Calrel_04

  Harwick's General Goods occupied the rgest storefront on the square's northern edge, a timber-framed building with goods spilling onto tables outside - rope coiled in neat bundles, cy pots stacked in pyramids, bolts of cloth in colors that ranged from undyed wool to something approaching blue.

  A hand-painted sign above the door showed a pair of crossed keys, though what that had to do with general goods, Leo couldn't say.

  The smell inside was dry and dusty - wood shavings, mp oil, the faint mustiness of cloth that had been sitting on shelves too long. Sunlight filtered through clouded windows, catching motes of dust that drifted zy in the still air.

  A woman stood behind the counter, tallying something in a ledger. She looked up as they entered.

  Nessa Harwick was somewhere in her te twenties, with a face that might have been pretty if she ever rexed it. Sharp cheekbones, sharper eyes, hair pulled back in a bun so tight it looked painful. She wore a dress the color of dishwater and an expression that suggested she'd already judged them and found them wanting.

  "Marsh," her voice was ft. "You still owe me for those candles."

  "Nessa, my favorite creditor," Marsh's ugh was the kind that usually charmed people out of demanding what he owed them. "Worry not, your days of chasing me down for a few candle nubs are over. I've come into money."

  Nessa finished her line with a decisive flourish before lifting her head. Her eyes, a cool shade of gray, barely flickered over Marsh's face before nding on Leo.

  "Who's your friend?"

  "My little brother, Leo," Marsh said with a slight flourish. "More reliable, but not as handsome."

  "Leo. Right, sorry for not remembering. I haven't seen you since st year, when you sold us that deer pelt," she studied Leo for a moment, her gaze taking in his cheap, clean tunic. "Ask if you need help with anything."

  Marsh just shrugged, and wandered toward a barrel of iron nails near the door, pretending to browse the goods while eavesdropping on two nearby farmers.

  Leo gave Nessa a small nod and started browsing. He was looking for things for the cottage. The kitchen was the first priority.

  His fingers found the lip of a heavy, bck iron pot hanging from a hook. It was deep, with a sturdy handle and three solid legs, the kind that would st generations if maintained properly.

  He lifted it down. It had a satisfying weight in his hands.

  Next to it was a stack of earthenware mugs and cy jugs, all gzed in a garish yellow. He bypassed them and found a crate of wooden bowls smoothed to a fine polish. He took four.

  Leo's next purchase was a bundle of candles bound with twine. They were thick and hard-pressed, made from tallow that smelled faintly of mutton. Far better than the thin, tallow-drip they currently used, which left more smoke than light.

  He carried his selections to the counter, pcing the heavy pot down with a solid thud.

  Nessa finally put her quill down. She ran a quick, appraising eye over the items.

  "A housewarming?"

  "Something like that," he replied with a polite smile and let his eyes wander to a corner near the back of the shop. Bnkets were stacked there.

  Maybe not now, he thought. The nights are still mild, and it would be a few more months until autumn chill set in. The ones we have at home are a bit uncomfortable but...

  Then he saw it.

  A thinner bnket in the stack. While the others were bulky, woven from heavy, dark wool, clearly meant for the dead of winter, this one was different. Its weave was looser, made from a creamy, off-white wool.

  He ran the fabric between a thumb and forefinger. It was soft, yielding in a way the coarse homespun at home never was.

  "What about this one?" Leo pointed.

  "That one? The trader from the coastal cities called it 'Merino' wool. He swore by it," Nessa leaned sideways, her expression unreadable. "It's fifty-five coppers."

  Fifty-five coppers.

  The rate was a hundred coppers to a silver, and twenty silvers to a gold. Fifty-five coppers was more than a farmhand earned in a week of back-breaking bor under the sun. It was an indulgence. An unnecessary expense for a farmer's family.

  Leo pictured Sera, asleep on their old bed, wrapped in the thin, scratchy bnket that did little to keep the night chill at bay.

  Well. We earned it.

  "I'll take it," the words were out before he had a chance to talk himself out of it.

  Nessa just raised an eyebrow. She reached beneath the counter for a clean sheet of parchment and began to tally.

  "Right. The iron pot, that's forty-five coppers."

  She paused, dipping the quill.

  "Four wooden bowls, four copper each. So, sixteen."

  Leo's gaze drifted past her. On a high shelf mounted on the stone wall behind her sat a small collection of personal items. Then he saw it.

