“Wandi, This may be a stupid question, but I know what pennies, dimes, dollars, eagles, and crowns are, but what is money… you know... worth?”

She tapped her teeth for a moment. “That is pretty flexible, based on quality, ingredients, and even certain popular names or locations. A decent loaf of bread on Main Street costs about a dime, but the same loaf from an unknown baker in the industrial quarter would be five pennies. A cheap loaf that’s part sawdust in the poor quarter might go two for a penny, while a slice of the same loaf smeared with lard or butter in a greasy tavern might be two pennies. It’s kind of a guessing game, and merchants get rich by guessing right a lot.”

She shrugged, “Our lunches cost a dime each, for the sandwiches and cider, and that’s generally a price I look for. At a fancy restaurant like the Arms or the Golden Hare, you could wind up blowing two or three dollars per person easily, not including the wines.”

“So what about gear for delvers?”

“You can get a decent used pistol for about an eagle, and a rifle for twelve dollars. New, you are looking at probably two eagles each if you get a good name. Good gunsmiths are expensive. Your armor is probably worth five dollars total since it’s good quality and decent leather. Mine was an eagle, but that’s because I have boobs, and designers automatically jack up the price on anything made for women because they assume we are desperate for good names and fashionable appearance, so if your armor is designed not to squash your boobs and fit your hips, you might as well double the price.”

She shrugged, “I don’t really begrudge the costs, though, since I know full well that making armor that is both comfortable and protective for a woman is probably a lot more difficult than making an oversized steel garbage pail a man can wear.”

She looked at her beloved buss. “This and my pistol were both made custom for me by Raspail. They were expensive, but they are very powerful, have greatly reduced kick, are made for my hand size, and the handgun can clear the holster clean and quickly. He threw in both for a gold crown, because… you know, favors, and family.”

“Favors and family?”

She nodded, “Yeah. He was not very well-liked, so I fronted for him for a while and didn’t make him pay, plus, you know, he married my sister Melita.”

“Melita is your sister?”

She nodded, “Different mother, but yeah, I have a lot of sisters.”

“How many?”

She thought about it, mumbling under her breath. Wow. “twenty-six. But Kamli and I have the same blood mother. Five moms, though. Also three brothers.” She shrugged, “My sword is actually pretty basic. Five dollars new for an arming sword, although you can cut off a dollar if you don’t mind the fact that it came off a dead guy but is still pretty new.”

I thought about that, “So that means…”

She smiled slightly, “That means that a good rapier, even if it is a lot lighter, could potentially cost you a good eagle. But a spear stick, if it is metal reinforced with a decent blade, would probably only cost you three dollars new, but I doubt you will find any used. They aren’t that popular.”

“No, I meant, that means if I were to ask someone to court you, I’d have to ask nine people, including your brothers? And maybe get past a shield of 26 girls trying to protect you from a jerk?”

She laughed, “No, you’d have to ask me. But if you wanted to get old-fashioned about it, you could ask my mom, Kasta Cooper, and probably Kamli since she’s protective, but she’d just throw me at you and smile like an idiot. My pop? He’d be like… “Is she one of mine? Just make sure you pay her bride price.” and then forget about you.”

“Wait, bride price?”

She laughed, “No, that’s not a thing, but my dad is greedy as hell and would ask for one if he thought you were stupid enough to fall for it. It’s actually the other way around, at least for aspected humans. Many well-regarded males would demand some kind of financial privilege for taking on another female unless she were particularly skilled or powerful. Food can get expensive.”

“So to change the subject again…”

She shrugged, “To fully outfit you, I am looking at about a crown total if you want to stick to a pistol and a reinforced short spear, both of which you are very good at. It’s a hit, but I can afford it, and I have already accounted for it. It’s a gift to get our new potential lawkeeper started, but if you have to pay it back, a couple of rifts should do it easily.”

I shrugged, “Are reinforced rifles with bayonets a thing?”

She nodded, “Yep. Popular actually. If that’s what you want, we could probably get you a reinforced carbine… it’s like a rifle but has a self-cycling magazine like a pistol. And you can affix a nice, long bayonet dagger to it.”

I grinned, “Yes, I know carbines. Most of that spear stuff, and shooting, were just side effects of my training with heavy carbines, bayonets, and staff fighting. If a carbine can be used the way I used my spear, I’d be far happier with that… I can save a pistol for when I become a lawkeeper and need something smaller to walk around with.”

