A Gentleman's Threat
The aide hurried into the guild.
Surely he hasn't already left.
Tracking the man called Juhwan had cost him more trouble than he liked to admit. The guild would not part with a single scrap of information, and the village that had sent the report knew almost nothing about him. All they could say was that a soldier had handed over a man from a slave wagon and gone on his way.
The winter convict wagons killed many. Summer was little kinder, but winter was the cruelest of all. To keep the numbers up they packed in extra men from the death rows and the felons' cells, and still they often ran short. Prisoners died along the road, and soldiers took coin to turn others over to the villages. When the wagons came up light, those same soldiers sometimes seized a man who looked unlikely to make trouble. The penalty for being caught was severe, so it rarely happened—yet now and then someone would stake his life and his whole future on the money.
He had thought Juhwan might have been taken that way, and he questioned the soldiers. He was wrong. If he had known the man's birthplace or his station, the rest of the work would have been easier, but nowhere could he find a trace. The fellow might as well have dropped out of the sky.
In the end the only path left was to grope along the guild's connections and whatever footprints they had left. Guild folk kept their mouths shut. They gave nothing away, as if their lips had been cast in plaster. But he was not playing at being the Bern Margrave's aide for show. He scraped together every connection he had and every connection he did not, sold his soul in the bargain, and at last learned that the man had taken hire with the Miller Trading Company and was bound for Moderni.
Said aloud, it sounded simple. No one who had not lived it could know the misery. He ran one way and then another, sent word to this man and browbeat that one, and on top of it all he had to weather the margrave's fiery temper. It was enough to kill him.
But when he stepped into the guild office, the healing mage was nowhere to be seen.
Already gone?
Anxiety tightened in his chest. He pushed through the crowd, scanning the hall, and then his eyes caught on the space behind the reception counter. He knew the man at a glance. Inside stood exactly the figure he had imagined.
People's descriptions were almost never accurate. Go looking for a peerless beauty and you found paint on a stone. Hear that someone was ugly but kind, and more often than not the character was the worst of the lot. Trust a man because his temper was foul but his work was good, and you received results a street beggar might have bettered. It happened all the time.
The healing mage called Juhwan, though, was precisely as he had been described. If anything, he looked a little more savage. The face was nearly that of a bandit chief. Study it closely and it was not an ugly face. The eyes were frightening and sharp, and that alone made the whole impression harsh. Very harsh.
The aide shivered without meaning to. Juhwan's gaze on him was cold.
He truly does look terrifying.
It was not only the face. The whole atmosphere was the same—edged, as if a blade sat in the air around him. He was merely sitting there in silence, and yet the air itself seemed starched stiff.
A healing mage, with that face and that air?
A fire mage would have suited him better. A frightening, well-built fire mage was not impossible. But healing magic, on that face and in that atmosphere—was it not a fraud? Not that every healing mage had to look like an angel.
He thought all of this, and on the outside he smiled. Whatever it took, he had to talk the man into serving the Bern Margrave. This country, this domain, was a ship standing before a storm. If there was a man who could wield both Healing Magic and Fire Magic, they would have to drag him to their side even if it meant selling their souls.
The aide steadied his breath and moved. He slipped inside and stopped before Juhwan.
"Good day, Mage Juhwan. I am Kyle, aide to the Bern Margrave. I came today because I wished to make you a good offer."
Kyle smiled the smile that served him well with men and women alike, and looked Juhwan straight in the eye.
The approach was far more gentlemanly than he had expected. Judging by everyone he had met so far, he had assumed a noble would use something rougher. But an offer—it was only ordinary headhunting.
Juhwan studied the man before him, unhurried. Kyle, who claimed to serve the margrave, was a smooth sort of person. Late thirties, perhaps forty. Not a handsome face, nor a frivolous one. It looked a little exacting. From hair to boots, though, there was nothing to fault. Not a single strand seemed to have fallen where it pleased. It had been arranged that way on purpose. He looked like a man who had just stepped out of a medieval painting.
Leonard, master of the Miller Trading Company, cut a striking figure of his own, but his was the air of an outlaw of the wilds. They were entirely different kinds of men.
Aide Kyle glanced at the guild clerk, returned his eyes to Juhwan, and grinned.
"Were you satisfied with the guild's first job? I have a fair idea of what one earns there. Just now it must look like a great sum. In truth, though, it is not a fair price. You deserve more. If you don't mind, I would like to speak somewhere other than here. What do you say?"
