A Child Does Not Understand a Parent's Heart
The Second Species War, which broke out in Sedes Year 744, dragged on for decades.
When war lasts that long, it leaves life in ruins. Refugees are driven from their homes and wander the land, while the people who should have been tending to their livelihoods are sent to the battlefield instead.
As manpower dwindled, production fell as well, and when production fell, tax revenues dropped right along with it.
Another serious problem was that there were fewer people left to defend the cities, such as retainers and knight orders.
The most basic promise that made a city a city — "In exchange for taxes, you are guaranteed safety" — began to wobble, and the common people trembled with unease.
That was why the profession of mercenary began to rise.
In truth, mercenaries had existed long before that, but they had never been especially respected. Monster attacks on a city or nearby fiends could usually be handled by the retainers and knight orders, so mercenaries were little more than a sideline for the slack season — people who took on petty requests for others when there was no real work to do.
But once those defenses grew weak, people began spending the taxes they would have paid to the city on hiring mercenaries instead, and that was how men and women who made their living as mercenaries came to be.
And when people with compatible temperaments gathered among those mercenaries, they formed a party; when the members of a party grew larger or several parties came together, the result was a mercenary band.
And during the Second Species War, there was one mercenary band that had earned an unmatched reputation….
* * *
“...And that was the ‘Liberi Mercenary Band,’ the precursor to Liberi, the Free Mercenary City.”
Jurney chattered excitedly as we arrived in Liberi.
Perhaps because she had finally entered the mercenary homeland, she looked even more pumped up than usual.
The fact that she was rattling off Liberi’s history without anyone even asking probably had something to do with that.
She must have worked hard, explaining it all in Granic, a language she wasn’t even used to.
Only…
“I know.”
“Ah, r-right?”
The problem was that it had been useless effort.
Even if I wasn’t interested in history, I knew something as important as Liberi’s founding.
More accurately, I had been forced to know it by someone who had blathered at my side long before Jurney ever did.
As Jurney had explained, the free mercenary city had begun with a single mercenary band.
As that band prospered, more and more people stopped paying taxes, and from the perspective of the lords who collected those taxes, there was no way they could have taken that kindly.
So the mercenary band clashed with the old powers that had held the wealth and influence, and Liberi — this free mercenary city — was born from the mercenary band’s victory.
In other words, Liberi was once the name of a mercenary band, then the name of a city, and now the name of the group to which mercenaries belonged.
Hmm….
I let my hood-shadowed eyes sweep across the city.
I had heard plenty about it, but this was my first time actually seeing Liberi, and its scale was impressive.
It wasn’t as large as the royal capital of the Grasis Kingdom, but it felt far bigger than most other cities.
At the very least, it was definitely bigger than Ordo.
...Well, of course.
It had once been the capital of a small kingdom, so that made sense.
“How long are you planning to stay in Liberi?”
“No idea.”
I wouldn’t have minded heading for the Holy Kingdom right this instant, but Jurney, who was asking me, clearly didn’t want that.
“Then… can we stay here for just a few days before we go?”
She started pitching reasons at me one after another: it was good to rest instead of rushing, sightseeing after finally coming all this way would be nice, and so on.
“No more, no less — four days. No, three days! Let’s rest for three days. Huh?”
“Okay.”
“You don’t like three days either? Then… huh? Wait, did you just say okay?”
“Okay.”
I did have something I wanted to ask Edel about, but it wasn’t urgent, so there was no need to hurry.
More importantly, I was used to sleeping outdoors in a cart or on horseback for days at a time, but that didn’t mean I enjoyed living like that.
Jurney’s face brightened when she heard my answer.
“Really? No take-backs, okay? You can’t suddenly turn around tomorrow and say let’s leave or anything.”
“Let’s just leave today.”
“Aww, why are you like this?”
Jurney pouted with exaggerated cuteness, then grabbed my hand and led me along.
She seemed thoroughly familiar with Liberi, because there was not a shred of hesitation in her footsteps as she walked the streets.
