Eddel waved a hand. “Well, of course, he’s right, you’re juniors, and if we’re lucky, we’ll be seeing a bit of you, if you come here instead of Liberfell. Liberfell is bigger, no doubt, but we’re next to the water, with shipping across the lake and a shorter trip to a major leyline. Without dungeoneers, I’d have no stock, and nothing kills an entad shop faster. Of course, a lot of young dungeoneers flame out early on.” She gave Alfric a look as she hustled along. “You seem like the kind who will stick it out though.”
There was a tightness in Alfric’s chest as he went through into Mergan’s Emporium, worried that somehow things would have deteriorated in his absence, but when he got inside, Isra was laughing. The laughter faltered when Alfric came in, but she made no attempt to hide her smile.
“Are we interrupting something?” asked Eddel. She immediately went to the books and started flipping through them.
“Just a joke,” Mergan said with a smile. “I know a scant amount of Tarbin and three or four jokes. Jokes are the most useful thing you can learn in a language.”
Isra smiled. “It was quite rude.” When she saw Alfric looking at her, she turned away from him and toward some of the cluttered shop’s other goods.
“All the best jokes are,” Mergan replied.
“These are the worthwhile ones?” asked Eddel, pointing at the small stack of books that sat next to the much larger one.
“In my opinion, anyway,” said Mergan. He turned to Alfric. “You’ll have to understand that I don’t have the time or inclination to go through everything with a fine-toothed comb. If that’s a requirement for you, you’re best off going somewhere else. Or, you could look through the books on your own, separate them out, and I could use that to inform my price.”
“We’re looking to sell quickly,” said Alfric. “Besides, I can’t read any of what’s written in the books.”
“You can still tell by looking,” replied Eddel, who was leafing through the small stack. “Sometimes there are one or two pictures, sometimes you can tell from the headings, sometimes just looking at the shape of the paragraphs.” She pointed to one open page. “Punctuation is usually done with small marks, different from the glyphs they use for letters or words, so if you see marks that seem to be annotating something, they can be pretty obvious. Here, you can see that these are probably quotation marks, though I’d be hard-pressed to bet on it.”
“They are,” said Mergan, who had slipped the monocle into his front pocket.
“It lets you make a good guess, anyhow,” said Eddel. She looked at the large stack of books that had been put off to the side. “And all those are dross?”
“Not dross,” said Mergan. “But I’d sell them as henlings or ship them off to someone who’s willing to do the work of bleaching or a wortier.” He clucked his tongue and looked at Alfric. “All right, I’m thinking for these,” gesturing to the small pile, “three hundred apiece.” He pointed at the other pile. “For the stinkers, five each.”
“Five?” asked Alfric, folding his arms. “That’s nearly robbery. It’s high-quality parchment and good binding, and beyond that, they’re nearly standardized.”
“Five is a fair offer,” said Eddel. “It’s good parchment, but it’s got ink on it, hasn’t it?”
Alfric deflated somewhat. “But that’s what, thirteen thousand for the lot?”
“When you say it like that, it seems like a worse deal for Mergan,” said Eddel. “Personally, I’d offer less.” She turned to Mergan. “You think you can recoup three hundred apiece for those? Or did you see something I didn’t?”
“I think it’s a fair price,” said Mergan. “And I think they’re worth more considering how many of them there are, all from the same place. They could be sold as a set.” He shrugged. “You’d get a better price taking them back to Dondrian, but that’s quite a journey to make, and travel comes with costs of its own.”
Alfric had been prepared to get less than the fifty thousand he’d
dreamed of, but so much less was a real blow. The money didn’t matter
“If you don’t like it, you don’t like it, but I’m not buying the books,” said Eddel. “And I know if you’re hot off a dungeon run, you’re probably coming my way soon, so I’ve got every incentive to get you to milk this poor bugger.”
Alfric looked at Isra, who was standing impassively. “Thoughts?” he asked.
“The opening offer is never the limit,” said Isra.
“It is with me,” said Mergan. He was standing still, as solid as a rock.
