Chapter 5 - Profits

Ryu strolled through the southern market whistling a tune, his purse a little heavier than it had this morning. He had just finished selling the herbs he had foraged from the wood outside of town to some of the local apothecaries. The pay wasn’t great, especially given how long he had spent hunting and picking herbs, but coin was coin.

 

Ryu scratched his chest where his bandages rubbed against his skin. He would have liked to buy something from the apothecary to help with the itches, but he preferred having more than a couple coppers in his purse more. There were times he honestly wondered if vendors short-changed him on a whim or if there was an unspoken rate going on behind the scenes. A bag of assorted herbs picked at their peak? Two silvers. Oh, you’re an elf? One silver. A Yoru? Here’s a handful of coppers to shut you up, now leave!  

Fortunately, Ryu had been able to use the news about lindrakes outside the city to his advantage. Word about them had spread like a lice outbreak in the Quarter. Only the stupid and the truly desperate would risk leaving the protection of the city walls to dig around for herbs with those beasts hanging around. The sort who wasn’t likely to return with much and even less that was decent quality.

   

Apothecaries valued the quality of their ingredients more than chefs in those high-end cafes Sumire told him about. The ones Ryu had visited paid him a little fairer than others and that was only because they knew he had the brains to bring them herbs that weren’t browning and wilting. He had been able to wring a couple extra silvers’ worth out of them by leveraging how long it might be until they’d get another delivery with the lindrakes out in the forest. Flashing the bandages he had on thanks to one of the beasts hadn’t hurt either.

The news of lindrakes had earned him some added coin, but it was a double-edged sword. Ryu wouldn’t be able to forage again until they were dealt with. Same went for hunting. They were some of the only skills his mother had been able to pass down to him and they were all that had kept him afloat since he had stopped thieving, if only just.

A caw from above shook Ryu from his thoughts. He looked up to see Sora fluttering down to his shoulder. She preened a bit as he scratched her neck before turning her attention to the path ahead.

Ryu followed her gaze and saw a crowd having formed near the southern gate, blocking his way. Such gatherings weren’t uncommon. Most were eager for something to help break up the usual drudgery of life in the slums.

This didn’t feel like an audience for some drunken brawl or other street theater, though. The crowd was too quiet, mutters and whispers floating in the air instead of cheers and jeers. It put an uneasy feeling in Ryu’s stomach as he tried to see what was happening.

 

The crowd being too tight to push through, Ryu hustled down the block looking for something he could use as a perch. Soon enough, he found an alley with an old crate laying amongst the other refuse. He hopped up on it and finally saw what had cast a stupor over the crowd.

   

Four men ambled along the street from the gate. All wore guard uniforms, each stained red to some degree. They all looked dead on their feet, like they didn’t even notice the crowd watching them as they walked.

 

Behind them, a pair of guards carried a fifth figure on a stretcher. A cloak was draped over it, but the crimson that bled through the cloth told enough of the story.

Whispers drifted up from the crowd, all wondering what had happened. Some made guesses, but Ryu didn’t listen. He knew the answer as soon as he saw the rips and tears in the uniforms. His shirt had looked much the same when he had made it back to town the previous night.

 

As the guards walked past, Ryu recognized a couple of them. It was a surprise to see Nishi amongst them. He didn’t know the Taijin well, but his face had been a common sight around the Elven Quarter growing up. Now that face was marred in bruises. His eye was swollen shut and his nose looked broken. Despite the blood on his sleeves, Ryu didn’t see any damage like that of the other uniforms.

 

Ryu didn’t recognize the guard standing nearest to him. He must have been new. Ryu made it a habit to keep track of faces among the city guard, especially those assigned to the Quarter. It was a good way to know which ones to steer clear of.

 

The new face seemed to keep himself between Nishi and the other two guards, who Ryu recognized as Sergeant Leon and guardsman Evans. Neither were known as friendly faces to those in the Quarter. Ryu took the newcomer straying closer to Nishi than them as a potential good sign, but remained cautious.

 

He tried not to think too much about the guard on the stretcher. Just glancing at it had made his shoulders itch.

 

Having had his fill, Ryu hopped down from his perch and leaned against the crate. Soon enough, the guards trudged past and the crowd began to disperse as everyone returned to going about their business. Some muttered amongst themselves about what the guards while others seemed to push such thoughts from their minds as they went about their day.

 

Ryu stayed for a long moment, his hand drifting up towards his shoulder while his face took on a distant expression. Sora softly chirped, nuzzling her feathery head against his cheek, snapping him out of his daze. His hand dropped back to his side as he took a deep breath before pushing off from the crate. Ryu quickly crossed the street and walked the rest of the way back to the stables in silence. His good mood from before had waned and he just wanted to get back home now.

