Chapter 28: 28 – Trust

About a minute of haggling later, she was dragged into full awareness when they came to an agreement, “A’ight, so that’s one large bottle and two small ones.”

Thinking quickly, she reached for her cleaver’s handle to loosen the holster, the merchant’s apparent alarm at this quickly quelled when she retrieved the Tablet and let go of the weapon. In fact, it turned to intrigue that bordered on wonder, the man’s beady eyes focused on the tablet’s projection as Zelsys quickly reached Fog Storage and activated the Retrieve function. She simply held the Tablet out flat, waiting for it to do its work.

The smaller bottles rose out of the vortex one after another, though it took some time to enlarge itself so the larger one could come through. As they came out, Makhus grabbed them and placed them on the counter, quickly yanking one of the seals off to show that the contents were the expected emerald-green of pure Viriditas.

Back into its holster the Tablet went, while the trader’s impressively hairy hand quickly snatched a bottle and he looked it over. “Mind if I take a whiff?” he turned a questioning eye to the swordsman, which was met with a nod. Out the cork came, and up the trader’s nose a ribbon of Green Fog went before he corked the bottle shut.

“Mmm… Smells like basil…” he uttered. 

Makhus reached out, offering a handshake, “That’s a yes on the agreement, I take it?” 

“So it is. Y’wanna get paid in Marks or Gelt? If it’s Marks y’should go get a wheelbarrow, ‘cause I don’t have any paper bills.”

With a heavy, distasteful sigh Makhus relented, “Just give me the Gelt.”

He spat the name of the foreign currency as if it were a grave insult.

“Ey, can’t blame the Greks for the idiocy of some out of touch banker,” the merchant placated as he briskly tapped away at the keys of an immaculate, brass-plated cash register, pleasing clicks and clacks emanating from its inner workings as he tallied up the transaction with the hand dexterity of a virtuoso. 

The register let out a melodious ding. The merchant bent down, retrieved a large fabric coin pouch, and began filling it from the register silver coin by silver coin, counting out in increments of five at a rapid-fire pace. As the pouch began to visibly stretch, he counted out four smaller, copper coins and pulled its straps shut.

“...And that’s a hundred and fourteen Grekurian Gelt, n’ gods help you if I find out you sold me diluted Viriditas,” the merchant threatened half-jokingly as he slammed the bulging sack of coins onto the counter. “The one gelt is fer the sack, don’t even think of haggling. I don’t break coins.”

Makhus stood stunned, staring at the sack for a moment before he reached for it, weighing it in his hand as if he held an artifact of the gods. The trader’s face beamed with a grin as he let out a belly laugh at the swordsman’s reaction to that much money in one place, and as they left that shop, he yelled after them, “Don’t go drinkin’ it all at once, and come again!”

The swordsman quickly stashed the sack into his backpack before they stepped into the sunlight, quickly scanning the street as if looking for something. In moments, his eyes locked to the door of a building just across the street, a makeshift wooden sign hung above the doorway signaling that it was an inn. The building bore many scars, from bullet holes to gashes in the brickwork, even a boarded-up, presumably broken window.

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As they made their way towards it, they heard a surprising amount of noise from within. Zelsys wondered why this one building was still in use, despite the damage - had this place been at the center of whatever conflict struck Willowdale? 

The answer she sought came quickly and simply when they entered through that door, and the smells of an inn slammed into her nose like a wild bull. Cheap ale, cheap food, and body odor. They remained almost unnoticed, having entered through the side door - whose hinges did not creak, whose mechanism did not make loud clacks, and which Makhus closed shut with nary a noise behind them.

Only two men sitting at the bar took notice, both of them at least in their fifties.Though they each shot Zelsys a lecherous stare they quickly returned to their drinks, and in moments, the group found themselves a vacant table off to the side. Lacquered wood furniture - the next step up just above the bare minimum, still not exactly the height of quality.

When she took a seat, Zelsys’s chair creaked under her apparently disproportionate weight, if the swordsman’s previous remark was anything to go by. He hefted the sack of gelt out of his backpack, alongside a few smaller, empty pouches, looking to each of the three in turn, ending on Zelsys.

“Y’got us ‘cross the border,” he said flatly. “Stake yer claim.”

He trusted her enough to just lay the offer out, no implication of attached strings in his tone. Not just him, but all three of them, they all looked to her with not a shred of distrust or doubt. At that moment, she made a decision. She would return the three Ikesians’ trust.

“Thirty gelt right now and five percent of all your profit from alchemical products going forward,” she said. 

Makhus met her with “That’s ridic-” 

“Under the condition that, between beast-slaying contracts, I not only try to teach you Fog-breathing, but also let you try to figure out how I function, because frankly? I’m not sure myself. Consider the five percent cut hazard pay.”

Befuddlement froze the swordsman’s face, his brow furrowed and he stuttered out just a short-lived “Eh?”

“I am neither a fugitive, nor a treasure hunter, or a scavenger,” she said in as quiet a voice as she could, leaning forward. 

“My earliest memory is waking up in a tank full of Viriditas inside some kind of bunker,” she said, omitting substantial chunks of the truth. “When we first met, the things I had with me were the only things I could find in there.” 

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