Whack-a-Mole (2)
The road to the Imperial Capital was farther than I’d expected.
Or rather, distance wasn’t really the problem.
It was everything you met along the way that made it a pain.
Checkpoints. Merchant caravans.
Mercenary bands.
Administrators nervously watching the road for no good reason.
And paperwork.
This was clearly a world with magic, and yet paper was still the most powerful force in it.
Fortunately, the carriage was comfortable.
It even had air conditioning. Seriously.
Apparently, when you killed monsters or dug in mines, you got something called mana stones.
They used those to run the air conditioning, among other things.
And, right now, the carriage engine too.
Which made me wonder—was this even a carriage anymore?
“Young master.”
Roman opened his mouth from across from me in the carriage.
“You may still turn back now if you wish.”
“We haven’t even made it halfway to the capital.”
“That is precisely why I’m saying it.”
“What a fast surrender.”
“It is not surrender. It is a reasonable judgment.”
I looked out the window.
We’d left Kaindel territory half a day ago.
The road itself was well maintained, but checkpoints had sprung up everywhere.
I’d heard that the Imperial roads had changed a great deal since the Normalization Decree.
Seeing it for myself, though, was a different matter.
Was this why?
Not long ago, I’d read a column in the paper.
[Rising Crime Rates: Is This Still Acceptable?]
If I remembered correctly, criminals committed things like robbery and theft, then fled to other cities to avoid arrest.
The claim was that the checkpoints had grown lax, letting people through without proper inspection.
Was this increase in checkpoints the solution?
I didn’t want to admit it, but it looked like the Emperor was actually trying to do his job properly.
“Aron.”
“Yes, young master.”
The logistics appraiser, Aron, was sitting in the corner with a small box in his arms.
Inside it was the sealing string in question.
The string recovered from the Ramar bandits’ spoils.
At first they’d said it came from the Imperial Capital, then after a closer look said it was no longer in use.
It took only a single string to make a person this tired.
For a world that was still underdeveloped, it was impressively efficient.
“You’re still holding onto that?”
“Isn’t it an important item?”
“What if you drop it?”
“……Would I die?”
“No? Then you’d just have to go looking for it yourself.”
“That might be better than dying.”
As Aron muttered that in all seriousness, Roman let out a quiet sigh beside him.
“Young master. Please do not frighten Aron so much.”
“I’m loosening him up.”
“You are doing the opposite.”
Oh. Was that so?
I scratched my head and looked back outside. A checkpoint came into view through the window.
Two Imperial soldiers, one administrator.
And a long line of merchant caravans.
A small caravan at the end of the line looked so tense it was practically swallowing every few seconds.
The large caravans, on the other hand, had already prepared their documents in neat bundles.
The stricter the procedures got, the more clearly the difference between those who endured and those who got pushed aside showed itself. It was blunter than I’d expected.
“Pass.”
“Here you are.”
“Cargo list and escort personnel.”
“Those are here as well.”
The large caravan went through without a hitch.
Before the inspector even had to ask, the necessary papers were already out.
By contrast, the smaller caravan in front was being held up for ages.
“There’s no sealing confirmation form.”
“No, that should be attached behind the cargo list.”
“It must be separate. An attached addendum is not acceptable.”
“Until yesterday, we submitted it that way……”
The man who seemed to be the small caravan’s owner was biting his lip as he flipped through the documents, while the porters beside him wore helpless expressions.
Watching that, I cracked my window open a little.
“That confirmation form—”
“Young master.”
“Just stay quiet for a second.”
I raised my voice toward the checkpoint.
“It should be tucked next to the pass copy. Not behind the cargo list.”
The small caravan owner startled and shuffled frantically through the stack.
“Ah, w-wait! There it is! Here it is!”
“……Pass.”
The inspector took the documents, checked them, and nodded expressionlessly.
The carriage started moving again.
The small caravan owner bowed toward me from the waist, in a panic.
“Thank you!”
“Go on. You’re blocking the line.”
After I shut the window, I could feel Roman’s gaze on me.
“Were you helping them?”
“Our carriage was going to be delayed too.”
“Yes. I shall record it that way.”
“Don’t record it. Are you Sera Klein?”
That made Roman and Aron both twitch the corners of their mouths.
Our own inspection ended as well. I hadn’t exactly advertised that I was a noble, but we passed smoothly enough.
Once we got past the checkpoint, the road opened up a little.
The merchant caravans began to pick up speed, and mercenaries were feeding their horses at the roadside.
The Normalization Decree wasn’t just tormenting nobles.
It was tormenting the merchants on the road, the mercenaries, the inspectors, and even tragic victims like me.
I’d only been trying to survive as a side character with a handful of lines in the original story, and then the Emperor suddenly threw out this net to “normalize” the empire.
