The World Is Not Fair
Whether the guild clerk had no sense for a room or simply refused to care about trifles, he spoke loudly enough for every ear in the hall to catch it.
"It doesn't happen often, but the Dorothy and Oz party will start at Rank 3, the highest grade this branch can issue. High rank or not, they're new to adventuring, so I hope you of Red Sword will look after them properly."
The women of Red Sword flushed darker by the moment. Laughter broke out here and there, and jokes spilled from the adventurers' mouths.
"Well, now. The low ranks teaching the high ones?"
"Women with no skill, good for herbs and gathering. You sure that's all right?"
"How about our party does the tutoring?"
"We'd do it even if we had to pay a bit of commission."
Then someone snickered.
"When night comes, do they all sleep together? Red Sword's famous for that, aren't they?"
Among Red Sword, the woman with the injured fist spun like lightning and went straight for the man who had spoken, her fist flashing up. But before she could strike, he moved first. He leaned his body slightly back, caught her head in one hand, and drove it down. With a thud, her face slammed into the table.
"Where does a Rank 5 nothing get off mouthing at a Rank 4!"
He bellowed it, and the adventurers around them laughed. No one moved to help her. Only the other women of Red Sword ran to her side.
Juhwan quietly took the room in: how they reacted, how they carried themselves, the motion of the man who had called himself Rank 4, the set of the others' shoulders and arms. What Gus had taught him was useful here. A few of the men moved differently from the rest. They seemed only to be shifting where they stood, yet their hands and feet already rested where a fight could start at any moment. Those, he thought, were the ones with experience.
Dorothy, smiling brightly only a moment ago, had gone still with surprise, eyes wide. Beside Juhwan, Lizzie's body stiffened for an instant. Then she ran straight to the child. She must have seen how still he was watching and decided she must not get in his way. Before Dorothy could cry, she snatched her up in a fluster and hurried back to his side.
Scenting a show, the adventurers closed in around Red Sword and the man. The woman and he seemed far apart in skill. Pinned to the table, she grabbed for his wrist and could not budge it, and blood from her nose fouled the wood in an instant. The other Red Sword women were blocked by the crowd. Unable to get near the two who were fighting, they were already quarreling with the men.
Juhwan took Dorothy from Lizzie and looked at the clerk.
"You're leaving it like that?"
The clerk shrugged.
"They aren't supposed to fight inside the office. Throw them out like this, though, and someone really will bleed."
That was not what he had asked.
Juhwan looked back at Red Sword and the adventurers. So this was what an adventurer was. No sense of comradeship, and women set apart.
Being a woman adventurer is far more dangerous than I thought.
He would have to be careful with Lizzie and Dorothy as well. For a moment he wondered whether he had chosen wrong.
The clerk studied his face, suddenly serious.
"Always look around you. Don't trust anyone. The guild, of course, you may trust. The Adventurer's Guild exists for your sake. But be careful of people. People lie."
He turned his eyes back to the adventurers and clapped his palms together.
"Take the fight somewhere else. Break guild property and you'll pay for it. Red Sword, come this way, please."
The man pinning the woman grinned and let go.
There were several other staff in the guild hall, and none of them paid the adventurers any mind. Each simply went on with his own work. Lizzie's face had drawn tight and small. She had taken one step out into the world and met, all at once, a great road with dump trucks roaring past. Juhwan drew a quiet breath and put an arm around her shoulders, and a little of the tension in her eased.
He looked at the clerk again and asked whether the master wasn't coming. If it was about the treatment, the man laughed and told him not to worry.
"The hair may never grow back, but, well, that's fine. Red Sword will teach you this sort of thing from now on, but you must not work without being paid. Among comrades it's a little different, of course. Even so, you have to weigh profit and loss. Healing magic, especially, is extremely expensive."
Watching the women of Red Sword draw near, he went on.
"You aren't being tutored for free, so if there's anything you want to ask or need to know, don't hesitate. Check it. Red Sword is having its commission waived as payment for taking this guidance."
"Commission?"
The clerk smiled.
"Unlike other guilds, the Adventurer's Guild charges no joining fee and no yearly dues. Adventurers wander too much. Collect that sort of thing and all you get is a headache managing it. Instead we take a commission on each job the guild brokers. Thirty percent. Take charge of training newcomers, and that commission is waived for a month."
Juhwan remembered that there had been no commission when he sold furs.
"But—"
The clerk said ah and nodded.
"We don't take a commission on purchases. That's why quite a few adventurers hunt magical beasts. Unlike ordinary animals, a magical beast may be hunted in any forest. It's also why they die so readily. A magical beast is called a magical beast because it is stronger than a human. Adventurers die very easily."
