The Ruler of Dusk Block, One-Armed Jackson
Inside the hall, the gathering was drawing to a close.
Yulia and Blow had split apart for a while and were moving among the other tables, talking people through tomatoes and Straight.
"If you go here, you'll be able to buy tomatoes."
"Oh, thank you, Lady Yulia! I wanted to be sure I tried tomatoes even after I went back up!"
"I'll send a simple recipe along through a servant. And they're wonderful even if you only sprinkle them with sugar."
"I tried some earlier, actually, after I saw Lady Rachel eating them, and they weren't half bad!"
"Oh my, did you? From about next week, if you come by Serdia Edfolk in the Imperial Capital, you'll be able to try all sorts of dishes made with tomatoes."
"I'm looking forward to it already."
The air at Yulia's table was warm and easy. The table of knight cadets where Blow sat had gone past easy and into something close to fervor. The drink seemed to have taken the walls down between them; cadets from the knight schools of Caipol and the Imperial Capital were all mixed in together, and every one of them threw Blow a thumbs-up.
"Young Master Blow! You absolutely have to supply Straight to the Imperial Capital as well!"
"Of course. With all of you enjoying it this much."
"Will it be out in Caipol soon?"
"Yes. I'll see that it's supplied as quickly as I can manage."
"Even we backwater folk of Caipol have something to boast about now!"
"I'll do everything I can, so that someday we can stand shoulder to shoulder with the Imperial Capital."
The cadets of the Caipol knight school nodded, brightened by his words. Rokan, who had been sitting at the table, broke into a great rolling laugh, got to his feet, and came over to Blow.
"Just as I thought! Words worthy of a man Lady Rachel herself has acknowledged! Young Master Blow Deblique!"
"Ah. She acknowledged me, did she?"
"Her Ladyship does not share a cup with anyone who falls short!"
Rokan offered his hand, and Blow took it with easy composure. After he had poured Straight for the lot of them, he made his way toward the table where the young ladies were gathered. The ladies there looked considerably more interested in Blow than in Straight.
"That was truly impressive! Young Master Blow Deblique!!"
"Thank you for seeing me so kindly."
"You'll come to the next gathering as well, won't you?"
"They say a ball is being held in the Imperial Capital this winter, in January. You must come to that, too!"
"Couldn't you host a banquet yourself, Young Master?"
"Wouldn't that be rather far from the Imperial Capital?"
"Everyone will come! If you're the one hosting it!"
The young ladies nodded along as if to say she had it right. Watching them, Blow answered in a smooth, shameless drawl.
"I'll work hard, so that someday I might invite young ladies as lovely as all of you."
"Oh my. Listen to you."
"Next time, dance with me as well, Young Master Blow."
"I'll invite you to our estate this winter!"
With that the noble ladies drifted off, and the carbonated water Blow had brought for the day—Straight, as it was called—was gone to the last bottle. He paused to catch his breath and tipped back what remained of the glass in his hand. Looking around, he thought that having avoided occasions like this in the past, simply because he could not stand the bother of them, had turned out entirely to his advantage. For most of the people seeing him for the first time, a man so unlike the one they had only ever heard about in rumors seemed to have become a kind of entertainment all on his own.
Yulia — "Young Master! I think it comes to ten thousand gold, at the very least."
Blow — "What? Ten thousand gold?"
Yulia — "Yes. The impression you left on everyone here today was simply that good! All of them are talking about nothing but you! Value like that can't be converted into money!"
Even Yulia had put it that way, so the night counted as a complete success. Relieved that he had gotten through it, Blow let out a sigh.
Hervena, who had followed along behind him, murmured just at the edge of his hearing.
"You're very popular, Young Master."
"Better than not being, wouldn't you say?"
"The carbonated water is the last thing on anyone's mind right now."
"Straight sold out, though."
"That isn't what I... never mind."
She said it and pouted. Blow patted her shoulder as he answered.
"You worked hard today, too. It was your first time. Must have weighed on you in all sorts of ways."
"You as well, Young Master."
"The way those Caipol knight cadets were looking at you was something else."
"Well, that's just..."
