Chapter 11: Buying Counterfeit Goods
Common sense told Ambrose that there was no way Alkhemia would sell him genuine living mercury for five hundred gold. But curiosity got the better of him. He just had to see how convincing their fake really was.
The clerk leaned in with a conspiratorial air and handed him a small vial of silver liquid.
It had a nice weight to it and was heavy in the hand.
It was promising enough until Ambrose took one careful glance and sighed in disappointment.
"It's separated into layers already… This isn't living mercury at all. It's just plain mercury."
Ambrose didn't specialize in alchemy, but he was a practitioner, at least. That was more than enough.
A thin fraction of genuine living mercury had been mixed with regular mercury, but they weren't quite miscible. As a result, the living mercury had separated into a thin layer on top with a slightly different hue.
To the untrained eye, it might look fine, but anyone who'd ever handled the real thing could tell at once.
This five-hundred-gold knockoff was simply too shoddy.