On the following day, the sun had vanished behind a thick layer of midafternoon clouds before Fin and Brando set out to explore the streets of the city with two names.
"Eat, drink, sleep, stay. Buy clothes, oil your beard, drink to my health, Lokardale." Brando said to himself as he explored the sights.
"What did you say?" Fin asked, walking beside him.
"It's what Heidle said. Eat, drink, sleep, stay. Buy clothes, oil your beard, drink to my health, Lokardale." Brando repeated the words like a chant. "It's like the longer we're out of the goblin camp, the more I forget how important things were to us back there. I mean, when Heidle told us to eat the apple pie at the village, I felt like there was nothing more important I could do in my life than eat that apple pie. Now that we're here, I think we should do everything in our power to buy clothes, oil our beards, and drink to Heidle's health."
"Gems and then clothes?" Fin asked.
"Gems, bath house, and then clothes." Brando amended. "I also might get a pipe. Who knows?"
"I bet a copper coin I can guess where you got your boots!" A gruff voice from a timeworn man announced as he approached them.
Brando looked at Fin and then back at the man. "I bet you can't."
"You got your boots on Richman Road!" The man bellowed his answer in triumph.
Fin and Brando shared a similar look of confusion. Finally, the man pointed at a road sign that read Richman Rd.
Brando's honor led him to instinctively pull out a coin, but then he hesitated and then pulled out another. The play on words barely qualified the man for a win, but another play on words would even the odds. "Double or nothing. I bet you can't guess where you'll pick these coins up from."
The man knew Brando was up to something; he just didn't know what that something was. "Uh, Richman Road?" he guessed the obvious answer.
"I guess we'll see," Brando threw the coins up and behind him as hard as he could. The sound of scrambling legs preceded the clinking of copper coins.
"Double or nothing, huh?" Fin asked offhandedly.
"The guy was being intentionally deceptive," Brando said with a shrug. "At least this way, I feel better about losing on a technicality. If he would have guessed where you actually got your boots, I was prepared to give him everything I got."
"Come and find what secrets the future holds," a woman with bandages over her eyes said from the side of the road. "The cards show a secret passage to treasures unknown."
"I don't know how she's supposed to see the cards with her eyes covered like that," Brando blurted out.
"I am blind, not deaf, you bonnet-wearing bastard," the woman said, pointing directly at Brando.
"If you're so blind, how did you know I was wearing a bonnet?" Brando chimed back, winning a look of pure awe from Fin.
"You're on a roll today." Fin shook his head in wonderment. "We should hire a bard to follow you around and play a tune whenever you piss someone off."
"They would be playing nonstop." Brando jested. "Where did he say this gem dealer was again?"
Fin pointed at a statue of who could only be assumed to be Clive Rae himself. They walked beyond the statue, following Kaper's instructions. When they found what they were looking for, they headed to the storefront that matched Kaper's description.
A yellow awning protected two large men from the overcast sky. Fin and Brando cautiously moved past and entered the door between them. Glass cases displaying jewelry, gemstones, and ornamental knives surrounded them. Walking sticks with animal heads featuring colorful and glittering eyes peered disdainfully at the other accouterments of status. Fin noticed another large man sitting unobtrusively in the back corner.
"Good afternoon," a woman with a voice dripping in extravagance greeted them. "What can I help you find today?"
"Hello, we have some raw gems that we might be interested in selling," Brando told the woman, prompting Fin to start the unstowing process.
The woman held out her hand. "In that case, I might be interested in seeing them. My name is Cynthia."
Fin offered his name and the pouch of gems. Brando quickly offered his.
Cynthia tisked at the sight of the leather pouch earning a self-conscious feeling from Fin. She unrolled a black, velvet-lined mat and carefully poured twenty-three gems. "Decently sized, varying tones, and most appear to have a nice clarity. May I assume these are all topaz?"
"Yeah, good eye." Fin complimented.
"I'll have to do an inspection before I can quote you a price, but I am confident that both of us are going to walk away satisfied with this transaction." Cynthia picked up and admired the largest of the gems. "I'll have to run some tests."
"You're not going to just throw these gems at the ground, are you?" Brando asked, pensive. "I'll tell you right now they are real."
Cynthia covered her mouth and let out a laugh. "Please, I wouldn't do anything so barbaric. Mostly I just need to check them for quality which requires looking at each of them very closely. It shouldn't take too long. I might need to verify a couple of them. For all you know, some of them could be quartz or something else entirely."
Brando pointed his thumb over his shoulder. "He can identify any gem, so we know we're good on that front. But, by all means, do what you need to."
"Oh yeah? You can identify any gem, huh?" Cynthia reached under the counter and brought out two red gems. "Which one of these is real?"
Fin took them in his hand and stowed them into his inventory. Each of them read "Cut Glass Marble." Fin unstowed the fake gems and set them on the countertop. "They're both fake."
Brando picked one of them up to try to see if he could tell. He couldn't.
"Okay, then what's this?" Cynthia set down a black stone.
Fin picked it up, seemingly held it in his hand, and then set it back down. "Onyx."
