Chapter 16: Special Order
It's time for the return of everyone's favorite merchant: Anna! It's been a hot minute since I've mentioned her, and I've had a joke I've been wanting to tell for a bit, so I figure that's as good of a reason as any to include her more in this story. Besides, Anna should've been more prominent in Three Houses anyway, and that's including her being a potential soldier in Byleth's army. So, I hope you don't mind my small indulgence with this chapter.
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"Come one, come all! The secret to your continued safety can only be found at my stall! Buy your continued security from any and all threats, including the Death Knight!"
The red-headed merchant raised her voice in a call that repeatedly echoed through the selection of shopping booths set up at the front gate of the monastery. Anna was positively sure that she saw both the local armorer and blacksmith glaring and scowling at her, but she didn't care. The growing rumors of some Death Knight marauding around the village and monastery were doing wonders for her sales, and there was zero incentive for her to discourage that. After all, scared kids meant that she'd be able to sell all of her protective tokens and charms, in addition to offloading second-hand weaponry she acquired at a bulk discount. Fear was pure capital. If anything, the other merchants were fools for not getting in on this game.
As her eyes scanned over the students milling about the marketplace, Anna swiftly made a mental note on the wealthiest-looking ones in the crowd. Those would be much bigger marks than the hapless teens idly browsing her cheaper wares. Even if a lot of those kids were rich, it wasn't like the rank-and-file would spend too much on average. Minor nobility didn't bring in as much cash as the big political players of the land, so she needed to target the people she knew for a face were rich.
Out of the corner of her eye, Anna picked up on two students that apparently were part of some big noble families out in the Kingdom of Faerghus. It was the tall blonde one and the one man-whore red-head kid. Right, Prince Dimitri Blaiddyd and Sylvain Gautier. They probably had some good coinage on their person. Putting on her best sales-woman smile, Anna milled casually over to where the two were standing and idly chatting.
"I'm just saying, you're treating me today," Sylvain commented.
Dmitri sighed. "And like I said before, I had no idea the service would last that long. Will an apology not suffice for missing lunch?"
Sylvain let out an affable chuckle. "If only people subsist on words alone, my friend."
Now that Anna was within speaking range, it was time for her to lay on her well-practiced charm. "Is there anything that I can help His Highness and his friend with today?"
"No, we're just browsing—" Dmitri began, before getting cut off.
"My friend here is wondering what's the most expensive imported food item you have here," answered Sylvain for his friend. He shot a sly grin at Dmitri, which was met with a small frown from the Faerghus prince.
"Sylvain, if you're truly hungry, I'm sure that Dedue would be most willing to arrange a meal," the blonde prince insisted.
"Then that defeats the point of you owing me something," Sylvain pointed out.
Anna scratched her head. This whole conversation was derailing itself fast. She needed to get things back onto the topic of sealing a deal. "Well, no, I don't have any kinds of food items on hand. But I can certainly tell you that I can order something for you from my contacts and have it shipped here in the next trade caravan, if you want something specific."
Sylvain stroked his chin in a brief amount of thought. "That does sound interesting… do you have a list of what you can order?"
"Yeah, sure! Let me just grab it real quick," Anna chirped. At that, she quickly made a bee-line over toward her stall and grabbed the order ledger stored under the countertop.
As soon as she made her way back over to Sylvain and Dmitri, Anna eagerly handed over the book to her potential customers. This was even better than getting these two to buy those drastically overpriced goods being marketed to those suckers pulled in by fear of the Death Knight. Getting a purchase on a big-ticket item would cover a lot of her operation expenses no problem.
"Take your time looking it over!" Anna beamed.
Sylvain leafed through the ledger's pages as Dmitri looked over his friend's shoulder to read it. After spending a few minutes flipping pages, he seemed to home in on something that really grabbed his interest. With a self-satisfied look on his face, he showed Anna the ledger page while pointing at the entry he wanted to order.
"I'll take this 'Secret Book', if you don't mind," announced Sylvain.
Dmitri visibly balked. "But that's well over two-thousand gold pieces!"
"C'mon, it's not as if that's a whole lot for someone of your status, your Highness," lightly chided Sylvain. Dmitri didn't seem to disagree, only once muttering something inaudibly under his breath in protest.
"It's a sale!" grinned Anna. "I just need you to fill out some paperwork over at the booth, if you don't mind."
Sylvain nodded and followed Anna back over to her Secret Shop market stall, with Dmitri following somewhat reluctantly after him. By the time the both of them stood across from Anna at the sales counter, she had already pulled an inkwell, quill, and some parchment with the sale printed on it. She certainly did work fast whenever a large amount of cash was on the line.
Sylvain dipped the quill in the ink and signed the parchment were there was some blank writing space. "Will that do it?" he asked.
Anna pulled out another parchment, a copy of the previous one. "I just need you to sign this copy here for record keeping. Also, if you can write out the name of the person we're charging for this order on both papers, that would be great."
Without a single moment of hesitation, Sylvain added his name to the copy and Dmitri's full name and title on both order forms, clearly designating his royal house as the place to charge for the purchase. The Blaiddyd family was hardly broke, they were the royal family of Faerghus, after all. It was funny to Sylvain to see his friend act stingy abut this book for that reason. Although if he knew the real reason for why he was ordering that Secret Book, he was sure that Dmitri would've bought it for him without hesitation. If only he knew how much Bernadetta meant to him, such a gift would seem like a small price to pay for him gaining such a good friend.
With the signatures finalized, Sylvain dropped the quill into the inkwell and handed the order forms over. "There, I think that'll just about do it."
"Thank you for your patronage!" thanked Anna. "And remember, you can always find the finest unique items and services at Anna's Secret Shop!"
Now that the transaction was finished, both Sylvain and Dmitri wandered off elsewhere into the market, with Dmitri looking rather pale at the thought of Sylvain spending his money. Not that it mattered to Anna.
For Anna, that special order made her day. 2,500 gold pieces would make covering her monthly operational costs easier than before. Now she could focus on making a real profit. And to think, some of the other Annas were content to just sell goods normally, like that one Anna working at the Hee-Ho Mart in Tokyo. That Anna was a moron for thinking that slinging donuts and shilling idol merchandise at a convenience store was enough to make large stacks of cash. Selling high-value goods to nobles was where it was really at. The gold value listed on the order forms certainly was no joke at all.
Humming happily to herself, Anna felt her feet become as light as a feather as she drifted and fluttered between customers browsing her wares, as if she was some kind of bright and cheerful capitalism fairy. There really was nothing else like the rush of pulling off a huge sale in a matter of minute. It was a unique high, not one that Anna would trade for anything else in the world. Other than for an exorbitant amount of cash, of course.
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And that's it! Yeah, this is a bit of a shorter chapter this time around. Think of it as something similar to the short Bernadetta chapter earlier in the story. It's nice to have some short, fun breather chapters every now and then. Besides, I really wanted to get in that Tokyo Mirage Sessions reference in there somehow, and jumping to more serious storytelling after that would feel a little bit jarring, I feel. Anyway, I hope you all didn't mind this short jaunt with everyone's favorite multiversal merchant Anna!
This is The Draigg, and I'm signing off for now!