The Sage of Silvatia (1)
People were working the fields. Some drove plows through the soil or set seedlings in the furrows; others broke up stones that got in the way with pickaxes, or crushed pests between their fingers. Beneath a sun that beat down without mercy, men, women, and children alike poured sweat.
Yet while every one of them strained across the fields, a single man among them had not shed so much as a drop.
He was not farming.
Instead he sat in a rocking chair beneath the shade of a great tree, reading a book and savoring, now and then, the breeze that wandered past. Books lay in neat stacks on the outdoor table. In a country where people who could read at all were rare, owning so many volumes was no easy thing unless one was a noble.
He was not a noble. He was a commoner—one of those ordinary folk whose days, on average, meant farming like a madman through the daylight hours and collapsing like the dead once night fell.
"Big brother, why do you only ever read?"
A girl poked her head in without warning. No taller than the man's waist, she had failed to endure the hard work of the fields and drifted, as anyone would, toward the coolest shade. She was curious, too, no doubt. The whole family was laboring with everything they had, and here sat her own older brother, doing nothing at all.
"This is my work."
The man with the book, Rondel, drew out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his little sister's face.
"If Father and Mother, our older brother, the rest of our siblings, and you are all to eat your fill of bread, then this is how it has to be."
"Bread comes from the fields."
"That much is true."
"Don't just sit here by yourself. Come work with us! Eldest brother harvested thiiis much wheat last time!"
The girl rose onto her toes and flung both arms wide. Remembering the last wheat harvest, perhaps. Rondel smiled and stroked her hair.
A man who had been pushing a plow across the field came running toward her.
"You! Don't go bothering your brother!"
Rondel's older brother arrived in a rush, and the girl scrambled to hide behind Rondel.
"I wasn't bothering him!"
"Quit loafing and get over here!"
"I wasn't loafing!"
"You little—!"
Older brother and little sister circled Rondel in a game of tag. She was caught in no time, and seemed to think the whole thing was play, for she giggled.
The older brother turned to Rondel.
"Sorry, Rondel. I interrupted your reading."
"I was about to take a break anyway. Need a handkerchief?"
"I'm fine. What would I do with a handkerchief?"
He wiped the sweat from his face with a sleeve. His clothes were already soaked through, but a little more work in the fields and the moisture would be gone soon enough. Scooping his sister up under one arm, he walked out of the shade.
"I'm going back to work."
"Why not rest a little first?"
"I just did."
Dangling from his arm as she was carried off, the captured girl waved at Rondel. Rondel waved back.
This was a commoner's life. Set aside the hours spent eating and sleeping, and nearly all that remained was work—just enough of it to scrape through one day, and then the next.
A modern person would've collapsed from exhaustion before they ever got around to arguing about human rights. No matter how many times I look at them, the people here are tough.
Rondel let his gaze travel along the road that ran beside the fields. A carriage was coming down it toward them.
Time to work, then.
In a backwater domain like this, there was only one sort of person who rode about in a carriage. A noble—the one who collected taxes from the domain's people and governed the whole of it, manager and politician both. In other words, the lord.
The carriage stopped near Rondel, and just as he had expected, a nobleman stepped down with impeccable composure. Cloth of fine quality, ornament worked in elaborate layers: even a glance at that tidy appearance was enough to mark him as something apart. The family, still bent over their fieldwork, straightened and offered their respects to Rondel's regular client, Baron Vincent.
"You're all working hard in this heat. Don't mind me. Carry on."
Vincent waved the family off and came toward Rondel.
Common sense held that a commoner, receiving a noble, ought to pay every courtesy due. Rondel did not even rise from his chair. He remained sunk in his reading—or, more precisely, in the appearance of reading. He had seen Vincent coming from a long way off, and he knew perfectly well that the man now stood at the tip of his nose. Even so, he did not lift his head.
"A fearsome power of concentration."
Vincent sounded impressed.
Only then did Rondel look up. His eyes went round, as if he had only just discovered an unexpected guest, and he rose from his seat.
"Good heavens. I had no idea you had arrived, my lord, and I've committed a terrible discourtesy. Forgive me. I ought to have greeted you at once."
"There's nothing to forgive. I'm the one who intruded on your time. If anyone should apologize, it's me."
"Not at all. Merely being granted the sight of you is an honor."
Rondel bowed his head to Vincent in respect, and exchanged a brief nod with the attendant who had come along. Vincent sat in the chair Rondel had set out opposite and gave the attendant a look. At once the man produced two teacups and a kettle, set them on the table, and dropped some manner of tea leaves into the pot.
"A fine tea came in yesterday. Leaves from the famous Mount Vertea. I wanted you to be the first to enjoy them with me."
"And you brought your noble self all the way out here for that?"
"Leaving the house to share a cup of tea with a friend is a pleasant thing."
