Merchants' Street (3)
Dieta, the Gold-Swallowing Snake.
She was a merchant of renown even in Cambria. She had her eccentricities and often acted purely on whim… yet every one of her interests ultimately led back to gold coins.
A life lived solely for gold.
Her interests, her hobbies, her concerns—all of it existed only to rake in more coin. A girl who seemed born for gold alone.
Some called her the stuff of great merchants. Others pointed fingers and dismissed her as a money-blind peddler. Countless people offered their own judgments of Dieta… yet one point always remained the same.
Dieta Arvenia was a merchant born and bred.
Her talent as a merchant was the real thing.
No one could deny that fact.
Dieta had proven it with her own life. Five years. That was how long it had taken her to become the head of a merchant company that represented the city itself.
A girl cast out by her house, building that achievement with nothing but her own strength, without leaning on her family’s power. An accomplishment worthy of being called a success story—one that nothing could tear down.
And yet.
The path she had walked to raise that achievement could not, even by the kindest stretch, be called beautiful. She had spared no means and no method in her pursuit of gold. That was why they called her the Gold-Swallowing Snake—a pejorative that clung to her name.
A girl who lived only for gold.
A miser wearing a girl’s skin.
At least on this Merchants’ Street, there was not a soul who did not know that Dieta Arvenia was that kind of creature.
“······.”
“······.”
Walking a step behind Dieta, Najin felt a quiet sense of wrongness. The fact that no one was calling out to him as they had a moment ago was hardly strange—he had a patron at his side now—but…
Those stares are sharp.
Their gazes were unnervingly cold.
Not mere wariness. Contempt flickered through them often enough. It was a look Najin knew well. The same look the “upper-town” folk used to give him whenever they came down to the underground city.
“······.”
Najin watched Dieta in silence. Today he was accompanying her as her escort, so she walked a full step ahead of him—unlike their usual arrangement. Her back was bright, almost buoyant.
Hum, hum-hmm.
Humming under her breath, Dieta strolled lightly down the Merchants’ Street. Now and then she glanced back and smiled at him, as if the stares that stabbed into her meant nothing at all.
For some reason…
That smile of Dieta’s felt familiar.
Where had he seen a smile like that? He was turning the question over in silence, keeping pace behind her, when—
“Tsk.”
A tongue clicked.
It had not come from Dieta. Both of them stopped. Looking toward the sound, they saw a man approaching from the opposite direction.
Dressed in garments permitted only to the nobility, with a knight bearing his house crest at his side.
Najin recognized him for a noble at once. He had crossed paths with men like this often enough while moving through the city. Cambria was relatively loose about rank, a place where noble authority did not always hold… but there were still lines one did not cross.
You did not need to bow your head at the sight of a noble, yet Najin knew there was nothing to gain by getting entangled with them or ruffling their pride.
Best keep your distance from nobles.
That was the word among adventurers.
Getting mixed up with nobles who demanded formality was rarely a welcome prospect for an adventurer. Ambitious types aiming higher sometimes took on the big commissions that came with noble connections, but when things went wrong, heads rolled more often than not.
To those born high, adventurers were disposable pieces—useful once, then thrown away.
So when a noble appeared, most adventurers simply waited for him to pass. Dieta was different. Cast out or not, she was still a child of a noble house. She did not wait for the noble to go by; she kept walking.
Tap.
Just as the noble and Dieta were about to brush past each other, the man clicked his tongue again.
“Cambria really must be a fine place.”
A gaze as if he were looking at an insect.
He glanced sidelong at Dieta and muttered,
“A cast-off whore from her own house, walking around with her chin up in front of a noble. Unthinkable in the capital.”
A clear insult aimed at Dieta.
Words that would have been unimaginable between two nobles—yet Dieta only tilted her head and met his eyes, her expression perfectly serene.
“Do you know me? The son of Count Fraunkel?”
Dieta spoke in a gentle voice.
She knew every noble who entered this city, and which house they came from. The young man before her was Danor Fraunkel, son of Count Fraunkel.
By rank alone, his house could not even present a calling card at the Arvenia ducal house.
But Dieta wore a noble’s name only as a formality; she was an “outsider” cast off by her family. That was why Danor had thrown the cheap provocation. Dieta merely smiled at it. She had heard the same taunt until she was sick of it.
“What, am I wrong?”
Danor twisted the corner of his mouth.
