The Magic Shop (2)
“That’s a surprise. Honestly, I thought you’d give up right away.”
By the time they were exchanging the third reading primer, Lurizisa, the clerk at the magic shop, had said as much.
“I was in the wrong that day.”
Lawrence’s manner toward her had grown noticeably more respectful.
He had been too shocked the first time they met to spare a thought for anything around him. But after thinking it over at length, he realized that Lurizisa had been seriously teaching him the path into magic.
More than that, she had shown magic to a customer she had never even seen before.
She had no reason to do that.
And yet, when Lawrence told her he wanted to learn magic, she had answered him in earnest.
That alone was enough to earn her his trust.
“Admitting you’re wrong is really hard, you know. It means putting the word ‘sorry’ in your mouth and taking responsibility for your mistakes. It’s fine. I already forgave you, Lawrence. That’s why I accepted this goat’s milk so readily.”
She lifted the goat’s milk Lawrence had bought as an apology.
Not even the faintest sipping sound reached his ears.
The drink steadily diminished in silence.
For all its plain appearance, there was something strangely graceful in the way Lurizisa tipped the cup back.
I’m glad she seems to like it.
Back at the inn, Anne had mentioned that goat’s milk was a popular drink in the royal capital.
Freshly milked goat’s milk mixed with sweet sugar and cream, apparently.
Because of its distinctive sweetness, it had become enormously popular among women.
Anne had looked as though she wanted Lawrence to buy her a glass too.
But the goat’s milk Lurizisa was holding now cost a full 1 silver a cup.
It wasn’t the sort of thing you could just buy for anyone.
Still, he hadn’t minded buying it for Lurizisa.
After he began studying letters and writing, Lawrence made it a habit to visit the magic shop on a regular basis.
Lurizisa was always inside the counter, buried in a magic book.
Yesterday. Today. And tomorrow as well.
Each time, she answered his questions kindly.
After a few days like that, the awkwardness between them vanished, and he found himself looking forward to the hour.
It wasn’t as though he came only to ask her something.
He simply enjoyed talking with Lurizisa.
Thanks to the way she took his questions without the slightest hesitation, his reading practice progressed with surprising speed. It reminded him of the days at Saint Charmant Monastery, when he had studied with Marjorie.
“I’ll be busy starting tomorrow, so I’ll probably be a little late.”
As much as he wanted to keep throwing himself into his studies.
It was about time he started worrying about the state of his purse.
If it came to it, he could always sell a potion.
But he couldn’t bring himself to part with the last potion hanging from his belt.
That was his life savings, meant for whatever emergency might come.
No matter how urgent his need for magic was, he couldn’t cross that final line.
“Is that so? What a pity. I still had plenty of books I wanted to show you.”
The more they talked, the more certain he became.
She wasn’t a simple shop clerk.
Not a peddler who wandered from village to village trying to make a living.
Not a mercenary who gambled with life and livelihood in reckless ventures.
The woman before him was a completely different breed.
No doubt about it.
Lurizisa was nobility.
The ease in her gestures, the composure in her movements—those were the bearing of someone who had spent her life being served.
The reason he hadn’t realized it sooner was simple enough.
She was nothing like the nobles Lawrence knew.
Nobles were, by nature, the sort of people who cared about no one but themselves.
They didn’t even treat others like people, and because they never had to mind anyone, they behaved however they pleased.
That was the divide between rulers and the ruled.
A difference in status money alone could never bridge.
And yet, through her, Lawrence had learned that there were nobles like this too.
Still, one question remained.
Why was a noble working as a clerk in a magic shop?
And not even in some ordinary city, but in Rombamel, a border city at that.
He would never get the answer unless he asked her directly.
“Looks like I’m not getting free goat’s milk for a while.”
At Lurizisa’s utterly unruffled voice, Lawrence laughed.
There was no need to ask now.
Depending on the subject, it might be a sensitive one.
That was fine.
He had plenty of time.
At least while he remained in Rombamel, he would have many chances to face her across the counter.
For some reason, that prospect excited him a little.
* * *
The receptionist took a prepared wooden tablet from the drawer.
It held the information Lawrence had requested the day before about the orcs of Rival Plains.
“This is a compilation of the intelligence sent down from above, along with reports from mercenaries who recently went out to hunt orcs.”
“Thank you. Is there anything else I should be careful about beyond what you’ve prepared here?”
