Merchant Crab

“This… this is so good,” Balthazar whispered.

Looking down from the counter, the baker nodded as he smiled. “I knew you’d like it. Nobody can resist my freshly baked bread.”

“I never knew bread could be this delicious.” The crab turned to Rye with glistening eyes, the loaf of bread still held in his pincers. “I should have asked Madeleine to make me some of this before!”

Rye smiled with a frown of slight confusion.

“Wait, you never had bread before?”

“I did, once, long ago, before I was a merchant, when an adventurer stopped by the pond and sat down on a rock to eat his lunch near the water. I kept an eye on him while he was eating, you know, to make sure he didn’t steal any of my favorite rocks or something. After he got back on the road, I noticed he left a bunch of breadcrumbs from his sandwich, but they were old and stale, nothing like this.”

“You used to eat crumbs off the ground?” the young man said in a teasing manner.

Balthazar glanced at him with a scolding stare.

“It was a long time ago. If you’re going to be like that, I won’t tell you anything anymore.”

“Well, I’m glad the famous merchant crab enjoyed my baking,” said the man behind the counter, standing upright again and planting his palms on the counter. “You’ll still have to pay for it, though.”

Balthazar glanced down at the loaf of bread in his claws and sighed.

Damn it, Balthazar, what is wrong with you? You’re no amateur trader, you should have known better than to accept a product before negotiating the price.

After being done chastising himself internally, the merchant pulled his little Bag of Holding Money and loosened the string keeping it shut, an act that always pained him greatly when it was for coins to come out of it.

“Alright, fair enough, you got me this once with your bready ways, cunning baker,” the crab bemoaned. “How much for the loaf?”

“For a first time customer, and because you’re such a special one, let’s say… two crowns.”

“Crowns? The hell is that?” asked Balthazar, frowning in confusion.

“It’s… money? You know, coins, currency, legal tender?” answered the equally confused seller. “I thought you were supposed to be a merchant. How do you not know what money is?”

“Of course I know what money is!” said the crab, pulling a couple of gold coins out of his bag and holding them for the man to see. “This kind of money. Gold coins.”

“Those are crowns!” the baker said, shrugging in an exasperated bewilderment. “Gold coins are called crowns.”

Balthazar looked at his coins, at the bread maker, at Rye, and then at his coins again.

“How did nobody ever tell me that?!”

The archer shrugged in an apologetic manner. “I don’t know. Maybe because you’ve been mostly dealing with adventurers all this time?”

“So you also didn’t know these were called crowns?”

“Well, no, I did, but most adventurers just refer to them as gold coins. Don’t ask me why, I wasn’t born here, and I just got used to calling them by what everyone else around me did.”

“Crowns…” Balthazar repeated, staring at his two shiny coins like he was seeing them for the first time again. “You know, I kinda like it.”

“I just can’t believe you’ve gone this long being a merchant without even knowing what the currency used all over Heartha was called,” said the baker.

“Heartha? Who’s that?” Balthazar asked. “Another baker?”

“You… you’re joking now, right?” the bewildered man said. “Heartha, the name of the world we all live in! How do you not know that?! Have you lived your whole life under a rock?!”

“Mate, I’m a crab, of course I’ve lived under a rock, and over too. They’re some of my favorite places to be,” Balthazar casually responded. “And how was I supposed to know this world had a name? Going around giving places names is more of a human thing.”

“I thought you read lots of books,” said Rye. “Did you just never come across the name before, in a history book, or something?”

“I mainly like the ones with lots of drawings to look at. Or the ones with recipes.”

The man behind the stall pinched his nose and inhaled deeply, like someone pushing back an incoming headache.

“Either way, misunderstandings aside, that will cover the loaf,” the baker said, reaching out for the coins in Balthazar’s pincer.

Crab instincts kicking in, he snapped his arm back and away from the man’s grabby hand.

He may have lost much, but one thing he still had was his business sense, and he would not part with two of his precious new crowns so easily if he could help it.

