B1 Chapter 15 - Shopping

Payday! Yay! I had to keep at least a third for Nancy. Maybe more. I really wanted to save some so I could advance my other plans. But I seriously needed a new bag. The one I had been carrying was criminally small for all the things I had been stuffing in it. A full week's pay ended up being about thirty thousand geld. More money than I have seen in a long time.

I found a general store with a lot of clothes and things like that. Leather bags. Cloth bags. Some with embroidery. Wow, one even had a crystal core in it. I noticed that one was tied behind the counter.

“What's with the crystal core one?” I asked.

“Fifty thousand geld. It is a magic bag,” he said as he placed his entire arm in it, despite the fact that it didn't seem any bigger than my current one.

“Wow! Are those rare?” I asked.

He nodded. “Very. A noble sold this one to me.”

Yeah, it was about two weeks' worth of pay, which wasn’t even factoring in food, shelter, or those costs. Sure, because of Nancy, I was slipping by pretty well. But even then, it would take me nearly a month to save up. At the guild, I made a good living, but under normal circumstances, it would probably take me half a year to save up for that one item. As tempting as it was, I turned my attention to other bags.

I found a nice leather one with some floral embroidery. “How much for this one?”

“Two thousand geld,” he said.

It was the size I wanted, and pretty. “I’ll take it.”

He smiled and took my coins as I put the bag on. Next up. I wanted more clothing. I ended up going to the place that tailored my work dress. Oh, right, I owed her for both the dress and my work uniform. The guild told me I needed to pay her within a month. Well, at least I wasn’t late.

“Hey girl,” she said. “Coming to order some more uniforms?”

I didn’t actually need more than one. I was able to clean it to perfection every day, but I didn’t wanna stick out as strange. “How many do other girls usually order?”

“Cecilia ordered two more. Some girls order three or four,” she said.

“I’ll take two as well then,” I said.

She made a note. “Anything else?”

“Yes!” I said. I had a yellow dress, but that was it. I found a pretty bodice that was a nice brown. A pretty blue skirt and a white blouse with some lace at the ends of the sleeves. Definitely fancy. I didn’t know how common my choices were, but I was having a blast. Ugh, the only issue was the price. Fifteen hundred geld for all this. Well, it was well-made and would last. But my poor wallet.

Oh well. A needed expense. I really wanted a map too. Mother would greatly benefit from it. I've been using a lot of ink from Nancy’s collection, and I felt kind of bad about that. So buying my own ink and maybe a few boards would be nice. I could technically make boards, but Nancy and Jackson really gave me a hard time about going into the forest. Especially for boards. They were pretty cheap to buy.

The last thing I wanted to buy was ingredients for a cake. Because of the whole Tabitha incident, we never ended up cooking a cake.

I didn’t know the ingredients, though, and I was kind of short after buying a map. Frick.

Nancy wasn’t home yet since it was early in the day. So I decided to take a note from her page and sweep up the front to take a chore off her list when she returned from hunting. It was nearly sunset when she made it back. The nights were getting longer as winter was approaching.

“Ah, how kind,” she said.

I handed her the coins. “My weekly payment.”

She counted them. “Oh my. This is nine thousand geld. So much?”

“I meant to give ten, but I ran short after getting some clothes.”

“Clothes? Getting some nice winter coats is a needed thing for sure. Best to buy now before the demand increases,” she said.

I froze. “I… uhm, yeah. Good point.”

She laughed. “What did you buy? Again, not any of my business, but I am curious as a friend.”

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“First, new bag,” I said. I was proud of it. It was holding all my new clothes with room to spare. I showed each item one after the other.

“Wow, those are pretty but hardly practical. I mean, I would get it if you were trying to get into business with a rich merchant or something, but everything I have seen of you seemed to indicate you're pretty frugal normally.”

“Frugal?” I asked.

“Tight with your geld. A coin pincher,” she said.

“Oh. Yeah, I mean I do try, but I mean, look how pretty it is,” I said, holding up the white blouse with lace sleeves.

She smiled and ruffled my hair. “So, pretty clothes are your vice. Interesting. But after this donation, how much geld will you have til next payday?”

“None,” I said.

“Alexis! What about emergencies!” Nancy shouted. “Food?”

“I eat here?” I said.

