Chapter 5
AMBERVALE turned out to be less of a village and more of a small town. Stone buildings lined the main street, merchants hawked wares from wooden stalls, and the smell of cooking food made Alsen’s stomach cramp with longing.
After a week of burnt meat and raw desperation, civilization felt like a fever dream.
They found an inn near the town center. By the Broken Wheel read the sign, hung above the door, together with a painted broken wheel. Though time and weather had faded it to a blob that would be difficult to identify without the name above it.
They had no idea how much a silver coin could get them, but the easiest way to find out was to go in first. They walked inside.
The common room of the inn was half-full. Workers ate lunch, a few travelers nursed drinks, and an old man slept in the corner. A smile spread over Alsen’s face. How beautifully normal, mundane, and simply wonderful.
They took a table near the wall. A serving girl appeared almost immediately, looking them over with the practiced smile. She must have seen hundreds of adventurers in here. “What’ll it be?”
“We aren’t local,” Alsen said. “So, we need to ask about the prices. Can we get a meal for a silver?”
“Sure.” The waitress flashed a smile. “That’ll get you a stew, bread, and some water. But you know what.” She leaned on the table right next to Luna. “I’ll toss in a couple of extra beers for sweetheart over here.” She withdrew, brushing against Luna’s shoulder as she did.
Luna rubbed her face with her palms. “Not again…”
“She seems to like you,” Alsen remarked.
“This can’t be happening.” Luna sighed. “Don’t wait for me with the meal. I’ve got to handle something.” She vanished from the inn before Alsen decided what he should say.
What was this about?
The waitress was returning already, carrying the beers. “Oh, where has sweetheart run off to?”
Alsen put on his best friendly face. “She’ll be back in a moment.”
“She’d better come soon. The stew is almost ready.” She left the beers and headed back to the bar.
What was Luna doing? Alsen spread out a detection spell. He couldn’t find her. Ah, there. He detected her in a building a few streets away. She sure moved fast. And, to his surprise, another person was showing her something.
Was she… shopping?
No way. He drank some of the beer, keeping tabs on her with the spell. She cleared that shop and then walked to another one. He could tell these were shops by how many people there were and how they moved.
No way.
The food arrived. He ate his portion slowly, savoring actual seasoned food for the first time in days. The stew was simple, mostly root vegetables with a few scraps of meat, but compared to their campfire cooking, it tasted like a feast.
Luna didn’t return, and his detection spell still had her moving through what were obviously shops.
Alsen sighed, put the coin on the table, and headed out mid-meal. If she had money, where did she hide it?
Not a chance she could talk the shopkeepers into giving her stuff for free.
He rushed out of the inn, following where his scan found her. Indeed, he found his way to a jewelry store.
She had to be kidding him.
He waited outside by the wall. It didn’t take long.
Luna emerged from the shop, dressed in new clothes, head to toe, with a large, full backpack on her back, topped with a rolled up sleeping bag lined with soft fur. “Oh, hey,” she said, forming a pleased smile, eyes still beaming. “How was the meal?”
Alsen crossed his arms. “I am not accusing you of stealing loot from the monsters we defeated together.”
“Good,” she snapped. “That’s good. Because it would be completely unfair, unjustified, and almost insulting to accuse me of doing that.”
“Right, but at the same time, we did defeat the monsters together, and I also need to buy gear and a new spellbook.”
They glared at each other for a few seconds. Neither of them budged.
Finally, Luna reached to her side and gripped as if for air. She moved that hand, helped herself with the other one, with which she pretty much opened the air.
An invisible bag, Alsen realized.
Luna reached into the bag, rummaged a bit, and the sound of metal clanking on metal slipped through. In a slow, forced move, she pulled out a single golden coin. She handed it to Alsen. “This should suffice, if you shop well enough.”
“Luna…” he said, glowering at her.
“Yes?”
“Don’t push it.”
She reached back into the invisible bag. She pulled out a steel necklace, which had a single remaining violet gem hanging from it. With an intense glare, she pulled the gem off the necklace and handed it to Alsen. “I’ve spent the rest.”
By the looks of the necklace, it had seven such gems. “Where did you get it?”
“From the void-animated priestess. I nicked it from her neck during the fight.”
