The foreign merchants with the potential vanilla beans were at the other end of the town, so Mana opted to use the carriage instead of walking, since she wanted to get there early. Once they had seen the beans, they could take their time and wander around on the roads. Besides, Mana was quite eager to sample the street food of this world, too.
It didn't take their carriage too long to reach the temporary stalls set up by all the foreign merchants. Mana quickly located the ones the head cook had told her about. It looked like they had just finished setting up their shops for the day, and not too many customers had come by yet.
"I should wait in the carriage for you," Raven said quietly.
"Why?" Mana asked. "Are you very tired already? Should we go back to the summer palace?"
Raven shook his head with a small smile. "I'm fine," he said. "But these merchants are from the Pearl Kingdom, right? They will….probably be frightened if they saw me."
