The kind-hearted villagers who attacked me trying to rob me of everything I own did not lie about the direction in which the nearest town was, and I managed to safely enter the town which I found out was called Emesa, already within the borders of Targis. The city, although not being too crowded, was very expansive with very few houses being taller than two stories. The guards at the gate actually made me open up my travel pack, and after seeing that I was carrying a lot of foodstuffs for one person, they demanded I pay three coppers as toll, accusing me of being a peddler going to sell food for a higher price in a city.
Although the accusation was unfounded and untrue I didn’t feel that three coppers was a particularly large sum to avoid an unpleasant situation with the guards at Emesa, so I eagerly handed the older-looking guard three coppers and entered the town, hearing the guards laughing behind me about how I just bought them a round of drinks.
The air in the city was not as dirty as in other cities of similar size, and the river Ras by which Emesa was located had a lot to do with that fact. While in other cities the people would dispose of their waste in the street, not even being aware that such a thing is deeply unsanitary, in Emesa a specific part of the city was devoted to waste disposal. The river helped shepherd all unwanted things away downstream, and such a thing made Emesa a more pleasant city to be in than I would have expected.
Since I was already outside the borders of Jenusia and their ‘puppets’ I decided it might be worth it to stick around in Emesa and not have to worry about hurrying away as far as possible from whatever ‘danger’ might befall me. I paid for a room a full week in advance in one of the better-looking inns, as I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the prospect of having to deal with bedbugs and the like. After making sure all of my belongings were safe and secure in my room, and the Des was safely tucked away in the inn’s stables, I went for a walk around Emesa.
The people here spoke Rahlian, but their accent was very different from say the way people spoke in Tarli and Jenusia. They added a lot of accents to the ends of consonants which jumped out at me who has been used to the softer but still fast way that people in Krilos spoke. It was already close to the middle of spring so people were no longer wearing very thick clothes, the weather providing sufficient warmth even in looser clothes.
The city serves as a very important trade post with many barges on the river being visible, some used to ferry goods along the river while others make a living by transporting people from one edge of the river to the other. I spared a look at some things at the market that is very close to the river itself and some things here such as wooden carvings and other tools which are primarily made of wood are even cheaper than they were in the larger cities.
Because I spent a long time at the stall of a carpenter, the shrewd man thought that I was contemplating a purchase, and as such decided to make a sales pitch.
“What catches your fancy? If you are thinking of purchasing something in large quantities then I am inclined to offer my upstanding customers a hefty discount” The carpenter began, not holding back his flattery in the slightest.
I didn’t particularly have a need for any of the tools the man had on offer, even though one of the things that was further back was actually something I recognized from my conversations with Bathory: an abacus. I didn’t think it would hurt to speak to the man about prices though, trying to wrap my head around why certain things cost more here than they did in a large city like Krilos, since the merchants and peddlers back there were always insisting that due to Krilos’ large population all things would obviously be more expensive there.
“I’m not quite sure, I have just come from Jenusia you see, and some of the prices you have here surprised me considering how inexpensive your wares are, while the stall I just came from had some meat being sold at double the price I remembered from Krilos” I explained, hoping to rope the carpenter into disclosing some mercantile information.
“You came from Jenusia? Does that mean you would be willing to purchase something with Jenusian Crowns?” He asked excitedly.
“If I did want to purchase something, I suppose so. Although some of the coins I have are not Jenusian but Tarlian” I elaborated, not understanding the man’s meaning.
“Ah Tarli, those would not fare too well in Emesa…” The carpenter trailed off, no longer as enthusiastic.
“What’s the difference? Aren’t silvers just silvers anyway?” I asked, still not understanding what the carpenter meant.
“If you go to the money changers, you’ll understand. But first, why don’t you purchase this abacus? I saw you examining intently with your eyes, if you pay with Jenusian silver crowns, I'll give it to you for the low price of eight silvers!” The man dodged my question, before trying to swindle me out of a whole eight silvers.
“I have no need of an abacus at the moment, it was just something that caught my eye due to how nice it looked.” I politely declined, before walking away from the man.
He must not have been too happy at his little scam failing, since Bathory already told me that only an abacus made of metal would go for more than five-six silver crowns, so only someone even more clueless than myself would pay eight for a wooden one.
The money changer wasn’t that difficult to find, as just asking someone at the market who was running a stall provided me with directions further away from the river to a building with a sign that had a bag of coins on it. I entered and walked up to one of the free windows where I wanted to gain some clarity regarding the currency issues the carpenter seemed to have with Tarli silvers.
The man who was not much older than I was must have been bored out of his mind, as he offered to explain things to me if I just gave him one Jenusian copper, something he would be able to use to buy himself a drink later that night.
