“Good luck!” Druma yelled from the side of the road, his wizard hat bouncing wildly from side to side in sync with his enthusiastic waving. “Druma hope boss partner make big kaboom on other merchants!”

As the sun made its way down the orange sky above, Balthazar and Tristan headed out of the bazaar and toward Ardville, leaving the crab’s party behind to protect the trading outpost.

“Hopefully not your kind of kaboom, Druma, but I appreciate the intention!” Tristan responded, waving back at the goblin, the golem, and the drake watching them leave.

“Nervous?” the eight-legged merchant asked once they turned to face the path to the town up the hill.

“Frightfully so,” the crab’s business partner said, rubbing his hands together for heat before pulling his overcoat closer to his neck. “Is it just me, or today is colder than usual?”

Balthazar looked around at the mounds of snow lining the sides of the road and the vast mantle of white covering the plains to their left.

“Yeah,” he said, pulling Madeleine’s wool hat down and closer to the base of his eyestalks. “I think so, too.”

As the pair strolled their way up the road, the crustacean kept quietly glancing at the human, unsure of what to say to make him feel more confident.

“You got this, Tristan,” Balthazar finally said. “After all, you were already lined up to get this job years ago, remember?”

Tristan sighed, a fleeting cloud of vapor escaping his mouth.

“I know, partner. But back then things were… different. I was different.”

The man’s pace slowed slightly, and Balthazar eased his skittering to stay at his side.

“I was younger,” the aged merchant said, his eyes staring emptily at the cobblestones as they walked. “More confident. Still had all my hair, too! And… I hadn’t yet fallen from grace at that point, you know?”

The crab shook his shell. “But your name has been cleaned. Everyone knows that!”

Tristan tried to force a smile in response.

“Perhaps,” he said, a sad note weaving through his voice. “But that doesn’t negate the years of shame. The years when I shamed my own name. I might have been a victim of Antoine’s scheming that night years ago, but everything that came after was on me. I went down, and instead of getting up and fighting back, I chose to stay down. I chose to feel sorry for myself. To keep drinking myself into numbness to forget the humiliation. I… I was weak. And I worry I still am, partner.”

Balthazar’s eyestalks formed a slight scowl. “Nonsense! You’re not weak.”

The large wooden gates of Ardville creaked and moved even before the duo reached the top of the road. An arm waved enthusiastically from behind them as the gap between the doors split open.

“Mr. Balthazar!” the guard in yellow and white armor said with a smile. “I was waiting for your arrival.”

“Ah, yes, uh, hello there… Quincy,” the hesitant crab replied.

“Welcome back!” said Quentin, his smile widening. “Go right ahead. They’re waiting for you at the town hall.”

“Waiting for me, and Tristan,” Balthazar corrected.

“Of course!” the gate guard said, nodding in agreement. “That’s what I meant.”

Tristan tried to force another sympathetic smile at the crab. “I’ll see you up ahead, partner. Thanks for the welcome, Quentin.”

Without waiting for a response, he shoved his hands in his overcoat’s pockets and walked ahead into the main street.

“Good luck!” Quentin exclaimed, waving as the crustacean skittered forward to keep up with his partner.

“Hey, come on, Tristan,” Balthazar said. “You can’t go into that meeting feeling down like that. Don’t mind Quincy over there, he’s a bit of a fanboy.”

“His name is Quentin,” the other merchant said with a sigh.

“Right. Isn’t that what I said?”

“And it’s not just him,” Tristan continued. “I’m not such a fool that I don’t realize the guild is only entertaining the idea of my bid for guildmaster as a way to get closer to you. And it’s not just merchants, most of the townsfolk know the famous merchant crab, they love telling tales about you to every adventurer who passes through Ardville. You’re popular, Balthazar. Me? I’m… I’m just the town drunk.”

The crab gave the man a disapproving glare as he continued walking alongside him.

“Former town drunk,” Balthazar said. “And don’t be ridiculous. I’m sure plenty of people in this town know and like you too!”

“Hey!” a man in working clothes said, waving from the other side of the street. “There he is! Good luck today!”

“See?! Look at that!” the crab exclaimed to his partner, stopping and pointing both pincers toward the other side of the road.

Tristan paused and raised his head from between the collars of his overcoat to glance at the worker.

“Give those guild merchants a show tonight, crab!” the man across the road yelled before turning back to the boxes he was unloading from a cart.