 

Climbing the rungs up to his loft, Ryu laid out on his bedroll as Sora flew from his shoulder to her makeshift nest. He pulled his coin pouch out and cradled it in his hand. It had the same heft as before, but it felt so much lighter now.

 

He’d have to find some odd jobs to help tie him over until he could go foraging again. There weren’t many who’d hire him, even for measly jobs no one wanted, but he’d hunt around. There had to be one or two. Even a few coppers were better than going back outside the city and rolling the dice with lindrakes skulking for their next meal.

 

Thinking about the lindrakes brought images of the guards back to the front of Ryu’s mind. The blood on their uniforms. The bruises on Nishi’s face. The body on the stretcher.

Ryu shook those thoughts from his mind and reached for his bag, the one he had taken with him into the ruins. Reaching inside, he pulled out one of the Dwarven locks he and Zach had found along with the key that went with it. It still astounded him how good of a condition it was in despite who knew how many centuries underground. Part of him wished he had given it to Zach to sell with the rest of what they had brought back, but Ryu had thought of a better potential use for it.

 

Taking out his picks, he began probing the lock and its inner workings. Zach hadn’t been the only one studying what they had found in the ruins. Once he had taken a good look at the key for it, Ryu understood why he hadn’t been able to pick it when they had first found it. The ridges and grooves etched into the key’s tooth clued him into the finer mechanisms fitted into the small lock.

 

Unlike when he had been down in the ruins, tired and impatient, Ryu took his time with the lock, feeling out what his picks could access and move. He soon found purchase and felt something shift inside the lock. Ryu tried applying a little extra pressure with his pick. The pick moved slightly before whatever it had snagged onto sprang back, snapping the pick.

 

Ryu banged his fist against the floorboards, tossing the ruined pick aside. Sora squawked from her perch, eyeing the boy with a concerned tilt of her head.

 

“Bad time?”

 

Ryu sat up, finding Zach’s head poking above the edge of the loft on the ladder.

 

“I’m fine,” Ryu said, tamping down his frustration. “What’s up?”

 

“Got your half of the pay from Abby, what else?” Zach replied as he climbed the rest of the way up the ladder and took a seat across from Ryu, well away from the edge of the loft.

 

He reached into his bag and pulled out a small money pouch. The sack jingled lightly as he tossed it to Ryu.

 

Ryu untied the drawstring on the pouch and promptly picked his jaw up off the floor as he looked inside.

 

“T… ten silver!?” he stuttered. This was fifty times what his herbs had earned him!

 

“Eleven, actually,” Zach remarked, clearly enjoying the look on his friend’s face. “Abby tossed in a couple extra for one of the pots we found down there.”

 

Ryu was at a complete loss for words. He couldn’t remember th last time he had held this much coin before. Had he ever held coin like this before? He knew relic hunting was seen as high-risk, high reward, but this?

 

“You’re telling me,” Ryu said slowly, his mind doing the calculations and double checking its math. “She paid up us twenty-two… twenty-two silver… for your notes, a dagger, and an old clay pot?”

 

“I did tell you that taking those notes were important, hadn’t I?” Zach answered.

 

“But… but twenty silvers worth?”

 

“The notes were worth ten. The rest came from selling her the dagger we found.”

 

Ryu nodded, beginning to understand their profits. The dagger was in good condition that only a dwarven made blade could be on top of having those weird engravings. Perfect piece for a student eager for research.

 

“You make any sense of those markings on the knife?”

 

Zach rocked his hand. “Translation’s slow going,” he said. “Cyrus was able to point me in the right direction, though.”

 

“Cyrus?” Ryu said, suddenly alert. “He doesn’t know about the ruins, does he?”

 

They couldn’t afford for word about the ruins to get out. If Cyrus knew, the church and Rosar Knights were sure to follow. Ryu couldn’t think of a worse group to catch wind of their discovery. Even Arthur would still let them explore and keep what they earned, albeit after he took his slice of the pie in exchange for his silence.

 

“Calm down,” Zach assured. “I told him that Abby recently acquired it, didn’t say from who.”

 

Ryu let out an anxious breath. “Good,” he sighed. “You had me scared there, you know that?”

 

“How do you think I felt? I’m the one who had to ask him what language those engravings even were.”

 

The two of them broke into laughter. It was almost nostalgic, like when they and Sumire had gotten up to mischief as children. They had gotten caught more often than not, but there were the rare occasions when they had made it away with their little tricks. Granted, it wasn’t quite as sweet as sneaking something past Reinhart, but the pouch of silver in Ryu’s hand came mighty close.

 

“So what were you able to find out?” Ryu asked as his and Zach’s laughter began to subside.

