Chapter 6 #2
The more he looked at the maps, the worse they looked.
Regional maps had wildly different scales, but somehow always had Vellhorn, the nearest actual city, about the same distance from Ambervale.
Some maps had forests where others had mountains.
Some had rivers, but they were disconnected without marks for bridges.
The roads didn’t match on almost any map. No map had any cities past Vellhorn.
But they had a whole lot of caves and apparently famous dungeons. The Tomb of the Eternal Queen was apparently a smashing hit, being on every map with a very detailed path of how to get there.
Their turn came. The shopkeeper preemptively glowered at Luna. But he greeted Alsen with a smile, “Greetings, young Sir, how may I be of service?”
Alsen knew that was just sales speak. But it still brought a broad smile to his face.
The young Sir landed exactly where it was meant to.
Alsen knew it. Something deep inside him screamed at him to calm down.
Yet the rest of him happily ignored it. He didn’t care.
“We are planning a trip to Vellhorn, so we need a map for that.”
“The cheapest one,” Luna added.
“The cheapest maps are hardly accurate, and definitely unworthy of the young lord. Here, I have just the map you need.” He reached under the counter, pulling out a very detailed map of the local area, with Ambervale in the middle, and Vellhorn on top.
The hand-drawn map featured detailed drawings of forests, paths, and even the Oak Library.
“For the small price of two hundred gold coins, this will guide your steps with inerrable precision.”
Luna scoffed. “This is a piece of junk that doesn’t match any other maps you’ve got here. It shouldn’t cost a single golden coin. Actually, we should burn this shithole of a shop down for you pulling this pile of shit on us. But I suppose we can refrain from doing that if you hand it over.”
Alsen’s heartbeat shot all the way to his temples. If they angered the cartographer, he was going to give them an inaccurate map on purpose. They didn’t know the area, so they couldn’t check. “How about you go outside to calm down?”
Luna returned his glare. She spun on her heel and walked out of the shop.
“Apologies for my attendant,” Alsen said.
The shopkeeper watched her leave with unconcealed relief, then turned back to find Alsen studying him, and stopped feeling relieved. He reached into the cabinet behind him, pulling out a much more detailed map. “Here is a map worthy of the young master.”
“Now then,” Alsen said. “Who surveyed this map, and when?”
“It was drawn by a master cartographer of—”
“Surveyed. Walked, measured, drawn from the land itself. Because your wall says nobody did.” Alsen pointed.
“That map has the river east of the road. That one has it west. That one traded the river for a mountain range the other two have never heard of. The only thing every map in this shop agrees on is that Vellhorn is exactly as far away as a customer is willing to walk.”
“The realm is dangerous, young Sir. Most of my maps are simplified for low-tier adventurers, omitting places that would be beyond them—”
“Simplification explains missing details. It doesn’t explain contradictory ones.” Alsen tapped the beautiful map. “Which map do the caravan drivers buy?”
A pause, one beat too long. The shopkeeper reached under the counter, with considerably less ceremony this time, and produced a small, creased, ugly thing. “Fifteen gold.”
Alsen unfolded it next to the pretty one. The ugly map had the road to Vellhorn, the lake, and almost nothing else. No Lass. No Oak Library. The pretty map had both, drawn with love, sourced, as far as he could tell, from imagination.
Annoyingly, the only map in the shop with his actual route on it was the two-hundred-gold guess.
“Here’s my problem,” Alsen said. “The honest map doesn’t show where I’m going, and the map that shows where I’m going isn’t honest. So I’ll buy the guess. As a guess. Forty gold, that’s the fifteen it’s worth as a map, and twenty-five for the artwork, which is genuinely lovely.”
“Young Sir, the detail alone—”
“Is unverifiable, which is the polite word for decorative. Forty.”
“One hundred and fifty.”
“The guess doesn’t improve with repetition. Forty-five.”
They ground each other down for a while.
The shopkeeper came down in wounded increments, invoking the master cartographer, the price of good ink, the perilous state of the realm.
Alsen came up in coppers, agreeing warmly with everything and moving on nothing.
Somewhere below half the asking price, the man stopped visibly bleeding, and Alsen quietly adjusted his estimate of what the map had cost to make down to about ten gold.
They shook hands at fifty, the map tube included.
“A pleasure, young Sir,” the shopkeeper said, sounding like a man who had just donated an organ.
“Likewise.” And it truly had been. Alsen walked out with the map and the last of the free flattery.
He waited for her outside the shop, looking at the map. The detail looked great. It even had the Lass drawn on it, roughly in accordance with the directions he received from Corwin’s wife.
Luna showed up a moment later, having a couple of fresh golden chains with gems interwoven into her chestnut hair.
“I see your shopping has been successful,” Alsen said the second she got close.
“Oh, don’t worry, I always get what I want.” She ran her hand through her hair to show the new jewelry. “And I’ve spent all my money. So, we’re good. Let’s go?”
She sure switched from threatening to burn down the store to acting nonchalant quickly. How much of her behavior was genuine, and what was an act?
He couldn’t tell. But he needed to start paying attention to it. Genuineness and honesty weren’t things he could scan for with a spell. “Yes, let’s.”