The Unfrozen Port (5)
Groll was at war with himself. I simply waited for him to take the bait. Had anyone glanced our way, they would never have guessed which of us was the fisherman.
"What if there's a bounty on that pirate's head?" Groll asked, an edge creeping into his voice. "Would you still hire me?"
"That depends on what it's worth."
Groll wore the look of a man who had expected exactly that. Savoring the shift in his face, I went on.
"I am the Duke of Esterzy. Small fry don't interest me. I'd say it takes a bounty of at least five million bhat before my interest is even piqued."
Mariella, who had been seeing to the meal, covered her mouth with a hand. Groll's dark eyes bored straight into me.
"You knew before I ever came?"
"Knew what, exactly?"
"About my past."
"To an extent."
"...Yemiral, I knew you'd be like this. This is why I despise nobles. It's that attitude of yours, lording it over people's heads."
"At my level, isn't standing above people's heads exactly where I belong?" I crossed my legs and fired back, entirely at ease. "And isn't that why you've had a change of heart? You must have figured that under my shadow, you'd never have to hide again."
Groll held his silence. The longer it stretched, the more anxious Mariella became, until she was the one who broke it.
"Honey, I really don't think this is a good idea."
"...I don't have a choice. I have to get back out to sea." Groll said at last, shattering the long quiet. "Otherwise I feel like I'll go mad."
He dragged both hands down his face, and Mariella laid a hand on his shoulder. I took it as settled fact that these two were the protagonists of the romance that had once set the world on its ear. They had turned their backs on the whole world to seize the love of their dreams, and, well... that love had borne fruit.
But to a rugged man like him, a life of trapping crayfish in an isolated fishing village was apparently unbearable torment. It would give him plenty to chew on. You can't live on love alone, but no one can live without it either.
"Let me lay out my position first, Mariella." She looked up at me with sorrowful eyes.
"The Esterzy Duchy has never once had a proper harbor. We have no craftsmen skilled enough to build ships, and the men begging to be taken on as sailors are greenhorns who've never so much as boarded a rowboat. Meanwhile, our territory is being strangled by brutal economic sanctions from the capital. For now we're scraping by on our grain reserves, but at this rate it won't be long before people start starving to death."
"Is it truly that bad?"
I gave a small nod. "A great deal hinges on whether ships can sail from Miren Port. That said, I'd rather you didn't take my words as pressure. What I mean is that I don't see this as a hand forcing you to give up your husband. If anything, I'm the one who stands to lose."
"Thank you for your honesty, Your Grace." Mariella said with steady composure. "If it's all right with you, I'd like my husband and I to talk this over a little longer."
"Of course." I granted the request without hesitation. "Calling it a condition would be a stretch, but I'd like this wrapped up to take home."
"The... crayfish, you mean?" Mariella asked, eyes wide. Left unsaid in her protest was the obvious: Your Grace, you're asking me to pack up the leftovers?
"That's right. The flavor was extraordinary." At my shameless answer, her expression softened by degrees.
News came winging in through the Communications Office: word from the delegation that had departed for the Subterranean World. Fifteen days after setting out, they had reached the capital of the Zaktar Kingdom, and along the way they had passed mighty walled cities and met a people whose refined intellect rivaled that of humankind.
The report was steeped in the raw wonder of the Exploration Bureau's researchers. Jonathan, the team leader, summed up his assessment roughly as follows:
— To have believed the surface was the whole of the world was my own arrogance.
— They would make allies second to none.
There was amusing news as well: Ruby's popularity had exceeded all imagination. The lizardmen held that the dragon was their ultimate form, and it wasn't an entirely wrong belief, for earth dragons, unlike the flying kind, begin life as creatures no bigger than vermin.
By all accounts, Ruby was received with fervent hospitality wherever she went and served the finest mana springs at every meal. And in the middle of it all, she conjured dazzling flames out of thin air, lavishing her worshippers with the full show, free of charge.
"...Now this part is rather interesting." I broke off reading and let out a laugh.
"What part would that be?"
"It seems Ruby has learned the trick of summoning flame."
Ruby had breathed fire from her jaws before, but she had never produced it from empty air. According to the report, this was an entirely new talent of hers. Had her bout with Ogmar been what lit the spark? The elder dragon had wielded far more sorcery than she had, and from where Ruby stood, it must have felt like one wonder after another.
"You look so bright-faced. Like a parent watching a child grow."
"I raised her from this tiny, so 'parent' is the right word."
"She may take human form before long." Uld said, sounding amused. "I hear dragons enjoy becoming small creatures to experience their lives. Most dragons in the old stories show up wearing borrowed human shapes, too."
"Absolutely not." I said flatly. "If she turns human, I can't ride her around anymore."
The look of pure incredulity on Uld's face was, frankly, a rare treasure.
And at last, the Zaktar Kingdom sent a delegation of its own. The lizardmen had arrived trailing a small mountain of livestock. My people were bound to find them strange, and mere strangeness would be the best outcome available, because this was a species whose name was printed proudly in the monster compendium.