She nodded slowly, “That will probably save some money. To be honest, though, if your whippoorwill idea works…”

“Spindizzy, or maybe ring rifle?”

“Right. If that works, and you tell Raspail you are interested in pistols and carbines, he’ll probably build you something amazing in a month that uses it, in lieu of part of your ten percent. I’d take it, whatever it is, and not even argue about the value. He’s usually money short because of bad spending habits, which is mostly my sister’s fault.”

“Melita has expensive tastes?”

She shook her head, “No, she buys JUNK. Lots of it. If it’s interesting and maybe broken, she pays way too much for it. You saw how full of garbage his lab was? That’s mostly her fault. Admittedly, it gives him some great ideas, which is why they are still married despite her being stupid with money, but as soon as he gets a commission, most of it goes to more scrap just stacked up by the both of them.”

She chuckled, “Honestly if you could get that chemical bullet thing going, she’d probably go crazy. Melita’s more of an alchemist-inventor than Raspail is, making stuff like poison cannons and flame-tossers. If you asked her permission to court me after giving her that, she’d probably try to get my clothes off and shove me into your bed. Wearing golden bells and… I don’t know, a top hat or something. She’s weird.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I was very thoughtful. “You know, I think I may have just remembered the third ingredient for gunpowder, the chemical explosive stuff that’s used in those bullets I was talking about. Charcoal, sulfur, and then I remembered it was called saltpeter, but it wasn’t until just now that I remembered what it meant, potassium nitrate.” I hopped to my feet. “How long do you think it would take us to get to the workshop?”

She looked at me in confusion, “Wait, are you actually serious?”

I grinned, “This may be hard to explain, but I am not as old as I used to be, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was reborn. Do you mind if I am a bit crude?”

She shook her head, “Nope, be as crude as you have to be.”

I nodded, “I was a fifty-year-old man. For the last fifteen years of my life, I was dying as my body rotted out from under me. For the last ten of those years, I was stuck in a bed, slowly growing fatter and fatter as my body shut down and had to be trimmed away by doctors to keep me alive. I haven’t even had a cute girl LOOK at me with anything other than disgust for ten years, and I couldn’t even masturbate. I could barely feel my hands, and honestly, I had no idea if I even HAD a penis or if the doctors had to remove it for the last two years.”

She looked embarrassed but nodded.

“Then, my lovely mother stuffed me into an icy coffin to freeze me for only God knows how many decades or millennia, hoping someone would invent a cure.” I pointed at the sky. “I was floating way out there, among the stars, with a bunch of other frozen corpses of half-dead hopefuls.”

“Then I got woken up by voices that were weird and creepy as hell, belonging to about the most non-human creatures you can imagine, and they threw me into a rift full of dead things, like skeletons and ghouls, so I could bring them the rewards. And at the time I was too stupid to care. Heck, I saw a cute girl getting violently raped in the first rift, and I came damned close to joining in the fun. Like I said, I am not a NICE man, but I am a self-controlled one, and I want to be good, but in my mental state, I barely resisted and slaughtered the goblins gang-raping her. Blood or sex and I chose blood.”

I shrugged, “And now, I am restored to the body of a twenty-something kid, a better body than my best in my last life, and the moment I resign myself to being a hermit, wandering along the road, I am immediately thrust into the company of the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life. Ever.”

“Sure she has a tail, which is very different, but it suits her, and she is incredibly nice, generous, and excited for me, and even gives me food and a place to sleep when I am pretty much at my current rock bottom. Her personality is exciting and vibrant, exactly the kind I like in a girl, she’s not money-hungry or searching for fame, and I pretty much desperately want to curl up in that incredibly soft tail and try to make her scream my name for days if she wants to.”

I sighed. “I know it’s a bit early, and I don’t know her very well, but so far she believes in me, even after I told her the absolutely worst parts. And she’s still the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, so I want to know what I have to do to actually convince her that I want to get to know her better, and maybe even try to find out if we have a future together. So yeah, serious.”

She looked… almost angry. “I already told you I’d become your deputy, what more do you want?”

“Uhh...wait, what?”

“Yes, if you become lawkeeper, I will be your deputy. I don’t understand what you are asking for.”

I scratched my head, “Wait. I think… maybe we are having some kind of cultural disconnect here. In my land, a deputy is a guy that the lawman hires to go collect drunks and back him up with a gun when he breaks up a house full of angry criminals. Basically he, or she, is a hired secondary law officer. Most lawkeepers will hire about a dozen or so to help keep the peace, but they are under his authority, and their badges, and training, are as a secondary guard force.”