Vincent laid a hand on the kettle. The water, which had been at room temperature, warmed, then began to boil as if the pot had been set over a fire. He had used mana. With perfect ease, he poured the mana-boiled tea into Rondel's cup and his own.
A refined fragrance spread, faint and lingering. Steam rose from water that was a touch hot, yet just the right temperature for unhurried drinking. For a while Rondel and Vincent drank their tea and watched the domain stretch out before them.
When the cups were about half empty, Rondel spoke.
"So. What brings you today?"
"Didn't I say I came to enjoy tea with you?"
"I mean the real reason you're here, my lord. A man as busy as you are would hardly come all this way merely to drink tea."
"The real reason, is it."
Vincent's brow lifted. Rondel changed the question.
"By any chance, are you weighing how much grain to release across the domain?"
The question transformed Vincent's expression in an instant. The leisurely face he had worn until then went still. The cup he had been raising to his lips stopped dead, and he stared into Rondel's eyes.
"How did you know that? You couldn't have pried it out of my people. I haven't breathed a word of this to anyone yet. Don't tell me you read my mind."
"Hardly. Even I can't manage something like that."
"Then how did you know I meant to discuss the matter with you?"
"I knew it from the river."
Rondel explained, unhurried.
"The water level has fallen a great deal compared with recent years. The rainy season is nearly upon us, so we might hold out after a fashion—but even accounting for that, far too much of the river has dried."
In other words, a drought was coming. Left as things stood, this autumn's harvest would drop sharply, and then, as a matter of course, winter's food would run short. Vincent had been driven to the point of reducing the grain he released, so as to prepare for drought and a winter shortage. It would not be as simple as it sounded. If he withheld the grain, the hungry people of the domain would turn against him.
Prepare for the drought, and he would lose their hearts. Tend to their hearts, and he would struggle to endure the drought. As lord, Vincent was caught in a dilemma.
"Hah. You read even that far?"
Having heard the explanation, Vincent could only marvel.
"As expected of the Sage of Silvatia."
"It's nothing remarkable. I merely overheard my family saying, as they looked at the drying river, that we were in for some hardship."
"An ordinary man would never connect a fact like that to the distribution of the domain's grain."
His true thoughts laid bare, Vincent at last set down his cup, and his expression turned grave.
"You're right. It's been weighing on me of late. I'm leaning toward storing the grain, even if it costs me some of the people's favor... What do you think?"
"It seems a sound decision."
"Why?"
"Your reputation is excellent, my lord. If you explain the circumstances to the people carefully, you should be able to rally them even in the midst of a drought, and slow the rate at which the food dwindles."
"Hm. Is that truly so?"
"How could I speak falsely?"
And yet Vincent, who had asked for the advice, pressed him again as if something still sat wrong. His eyes narrowed as he studied Rondel, who remained, even now, the very picture of calm.
"A man like you would certainly have prepared a better method. There's no chance you'd nod along to something this simple."
"The simpler a method, the better."
"Don't be like that. Lend me your wisdom. You know how prosperous a single word from you has made our domain."
"What have I done? All of it is thanks to your excellent governance, my lord."
Rondel savored the fragrance of the tea at his leisure. Vincent had the attendant behind him set a small pouch upon the table. Inside were ten gold coins. Rondel's entire family could not earn a single gold coin in a year of labor. It was a truly staggering sum.
"Did you think I would come to see you empty-handed? Take it."
"A moment ago you called me a friend. Now you're treating me like a merchant?"
"It isn't that. This is a small token of sincerity. I haven't been ungenerous whenever I've come seeking your counsel, have I? Please. Help me. The fate of the entire domain hangs on this."
"If you insist to that degree, I have no choice. I'll have to wring what I can from this inadequate mind of mine."
Rondel stroked his chin with a serious expression.
In truth, there was no need to wring anything. He had already prepared a solution. The reason he drew the moment out anyway was to cultivate an air of mystery. Handing over the right answer too easily would not do. He had to look as though he had passed through tremendous anguish and meticulous calculation. That was how one raised one's price.
For someone born to a commoner household, Rondel did practically nothing at all, and still he earned more money than anyone. The tax exemption he had received from Vincent covered thirty years, and the money given as tokens of sincerity alone had already surpassed a thousand gold. By the numbers, it was a sum an ordinary commoner could not earn in a thousand years of work. By Rondel's standards, at least, it still fell absurdly short of what he needed to survive in this world.
So even when the work was the same, striving to earn more was indispensable to survival. Showmanship of this sort was essential.
"Roughly thirty-seven solutions come to mind."
Rondel opened the eyes he had closed—solemn and mysterious, as if he had received a revelation from a god. Thirty-seven answers were, of course, nonsense. The method he had prepared was only one.