Chapter 59: 59 – Spoilt For Choice

Zefaris looked around, squinting her eye as she looked for price tags. They were present on the lower-grade pieces, but not on the uniques. “There are no price tags,” she stated flatly as she looked back to the gunsmith. A sly smile formed on the old woman’s face, and she put the cylinder back in its place before she tapped on the side on her nose.

“Everyone gets a different price, some don’t get a price at all. I won’t sell these masterpieces to just anyone,” she explained. “If you want, I’ll cut you a price. Show me your hands.”

Zefaris did as ordered, and Collier took her hands into her own, turning them palms-up as she gently felt her palms in the exact spots where calluses were known to form from frequent firearm use. This wasn’t about the calluses, however. The old woman took a slow, considered breath, and thin wisps of Fog rose from the corners of her mouth whilst a subtle thrumming spread through Zef’s hands wherever the woman’s wrinkled skin touched.

Her warm, grandmotherly smile only grew wider as she turned her gaze up to meet Zef’s, and for a brief moment, the markswoman felt a gaze more piercing than her own.  

“How fast are you with a ramrod? Five shots a minute with one of them military-issue muzzle loaders? Ten?” Collier asked, clearly making an estimate lower than what she truly expected in an effort to draw out Zef’s own estimate. She in return gave the most honest answer she could.

“Twelve is the fastest I got in training, but I’ve gotten faster since.”

A brief thrum of pins and needles shot through her hands at that, and Collier finally let go with the words, “Honesty is always appreciated, especially from a true gunslinger such as yourself. Three-hundred gelt and you can take your pick of any gun you see here.”

“That’s… More than I can afford,” Zefaris admitted with a heavy sigh, only for the store’s doorbell to ring mid-sentence.

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“...More than I can afford,” Zelsys heard Zef say to an old lady behind the counter the moment she stepped into the store, having paid no mind to its display case. She felt the old woman’s wizened eyes upon her left arm.

“Is that a gaunt-cannon with a kinetic absorption arm harness?” the old woman questioned, an almost childish sense of wonder filling her voice despite having never even met Zel. She appreciated such friendliness, especially when it was from someone who likely knew more about her own weapon more than she did, but there was another matter.

“Sure it is,” she said, raising her arm to show the gun as she approached the counter - or rather, approached Zef, who just so happened to be right in front of the counter. She unceremoniously placed her hand around the markswoman’s shoulders as she held her gun out for Collier to inspect, whilst she herself questioned Zef in regards to what she had just heard her say.

“What’s this about more than you can afford?” Zel asked, only to realize that this store’s displayed stock was half mass-produced sparklocks and half bleeding-edge custom firearms. 

“Oh. Let me guess,” she guessed, turning a slightly wrathful eye to Collier. “Everything other than the mass-produced stuff is overpriced to hell and back.”

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Zelsys was fully aware that anger at a gunsmith for charging high prices for custom work was irrational, but she couldn’t help it. Even still, she waited for Zef’s response before she decided to rein her irrational anger in or let it go. To the relief of one part of her mind and to the frustration of another, Zefaris cleared the impending misunderstanding with a simple, “It’s the opposite! Collier here offered to let me pick any gun she has on display for three-hundred gelt, but… I don’t have that much. I hate to do this, but could I borrow some money from you to cover the cost?”

She could almost see the inner conflict behind Zef’s eye - half of her was angry that she had stooped to asking to borrow money, from Zelsys no less, and the other half was consumed by fascination with these wonders of technology to such a degree that it overwhelmed the first half. 

A shake of her head and a look into the blonde’s eye. “No borrowing,” she smiled. “I’ll pay for it, you can make it up to me by making sure I don’t do anything stupid during our next contract. Maybe use your nice new gun to dome a beast that tries to sneak up on me. Deal?”

“Deal,” Zefaris smiled back.

“Oh, now ain’t that just precious,” Collier’s voice shattered the moment.

Still smiling, Zelsys took one of the pouches that hung from her belt and handed it over, remarking “That’s two-fifty…” 

She then reached for the other pouch to count out the remaining fifty gelt. Collier took the pouch, pulled it open, and gave a nod, somehow fitting the remaining coins into its already stretched-thin fabric before she closed it back up and stowed it away.

“Go on you two, take your time picking!” Collier encouraged. “It’s not like I’ve got any other customers at the moment.”

Zel and Zef exchanged looks, and did just that. The former did it mostly to satisfy her own curiosity, whilst the latter allowed herself to descend into a stupor of childlike fascination. Collier had sparklocks, she had pepperboxes, she had a dozen varieties of that revolving-cylinder design, and she even had a few strange pistols that had long tubes under their barrels to hold special ammunition that was just a shaped lead projectile with a hollow base and a solid chunk of propellant filling said base.

Their trigger-guards were levers, which supposedly were to be worked to load the next piece of ammunition. How bizarre and impractical, truly. What if the tube got bent? The ammunition would get stuck at best, or explode at worst.

A solid twenty minutes later, Zel’s eyes were just about glazing over from the meticulous inlays and alchemical glyphs that so richly detailed every single unique piece, some covered entirely in gold and cold-iron inlays.

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