I had already learned in my classes with Goer that currency was nowhere near as centralized as it was back on Earth, with certain nobles who are lucky enough to have silver or gold mines in their territory minting their own coins. Tarli as a not-too stable kingdom was very keen on arbitrarily decreasing and increasing the purity of their coins seemingly on a whim, which was something the man complained about egregiously.
Jenusia on the other hand, had most of their coin supply controlled by the crown and a few other nobles, who were all benefiting from the royal mint. The Jenusians must have already grasped the long-term benefits of keeping your currency stable, and as such, the last time their coins had their purity decreased was when they had a war against Yas over eighty years ago. This obviously meant that Jenusian coins were highly valued, which already made me feel deep shame in not thinking about what coins I was making my purchases with this whole time.
I still had one Jenusian gold crown, a few silvers, and a few coppers but the rest were all Tarli currency, so if I wanted to actually make sure that I wasn’t swindled from this point on I must pay attention to which coins I was paying on from now on.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
The man at the money changers had a register of sorts open in front of him, where he would note down what exchanges he had made so I reasoned that he was someone with better knowledge of local affairs as he could read and count at the very least. I offered him one more Jenusian copper if he would explain something unrelated to currency exchange to me, and he readily agreed as he would essentially get money for talking, and not doing any actual exchange work.
I explained my conundrum to him, at seeing different kinds of prices in smaller cities like Emesa and bigger ones like Meran and Krilos, and was confused by the prices, not mentioning the theory of supply and demand to him. He laughed in my face and asked how old I was to ask such a question, to which I told him my actual age: 16.
He said that it was quite a good thing that I noticed this discrepancy in prices so early into my life, and that it would help me in my future dealings to know that merchants and peddlers didn’t base their prices on what they thought was a proper price, but rather on what they thought they could get away with.
They would make up stories to convince those that did not think too deeply on the subject, with the excuse in larger cities being “There are many people in this city, so the supply can’t keep up with the demand for the goods”, while in smaller cities the excuse would be “This is a small city, so the demand is greater than the supply”. The only constant would be whether some goods could be sourced/produced locally, and then the prices would noticeably be lower. But for things which were common everywhere, the merchants would make any kind of excuses possible to pump up the price to make the greatest profit.
There was no regulatory body that spanned multiple countries on Euphelia, and if someone tried to explain the concept of free trade to the average merchant I feel like they would laugh in your face at such naive concepts, so the prices began making a lot more sense to me after talking to the man at the money change.
I thanked him for explaining such ‘complex’ issues to me, and left with mixed feelings. On one hand I was thankful that I could stop being unknowingly swindled out of my valuable Jenusian coins from this point on and now knew that believing in the excuses of merchants for prices was probably not a smart move, on the other I was disappointed in myself for not finding out such information earlier, which I could have done from Bathory.
I didn’t blame him for not telling me, I got the feeling that such things would just be common sense to the son of a merchant guild head, but to someone without such an upbringing things such as these just flew over my head.
I stayed in Emesa for a whole week, not doing much more except wander around, sleep in a proper bed instead of a tent, practice my swordsmanship and sorcery, and rode Des out to get him to move his legs outside the city on occasion. Such a tranquil time began to unnerve me as I didn’t actually have much to do for now, and the lack of entertainment of any sort such as books or the like, so I decided to leave on the morning of my eighth day in Emesa.
I still wanted to make my way to the capital of Targis Verorum, which was less than a week’s travel time on a fast horse from Emesa. Bathory had assured me that if I wanted to have a good balance of safety and good earnings as a mercenary, then Verorum was probably the best place in the whole of Eastern Euphelia.
I paid the toll to use a barge to cross the wide Ras river, and although Des’ neighed unhappily when I dragged him onto it I didn’t pay much attention to him, as this was the first time I was on any floatable vehicle in Euphelia as well. I didn’t have much fear of swimming or drowning as a whole, and knew how to swim, but the barge didn’t exactly look to be the most safe thing to stand on along with many others who wanted to get across.
The other people who wanted to cross didn’t seem to be bothered by the rocking of the barge, so I thought that perhaps this was just the state of boat technology in this land, and calmed both myself and Des’ by running my hand along his mane. We made it to the other side in one piece, and the man who operated the barge hurriedly shooed us off, his eyes already locked on those already waiting by the shore.
The road to Verorum was much better traveled, and the presence of others on my journey made me think that perhaps I wouldn't have to worry about meeting as many bandits in Targis as I did in Tarli. The green and yellow tones of the countryside put me in a good mood, and I didn’t even bother starting a fire in the evenings when I set up camp thinking that such things would only attract others and the warm blankets I had could keep me warm enough.
When I did want to start a fire was when I came to a stream on the fourth day of my travels, and I finally got the idea to submerge myself fully in water and wash myself. Such a luxury was hard to come by, and although soap was not something I had even seen since the luxurious inn in Strus, just using fresh water would perform the same function.
