Welcome to Moderni
Everyone Juhwan had treated lived, but the dead still outnumbered them.
At the Miller Trading Company, one man had died besides the fire mage. It seemed to have been instant. They said he had taken an arrow the enemy leader loosed with wind magic.
The other companies had not been so lucky. A good number were dead, and a few escorts and servants appeared to have fled as well. Several houses had lost their wagons—the ones at the tail of the train. Even as they ran, the raiders would not let go of the carts that held valuables, and dragged them off behind them. Because of it, some companies seemed to have taken losses heavy enough to ruin them.
Hoping for information, they looked among the raiders struck by arrows for anyone who might still be saved, and found no one. There was exactly one who had not yet died, but his wounds were past even Juhwan's skill. Only a thin breath clung to him. He was no different from a corpse.
A bleakness had settled over the whole train. Even so, people said it was rare good fortune that most of them had come through unharmed after meeting a bandit company of that size.
From several trading houses came words of thanks, and gifts of coin and goods. There was pepper, a costly spice, and silk, and some pressed gold coins into his hands. Few company masters had joined this shipment in person, but most of those in charge of the train held high places in their houses. They sent word that a man like him would surely be a strength someday, and that if he ever needed help, he had only to say so.
The gratitude was no doubt sincere. Even so, what drove them more was the wish to tie a thread to a man who could use several magics.
Juhwan said nothing. He stayed quiet. Dealing with people was their trade, so they did not show it on the surface, yet every one of them seemed afraid of him.
It was familiar.
It had often been the same on Earth. Walking a street, in a shop, on the subway—anywhere. If someone had seen him fight, even people who knew him were sometimes afraid. They did not have to show it in what they did. It came through in their eyes.
That Lizzie and Dorothy had grown easy around him so quickly was what made them rare.
"…."
In his place, Lizzie offered the company folk a word of thanks in return. Somehow she felt as if she had grown, all at once, into a full adult. She had been an adult from the start, of course, but that was how it felt. She had become poised.
And boasting to the people who came to give thanks was Dorothy's part. Every time someone arrived, she thrust out her chest and bragged that her dad was incredible.
"Our dad is a dragon! He breathes fire! Like this—fwssh!—and then wham!—and the fire comes out."
Everyone who heard it laughed.
Now and then someone from another company came over on purpose and pressed a treat into Dorothy's hand, then smiled a little while the child told her boast over and over again. A child, it seemed, could brighten a heart no matter the circumstances. In that subdued merchant train, Dorothy was the only soul still full of life.
Juhwan sat beside them on the driver's bench and quietly studied the two faces. Not even a day had passed since they woke, but they seemed all right. A little earlier they had even managed a proper meal. Watching them move made it real that they were alive, and so he kept on looking.
"Dad, you're a dragon. Why aren't you laughing?"
All at once Dorothy tilted her head and looked up at him.
He could not see what a dragon had to do with laughing, but logic did not work on a child. Juhwan smiled.
"No, Dad. Laughing is when you go ahaha, like Dorothy."
She stuck her chest out and preened.
"Ahaha."
The moment he made the sound, a bright flower of a smile bloomed across Dorothy's face.
"Ahahahaha!"
She laughed louder still. She meant to make a contest of it. He felt a little happier.
Lizzie, who had been watching him in silence, reached out and gathered Dorothy and him both into her arms. He was so large that she barely more than brushed him, and yet from the place her hand touched, warmth seemed to spread like a smile. He grew a little happier still.
"Pii."
Oz, who had been perched on Dorothy's head and was now squeezed between Juhwan and Lizzie, let out a cry.
If he gave this horned rabbit more mana, would it grow stronger? Then would Lizzie and Dorothy always be safe?
The thought left him unable to wait. He set a hand on Oz's head and was just about to pour mana in when Leonard, master of the Miller Trading Company, rode up alongside.
"Once we reach the city, I'll hand that traitor over to the margrave who rules these parts. The margrave is a man whose bones were set by war. He is very hard on an enemy. That fellow will likely fall into a suffering so cruel he'll wish he were dead."
Leonard's gaze flicked toward the Miller wagons. In the last of the company's several carts lay the wind mage who had been in league with the raiders.
As Leonard had explained it, mages did not fight by throwing their own bodies against an opponent. The fire mage had fought by swinging fire through a tool. He said he had never before seen anyone put fire on his own body, as Juhwan did, and strike with it. What mages did was mostly support for their companions. Each of them, he said, had a way of using his ability to help others, and there had been nothing especially strange in a mage party standing back where it was safer.
