12. Rekachev Circus School Trial (1)
12. Rekachev Circus School Trial (1)
Keeping patrons abreast of the outside world was considered a fundamental duty for any local tavern of this era.
From neighborhood gossip to affairs between nations, a juicy topic could revive a dying drinking session, which in turn boosted a tavern's sales. So beyond mastering the art of the shaker, bartenders were just as diligent about watching how the world turned.
Some taverns went so far as to keep a clown on retainer specifically for storytelling. When the patrons' spirits began to flag, the clown would descend from his room and warm the mood with comedy.
To merchants, they sold information—
"Throwing and playing with tomatoes to your heart's content? A stroke of genius worthy of the 'Iron Mask,' renowned as the most brilliant woman in high society. Ha-ha! As a stage man myself, I'll admit it's a little terrifying. The first-ever Tomato Festival, coming next year! Aren't you curious where it'll be held? Folks are guessing three likely cities, you see."
To soldiers, they dished out bawdy tales—
"A duke's daughter running off after falling for a common clown! Was the fellow that handsome to stir a maiden's heart? Or was it his tongue that sealed the deal—hee-hee! Hey, you there, quit wagging your tongue like that! What are you imagining? I meant his eloquence! Flaunting that sort of thing will keep our Beth the errand girl up all night... Oh dear, Miss Beth, please don't throw things at me!"
And to farmers, they offered a fresh target for the frustrations of daily life.
"I hear His Highness the Crown Prince pushed through a tax reduction, but the Senate put a stop to it. Goes to show how little real power a regent's words carry, doesn't it? Either way, it's the independent farmers who suffer for the greed of those old men. What even is the Senate but a retirement home for nobles doing legal errands on allowances from the great houses?"
Once that conversational bait hit the tables, the patrons would be back to drinking and babbling in no time.
So clowns always kept a stock of anecdotes on standby, tailored to every type of audience.
But lately, you'd be hard-pressed to find one agonizing over material. The Circus Grand Prix had seen to that. Four months since the competition began, and every week delivered a fresh scandal.
News of the preliminary trials, incidents sparked when troupes converged, the jockeying for prestige among the six host nations—there was so much material spanning culture, politics, and economics that a performer never had to stretch for a joke.
Everyone loved to hear it, and with so much to talk about, the Circus Grand Prix quickly became a tavern clown's bread and butter.
And so a tavern clown in a small town in Castille had picked the Circus Grand Prix as his comedy topic for the evening.
He had patched together a script on the spot from the piping-hot news that came in by telegraph that very morning. The regulars who'd come in to cool off were already starting to parch—backs sticky, lips dry. A perfect moment.
He arranged the lines in his head and rose from his seat.
His name was Sikrik.
He was the leader of the famed "Le Vodvilien," a troupe whose entire membership consisted of clowns.
Their usual shows were tightly scripted sketches with prepared sets and characters. But Sikrik loved concealing his identity and stepping onto the small stage of a place like this. The raw connection with the audience offered a high that a big stage could never replicate.
Tonight's subject was "knockoffs."
Counterfeits had become a hot social issue lately.
Nowadays, the moment a company poured its heart into a new product, imitations flooded the market. Trademarks were copied freely. In the worst cases, fakes seized the market entirely from the genuine articles.
A phenomenon born of the Industrial Revolution, the age when anyone with machines and facilities could churn out goods.
In the past, royal monopolies had kept such chaos in check, but in the free-trade era, the market was largely beyond government control—outside of strategic materials like salt and gunpowder. Some nations even actively encouraged counterfeit industries.
Scholars in many fields had plenty of theories, but few had been put into practice.
Sikrik planned to use the theme of "knockoffs" to frame the incident that had happened in Yeterinpurk the day before. He accepted a cool glass of beer and stepped up onto the stage.
"An age where you can barely tell real from fake! Abysmal quality comes free of charge! A mug handle snapping off in your hand after you paid a premium? Routine. For all you know, the very beer you're drinking is horse piss mixed with some dodgy alcohol!"
The patrons roared with laughter, but Sikrik caught the tavern keeper at the back flinching hard. The moment their eyes met, the man spun his head away.
Sikrik had planned to take a sip and then pull a disgusted face, as if he'd just caught a whiff of urine. Instead, he simply set the glass far away on a table.
"Friends, knockoffs don't just roll off factory floors. The one I'm about to introduce is the work of a playwright. Though, come to think of it, I suppose this one did come from a factory. This is the story of His Grace, the duke with the confectionery factory up north..."
He delivered the morning's news from Yeterinpurk to the patrons, seasoned with savage jokes.
A duke with more money than taste, a vanity collection exposed!
Five circus troupes blinded by false glory and covered in shame!
He dismissed Lord Fantastic's reputation as cheap gold-plating, wrote off Eunmak Arno as an old man so drunk on illusions he could no longer tell real from fake, mocked Minova as a mere loud-mouthed thug, cackled at Hobbs as a monkey who only knew how to use his body, and painted Wonderstein as a barbarian clinging to outdated traditions. He even threw in a jab about how he wouldn't dare buy anything from the trading companies that sponsored such frauds—who knew if their wares were real?
Two weeks prior, when word reached him that they were postponing the premiere of the "Illusory 13th," Sikrik had felt a surge of inferiority and jealousy.
Maybe that was why.
His humor tonight was more brutal than usual.