  It was a comb, carved from a dark, reddish-brown wood he didn't recognize. It wasn't ornate or jeweled, but beautifully made. A graceful, curving shape, with a row of fine, closely-set tines, polished smooth enough to catch the dim light.

  "And the bundle of tallow candles is ten," Nessa said, pulling him from his thoughts. "And fifty-five coppers for the bnket. So your total comes to one hundred and twenty-six coppers."

  "One twenty-six," Leo confirmed. "I'll also take that comb over there."

  Nessa turned to look at it. She pulled it from the shelf and turned it over in her hands.

  "Another fifteen coppers."

  "Fine," Leo nodded. "One silver and forty-one coppers. Here's two silver. Change please," Leo slid the coins across the scarred wood of the counter. The sound of them cttering was a satisfying noise in the quiet shop.

  Nessa didn't smile, but the tension around her eyes seemed to lessen. She swept the coins into a wooden drawer with practiced speed, before giving Leo his change.

  "Need help packaging those?"

  "Yes. Also please keep them here for a while. We'll come back after finishing our purchases," Leo said. The iron pot alone was awkwardly heavy. He didn't want to lug that around the muddy market square.

  They stepped back into the square's vibrant chaos. The noise and smells immediately rushed back in, a stark contrast to the shop's quiet dust.

  "I see you're not holding back, spending your 'earnings'," Marsh said, a smirk pying on his lips. "An entire silver on a pot and a bnket. Sera's okay with that?"

  "What can she do? I've already paid for the items," Leo shrugged. "If it makes her comfortable, it's worth it."

  Still, he had to admit that was a bit of a splurge. Leo only had three silvers and twenty coppers on him before leaving the vilge. Now he was down to one silver and seventy-seven coppers.

  He had set aside the fund for dungeon supplies back at home, so Leo wasn't worried about going in underprepared next time.

  "You aren't gonna buy anything?" He asked.

  "Nah. Didn't see anything interesting. I'll take my chance at Gwen's ter," Marsh shook his head.

  They skirted the noisiest part of the square, weaving around a small group of children chasing a runaway chicken. The crowd was thicker here, forcing them to walk single file along the edge of the packed mud track. The smells grew stronger, a mix of wet wool, unwashed bodies, and the savory aroma of frying onions from a nearby food stall.

  Widow Kemp's establishment stood apart from the main bustle. It wasn't a shop so much as a sturdy, windowless shed built of grey stone, its heavy wooden door slightly ajar. A simple sign above it, painted on a st of old wood, bore a single stalk of wheat.

  A no-nonsense structure for a no-nonsense woman.

  As they pushed the door open, the air inside was cool and still, heavy with the dry scent of grain. Sacks of all shapes and sizes were stacked in neat, formidable pyramids, from small shoulder bags to massive burp monsters that reached to the rafters.

  Behind a rough-hewn counter, a woman was using a small scoop to transfer kernels from one sack to another.

  "If you're browsing, look with your eyes, not your hands," she didn't look up.

  "We're buying," Marsh said.

  The woman finished transferring the scoop of grain, her movements precise and unhurried. Only then did she raise her head.

  Widow Kemp was in her te fifties, her face a road map of deep lines and sun-browned creases. Her grey hair was pinned in a tight knot at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were a pale, washed-out blue, sharp and calcuting as they swept over them.

  She lingered for a fraction of a second on Marsh's throat, taking in the garish bruising. Her expression didn't change, but her lips tightened almost imperceptibly before she looked away.

  "What do you want?"

  "We're looking to buy some grain. What are your prices today?" Leo asked.

  "Depends on what you can afford," a humorless smile touched her lips.

  She pointed with her chin toward a stack of small, dingy sacks in the corner.

  "Coarse millet. Bnd, chewy. Mostly it's animal feed, but it'll fill a belly if you have to. Three coppers for ten pounds."

  Then she gestured to a more central pile of grain in rger sacks.

  "Oats. Decent enough for porridge, if you've got something to put in it. Five coppers for ten pounds."

  "Barley. Good for stews. A bit heavier on the coin. Seven coppers a ten-pound bag."

  Finally, her arm swept across a series of premium sacks sitting behind her, out of casual reach. These were made of a finer cloth, and the print on them was clearer.

