After we left the carpenter’s shop, I thankfully still had my fifty silver pieces on me. Since I didn’t have to use them for the advance payment of the house.

That said, I can now safely say I’m into debt for the first time, official debt.

Though the whole situation left a bad taste in my mouth, the guildsman assured me that he would be submitting the papers to the Adventurer’s Guild for them to ratify the transaction and hold onto the documents.

There was the possibility of trying to ratify it through a bank, but most banking families didn’t deal with holding bonds they didn’t issue and would rather just buy the bonds and increase the final settlement.

“Let’s go, Fiora.” Leaving that aside, I took Fiora’s hand and started walking through the city towards the address I had asked the guildsman about.

We were currently in the craftsmen district of the city, so most of the buildings around were guilds or associations of some sort, but the place was hard to navigate since there weren’t that many places with signs and there were many warehouses mixed in with the workshops.

We finally arrived at one of the Artisan’s Guild of the city. It didn’t take long before one of the guildsmen noticed us and came to greet us like before.

“Hello, sir and miss. How may I help you?”

“We’re looking for tools for drawing and sculpting.”

“Oh, so you’re looking into joining the guild?! You’re quite old, but don’t worry. We have some that started just as old as you.”

“Ah, no. I think there’s a misunderstanding. The tools are for her.” I said, gesturing towards Fiora.

“Oh…” He looked a bit less enthusiastic than before. “I’m afraid she can’t join the guild quite yet, due to her age.”

“Don’t worry, we didn’t intend for her to join either way, we just wanted to purchase the tools.”

“If you’re looking to conduct business here, you’ll have to be registered though.”

“We don’t live here, nor intend to make business here. It’s just that our home island doesn’t have that many specialized guilds.”

“Ah, I see… then, follow me.”

We were led further inside the building where they showcased some of the tools they had commissioned to put up for sale for their members or aspiring members.

Most of the good quality ones were reserved exclusively for the guild members, so we would have to settle for the basic ones.

Still, I made sure to choose the ones who seemed to be of better quality among the available ones.

“Ah, I don’t really need that much…” Fiora tried to protest as I began pointing and picking up her equipment.

One drawing board, two sets of drawing coals in different dimensions, an eraser of goose feathers, two pieces of parchment one to serve as a tracing paper and the other was clean.

After that, her carving tools. A set of carving chisels, a set of carving gouges and a set of carving knives. Since they also sold satchels here, I added one on top. All in all, the total rounded up to about thirty silver pieces.

I worried whether it would be too heavy for her to carry, so I offered to carry it for her to which she responded by shaking her head violently in refusal.

She hung her new bag over her shoulder and proudly carried it as I paid the guildsman and bid farewell.

When I came back to her, Fiora was staring at me with a slightly annoyed look. I wonder if I exaggerated a bit…

Since we had work to do and we had already dilly-dallied enough so we hurried down to the harbor. She spent the entire way there avoiding me whenever I tried to talk to her, but she didn’t really seem angry at me so I just let it be for the time being.

There were many ships docked at the landing sites of Damiya, so it would be a bit of a challenge to find which one was the right one.

To save time, I walked up to one of the dock workers and showed him the paper that was given to me, since it had a symbol or mark of sorts that probably should identify the ship.

As I showed the paper, the eyes of the young dock worker widened and he looked astonished at my face for a brief second before asking us to follow him and guiding us to a ship that did bear the same mark that was on the paper.

Well, I suppose since the man who gave us this was an attendant to the Principality, he probably had some clout which caused the reaction of the poor dock worker. But looking at how small the ship that was assigned to us was compared to other aristocratic ships that I had seen before, I suppose he wasn’t that high on the hierarchy.

The ship in question was about thirty meters in length and six meters wide, with a sculpted bow in the image of a peafowl head and on the back I could see a folded arcane sail in the shape of a peacock’s tail, while the sides bore smaller wing shaped arcane sails.

We handed over the paper to one of the men that was working around the ship and after having read through it, the man smiled and welcomed us aboard.