CHAPTER 45
POV - Azra'il
The idea of going out for a walk around the city came up with the naturalness of things that happen when four people have lived in the same manor long enough for "let's go out" to become a proposal with universal appeal.
Or more precisely: I'd mentioned needing certain ingredients that Roa had and Buena village didn't, Rudeus had said he wanted to see the bookshop, Ghislaine had gone quiet with that silence I'd already learned to read as "I want to as well, but I won't ask," and Eris had declared she was coming along because she felt like it.
Democracy, of a sort.
We were waiting in the entrance hall when Eris came down the stairs.
Rudeus and I were in our usual clothes. So was Ghislaine. Eris was in a dress.
Dark red, simple cut, hair tied back with the particular stubbornness of red strands that had agreed to be tamed for a limited time and were already considering renegotiating the agreement.
Rudeus stared with an enthusiasm ill-advised for a tutor assessing his own student.
"You look—" he began.
"Rudeus," I said.
He shut his mouth.
I looked at Eris. "You look pretty in a dress."
She reacted like someone who'd expected provocation and received a compliment instead, not quite sure what to do with the second option.
"But you look better with a sword," I went on.
"Was that a compliment or wasn't it?!" she asked.
"It was both. The two parts are simultaneously true."
She frowned, processing that. "So, thank you?"
"You're welcome."
Rudeus still had that look. Ghislaine turned her head towards him. Her ears settled into the position of silent disapproval, which I'd already learned was more effective than any verbal reprimand.
He looked away.
Roa had the layout of a city that had grown with purpose. Wide streets, a centralised market, commerce organised into sections that made sense. Compared to Buena village, it was a different category of urban life altogether.
Eris took it all in with the attention of someone who'd grown up inside a manor and whose last outing had ended in a kidnapping, an objectively poor sample of urban experience.
"There really are a lot of people," she said.
"It's a city," I said. "That's what cities have."
"There aren't this many people at the manor."
"At the manor there are the staff you regularly hit, which reduces the voluntary foot traffic in your vicinity."
Eris opened her mouth. Closed it. Concluded she had no argument available.
Rudeus, beside me, wore the face of someone filing away that particular exchange for future reference.
The first teaching opportunity arrived at a spice stall.
"How much is the ginger?" I asked the vendor.
"Three coppers a bunch, miss."
I looked at Eris. "You have ten coppers. You buy two bunches. How much is left?"
Eris frowned, realising the outing had turned into a lesson earlier than expected. "Four coppers."
"Correct." I looked at Ghislaine. "You buy three bunches with one large copper coin. How much change do you get back?"
Ghislaine went quiet a moment longer than necessary.
Her ears dropped a millimetre.
"You have one large copper worth a hundred small coppers," said Rudeus, gently.
"I know what it's worth," said Ghislaine, in the tone of someone who already knew and would rather no one watched the calculation in progress.
Her ears dropped further.
"Ninety-one coppers," she said, finally.
"Correct," I said.
Her ears perked up.
Eris looked at Ghislaine, having expected a wrong answer and received a right one, not quite sure what to do with that either.
"You got it right," she said.
"I learned to count properly," Ghislaine replied. "From the lessons."
"Maths is like swordsmanship," I said. "With enough practice it becomes reflex. Ghislaine practised. The result shows."
Her ears and tail settled into the position of quiet satisfaction.
"Copper coin," I said, holding one up for Eris to see. "The smallest. Ten coppers buy a simple dinner at a decent establishment." I picked up a larger coin. "A hundred coppers make one large copper. Ten large coppers make one silver. Ten silvers make one gold."
"That's a lot of arithmetic," said Eris.
"It's arithmetic you'll be doing for the rest of your life if you want to manage money without depending on other people to do it for you."
She frowned. "I have people for that."
"You have people for that now," I said. "People change, situations change, and the day you need to know how much something costs and don't know is an inconvenient day to be finding that out."
Eris went quiet, having received an argument she recognised as valid and would rather hadn't been.
"And how much do I have?" she asked.
"You have nothing. You have access to your parents' money."
"What's the difference?"
"When it's your parents' money, you don't feel the weight of each coin, because you weren't the one who earned it." I looked at her. "If you want to understand how a budget works, ask for an allowance. A fixed amount. When it runs out, it's gone."
"And if I need more?"
"Then you've learned something about planning."
Eris kept looking at me, having hoped for a way out of the logic and concluding there wasn't one.
"That sounds uncomfortable," she said.
"Learning usually is," I said. "It's what tells it apart from knowing."
Rudeus, beside me, opened his mouth with the face of someone who'd decided an observation deserved sharing.
"In Buena village I never had to think about money," he said. "The adults handled everything. Food, clothes, everything just existed." He picked up a suspicious-looking elixir from the stall counter, checked the price, put it back. "Once I asked my mother for a book. She said I'd have to wait for my next tenth birthday."
"Because of the price?" asked Eris.
"Because of the price." He looked at the various suspicious-looking bottles for sale on the stall. "At the time I didn't really understand. I thought she was exaggerating... Now I understand."
Eris took in all the goods around her, having grown up in a manor where things simply existed without anyone needing to reckon the work behind them.
"That seems unfair," she said.
"It's the cost of production," I said. "Every book is made by hand. The price reflects that." I looked at her. "That's why, when someone lends you a book, you treat it carefully. It isn't just paper."
Eris went quiet, arriving at a conclusion about past behaviour she'd rather not elaborate on aloud.
The bookshop was on a side street, the kind of establishment that doesn't need a prime location, because whoever wants to find it, finds it.
Rudeus had already been there before. I could tell from the way he walked in, not with the energy of someone exploring somewhere new, but with the caution of someone returning to the scene of a crime, hoping this time might be different.