“Or!” Balthazar said. “What if we settled on a trade of goods to cover the cost of the bread?”

The baker pulled his hand back onto the counter and looked at the crab with an inquisitive expression.

“What kind of trade? I never really caught what it is that you trade in, merchant crab.”

“Oh, he mostly deals in loot jun—”

“Zip it, Rye. Let me do my work,” the shrewd crustacean quickly said. “I am a trader of general goods, my good baker. A dealer of fine items and purveyor of quality treasures. I got a little bit of everything, and always that one thing you needed and didn’t even know yet.”

The man cocked an eyebrow at the crab.

“Well, I don’t really need anything right now, so just the two coins would be—”

“Ah, but like I just said!” interrupted the merchant. “Always something you just didn’t know you needed yet.”

Releasing one strap of his backpack and putting it down on the street cobblestones, Balthazar began quickly rummaging through its magically enhanced inner space, pincers searching for something that, most likely, not even the crab knew yet what it would be.

“Aha!” he triumphantly exclaimed, pulling his arm out of the bag. “This is what you need!”

Held in his raised pincer was a sword, grip and pommel with finely etched silver details, leading to a long and wide serrated blade with a shiny gold finish.

“Why would I need a sword?!” said the man, shaking his head in disbelief. “I’m a baker!”

“Exactly!” said the smiling crab, placing the tip of the weapon on the counter. “You make bread, and then what do you do with it? You come here to this market, and you sell it.”

The man looked at the blade again and then at the crab, still confused.

“And? What does that have to do with a sword?”

“This sword is enchanted, my friend. Imagine how much your stall would stand out compared to every other boring bread seller if you were the only one slicing your beautiful golden loaves with an equally beautiful golden magical sword? People would gather around just to see it! Trust me, I am a crab who sells stuff to adventurers every day, I know how to impress clients!”

The baker’s eyebrows rose as he contemplated the blade.

“I mean… that does sound pretty awesome. I always dreamed of being a sword-wielding noble knight when I was a kid, but you know, I just ended up being a baker. A lot less getting stabbed this way. And it’s not like I even know how to use a sword…”

Balthazar scoffed as he fully placed the sword on the counter.

“Pfft, please. You’ve used a knife to cut slices of bread every day, I imagine, right? Same thing! Just, you know, bigger, and more impressive! Try it out.”

The man hesitated for a moment, but the temptation clearly won him over as he picked up the sword and felt its balance. “Oh, lighter than I expected.”

Reaching into a nearby basket, the baker picked up a large loaf and placed it over the wooden surface in front of him. With a slow and careful motion, the blade slid into the crust and crumb, producing a sizzling sound and some steam.

“Woah! What’s this?!” the baker exclaimed, looking in amazement at the cut, revealing a crispy golden inside where the blade had passed.

“Hah! I told you, the sword has a fire enchantment. You just made instant toast! Impressive, isn’t it?” the crab said. “Now imagine how spectacular you will look to your clients if you do that every day.”

The baker took another, more enthusiastic stab at the bread, splitting a generous slice off the loaf, both sides perfectly toasted into a lightly brown, crispy surface that begged for a dose of butter on it.

The man sighed, eyes still fixed on the sword, admiring its golden shine and the silver details of the pommel.

“Oh, you crafty crab. My wife is going to kill me, but now I just gotta have this beauty. I’ll just have to convince her it’s a work tool. How much for it?”

The crustacean smiled, knowing he still got it, even without a system, levels, or silly skills.

“Of course it is a work tool, friend. And for a first time customer, and because I like you, let’s say… 50 gold coins. Plus the loaf!”

The baker sucked in some air with a whistling sound.

“That’s a lot of dough for a humble baker like me.”

“Think about it, though,” the friendly crab said, “this is a once in a lifetime purchase. You will tell the tale of this day for years to come. You can hang this up as a family heirloom over your oven. Pass it down to your children and grandchildren. It will be your bread-cutting legend.”

The baker’s eyes glistened with possibility and the metallic reflection of the blade in his hands.

