A Tenacious Sort
Pwooo—
"Ooh."
My eyes opened of their own accord at the sound of a ship's horn drifting in from far away. I looked out the window. In the wide-open view beyond, people were already brimming with life, though the morning had barely begun—a sight one rarely saw in the Empire.
For a moment the mornings of the past drifted faintly through me. Mornings that had depended on living things: the chatter of birds, a rooster's crow, the bright rap of Benjamin striking a pan with a ladle.
Waking to an artificial noise. No one else in this city would find it the least bit remarkable. Which was to say, a privilege reserved for me alone.
I rubbed my eyes where I lay on the bed and smiled a hazy little smile.
"Right. It isn't a dream."
The first morning I would spend in the Federation had broken.
Clear.
For someone whose entire knowledge of overland travel amounted to horses and carriages, ponies and mules, learning that such a thing as a train existed had of course come from an encyclopedia. Even a volume published in the Federation more than ten years earlier was the latest of marvels to a man born of the Empire.
If the blueprint of a sailing ship had astonished me—the most intricate picture I had ever seen in my life—then trains and railways stirred a simpler kind of wonder.
Good heavens. A mass of iron that ran by burning black stone. I had not even been sure such a notion could exist. Beneath the careful illustration, the purpose of that towering smokestack and the principle by which so heavy a bulk of iron moved forward were set down in detail, and still, in the end, I had not understood.
Benjamin, for his part, had added a remark of his own.
"A train, you say? That illustration's a pretty early model, you know."
"N-now—what does it look like these days?"
"Twice as big as that picture, and ten times as long."
"—!"
Several years had passed since that day. At last the moment had come to see the real thing with my own eyes. If there was a problem, it was that I did not know where the railway station was.
"......Why is this city so wide."
Clutching a wallet that had grown startlingly light, I stepped out into the streets with no plan at all.
A port city by day was another thing entirely from what it had been in the dead of night. Countless mana lamps stood with their light withdrawn, and strange black lines hung suspended in the air; avenues swept to a gleam ran on without end, and carriages—things I might have seen once in a day, if that—were plentiful in every direction.
"Hey, hey! Out of the way, out of the way!"
A horse whinnied. I lost count of how many times a carriage nearly ran me down. After wandering the streets for some thirty minutes, I made up my mind.
"I ought to ask someone."
When you do not know the way, you ask. The most ordinary method there is, and, for me as I was now, the one I most wanted to avoid. I had never seen a railway station in the flesh, but it was surely a building so emblematic that no one born and raised in the Federation could fail to know it. And the owner of a head of ash-gray hair asks where it stands? I would have been suspicious myself.
But there was no other way left. I glanced about a few times, then approached the elderly couple who looked the kindest and spoke to them. It was a little underhanded, perhaps. I had judged that if their eyes were dim with age, they would not make out ash-gray hair.
"Excuse me. Might you know where the railway station is?"
They were a couple who each held a cane in one hand and each other's hand tight in the other. Of the two, the old gentleman turned his head.
"The railway station, you say?"
"Yes."
"Heh heh. We're only travelers up from the countryside ourselves, but you must have come from quite a distance too, young man."
"Th-that's right."
"Too far to walk. Here."
The old gentleman extended a finger. A single signpost stood there.
"Take the tram from over there, and it'll carry you the whole way in one go."
A tram? If I asked what that was, I had the distinct feeling that this time I truly would be suspected.
It was then. Far off, something that was neither carriage nor train began to show itself, racing down the middle of the avenue. So that was the tram.
"Oh. Coming right on time. Hurry along, now."
I had the old gentleman's confirmation as well. I ducked my head in a silent bow and made quickly for the sign.
A few people were lined up behind it, each with coins in hand. I, too, hastily drew out several one-shilling pieces. The thing drew up before the sign with a screech. How to put it—like a carriage stretched long. Inside, people were reading newspapers or dragging hard on their pipes.
Only from up close did its use become plain. It seemed to be a conveyance for getting about the city's principal facilities, once a fare had been paid. Did it run on mana? I wanted to take the principle apart, but people had already begun to climb aboard, and I had to put my thoughts in order. The fare was three shillings. Whether I was meant to call that expensive, I could not have said.
A moment later the departure bell rang—ding, ding, ding—and the tram lurched into motion. Clatter, clatter. In a space that could not, even by way of empty flattery, be called wide, a dozen or so people were packed in close. Whether they had found the ash-gray hair hidden beneath my hat, several of them began to look me over from head to foot with sour, unfriendly eyes.
Only then did it feel real. I had come to the Federation. A gaze I knew well, and one I would have to grow used to. Go where I might among the Federation's three nations, that look, at least, would not change.