“Where are we going?”
“The Liberi headquarters! Since it’s been a while since I’ve come back, I want to report my results and show you the headquarters, Kana.”
“...Is it okay for me to go?”
“It’s fine unless it’s a major facility. Even if we went, we’d only be going to the reception desk or something like that, and that’s where requests are accepted and assigned anyway, so regular people come and go all the time.”
In that case, sure.
As we threaded our way through the crowd and walked down the street, the huge castle I had seen in the distance came rushing up before my eyes.
Not only had they seized the capital of a kingdom and made it their own, they had even left the royal castle standing and were using it as their headquarters.
If the royal family of the fallen kingdom had seen it, they might have wept tears of blood.
Still, it was better than some country that had been reduced to nothing but ruins.
As befitted the headquarters of the famed Liberi, the place was packed with people.
As usual, there were plenty of Apostles around, but there were also many ordinary mercenaries who were not Apostles.
As I stared at the people around us, Jurney noticed my gaze and bent her knees a little so we could meet eye to eye.
“Have you… gotten interested in mercenaries? Do you maybe want to become one?”
“No.”
“Why not? You’d get treated really well if you were a mercenary, Kana.”
“...I don’t want to.”
I would probably be treated well. But what was the point if that wasn’t what I wanted?
If I had been short on money, maybe I would have considered it, but I had always only ever earned money, never really spent it.
So much so that Garid used to chide me for not spending any of it.
Even when I did spend, it was usually just on food, and compared to the money I received as a commander, that was a drop in the ocean.
The royal bastards had been infuriating little mosquitoes at every turn, but they had been generous enough with money.
Probably because that other bastard had been whispering in their ears.
...!
The moment I recalled a face I had been trying hard to forget, my mood curdled in an instant.
Even Garid, who usually brushed everything aside no matter what he heard, had oddly enough spoken of that man with a faint sense of displeasure.
What I hated was my own business, but objectively speaking, he was probably the only royal who had even a grain of sense in his skull.
I had asked Garid why he disliked him, but he had refused to tell me to the very end, so I still didn’t know the reason.
If you really want to know, why don’t you try acting cute? Then I’ll tell you.
...
He had said that, but I hadn’t wanted to know badly enough to go along with it, so I ignored him.
In any case, I didn’t care about fame, and I had enough money, so there was no reason to pretend to be a mercenary.
And while I wasn’t quite as allergic to Liberi as I was to those imperial bastards, my feelings toward this city were not exactly warm either.
Whether Jurney had suggested it without thinking or not, she didn’t seem too attached to the idea when I turned her down.
Looking at the line stretched before the reception desk, Jurney said in a somewhat troubled voice, “It looks like it’ll take a while…. Kana, do you want to look around by yourself for a bit? I’ll come find you when I’m done.”
“Come find me?”
We hadn’t even decided on a meeting place, and she probably didn’t know where I’d be. How was she supposed to find me?
At my question, Jurney pointed around us.
When I followed the direction of her finger and looked around, I nodded.
Right. There was no way I could get lost.
I wasn’t some monkey in a cage, so why were they all staring at me like that?
So many Apostles were whispering about me that the other mercenaries, who hadn’t been paying attention a moment before, started looking this way too, wondering if something was going on.
It was a perfect vicious cycle, one person calling another over, and that person calling yet another.
“All right.”
They looked like they’d follow me wherever I went, but that was still better than standing around and becoming a spectacle.
I left Jurney behind and began exploring Liberi Headquarters.
Old-fashioned interior design and rough mercenaries.
Could there possibly be a less fitting combination?
As I walked wherever my feet happened to take me, avoiding the mercenaries, people would occasionally step out and block my way.
“This area is restricted to authorized personnel only. If you are authorized, please show proof.”
Even if I hadn’t understood the words, the meaning came across clearly enough from the firm voice and the body blocking the door.
Whenever that happened, I turned around without the slightest hesitation and headed somewhere else.
