*ding!* The skill [Orienteering] has been acquired!

  Orienteering, huh?

  Zack had heard his fellow soldiers in the Army complain about the land nav course that he had managed to skip out on. Apparently, reading a map was difficult for most people.

  If [Orienteering] was for reading and using maps, maybe there was another skill for actually creating maps.

  Something to consider for later. For right now, he had four more envelopes to deliver.

  At the end of the alley Yarvin called out to him once again.

  “Any trouble with Harvey?”

  “Nah,” Zack replied. “No problems.”

  Yarvin’s eyebrows rose in mild surprise. “That’s unusual. He must be in a good mood.”

  Zack shrugged. “Not anymore, after he took the delivery.”

  Both guards chuckled. “Good luck with the rest of your deliveries, Adventurer.”

  “Thanks!” Zack smiled and went on his way.

  He felt the guards’ gazes slide off his back as he went, no longer the focus of their attention.

  Two more of his deliveries were along the Kingsroad. Another was in a market square down one of the main crossroads, and the last was deep into the southwest corner of the city, where the land rose above the river.

  Forced to a walking pace by the Kingsroad’s congestion, Zack encountered no problems finding his next recipient. A store specializing in fruit, with stands filling nearly the entire sidwalk in front of the store itself, was where he found one Miss Gretchen Hazelthorn.

  “Oh, thank you! I’ve been waiting for this letter.” She signed the receipt in elegant script. “Take an apple for the road.”

  “Thanks, Miss Hazelthorn.”

  “Oh call me Gretchen. Come buy some pears next week, when the shipment comes in!”

  The apple was delicious, and he ate it as he walked, tossing the core into a half-full wastebin. To his surprise, despite the general apparent medieval level of development, there were wastebins at regular intervals along the Kingsroad, and larger dumpsters just inside some of the alleys.

  Come to think of it, Vlad’s top floor apartment had indoor plumbing, too.

  But candles were commonly used for light, even though they had some kind of light crystals.

  It was a strange mix of technologies.

  The last stop on the Kingsroad was a tailor, an artistic wrought-iron depiction of a needle and spool of thread announcing its presence. The door was closed, but opened smoothly on well-oiled hinges when Zack pushed against it. A small bell rang gently as he stepped inside.

  The store was brightly lit by light crystals, and the walls were lined with cloth samples and mannequins wearing several different styles of men’s clothing. Vests, frilly cuffs, and poofy breeches were the fanciest style, while a more conservative mannequin wore a simple blouse under a patterned vest, loose trousers down to just below the knee, and tights with leather shoes polished to a shine.

  “Welcome to Lamont’s,” an attendant said, emerging from the back. He stepped around a counter and approached Zack directly, stopping a polite distance away and bowing slightly. “My name is Hector, how can I help you today?”

  Despite Zack’s humble blouse, trousers, and rough leather shoes, there was no hint of disdain in Hector’s demeanor.

  “I’ve got a delivery for Mister Jacques Lamont.”

  “Of course, please wait one moment.”

  Hector withdrew to the back, and Zack walked up to the counter and got the receipt ready for signing. The wait was a fair bit longer than a minute, but eventually a man with very light brown hair and a thin mustache came out from the back.

  “Sorry for the wait,” he said with a soft voice. “I am Jacques Lamont.”

  “Jack,” Zack introduced himself. Jacques quickly signed the receipt and passed it back to Zack, who then handed him the envelope, slightly heavier than the others.

  Without waiting, Jacque carefully unfolded the envelope and pulled out a sheaf of parchments. “More commissions…” he muttered.

  Zack turned to leave, but then felt a gaze on his back.

  “Wait a moment. Jack, was it?”

  When he turned around, Jacques was staring intently at his clothing.

  “Come here, closer.”

  Zack obliged.

  Without asking, he rubbed his fingers along the seam on Zack’s shoulder where the sleeve was sewn onto the body of the blouse.

  “This stitching is quite good… Although here, is not so good…” he muttered. Zack and Millie had worked together on this blouse during his early [Sewing] training, so the quality was obviously different where Zack had sewn compared to Millie’s examples.

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  “Where did you get this blouse?” he asked, looking up directly into Zack’s eyes. His gaze was penetrating.

  “I helped make it,” Zack said, and Jacques’ eyes widened.

  “You [Sew]?”

  “Sometimes.” He pointed to the seam joining the front and back body parts. “I did this part.” Then he turned and showed the other seam. “My mentor did this part.”

  Jacques spun a finger, directing Zack to turn back to the seam he had worked on, and leaned in to inspect it closely. “Is not so bad. Hmmm… not bad…”

  After a little more inspection, Jacques stood up straight.

  “How would you like a job, Jack? Fifteen lindra a day to start, twenty a day once you improve? It’s a better life than Adventuring.” He said the word with disdain and an exaggerated shudder.

  “Thank you for the offer, but no.” Zack declined with a smile.

  Jacques sighed dramatically. “And I don’t suppose your mentor would be interested? Not even for two fortin a day?”

  Zack couldn’t stop his eyebrows raising. That was ten times what Jacques had offered him, and was something like $400 a day in American dollars.

  “I can ask her if she’s interested,” he said.