In ordinary times, though, they took the night watch and stood guard just like the other escorts. When the raiders struck, they ought to have been properly at their posts. That was what had caught Leonard's eye. It was just as Juhwan had guessed.
Leonard grinned.
"A few hours more and we're at the city. We own several buildings there. From the one on the central square you can see the whole street at a glance. The child will like it. You'll stay there."
"Thank you."
If the man meant to show them that kindness, Juhwan was grateful, and he accepted it without protest.
With their destination not far ahead, the merchant train filed along the frozen winter road like a column of beaten soldiers.
Wind stirred at his fingertips. Anri set a small, meaningless breeze to spinning and pushed the dust across the floor.
Even if he called it wind magic, this was all he could do. In a real fight it was nearly impossible to use. Good for nothing. In truth, no one had ever called him a mage.
He sighed and turned his eyes to the window. From the third-floor lodging, the broad street lay open all at once below.
They ought to be here by now.
Word was supposed to come before the merchant train arrived. He had expected it last night, or this morning at the latest. There was still no news.
I have to know what's in the cargo if I'm to ready the customs papers.
Anri clicked his tongue.
The men he was waiting on worked as raiders in this country. They took information from adventurers here, robbed merchants' wagons, and delivered the goods to him. His own work was to pass those goods off as his company's, carry them back to his homeland, and send them on again to this land's enemy, the Tyrone Kingdom.
Before he ever took the goods in hand, the raiders always sent a rough list. Looking it over, Anri prepared in advance to falsify the ledgers, or to disguise the outward look of the cargo. Let the message come a day late, and the work dragged on for two or three. The band knew that, and always sent someone as quickly as they could.
This time, besides, two people were mixed into the load: a fire mage and a wind mage. The pair who had been feeding information to the raiders had to be taken abroad under the form of escorts in Anri's hire. He had heard those two were bound for Tyrone.
He'll be surprised if he sees me again.
The fire mage the raiders were bringing was his younger brother. Different mothers, and unhappily the same father. Under that father, no one was happy. He and his brother were both pitiful wretches.
And remarkably stupid, on top of it.
The brother, who had chased women like a fool, had laid hands on royalty and drawn the king's wrath. For that their father cut him off, drove him from the house, and he left the homeland as well. With nowhere left to belong, he had drifted until he settled, it seemed, in this country.
Foolish, pitiful wretch.
A brother with nothing to recommend him but a passable face probably still did not know that their father was why he had come to this. Anri sighed and looked down at the street.
He had envied that rotten rat of a brother. At least the boy had left their father's side. At least he could be free.
But it had not been so. Their father, it seemed, had gone on making certain of where the brother was. The moment he learned his son stood in a place he needed, he thought at once of using him. He set the brother into a secret dealing with the Tyrone Kingdom, and offered up his own son's person to be used as an informant.
A truly vicious man.
His brother likely did not know even that. Had he possessed so much as the wit to understand it, he would have taken his chance to leave their father's arms and flown far away.
Anri stared blankly at the sky. Raiding a merchant train was work whose timing could shift at any moment. Nothing went only according to plan. Thinking that word might not come today at all left him feeling wretched. The fault was not his, and yet when a schedule slipped, he was the one their father rebuked.
When is Father finally going to die?
When their father died, he, the heir, would become Baron Dieter. Only then, at last, would he be free of that man.
Will he die around sixty?
Not likely. Their grandfather had left the world at seventy-nine. For some reason the men of this house lived long, and their father was far healthier than the grandfather had been, and careful of his body. He would probably have to pass well beyond eighty before dying even came into question.
If Father dies at eighty, I'll be sixty. If he dies at ninety, seventy. I'll have to become a grandfather myself before I can get free. Maybe I'll die first….
Some men handed their seat to a son early and retired. There was no chance of that. Their father would not loose his grip on the title until the breath rattled out of him.
"Idiot."
Thinking of the brother who possessed the gift of fire magic and would still be dragged back for their father to use, Anri muttered it under his breath. Truly, a fool of a brother. An idiot.
At last the city showed in the distance. Unlike the villages they had seen until now, the walls were immensely high and broad. This was a medieval city in earnest.
Dorothy, seated on the driver's bench, shot to her feet. Her eyes went round at walls like a fortress.
"Whoa!"
"Sit down, Dorothy. It's dangerous."