Balthazar let out a muttered groan.

“Alright, never mind, don’t look at that. Bad example. But that’s just one person!”

A white plume shot out from behind his popped collars as the human merchant sighed and sank his face back into the warmth of his coat. With a heavier pace, Tristan pushed forward in silence.

The duo made their way up to the town square, Balthazar feeling more familiar with the path to take now that he had walked the streets of Ardville a few times. All the way there, random people would look and wave at the crab, smiling and greeting, some offering good luck wishes.

Balthazar was growing increasingly more grumpy about it.

For one, because that was too much unwanted human attention from people he wasn’t even attempting to sell anything to. But more than that, because the further they went, the more he could see Tristan’s morale faltering next to him.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The human and the crustacean stopped in front of the town hall, near Bergen’s statue, who seemed to smile at the sun slipping below the horizon in the distance.

“Look, Tristan,” Balthazar started. “Don’t mind all that. I’m a talking crab wearing a backpack and a wool hat. Of course people will focus on that! It's a novelty! But you have to remember that it’s you who’s up for the position of guildmaster once we go inside. Not me. Everybody knows I’d never want that job!”

Tristan forced a smile before shrugging.

“That’s the thing, partner,” he said. “If you did want it, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t even want me present here tonight.”

The graying man turned and walked inside the hall, hands still in his pockets, shoulders still pushed up against the night’s chill.

Balthazar hung back for a moment, staring emptily at the long, crab-shaped shadow being cast on the cobblestones behind him by the last remnants of sunlight.

With a sigh, the merchant skittered inside the town hall too.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” a man in a white shirt and embroidered yellow vest said as Tristan and Balthazar stepped through the doorway.

“Hello, Jarvas,” Tristan greeted. “Long time no see.”

“Indeed, sir,” the other man said, both hands crossed behind his back, his chest slightly puffed out, and his chin held high. “May I take your coat?”

The aspiring guildmaster nodded and removed his overcoat. After laying it onto Jarvas’s waiting arms, Tristan also placed a single coin in his open palm before moving toward the main hall.

As the hall’s butler carefully placed the coat on a rack behind the counter, Balthazar stepped forward.

“Ask me to hang my shell, and we’re going to have trouble, pal,” the crab said.

“Uhm, right, sir,” Jarvas said hesitantly, trying not to lose his decorum. “I’m afraid I will have to ask you for your… bag, however. No weapons, armor, or other such gear allowed in tonight's meeting, given the importance of the people attending it, as I’m sure you understand.”

Balthazar groaned quietly, but obliged. He already expected something of the sort, for the same reasons he wouldn’t even bother trying to bring a giant stone golem into that meeting.

As the crab let his Backpack of Stuff and Things slip off his shell, the butler extended his arms to receive it.

“Thanks,” Balthazar said, dropping the bag’s straps onto his right hand and taking the coin Tristan had left from his left palm with a swift pinch.

With a confident skitter, the eight-legged merchant stepped into the main hall, leaving the speechless butler behind, staring wide-eyed back and forth between the crab and his now empty palm.

Unlike the last time he had been there, the main hall was now filled with lively chatter and people in fancy dressing. Merchants, traders, suppliers, and other influential nobles were present, in what the crab calculated from a quick headcount to be around thirty people.

They all wore expensive textiles and jewelry of either silver or gold, in a clear attempt at displaying their wealth and status. Each one held a cup or chalice with their little finger sticking out too, for some reason the crab could not fathom. Then again, Balthazar figured if there was something he wasn’t very well versed on, it was the intricacies of how to use fingers.

Small groups formed around the banquet tables, each absorbed in their own conversations that filled the room with a background noise of unintelligible words underneath the soft melody of a harp being played by a lady on the other end of the room. For a simple pond-grown crustacean, the whole thing felt a bit too… stuffy.

“Ah, magnificent! There he is!” a short and rotund man in a dark green robe who was talking to Tristan said.

“Hello,” said Balthazar, slipping the coin into the Bag of Holding Money attached to the side of his shell.

The white-haired man stepped around the crab’s business partner to come closer, a silver chalice held high in his hand.

“So nice to finally meet the famous merchant crab!”

“Balthazar, meet Ambrose, our senior alchemist here in Ardville,” Tristan said.

“A pleasure!” the older man exclaimed. “I was just asking your associate here when we’d be graced with your presence!”