“You tried to use that face of yours to win the Duke of Arvenia’s favor… and in the end you were thrown away. That you’re no better than a whore is common knowledge, isn’t it?”
Danor sneered, and the escort knight at his side smiled with him. Even under the insults aimed at her, Dieta only kept smiling. It was not the reaction Danor had wanted. He clicked his tongue and turned away.
“What was I expecting from a wench with no honor and no pride.”
Just as Danor was about to walk on—
“Ah. I remember now.”
The escort standing beside Dieta.
Najin let out a short sound of realization. At the unexpected voice, Dieta’s expression shifted. She turned her head to look at him.
Najin, who had been watching Dieta’s face the whole time, now wore a look of sudden clarity, as if the memory had finally clicked into place.
“I was wondering where I’d seen it.”
He was still looking only at Dieta.
As if he had never even registered Danor or the escort knight’s existence from the start.
Najin touched the corner of his mouth and smiled—
as if he were imitating something, or recalling it.
Dieta’s eyes went wide at the sight of that smile. They looked nothing alike, yet the smile Najin wore now was the twin of her own. It was the smile Najin had always worn in the underground city.
No wonder it felt familiar.
It was the expression he had seen every day—in mirrors, in pools of spilled blood, in the surface of a glass. The peculiar, servile smile of someone eroded and resigned. It did not suit Dieta, the most successful merchant head in the city… which was why he had not recognized it at once.
“You…?”
Dieta’s eyes were still wide when she started to speak—
“A crude fellow. Birds of a feather, I see. Just because a man wears a sword doesn’t make him a knight…”
Danor, who had paused at Najin’s voice, glanced back with a sneer. The knight chuckled in echo of his master. Najin paid them no mind at all.
“One question.”
Najin asked, still looking at Dieta.
“If I cause trouble, can you cover it?”
“···What exactly are you planning to do?”
“I just don’t like the look of them.”
Najin smiled, eyes only on Dieta. Dieta, who had no way of knowing what was going on in his head, could only feel bewildered.
“Well… as long as you don’t touch the noble, it should be fine?”
The moment Dieta muttered that—
As long as you don’t touch the noble, it’s fine. Najin took those words to mean: the knight standing next to the noble was fair game.
“For a man who calls himself a knight, that mouth of his is awfully light…”
Najin muttered loudly enough to carry.
Danor and the escort knight stopped mid-step and turned back toward him.
“What did you just say?”
Danor demanded.
Najin did not answer him. He looked at the escort knight instead and murmured,
“Respect your opponent. Keep laughter at a distance. Shun insult and draw humility close.”
A knight’s virtues.
“Aren’t those the precepts a knight is meant to keep?”
Najin’s face was blank.
“You’ve already broken more than four of them just now. Are you sure you’re actually a knight?”
The knight opened his mouth, looking incredulous.
“You’re lecturing me on a knight’s virtues? In front of me?”
“Does it take anything special to recite a few virtues?”
“That is an insult. For someone who is not a knight to discourse on knighthood before a knight—”
“You don’t look like you became a knight by swinging a sword particularly well, either. How exactly did you get the title?”
“······What?”
Najin’s eyes narrowed as he pointed at the knight’s hip. The sword hanging there showed no wear. No sense of use at all.
Provocation. Insult.
The knight’s brow furrowed; his master’s face twisted. Sensing the moment had turned, Najin pressed harder.
“Why is that tongue of yours so long?”
Najin tapped the pommel of his own sword, expressionless.
“If you’re that confident, come at me.”
And so—
the situation arrived at this.
2.
A knight drawing his sword in the middle of the main thoroughfare.
And Najin, casually tipping the tip of his own blade toward that knight.
Dieta and Danor, the knight’s master, wore opposite expressions as they watched. Danor’s face was crumpled with displeasure; Dieta, startled by Najin’s sudden leap into the fray, still felt the corner of her mouth twitch with a laugh that wanted out.
The whole scene was simply strange.
It was the kind of insult she could have let slide, as she always did. Words she had heard a hundred times, words she could have simply walked past. Watching Najin flip the middle finger straight into the face of that insult was something new for Dieta.
There was no real profit in doing it, after all.
Why was Najin staging this little spectacle?
Dieta could not tell. It did not seem to be because his employer had been insulted…
“Come at me, brat.”
“I’ll give you the first move.”
“What…?”
In the midst of Dieta’s confusion—
“I just handle a sword better than you do.”
