Aftermath (1)
The streets were under the control of mages.
In every alley without exception, mages in blue robes stood on standby, and the dragnet they had spread out showed every sign of not letting a single rat slip through. Naturally, this was territory no mage was permitted to enter—officially, only the Knight Order and the Imperial Magic Investigation Bureau held such authority. In other words, it was an overreach of power.
"Find them quickly, before the Knight Order and the Magic Investigation Bureau arrive!"
And so, as time wore on, anxiety crept across the faces of the mages scrutinizing every passerby. One of them, checking his pocket watch every few seconds and stomping his feet in frustration, finally raised his staff.
"You two there. Halt."
At his command, a suspicious hooded pair came to a stop. The mage sauntered over and flipped back the hood of the shorter figure with his staff.
Golden hair spilled out as the hood fell away. The face, its delicate features gathered close together, was small enough to make one lose all sense of distance—yet the eyes within it were strikingly large. Her expressionless, tightly closed lips betrayed an irritation at having her hood torn back without permission, but she was a beauty so arresting it was difficult to look away.
"That was rather rude."
At the rebuke, the mage fumbled awkwardly. Having spent his entire life buried in the Magic Tower's research halls, he had little experience dealing with beautiful women.
"Ah, my apologies. I was required to verify identities, and in doing so I committed an unintended discourtesy."
"A mage of the Magic Tower has no authority to enforce control like this, does he?"
"I would be grateful if you could overlook it with your generous mercy..."
The mage darted a glance toward the taller figure. Having been scolded by the golden-haired woman, he now felt self-conscious about yanking off hoods. Unable to bear the sight of him fidgeting like a dog desperate to relieve itself, the man pulled back his own hood.
Beneath it was a man with brown hair and brown eyes. According to the reports, that mage named Owen was a black-haired fellow, so the man before him was someone else entirely.
The man gently drew the woman's hood back up and said, "As you can see, my wife is a beauty. I only had her wear the hood because people's stares become a bother otherwise."
"I see. Understood."
The mage nodded. She certainly was an eye-catching beauty. If he had a wife like that, he'd treasure her so dearly he'd carry her around in his pocket. And then, quite suddenly, envy welled up in him.
Ugh, I'm jealous. Tall as can be, handsome to boot, and a gorgeous wife too?
Truly, the gods are unfair.
Muttering this inwardly, the mage stepped aside from the path he'd been blocking. "You've been cleared. You may pass now."
"Thank you."
The man extended his arm, and the woman took it. Watching the pair stroll leisurely away, the mage felt the first stirrings of doubt.
And so we slipped past the surveillance net.
"Honestly, what would you have done without me?"
Once we were far enough away that our voices couldn't be heard, Muriel's pointed scolding began, her arm still linked with mine. Deciding I'd done enough for now, I peeled the doll's face-skin she had lent me off, stuffed it into my back pocket, and answered.
"If it had come to that, I'd have beaten down every ice mage who rushed me, and then run."
"There you go again with that talk. Are you determined to be enemies with the Magic Tower for the rest of your life?"
Two of Muriel's fingers pinched the flesh at my side. "I swear, I don't know who you take after, getting into trouble like this."
"I was raised by you, Muriel, so I suppose I take after you."
"Talking back again."
The two fingers pinched and then twisted. The pain, which had been barely tolerable, evolved into something else entirely, and a pained "Aagh" escaped me before I could stop it. Muriel released her grip.
"Quit being dramatic."
"It really did hurt."
"Says the man who wasn't the least bit afraid of tangling with mages."
"Well, I just wouldn't let them catch me."
"Enough."
"Yes, ma'am."
BOOM───!
In that instant, an explosion thundered from the road we'd just come down. Startled people spun around, and I too glanced back to see what on earth had happened. Then came the faint sound of someone shouting in fury.
— You bastard, this is ILLEGAL!! You were bound and determined to get in our way, weren't you!!
Well, well. So the fire mages, who'd finally declared war on the ice mages, had arrived. It appeared to be a surprise raid intended to let the developer of the air conditioner escape the ice mages' encirclement—but I'd already slipped out, so unfortunately for them, all that effort was for nothing.
More than that, though—explosions of flame embroidered across the sky. That was rather like...
"It's just like a fireworks show, isn't it?"
"It really is. Shall we watch a bit before we go?"
Since the fire mages' intervention meant the ice mages' pursuit was well and truly over, we sat down on a nearby bench and enjoyed the spectacle of two Magic Towers going at each other. Firelight scattering in every direction off a white fog of frost that blanketed the street. Creative insults flying back and forth without pause—clearly old grudges ran deep. Mages brawling like common street thugs.
