It's already a second too late when Marian realizes she's dripped sauce onto the front of her apron. She still makes a noise that might have been a swear, had her mouth not been already full of food, and sweeps her hand down and up her chest. All her efforts earn are sticky fingers, a sigh, and faded orange rather than brown smeared across the white fabric. Oh well, so much for not disgracing her uniform as a maid of a mage's esteemed household. Not that she's been doing a good job of that all day.

Ever since disembarking just after dawn, finding the reagents she's been tasked to find has been dead last of Marian's priorities. One couldn't work on an empty stomach, and where else but a port city could she grab a fresh meal from afar? Breakfast had been grilled fish, a clear broth garnished with seaweed, and some sort of fermented beans instead of the oatmeal she was used to every morning at the manor. Lunch is a similarly free and new affair, a wrap of spiced meat and a sour yet refreshing cream sauce that reminded her of yogurt as she strolls along the docks picking up whatever snack carches her eye. Enhancing each exotic flavour is salt on the air, blowing in from over the sea with the steady crash of waves scoring every delicious bite.

Only when the sun starts to dip low enough to dim the light glittering off the water's surface does Marian remember there's still technically work to be done. But the shop described to her by her master is easy enough to find, with an hour left before cloaing. They even still have the basilisk extract she's after in stock, only available for purchase acroas the ocean if not at this port.

Only when she pulls out her purse too easily without weight or the rattle of coins does she realise something is wrong. Had she been robbed? But the knot of her drawstring is in the exact same bow she tied this morning with all seams tight and no hole to be found. "You, uh," She tries to put on her best smile for the shopkeeper. "You mind giving me a sec here?" The more Marian pats herself down, recounting her day and all the stalls she visited, the heavier the weight of realisation sinks into her gut. No one had lifted a coin off of her. The idiot maid had spent each and every last one herself.