Yet no one seemed put off. From the emperor down to the lowliest peasant, clowns and acrobats were fair game for contempt. That social standing went a long way toward explaining why the Circus Grand Prix was consumed so casually as tavern joke fodder.
Watching the crowd eat up his comedy, Sikrik realized why he'd felt the urge to take this tavern stage today.
He had wanted to laugh at them. Openly mocking his industry peers in a formal setting carried too much risk, so he had borrowed this venue instead.
A deep satisfaction settled over him. He handed his tips to the owner, shouted for a round of beer for everyone, and strode out of the tavern to applause.
While the whole tavern roared with laughter over Sikrik's tale of "the blind duke and his five blockheads," one table sat in sullen, hostile silence.
They were merchants who had come to this city to close a critical deal. The grim-faced man seated at their center was the head of a merchant group.
He had traveled here to finalize a contract supplying two hundred commercial freezers to a regional distributor.
It wasn't an exaggeration to call it the largest single transaction in the company's history.
He had barely slept for weeks preparing for it. He'd done exhaustive market analysis, never once slacked on tracking his rivals' movements, and even in the final stretch, he'd meticulously researched his counterpart. He'd identified the man's favorite tavern and arranged this dinner.
He had downed over ten glasses of the man's preferred brew—a beer with a pungent, almost uric tang—without complaint. He himself, the head of the company, had put on the demonstration of stepping in and out of the sample freezer unit installed at their lodgings.
And all that misery had looked like it would pay off. The deal seemed poised to close smoothly.
In place of champagne, the company head brought out a frozen fruit stored in the freezer. A prized item he had acquired not long ago, which he sliced into eighths and served to celebrate every major deal his company closed.
"Oh, is that the... the one money can't even buy? How in the world did you get your hands on it?"
"I sponsor a circus troupe. Ah, they're in the Grand Prix, of course. I was lucky enough to form a connection with the Bergson Trading Company through them..."
"Bergson! That speaks volumes for your company's caliber."
A deal that had seemed to be going so well suddenly came undone the moment the clown took the stage.
"The Saetbyeol Merchant Group? I wouldn't buy a thing from them! Aren't they the ones backing those frauds peddling fake scripts and fake fame? Anything they sell is bound to be counterfeit!"
The warm mood drained from the table in an instant.
The company head felt as though he'd just stepped right back into the freezer he'd demonstrated earlier.
A moment later, his counterparts received a message from outside, stood up citing urgent business, and left.
"Your company's products were most impressive. I'd sign the contract on the spot if I could, but a deal of this size requires further discussion within our firm. Regrettably, we'll have to reach out again another time. I'm sure we'll have good news then."
The company head had spent nearly twenty years as a merchant. He was no fool who would sit around expecting a positive reply.
He brought the slice of Golden Tomato back to his room, sealed it in the freezer, and stood before the open door, letting the cold air wash over him to cool the heat rising in his chest.
But that only delayed the explosion. Nothing could stop it.
Soon, his furious roar shook the guestroom walls.
***
"I hear the company head is quite enraged."
The woman didn't raise her voice, nor did she frown. She merely flipped through the documents in her hand with a grave, detached air.
And yet Minova felt as if he were suffocating.
The woman tossed the stack of papers she'd been reading onto the table in front of him.
"My own reputation is now in tatters as well."
The stack consisted of telegrams from merchants affiliated with the Saetbyeol Merchant Group, sent from all over the continent. They detailed deals that had soured, social functions where they'd become laughingstocks—all because of the incident in Yeterinpurk.
"Uh, is it... that severe...?"
Minova rifled through the pages she'd produced, clicking his tongue in embarrassment.
The woman let out a small, sympathetic sigh.
"A man of a duke's stature always has political enemies. With five sponsors dragged into the mess, everyone who's ever wanted to take a bite out of him is spreading the story far and wide, chipping away at his name. And we did trumpet it first ourselves—the Illusory 13th and all that."
"The company head... did he have much to say?"
At his question, the woman's expression tightened into something hard.
She was the Saetbyeol Merchant Group's lead on the Grand Prix sponsorship project. Having always enjoyed the circus, she had gladly taken the assignment. Lately, her work had felt genuinely rewarding—building connections through promotional performances, coordinating sponsored goods, extending influence, and broadening her eye for regional trade.
She had thought her standing within the company was set to grow.
Right up until the day before, when she'd gotten a bucketful of vulgar abuse over the telegraph from the company head.
But she had enough self-restraint not to relay that to the man before her.
"I'll handle matters within the company. So, Troupe Leader, please forget about all that and just focus on the competition. You'll absolutely need to secure a star in the November trial."
"And if we don't?"
"The circus troupe may vanish. Or you may be replaced as its leader."
The Morning Star Circus was a project troupe founded by its sponsor.
Disbanding the troupe outright would be tricky, even for the sponsor, given their contract with the Grand Prix organizers. But replacing the troupe leader? That was simple.
Having finished the business portion of the conversation, the woman softened her cold demeanor ever so slightly and looked at Minova with pity. He sat with his shoulders slumped—though, by virtue of his build, they still bulged higher than most men's.
"Where has Luri gone?"
"Out with Dosville, seeing the Halloween sights."
The woman's eyebrow arched sharply.
"You left your daughter in the care of a man like him?"
"I-it'll be fine. Luri is strong... and there are... the other kids with them."
The woman had a fair guess who those "other kids" were.
Perhaps it was they, not the adults, who were having the hardest time of all.
Her gaze drifted toward the window, her expression a tangle of complicated thoughts.
