Border City Rombamel (1)
After waiting for what felt like hours, their turn finally came.
Rather than writing their names in a register, the gatekeeper simply stared at the two of them.
“Hey. Is there some kind of problem?”
Lawrence couldn’t understand why he was being treated this way.
At Morris’s question, the man let out a snort.
“Looks like this is your first time in Rombamel.”
“Oh? Is it that obvious?”
“What’s in the carriage? If you’re trying to bring in anything dangerous, I, Maren, will personally see to it that you all rot in prison!”
Maren threatened them in a voice that was downright intimidating.
“W-What? No. Of course not.”
Startled, Morris waved his hands in denial.
It was useless to protest.
The gatekeeper’s men began inspecting the carriage from top to bottom.
It was nothing for them to jab the scarred old vehicle with their spears, and before long they were climbing aboard without permission, checking the luggage one piece at a time.
“These brats are a pain in the ass. Get lost already.”
“Hey. Hey, you hear me? I said get lost.”
As if warning them not to interfere, the men swung their spears around.
The children shrieked at the recklessness of it all.
“You okay, kids?”
Morris’s wife hurried to the children’s side.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Enough of that!”
The spear-wielding Maren stepped in front of Jace and Morris.
“Well, well. So there is something you’re trying to hide, then?”
“No, what are you even talking about? We’re craftsmen. We came to Rombamel because of an acquaintance’s shop….”
“Everyone who gets caught at a checkpoint says the same thing. Give me the slightest excuse, and I’ll strip you bare.”
Quietly, Lawrence moved his hand to his waist.
His coin pouch held a few silver pieces left over after buying the potion.
Not many.
Just two glinting silvers at a glance.
He kept only fifty copper on him and stepped up to Maren.
“May the Goddess’s blessings be with you.”
“What the hell is this guy talking about now?”
Could it be that the gatekeeper didn’t even know the Order’s greeting?
“I believe there may be some misunderstanding.”
“A misunderstanding? What misunderstanding? That you’re criminals?”
All bluster, no bite.
He had no intention of actually dragging them away.
This entire performance was theater from the start.
Lawrence slipped him the silver.
“I’m late with what should have been offered in advance. You must be having a hard time in this cold, so I hope you and your men will treat yourselves to a warm stew.”
“Hmm?”
Maren’s expression changed.
When he confirmed the two shining silver pieces, he coughed dryly.
“Now there’s someone who knows how to talk. Tsk, tsk. You should’ve said so sooner. Those men have worked hard too, so you ought to buy them a drink while you’re at it, wouldn’t you say?”
Greedy bastard.
Not a gatekeeper, but a common thug.
His eyes had that same look Lawrence had seen countless times in filthy back alleys, a look that said he was already thinking about how to squeeze out one more coin.
Dragging this out with a man like that was foolish.
Lawrence placed the one-silver potion in his hand.
“That’s enough, given your sincerity. Hey! That’s it, let them through.”
At Maren’s order, the other gatekeepers jumped off the carriage.
Their withdrawal was almost comically swift.
A few of them even ruffled the children’s hair in a show of mock friendliness, as though nothing had happened.
“If you run into any trouble in the city, come tell me. If you show a little sincerity like today, I’ll be happy to help.”
“Thank you. Please work hard as well, gatekeeper.”
“Good. You folks should count yourselves lucky this friend of yours was here. Move along!”
Once they cleared the checkpoint, Morris collapsed onto the driver’s seat as if his strength had gone out of him.
“Are you all right?”
“Heh-heh-heh. Thank you. If it hadn’t been for you, Lord Lawrence, we’d have been in real trouble.”
Jace was in the back, making sure Morris’s family was all right.
He seemed to want to express his thanks too, because he lowered his head to Lawrence.
“I don’t know how much you gave that bastard, but I’ll make sure to pay you back.”
“There’s no need to worry about it. I rode this carriage all the way here for free. If you think of it as the fare, it isn’t the least bit wasteful.”
Usually, someone who dealt with all kinds of people would be more used to this sort of thing.
But Morris, who had been flustered just moments ago, didn’t seem to know much more about this kind of unreasonable extortion than Lawrence did.
Was it rude to say that a little of why he had struggled to settle in Albrade was now becoming visible?
“You even gave him a potion, didn’t you? I know from the pilgrim road that a potion prepared for the journey isn’t cheap.”
That thing only cost one silver, though….
Still, saying that out loud felt inappropriate somehow.
Morris called Yvette over.
As though they had already discussed it, she brought over a bag.
“There’s my letter of recommendation inside. If you ever find yourself needing to visit Albrade later, please show it to my acquaintances. They’ll gladly help you, Lord Lawrence.”
“No, when did you even prepare something like this? It’s really all right. I didn’t set out to get a recommendation.”