“You’re thorough. For now, this is everything we have at the branch. You’ll probably need to hear the voices of the field out there on Rival Plains. If I were to offer one piece of advice personally… it would be this: there are more deserters on Rival Plains than there are orcs.”
At once, the bandits Lawrence had encountered with Morris’s party came back to mind.
If he met bandits on Rival Plains, there was no option of avoiding a fight.
If he wanted to live, he would have to kill them and stand on their corpses.
After setting the documents aside on one end of the reception desk, Lawrence changed the subject.
“What happened to the request I put up on the notice board?”
“I’m sorry. There’s still nothing yet. Considering the nature of the request, it may take longer than you expect.”
Not the news he had been waiting for.
If he’d known that, he should have made the reward plainly explicit.
“Does the guild have any separate information on it? It doesn’t have to be recent. Or do the reports mention anything like a holy site, even a rumor that sounds similar?”
“Hmm. That may take some time. We’d have to comb through all the reports that have come in so far… I hope you won’t expect too much. We’re short on hands, so the kind of thing you’re asking for inevitably gets pushed far down the list.”
The receptionist trailed off awkwardly.
He could roughly understand why she reacted that way.
Even now, the guild was overflowing with mercenaries, while the number of staff didn’t even reach ten.
It wasn’t just a shortage of labor; the whole machine was barely turning over.
He had seen the same scene at the Horos branch. There, the few available counters were so fiercely contested that cutting in line was practically a daily event.
“I’m the one asking too much. I understand. Then please give special attention to the request on the board instead.”
“Thank you for your understanding.”
“Not at all. May I read the documents here?”
“There are quite a few people waiting behind you, so I’m afraid you’ll have to make room. As long as you read them inside, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Lawrence stood and gathered the documents in his arms.
There didn’t seem to be any empty tables nearby.
He’d have to share with another mercenary after all.
After a moment of scanning the hall, he headed toward the one table that didn’t have an ash tray crowded with smoking tobacco.
“Is this seat taken?”
“If nobody’s sitting there, then it’s empty.”
“Don’t pile everything on the table. Just use four seats.”
He hadn’t planned to spread everything out anyway.
He set the documents on the chair beneath the table, then laid them out one by one on top.
It was noisy all around him, so he wasn’t sure how well he’d be able to focus.
But that concern only lasted a moment.
Lawrence began reading the materials the receptionist had gathered for him, line by line.
The orcs appearing on Rival Plains were, in the usual sense of the word, stragglers.
Immature ones who could not bear the name of their tribe.
Individuals with congenital or acquired physical defects.
Orcs unfit to become warriors were cast out from the tribe and had to wander for the rest of their lives. The orcs travelers usually encountered were these castoffs.
Depending on the individual, a seasoned mercenary might be able to subdue one alone.
Wood Plate or Bronze Plate mercenaries could even bring one down by gathering a party.
The real problem, however, was the tribe’s warriors.
Effort was not humanity’s exclusive property.
The old traditions preserved by the tribe, and the warrior class honed through real combat, were said to hunger for bloody battle.
The reason the kingdom itself recognized the territory of some orc tribes was simple: they were strong.
Of course, that was only recognition of territory.
If they invaded lands and caused damage, that was a different matter entirely.
The noble orc hunts Lawrence had heard about in rumors seemed to refer to just such cases.
There wasn’t much in the way of profitable by-products other than blood.
It did mention magic stones, but the reports were blunt: unless it was a warrior with a name even within the tribe, they were difficult to find.
Blood, too, was only valuable when taken fresh, straight from the heart at the moment of death. The main source of income from an orc hunt was the beast’s nose.
Since the kingdom itself encouraged orc hunts, every mercenary guild purchased them as a priority.
A castoff orc’s nose fetched 3 silver apiece.
A tribal orc’s nose fetched at least 10 silver apiece.
Accessories in the nose and tribal tattoos apparently drove the price even higher.
Lawrence closed the documents and rested his chin on his hand.
It was all the same everywhere.
He hadn’t traveled enough to claim much experience, but humans lived in coexistence with the monsters native to whatever land they called home, whether they liked it or not.
Three silver apiece.
If he counted the blood money too, maybe it came to four.
Compared with the bugbears and eligators of Ulbazar Swamp, it wasn’t much of a money-making monster.
Thinking about the eligator hide—especially the belly cut, which had been worth a truly eye-watering sum—only made him want to sigh.
