Chapter 126: Ronald

FieryKathy

It doesn’t take us terribly long to start encountering the first couple of shops and stalls that belong to the Dwarger capital’s main square. There’s still quite a lot of buzz going around. People buying all kinds of things here and there. Market sales people crying out their prices to gain people’s attention. From the look of it, it was back to business as usual. Not a hint or a sign that the city had been besieged recently. 

“Ah, there’s a spice stall.” Hilda lazily points towards a stall in front of us. The market vendor must’ve seen that, because as we come closer she smiles at us.

“Interested in my spices, ladies?” The vendor signs to her entire stall. It’s actually a pretty darn big stall with lots of different spices. Some that I recognize like garlic, ginger and chili but plenty others that I swear I’ve not even seen pictures of. 

“In the matter of fact we are, but it depends on the prices of course.” Hilda smiles as she joins the game called haggling. 

“My prices are the fairest of them all.” The vendor shakes her finger around. “Won’t find any lower than these.” 

“That’s a coincidence, that’s just what all the other vendors on this market are calling out.” Hilda gives the vendor a wink.

“A coincidence indeed.” The tricksy salesperson smirks. “But not all of them know that they have the saviors of the city in front of them.” 

“Oh ho? You seem to know something we don’t?” Hilda’s acting is great but by the smile on the vendor’s face I can tell that she’s not buying it. 

“My brother fought on the wall that day and he told me a pink-haired cat-lady saved him and his friends. You might not realize that this city doesn’t have many pink-haired catgirls.” She smiles at me. 

“Well, I guess our cover is blown.” Hilda smiles back. 

“Tell you what. I also heard from my other brother that you have received a mansion from the city as a thank-you from the council. If you make us your supplier for all things spice related, I’d be offering you a seventy percent discount.” 

“Seventy?” Sam scratches the top of her head. “But how do you even make money off that?” 

“I take it the ‘but’ is still to come.” Hilda halfly replies to Sam’s question.

“Indeed.” The vendor smiles yet again. “Obviously I’m cutting off even more as a thank you for saving the city, but I also want to get a bit of publicity out of this all. And I’d also like to ask you to buy your other food-related products from the guild I am associated with.” 

“Hmmm.” Hilda thinks for a second. “Can we get similar deals with them?” 

“Most probably. I can’t guarantee seventy percent, but they’ll most probably offer a pretty sizeable discount as well.”   

“Alright…” Hilda looks the vendor up and down. “Hmm, in other cases I’d go around and look for better deals. But I like the variety your stall offers and the deal is pretty good indeed.” 

“So, do we have a deal?” The vendor reaches out her hand. 

“You do if you give us a list and the location of your guild partners.” Hilda waits a second to reach her hand out as well. 

“I have something even better.” The vendor grins and suddenly ducks under her counter before popping up a couple of seconds later and she then pops a piece of paper in Sam’s hand. “We have flyers.” 

“Deal.” Hilda shakes her hand. 

After the deal, our small party buys a small bag of different spices. Most of them are the spices we all know, although Hilda also selected a couple that the vendor lady recommended. The food stalls that are connected to the same guild are also not that far away from each other so in a short amount of time we manage to buy pretty much all kinds of food we need and even some supply contracts on top of that. 

“So, what’s the next stop?” Sam asks, munching on a piece of dried jerky before offering some to me. Which I gladly accept of course. 

“Furniture and things like that.” Hilda quickly replies as Sam also gives her a piece. “But definitely do call out if you see anything in one of the stalls you like. We have plenty of money.” 

Sadly for us and for the vendors, nothing really pulls our interest until Hilda stops at a showroom of a shop. “Wow!” 

“What do you see, Hilda?” I stop as Sam and I had started walking a little bit ahead of our fearless leader. 

“Look, this store is full of clocks.” 

“Clocks? What’s so interesting about clocks.” Sam asks.

Hilda just waves us over. “Look at this and you’ll see what I mean.” 