Giving my clothes a wash seemed like a good idea as well, as even though almost everyone I had met had an unpleasant stench in Euphelia, that didn’t mean I had to fit in. I spent a few hours in the still cold river, intermittently running out when I got too cold to warm myself by the fire, and running back in after making sure the fire had enough firewood to last until I next came out. I sat naked next to my fire after washing myself to a satisfactory extent, and waited for my clothes to dry next to the fire after I used the tent poles to make a makeshift drying rack.
Sitting almost naked near the fire wasn’t the most unpleasant experience, as the sun was still out and the fire provided the warmth I was lacking from the absence of my clothes. I actually felt quite cozy, so I decided to take the time to meditate a little bit and use the time I waited for the clothes to dry to do something useful.
The wisps of arcane power that were near-transparent or white were accommodating to me as always, and the red and yellow ones, although no longer as ‘rebellious’ were still reluctant to follow my will, which made me laugh inside at the thought that one day they would drop their guard and actually follow the lead of the ‘wind’ wisps. This was the first time I was meditating anywhere near a body of water, so I thought that it wouldn’t be too dangerous to see if I had any more luck with the blue and turquoise colored wisps which were usually few and far between in my meditating sessions.
At first they continued floating aimlessly away from the stream, while those still in the stream moved at the same pace as the water current moved them. I felt quite frustrated after a solid fifteen minutes of trying to make them approach me, so I decided to use the same method that gave me great success in the past and that was to try and visualize the chemical formula for water in my mind, and use that to see if it would change anything.
Water in its purest state is just one oxygen atom, and two hydrogen atoms connected by a covalent bond, which is something I read in a book a while back. The memory I always slighted for making me remember things I did not wish to recall, was coming in quite handy when it came to sorcery, and it was the same when it came to water sorcery, although not quite in the way I would have preferred.
As soon as I imagined a multitude of oxygen and two hydrogen atoms conjoined together, moving towards my chest where my ‘center’ was, a small pointed mass of water jumped out of the stream and moved towards me. I didn’t have the time to even process what was happening as I saw the wisps of blue arcane power moving towards me while still having my eyes closed and ‘strengthening my mindspace’, but I knew that such a thing was not just an amalgamation of power but had a physical presence that would hit me within moments. I tried to dodge out of the way but the unexpected success of my meditation meant that the water got me drenched once more, and even worse, put out the fire which was in its path.
My frustration and displeasure at being entirely wet and no longer having a fire to dry me off was offset by the fact that the water didn’t hit the clothes that were drying nearby, and as I was shivering and gathering some fresh firewood elsewhere and counting down the seconds before a burst of fire would come out of my finger to light it, I had a wide smile on my face knowing that water sorcery was not out of my reach.
Verorum was a pretty city, which was located on an elevated plateau with many parts of the city sitting on uneven terrain, which meant that much more of it was visible as I was approaching it even though the walls were quite high. I got in without any trouble, unlike Emesa, and made my way to an inn that was very close to the mercenary guild located only a stone’s throw away from the north-western gate.
I didn’t wish to waste much time so went to the guild immediately after settling in, where the commissions on offer were extremely sub par, or out of reach for me who was alone. Bathory did not lie about the fact that there was a multitude of options for mercenaries to make a living in Verorum, with the commissions board being at least four times the size the one I saw in Regan for example.
The problem was that they ranged from extremely terrible, to just unrealistic. There was one which offered to pay seven silvers if I would be part of an escort for a merchant caravan to Hessia, the capital of the Kingdom of Hessia to the north. The problem with this one, was that the journey would take at the very least two weeks, and that was on horseback.
I stood there dumbfounded by the commissions on offer for a while, with a clerk likewise approaching me here and asking if I needed help with reading them. I politely declined and left the mercenary guild to the sound of many recruiters for mercenary bands outside, who shouted at the top of their lungs trying to attract potential recruits to their group.
This was something that actually caught my eye, as they spun tales of how great the pay was in a mercenary group that would take on some of the more dangerous commissions, but would also allow one to have safety in numbers.
I wasn’t keen on throwing my hat into the ring with strangers just yet however, as my money pouch still contained enough to visit another city in search of better employment prospects. This was exactly what I did the next morning, already having overheard last night in my inn that there was a shortage of mercenaries to the south, in one of the smaller cities in Targis.
I traveled south for only a day, with great excitement and optimism for the money I would be able to earn in the near future, and camped out that evening in the wilderness, without lighting a fire. Nature’s call pulled me away from the place where I had set up my tent and left Des’, and as I needed to disrobe I left my money pouch at my campsite.
Since I wanted to avoid the terrible smell during my sleep I went about four minutes’ walk away, which I thought was close enough that I could hear Des’ should something bad happen. To my surprise, I returned to see that not only was Des’ missing from the place where I secured his reins, but so was the pouch with all of my money that I had left in his saddle bag.