Layla began to shuffle, but I poked her in the back. “Not yet. Give me your starting price and then I’ll let you see. No hands until our prices are set.”
He smirked. “Ah. Not your first time with one of ours, I see. Very well.” He shuffled in one of his draping pockets, pulling out a notebook and pencil that seemed twice as big as they should have been. “If what you say is true, and all facts are correct, I can start you off with five-double with interest for a return should you need it.” He scribbled something on the paper and showed it to me. “These are the terms of the deal.”
Exchange merchants and deals. They had to keep a copy in writing, both for themselves and their customers or the entire exchange was meaningless. Couldn’t have them be swindlers, but also couldn’t afford customers ripping them off. Then again, one of the reasons these guys were very popular is because they took everything and anything and melted it down to create more of their bits. What I hadn’t told Layla is that most of these bits were infused with tiny spells or just bits of raw magic, usually fueled by the items exchanged.
Basically, when you brought stuff here it was because you needed it destroyed with no trace left. Smashing it to bits to capture the magic and sifting said magic down into bite-sized tokens was one of the best ways to do so. The stronger or more rare the magic, the higher value the bit had almost anywhere. But sometimes they’d have a waiting period, sort of like a loan where you could take less valued bits and use them, as long as you came back within the allotted time with double the amount of bits your item was initially worth.
Most of the time, they kept about half of the bits made from an item to reuse for marketing purposes. You didn’t have to bring in an item to get coin, sometimes you could exchange a favor or a promise, and for those times Exchange Merchants needed a token to exchange for non-physical items. This guy, however, wanted two-thirds of the haul from my starmask and I wasn’t about to have that.
“Short turnaround,” I remarked. “And far too high a fee for my mask.” His smile didn’t waver as he waited for my counter. “I’ll offer reverse terms; I take two-thirds and you keep the mask for two market cycles. If I don’t come back it’s all yours.”
“If you don’t come back with a better offer you’ll be mine too, for the debt you’d accrue,” he said, taking the paper back and scribbling what I wrote. Most of these guys like to do this too, mark down every offer and counter offer. So I waited while he narrowed the field. “Try this on; I get my short turnaround time, but we split the different in price to half. And I throw in some extra bits in compensation for the time.”
“I’ll take the half-offer, but extend the turnaround by about a week. Give me a running start, and you can lower the value of the compensation from the caps to a bag of silver buttons.”
He wrote it all down and looked at it. Glanced up at me for a moment before tucking it back under his arm. “I think that’s an agreement. But rules are rules, I must see it.”
“See. No touching until the deal is solid,” I answered, nodding over my shoulder to Layla. She shuffled around and raised the white mask over my head so he could look at it. Sparkle zipped up close to it and got out a small pair of glasses, putting them on and turning around and around as he stared. “No resale on this,” I insisted. Sometimes they’d do that with rare objects, give you the bits and swap something out so they could resell the item itself. “It’s of a…personal nature.”
“Done some things with this skin you don’t want repeated, eh?” He chuckled. “Don’t worry, Sparkle Bits melts down all items. Never liked the resale hussle. He zipped back over to face her. “Well, I’d say this seems like a deal. Your mask was exceptionally close to your approximation.” He considered for a moment, zipping back over to one of his displays and grabbing a cloth bag the size of my head. He opened the case and dipped into it, dragging the bag behind him until he got it mostly full, lugging it back out and closing the case. “One scoop, right?” I nodded.
He motioned to the bag on the floor and I nodded again. “Deal, contracted and binding.”
“Contracted and binding,” he repeated, noting it down on his pad. “Items exchanged…And a moniker for the books?”
“Olaya,” I said.
He nodded, jotting it down before the notebook went back in his too-small pockets. “Pleasure to make the exchange,” he said, zipping back over. I poked Layla in the back and she gave a short yelp, handing the mask over. As soon as it was in his hands he zipped around a corner and disappeared behind a curtain.
“So now what?” Layla asked as I trotted forward, grabbing the bag by the teeth. I half-gave, half-tossed the bag over my head so I could answer.
She grunted as she caught it. “We wait,” I answered. “He’s gonna siphon off the magic from the starmask into other objects and give us half. Then he’ll wait about two weeks in case I change my mind before he destroys the mask altogether and adds bone chips to his stash, ready to be used as a sponge for some other trade.”
“So…” she glanced around, adjusting her weight with the weight of the buttons. “All these bit-things…are magical?”
I nodded, trotting a little closer so she could look in one of the display cases. “Trash and treasure, kid. When you refurbish an abandoned human site, you gotta go for what you have. And in this case, pixies decided to pick up bits and pieces of things and infuse them. Makes for a good basic exchange rate these days. Better than those days they used actual silver and gold. That sort of thing tends to draw attention when you head back out into the human world. But if you walk around with a sack full of buttons and knobs humans just think your eccentric. Or crazy. Either way, it’s one more way to skate right past them.”
She stared and didn’t say anything, looking around. Looking down at the buttons in her hand. I slowly walked the perimeter of the tent, letting her look at the cases if she wanted to. It was easier than trying to tell her to get off so I could sit, and to be honest I really didn’t want to sit. I was ready to be done with this deal and find Rod again so we could get out of here.
Eventually Sparkle came back with a bag full of assembled bone chips, keychain rings, and a few bottle caps. “Extra dues,” he said when I looked at him funny. “Don’t worry, I wrote it down. You didn’t lie at all about your mask and, well…to be honest, it’s always a pleasure dealing with an alien like yourself that’s calm and rational.”
I held back a growl, instead shaking my head and moving around so Layla could accept the second sack. “Thanks Sparkle,” I said. “Nice to do business with you.”
He waved as I moved to exit out the back of the tent.