Which was why first impressions mattered so much. A friend who shared food in lean times would win hearts without half trying.
The harbor project, meanwhile, advanced without a hitch. Workers smashed the thinning ice with their pilings and raised foundations from the seabed upward. The sea monsters were left to Miren's fishermen; day after day, grotesque creatures never before seen by human eyes rose from the deep to menace the laborers.
"Full nets again today!"
The fishermen hunted the monsters down with harpoon and net as easily as if they were mackerel. Even the strongest knight would have found it no simple matter to face monsters on a sea cold as a sheet of ice. It was no exaggeration to say the entire construction rested on Miren's fishermen alone.
Once the work had found its stride, I stole a few days to visit the capital. The day I returned to the ducal residence, I was greeted by a mountain of paperwork. I had been away, and Uncle Luka was down in the underworld, so of course the work had piled up. In other words, the duchy had, so to speak, thrown an overflow error.
The experience taught me something new: ascending to the Ascension Realm did not, in fact, double or triple one's capacity for paperwork.
"Myaaaoow." I was mid-signature, tearing at my hair, when a black cat appeared with a long, lazy yowl. Fluttering its membrane-sheathed wings, it curled up and sprawled across my desk as though the thing belonged to it. The cat was Hellcat, and it was exceedingly rare for the creature to approach me first.
"I'm working." I seized it by the scruff and set it on the floor. It climbed right back up and flopped down on my documents.
"I said I'm working." This time I gripped the back of its neck and deposited it beneath the desk. Up it came again, and this time it rubbed its cheek against my arm.
...Hold on. By its old temperament, vicious claws should have been out by now. This was the beast whose vile personality had made it impossible to take anywhere in public, and now it wanted to play at being friends?
"I can't play with you right now." Hellcat batted its black eyes at me. A cuteness that could only be called demonic.
"In exchange, I'll take you somewhere fun once the work is done." Apparently satisfied with that answer, it purred and settled down beside my arm. My hunch had been right all along. Back when I was in the Avatar Realm, it hadn't given me the time of day; now that I had ascended, it recognized me as its master. Well, I supposed that was a cat for you.
Once I had cleared the most pressing business, I returned to Miren Port, and true to my word, Hellcat came along for the journey. The road linking the harbor and the capital was already nearing completion; with the giants having pushed the roadbed through, the work was moving at a staggering pace.
The moment I arrived back at the port, Groll requested an audience. This time he appeared with a whole crowd of fellow fishermen in tow.
"You've reached a decision, I take it."
"I have." Groll answered, his face set with resolve. "Mariella would rather I never leave at all. Since this whole venture is my own selfish doing, there are a few things I'd like to be stubborn about."
"Let's hear them."
"These men are the crew of my ship, the Dead Man's March. My first condition is that you take them on along with me."
"Done." I answered on the spot. As I had suspected, some of the fishermen were Groll's old crew. Hire the captain, and his seasoned sailors came bundled in; there was no reason on earth to refuse. What mattered most was that they had kept faith with him. The bounty on Groll's head stood at a full five million. Five million bhat. Who wouldn't be tempted, at least once, to collect their captain's neck and turn their fortunes around? That they hadn't, that they had stayed with him to the very end, was reason enough to hold them in high regard.
"And the second?"
"Aboard ship, the captain is king. And a king outranks a duke. Can you accept that?"
"There is nothing hard to accept, so long as you remember your place again the moment you step ashore."
"I'm not fool enough to provoke the temper of Duke Iden, the 'Little Blast Lord.'" Groll said, without a trace of humor in his voice. Just as I had investigated him, he had evidently done some digging of his own in the time available.
"Third. Ship's business is best left to ship's men. Leave the hiring and training of sailors entirely to me, and not to the faceless bureaucrats shipped in from the capital."
"Very well. Speak with Opils about it."
"That's the whole of it."
"Then the contract is sealed, Captain."
"I look forward to serving under you, Your Grace." Groll bowed his head without a word.
"To mark the occasion, I have a gift." I drew out my Sanpedla bag. I had picked something up in the capital with Groll in mind. What emerged was a hand ballista radiating a sinister crimson aura.
"That's...!" The color left Groll's face. The sailors watching swallowed hard. Any pirate with a name to his would have recognized the make of this thing at a glance.
"Your old byname was the Harpoon King, if I recall."
"...It was." Groll could not tear his eyes from the hand ballista, as if spellbound.
"The more I turned it over in my mind, the clearer it became that no weapon in the world suited the Harpoon King but this one." He received it as carefully as a man cradling a newborn.
"It's called Korvash's Harpoon. I guarantee its performance."
Groll looked up at me with trembling eyes.
"It has already punched through an elder dragon's scales, so holing an imperial hull will be nothing at all."
The Northern Grand Duke's Daoist Arts Are No Joke (Episode 108)