His eyes widened. Impressive. “When?”
“When she tried to swat me away. She didn’t actually hit me, and I yoinked it.”
“That’s… impressive, actually,” he admitted.
Her eyes beamed up. “I wondered if you’d ever catch me. I’ll go have a meal, so you can do your shopping.” She slipped away, heading for the inn.
Before entering anywhere, he walked the street once, end to end.
The traveling goods store had a conversion board nailed by its door.
One crystal to a thousand gold, buying and selling, no spread listed, which meant the spread lived in the merchant’s smile.
He ran a quick scan for magic while he walked.
Quite a few pieces shone inside a shop called Merrick’s Oddities, together with the gem in his hand.
The jeweler first, then. Sell stones where they buy stones, buy books where they sell books. Mixing the two only ever benefited the man behind the counter.
The jeweler’s shop was small and painfully clean. A single counter, a scale, and a lamp angled to make everything on the black felt glitter. The jeweler himself was a round man with clever eyes, and on the felt before him, in a neat little row, sat six violet gems.
Alsen knew those gems. He’d spent a week walking behind the necklace they came from.
“Good day,” the jeweler said. “Buying or selling?”
“Selling.” Alsen placed the seventh gem on the felt, at the end of the row, where it very visibly completed the set.
The jeweler’s eyes did a small, involuntary thing. He picked the gem up, screwed a loupe into his eye, and turned it under the lamp for a long moment. “Hm. A decent stone. I can offer a crystal for it, and I’m being generous, considering the state of the market—”
“You paid half a crystal apiece for its six sisters this morning,” Alsen said pleasantly.
“Which was a wonderful deal, and I don’t begrudge you a coin of it.
But six matched stones are jewelry parts.
Seven are a set. Restrung as a necklace, a matched set of seven fetches, at my guess, ten crystals in any city with a noble quarter. ”
The jeweler lowered the loupe. The clever eyes reassessed him, top to bottom.
“So,” Alsen continued, “you can have the seventh for two and a half crystals and go make your ten. Or I carry it to the next city, sell it there for three, and you keep six orphans.”
Silence. Somewhere in the back of the shop, a clock ticked that Alsen hadn’t noticed until now.
“The girl this morning,” the jeweler said at last, opening a lockbox, “asked me whether half a crystal each was a lot. I told her it was plenty. She said, ‘neat.’” He counted out two crystals and five hundred in gold, and slid it across the felt. “You are not going to ask me whether this is a lot.”
“I know exactly what it is.” Alsen swept it into his pouch. “A pleasure doing business.”
“Mhm,” said the jeweler, already rearranging seven gems into a circle.
The general store for adventurer stuff.
The proprietor, a thin man with spectacles and gloved fingers, welcomed him with a broad smile. “What wonderful trinket are you in search of, young master?”
Oh, that stroked Alsen’s ego just the right way.
Yes. Master. He liked that a lot. It was only a trick, he knew, but his ego didn’t care.
Flattery was the one thing in this shop that came free, and he intended to accept the full inventory of it.
It just wasn’t going to cost him a single actual coin.
“An empty spellbook,” he said. “With writing supplies.”
“I have just the thing.” The proprietor skittered off, surprisingly agile on his feet.
He rummaged somewhere in the back before returning with a tome, a leather sack designed to hold it, and an over-the-shoulder strap to carry it all.
“This is rumored to be the spellbook of Alakazair the Magnificent. It is said that he wrote every spell he knew in it until his death, at which point his own bound spell erased all the written knowledge, creating this empty spellbook. The paper is water- and fire-resistant, the cover durable enough to withstand even enhanced arrows. Truly, a spellbook worthy of a young master such as yourself.”
Alsen took it into his hands, and while the proprietor talked, he ran a scan through it.
The faint tingle of magic in the cover resolved into a preservation weave.
Real. Well-made. Workshop standard, a few decades old.
No residue of any grand caster, no ghost of erased knowledge, no trace of Alakazair the Magnificent, assuming the man had ever existed anywhere outside of sales pitches.
He flipped through the pages. All empty. All excellent paper.
“The story is very good,” Alsen said. “How much of the price is the story?”
The proprietor’s smile didn’t waver. “Two crystals, young master, the bag and the strap included.”