Duncan silently stood there as he pretended to be observing the approaching city of Bant, but his thoughts were elsewhere. “The boys are progressing much faster than we could have hoped. I wonder if it’s because he’s an antimage. No, no. He hasn’t had any formal training. Hmm, I wonder if his control is better,” Duncan thought to himself as he slowly made his way to the boys as they were standing at the prow. Excitement and giddy at the looming lake-city, Gaius and Gen were talking about what marvelous wonders they could find here.
“Do you think they have an arena here to?!” Gen shouted at his brother.
“Definitely! It’ll probably be a lot bigger too! Do you think the merchant’s guild has a branch here too?”
“They have to!” Gen said.
“Ahem,” Duncan lightly coughed as he stood behind his two sons. The two boys turned around and immediately put on their servile and respectful mask as they have gotten used to it. “Let me see the progress of your training. Gaius make this orb go away,” Duncan commanded in a flat tone. Tulia had to be careful not to expose herself or her two sons within the walls of South Calet because she was afraid of being discovered by some expert. The ferryman on the boat were an entirely different story since they did not truly understand the meaning behind possessing a Heavenly Aspect, much less identifying one. Because of this, she allowed her sons to be less restrained while they trained.
Upon the deck, Duncan immediately summoned a dense cluster of wood aura. Just as quickly as it condensed above his hand, it disappeared. Duncan’s eyes widened in shock as he could see the aura of wood fly directly into his son’s body where it disappeared without a trace. Duncan had a somewhat uncomfortable feeling as his son ripped the aura away from him. “Whoa, I feel so dizzy all of a sudden, and nauseous. Can’t fall, don’t fall,” Duncan encouraged himself to remain steady.
Without further delay Duncan looked at his son and said, “Acceptable,” he then quietly and quickly turned away to retire in his cabin, trying to maintain his aloofness.
Gaius and Gen stared at each other in confusion, “Hey did dad seem a bit weird to you?”
“Yeah, even posing as an esteemed alchemist he would have at least given us a smile, maybe he ate something bad,” Gen said
“Probably.”
“What did you do anyway? I didn’t see anything,” Gen asked.
“Nothing out of the ordinary, I just took the aura he condensed into myself. I feel good, better than normal actually,” Gaius said after a bit of introspection.
“You’re a weird one. Taking someone else’s aura like THAT’S normal. . .” Gen said off-handedly.
The two boys turned back around and appreciated the scenery as they slowly approached it. Before them was the lake-city of Bant, and from a kilometer out the boys could easily make out the giant stone walls that fully encompass the city. In between the boys and the city was an armada of boats going in and out of the docks. A wide wooden dock ran for kilometers around the lake shore with hundreds of jetties for all types of boats. Some of which were 3x the size of the ferry they were on while others were rafts.
Upon the stone walls surrounding the city were tall crenellations only interspersed by a turret every dozen or so meters. At the corners or other junctions of the walls were tall watchtowers. “Do all cities look like this?” Gaius asked.
Gen could only slowly shrug as he was also amazed by the sheer size of the city as their ferry meandered towards it. Tulia stepped onto the deck and headed straight for the boys and said to them, “Come.”
With that, the boys followed the bodyguard towards their personal cabins obediently. When inside the cabin they saw their father sitting and waiting for them to arrive. Duncan was still recovering from the effects of his son’s abilities. “How could he have gone from barely being able to move our auras to fully absorbing it in so little time?” Duncan wondered to himself as the boys entered the cabin.
Duncan mustered up his remaining strength and said, “Your mother and I have discussed something, we are going to stay aboard the ship while the captain hauls and sells your catch and we will immediately depart later tonight.” The two boys’ faces dropped in sadness for not being able to explore their second city.
“If you’d like, your father and I agreed that it may be beneficial to you boys to go along with the captain and learn how to trade. At least this way you can explore a little bit of the docks while learning a valuable skill, how about it?” Tulia said to her sons.
“Yeah!” they both shouted as excitement bloomed within their faces.
“Okay, go to the captain and make yourself at his service. Remember to stick with him and look out for each other. Don’t tarry and learn what you can,” Duncan said.
The two boys couldn’t stop smiling as they made their way out of the cabin and up onto the deck. They jostled and pushed each other playfully as they walked. Tulia and Duncan looked at their sons with a warm smile; Tulia then sat down besides her husband. “Remember not to get spotted by them,” Duncan warned.
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“Like I can’t keep myself concealed from two children?” Tulia scoffed.
“If it were any other boys, I’d have no doubt. But Gaius’s abilities have grown considerably. Just now he successfully siphoned my aura from me,” Duncan said seriously.
“What!?” Tulia shouted.
“It seems like the training you’ve been putting them through has been very beneficial to them both. Do you remember when we were dispatched to Mantabo with that antimage?”
“How could I forget, that was the first time we met one. Do you really think Gaius is an antimage, how certain are you?” Tulia asked her husband again.
“You were there at Mantabo and you felt Gaius’s pull on your aura at the village. You remember how the antimage could rip auras away from mages and take it into himself? That’s exactly what Gaius just did to me, I have no doubt he’s an antimage. But I had no idea that they were this strong, imagine what Gaius could do if he was formally trained by another,” Duncan pondered aloud.