“You insolent little—!”
The duel began.
Eyes wide, the knight charged at Najin.
“Whatever confidence he’s got, he’ll be a laughingstock in no time. With a master like that, of course the underlings are a mess.”
Certain of victory, Danor sneered. Dieta let the smug voice pass through one ear and out the other, her eyes fixed on Najin.
Was he always like this?
Hadn’t he been more taciturn, quieter?
Dieta had taken Najin for a rigid, tightly controlled man. The Najin in front of her was different. Light, provocative, wearing a livelier smile—a young man with something of his true self let loose, as if some switch had been flipped.
What the switch had been was not hard to guess. The smile he had shown her just moments ago.
“······.”
Dieta recalled that smile in silence.
A smile startlingly like her own. A smile that even stirred a sense of kinship. It was hard to believe he had merely been imitating her.
Just what…
Dieta looked at Najin.
A young man whose age and name both seemed false. Yet the smile he had worn in that instant had been real.
Kaaaaaaaaang!
Najin’s blade and the knight’s met.
The knight who clashed with Najin was, of course, a man who had reached the rank of Sword Expert—yet he did not draw out his aura. Minimal pride would not allow it.
He would force Najin to his knees with pure swordsmanship alone.
He would show this arrogant brat the difference between them.
With that thought the knight swung.
Yet Najin caught every cut with almost insulting ease. As he parried, his expression grew colder and colder.
The knights I know…
are never like this.
Their blades are never this light, never this frivolous.
The knights Najin knew and had seen were not this kind of creature. This was not the knight he dreamed of. Were knights not lofty beings of honor and pride? He felt no honor from the man in front of him.
No pride, either.
Only stubbornness.
Najin, who had been content to receive, took a single step forward. The knight was forced a step back. Najin kept advancing; the knight began to give ground, cold sweat beading on his brow.
Watching it, Danor’s composure drained from his face. The knight’s features twisted as well.
Kang, kaaaang!
Najin’s swordsmanship was already on its proper track.
His eyes read the arc of the knight’s blade far too easily. Crushing Najin with pure technique alone was something only the priests of the Sword Church, who devoted themselves entirely to the blade, could hope to do.
Najin’s sword was neither light nor sloppy enough to be broken by a knight who had grown lazy in his training.
“Kh!”
Cornered, the knight’s blade flashed. A gleam began to gather. Seeing the man finally abandon even his stubborn pride and try to draw out aura, Najin clicked his tongue. Just before the light could take the shape of true blade-aura, Najin reached out.
Grab.
He seized the knight’s wrist. One breath. The aura that had been trying to bloom along the blade scattered in an instant. Neither the watching crowd nor the knight himself understood what had just happened.
—Whoa.
Only Merlin understood.
What Najin had just done.
—This guy’s completely insane.
Merlin let out a hollow laugh.
Najin’s training method of drawing in external mana. He had used it to snatch the mana rising from the knight’s body toward the sword, intercepting it mid-flow.
While the knight gaped at the failure of his aura, Najin twisted the wrist he held. Then he slammed the pommel of his own sword down onto the back of the knight’s hand.
“Guh!”
The knight dropped his sword.
A disarmed knight and Najin still holding his blade. No one needed to declare a winner; the result was overwhelming. The murmurs of the watching crowd swelled.
“What in the—!”
Danor’s face flushed scarlet.
The knight’s eyes were wide.
With victor and loser decided, Najin walked over to Dieta, who had been watching him. He looked at her quietly.
An expression tangled with fluster, vindication, and sheer disbelief. Looking at Dieta’s face with the mask stripped away—natural, unguarded—Najin spoke briefly.
“That’s a bit better.”
“···Pardon?”
“I said it’s better than the face you were making earlier.”
Dieta blinked blankly.
Even after winning the duel with the knight, Najin’s face had stayed expressionless—yet the moment he saw Dieta’s changed expression, he smiled.
The reason Najin had kicked up this whole mess was simple.
He just hadn’t liked it.
He hadn’t liked Dieta wearing the same smile he used to wear in the underground city. Only after seeing her face change did he feel something like relief. He held out a hand to the seated Dieta.
It was the abbreviated escort gesture he had learned from Pasion.
Dieta had always been the one to offer her hand first. This time Najin offered his. Dieta blinked as if she could not believe it—then burst out laughing.
“You really are an interesting person.”