer.

  “My item box is full. We still have more apples coming. We need to move the grain, but not onto the floor. If we hang it from the rafters, it’ll be safer, and the cats can defend it.”

  They agreed at once and went to fetch nets and cloth. Alric went to an unused staff room and began unloading sack after sack of grain. The release was oddly satisfying, like clearing a blockage.

  Staring at the pile, he saw the next problem immediately. Weevils. He couldn’t freeze grain here. That meant another process, another problem. He clicked his tongue.

  Outside, Stromni stood nearby. Alric waved him off. The dwarf nodded, recognising busy work when he saw it.

  With Mara and Hal organising the rafters, Alric returned to the apples he hadn’t been able to store. He tried again to pull them into the item box. The pressure hit at once. Apples took more space. He grimaced and instead carried the remaining bags to the peelers’ tub.

  Hooves sounded outside, sharper than a wagon’s. Alric was halfway back inside when Moreen stepped down from a carriage. The peelers stiffened.

  “Oh my, what a delightful scent you have here, Alric! Your little operation is simply charming,” Moreen said.

  Alric shook his head, amused, and dusted his hands as he approached. “Good to see you, Moreen. And I’m glad you like it. This is what I wanted to show you.”

  He led him to the press. From the corner of his eye, Alric saw Mara and Hal give it a wide berth.

  Moreen bent to study the mechanism. “Hmm. How does it work?”

  “Here,” Alric said. “When I pull this, it turns here and pushes this down. Watch.”

  He took the handle and turned it. Clear juice flowed freely. He noticed Moreen’s people waiting outside.

  Moreen’s curiosity sharpened. “How repeatable is this? Who made it? How difficult?”

  Alric pointed to Stromni. “He made it for me. He can answer that. I just think it’s something nobles would want.”

  Moreen straightened, eyes bright. “I agree.” He turned and listened intently as Stromni explained the making the parts, Moreen nodded along and mentioned “And this central piece, this is the difficult part. Master Stromni, a pleasure. I want one. Immediately. But I’ll need a lot of ornamentation for the first.”

  Stromni shrugged, smiling. “Aye, easy enough.”

  “For my commissions,” Moreen continued, tapping the screw, “I’d ask that you source iron through me. After the first full press, I’ll only need this part from you. No offence, but I don’t need a master smith to make a decorative base. I’d love to lock you into exclusivity but the smiths guild would have my neck.”

  Stromni’s eyebrows rose. “Aye. Suits me down to the ground.”

  Moreen gestured for them to step outside to discuss price. Alric watched them go, satisfied. Then the thought struck him. Had he changed Stromni’s business? He meant to speak to him later, but seeing Mara and Hal wrestling grain into the rafters, he went to help and forgot.

  Some time later, Alric, Mara, and Hal sat against the wall. Nets and cloth hung heavy with grain along the rafters. A long row of casks rested on the shelves, quietly becoming cider.

  It was the good kind of exhaustion.

  “Mister Alric,” Mara said carefully. “You once told us to speak up if you did something strange.”

  He nodded. “I did.”

  “I won’t get in trouble for this?”

  “No.”

  She took a breath. “That merchant today. Mister Stromni is one thing, he’s a craftsman. But that man is the head of a house. You shouldn’t be dusty and covered in apple juice when you speak to someone like that.”

  Alric blinked. To him, Moreen was just Moreen. He looked away.

  “Mister Alric,” Mara said more gently, “you should stop doing labour.”

  Hal nodded.

  Alric swallowed. “I’ll think about it,” he said at last.