Cynthia walked to the back of the store and quickly opened and shut a drawer. When she returned, she set another black stone on the counter.
Fin picked it up and then set it back down. "Jet."
Cynthia set one precious stone after another in front of Fin, and he accurately named each of them.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Finally, she set two nearly identical clear gems in front of him. "Okay, try these two."
Fin picked them up, under the watchful glare of her security guard, and then set them back down. "Diamond and sapphire, though I would have never guessed it was a sapphire just by looking at it."
A look of pure astonishment passed over Cynthia's face as a notification appeared.
Ignoring the jewelry woman's high praise and complex description of white sapphires, Fin pulled up his notification.
* Path Quest Complete: Attract a potential mate. +2 path quest revealed.
* Sovereign Quest: Battle your potential mate for ascendancy. +2 levels, +4 gold stat points, +1 ability point. Forfeit all Patriarch Quests.
* Patriarch Quest: Spread your seed throughout the land and battle your offspring for dominance. +4 levels, +8 gold stat points, +2 ability points. Upgrade Sovereign Quests to Patriarch Quests.
Upon seeing the words, 'attract a potential mate,' he blushed and raised his window out of sight. There were too many words to read, and he had already missed half of the woman's conversation. He started listening, trying to catch up.
"…And I've seen them in all different colors, but it's hard to tell someone, 'Yeah, this might look like an aquamarine, but it's really just a cornflower-blue sapphire.' You know?"
Fin nodded his head like he was listening intently the whole time. "I have this blue topaz that you wouldn't expect to see from a place that mostly has yellow and orange ones."
"May I see it?" Cynthia asked while running her fingers through her hair.
Fin reached into his pocket, unstowed the blue topaz, and held it in front of him. "I don't really want to sell it because I feel like it's important."
Cynthia reached out and took the gem, hand lingering on Fin's for a half measure longer than necessary. "I completely understand! Sometimes, when I come across a gem, I fall deeply in love with it and can't bring myself around to selling it. I'm a hopeless romantic that way. If you want, I can show you my private collection sometime. Just us, of course."
"Yeah, maybe we should do that. I'll let you know when I have some time," Fin felt the awkwardness of knowing she was attracted to him based on his quest completion. Fortunately, the quests only tend to pop off a single time, and he wouldn't have to worry about this again. "What do you think?"
"Are you sure this is a topaz?" Cynthia asked, looking closely at the gem. "I hate to sound like a hypocrite, but this looks more like an aquamarine."
Brando was looking at the assortment of jeweled rings and bracelets when he noticed the tone of flirtation in the woman's voice. Fin must have really impressed her with his ability. She was leaning across the counter and looking up at him with feral eyes. If there wasn't someone else in the room beside him, he would have left for a while and returned after the two of them had sorted through their feelings.
He tried to imagine if they were a good match or not. She was a little older, sure, but she was beautiful by anyone's standards. More than enough to overlook the age difference. The problem was she reminded him of his first wife. The two had a lot of similarities. If this woman was anything like his first wife, Fin was in for some serious trouble. It would be something he would have to learn on his own. Who knows? Maybe they would work out after all. He felt like it wasn't his place to worry about it.
Brando walked over to the walking sticks and picked up the one that looked like a snake, two red gems for eyes. He marveled at the craftsmanship that went into it. He tried it out and walked back and forth with the assistance of the viper staff, tapping his progress across the stone floor. Deciding he wouldn't like carrying around a stick everywhere, even one as interesting as a snake-headed staff. He gently put it back and listened for any cues that he should leave for a while.
"This one has several small bubbles around the edges, which is fine. Those will disappear through the cutting process. This next one seems big, but with its odd shape, a lot of it will have to be taken off." Cynthia spoke excitedly, moving from one gem to the next.
"If you two want me to take off for a while, It's no problem," Brando suggested. He wasn't sure what they were talking about anyway.
"I'm almost done pricing your gems," Cynthia said, dropping all pretenses from her voice. "Hang on, okay?"
Brando had looked at every item in the store twice before Cynthia was finished pricing the gems. She had gone off on tangents about how well she could cook and made off-handed comments about how lonely she's been since her husband left her, but she diligently sorted through all twenty-three gems and came up with a price.
"Five gold, two silver, and ten copper coins for everything," Cynthia said, placing the final gem on the black velvet mat.
"We'll take it," Brando said before Fin could ruin his chances with her by bartering.
At Fin's prompting, Cynthia replaced a gold coin with ten silver coins and added them to the two separate piles. She slid a stack of coins toward each of the men.
When Fin was about to put his coins into Heidle's leather pouch, she stopped him by placing a hand on top of his. She then walked over to a display case and returned with a new coin purse. Taking Fin's money, she tucked the coins inside and handed Fin the pouch.
Fin looked at it. It was a soft leather with a golden embroidered eagle across the side. The drawstring was a brown braided rope with interwoven silver strands. Inside of the pouch was lined with red fur. "Thank you, this is really nice."
"Stop by again soon," Cynthia said before the two left. "I'll try to get some more gems for you to identify. We could make a date out of it."