“Please accept it. Otherwise I’ll feel terrible.”
There was force in her voice.
The hand Yvette held the bag with was trembling slightly too.
“…I really can’t refuse, can I? All right. If I ever go to Albrade, I’ll be sure to look up the person named inside.”
“Yes! Please do. They’re all kind people.”
Only after Lawrence accepted the bag did Morris finally brighten.
Yvette gave him a small bow, then returned to her mother’s side.
There was no way to take the carriage into the city itself.
At the carriage depot, Morris entrusted the vehicle to Jace.
“What are you planning to do now, Lord Lawrence?”
“I’m thinking of finding an inn first.”
For the time being, he planned to stay in Rombamel.
The most urgent matter was money.
He needed to find the Mercenary Guild and take on work, and he also had to gather information about whether there was a Lost Sanctuary nearby.
The problem was that the Holy Cross Order had no influence here.
Judging from the gatekeeper’s reaction just now, he hadn’t even known Lawrence was a member of the Order.
That meant he couldn’t rely on the Order’s authority here.
His time in Rombamel might be harder than he expected.
“Will Morris search out the acquaintance you mentioned?”
“Yes. I was told they live on the outskirts of the city. As soon as I’ve sold the carriage, I’ll go find them.”
No wonder they had spent so long at the depot.
He hadn’t just been leaving the carriage in storage; he’d been talking about selling it altogether.
“Then I suppose this is where we part ways.”
“You’ve had a rough journey. It can’t have been easy, but with you here, it felt as though the Goddess’s blessing was with us.”
There was a deep trace of regret on Morris’s face.
“I should be the one thanking you. If it hadn’t been for you, Morris, I never would have made it to Rombamel so easily.”
He had learned more than he expected.
How difficult it really was to travel alone. How short the distance had to be before one could still afford to feel at ease, to savor the mood of the road.
From now on, no matter what happened, he planned to take escort work whenever he had to travel between towns.
It wasn’t a matter of pay.
For practice in magic, for safety, for stamina, even for his own mental health, it was better to ride in a carriage.
And the quality of meals was another reason.
There was only so much one could endure without a proper hot meal.
Humans were meant to have soup, something warm that went down easy.
Lawrence shook Morris’s hand.
“Morris. I hope the Goddess’s blessings go with you on the road ahead.”
“Thank you. May the Goddess’s blessings also go with your pilgrimage, Lord Lawrence.”
He exchanged bows with the rest of the family in place of farewells.
Maybe they would run into one another again somewhere.
Leaving behind the lingering sadness of parting, Lawrence walked out into the streets.
* * *
Rombamel strangely reminded him of Hilton Village.
Not in size, of course.
It would have been insulting to even compare the two.
Streets that stretched farther than the eye could see. A great bulletin board erected in the central square. A stone statue of some unknown mage dividing the crossroads. The number of shops he passed was impossible to count, and it was easy to spot people with different skin tones.
Even their appearances varied wildly.
Some lived in obvious luxury, dressed like nobles, while a woman in the dead of winter danced by in thin clothes as though she didn’t feel the cold at all.
It was a landscape impossible to see in Hilton Village, where there were so few people.
No, it wasn’t the size he meant.
It was the mood that wrapped the whole city.
Behind the bustling streets, he could see people gasping under the weight of poverty.
Behind the lavish shops lay dark alleys.
In places where not a single ray of light reached, beggars crouched like the dead, begging in silence.
No beggar would dare look up at a passerby.
They only pressed themselves flat against the ground and held out their bowls.
There was no chance those bowls, which seemed to attract only flies, would ever be filled with money.
When hunger became too much to bear, one beggar dared to knock on a shop door.
The body visible through the rags hanging over him was so thin the ribs stood out plainly.
“Jesus fucking Christ. Get the hell away from here, you bastard. You’re ruining the taste of the liquor!”
“Agh!”
The response that came back was not pity.
It was curses and violence. The beggar, with no strength left even to resist, was simply beaten.
Even as blue-black bruises bloomed across his skin, the kicking did not stop.
The shop clerk’s violence continued until the beggar coughed up blood.
No passerby on the street stopped it.
No customer in the tavern interfered.
At best, they pretended not to see. Many joined in with insults or laughter.
Nausea surged up inside him.
The scars buried deep in his chest throbbed.
Days of being beaten for no reason. Memories of coming to and finding himself buried in a garbage bin. The scene of that horrible day when the fever had risen after being struck too many times.
“Damn it.”
Before he knew it, a rough curse had slipped from his mouth.
He couldn’t help it.
The image of the bloodied beggar twitching on the ground had overlapped with someone else.
Lost in thought, Lawrence bumped into someone.
When he turned, he saw a boy wearing his hat pulled low over his face.
“I’m sorry.”
He received only that brief apology.