“You’re right. I can’t let this opportunity pass me by. I’d spend the rest of my life wondering about it. You’ve got yourself a deal!”

Putting the sword down, the man reached behind his counter and retrieved a coin purse. After some quick digging through it, he placed five coins on the wooden surface in front of the crab. “Here you go!”

Balthazar stretched his eyestalks up to look at the money on the counter.

“I said 50 gold coins, pal. I don’t want just five coins.”

The baker looked at the coins and then at the crab, visibly confused.

“Yes, I heard your price, and that’s what I’m paying you. Five 10 crown coins, adding up to fifty crowns.” He looked at Rye. “Do crabs not know mathematics?”

“No, I don’t think you get it,” the crab said, shaking his shell. “I want fifty coins as payment. Five is less than fifty.”

“Balthazar,” Rye hesitantly said. “You do know there are 5 and 10 crown coins too, right?”

“Sure, but why would I want fewer coins? I like to look at my big pile of money and see lots of them.”

“Because that’s very impractical to store and carry?!” exclaimed the befuddled baker.

“Wait,” said the adventurer. “So all this time, the reason you’ve been making every adventurer pay in exact amounts was because you wanted everything in 1 crown coins? I thought you just didn’t have change!”

“And I don’t,” said the crab. “If you’re buying something from me, you’re the one giving me gold. I’m not going to give you the goods and also coins in return.”

“That’s… that’s not the point of giving change…”

“Look,” the increasingly exasperated baker interjected, “I want the sword, but I don’t just have fifty 1 crown coins lying around. Each one of these is worth ten of those because they’re bigger and heavier, either take them or we can’t have a deal.”

The crab glanced at Rye. “I never had this kind of problem with adventurers.”

“Well, yeah,” the archer said, “that’s probably because we always have tons of those single coins from all those pots and chests we find in dungeons. I always wondered why they only ever contain 1 crown coins…”

Balthazar looked closer at the coins. He liked having as many of the shiny pieces of gold as possible, because it made him feel richer, but these were also bigger. The crab also liked bigger. Just like with pies. Bigger and heavier was good.

Perhaps, as with so many other aspects recently, it was time he opened himself to trying doing things differently.

“Fine, I’ll settle for these,” said the crab while swiping the coins off the counter and dropping them in his money bag. “The sword is yours.”

“Yes!” the baker quietly said in a childlike joy, before picking up his new blade and swinging it around with a smile on his face.

“That was a pretty good deal,” said Rye as they walked away from the market stand and back through the bustling crowd in the street.

“For me, it was,” Balthazar said, while breaking another piece of bread from the loaf and tossing it into his mouth. “Those swords do terrible damage, the enchantment is stupidly weak, and their blades are as dull as chatting with a barbarian. I can never sell that junk to any adventurer above level 2 or 3. The blade isn’t even real gold! All they’re good for is cutting bread, so… good for him!”

As the crab and the human wandered back through the market, Balthazar admired the architecture all around him. Used to the wilderness and only knowing human civilization from books, the crustacean didn’t expect to find himself so impressed by the fine details of it all.

The houses, some wide, others taller, with their thatched roofs and colorful walls of clay. Windows with people on them high above, watching those who passed, or chatting with their neighbors about the weather. The braziers spread around every corner, their coals still warm with a dying glow from before dawn.

After the shock of the first contact with a real town had worn off, Balthazar was beginning to realize that this busy bubbling of people and activity might actually suit him a lot better than he ever expected.

As much as he liked his space and solitude, these filled streets, like rivers full of fish, made his commercial instincts sizzle with excitement for all the thrilling possibilities.

Pondering on what shop he wanted Rye to take him to first, the crab started considering that maybe, just maybe, he didn’t hate being surrounded by other people as much as he used to.

Unfortunately for everyone, this was also the same moment when Balthazar saw a strange shadow growing on the ground underneath him, and as he looked up, all he had time to see was a human figure falling from a balcony above and straight onto him.