  “Please do,” Jacques nodded. “I have more work than I can handle on my own these days.”

  Jacques slid Zack two lindra coins. “A tip. Do not forget to ask your mentor.”

  “Thanks.” Zack swept the coins off the counter and left.

  He wondered if Millie would be interested. Come to think of it, how much was the Director paying the troupe’s actors? Would it be impolite to ask?

  He’d ask Ronaldo about it later. If it was a social faux-pas, he’d be the most forgiving, knowing that Zack wasn’t a Forti native.

  Zack left the shop, the bell tinkling behind him, and retraced his step back up the Kingsroad until he reached a large intersection. He had to dodge between cart traffic, like everyone else, to cross the road and then jogged up a slightly smaller but less congested road to a large market plaza. Past rows and rows of stalls selling all kinds of goods, from clothes to cooked food to raw ingredients to tools to even a stall carrying leather-bound books inside a clearsteel display case, there was a large warehouse with wide open doors. A City Guard stood outside, and within the warehouse Zack could see large piles of grain in open bays, and merchants filling sacks and taking them to a scale to be weighed.

  As he approached, envelopes in hand, the guard beckoned him over. “Delivery?” he asked.

  “Yeah, for…” Zack pretended to check the envelope again, though he had already memorized it. The name was conspicuously foreign.

  “For Baron Nan Fao Sheng.”

  “Ah, you’ll find him at the rice bay, in the back. And, by the way, Baron and Nan are the same thing, you don’t have to say the ‘Nan.’”

  “Got it, thanks.”

  Zack stepped inside and made his way past various types of grains until he found the rice, visually distinct with its bright whiteness. The pile sat on a large, brightly patterned cloth rather than on the stone-paved ground directly.

  Baron Fao Sheng was clearly Asian-looking, compared to everyone else Zack had seen in Forti. But he stood nearly seven feet tall and was as well-muscled as Fyodor, wearing a sleeveless vest of embroidered silk and loose breeches and a thick gold chain. His hair was black, pulled back tightly into a long ponytail and he had a thin mustache and neatly styled goatee and onyx-black eyes.

  On his belt hung a large curved sword.

  He glared at Zack as he approached.

  “I have a delivery for Baron Fao Sheng,” Zack said, and Fao Sheng imperiously held out his hand.

  Zack handed him the receipt. “Please sign here.”

  Fao Sheng exhaled through his nose and glared at Zack a moment more.

  [Calm Down].

  The man was highly intimidating. He looked like he could take apart anyone in the warehouse with his bare hands, let alone his sword.

  This was a Baron?

  *ding!* The skill [Resist Intimidation] has been acquired!

  Ah, now it made sense.

  He likely had the same [Intimidate] skill that Zack had picked up.

  Seeing Zack’s lack of reaction, the Baron stopped his glaring and signed the receipt, handing it back. Zack handed over the envelope.

  “Thanks, have a nice day, Baron.”

  A low rumbling groan was his only reply.

  On his way out, his business now done, Zack noticed that there were large slate signs hung above each bay, listing the type of grain, its quality, and the price per pound. He paused out of the way and looked over his shoulder at the sign above Baron Fao Sheng’s rice.

  ‘White Rice. Grade 3. One Fortin twenty-five lindra per pound’

  It was by far the most expensive grain in the warehouse. Very few merchants were visiting the Baron compared to the other grain sellers.

  Maybe that was why he looked so angry.

  Or maybe that was just how he naturally was.

  Zack probably wasn’t eating rice any time soon.

  He exited the warehouse and checked the sun. It was only mid-afternoon, so he took a break to check out the market stalls and get a sense for how things were priced.

  Information was power, after all.

  A cheap knife with a four inch blade was ten lindra. A high quality dagger with a twelve-inch blade was forty-two lindra, and came with a simple leather sheath. A small-bow like the one he had trained with in the Castle went for one fortin, and the cheapest arrows were five lindra each. A quiver was ninety lindra, but came with ten arrows.

  On the one hand, Zack already had the [Archery] skill.

  On the other hand, a knife was far cheaper than a bow, quiver, and arrows, and he had [The Learn]. It would probably be easy enough to pick up a skill for it. Although getting that close to a thurgenrat sounded like a good way to get bitten.

  He looked around but there were no spears for sale. The next best thing was a long thrusting sword, similar to a rapier, which was listed for sale at three fortin.

  That wasn’t happening anytime soon.

  Lastly, Zack made his way to the bookseller’s stall, past a number of other specialty stalls selling things like potions in small glass bottles, outrageously expensive bundles of dried herbs, spices in small containers sold by the ounce, and even a stall selling nothing but light crystals in various sizes.

  The bookseller smiled at Zack when he stopped to check the titles, and Zack nodded back by way of greeting.

  The cheapest book was twenty fortin.

  Zack nearly choked when he saw the price tag. No wonder Matthias, the librarian in the Royal Castle, had been so outraged at the idea of taking books out of the library.

  That book happened to be a cookbook of some kind, titled Chef Gordin’s Recipes.

  The prices only went up from there, and none of the titles piqued Zack’s interest until the very last book on display.

  Magic Perception for Beginners. Price: 200 fortin.

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