He let out a long sigh.
"That's why our guild goes so far as to waive the commission and fuss over training newcomers. So you won't die. For an adventurer, danger crowds in from every side."
Whatever the man's name might be, Juhwan decided he would call him Chatterbox from now on. The man truly never stopped talking. Offer him one word and he answered with a hundred. Fall in the water, and only his mouth would stay afloat.
The members of Red Sword came close and spoke a little curtly.
"A lot of time has gone by, so let's pick a request first. We have to eat."
It was the woman who had hurt her fist, and who had just charged the Rank 4. She seemed rougher than the others. Thinking back to how she had picked the fight, that was probably right.
"I'm Karin. I lead Red Sword."
Karin glanced at Juhwan and Lizzie. Last of all she looked at Dorothy, frowned a little, and muttered.
"They think being an adventurer is some kind of game."
Oz, perched on Dorothy's head, cried, "Eep," and with feet large for his body lightly pattered her hair. Maybe he was a little angry. Lizzie and Dorothy both seemed more withdrawn than before, and the two of them shrank in on themselves. Juhwan grinned at his wife and the child and tightened the arm that held them.
"You don't need to worry about our party. We may not look like much, but each of us has a role, and we're doing them well. We won't be a burden on yours either. If it ever looks like we will be, don't mind us. Just run. We'll handle our own business."
He had a feeling this women's party and his would not suit each other. But he could not ask to be switched. If he ended up beside a male adventurer who treated Lizzie and Dorothy roughly, he was not sure he could keep from killing the man.
The other members of Red Sword, flustered, stepped in between and excused themselves. Something unpleasant had happened today, they said, so tempers were short. He knew. He had seen them fighting in the square. Awkward introductions followed at once. The other two were named Marie and Jessie. From the look of it, Karin was the one who mostly picked fights with other adventurers, and the two women behind her fought along after.
Juhwan patted Lizzie's shoulder in encouragement. She swallowed and straightened her back.
"I'm Lizzie. In our party I handle the cooking, the accounts, and the leatherwork. This child is Dorothy, and the magical beast on her head is Oz."
Her voice was small. She still was not used to introducing herself as one of a party, and she was shy about it. But they had promised before they came. To other people, she would say plainly that those were the tasks she held. Well done. He put that into the hand on her shoulder, and she let out a small, easier breath.
Dorothy's eyes went round as she looked from Lizzie to Juhwan and back. She wanted to be introduced as a magical-beast tamer. Juhwan turned his head slightly and avoided her eyes. He was sorry, but aside from her name there would be no introduction for Dorothy. Calling her a tamer had been little more than the lie that got the party registered. If he had any conscience, he could not present her to other people as one. Lizzie seemed to feel the same. She had turned her face a little aside.
Dorothy threw both arms around Juhwan's neck, lifted her head high, and opened her small mouth toward Red Sword. She had decided, it seemed, to introduce herself.
"I'm a magical-beast tamer. Oz is my magical beast!"
"…Eep."
As if there were nothing to be done about it, Oz gave a small cry. Did that one really understand human speech? The thought came to Juhwan now and then. Maybe he even read the mood.
A brief silence followed, and the woman called Jessie let out a thin laugh.
"Right. A magical-beast tamer."
"Yeah!"
"Impressive."
"Right? Dorothy's impressive. Oz is still a baby, so there's lots he doesn't know. Dorothy has to teach him a lot."
Jessie looked at Dorothy and Oz, then at Juhwan, then at Lizzie.
"Really… impressive."
She said it quietly, and smiled.
I thought this was a world where every woman was unhappy.
Jessie watched the child's smiling face a moment, then let her gaze fall. A gentle man. A wife who looked beloved by her husband. A little girl growing up full of the affection of both. A family party, even. She had never heard of a family in one party. And the man was a mage—a mage with two attributes, she had heard. So the world had children like this. Women this lucky.
It isn't fair.
She almost wanted to cry.
The name Red Sword held the anger of its leader, Karin, of Marie, and of herself. They who had always been the weak would endure it no longer. Whoever stood against them, they would dye a sword red and kill. That rage was in the name. But it had not turned out that way. Skill picked up by eye and beaten into the body had never raised the three of them. They must have had no talent. Not even a little. No matter how they tried, climbing from the lowest grade, Rank 6, to Rank 5 had been the limit. And even among Rank 5, Red Sword was the party with the least skill.
