Chapter 11 – Rickshaw’s Travelling Market

Lillia opened her eyes to colour.

Not the muted flickering orange of torchlight or the sickly blue of dungeon runes. Colour. Proper, overwhelming colour. Bright banners of luscious fabrics hung from the rafters of a tall wooden room. A glowing rainbow of lanterns dangled from tangled ropes strung between banisters and trunk-like support beams that stretched from floor to ceiling. The myriad pools of light they cast swayed back and forth across a thick planked wooden floor that looked like it had been swept and mopped recently. Recently! Lillia had been worried she’d forget what it felt like to stand on something that had been cleaned on purpose.

The air smelled like spice and woodsmoke and something sweet that Lillia couldn’t place. Her eyes watered. It must have been the light or the smoke.

“Welcome, your highness,” Rickshaw said from Lillia’s left. He’d changed, or something had just changed about him. The tattered cloak had been replaced with a swirling colourful set of robes that hung loose and elegant over his bones. The golden light in the skeleton’s eyes swayed with the light of the lanterns, following the same soft rhythm of whatever was moving them. “To my traveling market.”

Rickshaw waved an arm out to the room. A circular thoroughfare with a dozen stalls that were all filled with strange and bright objects that Lillia’s eyes couldn’t quite focus on. Beyond the lanterns there was a beautiful cool light up in the…sky?

No. Not the sky. Lillia had to squint to see past the lanterns, but up past the rafters there was a massive humming white flame. She knew a dawn crystal when she saw one. Lillia had just never seen one that large. It made the one in the ballroom look quaint.

“Where are we?” Lillia asked.

“The traveling market.”

“But where is…this?” Lillia turned around and wobbled as the floor moved under her. It almost felt like she was standing on a ship, but if they were, the ocean under their feet was more gentle than any she’d seen.

“Wherever you need it to be,” Rickshaw said.

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the best one I have, darling.” Rickshaw pushed past Lillia and swept into one of the gaps between stalls. His boots clicked against the wood. It was a warm familiar sound, the sound of a home as opposed to a dungeon floor.

The skeleton disappeared for a moment only to slip in behind the counter of the stall beside Lillia. He leaned over to Lillia, resting his elbow on the plush roll of fabric that covered the stall’s wood. The pattern on it was beautiful. “The market,” he continued, “isn’t a place. It’s between the floors. Between the rooms. It’s the moment a dungeon isn’t watching.”

“What?”

“Think of it as a pause. A breather.” Rickshaw bent down below the counter. Lillia heard clinking. “The dungeons don’t follow the same rules as your castle.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” he popped back up with a polished wooden tray. It was empty, but that allowed Lillia to see the ancient crest burned into it. “My point is, things don’t need to be somewhere. Things are where they are.”

“And this is…” Lillia looked over her shoulder to the other empty stalls. She took a step toward the center of the room. Her heels sounded different on the wood here. Almost musical. The chitin dress caught the lantern light and threw iridescent patterns across the nearest stall, which was draped in fabrics she didn’t recognize. “This is where we are. As much as anywhere else.”

“Quick learner, darling.” Rickshaw was back beside her. There was a plump and glistening exotic fruit in the tray.

Lillia eyed it, but didn’t reach. This was a market after all. “Is it safe here?” she asked.

“As safe as anywhere in the dungeon, which is to say…” Rickshaw tilted his skull in a way that was almost a shrug. “Safer than where you just were.” The skeleton held the tray closer to Lillia, but not close enough for it to be considered an offer.

Hunger had taken a backseat during the struggles of the past floors, but it didn’t like being teased. Lillia snapped her attention to the stall opposite the one Rickshaw had gone into. As she approached, the shelves took form. They were fabrics. Bolts of cloth in colours that Lillia hadn’t seen since the castle. Deep blues. Forest greens. A red that reminded her of the curtains in her mother’s chambers. Her breath caught for a moment, but she pushed past and reached out to run her gloved fingers along a length of pale gold silk.

[Everweave Silk – Requires Level 8 – Defensive Material]

Lillia’s hand lingered. Level 8. She pulled away.

“Don’t think too much about the numbers,” Rickshaw said. He’d manifested behind the counter, his bony hand resting on the same silk. “Most of this will be here when you come back. We keep good stock here.”

“How? From where?”

Rickshaw let go of the fabric. “You ask a lot of questions that scholars have given up on. Hope you don’t lose that, darling.” The skeleton put the tray with the fruit in front of her again. A salesman. “People trade for things in dungeons. Some things I have. Some things people gave to me. It works.”