She looked at me and burst out laughing!

“W… what?”

She tried to talk in between giggles, “You thought that a deputy was some girl, or maybe even a man, that you could just hire off the streets? Someone who is maybe your delve teammate, or drinking buddy, could speak in your name. YOUR name, with YOUR authority. That authority includes summary execution, I might add. You would trust someone that you pay wages to, like a watchman or peacekeeper, or maybe a housemaid?”

“Umm…”

“And you expect her or him to watch your back, protect your life, and support your judgments instantly, and without hesitation, even if that judgment is against a rich idiot or nobleman who would happily pay a thousand times what you can afford as a… salary, to shoot you in the back? That adventurer who you have been delving with, who has NO lawkeeper trait, well, you just think he or she is a decent person who can be trusted.”

“Alright. When you put it that way… it does seem a little uhh… poorly thought out.”

She laughed, “No, a Lawkeeper’s deputy is a lot closer to him than that. And yes, all lawkeepers are male. She speaks in your name because she HAS your name. She understands your judgments because she gains a trait that lets her know what they are. She supports your judgments, always, instantly, because you are as close to her as her life, and her children. She’s there to support you through the thick and the thin, through the worst battle wounds or tragedies, and she offers you ALL of her support, whether you are agonizing over a judgment or if something… umm… comes up in the night.”

“So it’s like mating? Till death do you part?”

She nodded, “And death usually does. But it’s a lot closer than being mated. Males can have giant families, and some of the sister-wives can just sort of be there without being part of the family or ever even meeting with their mate except for children. But a deputy is as close to you as your skin, her life is YOURS. I thought you were just being a completely mean jack-hole by making jokes about permission and stuff like you might turn me down as your deputy completely.”

I sighed. “Well, now I feel like a jack-hole, whatever that is.”

She shrugged, “It’s the southward-facing end of a northbound jack. The part that cabbage comes out of after the jack is done using it. Jacks have soft fur and giant testicles that usually wind up covered in the leftovers. Pretty nasty.”

“Okay, right, I am officially a jack-hole then. A clean one, anyway.”

“It was after you spoke with Kamli. I decided I would become your deputy, and help you recruit only the absolute best. Oracles can… see souls, and she knew that we had matching souls, and would be happy even if life turned to scat for us, which is possible for a lawkeeper, even if we… died for each other.”

She shrugged, “I trust Kamli with my life and my soul. She told me not to marry Miatt, and she was right, and she told me not to sleep with him, and she was right, and then she told him I needed to get out when I could, and that it was the right time because something amazing was coming… so I trusted her this time, and she was right. You are not a nice man, but you are a good man. I was married to a nice man, and it just made me unhappy. And now I am going to someday be the deputy of a good, but not nice man.”

She giggled a little, “Are we still being crude?”

I nodded, “Be my guest, madam.”

She smiled, “I know, without the slightest doubt, that if someone tried to really hurt me, that you would blow their heart out through their spine, or their balls through their head, or cut their head off, or stick a pokey stick in their brain without even the slightest hesitation or thought. And the idea makes me… well… when we get back to town, I need to go home for a few minutes to change my clothes.”

Please materialize two crowns, Jessie.

I felt I could actually feel, my energy halo thin out. It wasn’t severe, but Jessie sucked the energy through the conduit I had connected as quickly as firing off a full cylinder of revolver bullets, and then two heavy coins dropped into the palm of my left hand. I took Wandi’s hand, and then said, “You are absolutely right. If someone breaks the law of family and the law of body like that, I’d end them without hesitation,” then I turned her hand over and dropped the coins into it.

“What’s this for? She asked, opening up her hand and widening her eyes at the glint of gold. “I thought you were broke.”

I chuckled, “I WAS broke. That’s why I needed to unlock my cultivation. The first coin is to help get me outfitted. You know this town, where to get the best deals for the best quality, where to look for more clothes, decent food, maybe some training, and where to look for our first delve together. That’s to help defray the costs.”

“And the second coin?” she asked, looking at me with an oddly indecipherable expression.

I grinned, “That belongs to your father. It’s your bride price. Oh, and I need to talk to your sister about chemical bullets. It would be worth it to see you dressed in bells and a top hat.”