Thrown Out of the Hero Summons for a Worthless Haggling Skill, He Struck a Deal With the Dragon novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: One Copper
Tsubasa swears a joke price on the hall's oath-stone, Ryota counters with one copper, and the Sword Saint's blade leaves his hand in front of eighty adventurers, until the knight who threw Ryota out tells him to sell it back by sundown.
The whole Copper House leaned in to see what the foreigner with the dish towel would do.
Ryota looked down at the sword on his counter.
The blade was mirror-bright, and the gold hilt had a lion on it with rubies for eyes.
At home he'd have priced it at a glance and then added twenty percent for the lion.
"It's very shiny," he said.
"It's the Sword Saint's blade." Tsubasa turned to the room. "Lord Morvaine says it's bound to me by the crown. It can't leave my hand even if I throw it in the river."
He looked back at Ryota with a wide white grin.
"So it's a joke, Discount-kun. Relax."
At the end of the counter sat the hall's oath-stone, black and dull, where adventurers swore on their contracts.
Tsubasa slapped his palm down on it so hard the cups jumped.
"Ten thousand gold," he announced. "The Sword Saint's own sword. Anybody here got ten thousand gold?"
The hall laughed.
Words appeared over the counter in plain Japanese.
Ten thousand gold for the sword of the Sword Saint.
Under it was the small line.
He wants the room to laugh at you.
Ryota knew this customer.
Every month a man like Tsubasa came into Kishibe Shoten with a friend.
He always bought the most expensive thing on the shelf, because the friend was watching.
The price was never about the thing. It was about the friend.
In Osaka, the first price was a greeting. Nobody was supposed to pay it.
"One copper," Ryota said.
Tsubasa laughed so hard he had to hold the counter.
"One copper. That's your counter."
"That's my counter." Ryota folded the dish towel and laid it beside the blade. "And if this room laughs at me when we're done, I'll polish your boots with my apron. Right here, in front of everyone."
The hall went "Ohhh" all together.
Tsubasa's grin got even wider.
He wanted that picture. Ryota could see him wanting it.
Behind the heroes, the knight from the gate pushed off the doorframe.
"Mikami. That blade belongs to the crown."
"It's bound to me. He can't take it." Tsubasa kept his hand flat on the stone and looked straight at Ryota. "Deal."
Ryota laid a single copper coin on the counter.
Tsubasa's fingers opened on their own.
He made a fist and opened it again, and stared at it.
He reached for the gold hilt, and his hand slid off it.
He tried with both hands.
They wouldn't close.
Ryota picked the sword up by the lion.
It weighed about as much as a good frying pan.
Nobody in the hall breathed.
"Maido ookini," Ryota said in Japanese, which was what his mother said to every customer who ever paid. Thank you for your business.
Then he said it in Ardescan for the room.
The older of the two archer brothers laughed first.
It came out of him, and he slapped both hands over his mouth.
Then his brother went, and the candle-seller at the door.
Then the whole Copper House was roaring, eighty people pounding the tables and pointing at the Sword Saint's empty hands.
Nobody was laughing at the man with the dish towel.
Tsubasa's face went red from the collar up.
"Give it back."
"You can buy it back. It's for sale."
"It's mine! The king gave it to me!"
"You sold it to me." Ryota kept his voice down, the way you did with a customer who'd had a bad day. "On the stone, with eighty witnesses. One copper."
Tsubasa grabbed at the blade again.
His fingers skated over the steel.
The salaryman put a hand on his shoulder, and Tsubasa shook it off.
At the back of the group, the student from Sendai had both hands pressed over her mouth, and her shoulders were shaking.
Asako wasn't laughing.
She was looking at Ryota as though she'd just found out something important about the stone.
[Commission: one memory of home.]
Ryota reached back for it without meaning to.
The night the Tigers won the pennant, when he was twenty-six, he had jumped into the Dotonbori canal.
Five hundred other idiots had jumped off the Ebisu Bridge with him.
His friends told the story at every party. He knew exactly how it went.
He couldn't remember the water, or the cold, or the noise, or climbing out.
It was a story about somebody else now.
He put the sword down on the counter so nobody would see his hand shake.
The knight in the blue coat crossed the hall in brisk strides.
She stopped across the counter from him, with the sword between them, and looked him dead in the eye.
"Corisande Arvenne, King's Guard," she said. "That blade is the crown's, and I signed for it."
The room went quiet again.
"Sell it back to me by sundown, Copper," she said, "or I come back with the Guard and a rope."
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