Chapter 139: 137 – The Moneychanger

The shape of its head was somewhere between a lizard and a human, four horns poking from its skull and two pairs of disparate eyes staring ‘twixt the bars. The lower pair was where one would expect a person’s eyes to be, they were even shaped correctly, yet they were milky-white, as if blind. Right above them, two freakish chameleon-like eyes swiveled about, which deigned not to even look at them, instead tracking the myriad things the lizard-person was doing with its four arms.

It wore a loose-sleeved jacket not unlike Ezaryl’s, excepting the fact it was not nearly as revealing and had four sleeves rather than just one. It was a black base colour with green scales, and it bulged to contain what Zel presumed to be a sizable bosom, though she wondered why a lizard had such a thing. Then again, even Locust Nobles maintained some of their human figure in metamorphosis, so perhaps this was another sort of mutant. A… Lizard Noble, perhaps?

“You wish to exchange Pateirian currency, is that correct?” piped up the lizard with a strange voice. Deep, suave tones reverberated on themselves, though it was recognizably female. Her mouth did not move as she spoke, but her pronunciation carried a heavy Kargarian accent nevertheless.

Zel nodded, her tangent train of thought forced off the rails by the reminder of why they were here in the first place. She took out the Tablet, first pulling out the free exchange voucher that Arnys had written for her and sliding it across the counter. After a brief examination, the Moneychanger murmured something about the Matriarch and stowed it away, nodding that, “It checks out, your next exchange up to thirty-thousand Gelt in value will be free of all fees.”

After that, Zel scrolled until she found the Pateirian currency in question. It was all split across twenty-coin strings of cash, boxes, loose coinage, and in the case of Jade Dragons, decks. However, simply through will Zel could make the Tablet total up the coins into a separate readout… Even if it took multiple attempts to only include the desired articles in the count.

x1267 Huén Copper Rabbits

x1456 Huén Silver Hawks

x337 Huén Golden Tigers

x140 Huén Jade Dragons

She willed the readout to enlarge until it took up the Tablet’s entire projection area, then showed it to the lizard-woman, who looked down with her seemingly-blind humanlike eyes, looked at Zel, and nodded reluctantly.

“I believe we can exchange most of your Huén for Gelt, with the exception of your Jade Dragons. Their nonstandard shape and denomination notwithstanding, they are too volatile for our methods. I would suggest trading them with some of our arcane-certified brokers, if you still wish to change them for Gelt… Though I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

“Why? They’re still just money, aren't they?” Zel asked with a small chuckle, even as she tipped the Tablet over the counter and willed it to expel Huén by the string-of-cash, starting at Copper Rabbits. The Moneychanger, in turn, snatched each string through the small window in the bars and stripped the coins into the chute of a machine to her right, putting the string away into a segmented box. 

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The lizard woman shook her head, smiling understandingly, “No, it is not, though I understand that you might have come into Pateirian currency without sufficient prior non hostile contact with its originators to learn how their currency works. Pateirian currency derives its value partially from materials and manufacturing as other coinage does, and partially from an enchantment that assures its authenticity. This machine right here muddles that enchantment enough to prevent scrying from tracking the coinage without damaging the authentication properties, which actually increases its value, even to the few Pateirian merchants we do business with - do not worry, we take this into account in our exchange rates. The potency of the enchantment, understandably, increases with denomination, with the exception of Jade Dragons, which do not have such a measure.”

At the mention of exchange rates, Zel looked up at the sign above the counter. It had exchange rates for currencies other than Gelt, but none for Ikesian Marks. A single Copper Rabbit was worth barely over a fifth of a gelt, with the higher denominations following the same pattern - two and one-tenth for a Silver Hawk, twenty-one for a Golden Tiger, and there was no listed rate for Jade Dragons.

“The Jade Dragon is a unit of currency, but also a unit of magic,” the Moneychanger continued explaining. “A single Jade Dragon can be made into a talisman of intermediate power with relative ease, and a larger number of them can be used to perform rather impressive feats of magic, especially if you use them as-intended to invoke trigrams. In fact, the infamous Emperor’s Mercy Talisman is actually carved from a Jade Dragon and further enchanted using three more.”

She just sounded bored, if anything. Like she was talking to pass the time. Zel couldn’t blame her, the dexterity with which she performed the work suggested the tedium of it all too clearly.

After a few moments coins began falling out of that first machine, and as each coin fell out of it, she simply flicked it from underneath and sent it flying into the chute of another, creating a continuous arc. Every once in a while, her upper right arm would snatch a coin mid-flight, and she would either bite it or place it atop a little glyphic plate of black rock, which flashed an alchemical sigil for the corresponding metal each time. Then, she would return the tested coin back to the cycle. It was altogether mesmerizing, both the effortless manual dexterity and the mechanical number wheels counting up how much gelt it would translate to.

For a little while there was no speech, only the sound of machinery and coins as the money made its way through some half-dozen steps. Zel had traced the chain to what looked like a modified cash register, with an eight-digit cylindrical counter. 

By the time Zef voiced her curiosity, over a hundred-fifty coins had reached the final receptacle, counting up to a little over a thirty Gelt and quickly rising. 

“Don’t take this as an insult, but… What are you?” she asked cautiously, struggling not to bring up locust mutants or noblemen stricken by the side effects of careless Azoth Stone consumption as a comparison.

The Moneychanger smiled and let out a sigh, her milky-white eyes shifting in their sockets as they overtly looked at Zefaris.

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