It wasn't different.
"Five gold coins," he said, holding up the thinnest volume on the bottom shelf, with the face of someone who'd known what he was going to find and still felt the impact all over again. "This is the cheapest one."
Eris came closer and looked at the price. Then at the book. Then at the price again. "Five gold for this?"
"For this," Rudeus confirmed.
"But it's small."
"Size isn't the relevant criterion," I replied. "It's copied by hand by someone who spent years learning to copy with handwriting legible enough to sell. The price reflects the labour, not the pages."
Eris picked up the book, trying to understand what justified the value. Flipped through a few pages. Put it back, having concluded she understood nothing of what was written in it.
"And these?" she said, pointing at the larger volumes on the back shelves.
"Twenty gold, some of them," said Rudeus, delivering a piece of information that had taken him a while to digest and that he hadn't fully digested yet. "And they're not even magic books. They're history, philosophy, literature."
"Twenty gold?!" asked Eris.
"Unfortunately, yes, twenty gold..."
She stared at the shelves, having grown up in a manor where books existed without anyone needing to reckon how much labour they represented. Then she looked at me.
"How much do you two earn a month?" she asked.
"Four silver each," I said.
Eris looked at the twenty-gold book. Then at me. She was doing the maths.
"Four silver a month," she repeated, slowly. "And twenty gold is..."
"Two hundred silver," said Rudeus. "Fifty months for each of us. Saving every bit, spending nothing."
"That's four years and two months."
Eris stared, shocked, at the book. Then at Rudeus. Then at me.
"More than four years."
"To buy one book," I confirmed.
"To buy one book..."
"And that's assuming we don't eat, don't buy clothes, don't travel, and don't spend a single coin during those four years," Rudeus added.
Eris opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked at the book again, realising for the first time that there was an entire reality behind every volume in that manor she'd never needed to consider.
"And it isn't even a magic book," she said, finally.
"And it isn't even a magic book," I confirmed.
"That's absurd!"
"Absurd and real coexist frequently."
"What about Ghislaine?" she asked, still processing.
We looked at Ghislaine.
"Two gold coins a month," she said.
Eris did the maths quickly. "So she'd buy the most expensive book in ten months. And the cheapest one in two and a half months."
"Correct," I said.
"She earns a lot more than you two," said Eris.
"Five times more than each of us," said Rudeus, and then looked at Ghislaine, having just done a bit of maths with immediate practical consequences. "Ghislaine."
"No," she said.
"You haven't even—"
"You want me to buy the book."
"I want you to consider the possibility of a collaborative investment in educational material that would indirectly benefit the pedagogical development of your lessons—"
"No."
Rudeus looked at me.
"No," I replied.
He looked at Eris, making one last assessment of available resources.
"No," said Eris, before he could open his mouth. "And if you ask again I'll tell Dad you were staring oddly at Ghislaine on the training field."
Rudeus went red.
Ghislaine turned her head towards him slowly. Her ears dropped, communicating exactly what she was thinking without needing any words.
"I was studying her posture," he said, quickly. "For pedagogical purposes."
Ghislaine's ears dropped another centimetre, entirely unconvinced.
"Let's leave the bookshop," I said.
The things I needed to buy were in a section of the market that sold multi-purpose ingredients, things that could be spice, medicine, or raw material depending on who was buying and for what.
Vegetable oils. Specific herbs. Certain extracts I recognised by smell before reading the label.
Rudeus watched me fill the basket, cataloguing without arriving at any satisfactory conclusion.
"What are you buying?" he said.
"Ingredients."
"For what?"
"A personal project."
"What kind of project?"
"The kind that's better off unexplained until it's finished." I picked up a coconut oil. "If it works the way I expect, it could earn some extra money."
"Are you going to become a merchant?"
"I'm going to become someone with extra income, which is different."
Eris had come closer and was looking at the basket's contents, trying to reach the same conclusion Rudeus had, and failing just as badly.
"Looks like kitchen ingredients," she said.
"Some things look like what they aren't."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the answer available right now."
"You always do this," she said, recognising the pattern. "When you don't want to explain something, you give an answer that sounds like an answer, but isn't."
I looked at her.
"That was a perceptive observation," I said.
She reacted like someone who'd expected evasion and received recognition instead.
"And you're still not going to explain," she replied.
"Correct."
Eris looked at me for a second, concluding she'd find out on her own eventually, and that she was fine with that, because finding out for herself was more satisfying anyway.
Rudeus, beside me, had the same look.
[They're going to try to figure it out.]
<I know. It'll be instructive to watch the process.>
[And when they find out it's shampoo?]
<I'll pretend it was obvious from the start and that they simply didn't ask the right way.>
[That's technically defensible.]
<It's my speciality.>
The walk back had the rhythm of a well-spent afternoon.
Eris walked like someone who'd set out expecting one thing and found another, but in a way that was, in its own manner, a positive.
"I'm going to ask for an allowance," she said, at some point along the way.
"How much?" said Rudeus.
"Three silver a week," she said, in the tone of someone who'd already decided and was informing, not consulting.
"Reasonable," I said.
"But what if it runs out?" asked Eris.
"Then it's run out."
"And if I need more?"
"Eris."
"I'm just asking."
"You already know the answer."
She crossed her arms, recognising the answer was right and not liking it one bit.
Rudeus walked beside me, with the face of someone who'd spent the day out and concluded it had been worth it even without buying a book. Ghislaine walked nearby, ears and tail in the position of quiet satisfaction.
Roa carried on around us, with the consistency of a city that exists regardless of who's observing it. It was, on an honest reckoning, a well-spent day.