“Wouldn’t it be flattering for a customer to drop his trousers? Means you did a good job on the scrims.”
“No. It would just mean I need to beat a half naked man. Unlike the women at the ‘Cruel Lady’, I wouldn’t get paid for it.” The man’s voice was neutral and deep, and he delivered the jest with a straight face and no hint of irony.
Dantes laughed. He didn’t even need to fake it to curry favor, it was a genuinely amusing remark. He’d never been to the ‘Cruel Lady’, as it was expensive and as close to uptown as a brothel could be allowed to be, but he remembered Danglars saving up for it, and then not being able to sit comfortably for a week. A memory which he realized may have some use. He filed it away.
“I’m Dantes,” he held out his hand.
“Dario,” the man took Dantes’ hand and shook it firmly. Dantes wasn’t certain, but he was fairly sure that he was at least a quarter dwarf. That was always a hard one to tell, it wasn’t like full humans that were short, stout and bearded were ever in short supply.
“I see that you sell some basic enchanted goods. Do you ever make anything other than what I see?” Dantes gestured around.
Dario shrugged. “I have a list of enchantments I’m restricted to by the academy with what I’m allowed to do. Not that I’d be able to do much beyond the list, I wasn’t much for learning when I was there.”
“Must feel limiting,” remarked Dantes, fishing.
“Nope,” replied Dario.
“Do you have a list of what enchantments you have available?”
He nodded, “Reading and writing was almost all they could get through to me.” He stepped behind the counter and pulled out a sheet with surprisingly delicate handwriting that listed what he could do. Dantes perused it until he found what he was looking for.
“How much to enchant an object to, ‘produce flame’?” asked Dantes, pointing at its entry on the list.
“If yer lookin for more of a torch, that’s the wrong choice. That ones mostly for lighting candles and such. Not requested often, since it’s cheaper to just buy boxes of burnsticks.”
“That’s the one I want.”
“Tell you what, I don’t get to do that one much…eight silver.”
“How about five? I want it on a memento of a dear friend.”
“Eight.”
“Six.”
“Eight.”
Dantes sighed. He’d met intractable people before, but it had been a while. In the prison everyone was always willing to haggle at least a bit. It made sense for a bunch of people prone to disobeying the rules he supposed.
“Alright Dario. Eight it is.”
Dario nodded. “So, what object is it you’d like enchanted?”
Dantes reached into his new backpack, and pulled out Tel’s finger, placing it on the counter between them. He’d let Jacopo eat the skin off of it, and then he’d tied the bones together in an approximation of their original shape with black string.
Dario looked at the finger sitting on the counter. “Is that a human finger?”
“Half-elf, actually.”
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“Oh, that’s no worries then,” replied Dario with a hint of irony finally bleeding through his neutral tone.
“Is that a problem?”
Dario stroked his beard. “It’s not…illegal for me to enchant remains. It’s more a general concern about where they came from?”
“As I said, they’re from a friend. His last wish was to be able to light a candle with magic.”
Dario frowned, and placed his hand a few inches from the finger, closing his eyes. “Hmm, sea spray….” He opened his eyes again. “A former Academy student?” he asked.
Dantes nodded.
“Forbidden to cast by the academy?”
Dantes nodded again. Not feeling a need to elaborate beyond that.
Dario let out a slight, sad breath. “I’ll do it. The price is now a gold and two silvers though.”
Dantes nodded. “Throw in that necklace with the blinking eye and you’ve got a deal.”
Dario spat in his hand and held it out to Dantes, confirming his dwarven ancestry in the process. Dantes returned the gesture, and once their wet palms separated Dario went to work.
He lifted the finger carefully, turning it over in his hands, then he began muttering. At first he was speaking common, then he shifted to what Dantes thought was elvish, then he shifted through a few more. As he spoke, small glowing purple script began to float in the air around the finger. Some of the script would wrap around it, then unwrap and fade away. Other script would wrap around and adhere, small purple sparks coming out when the script connected.
The process took some time, and Dantes pocketed the agreed to blinking necklace while he waited, then he spent the rest of the time browsing the shop, and wondering if the slight glow on the compasses would be enough to attract moths.
The muttering stopped, turning into heavy breathing.
Dantes turned to see Dario, his brow covered in sweat, as small purple sparks slowly faded from Tel’s finger. He placed the finger back on the counter and braced himself against the counter for a moment.
“You alright?” asked Dantes as he approached. He could feel the faint tingling in his fingers build up as he stepped closer.
Dario shook his head. “No. Your friend’s finger wanted more than I wanted to give it.”
“Oh?”
He nodded. “Some objects hate magic, and you have to practically force them to work with you. Others take to it like a fish to water. This finger was closer to a whale though. Tried to suck up all I could give it and then some. I’d’ve charged you even more had I known, but… a deal is a deal.”
Dantes nodded, pulling the coins from his pocket and sliding them over to Dario who took them, locking them in a small metal box attached to the counter.
Dantes lifted the finger. If he looked closely at it, he could see faint afterimages of text gradually fading from it. “Do you have a candle?”
“One copper.”
Dantes sighed, and slid a copper to him. Dario placed the candle on the counter between them. Dantes lifted the finger to the wick, and sent a small surge of will through it. The tip of it ignited, and produced a brilliant, but small gold flame with flecks of red. Dantes watched it burn for a moment, offering a brief prayer to the god of magic in honor of Tel, then licked his fingers and extinguished the flame. He then pocketed the candle, he’d already paid for it after all.
“Thank you,” said Dantes.
“Come back anytime, but don’t bring remains if you can help it.”
“I’ll try.”
Dantes walked out of the shop to the light of the late-morning beating down on him. It was almost too hot for his coat, but he knew that Rendhold’s mercurial weather meant there wasn’t much need to take it off. He may need it within the next hour.
He moved through the outer docks, weaving by sailors, merchants, and thieves as he headed toward the Vixen. He found himself worn out. Walking the streets, seeing so many people, interacting with so many new people, seeing Mercedes, and honoring one of Tel’s last requests. It was quite a lot to have done in a single afternoon.
He briefly strengthened his connection to Jacopo, checking in on him. He was feeling impatient, pacing in the alleys near the Vixen.
“You could’ve let me know you were waiting,” sent Dantes.
“Not waiting for you to arrive. Waiting for you to kill.”
“What?”
“The woman, why didn’t you kill her? I could feel your hate from here, The craving for revenge. It set me on edge. I picked a fight with one of the cats you spoke of.”
“Killing is too good for her. For all of them. I want to take from them first.”
“What is the point of that? Why not sneak into their homes, stab them, and move on?”
“Because they didn’t give me that courtesy.”
“Hmmm. You’d prefer to have died? A struggle to live is always better than dying.”
Dantes thought about the question. Jacopo had a point. Dantes would prefer to live in the Pit struggling as he was before they began talking to one another than death. The closest he’d come to suicide was the dust he did, and the risks he took, but to brush against death was a different thing entirely. “A hard struggle to live that ends in death though, that’s the hardest death to die.”
“True.”
Dantes walked in silence, Jacopo feeling as he got closer to the Vixen where he could hop into his pocket.
“So…I assume you beat the cat?”
“He lost more whiskers than I did. So yes.”