“Dibs on the spoon,” said Mizuki. She was still slightly shaky but seemed to have it under control. If she had recriminations, she was saving them for later.
“We don’t know what it does, and that’s not the arrangement we have,” said Alfric. “Also, as I mentioned earlier, I promised Isra that she would have first bidding rights for entads and break any tied bids. Because we’re not allowing outside money, that means she could potentially take any of these entads by bidding her entire share of the loot.”
“I continue to object, except I feel like she did a lot more than me, so whatever,” said Mizuki. That wasn’t Alfric’s read of what happened, but he kept his mouth shut.
“It was needed to bait her, sure,” said Hannah, giving Isra a smile. “Alfric, you reckon to wait until after we’re out to find out what they do?”
“Usually, yes,” said Alfric. “You don’t want to stay in the dungeon longer than you have to. But in our case, because we got lucky and there’s so much we want to carry out, I think it’s better that we find out now, just in case one of these things allows for extradimensional space.” Aside from travel, extradimensional space was one of the cornerstone abilities needed in the trade, because it could greatly multiply what you could bring out of a dungeon.
Mizuki picked up the spoon and looked it over.
“Be very, very careful,” said Alfric, holding up a hand. “You don’t know what they do. Treat it like it might kill you or anyone you point it at. Assume that it’s deadly.”
Mizuki looked down at the spoon in her hand, then back up at Alfric. “It’s a spoon,” she said.
“One of the most powerful combat entads in existence is a flowerpot,” said Alfric. “If you tap on the bottom of it twice, it lets out a beam of concentrated light that can blast halfway through a city.”
“The first time it was fired, nigh on a hundred people died, though it did get undone,” said Hannah. “Rare, that, though, ay?”
“It’s good to keep in mind,” said Alfric, nodding to Hannah. He was going to have to talk to her in private, he decided, to see what she knew and how she knew it. He hadn’t expected a cleric so eager to venture into a dungeon, and he certainly hadn’t expected her to be so knowledgeable.
“Oh, it changes size,” said Mizuki, twirling around a spoon that was much bigger than it had been before. “That’s… neat.” It warped and shifted in her hand, and from the way that she was concentrating, this was taking quite a bit of effort. It wasn’t just changing size, it was changing shape as well, becoming deep or shallow, changing its angle, but never straying too far from being a normal spoon. “I want it,” said Mizuki.
“That’s not really how we’re doing things,” said Alfric.
“Then I’ll bid on it,” said Mizuki. “One-twentieth of my share.”
“That’s stupid,” said Verity. “No offense. With the books, we might get as much as fifty thousand rings, by Alfric’s evaluation, which… I’m skeptical of. Your share would be ten thousand. A twentieth of that is five hundred rings. You think a spoon that changes size is worth that?”
Mizuki turned the spoon into a ladle and frowned at it. “I suppose not.”
“You shouldn’t tell her that,” said Isra. “More for the rest of us.”
“I don’t particularly need the money,” said Verity. “I live a nice enough life right now, even without this windfall.”
“Then for my sake,” said Isra.
“We’ll do all the negotiations at the end, once we’ve taken out everything we can carry,” said Alfric. “No point in talking about it now.”
“And we can touch these?” asked Verity, looking down at the objects on the table, then up at Alfric for confirmation.
“You can,” said Alfric. “The flowerpot was an aberration. Just be careful what you try.”
Verity picked up the flute and looked it over, while Isra went for the bow. Alfric watched them carefully, then went to grab the handkerchief, only to find that Hannah had already picked it up.
“I’ll go get the two books from downstairs,” said Alfric, closing his hand. “If we’re entad testing, best to do it all at once.”
The bigger of the two books was nearly fifty pounds, and while that wasn’t a problem for Alfric, it did make him wonder what it could do that would possibly be worth lugging that weight around. Naturally, entads didn’t have to be worthwhile, and many of them (like the shape-changing spoon) were little more than curiosities, but he was hopeful that the book would prove its worth. Perhaps when he opened it he would find a multitude of maps, and touching them would take him and the book to somewhere else, the exact kind of travel entad that he’d been hoping for. More likely, it would be something just barely useful enough to justify taking it out. It was useless to guess at what an entad did before testing it, but impossible to stop yourself.
“I figured out the handkerchief,” said Hannah when Alfric came back up. She was smiling. “It heals wounds.”
“It does?” asked Alfric.
“Well, ‘heals’ is strong language for what it does,” she said, looking a bit sheepish. She held out her arm, where she’d rolled up her sleeve. The handkerchief was wrapped around her forearm. “See?” she asked. “Covered, it looks and feels fine. But take it off?” She took off the handkerchief, revealing an inch-long cut that was bleeding freely. “Huh,” she said, looking down at the wound. “I thought it just stopped the hurt and the blood, but I think it’s a bit more.” She replaced the handkerchief and held it there.
“How’d you get hurt?” asked Alfric.
“Did it myself,” replied Hannah, still looking cheerful. “Red is the color of blood, ay?”
“That’s,” Alfric began, then thought better of it. “I suppose if it works, it works. Guessing things on the basis of their looks is a crapshoot though, maybe a bit better than chance, but not so much that you should be cutting yourself.”
“This flute has too many holes,” said Verity, turning it over. “And there would be no way for your fingers to effectively cover them.”
“Do you play the flute?” asked Mizuki, moving over to stand next to the bard.
“No,” replied Verity.
“And how many fingers do you have?” asked Mizuki.
“The usual amount,” replied Verity with a sigh of exasperation.
“I’m counting six on each hand, for what it’s worth,” said Mizuki.
Alfric looked and saw that this was true, at nearly the same moment that Verity seemed to notice. She shrieked and dropped the flute, which clattered on the ground, at which point her hands went back to having five fingers. She stared at her hands, keeping them in front of her, as though they were going to mutate at any moment.
“Entad effects usually aren’t permanent, for bodily effects,” said Alfric. “If there were one that gave you an extra finger on your hand for the rest of your life, it would be one of the really rare ones.”
“Neat,” said Mizuki, picking up the flute and giving it a twirl, the spoon she’d taken stuffed into a pant pocket. She held the flute in one hand and stared at her free hand, which had six fingers. She waved them back and forth, then clenched and unclenched them. “This is so weird. You can’t even feel it. It’s like I always had six fingers.” She squinted for a moment, and then she had seven fingers instead of six. “All right, time to see how many we can get out of this.” More and more fingers were added to her hands, until eventually she had ten fingers on each. It was altogether too many fingers, very noticeable when Alfric looked at her.