  "Rye flour, if you're making dark bread. Eleven coppers for ten pounds," she paused. "And over there, fine wheat flour. For people who like their bread white and soft. Twenty coppers a ten-pound sack. That's my best."

  She rested her hands on the counter, her pale blue eyes watching him, waiting for him to show her which world he lived in.

  Leo's gaze drifted toward the stack of fine wheat flour. He could almost taste the promise of it - light, airy loaves, the kind of bread that was a luxury. In his old life, white bread was the default. Here, it was a status symbol, the centerpiece of a feast table for the vilge headman or the Baron's steward.

  Twenty coppers is around 4 days' wage of a farmer...

  He had the money for it, but maybe not today. Leo wasn't about to buy just 10 pounds. He didn't want to go to Rockhaven every week to lug back some grains. The trip, even on a cart, was still too long and boring.

  "I'll take the rye, and barley," he said, his voice calm and even. "Twenty pounds each."

  "A wise choice," Kemp commented, not seeming surprised at all. She grabbed a rge scoop.

  "I will have 20 pounds of barley, and another 20 pounds of oats," Marsh added, fishing into his pouch.

  Kemp slid the rye flour sacks onto the counter. Then she used a different scoop to fill a bag from the barley barrel, weighing it on a rusty iron scale before cinching the neck shut. She repeated the process for the oats.

  "Thirty-six coppers from you," she said, pointing to the two rye sacks and the barley.

  "Twenty-four for me," Marsh counted out the coins for his purchase.

  "That should be right," Leo took out the coppers and pushed them across the counter.

  Widow Kemp swept both piles of coins into a strongbox behind the counter. She offered them a couple of strings to tie the sacks with, but didn't say anything else.

  "Come on, I'm already smelling the sausages," Marsh grunted, grabbing his two sacks in his thick arms, the canvas fabric groaning under the weight. Leo did the same before following his brother outside.

  The butcher's stall was not hard to find.

  It was less a stall and more a permanent, open-fronted structure on the western edge of the square, closest to the river. The scent that hit them was both inviting and raw – the coppery tang of blood, the rich, fatty smell of freshly cut meat, and underneath it all, the pungent smoke of the chimney pipe jutting from the roof.

  Garron the butcher was a mountain of a man. He stood behind a long, blood-stained wooden counter, his massive forearms stained red up to the elbows. He was methodically chopping a rge haunch of something with a cleaver that looked as heavy as a brick, the rhythmic thwack-thwack-thwack echoing through his corner of the market.

  The chopping of the cleaver didn't stop until the butcher hefted a newly-trimmed section of meat onto a hook behind him. Only then did he look up, a zy gaze sweeping over his customers. His eyes lingered for a long moment on Marsh’s throat, a flicker of wry amusement in them.

  "Morning, Marsh," Garron rumbled. "Your wife finally had enough of your antics? Looks like she gave it a proper go."

  "Nah, you know Dar. If she was trying to kill me, she'd have poisoned my porridge," Marsh's booming ugh echoed in the small space. "Just a freak accident, don't worry about it."

  Garron let out a gravelly chuckle and wiped a bloody hand on his leather apron.

  "Right then, what'll it be? Looking to celebrate your near-demise?"

  "That's the pn," Marsh grinned. "Show us the good stuff."

  Garron just gave a slight nod and gestured with the cleaver toward the selections.

  "I want a belly cut of pork," Leo said, pointing to a thick, pale sb with a good yer of fat. His old self knew this was the cut that made the best roasted pork, crispy skin, tender meat. "How much?"

  "Forty-five copper."

  "And I'll take six of those sausages, too," he added, nodding toward the coil of smoked links hanging from a rack. The spicy, wood-smoke aroma was intoxicating.

  "Fifteen for the string."

  "I'll take them both," Leo pushed the coins forward.

  "Beef for me. Just a good solid chuck cut for a quick roast," Marsh said, pointing to a dark red piece. "Thirty copper for that, right?"

  Garron grunted an affirmation as he cut the thick sb.

  "And a quarter of that ham," Marsh gestured toward a smoked ham, glistening with a sheen of fat and salt. "The one with the nice bone in it."

  "Thirty-five for a quarter. You got it," the butcher replied.

  As they packed their heavy, blood-wrapped parcels, their wallets were noticeably lighter. They pushed back out into the square.