If they said not to go in, then I wouldn’t go in.
There was no need to be stubborn if I had no real reason to enter.
That was when I was wandering around, watching the spectators watching me, and sightseeing through the castle’s many corners.
Ears perked up.
“...?”
“...Ha!”
“Faster! Swing faster!”
Distant shouts and the dull clang of metal.
Drawn by the sound, I changed course and headed toward it.
The closer I got to the source, the clearer the faint sounds became.
And when I arrived, I found a courtyard attached to the castle.
Before Liberi had taken it over, it had probably been used for its original purpose, with flowers and other plants growing there, but now it served as a training ground where mercenaries honed their skills.
There were people pounding away at wooden dummies and straw targets with great enthusiasm, and others testing their strength against one another with weapons drawn.
Scattered among them were Apostles, which was impossible to miss.
I had thought people like that would never, ever bother training.
How surprising.
Their skill still left something to be desired, of course, but the fact that they were working hard at it was worthy of praise.
From what I could see, the people practicing alone seemed to be beginners who had only just started life as mercenaries, while the ones sparring were a step above that.
And those with even greater skill were receiving instruction from mercenaries who appeared to be instructors.
They even had instructors.
I had thought this was just a place where a bunch of random fighters were gathered together, but apparently they actually trained people directly.
They were more organized than I’d expected.
“Hm? ...Take a break for a moment!”
The instructor, who had been teaching the mercenaries with a stern face, spotted me.
When he raised his hand, the mercenaries, who had been swinging their weapons while dripping with sweat, let out relieved sighs.
Then, in a voice much gentler than the one he had been using just moments before, he spoke to me.
“What brings you all the way out here? Did you perhaps come with an older sister or brother you know?”
“I, don’t know Arkish.”
I recited the first words Jurney had taught me, and the instructor scratched his head.
“Hmm, are you lost? That’s a problem….”
“...”
“If a stray blade flies your way, it could be dangerous.”
The instructor, stroking his bristly beard as he thought, gestured to me.
If it wasn’t some special hand sign used among mercenaries, then in the ordinary sense, it probably meant to follow him.
I didn’t know where we were going, but I obediently trailed after him.
The instructor led me to the door near the training ground and knocked.
Knock, knock.
“Captain, may I come in?”
“Yeah, come in.”
I followed the instructor through the open door.
The room looked like someone’s office.
A man was seated at a large desk, wrestling with a stack of documents.
“Is something the matter?”
“We found a lost child. It seems she’s been separated from her guardian, but it was too dangerous to leave her in the training ground, so I brought her here for now.”
“Is that so?”
The man who had been wrestling with the paperwork lifted his head.
Age had faded his features a little, but time had not been able to strip away the handsomeness in his face completely.
He had the striking looks of a man who must have captured plenty of women’s hearts when he was younger.
And I knew his name.
“Aaron.”
His eyes, tinged with a faint blue, turned toward me.
Question, surprise, disbelief.
Aaron’s gaze changed through those three expressions in an instant before deep shock overtook it.
“No way, no, that can’t be…. ...Really?”
“...Is this your daughter, Captain?”
“...My daughter, huh.”
At the instructor’s cautious question, Aaron stopped his stunned reaction and gave a bitter smile.
By then, he had already pushed back his chair and risen to his feet.
“I’ll handle this. You may return to your duties.”
“Yes, sir…!”
After the instructor closed the door and left, silence settled between the two of us for a moment.
He seemed almost certain, yet disbelief still lingered in Aaron’s face.
Wanting to help him along, I pulled down the hood I had been wearing.
Pink hair, which had been trapped beneath it, spilled down softly.
“Long time no see, Vice-Commander.”
“...No, wh—heh...!”
A laugh of disbelief slipped from Aaron as our eyes met.
Now that I had taken off my hood and stood before him properly, not a trace of disbelief remained in his face.
“It truly has been a long time.”
After a brief hesitation, he spoke again.
“...Commander.”