Merchant Crab

"What?!" Antoine exclaimed at Bruce.

"Yep," the mercenary said in a laconic tone as he reentered the merchant's chamber with a washcloth in his hands. "All burnt up to ash. Every last one of them."

"How?! This was meant to work! It was flawless!" the irate duke shouted, sending spittle flying forward with every word. "That pest was going to be taken out by a swarm of pests made in his own image! It was going to be the ultimate irony! It was going to be poetic! It couldn't fail, because it took advantage of his greed, his hubris, his high opinion of himself!"

Bruce raised an eyebrow at the small man in front him while rubbing his ham-like fists on the piece of cloth. "Are you sure you're still talking about the crab there?"

Antoine turned around suddenly and swiped a small wooden box full of coins off a nearby table in rage, sending it crashing onto the floor and spreading the gold in front of the merc's boots. Bruce glanced down without so much as a flinch.

"You! You useless brute! This was all your fault, was it not? You made some mistake along the way. You must not have followed my instructions to the letter like I told you to. That's the only explanation. I provided you with plenty of copies of those stupid figurines, all you had to do was distribute them to the adventurers I had negotiated with. It was as simple of a task as it gets, but you couldn't even do that right!"

The nobleman's bodyguard closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in deeply as he continued to clean his hands.

His patience was really coming to an end. Every day the deranged fool of a man before him was becoming more and more unhinged, and even the piles of coin Bruce was earning were becoming less and less worth the headache.

The mercenary had always been a firm believer that one could never have too much money, but he found himself now often wondering if perhaps it was time to cut his gains and leave the irritating little pencil of a man behind.

The wardrobe of a man sighed, the leather of his armor creaking as his broad shoulders rolled forward. He looked down at his chest and took the washcloth to a stain on it.

He knew things weren't right when not even a shakedown would bring up his spirits. The weak little excuse of an adventurer the merc had been extracting information from just a few minutes before hadn't even tried to fight him when Bruce started putting the screws on him, as they say on the streets the brute had grown up in.

Instead, the scrawny boy had started crying in front of the merc. Bruce found himself dumbfounded. Who even does that?

Adventurers. Supposed to be the heroes of the land. Bravest of all. Mighty and fearless, taking on danger and challenge head-on. What a load of horse manure, the bodyguard remembered thinking.

Just a few squeezes and some mild roughing up and the guy was already leaving a stain of tears and snot on the mercenary's armor like a baby.

How Bruce hated when his marks did that. The crying always reminded him of kids. And the merc couldn't stand children.

Weak, pathetic, and always crying. That's how he saw them.

They reminded him too much of things he did not wish to revisit. Mainly, when he himself was one.

Growing up on the streets, he was always the punching bag for every other thug and lowlife, because he was fat, clumsy, and quiet. The perfect mix to be picked on.

It still made his teeth grind whenever he thought back to those days, which was why he hated anything to do with kids. It would make him see himself as he was back then—a pathetic, defenseless orphan on the streets of the capital city.

But not anymore. That weak boy grew up, and now no one pushed him around. Bruce was his own man, who took no abuse from anyone anymore.

"You, oaf, take this!" Antoine barked, tossing a bag of coins at his bodyguard with one hand while holding a letter in the other.

Bruce caught the bag with one hand while still wiping the nasal mucus off his chestplate with the other, a quiet snarl escaping his curled lips as his gaze returned to the despicable character addressing him.

"I just got some news that gave me a new and even better idea. I want you to go to a place I'm going to draw you on a map," the disgraced merchant explained. "You will meet someone there who will sell you a vial of an extremely rare and potent poison—do not mess this up by losing it! The only alchemist who knew the formula died years ago, and there are probably only a handful of bottles still left on the continent." He paused and eyed the large chest sitting in a hole in the middle of the room. "Not a problem for me, but I will still need at least one vial to start with."

"Fine, at least it will get me out of here for a while," the bodyguard grumbled.

"And make sure to bring me a receipt, so I can check if you're not pocketing anything extra," The Duke said, an evil grin spreading under his mustache as he eyed the letter in his hand. "Then ready the horses. I have a party to crash in Ardville."

***

"What?!" Balthazar exclaimed at Rob.

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"Yep," the courier standing on the other side of the counter said with a shrug. "That's how bounties work. Seriously, how did you not know that?"

"You really mean to tell me that I'm supposed to pay someone for it?" the baffled crab said, spreading his pincers on the countertop in front of him. "Unbelievable. What has the world come to? Does everything cost coin now? Nobody does anything without putting a price on it these days?"

The former thief cocked a wry eyebrow at the merchant.

"Dude, you try to charge your clients money for smelling the aroma of freshly baked pastries coming from behind your bazaar."

"That's different!" Balthazar exclaimed. "That is a heavenly smell that gives you a buff to your spirit attribute just from inhaling it. Of course I'm going to charge for it!"

"That's not a real stat," Rob said flatly. "But yeah, I get what you mean. My mouth is watering just from standing here feeling that smell of pumpkin pie."