“Barely,” she retorted.

Well, frick she did have fair point. I didn’t want her investigating how often I ate. That wouldn’t be good for me. But I felt fine with my current diet.

“I’ll keep a thousand for food,” I said.

“Three thousand,” she said, handing me coins. “Normally, girls only give me three thousand anyhow. So you're giving me double, which is more than enough. You gave such a large donation last time too. I thought that was intended to be for the month.”

Oh, was that the standard rate? Well, now I know, I guess. “This works. I can use this to buy the cake ingredients, though, could you write a list for me?”

She shook her head. “Cake for the entire shelter will come out of the shelter funds. Not your personal lunch and emergency fund! Goodness, you're a handful in the oddest of ways, my child.”

I gave a shrug. Hmm, I guess I could save the three thousand geld and just pretend I used it on lunch. Jackson surprised me with food anyhow. Oh, maybe I should get him a gift. But what do boys like? Yeah. I liked that plan. I didn’t want him to think I was a bad friend. Plus, I thought, looking at my shield bracelet. He gave me this. It was about time I got him something.

Too bad it was late. I worked tomorrow too, so that was a no-go. Oh well, it wasn’t like I had a deadline for his gift.

***

I yawned. I should probably eat breakfast. Because of the influx of money and meat, we had been eating once in the morning and once in the evening. I knew it would put Nancy’s mind at ease to see me eat. Maybe I should keep a log of meals. That way, I could check when I should be seen eating again. That could prove to be useful.

Breakfast consisted of eggs, ham, and bread with jam. The light meals like this tended to be my favorite, anyhow. One thing I noticed recently is jam tasted really good for some reason. Way better than I remembered. So I was quite eager to accept the breakfast.

Work was slow. I was working in the back and checking the logs for the pickup later this week. My first time, so Gwen was making sure I didn’t make any mistakes. Cecilia was working with Dawn today at the front.

“So, you know what kind of presents boys like?” I asked.

“Is this for Jackson?” she said, teasing me.

“Maybe,” I said. “Okay, yes. I got some spare geld and he gave me a core. I feel like it would be rude not to give him something.”

“I’d personally vote for a knife. Boys like that kind of violent stuff, right? But Dawn may be better to ask. Since she has a husband.”

“Good point,” I said. Looking around the storage room, I couldn’t help but notice how full it was getting. We've got a lot of stuff to trade with. The guilds worked both nationally and internationally. I didn’t know about the larger part of all that, but I knew we handled more product than we could ever meaningfully deal with. And the big city guilds had more customers than products. So it was a happy marriage for small fries like us.

“Does anyone ever try and rob us?” I asked, looking at all this stuff.

“The processed stuff? Never. They would have to travel to the big cities to do something with it, and the amount one person can carry isn’t worth it. The unprocessed? Yeah, sometimes. Never ends well for them, though. After all, most of us eventually end up marrying a town guard. And with fifteen of us, we usually see something, and if they tried to hurt or threaten us, the guards would go crazy.”

“Wait, receptionists tend to marry guards?” I asked.

She nodded. “You didn’t know that? Dawn is married to the captain of the eastern gate.”

“But why?” I asked.

“We make a financial juggernaut for the poor,” she said. “We can’t exactly marry into the merchant classes. And while adventurers do make more, they have riskier lifestyles. The guards are stable, and they make good geld too. And we are both reasonably independent. It is a natural choice. I figured you knew when you started dating Jackson.”

“We aren’t actually dating,” I said.

She giggled. “Keep telling yourself that.”

We walked into the main room. “Hey Dawn. Alexis needs suggestions for a gift for her guard boyfriend. Any suggestions?”

“Gwen!” I shouted.

“Well, I don’t know about all guards, but my husband loves it when I take him to the bar and buy him a few pints. He says they taste better when he isn’t paying for them.”

“I thought men liked weapons,” Cecilia added.

“Right!” Gwen said.

“Oh no,” Dawn paused. “I mean, I guess that isn’t wrong, but that is more of a thing they do at work. They get a budget for weapons. My husband just prefers good food and good mead with me.”

Hmm. So, a trip to the bar. Come to think of it. I haven’t had a drop of mead since I've been back. I could see the appeal. “Thanks for the idea.”