“I’m sure you were,” the crab replied under his breath, watching the very animated man wave his chalice around as he spoke.

“Is it true that you once managed to acquire the petals of a Frostshade flower to cure one of your associates?” Ambrose asked. “Not even I in all my years managed to so much as lay eyes upon that rare flower! You must tell me all about this no doubt fascinating tale, please!”

“Heh, right…” Balthazar said, awkwardly trying to sidestep the alchemist. “Perhaps later in the evening. For now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go say hello to some… acquaintances over there.”

Without waiting for a response, the eight-legged merchant skittered away to another table, where he had spotted two familiar faces—Olivia and Suze.

“Hey, you made it,” the Marquessian heir said, saluting the crab with a nod of her cup.

While the young woman was no longer wearing her light armor like before, Balthazar couldn’t help but notice she still refused to adhere to the dress code from the other nobles around them. Instead, she opted for a discreet and mostly black outfit, with a blouse, trousers, and boots. Like someone who wanted to be ready to jump into a scuffle at some point during the night—and knowing her, the merchant was certain that was likely her hope.

“What’s she doing here?!” Balthazar asked, pointing a pincer at Suze. “I doubt a guild of merchants would invite a kid to their meeting.”

“Well, that’s just rude!” the little rascal said, waving the huge turkey leg in her hand at him. “They invited an old lobster, why couldn’t they invite me?!”

Olivia rolled her eyes and shrugged.

“She snuck her way in behind me, and by the time I noticed the little mouse, it was too late to leave and take her back to the inn. So I figured it would be best to just let her stay where I hopefully can make sure she doesn’t cause any trouble.”

“Pfff! Liar! You want me here because without me you’d be bored out of your gourd!”

Olivia threw a glare at the little girl, and she responded with a big grin before taking a huge bite into her turkey leg.

“Well, at least the mayor knows how to throw a feast,” the older girl said. “The food is great. You should try some.”

“Yes, you should!” a familiar booming voice exclaimed.

Balthazar turned to see a big barrel of a man in furs stomping toward him with open arms and a smile behind his thick beard.

“Mayor Bergen,” the crab greeted, already bracing for the possibility of an impact from the man’s hand on the back of his shell.

Thankfully, the warrior had both hands busy, one holding a huge leg of lamb with several chunks already missing from it, and the other holding a shiny tankard that was nearly the size of a keg.

“Craaaab!” the rose-cheeked man said. “Good to see you! Have you had anything yet?”

“Hmm, no…” Balthazar said, eyeing the canapés sitting on a plate next to him with suspicion.

“Don’t worry!” a very amused Bergen said. “I gave the kitchen very specific instructions to not use any seafood tonight!”

“Uhm, thanks, but you do know that crabs usually eat sea—”

“But before anything else,” shouted the happy mayor, “I must insist that you try this delicious liquor! I haven’t tasted such a sweet nectar in years. Probably since the last time I had supper with your friend’s aunt! HAH!”

Olivia rolled her eyes as the burly man snapped his meaty fingers to call one of the waitresses. As the girl approached, he snatched a cup from her tray and offered it to the crab, some of its contents sloshing wildly inside and spilling as he extended his arm.

“Here, try it!”

“Erm…” the hesitant crustacean said, taking the cup into his pincer. “I’m not really the drinking type.”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed the mayor. “Tonight’s a special night. A sip won’t kill you!”

Balthazar stared down into the cup, a thick, dark liquid circling inside it as a fruity aroma emanated from it. It was strong, but pleasant.

“Sweet nectar, you say?”

“Indeed!” Bergen said, before taking another loud swig from his tankard. “Ahhh!”

“Oh well, what’s the harm?” the merchant said.

Taking a tentative sip from the cup, the crab’s eyestalks stood up slightly higher as he felt the smooth drink rolled over his tongue and down his throat.

It was definitely not comparable to one of his baker’s sweet pastries, but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad of an experience as the crab feared.

“Hmm, I wonder if Madeleine could find a way to use this liquor in any of her recipes,” he said to himself before taking another small sip.

“Everyone, may I have your attention?” another familiar voice called loudly, causing the chatter in the room to die down.

Everyone turned to look at Abernathy, who stood next to the mayoral chair with hands clasped together in front of his chest.

“Please take your seats,” he announced. “We shall begin the meeting to nominate the new master of the Merchants Guild now.”