Chương 16: Banking and Dinner

Amberlin found the bank with no problem because it was one of the fanciest buildings on Main Street. A large marble carving of a coin was positioned above the signboard, and below it was a logo that consisted of coins in a fancy arrangement, which Amberlin didn't look too closely at because she didn't really care, and by the time she stepped inside through the ornate double doors, she'd already forgotten all about it. The line was short, and within a couple of minutes she made it in front of a teller.

"What can I do for you today?" the man asked.

"I'd like to open an account."

"I can certainly help you with that. Do you have any ID on you?" She checked her pockets.

"Would a guild card do?"

"From the adventurers guild?" he asked, looking at the badge pinned to her cloak. She handed the card over. He inspected it from different angles and lighting and then started writing something down on his notepad.

"Say," she said, "how would someone open an account who isn't an adventurer?"

"Oh," the man replied while still scribbling with his quill, "the ID isn't required to open an account."

"Then why did you ask for it?"

"Because management wants us to."

"And why does your management want it?" He paused and looked up at her.

"Honestly? I don't know, but I can't imagine it's for anything good."

"I appreciate your honesty. Can you pass my card back and burn that note?" He returned the card without a fuss and crumpled up the page he'd been writing on before looking around.

"I'm afraid I don't have any fire on me." She snatched the paper from his hands, and within seconds it was reduced to ash.

"Ah, very good," he said.

"Sorry for the fuss."

"No, no. I would have done the same thing," he replied. Next he reached beneath the counter and lifted up a wooden board. It looked like the sort of thing you could play games on if you were inclined to draw some lines and had a couple of hundred little stones in two different colors. The top surface has been sanded down and polished to a shine. When he touched his hand to the surface, words and images appeared, and they changed when he tapped at them.

"This looks kind of like that thing they have at the guild," Amberlin said.

"The Maker's Shift system? I suppose it works by similar principles, but our system is much more advanced, I assure you."

"Is that so?" From what she could tell, he was navigating through the different menus and had to backtrack a couple of times. She supposed that meant it wasn't very intuitive to use.

"Our system is much more versatile. See, the guild's system relies on those black tablets, which are heavy and fixed in place. So any adventurer who wants to update their profile must go to an established guild hall. Ours used to be like that too until Sir Bradley Ashley Westley Anker came up with an innovation that changed banking forever. Notice how this board is light and not fixed to anything?"

"You can just lift it up and carry it away," she observed.

"Exactly! These boards are mobile, allowing our services to be provided outside of our established branches. We like to call it mobile banking."

"So if I bring one of these boards with me, I can withdraw my money from anywhere in the world?" she asked.

"Well, no. You would still need one of our tellers who has authorized access. And the teller would need access to enough coinage to complete the transaction."

"So instead of keeping all the money safe and secure in a vault, your agents are carrying it all around the place?"

"Admittedly the mobile part of our banking system isn't quite there yet. But we'll be ready to roll out just as soon as someone invents a bank vault that's as transportable as this board." Having said this, he seemed to have found what he was looking for in the menu and pushed the board toward her.

"Just press your hand on the surface and it'll register a new account for you." There was an image of a hand, and hers fit perfectly within the lines. The image shifted and a bunch of new fields came up.

"Normally I would ask you to fill in your personal details on a form that I would transfer onto here," the man said, "but since you already have a guild card, the system can interface with that and pull your details directly, if that's what you prefer. Just tap your card on the side there." The moment she did, all the fields automatically populated. The lines began moving around in a fancy pattern and then a card materialized on the board.

"That's all yours," the teller said with a smile. She picked it up. It was made of hard paper like a business card, and with the same dimensions too. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"This is going to get damaged very easily," she said.

"Then we can just issue you a new one," he said.

"That card isn't for accessing your account. Instead it has details on it that will allow other people to deposit money." So it was more like the account number to make a payment to rather than a proper bank card, she realized.

"Then how do you verify who I am to get my money out?" she asked.

"In that regard it works just like the guild's Maker's Shift system. When someone tries to access a profile, it can check if they're the person who created the account." She looked down at her bank card again.

"I like my guild card better. The metal feels more reliable."

"A lot of people feel that way," the teller agreed.

"Unfortunately Sir Anker was major critic of Kalimor's coinage system. He was a pioneer in many ways, and not all of them worked out. But he was always a man of boundless optimism, and that's why he named his new system the Bet-on-Wood system."

"The Bet-on-Wood system?"

"His dream was to move the world completely away from reliance on precious metals. He believed that one day we would all be trading pieces of paper with one another instead of coins. And you know what paper's made from."

"But the world still uses coins," she said. The teller shook his head.

"That's the thing about visionaries. Sometimes their dreams make sense, other times you're left wondering if they've hit up one too many alchemists. Can you imagine a world where trade is conducted in paper? How can an economy work when money literally grows on trees?" After leaving the bank, Amberlin spent the rest of the afternoon searching for the cake shop again. Luckily she got there just as Rylee was closing up and got to buy three cupcakes to share with her friends at dinner.

This meant she didn't get a chance to stop by the merchant house or adventurers guild to drop off her bank details. But she could always do that tomorrow.