They always had to keep their nerves strung tight and roughen how they looked, so no one would look down on them. Accept a thing meekly and you were laughed at. So they answered roughly on purpose, used rough speech, and picked fights. Even so, their party was always a joke. People looked, and sneered.
Jessie looked at Lizzie, standing beside her husband and smiling. She envied her. The envy made her hate her a little. We live this hard. Why is that woman so happy? The child smiling with a rare magical beast perched on her head was a little hateful too. Jessie's own father had not been like that. Neither had Marie's, nor Karin's.
The world really isn't fair.
Today she felt it especially.
"If you find a suitable request among the papers on this wall, you take it to the reception desk."
Marie was explaining it to the people of Dorothy and Oz.
"The person over there will read them aloud for you, so just ask."
In the corner she indicated sat the man they were always in his debt. The guild had two readers. One was a man, the other a woman said to be of noble birth, and the two came by morning and afternoon, or by splitting the days. Some adventurers could read. Most did not know their letters. Jessie was the same, and so were the other members of Red Sword. They had never been taught, so they always paid a little and used a reader. The readers took one small copper coin for as long as a little sandglass ran. In that time you compared several request slips and found the one with the best terms.
Thinking it would of course be the same this time, Jessie was just about to call a reader when the mage named Juhwan shook his head.
"I can read, so I'll choose them myself."
She was startled. She had heard that even among nobles there were sometimes people who could not read. An adventurer who had gone to escort one had said so. Then how was this man… She looked at his face anew, and the child stared up at her father with round eyes.
"Dad! Dad! Why do you know how to read?"
He softened his eyes and smiled.
"If you know your letters, there's a great deal you can do. You get to live in the world a little better. I'll teach you later too, Dorothy."
"I don't want to. Dorothy likes playing better."
"Well, if you know letters, you might get to do something even more fun. Later I'll teach you, and Mom too."
At that, the woman named Lizzie wore a troubled look. Had she heard this before? Jessie, listening while pretending not to, was a little surprised. That the man knew his letters was surprising enough. But to say he would teach them to his daughter, and to his woman…
Juhwan checked the papers on the wall one by one and slowly read them aloud to his wife and child. Herb gathering. A village's request to catch a magical beast. Escort work. He really can read. And he did not simply glance through them by himself and set them aside. He told his wife, and even the child who could not properly understand.
"Dad, why are they asking for herbs here?"
At the question, he began to explain that this was where adventurers gathered, and what those adventurers did. A strange person. Why answer every single thing a child said?
Watching a family she had never seen the like of, Jessie felt something bitter rise. The black, bitter thing called jealousy slowly filled her chest. She glanced aside. Leader Karin and Marie wore similar faces. Everyone else stood in a storm taking the rain, and only that woman and child were inside a safe hut.
Really, the world isn't fair.
Jessie muttered it inwardly and turned her head.
Someone was hurrying into the guild, a staff member whose face she saw now and then—not one of the people who took requests at the desk, but a man who handled outside work. He went straight to the clerk at reception. After some whispering, the talkative clerk turned his head this way. Chatterbox looked at Karin and called out.
"Everyone! Come this way, please. A request has come in for you."
A request? For them, the least skilled of Rank 5? Jessie glanced at the mage. He was a healing mage, so the request was probably for him. Red Sword was just thrown in.
When both parties gathered at the desk, Chatterbox scattered a glittering smile.
"A fairly large merchant caravan is on the move. Small and middling traders, gathered together. One of them has commissioned an escort from our side. You'll need to go. Please be ready to leave early tomorrow morning."
He looked at Karin.
"Dorothy and Oz is a brand-new party that doesn't know anything yet, so please teach them well what they need to prepare for a long journey."
When Karin said she understood, the mage spoke.
"This escort—are we allowed to take part? We have a child."
Chatterbox laughed and said there was no need to worry at all.
"It's fine. There are plenty of adventurers on the escort, and we don't expect it to be particularly dangerous. We've already asked them to allow for the child, so it's all right."
"May an escort bring a wagon?"
"Of course. Bring a wagon, so long as you can do the work properly. Besides, that side wants an escort and a mage at the same time. Dorothy and Oz is going on the request as the mage. The escort is Red Sword's part."
See? Of course.
Jessie wore a self-mocking smile. No merchant would deliberately commission a low-rank party like Red Sword. Her party did escort work sometimes, but almost all of it was the cheap kind. A caravan large enough to travel as a company would hire adventurers of high rank, every one of them. Sure enough, the escort fee Chatterbox named was quite high. And the payment Dorothy and Oz would receive was higher still.
The world really isn't fair.
A world she already disliked, she disliked even more.