"That will be 2 crowns, by the way," the crustacean stated plainly while extending his open claw at the adventurer.

"What the…"

"And while I'm not going to pay coin for someone to find this duke for me," Balthazar continued, ignoring his informant's frown of annoyance, "you can spread the word that I might repay any adventurer who brings me useful information about this mysterious guy with some… treats."

The courier narrowed his eyes with a squint. "What do you mean, treats?"

"You know… leftovers… crumbs," the crab said, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling. "As much as it pains me to admit it, even I cannot eat everything Madeleine bakes. Seriously, she's like a machine in that kitchen. So there's always some stuff left after a few days, forgotten on a plate, or under the counter, sometimes inside my backpack for a week or two. And Montgomery is very picky about the specifics of what she eats, so I can't just dump it all on her."

Rob stared at the merchant with his mouth slightly ajar and blinking in mild confusion.

"You want to offer stale pastries and crumbs as the reward for a bounty?!" he said, incredulous.

"They're still tasty!" the crab replied with a shrug.

"And who in the world is Montgomery?"

"Oh, that's the giant slime living in my dungeon. But she's currently tiny. So we're feeding her moldy bread so she grows. Don't worry about it."

The adventurer stared at Balthazar for a solid five seconds, looking completely dumbfounded, before shaking his head from side to side like someone trying to wake themselves up.

"You know what? I don't even want to know," he said. "I'll shake some trees and see if any dukes fall out, but don't expect me to find much information on whoever this guy is if you're not willing to pay properly. Intel isn't free in the underworld."

"Morning, fellas," said John as he entered the bazaar from the back while wiping his hands on a rag. "I'm done assessing the damage to the structure."

Rob craned his neck to take a good look at the floor, pillars, and roof of the bazaar surrounding him.

There were chunks of wood missing from the roof, leaving gaps through which daylight could be seen, most of the pillars were covered in tiny bite marks, and all over the floor was possible to find clusters of chewed up bark and timber.

"Yeah, I've been meaning to ask since I got here," the courier said. "What the hell happened to your place? You got an infestation of termites or something?"

"No, worse," said the merchant. "I got crabs."

"Excuse me?!"

"I mean tiny ones, of course."

"Again… what?!"

"It's alright, Blue incinerated them all."

"I… I'm not even going to ask anymore," Rob said, throwing his arms up in surrender.

"Well, you boys excuse me, but I do have to ask something of my own," the old carpenter said, pulling a folded piece of paper from inside his vest. "While I won't trouble you with the cost of my manual labor, fixing this damage and getting everything up to snuff again will require some supplies. Lots of supplies, actually. And while I can go up to Ardville to get them, they will cost a pretty sum, I'm sorry to say. I've got a shopping list I made here, with my estimations of the costs for you to check and—"

"Bah, no need to check," Balthazar said, waving away the piece of paper being offered to him by the old man. "After all the work you've done here, not even I am crabby enough to question your honesty, John. Get the stuff and bring me the bill."

The handyman's bushy brows rose with a brief expression of surprise seldom seen on his face, before a calm smile returned to his mouth and he readjusted the smoking pipe hanging from the corner of his lips.

"Alright then, pal. I'll get to work on gathering what I need to start repairs."

And then the old man walked out of the bazaar, leaving the crab and the courier alone once more.

"Another expense," Balthazar said with a sigh. "At this rate, I'm going to be poor and destitute in no time."

"Don't you have, like, tens of thousands of gold coins at this point?" Rob asked from the other side of the counter.

"Like I said, poor and destitute," the merchant said with a sad shake of his shell from side to side. "I could really use some extra business opportunities. These passing adventurers lately aren't buying enough for my needs."

A low rumbling started shaking the counter between them, growing every second, until the glass bottles and jars on the shelves nearby began to rattle faintly too.

The crustacean and human exchanged a glance as the steady clatter of hooves and the creak of wheels announced the arrival of something outside.

Balthazar hopped off his stool and walked around the counter until he was halfway between the adventurer and the front door.

"What do you think that is?" the merchant asked.

"I don't know, but it sounds like whatever it is, there's lots of it," Rob replied. "It's making me nervous, and making my sneak-thief instincts scream."

"Don't be such a coward," the crab said without turning his eyestalks away from the door. "It sounds like a bunch of carriages, so it—Rob?"

Balthazar turned his eyes only to find the space in front of the counter empty, the courier gone without a trace, leaving the bazaar's owner all by himself.

"Never mind," the eight-legged merchant muttered. "Some old habits are hard to break, it seems."

Pushing the door of his bazaar open with both claws, the crab walked outside to greet whoever—or whatever—had just arrived.

"Greetings! Carriage parking is across the road and will cost you 4 gold coins per hour, so let me just—"

As the blindness from stepping outside into the brightness of the sun subsided, Balthazar began to make out two vague shapes coming down the dirt path from the main road, and soon his eyestalks jumped at the realization of who they were.