There were only magicians and nobles in the hall, sitting in chairs and taking a place right in front of the stove.
Although this is a hall, it is not very large, and twelve people are crammed into a narrow room, the heat from the fireplace blows their nostrils with the stench of sweat.
In front of the two men were two bottles of wine with labels of different crops.
"Yes, my exclusive spell can speed up the passage of time so that even wine that has been in the barrel for only a year can turn into a ten-year-old wine within a few months...".
Faced with a pretentiously dressed man, the magician - De Niro desperately tried to sell his charms.
Even though he boasted of his ability to speed up time, after all, he was just an empty stone in his late twenties who had not yet been promoted to an elite mage and had not brought anything revolutionary to spells.
He came here alone to live in seclusion because he couldn't stand the ridicule of colleagues, but in two years he spent all his savings.
He was at a loss when he saw the news in the newspapers that Fraser had earned half a million gold coins by selling his cold preservation spells, and on a whim pretended to meet the lord of the area in the church.
In the middle of every month, the Lord of Peli, the Morlock of Peli, comes here to make his rounds. Every month, Vladyka Pele comes here to inspect his vineyard, and then, with a little trick, he can cause rain.
This does not mean that he is a powerful magician who can change the weather and cause rain, but the rain, which was unpredictable, was just a natural phenomenon caused by the fact that he bought three buckets of salt with all his savings and asked his bird of prey, with which he signed a contract, to carry buckets and scatter them in the clouds.
Soon Morlock, an ignorant and unproductive lord, was fooled by him.
"Okay, then I'll subscribe to you as the head of the wine farm, if you can really show me such fantastic spells?".
De Niro immediately agreed, and the demonstration he conducted was simple: with the help of such a technique as spatial transfer, he swapped a new bottle of wine that had just begun to ferment with one that had been aging in the cellar for a long time.
In the presence of a village lord who was completely ignorant of spells, there was no chance that such a trick would be revealed on the spot.
He was appointed master of the cellar, received a good salary and could smuggle wine for sale to replenish his treasury.
De Niro would have been alive long ago when they discovered the problem.
"Pele, rich lord of the Southern Lands, you almost fell into the trap of this incompetent man of honor."
The peaceful conversation of the two men was interrupted by a voice that sang like a nightingale and was as beautiful as a poem.
Looking in the direction from which the voice came, a beautiful silver-haired woman with a smiling face slowly approached.
"And you, this young lady?". Morlock, a man over forty, seemed to have fallen in love with the haze of ignorance again.
"Rhea, my name is Rhea, my lord, and I am a passing cruiser."
A young girl who set out alone because of her pilgrimage was obviously much more reliable and trustworthy than a worldly traveling merchant.
Rhea took her place at the table, and the wet clothes she carried in her hands were given to Gloria to dry in another place much earlier.
It was clearly inappropriate to interfere in a conversation between a noble man and a magician with wet clothes in his hands.
"Magic is a high and esoteric discipline, my lord, and for a vulgar country peasant like her, nothing seems like an impossible miracle."
"Shut up and let Lady Rhea finish first."
"Lord Pele, this man did the usual trick for the North with you, he cast a spell and turned a new barrel of wine into aged wine before your eyes, but it was not an acceleration of time, but only a change in the interval."
"A spell in the air?" Morlock, perplexed, put his hand to an unopened bottle of aged wine and opened it to smell what was really there.
"This....
My lord!"
"Knights, there is a deceptive wild magician here."
Three knights of the church, who were staring at the wizard on the periphery, piled on him, dragged the still resisting magician to the back kitchen and tied him up, giving him fair blows.
The Overlord was still here, so naturally it was impossible to simply tie the prisoner to the overlord.
The room, which was packed to capacity with twelve people, became much freer after the departure of four.
"Come in, have a seat, Miss Rhea."
With the courtesy of Mr. Ray, he sat down on a chair opposite him and began to tell him about his "travels".
Of course, it was mostly complete nonsense.
When the conversation turned to another topic, Rhea suddenly said: "I have been traveling around the country since I was six years old, making pilgrimages to become a Virgin of the Church for ten years."
"It's quite a lot of work."
"If it was only hard work, then every four years the coins in my hand would suddenly run out, and for the white bread that I could buy with a silver coin, I would have to pay with two more copper tickets for the next four years. But after another four years, silver coins are used to buy white bread, and you still get four or five copper bills back."
The new noble lord, sensitive to economics and coinage, had to explain to Ray about the Mint and the changes in coinage, and possibly reveal his own exclusive information.
This is a way for noble people to show their knowledge to a chosen lady, help her in something and make her feel good.
But this morlock just laughed: "This is something, my manager argues with the person who manages the treasury, because of this every few years."
The fact is that the accountant hired by the lord would have been red-faced when he explained to the old nobleman and his managers, who were not so scrupulous in matters of economics, the various reasons for the need to exchange coins.
Most of those who owned vineyards were traditionally of old noble origin, but few nobles, whether old or new, who bought their way to the top, would themselves engage in agriculture or conduct monetary negotiations.
Thus, it seems that any hope of getting exclusive information about the mint from the lord and speculating on coins has been lost.
Lord Peli continued to flirt with the innocent newcomer, but Rhea tactfully evaded these polite courtship.
It was probably only when the impatience finally subsided that Morlock said to Rhea.
"You say you're Rhea! I invite you to visit my humble abode the next time you have the opportunity to come to Karafrog."
With this, Morlock? Then Pele left the hall.
"Yes, thank you."
Throughout the conversation, Maroccan and his wife did not give their names. It was the custom of the nobility not to mention their names.
They believed that even if their names were not pronounced, they would still know them, and it was only natural that a commoner should know a nobleman, so it would be beneath his dignity to pronounce his name.
It was believed that when it came to Karafrog, the only person who mentioned the lord of the vineyard was the man standing in front of Rhea.
If they were in the city, then the likes of Rhea, a small traveling merchant, and De Niro, a magician trying to sell himself, would not even be able to meet, let alone talk to the Lord of the Vineyard.
Therefore, the church was an ideal place to establish such contacts.
Even if he politely refuses the invitation, the service for helping to detect fraud will still be provided, and he will certainly be able to get a small discount when he returns here to do business in the future.
As soon as Rhea left, the traveling merchants who were discussing this issue on the sidelines also turned to Rhea.