Before Juhwan could answer, the guild clerk spoke first.
"That would be difficult, Aide. Our guild is obliged to protect the members who belong to us. If you have something to say, please say it here."
Kyle smiled, smooth as ever.
"An odd way to put it. You make it sound as if I were some swindler who leads people into danger."
"I wouldn't go that far. But there are already people who died after you took them away, aren't there?"
"...Isn't that true of adventurers as well? People die even going out to cull goblins."
The two of them began to quarrel, leaving Juhwan aside. Kyle must have poached a high-ranking adventurer who later died on the battlefield. Both men were good with words. They smiled like old friends while circling around to call each other a swindler, or a demon who worked people to death for a pittance. Now and then an unknown word slipped in. Juhwan guessed the sense from context and stored it away. Lizzie had said she meant to learn her letters, so he ought to learn all the harder. If he could manage it, he wanted her to think, My husband is impressive.
Listening to them, he understood the shape of things well enough. A person registered with the Adventurer's Guild was someone even a noble could not handle lightly. So long as he did not follow of his own accord, he would be all right.
The aide and the clerk were both so fluent that the argument chased its own tail. Left alone, it might run until night. He glanced aside and found Lizzie watching his face, uneasy.
Ah. Of course. It meant nothing to him, but to Lizzie the margrave's aide was a very high person—a station she could not oppose.
Was that why the clerk stepped in ahead of me?
An ordinary person here would stand speechless before an aide, fluster, and be dragged away. Had the clerk taken his place from the very start on purpose?
Juhwan rose. The moment he moved, the argument ended. He looked at Kyle and spoke quietly.
The answer seemed to surprise them. Kyle and the guild clerk both looked at him a little strangely. As he had thought—ordinary people could not refuse so cleanly.
Kyle opened his mouth, slightly thrown.
"Wait. You're thinking about this the wrong way. If it's for your family, all the more reason not to let that ability rot. If this country, this land, is trampled underfoot, who suffers first? Your wife. Your daughter. This is not someone else's affair. Protecting this land and this country is the best way to keep your family alive."
So it was a threat after all. He had half expected as much. If Lizzie and Dorothy had not been registered as a party with the Adventurer's Guild, the man would have been right. Unable to leave this land, they would certainly have fallen into misery. And beneath Kyle's words there seemed to sit another meaning: If you do not obey, your family will not be safe. That was how it felt.
Registering the two of them in the party was the right choice after all.
Relief settled deep in him, and with it a small disappointment. He had thought the noble side surprisingly uncoercive, but that was only because he had joined the Adventurer's Guild. Had he and his family belonged nowhere, the approach would never have been this mild.
He stood his huge frame where it was and looked down at Kyle. Lizzie and Dorothy stood beside him, still uneasy.
"You may be right. If this land is invaded, the people who live here will certainly fall into hardship and pain."
Kyle looked up at him as if to say that was exactly it. On a face several heads below Juhwan's, there was a faint light of relief.
"But I hear that someone belonging to this country's guild may go to several other countries. Not every country—only where the same Adventurer's Guild exists. My family and I can leave this country whenever we like."
"What!"
Kyle's face went blank with shock, and he shot a glare at the guild clerk. He seemed to think the guild had talked the family into joining. When he looked back at Juhwan, his expression had twisted a little.
"But what of your family's hearts? Surely your wife and child have other people who matter to them. Parents, siblings, a hometown. Will you tell them to throw all of that away?"
Juhwan grinned. Back when they still lived at the cabin in the mountains, he had asked Lizzie whether she wanted to see her family. And Lizzie, then...
To Lizzie and Dorothy, he was everything. Just as the two of them were everything to him.
Ah. Was that why Santa led these two to me?
Each was the other's whole world. How perfect.
Juhwan finished with a short bow, gathered Dorothy into his arms, and walked out of the guild with Lizzie.
"W-wait!"
Kyle called after him and tried to follow, but several of the guild staff seemed to have blocked the way on purpose. Juhwan heard them shouting that it was an obvious trick. Working for the guild looked like hard work of its own.
The Red Sword party came hurrying after him, faces startled. Once they were outside, Marie of Red Sword asked, her eyes round. Even to Red Sword, adventurers of several years, the powers of this land were people one must not cross.
"Are you really all right? Of course, with the Adventurer's Guild, nothing will show on the surface. But that man serves the margrave. An aide stands right beside him, doesn't he? Can you just cut a man like that off and tell him no?"