The net was wide, and there wasn’t a single noble who wasn’t caught in it.
I got caught too.
It was just that, once caught, I discovered the bandits I’d nabbed were dirtier than I’d expected.
“Young master.”
Aron asked carefully,
“Do we really have to go all the way to the capital because of this sealing string?”
“It’s not just because of the sealing string.”
“Then why?”
“Ramar, Arbina, the noble territory that had trouble this time—different places, same pattern.”
I tapped the carriage window frame with my finger.
“The bandits blocked the road, the big caravans were skipped over, and only the smaller ones got hit.”
“…….”
“If it happens once, it’s a coincidence. Twice, it’s suspicious. Three times…… you get the picture.”
Aron seemed to understand and nodded.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
The carriage kept rolling on.
By noon, we stopped for a short break at a roadside rest stop.
Several caravan wagons and a few mercenaries had already claimed the place.
The smell of drying meat.
The smell of horse sweat.
The smell of cheap beer.
And between those smells came the mercenaries’ voices.
“You see the gear those bandits have been carrying lately?”
“I did. Better than our rookie’s.”
“Banditry’s become a business for people with money.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. What kind of money do mountain rats have? Someone’s feeding them.”
I paused with my water flask halfway to my mouth. Sometimes conversations like this were far more useful than newspapers or books.
The mercenaries’ talk quickly drifted elsewhere.
One inn’s liquor wasn’t any good, they said. Imperial Capital escort requests paid well, but they drained the blood out of a man. That sort of thing.
The important stuff rarely came out in neat sentences.
It usually slipped out like an offhand remark.
Someone’s feeding them.
As I mulled that over, my thoughts drifted to my time with Roelin.
It had been not long after we got engaged.
At a certain count’s evening banquet, I think.
Roelin had been unusually quiet that day.
She was smiling like the noble young lady she was, but she didn’t say much.
I’d thought she was just tired.
The problem came from somewhere else.
I don’t remember her name.
She was some baron’s daughter, I think, and she edged up beside me.
“Do you like sweets, Young Master Kaindel?”
That’s what she said as she offered me a small wrapped confection.
It wasn’t openly rude.
But speaking to me alone like that, with Roelin right there, was pretty blatant.
...What is she playing at?
Back then I wasn’t nearly as good at reading things as I am now. I just found it annoying.
So I accepted the candy.
“Ah, please enjoy it……”
The young lady’s face brightened.
Then I handed the candy straight to Roelin.
“You said you like sweets.”
I added without thinking,
“Don’t you like anything sweet? Or did I get that wrong?”
For a moment, silence fell.
The young lady’s smile stiffened,
and Roelin lowered her eyes to the plate before slowly speaking.
“……Feed me.”
“Huh?”
Roelin held out the candy with a perfectly calm expression.
“You gave it to me.”
“I did.”
“Then you should see it through.”
The young lady beside us stiffened even more.
A few nobles nearby started looking over with interest.
I stared at Roelin as if to say, What the hell are you doing all of a sudden?
Roelin was still smiling.
Only now, the smile was a little different from before.
It wasn’t the face of someone quietly angry.
It was the face of someone who’d finished setting up a prank.
Fine.
No, not fine.
But I couldn’t exactly ignore Roelin with her mouth slightly open, waiting in front of me.
I picked up the candy and brought it to her lips.
“Here.”
Roelin took it as if nothing were unusual.
It was only a tiny sweet, but the air around us somehow split apart.
The baron’s daughter stopped smiling altogether, and Roelin slowly pressed a handkerchief to the corner of her mouth.
Then, very softly, she said,
“Thank you.”
That thanks wasn’t for the candy.
At the very least, I could tell that much.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“Let’s get moving.”
Roman said,
“We need to reach the White Stag Inn before sunset.”
“I still can’t get used to that name.”
“It is a fine inn.”
“Expensive?”
“If the family head heard you, he’d be hurt.”
My father would probably just sigh and let it slide.
Or he might hit me over the ledgers later.
I was joking, of course. The Kaindel family wasn’t at a level where this sort of thing mattered much.
The carriage rolled back toward the Imperial Capital.
As the sun started to lean toward the horizon, the air on the road changed too.
Caravans hurried along, and mercenaries checked the surroundings more often.
The closer you got to the capital, the safer the road became.
Instead, people got more complicated.
The bandits decreased,
and the bandits with ledgers multiplied.
It had been the same in my previous life.
Street robbers are scary, sure, but men smiling while holding contracts are even scarier.
Here, they carried both swords and contracts, which made it even more damnable.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“Young master, we’ve arrived.”
Before the sun had fully gone down, the White Stag Inn came into view.
And in front of it stood a line of carriages.
The emblems of the large merchant caravans I’d only glimpsed while buried in paperwork for the past few days were stamped there, clear as day.
“……So this is where they are.”