"But Dad! Look at that. That. It's huge. It's all over!"
Lizzie, sitting on Dorothy's other side, put on a stern face.
"Dorothy, I told you not to say that."
"Okay! Mom!"
The answer came bright and bold. Dorothy was still using the rough, ugly words her birth father had used. Every time, Lizzie told her she must not, and still they would not leave her.
"Oz, look at that. You've never seen one, right? That's a city! Well? Isn't it grand? It's amazing!"
The first of it had clearly been meant for Oz. The rest was her own wonder. And though she herself was seeing a city for the first time, she was somehow showing off to him.
Juhwan stroked the child's head once, then turned his eyes back to the walls. At every corner stood something like a round tower. Along the parapet, several soldiers were posted. The gate itself was thick timber, and above the door hung a second gate of latticed iron. The black iron looked somehow dreadful.
As the train drew near the gate, a gatekeeper circled the column, checking people and cargo. Several soldiers stood before the door. When the merchants said the train had been attacked by raiders, one of the men at the gate seemed to go off somewhere to report it.
The wind mage was handed over to the soldiers there. At the sight of the hideously twisted face and the burns across the body, one of them asked how he had come to look like that. Gordon of the Miller Trading Company explained the course of it in brief, and when he added that however the man appeared, healing magic had been used, so he would not die, the soldier's face went strangely pale.
Passing through, Juhwan saw that the wall was tremendously thick. It felt like walking a short tunnel. Dorothy craned until her head seemed about to fall backward, and as they passed beneath the iron lattice she blurted a thought.
"It looks just like a monster's teeth."
Hearing it, he thought it rather did. Lizzie, too, was seeing a city of this size for the first time, and stared with her mouth hanging open.
Besides the pay for this work, there were the gold coins given in thanks. This time, at last, he thought he might buy the two of them something they liked. Every time they smiled with happy faces, happiness and ease seeped, little by little, into a heart that had been full of worry.
Once they were through the gate, Leonard of the Miller Trading Company came up to Juhwan and spoke.
"I forgot to say it earlier. How about trying a magical-beast hunt?"
"A magical-beast hunt?"
"That's right. Healing magic pays, but there isn't all that much work in it. A magical-beast hunt is another matter. They're hard to take, but people willing to buy are everywhere. Just now, with the war on, magical-beast fur is selling dear. It'll make money."
The fur and hide of a magical beast were far tougher and harder than ordinary leather, and people often used them in place of light armor without any special working. Come to think of it, the Miller Trading Company that Leonard ran dealt in fur and hides.
Eyes bright, Leonard went on.
"You're a mage, and you said you were a hunter, so you'll take to hunting magical beasts in no time. Hunters of that sort are very rare. It'll earn."
"I'll think about it."
"If you do take it up, send word to me. I'll buy the whole of it."
"Would that be all right, without going through the guild?"
"Something like escort work, if you said you were taking it on your own, the guild might not care for it. Fur is fine."
"I see."
Even so, hunting magical beasts would be dangerous. With a family, he had no mind to take up work like that. Safety came first, before anything.
As if he already knew the thought, Leonard drew his horse in close and lowered his voice.
"A magical-beast hunt is dangerous for an ordinary man. For you, it's no more than driving rabbits. You could bring your family along and it still wouldn't be dangerous. Try it once, and you'll understand what I mean. And it's better to deal with beasts than with a train of merchants like this, or with the business between people."
He grinned.
"Human society is a tangled thing. Plenty will come up that you can't settle as you please. If your opponent is a beast, you don't need any of that. It's however the heart inclines."
"…."
"Only humans use tools to lay a trap. Think well on what I've said."
With that, he turned his gaze on Dorothy, who was looking all around with round eyes, and put on a face as mischievous as a man about to play a trick.
"Little miss, welcome to Moderni, the city of commerce."
Seeing Leonard take off his hat and bow his head with elegance, Dorothy declared:
"He's a prince!"
"Haha. Don't go saying that sort of thing anywhere. Insult royalty, and you or the other fellow will die for it. Your dad is a special man, so you've got to be even more careful. He's a dragon, after all."
Leonard laughed and went on ahead. Faces gone white, Juhwan and Lizzie warned Dorothy at once: never, to anyone, say that a person looked like a king, or a prince, or a princess. Dorothy tilted her head and muttered.
"But he was exactly like the prince Dad told me about."
Lizzie looked at Juhwan as if she blamed him, just a little.