It was, in a word, a dogfight. And quite an entertaining one at that.
The next morning, yesterday's incident was splashed across the front page of the magical newspaper in enormous print. When pressed by the Magic Investigation Bureau, the Cold Magic Tower had named several of its mages as the principal offenders, and those mages had reportedly been exiled from the Tower. The Tower Master had also pledged to take measures ensuring no incident like this ever happened again, so attacks directed at me were expected to cease as well.
"Poor bastards."
The Tower Master, it seemed, had made up his mind to abandon the Tower's monopoly profits from the summer season while preserving its imperial subsidies and staying out of the royal family's bad graces. In the process, the ones whose loyalty to their Tower had burned a little too fervently got their tails cut off.
With that, everything was settled—or so it seemed. But it wasn't. The newspaper had given rise to one new problem.
"Ah, Mage Owen, sir!"
A pig of a man, rubbing his hands together like a servile fly and bowing at the waist, kept pestering me, trailing me wherever I went with his flattery. This fellow was the guild master of a fairly well-known merchant guild I'd once visited to sell my air conditioners.
Here's what had happened. Several mages had pressured their guilds to pursue new summer profits through the fire mages—those with bitter friction against the Cold Magic Tower. Then the newspaper reported that the Cold Magic Tower's Master had vowed to prevent any repeat of this and exiled the offending mages. These two facts combined to strip away the notoriety that had branded the air conditioner a ticking time bomb, an artifact destined to invite a mage's sanctions.
And once that stigma vanished, what remained? A headline artifact that people would line up around the block to buy, of course!
In other words, this man was a latecomer desperate to board the air conditioner coin before it mooned.
I folded the newspaper and started walking. The pig, who had been babbling at my side, hurried after me.
"Ah, but I haven't introduced myself. I am the guild master of the Malm Merchant Guild. Surely you've heard of the Malm Merchant Guild?"
With my long, brisk strides, the chase looked hopeless for the pot-bellied creature, his gut jiggling with every waddling step. His stout upper body and stubby legs working furiously made him the spitting image of a duck paddling through water. I cast a cursory glance at the figure nearly vanishing from my field of vision and kept ignoring him.
"Ah, Mage Owen! Just a moment, just a moment, I beg you!"
And here I'd taken him for an ordinary pig. Turns out he was a pig with grit.
"If you would revoke the exclusive sales rights you granted to the Morne Merchant Guild, our guild will purchase your air conditioners at a considerably higher price. What do you say?"
I stopped walking. The pig, scrambling up behind me, panted for breath and mopped the waterfall of sweat pouring down his face. His fitness was so woeful that he looked like a man who had just completed a full marathon.
"Guild Master."
At that, his face brightened, awaiting a single word from me. Well, he seemed to be hoping for a favorable answer.
"The Malm Merchant Guild. Well, it's a fine outfit, I suppose. Long history, respectable size, considerable wealth."
"Ah, then—"
"But the important thing is that none of that is everything, is it?"
"Pardon? I'm afraid I don't quite follow..."
"A web of connections and a fortune, built up over generations. Certainly, those must count as the fangs and claws a merchant guild can wield. But you see..."
I rested my chin on both hands, perched atop the pig's shoulders.
"Can a blind tiger actually use them? Could it catch even a single rabbit?"
The pig's expression soured. He roughly understood what I meant, but the face of a man desperately holding his tongue for the sake of the deal. Worth watching, at least—a far cry from the sneering mug he'd worn when I'd first come to sell him air conditioners.
"No matter how fine the fangs and claws, that tiger would simply starve to death, wouldn't it?"
"..."
"I'd rather have a tiger with eyes and no fangs or claws. It would hunt its rabbit with its gums if it had to. Do you take my meaning?"
Meaning: if you lack the eye for it, get lost.
The fly-buzzing hands of the pig stopped mid-rub. He straightened his hunched back, his face suddenly grave, and looked up at me with wide, glaring eyes.
"You will regret this."
"Me? Or you?"
The pig offered no answer to my question. He huffed off and vanished into the crowd.
Regret? What on earth would I regret? I was about to reproduce inventions even greater than the air conditioner. I tracked the pumpkin-sized head of the man with my eyes, then turned away with a quiet snort.
And that was when it happened.
"Mage Owen, sir?"
In the middle of a market so crowded you could barely move, a woman stood gazing straight at me. Guild Master Morne.