Lillia looked round the room again. Even the stall Rickshaw had been behind earlier was slightly blurred and beyond the reach of her eyes. She knew what was there, but she couldn’t force it to return.

“Now, princess. How about we get to why you’re here.” Rickshaw slid the fruit across to Lillia, almost off the counter. That was an offer.

Lillia still hesitated.

“That one’s a hello. Guest rights.”

Lillia snatched the fruit faster than she knew she could and much faster than she should have. Years of being told to eat slowly grabbed her wrists and stopped her from shoving it right into her mouth. Hunger wanted to devour. She had to settle for eating.

Rickshaw watched intently. Lillia closed her eyes with the first bite. The fruit was sour, stringy and strange on her tongue. Thick juices stuck to her teeth as she pulled away from the small bite she’d allowed herself. She had to run her tongue over them several times to clean off.

Back home she would have asked for something different. At the moment she wanted a second bite more than anything. Lillia abstained. Years of practice. “I don’t have any money on me.”

“Money?” Rickshaw scoffed at the word.

Lillia’s stomach dropped. She raised the fruit to her mouth to try and cover the red as she felt the heat in her cheeks.

“Do you want me to give this away?” he asked. “Money is useless in the dungeons. Nobody comes to the market looking for some money.”

The lantern-light danced off the dress as Lillia stared at Rickshaw. One of them changed from red to blue. The glint in Rickshaw’s eye socket darted to note the change.

He sighed. “I don’t deal in coin. Okay? Coin is a luxury for surface dwellers who don’t know any better. It’s for people who don’t need solutions right now, darling.”

Lillia’s lessons covering the workings of the kingdom’s gold had always posited that money was the solution.

“Money can buy anything. We just skip right to the anything.”

“Anything.” Lillia repeated. She took another bite. It was as strange as the last had been, but in a different sweeter way. Unsettling.

“Materials,” Rickshaw said. “Things you find in some rooms. Monster drops. If the dungeon has given it to you, I’ll take a look.”

“Oh. I have some…” Lillia looked around. Before she could reach into her dress to check, Rickshaw disappeared behind this second counter. In the quiet of his absence, Lillia placed the smell of something cooking on a fire across the room. The half-finished fruit was less enticing with that option in the background.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

A moment later Rickshaw popped back up. He had a second tray in his hand, which he laid in front of Lillia while taking back the one he’d used to hand her the fruit. It was blank. Dusty.

“Hand in there, please,” Rickshaw said.

Lillia complied with her left. Some of the fruit juice was on her right and that felt rude to smear on the counter. As soon as her fingers touched the wood, something flared under her nails. It was bright. Warm. Smoke followed, but nothing hurt.

After a second of watching the light dance across the tray, Lillia recognized the burned symbol of House Ashvalin. The flaming rose. A thorny crest.

“Thank you, darling.” Rickshaw took the newly burned tray back to his side of the counter. The purple fabric of this counter top allowed it to slide so smoothly. They would have made wonderful bedsheets. “And inventory?”

Lillia thought about it and the text appeared.

[Inventory]

[Key Item – Note of Sir Nobody]

[Empty Bottle x 1]

[Ruined Gown of House Ashvalin x 1]

[Rusty Knife x 1] [Ruined Royal Slippers x 1]

[Scroll – ??? x 1]

[Burnmite Cloth x 2]

[Spellmite Cap – Burning x 2]

Rickshaw looked down at the tray. Lillia could see that there was a small version of the text above the crest her fingertips had left there. His jaw clicked as he processed the list. “That’s…”

“Bad?”

“Well, mostly.” Rickshaw looked up to Lillia. The light in his eye had cooled from shining gold to an off-white yellow. “Quite the killing spree.”

“Pardon?”

“You went to town. Didn’t you?”

“They tried to kill me first.”

“I get that, just think I might have underestimated you,” Rickshaw said. He looked down at the tray again, almost like he needed to double check the short list he was seeing. “How many spellmites did you hunt?”

“Three.”

“Right, you have three caps but how many did you—”

“I killed three. I have three hats.”

“I see three caps listed but—”

“They were all wearing hats. Why wouldn’t I—”

This time Rickshaw cut off Lillia, but it was by snapping his fingers. The sound was resounding within the market, amplified by a magic that lingered in the air and rested on Lillia’s ears as the sound faded. “You don’t know how drops work. Do you?”

“I kill things and they drop stuff.”

Rickshaw nodded. “But not everything drops everything every time,” he said. “You said you only killed three spellmites?”

Lillia echoed Rickshaw’s nod.

“If you hadn’t told me that, I would have guessed twenty.”

“Why?”