Feigning a Tour #7
“Hmm……”
As the blazing red sun began to sink toward the horizon, Albert watched the sunset with a look of quiet regret. The reason was simple: he was replaying Lloyd’s report after the boy had shown Helena around the territory.
When he closed his eyes, his son’s dejected face rose with perfect clarity. The lad had seemed to struggle against the reckless fire of youth, yet the way reason still won out filled Albert with an unexpected swell of pride. It was a fresh reminder that Lloyd truly possessed the caliber to succeed him as count.
“So she already had someone, did she…”
That revelation had startled him. Judging by how Helena turned down every marriage proposal that came her way, Albert had assumed she simply had nothing to do with men. Clearly he had been wrong. And the fact that her partner was someone of House Altram made the whole business even more regrettable. There was simply no gap to slip into.
Altram was a house that had shown unwavering loyalty across centuries. Their trust was unshakable—nothing other factions could even approach. That was why their relatively modest noble power never became a liability. Having someone you could truly rely on was already an enormous advantage, especially in a noble society where everyone spent their days sizing one another up. Albert himself was one of those people forever gauging others, so the truth of it struck him with particular force.
“Nothing for it, then.”
He pictured the face of that boy, Zion—the one who had accepted his request with such a dubious expression. No wonder the lad had seemed so reluctant at the time; he had already been building that kind of relationship behind the scenes. Truly astonishing. Still, Albert judged that he must not interfere any further. Regret was one thing; trying to force the issue and inviting greater calamity was another. If he wanted to keep relations smooth with Helena—who would succeed Is Krauser as duke—this was the only sensible course.
“You want to look around the city and then leave?”
“Yeah. Staying any longer just feels awkward. Lloyd was testing the waters yesterday, too.”
Testing the waters, huh. I thought back to the previous day and simply nodded. Exactly as expected, he had been sounding Helena out for a marriage proposal—only for me to get there first and ruin the whole thing.
“Well… after cutting him off mid-confession like that, hanging around would be pretty uncomfortable.”
“That’s what I figured, so I came to this conclusion.”
And with that, Helena grabbed my hand right then and there, insisting we head out into the streets. Going through every single thing I had mentioned would take far too long, but she at least wanted to see the city. Luckily, I had been thinking the exact same thing—I wanted a quiet look around myself.
“Oh? There’s a lot of really fresh stuff here.”
“Right? Even I only saw living ones like this for the first time in this place.”
The moment we stepped out into the market, we found tanks of remarkably fresh fish swimming about. They were basically large wooden boxes built from thick, sturdy planks and filled with water—clearly a way to keep the catch alive. I couldn’t help being impressed by how clever the locals were. Maybe I had been underestimating them, but the fact that they were using wooden tanks in this era was genuinely surprising. With a little work, you could probably turn a carriage into a live-fish transport, I thought. In a world where all sorts of magic items were sold, it might even be possible to set up something close to modern equipment depending on the circumstances.
“Huh? They have cold storage?”
“Yeah. They place magic items that emit cold air throughout the warehouses. The city and the Barkan house cover the upkeep costs. Surprising, right?”
Hearing that cold storage existed outright was enough to leave me stunned. For a second I even wondered if refrigerated wagons might be next, but apparently the cost of personal cold-storage magic items was still far too high for ordinary use. On second thought, though, it made sense. We had used magic items to stay warm during outdoor training, so the opposite existing wasn’t strange at all.
“Oh, right. You said you wanted to try fishing, didn’t you, Zion? I looked into it yesterday—want to go?”
After we had wandered through various parts of the city, Helena turned her steps toward the harbor and asked. I had mentioned wanting to fish, true, but taking a boat out specially at this hour would cost a small fortune. Fishing boats usually only went out at night or before dawn, after all.
“There won’t be any boats heading out now, will there? We can’t exactly hop on a trade vessel.”
“Hm? There are boats that fish in the afternoon, too.”
“Uh…?”
It turned out the “common knowledge” I had been operating on was pure delusion. I should have died of embarrassment right there, but thanks to my Steel Mental the shame stayed at a faint, manageable level. Right. I was an idiot.
Ahem.
Anyway, if that was how things worked, there was nothing holding us back.
“In that case… would you mind arranging it for us?”
“Ahh… this is nice.”
I sat in a chair on the quiet sea, lazily dangling a fishing line and staring blankly past the horizon. There really was nothing better for emptying your brain completely. Thanks to Helena’s negotiations we had managed to board a fishing boat, and being assigned a corner spot where I could enjoy this leisurely stretch of time felt like pure luxury. Disguising ourselves as people connected to an Altram-affiliated trading company—because she preferred not to flash our actual status—had also been a smart call. Even though we were wearing clothes that looked fairly expensive, everyone just accepted it without a second glance.
“You actually like this kind of thing, Zion?”
Helena, sitting beside me with her own line in the water, tilted her head. If you didn’t know the appeal of fishing, it just felt boring, so her puzzled look was only natural.