Whatever the boy had been in such a hurry for, he vanished from sight almost at once.
Something felt wrong only after Lawrence had settled into an inn.
The coin pouch he had kept in his bag had been replaced by another pouch.
When he hurriedly checked the contents, he found only a stone.
“……”
He had been had.
A pickpocket.
Most likely the boy he had bumped into by the roadside.
There was no other suspect.
Fortunately, the potion at his waist was safe.
In any case, the coin pouch had only held fifty copper.
Compared to the potion, worth several silver pieces, it wasn’t a serious loss.
But that was not where the problem ended.
The Lemegeton he had tucked deep inside the bag was gone.
“……”
Gone.
Nowhere.
He searched the bag again and again, but all he found were Lenard’s letter and Morris’s recommendation.
His mind went blank.
He had lost something that must never be lost.
The precious symbol of the bond given to him by Acheron and Veles.
The Lemegeton, a Grimoire and a Key of the Spirit World, had been stolen by a pickpocket.
Why hadn’t he noticed sooner?
The bag.
That was the problem. Putting his belongings inside the bag Morris had given him had been the mistake.
Normally, even if it was a little inconvenient, he kept them secured against his body.
But because he had used a bag today of all days, this disaster had happened.
What was worse, that crafty little bastard had even had the foresight to slip in a stone.
Calm down.
The thing to blame was not what he thought.
The bag was not the problem.
He had known from the beginning that Rombamel was a rotten city.
This was Lawrence’s fault for knowing that and still letting his guard down.
The hand clenched at his side trembled violently.
How pathetic.
What the hell had he been doing?
He was furious with himself for being taken in by something so cheap and nasty.
“Hoo.”
Lawrence covered his mouth with both hands.
Calm down.
This wasn’t the time.
Finding the pickpocket came first.
The coin pouch with only fifty copper inside could be forgotten.
What mattered was the Lemegeton.
The Lemegeton wasn’t something he could just dispose of right away.
It would take time for whoever stole it to turn it into cash.
There was no way they could recognize what it really was.
They had probably only gone after it expecting to pawn off a fine-looking book.
Then should he go looking for a shop that handled stolen goods?
No.
That was a shallow thought.
He forced himself to think more clearly.
The pickpocket was at most early teens, and probably just another penniless kid you could find all over these streets.
Think. Keep thinking.
This wasn’t like some adult moving with a plan.
They were impulsive, the kind of child who would be thrilled just to eat that day.
Would a kid who had successfully pulled off a pickpocketing job immediately go off to exchange the goods for money?
Nonsense.
Unlike cash that could be spent instantly, the risk was too great.
Today, they would make do with the copper in the stolen pouch and maybe head out for a trade tomorrow at the earliest.
He was sure of it.
He and his friends had been the same back then.
The difference was that they had only ever gone after food, whereas a pickpocket was coveting other people’s money and valuables too.
The bastard had reached for one of the unwritten rules the Leader had warned them about.
As his thoughts cleared, Lawrence regained his composure.
First, he returned to the central square where he’d been pickpocketed.
He began asking around among the passersby.
“Have you seen a boy wearing a hat by any chance?”
Most people ignored him.
Some showed irritation, as if to say he shouldn’t be grabbing them when they were busy.
“Give it up. You think there’s only one pickpocket on this street?”
“Go ask the city guard, then. Don’t forget to slip them some money while you’re at it.”
He got nothing useful.
All he received were mocking remarks about having been robbed.
In the end, Lawrence sat down on a bench in the square and fell back into thought.
No. This won’t work.
At this rate, he’d never find the thief.
There was time, yes, but once the sun went down, finding anything would become impossible.
Before that happened, he had to catch some kind of lead.
What should he do?
Go to the Mercenary Guild?
No. Too late.
Even if he put in a request to find a person, it would take too long.
Once he missed this window, the chance would be gone.
He would have to find the pickpocket himself somehow.
But how?
His thoughts circled back to the beginning.
Just as his lips were growing dry with anxiety, he suddenly remembered the strands of light that had bloomed in the Witch’s Forest.
A land where currents crossed over and intertwined. The place Laurzara had called a vein of the world had answered Lawrence’s call and borne fruit in the shape of a Bind.
Now the boy understood that all of it was part of the world’s neighborhood.
If he could borrow their power, wouldn’t it be possible to track the Lemegeton too?
It wasn’t just any object; it was the Lemegeton, steeped in potent magical power.
Even sealed inside a container, its trace could not simply vanish.
“……”
Lawrence closed his eyes and focused.
His consciousness slowly sank into a deep lake.
The voices of passersby slipped one by one beyond the edge of awareness.
When even the chatter of hawkers became too faint to hear, he opened his eyes.
Then the boy’s sight caught a single trail.
A trail of ominous black light.
It was the lingering mark left behind by the Lemegeton.
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