"Answer him halfway and he'll catch you on the tail of a word. You saw how well he talks."
Marie hesitated, then asked.
"With skill like yours, the treatment would be good. Wouldn't it be better to work under a noble?"
"If I go to war, I can't stay with my family. A few months if it's short. A few years if it's long. How would I know what might happen while I'm gone?"
That was what frightened him most. Even right beside them he could not know what might befall them. To be far away was unthinkable. And from what the clerk and the aide had said, he understood something else. Mages were precious, yes, but on a battlefield they were only things to be used up. Not lives one risked everything to save—lives one spent so that a war might be won. In a word, expensive weapons.
The Bern Margrave was a mage himself, so it would be all the more so. He seemed the sort to wring out every last drop of mana for his own sake, then throw a man away once he grew weak and useless. Go under a man like that, and Juhwan would leave Lizzie and Dorothy far behind and die on a battlefield in the end. He had not come to this world to live that life. It was a pity that war made people miserable, but the affairs of this world belonged to the people of this world. He would rather they not drag in a man from another one.
For some reason Dorothy locked her arms tight around his neck. The air was strange, and the child had felt it. He patted her back to say that it was all right, and set a hand on Lizzie's shoulder.
"Lizzie, let's go buy the things you said we needed."
They had agreed to leave with Red Sword around noon. If anything was wanted, they had to hurry. Lizzie kept glancing back at the guild entrance, worried, and nodded.
After that they went about buying what she had said they needed. The alleys held far more shops than the adventurers' village, and the goods were of every kind. Lizzie went from one shop to another, comparing prices, and at the cheapest place chose several tunics, shirts, and pairs of shoes for the family.
In one corner there was women's underwear with ties. He asked whether they ought to buy some, and Lizzie shook her head. Those, she said, were expensive. He was wondering how a scrap of cloth the size of a palm could cost so much when the shopkeeper came over, smiling with his whole face.
"You have a fine eye, sir. That's a very fine piece. Ten rina apiece."
Juhwan started. The man showed him another item in the corner and said that one was seven rina.
"Women like them. Pretty, and soft. Fine linen."
"A very good article. Buy two and I'll take a rina off—thirteen rina for the pair."
"Your wife will be very pleased. And you, sir, will certainly enjoy yourself as well."
Through the whole exchange, Lizzie seemed to have abandoned him. She stood a little way off with her face bright red. Somehow a few onlookers had gathered at the shop entrance. A man looking at women's underthings was, it seemed, a deeply unfamiliar sight. It was unfamiliar to Juhwan too. He had never meant to ask. He had only worried that she was refusing to buy her own underclothes in order to save money. In the end he fled the shop.
After that they went around buying a few things needed for daily life. They had called it a city of commerce, and the alleys were full of foreign goods. Now and then he saw things that looked Eastern. Shops that sold only such goods were rare, but ordinary shops sometimes had a few mixed in among the clutter, like so much odds and ends.
In one shop he found an Eastern scroll and a set of hairpins. A tiger was painted on the scroll. It had not been popular. Sticky dust clung to it and would not wipe away. Lizzie, perhaps finding his interest strange, asked the price. He had thought it would be dear and was a little surprised to find it cheap. What truly held him, though, was not the scroll. It was the hairpins, made of wood with a black sheen, several of the same shape tossed carelessly on the floor.
"What are these?"
The shopkeeper shrugged.
"Honestly, I don't really know. If they please you, take the lot for one small copper."
He bought them along with the things they needed for living. She could not use them now, but once Lizzie's hair grew long again they would suit her. A hairpin could also serve as a weapon in a pinch. Two uses for the price of one. When he explained as much after they left the shop, Lizzie grew a little shy. She looked pleased.
Come to think of it, he had never once given her a proper gift. He had hardly kept anniversaries, but if they made Lizzie happy, perhaps he would start keeping several of them.
"Daddy, Dorothy wants a hairpin too."
Dorothy blurted it out. Was she a girl even this young? Or perhaps she was reaching the age when she began to copy Lizzie. He said they would, once her hair was long, and the child smiled, bright with joy.
But ever since they had left the guild, Dorothy's behavior had been strange. Unlike other times, she did not wander off. She stayed in his arms, holding fast to his neck. She did not look gloomy or sad. She laughed as usual and looked about with shining eyes. She simply remained held against him.
Since morning, something had been catching at him, and he still could not tell what it was.