Chapter 143: 141 – On the Health Risks of Business Negotiations

Soon, similar vendors gave way to weapons again, though as they plunged deeper into this “nice” part of town, so did the vendors become oriented towards clientele of greater means. Instead of a generic firearm salesman, they saw a gunsmith offering a “build-your-own-jezail” service, with a great number of different parts and options listed. Despite the name used, many of the options offered would cause the firearm to technically not be a jezail - that is to say, an onerously long musket intended to be fired from a rest - besides the cosmetic stylings.

Despite exploring and passively searching for a while longer, they found neither a dedicated armorsmith nor an enchanter, merely vendors, and eventually, they ended up back at that seafood stall. Not because they had intended to head there, but because when they once more neared the sect property, they saw Makhus sitting there, drinking. He had a rather spirited energy about him - certainly well beyond his normal. 

It was… All but obvious why, when they actually got there.

Before, he was relatively well-dressed, wearing clean and even ironed clothes, the only things to imply his unkempt nature being his perpetual stubble and slight bags under the eyes. Now, he was all sorts of unkempt - shirt crumpled up and buttoned wrong, belt barely buckled, one shoe untied, suspicious reddened marks on his neck, and was that… 

“Why’re you bleeding from your back?” Zef asked, the mere tone of the question enough to make it clear she had come to a conclusion.

He swigged straight from a bottle of plum wine and tossed a piece of raw tuna in his mouth, swallowing before giving a flat answer, “I questioned the reliability of Lady Krishorn’s sound ward generator. Business negotiations became heated.”

Despite the smell of fish and plum wine, there was another cutting through it, a familiar one. A scent with light fruity overtones and spicy sting, one that Zel was certain she smelled before… Of course. The heiress. 

The stage had been empty for the moment, in the minutes between performers changing out. Music had started up again by this point, a pair of men - one a Grekurian, one Ikesian, one playing a curved brass horn while the other drummed and sang repetitive lyrics about some sort of maneater. They also had a clockwork automaton plucking away at a bass.

“Is that so?” smugged Zel, gesturally ordering plum wine for herself with her right hand as she kept talking. “Didn’t happen to catch the name of a smith who could replace my arm harness, did you?” 

Shaking his head, the swordsman-alchemist finished chewing another piece of tuna - this one taped to some rice with dried seaweed, for whatever reason - and answered, “No, but I think I know how to find one… I think. There’re broker tents near the main- the main streets, and designated spaces for them all over town. Think they just haven’t set up yet.”

Another piece of tuna.

“So uh, I’d say your best bet is to go to the northern gate and look for a tent with the caravan flag, like that one,” he finished, pointing to the flag that flew from the highest pole of the stage. An elongated triangular shape, it was a bright red with golden edges and an elaborate letter K in the center.

After they left to pursue Makhus’s directions a few minutes later and the alchemist gestured them goodbye, the question that had been on both their minds inevitably arose.

“You think he...” Zef began.

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“Probably,” Zel laughed. “Sure as hell smelled the part. How or why, that is a whole other question.”

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Walking back through the city and towards the gate, they quickly realized that the city’s usual segmentation had influenced the distribution of vendors and other caravan businesses - while every sort could be found in every place, the concentration of those selling mundane goods and services appealing to the average person rose by orders of magnitude the further from the sect they went. Clothing, fabrics, household tools and goods, things like portable water to Aqua to water converters marketed as purification devices. 

Dear gods, so much clothing and fabrics.

Then, as they passed the gate, they saw that the fields now sprawled with all sorts of offerings that would not fit within city limits. A veritable armored column was being unloaded from the gaping maw of the Serpent Head’s cargo bay, lining up in one of the fields that had been previously full of smaller vendors that had by now dispersed through the city. Tractors, tanks, armored transports, a few boat-like hovercrafts, even rows and rows of hunched-over… Golems?

No, those weren’t golems. 

“By the Sage, they’re really just selling Second-models out in the open!” the amazed voice of a nearby civilian cut through the ambient noise… Only to be quieted by a sneering, “As if you could afford even the helmet.”

“Hey, you never know. I heard we were supposed to get some new equipment, maybe that includes a few Second-models. Why else would they be displaying them like this?”

The conversation faded from hearing as they forged onward, the promised tent’s flag already in sight. It was just off the main road, a sizable square tent, though not many people were milling in and out of it. Those they found near and in the tent, though, seemed to at least know what they were asking about.

Following a brief wait in a queue they got through to the counter, and the question was asked - an armorsmith, an enchanter, and perhaps a tinkerer specializing in advanced firearms. Behind it sat a high-strung, well-groomed young man wearing colorful eyeliner, a notable amount of jewelry, a vest, loose trousers, and not much else. He took the question, nodding slightly and murmuring in Kargarian as he paged through a pair of thick binders. Zel caught something about how he hated such physical media and annoying it was that they wouldn’t at least let him use mnemographs.

One binder contained fragmentary maps of the city and areas around it, overlaid by charts sectioning them off into plots, while the other had neat, handwritten profiles with renditions of the establishment’s sign or logo as the headers.

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