“We’ll know more when we ask my brother,” Tulia said confidently.
Duncan slowly nodded.
Back upon the deck, the captain stopped treating them like every other Novitiate as was custom because the boys that stood in front of him were requested there by his esteemed guest; to say nothing of their enormous fishing abilities. The captain eyed the two boys in front of him with a curious look, gauging them slowly with a new perspective. “How much is a single steelteeth worth, do you think?”
“Can’t be more than a few coppers,” Gen declared seriously as he eyed their catch behind the captain. He observed the giant pulleys and moving crates as they were lifted high above their heads carrying their fish. The captain noticed their rapt attention to the giant crane behind him, “Ah, true country bumpkins these kids are,” he thought to himself. He began to explain it to them, “the crane will load up any tradeable cargo onto a crate and then take it there,” he pointed to the side. There were several giant pulleys placed throughout the docks, Gaius and Gen observed their fish being dumped into a crate that hung in midair on one end of the pulley. After all of the fish were loaded, workers on the docks began to remove uniform sized rocks and bricks out of the other crate on the ground, until finally the two crates were both suspended. Gaius observed a well-dressed man with a calculating gaze etch something onto the side of the crate, what it said he could not discern from the distance.
“Sharp eye lad, that’s the foreman of that group and he just labeled the weight and type of cargo,” the captain answered an unasked question. “So, back to my first question, how much is a single steelteeth worth?”
“6 coppers,” Gen said more assuredly.
“1 silver,” Gaius answered after a bit of time thinking.
The captain smiled and responded, “You’re both right, the same steelteeth can be worth 6 coppers and 1 silver. Explain to me how that can be.”
“It would depend on the buyer, how much they really want a steelteeth,” Gen said after a bit of thought.
“Very good. That is the essence of a trade. Figuring out how much the other party desires your wares is crucial to good trade. There are many factors that will affect someone’s desire for your goods. Understanding and discovering what these factors are will make you into a true tradesman. Ponder on this,” the captain said with a smile. With that, the captain led the boys onto the docks as they made their way through. The captain first led the boys to the foreman that marked their fishing crate, and after a bit of talking the foreman handed the captain a piece of paper.
The two boys were surrounded by new sights and exotic smells usually found on a trading dock. “How can anyone move around with so many people? It’s so chaotic, but it seems orderly? So weird. Oh, what is that man over there doing?” Gaius thought to himself.
“Ask your questions if you have them, I promised your master to instruct you to the best of my abilities,” the captain said as he watched Gaius’s changing expression.
Gaius quickly pointed to the man in question and asked, “He seems to be looking for fish to buy, why not sell to him?”
“Ah yes, they are bulk buyers. Many businesses send representatives to the docks to secure new lines of resources. The price they pay per fish is below their value, but they are consistent in their purchases. So it will only be helpful to those who make their living through such contracts. Though your haul is impressive for two boys, it pales in comparison to what industrial fishers bring in. With that being said, it will benefit us more if we sold these fish directly to vendors. Cutting out the middlemen, so to speak,” the captain narrated.
“Why would anyone purchase our fish when they could buy them for cheaper through these bulk buyers?” Gaius asked.
“Good question boy, bulk fish buyers represent large restaurants with a stable financial foundation because they usually have a scribe on retainer to form all of their new contracts and that can get expensive. So if that is the case then who do you think we sell our fish to?”
“The smaller restaurants?” Gen chimed in.
“Correct. Remember figuring out who best to trade with is already half of the battle,” the portly captain said.
Gen suddenly asked as the thought occurred to him, “Shouldn’t we be hauling our fish with us?”
The captain couldn’t help but let out a cackle at the question, “There’s no need,” the captain said after he calmed down. He reached out of his pocket and produced a piece of paper with the Alirian crest. The same one that was given to him by the foreman earlier. “This is trade writ that states that I am the legal seller of the fish where you two are its beneficiaries, the writ also stipulates that I am allocated 2 pieces of gold from the trade as a transaction fee, but it is capped at the amount of the total sale.” The captain handed the writ to the boys for them to observe.
Gaius’s hands gently held the writ, fearful of ruining it. The Alirian imperial seal was exactly the same as the one he saw within the merchant’s guild in South Calet. It composed a singular large white shield with a black silhouette of a sword residing in the center pointing upwards. While Gen was oblivious to it, Gaius was not. He could feel power emanating from the seal as he lightly traced his fingers over it. “I wonder what mom is doing right now?” thoughts of his mother suddenly filled his mind as he nestled within the aura radiating from the seal.
After examining it for a while the two boys handed the writ back to the captain and continued to follow him. The captain quickly led the two boys into the town’s interior where the central trading hub was located. Pungent smells, loud hawkers, jostling crowds, and the cobblestone path underneath Gaius’s feet overwhelmed all of his senses at once. Off into the distance a loud banging could be heard and it grew progressively louder until Gaius and Gen realized that they were headed towards a shieldsmith.