“I do. You don’t have to think about a single thing. You just space out… and if you get sleepy, you sleep.”
“If that’s all it is, you could just lounge around in a room, couldn’t you?”
“The scenery is different. Completely different.”
A room didn’t have a blue horizon or the cries of seagulls. And resting in the shade of the cabin roof felt entirely different from staying indoors. At least, that was how it felt to me.
“Mmm. I don’t really get it… but if you like it, that’s enough.”
Helena said that any time spent just the two of us was fine by her. She wasn’t the type who hated quiet moments either, so she adapted quickly—sometimes even sparkling with interest when a fish took the line. Of course, since we weren’t keeping them to eat, we released them right away… though the way they flopped off the railing into the sea looked pretty painful.
“Everyone really works so hard, don’t they.”
The remark came out of nowhere, but I could guess why she said it. The faint shouts of the fishermen were drifting into our ears.
“Hard work, huh… Yeah. They really do.”
“Do you think I could ever say, with a straight face, that I work as hard as those people…?”
“Of course you could. You’re someone who works plenty hard yourself, Helena.”
Even if her body wasn’t constantly worn down the way those fishermen’s were, I could say with certainty that Helena lived diligently. Always wearing a public mask, never putting down her sword even after becoming a master—her talent played a huge part, sure, but there were plenty of things about her worth respecting. The only thing that made me sigh was how her twisted mind kept chipping away at all those good qualities.
“Thank you. Hearing you say that… it gives me a little more confidence—”
Helena started to speak with a soft smile, then abruptly pressed her lips shut. A serious look settled over her face. Something was clearly bothering her.
“What’s wrong all of a sudden?”
“Yeah. I just heard some irritating talk.”
A Sword Master’s senses were absurdly sharp. If she wanted, she could pick up even soft whispers—provided the distance wasn’t too great. Even accounting for that, it was still superhuman hearing. Quietly, I set my fishing rod down on the deck. So much for our peaceful outing. It looked like everything was about to go sideways.
“What exactly did they say?”
“Since we introduced ourselves as high-ups from a trading company, they’re thinking of taking us hostage and squeezing us for money.”
“So they’re not ordinary fishermen… pirates. Water bandits, basically.”
Well, smuggling thrived in every era. In any human society where commerce flourished, it was only natural. No matter how hard you cracked down, you could never stamp it out completely. This particular case was kidnapping and extortion rather than smuggling, but people willing to pull that kind of stunt would hardly shy away from smuggling either. At any rate, we must have looked like easy targets. Even the sword hanging at Helena’s hip—who looked frail at a glance—was probably being dismissed as pure decoration.
“Should I… just kill them all?”
Helena rested a hand on the sword at her waist, eyes going wide. Given the sudden urgency and the fact that they intended us harm, she clearly didn’t feel like sitting still. That thinking was perfectly sound. Sitting there and taking it was something only an idiot would do. And yet I deliberately suggested we do exactly that.
“No. Let’s get captured the way they want, for now.”
Proposing we willingly walk into their hands after knowing everything should have sounded absurd, but Helena’s eyes stayed ice-cold. Her expression never cracked; she was staying calm because she trusted me. Still, she was curious about my reasoning, so she asked naturally.
“Why think that?”
“As long as they’re planning to ransom us, they won’t do anything too extreme. If we just cooperate for the moment, we should stay relatively safe. Of course you could end this in seconds with your sword, but… there’s something I want to find out.”
“Something you want to find out…?”
“Whether these guys are operating alone, whether they have partners somewhere, whether they’re mixed up in other illegal business.”
I genuinely wanted to know those things. And if we managed to round up people who had been hiding and operating inside the count’s territory, we could put the count himself in our debt—after all, we would be catching criminals on his behalf. We could have just beaten the answers out of them, of course, but if we played along and let them lead us, we would essentially get a guided tour. That seemed far more convenient. There might be some risk involved, but with a Sword Master sitting right next to me, I didn’t think I needed to worry much. They wouldn’t fence the “goods” the second they secured them, and since they were trying to stay under the radar, any deal would take time. During that process they would almost certainly stash their captives somewhere only they knew. They couldn’t keep a boat out on the water all day while someone went to fetch the buyer; that would stick out like a sore thumb and get them discovered in no time.
“You only get this curious at times like these, don’t you, Zion?”
Helena sighed and shook her head as if dealing with a troublesome child.
“Fine. If that’s what you want to do, we’ll do it. I don’t think the outcome will be bad, either.”
“Thank you. Then for now, let’s pretend to doze off and put them at ease.”
It might have looked dangerous, but I felt no real danger at all. The woman sitting beside me wasn’t an ordinary person—she was one of the most renowned Masters on the entire continent. Our opponents had no idea, and from my perspective it was almost laughable. Trying to kidnap Helena was basically the same as asking her to kill them.