…Should I have forced myself to carve out the center cut after all?
Because it was already past, the regret only lingered more sharply.
But Lawrence soon shook his head.
That had been the best he could do at the time.
There was no space on the boat to butcher an eligator.
And even if one had died, there had been no leisurely time to harvest the by-products.
If he had let greed blind him and pushed his luck…
He probably wouldn’t be here now.
He would simply have to earn his way honestly.
For one thing, there was a magic shop in Rombamel where he could obtain spellbooks.
He would have to budget at least 1 gold for a basic magic book.
In other words, he’d need to kill nearly thirty orcs just to get his hands on a single book.
No, that wasn’t quite right.
That was only if he poured every last coin of the reward into the book itself.
A person spent money merely by breathing.
Once he accounted for lodging, food, and everything else required to stay in a city, he would need nearly twice that amount in practice.
He might end up staying in Rombamel longer than expected.
Still, he should think positively.
After all, he had to remain in Rombamel until he found information about the holy site. At the very least, he needed to know whether such a place existed before he could move on somewhere else.
Lawrence checked the stack of documents beneath his chair.
Even after reading steadily for quite some time, half of it still remained.
He stretched lightly, then returned the papers to the tabletop.
He had time.
Before he actually ran into orcs, he needed to cram as much information into his head as possible.
The reason he was moving more cautiously than usual was simple.
This time, he had no intention of joining a party.
Of course, there might be decent mercenaries here, just as there had been with Balik’s group.
Two heads were better than one.
When trouble arose, they could pool their strength and get through the crisis together.
But Lawrence remembered what had happened in Horos Village.
Besides, this wasn’t Ulbazar Swamp.
This was Rombamel, a border city, a lawless city, a back-alley city. As such, alongside the lack of order, people could not be trusted carelessly.
He mustn’t forget that.
People were the most dangerous thing of all.
And mercenaries were even less trustworthy.
Unless he could form a party with at least a Silver Plate mercenary like Balik, joining up with Bronze Plate or Wood Plate mercenaries would likely bring more poison than benefit.
Lawrence trusted his own judgment.
He had already been badly burned once.
He had no desire to repeat that mistake.
That day, he kept reading and rereading the reports on orcs until the guild closed its doors.
* * *
Lawrence was riding in a wagon with the other mercenaries.
Because he had spent the previous night buried in his reading, his eyelids felt heavy.
Crude banter and vulgar insults flew around inside the wagon, but it wasn’t enough to keep the drowsiness from dragging at him.
How many times had he half dozed off and woken again?
Through the flapping windscreen, the scenery outside came into view.
The cargo wagon had left Rombamel behind and entered a vast plain.
The day’s destination was Rival Plains.
Scattered across the flat field were patches of red flowers in bloom.
The stench riding up to the wagon stirred a sense of unease.
In places where the traces of battle still had not faded, mercenaries could be seen tending the wounded.
There were no orc corpses in sight yet.
Instead, the bodies of bandits armed with shabby equipment were easy to spot.
The receptionist had been right.
Rival Plains was not a place where one could afford to think only about orcs.
In the end, the most frightening thing in the world was another human being.
He would need to be careful not to lose focus and get struck by some stray arrow while worrying about orcs.
Sensing the foul mood in the air, the wagon fell silent.
The mercenaries began checking their equipment one by one.
After a while, the wagon slowed and came to a stop.
“This is your first stop. Anyone here to hunt bandits can get off.”
At the driver’s words, the mercenaries rose from their seats one after another.
Hardly any of them had come alone.
At the fewest, in pairs; at most, in groups of four.
The mercenaries moving in parties scattered across the plain.
Watching them go, Lawrence pressed his hands together.
His lips felt dry and stuck.
His pounding heart was loud in his ears.
Swallow that trembling heart whole.
If he couldn’t devour this tension, then the next turn would be his.
“We’ve arrived. Anyone here to hunt orcs can get off. We’ll be coming back here again after sunset, so make sure you remember this area.”
The driver who had stopped the wagon gave a half-hearted kick to a bare tree.
Impaled on that tree’s trunk was the head of a monster Lawrence had never seen before.
Its skin was a uniform blue.
Its eyes, now forever unblinking.
And from the mouth of the thing, which had no nose at all, protruded two enormous fangs.
It was the first time he had ever seen the orcs he had only heard about in rumors with his own eyes.
* * *