The guild master's alcohol selection was good. The pricing was not.
I looked at the numbers written next to each variety and then at the guild master and then back at the numbers.
"No." I said, and teleported us out.
We landed in Stunfore. Branklore's south district. The largest alcohol production territory in Philantria, where the pricing reflected what things actually cost to make rather than what a Medalline guild thought it could extract from buyers with limited alternatives.
Frostina recognized where we were before she had fully found her footing. Her entire posture changed.
I reached into my item box and pulled out a coin pouch. I held it out to her.
"Twenty gold coins." I said.
She took it with both hands and looked at it. Then at me.
"Mine?" She said.
"Your allowance." I said. "First one. Spend it however you want."
She stared at the pouch for another moment. Then at the market stretching out in front of us, full of stalls she had been to before but always alongside me and always as a companion to my purchases rather than as someone with her own money to spend.
She was already moving before I had finished thinking about it.
Torra watched her go from his position in my arms.
Then he looked at me.
"Why does Frostina get money?" He said. "The others don't."
Entirely without accusation. Just the honest, direct question of a child who had noticed something and wanted it explained.
I looked at him.
The question landed somewhere I had been circling for a while without addressing. The residents of Eryndor had everything they needed. Housing, food, clothing, safety. None of it required them to ask twice or worry about whether it would be there. By any practical measure they were provided for more completely than most people in Philantria could imagine.
But they had nothing that was theirs.
The distinction mattered. I knew it from the other life. The difference between being taken care of and having something of your own wasn't about the amount. It was about the choice. A person who receives what they need is comfortable. A person who spends their own money on their own decisions has something else entirely, something that comfort alone didn't give.
The money coming into Eryndor now came from what the residents grew and made. The crops were theirs. The fabric was theirs. The herbs were theirs. The income from all of it was theirs already in every meaningful sense.
I just hadn't structured it that way.
"When we get back," I said, "everyone gets an allowance. Twenty gold coins a month."
Torra blinked. "Everyone?"
"Everyone." I said. "The money comes from what Eryndor produces. It belongs to the people who produce it."
He thought about this with the seriousness he brought to things that seemed important.
"Even Elder Elka?" He said.
"Even Elder Elka."
"Even Flame?"
I considered Flame's current relationship with money, which was nonexistent, and his current relationship with fruit, which was a recurring operational problem.
"Yes." I said. "Even Flame."
Torra nodded slowly, turning the idea over.
Twenty gold coins a month. Five gold coins fed a family of four for a full month among commoners in any of the surrounding kingdoms. Twenty put a single person comfortably into the middle tier of society by standard measure.
The residents of Eryndor, with housing and food and everything else already handled, would have twenty gold coins of pure discretionary income every month with nothing required of it.
I should have done this months ago.
The fact that I hadn't sat with me in a way I didn't examine too closely.
I purchased the party alcohol separately. The practical quantities, the varieties Azylan would want for cooking alongside what the adults preferred to drink, a selection broad enough for a proper celebration. Everything into the item box efficiently.
Then I bought Eryndor's regular supply run alongside it. The bulk of the shopping for the month, the things on the mental list I ran through every cycle, restocking what had been used and adding what had been requested.
Frostina reappeared eventually with the particular walk of someone who has made several satisfying decisions in quick succession. She was holding three bottles against her chest and had the expression of someone who had spent the afternoon exactly as she intended.
"I got something for Elder Elka." She said, before I could observe anything about the bottles. "She mentioned once that she liked the sweet wine from Branklore's eastern vineyards."
I looked at her.
"What." She said. "I can think about other people."
She had received her first personal allowance and spent a portion of it on Elder Elka without being asked or prompted, and was now presenting this as if it required no acknowledgment.
"Good." I said.
She looked slightly wrong-footed by the absence of a more complex reaction and examined one of her bottles to cover it.
Torra tugged my sleeve.
I looked down at him.
He had the expression he sometimes got when he was about to say something he had been holding for longer than the current conversation. Slightly careful. Like the words needed to be chosen right.
"Can I have one too?" He said. "An allowance."
"Yes." I said.
His face shifted immediately into something brighter.
"Can I use it now?" He said.
"What do you want to buy?"
He pressed his lips together. Then, with the air of someone finally saying something out loud that had been waiting for a while:
"In Amlada's capital. Near the west market. There's a toy store." A pause. "They had stuffed animals in the window. I saw them the last time we went. There was a rabbit one. It was big."
I looked at him.
Every market we had been through together, in every kingdom. Torra had pointed at food, at things for the settlement, at items for other people. He had asked for candied apples to share. He had asked for things other people might want. He had never once asked me to stop at a toy store.
I thought about how many we had passed. How many times he had looked at something in a window and then looked at something else because asking wasn't something he did.
The feeling that came up in my chest was not one I had a precise name for.
Something like realizing you missed something obvious and the missing of it having mattered.
"Frostina." I said.
She was already looking at me.
"We're going to Amlada."
She tucked her bottles more securely against her chest and nodded.
We teleported to the capital and landed in the familiar alley. I let Torra lead.
He knew exactly where the store was. He walked to it without checking his direction once, which told me the location had been noted and retained across multiple visits without ever being mentioned.
He stopped in front of the window.
The stuffed rabbit was in the lower right corner of the display. Large. Soft-looking. The kind of toy made to be held rather than looked at.
Torra looked up at me.
"Can I go in?" He said.
"It's your money." I said. "Buy what you want."
He went in.
Frostina and I stood outside. I watched through the window as Torra moved directly to the rabbit, picked it up, examined it with the focused seriousness of someone conducting a proper evaluation, and then carried it to the counter with both arms because it was nearly as large as he was.
He came out with the rabbit held against his chest with both arms and an expression that was trying to stay composed and not quite getting there.
"It was twelve silver coins." He said. "I still have money left."
"Keep it." I said. "It's yours."
He looked up at me with the rabbit still held against his chest.
"Thank you, Brother Leigh." He said.
I had built him a settlement. I had carried him across half of Philantria by the collar and healed every scrape and bruise he had collected along the way. I had stood between him and things that would have ended him without a second thought and never considered it worthy of acknowledgment.
Twelve silver coins for a stuffed rabbit and he was thanking me like I had done something that mattered.
I looked at him and said nothing and started walking back toward the alley.
He fell into step beside me with the rabbit still in both arms, already telling Frostina about it, asking whether the eastern vineyard wine was as good as she said, filling the walk back with the kind of noise that I had, at some point without noticing when, stopped finding excessive.
I thought about the allowances.
I should have done it months ago.