 

“Well, according to Cyrus, the inscription is in Imperial,” Zach said. “I’m still working my way through translating it, but the blade seems to be engraved with some sort of dragon blessing.”

 

“Hold on, what?” Ryu cut in, holding up his hand. Even Sora had her head cocked as she watched the boys from her perch. “You mean we found an Imperial dagger in a Dwarven ruin?”

 

It made about as much sense as finding a Kyamese knife under Reinhart’s pillow. Dwarves had rebelled against the old Draconic Empire. It was the oldest tale there was in Vestria and one everyone person knew by heart. The war had reshaped the world. Humans had ended up siding with the dwarves while elves remained loyal to the dragons only to be driven back to their islands when their emperors abandoned the continent.

 

The role of elves in the conflict had been a recurring lesson when Ryu had been at St. Anne’s. The clergy had seemed to make it point to not let anyone forget that fact, be they human or elf.

 

“That’s what it seems to be,” Zach said with a shrug. The oddity of it all wasn’t lost on him, but he was loathed to ignore the obvious facts.

 

Ryu shook his head, trying to make sense of what he was hearing. “What about the inscription?” he asked. “You sure it was a blessing? Not ‘may this blade pierce a dragon’s heart’ or something?”

 

“No, it seems to be a blessing,” Zach replied thoughtfully. “I’m still working through the translation. Imperial isn’t like Common or Dwarven, but I think I have that much correct.”

 

“Okay,” Ryu sighed. It still made no sense to him, but he knew better than to question Zach’s academic skills. “Any idea why it was down there?”

 

Zach crossed his arms, considering his answer. “It’s still too early to make much theory,” he said eventually. “We weren’t able to explore that deep into it, so we didn’t find much in the way of clues. I tried looking up if there were any historical records tied to that area, but there’s only so much that goes back that far.”

 

“In other words, you have no clue,” Ryu summarized flatly.

 

“Like I said, we don’t have much to go on,” Zach replied, not denying the remark. “We might be looking at a dwarven workshop pre-dating the draconic war. That might explain there being an Imperial dagger there, but that’s a shot in the dark, if we’re being honest.”

 

Zach was right. It was shot in the dark, but it also made some sense. Dwarves had been the smiths and architects of the empire. If the ruins really had been blocked since before the war, it would explain why the dagger had been there.

 

And if it really was a workshop, who knew what else might be down there?

 

Ryu’s fingers tightened around the pouch of silver.

 

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Zach remarked, breaking Ryu out of his thoughts.

 

“What?”

 

Zach rolled his eyes. “I know that look in your eyes, Ryu. The dagger was a good find, but we don’t know what else might be down there. Could be dozens more. Could be nothing else to be found.”' 

“Fine,” Ryu sighed. “But seriously, if there’s more stuff down there like the dagger, what do you think you’d do with all the coin we’d make?”

 

“Not sure. I’m not just doing this for the money.”

 

Now Ryu was the one to roll his eyes. “No, you just risk life and limb with me for the sake of discovery, right? Come on, isn’t there anything you’d like to do with all that coin? I’m sure Sumire wouldn’t mind you spending a little of it on her.”

 

“Get of it,” Zach chided. “Despite what you might think, one set of ruins isn’t going to set us for life.”

 

“Oh, I know,” Ryu replied casually. Whatever fortunes waited for them down in those tunnels would run out one day. Especially if he tried spending his share of the profits trying to improve his living arrangements. Ryu had his eye on something with a bit more staying power.

 

Thinking about it made him remember the guards he had seen coming back through the gate. His mirth died some as his hand drifted up towards his shoulder.

 

“Say, you hear anything about the guards taking care of those lindrakes?” Ryu asked.

 

“I heard they assigned a hunting party to take care of them,” Zach replied thoughtfully. “Hadn’t heard much else. You that eager to get back to the ruins?”

 

If Ryu were to be honest, yes, he was eager to return to exploring the ruins. What he had seen at the gate shook him, but it also reminded him of why he went down into that tunnel to begin with.

 

“I just… I just want to get done exploring it before someone else finds that cellar and tries to horn in on our find.”

 

Zach nodded his head in understanding. “Same, but no one’s going near there with those lindrakes skulking around. No use worrying about it for now.”

 

“You’re right,” Ryu sighed. He hated admitting it, even if only to himself. There wasn’t anything he could do about it.

 

Sometimes those words felt like they defined his life.

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Author's Note

Had a lot of fun writing this chapter!
Ryu has the most reason to be exploring the ruins and I liked bringing his current financial state to the for. On a side note, I think this is the first time I've had to think about the economy of a world in how much a copper can get you. 
Ryu and Zach meeting up was super fun. I always love writing chill scenes between characters and letting their personalities take center stage. I like to think this chapter helped get across the fact these two have been friends for ages.

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