Sam and I come closer and look into the shop as well. In the showroom are multiple clocks displayed, some of them having glass panes in the front so you can very clearly see the engraved mechanisms inside of them.

“Wow.” Sam and I say at the same time. 

“See, amazing isn’t it?” 

We then hear the doorbell ringing as a very old Dwarger man steps out with his walking stick. He adjusts his monocle, which looks like some kind of telescope. “Young ones, would you be interested in taking a closer look inside my shop?” 

Hilda looks at Sam and I, we give her a nod. “Yes, Sir. We definitely would.” 

The very old man nods slowly and waits for us to meet him at the door. He then leads us inside. 

Inside the shop there are many more mechanisms of all sorts. 

“Ah, you don’t only sell clocks?” Hilda asks the man. 

“Clocks sell very well…” The old man replies slowly. “Some of my mechanisms don’t pull in the people, because people do not know what it does. But everyone knows what a clock is, don’t they?” 

“That’s very true.” Sam replies as she kneels down next to a table. There’s a little birdy sitting on top of it, with yellow and green feathers. “Is this a mechanism too?” 

“No, sweet girl, that’s my pet, Ronald.” As soon as the man says this, the little birdy flies up, spooking Sam for just a sec, and then he lands on top of the old man’s head. “Ronald’s a good boy.”  

“I can see that.” Hilda chuckles, probably more at Sam’s reaction than at the bird. 

“You sell a bit of everything then?” I ask. 

“That depends on what you mean with everything, dear girl.” The man chuckles in his fist. Ronald the birb just happily bobs along. “Sorry, I am a bit pedantic at times. But I definitely do sell a lot.” The old Dwarger man leads us by another display, this one is entirely filled with Ronald look-alikes. This utterly confused Sam. 

“Please don’t tell me these are all actual birds.” 

“No, these are, in fact, mechanisms I have made. Back when I wanted to make Ronald the mascot of the shop, but sadly it never really caught on.” 

“Because they don’t fly?” Hilda asks.

“No, they do fly.” The old man stops next to the display case for a second. “They just had a tendency to explode.” 

“Ah…” Sam backs away slightly from the display case. 

“It was a minor thing and I’ve fixed it since then… but people still don’t really trust it.” 

“What do they cost?” I ask. 

“Just one gold Dwargon.” 

I look at Hilda. 

“If you want to buy it, buy it.” She smiles back. 

“Are you sure Ami?” Sam asks, clearly more hesitant than I am. 

“He said it’s fine…” I look back at the Dwarger man. 

“I have a 100% money-back guarantee when it explodes. I’ll even go as far to say that I’ll give you double the amount of money back.” 

Hilda gives me a nod. “So, want to buy it, Ami?” 

“Yes please.” I happily nod in return. 

Hilda hands the man a golden Dwargon from her pouch which the man gladly accepts and he then opens the display case. 

“If you would, little lady.” He invites me to stand in front of the bird he takes out of the display case. When I do so he taps the head of the little birdy and its wings slowly start to clap. They speed up and speed up until suddenly all movements stop. A couple of seconds later the bird starts moving like any other bird would, looking around and then at me. 

“What did it do?” Sam asks, her hand is on the hilt of her dagger that’s strapped to her hip. 

“It had to be calibrated to its new owner.” The Dwarger man calmly explains. The little bird flies up, and lands on my head. Just as Ronald had done before. It’s surprisingly light for a bird whose insides are presumably made out of metal. It’s little paws actually tickle me a little so I start to giggle. 

“If you want to let it rest, just tap its head twice. To unpause it again, tap it twice once more. As for the other features, I’ll let you explore them on your own time.” 

“That’s a bit vague for a salesman, isn’t it?” Sam asks.

“It’s part of the fun.” The old man laughs. 

“Surprise mechanics, ey?” Hilda chuckles as well.

-As long as my birdy doesn’t explode I’m more than happy with it.- 

FieryKathy