1 Alvissa: We'll give you five silver nobles each for passage as far as Footcrag.
2 Bargemaster: Agreed! Come aboard.
3 Kyros: {aside, to Mordekai, as the others climb aboard the barge} I'm surprised you didn't protest over paying so much silver, Mordekai.
4 Mordekai: {aside, to Kyros} It'll give me an excuse to check the security of their coffers.

Try as I might, I couldn't come up with a joke about haggling over the price, so I glossed over it quickly for the sake of plot advancement. Once you actually start these quest things, they just fly by!

---

2014-08-12 Rerun commentary: A coffer is essentially just a chest, a piece of furniture with a deep compartment for storing objects, covered by a hinged lid. "Coffer" is just a cool antiquey sort of name to use to refer to chests when one is a pseudo-medieval fantasy character.

"Coffer" also refers to an architectural feature, comprising a sunken or recessed panel, usually in a ceiling. They can be used to reduce weight of the ceiling (such as in the Pantheon in Rome), or for decoration and ornamentation, or possibly both.

A coffer is also apparently a type of fortification associated with moats, though Wikipedia's description was not very enlightening to me. Perhaps one of you is an expert on medieval fortification and can improve the article.