Boots yawned and stretched his back. With his sensitive ears, he could hear Kitten coming up the stairs. This meant night was approaching, and it would soon be time to go on the hunt again. The woman who ran this house had come up a few times during the day to feed him. She was quite pleasant, so he'd let her pet him. Otherwise he'd spent the entire time sleeping. Because he knew he had to conserve his energy for the adventure to come. The door opened, and there she was. His Kitten.

She was holding a plate, and on it was one of the food items that she really liked. She placed it down before him and he tested it with a lick. It wasn't to his liking. But that was okay. He knew she meant well. He would accept this offering for what it was. Kitten was waiting at the door. She said, "I'm going to have dinner with Havlo. The innkeeper says you've been fed not longer ago, so you aren't going to get anything. But you're welcome to sit with us. Would you like that?"

He answered her by returning to the bed and curling up. He just wasn't in the mood to put up with the Outsider. And then she was gone. But her scent lingered behind, and from it he was able get a sense of what she'd been up to during the day. There was a faint hint—very faint, like she'd tried to wash it out—of litter water and the barest trace of a water lizard. It had been so long since he'd had a taste of water lizard. He turned to the window. It was only secured with a hook like yesterday.

Within seconds he was out.

That evening Havlo got back to the inn before Lady Amberlin. He placed a dinner order with the innkeeper. Or at least he tried to.

"You don't know what your friend likes, dear?" the innkeeper said.

"What did she order yesterday?" he asked.

"Chicken rice and green beans. But are you sure she'll want the same again?" He didn't know. Sure, they'd been traveling together for a couple of weeks now. But most of that time had been on the road, where they'd had to make do with what was available. Here she had a choice. He had a long way to go as an apprentice if he didn't even know his master's favorite dish.

"What would you recommend?" he asked.

"Today's pot roast is pretty good, if I do say so myself."

"Then we'll take two servings of that."

"I'll keep it warm for you," she said pleasantly.

"Wait," he said before she left.

"My... friend also likes cake."

"Oh?" the innkeeper chirped.

"What sort of cake?" What sort of cake. He wasn't an expert on cakes. How many different types of cakes were there? Ask him anything about magic, he could answer right away. But what did a man like him know about cakes?

"All of them?" he offered. The innkeeper smiled sweetly.

"I did make a bit too much plum pudding this afternoon. I happen to have two servings left. Would you like me to set those aside for you?"

"That will do very well, thank you." He hoped that pudding counted as cake. Not long afterward, Lady Amberlin returned to the inn. She greeted him and then went upstairs to check on her cat before coming back to join him at the table. The innkeeper appeared shortly with the pot roast.

"I took the liberty of ordering for us. I hope you don't mind," he said.

"Sounds good to me," she replied as they dug into their meals.

"How has your day been?"

"Uneventful." He felt bad about lying to his master, but she needn't concern herself with trivial matters. He would get it all sorted out tonight so that they could make their way to Ygg Latten Bay and check on the second keystone.

"Same, same," she said.

"Though I did make some new friends and open a bank account."

"Did you, now?"

"Yeah! One of them is really nice. Her name is Jenny. I think she said she's a genie or something? She has very pretty pink hair. Then there's this archer, Bucko. His hair's very messy, and so is his personality. There's also a warrior named Two-Fist. And Keel the cleric."

"It sounds like you met another adventuring party," he observed.

"Yeah!" She suddenly got a shifty look her eyes.

"I, uh, met them under very normal circumstances."

"I'm sure you did." He wasn't too worried. On the whole, Lorelark was a safe place, and it was going to become a whole lot safer after tonight. Considering her ability to cast spells up to Tier 3, he doubted that there was much here that was a real danger to her. Particularly in the company of what sounded like an experienced adventuring team.

"La... Amberlin. There's somewhere I need to be after dinner. I hope you don't mind if I take the night to myself." He expected some pushback and had an excuse prepared. Instead she replied, "You're staying safe, I hope?"

"I won't be in any danger at all," he assured her.

"I will be with other people the entire time. Some of them are even members of the watch."

"That's good. I'm glad you've made some friends."

"I may not be back until morning, so please don't be worried if you don't find me in my room." She looked him over.

"I gotta say, I'm jealous of elves. You get to stay youthful so much longer. I have a cous—uh, friend—who's human like me, and he used to love partying in his twenties. The moment he hit thirty? Out like a light at midnight."

"I'm sure you have many youthful years ahead of you, Lady Amberlin."

"Yeah! I do, don't I? I guess I'm lucky that way. It would have been awful to lose it all because I ran across the street without looking because I was chasing my cat who'd escaped through my apartment window." He wasn't sure how to respond to that oddly specific scenario. Eventually he settled on, "Well, I'm sure Boots won't be escaping through any windows tonight. The shutters at this inn can be locked shut."

"Yeah, I made sure to check that this morning." Once they'd finished their meal, it was time for the moment of truth.

"La... Amberlin," he ventured carefully, "what sort of cake do you like?"

"All of them," she answered immediately and decisively. He nodded as he scored this piece of knowledge into his brain. Perhaps his answer to the innkeeper hadn't been so off the mark after all.

"And that would include plum pudding, yes?" he asked. Her eyes lit up.

"You got me pudding?" As if on cue, the innkeeper appeared with the dessert plates.

"That smells delightful!" Lady Amberlin squealed. His heart filled with joy. They ate pudding together and chatted. It was going to be a long night, but from this moment, he was ready to face anything.