I shut it out and gave myself over to the city flowing past the window. The landscape of the Federation, painted with the tram's glass for a canvas. Far too fine a thing to set aside over nothing more than a few suspicious stares.
Some forty minutes later, I arrived before the largest building I had ever seen in my life—one that bore the name Oris Railway Station.
"Fifteen pounds."
"Pardon?"
"You're bound for Fraussen, aren't you? Our Oris Station has no direct line to Fraussen. There's a service that runs as far as Leslie Station."
"I understand. So the price of a seat is..."
"Third class. Fifteen pounds."
"Hah."
I turned from the ticket window without lingering. It was already the second time I had felt these prices in my gut, and still there was no sign of growing used to them.
Fifteen pounds. Third class, at that. A sum past all imagining had come out of the clerk's mouth. I had eaten nothing, for fear the money might fall short, and the effort had gone to waste. What I had on me was three pounds and a handful of shilling coins. Short—and not by a little.
I had expected, more or less, that I would come up short. I had not expected the gap to yawn this wide, and a hollow feeling settled over me. I dropped onto a bench nearby.
"Do I have to find work around here."
In the end I would have to find work somewhere and earn the money. I had not imagined I would fail even to begin the train journey, but working itself had always been a settled matter. It was a port city; I could sign onto a fishing boat. I might also find work by putting what I knew of magic to use. Unlike the Empire, where I had been forced to study magic in secret in a cramped back room, here in the Federation no one would care if you worked a spell in the middle of the street.
What to do, then. What was certain was that both courses would be nothing but trouble. When I thought of eight pounds a day for lodging, and the cost of meals besides, I might well be stuck in this port city for some time. I wanted, if I could manage it, to avoid wasting time to no purpose.
A way to earn the fare with no capital, and soon. Was there no method so dreamlike as that?
"......Wait."
All at once a plan flickered through my mind. I lifted my head and looked around. Passengers, each with a travel bag on their shoulder, were gathered in twos and threes, waiting on the train. A good number of them were families—parents and children together.
"......"
This. It might actually work.
For the first time in a very long while, I roused the businessman who had lain sleeping inside me. Then and now, a business requires only two things.
A body, and a tin can.
"Sophie. Wait here quietly with Mommy. I'll be right back with the tickets."
"Okay! Daddy. Sophie will be good."
"That's my girl. Take care of your pocket money!"
"M'kay."
A broad hand patted the little blonde girl, Sophie, on the head, and a smile spread over her whole face.
Sophie and her family, who lived in Oris, the port city of Oslovia, had set out on a family trip after a long while. Two whole years. Her father worked at the immigration office and was always busy past all belief, and so, since the trip that had marked her fifth birthday, Sophie had never once set foot outside Oris.
"I hate you, Daddy."
"Urk."
Those words had been the finishing blow. An emergency holiday was settled on the spot. There was no way his adorable daughter could know the lengths her father had gone to, fighting to win a leave that would fall upon the birthday of Sophie, who had, before anyone quite noticed, turned seven.
"Wooow...... so many people!"
Sophie applied herself with all her heart to everything the parents who had arranged the trip could have hoped for: to look forward to the fullest, and to enjoy herself to the fullest. Within those bright, round eyes the world was nothing but people, and what a variety of them there were. Families as giddy with travel as Sophie herself. Middle-aged travelers who never once thought of taking the pipe from their lips, as if they were off on business rather than holiday. And last of all, a young man wearing a soft, good-natured smile.
That last young man had a rather striking look about him, and Sophie's gaze rested on him a long while.
It was then.
"Hmm?"
Sophie tilted her head.
Is he looking at me?
The young man wore a ridiculous mask of the kind sold in souvenir shops. In his hands he clutched three balls that looked, likewise, as if they had come from a souvenir stall, and at his feet a tin can—apparently picked up somewhere nearby—gaped wide open. Curiosity surged in Sophie's chest. Her father's instruction to stay quietly put had been cleanly forgotten long since. Slipping past her mother, who had glanced aside for a moment, Sophie pattered up in front of the young man.
"Ahem. Hello there, little miss."
"Hello."
"Shall I show you something fun?"
The young man smiled a still kindlier smile, settled his grip on the balls, and sent them up into the sky with a whoosh.
One. Two. And three.
"Wooow...!"
Three balls danced over the young man's hands. Juggling—red, yellow, and black. Sophie watched the dazzling motion of the balls as if spellbound, and before she knew it she had opened her allowance purse and dropped a one-shilling coin into the tin can with a bright little clink.
And then—
"Thank you, little miss!"
The balls became four. Three was his specialty. Four belonged to the realm of acrobatics. The eyes of the family travelers wandering nearby gathered, all at once, upon the young man who had abruptly begun to perform.
The young man's smile deepened.