She had taken nearly as many requests to dance as Jane. Between that and the showing she had put on earlier with the Mana Bead, Hervena seemed to have become, alongside Blow, one of the faces people would remember as Caipol's own. She had also gone from table to table with Lady Renelit, pressing her face into memory.
"Hervena, you held your drink pretty well with people you'd only just met."
"Lady Renelit was kind enough to look after me."
"That's good. But why didn't you dance? Looked like you got asked more than once."
"I've never learned."
"Ah. Right. Sorry."
"I'll dance later. With someone I want to dance with."
"Well now. Whoever gets your first dance is going to be under a fair amount of pressure."
"...Why?"
"Because they'd have to dance with you. Even I get scared of you, and I'm your master."
The moment she heard it, Hervena puffed her cheeks and answered in a voice that shrank in on itself.
"He'll like it. That person will..."
"Fair enough. You wouldn't dance with just anyone. We ought to start getting ready to go, too."
"Yes."
With that, the gaze she had held steady on him fell away. People were filing out of the hall one after another, and through them Skadi came trudging up in flat shoes that did not match her clothes at all.
"Blow Deblique!"
"What's with the shoes? You were sitting the whole time earlier, so I didn't notice."
"The heel broke!"
"How?"
"I don't know. After I danced it felt kind of loose and wobbly, and then all of a sudden it just went."
She said it and broke into a bright little laugh. Blow tipped his head and put the question to her.
"You sure it isn't because you walk like you're trying to stamp holes in the floor?"
"As if!"
"Still. It's over. You did well."
"It ended well thanks to you, Blow, so there."
"So? Feel like a lot has changed? Earlier I saw you talking just fine with Lady Rebecca, too."
"Yeah. Thanks to that..."
"Good."
The four of them began, little by little, to make their way out of the hall. Skadi hesitated a moment, then stepped in close to Blow.
"Listen! From now on, I'm going to be a little more confident, and a little more honest!"
"You already were."
"I wasn't."
Skadi gave a small shake of her head. Blow answered her with a shrug.
"Well. You did overthink things more than you needed to."
"Yeah."
When they came down into the hotel lobby, carriages beyond counting were lined up in front of the doors, waiting to take their owners aboard. Among them Yulia was speaking with Yellich, and her face was none too bright. As Blow started that way, Rachel's voice cut across to him.
"Hey! Blow Deblique!"
"Yes, my lady."
"Keep two tables clear at lunch tomorrow!"
"Lunch. Understood."
"Through dinner, too!"
She climbed into her carriage without waiting to hear an answer. Blow stared after it for a long moment, and in the end all he could do was let out a thin sigh.
The next day, on the borderlands of Balt Village of the Ain.
Amael, who led the army of Parso, was waiting with his adjutants for nothing but the order to advance. The upper ranks of Parso were at that moment in contact with several figures inside the imperial palace of Serdia. If the talks ran the way they wanted, it was all but certain they could force the Ain to their knees before them once again—and before the march, he had already been told that the moment was close at hand.
Let the Ain resist all they liked. To the regular army of Parso they would be no more than a candle in the wind. So there was not a single tense face inside the command tent. If anything, the men were worked up like farmers on the eve of harvest.
"We'll have to take the sugar factories first, won't we?"
"We will."
"Honestly. What's so wonderful about that filthy sugar."
The adjutants were snickering over it when Amael alone wore a poor look, and a man beside him ventured a careful question.
"Lord Amael, did you have a bad dream in the night?"
"......"
"Isn't it obvious! They say Lord Amael's own younger cousin was humiliated by some noble bastard who takes his deliveries from those stunted little runts!"
"And trash like that calls himself a noble!"
No one had to start it. They flew into a rage together.
"In any case! We put them down properly this time. Leave them as they are and they'll run wild without a clue how the world works!"
"Damn right! Give them one thing and they'll take two or three before you can blink!"
"When in the world is that messenger coming!"
They were all burning with impatience when, at last, a messenger came running into the tent.
"Lord Amael!!"
The order to march, surely. A few of them ran their tongues over their lips, anticipation rising. What the messenger actually said was nothing like what they had been waiting to hear.
"Disaster! B-Baron Christopher of Cypress has entered the territory of the Ain!"
"What?"
Every face, Amael's among them, went rigid as stone.
"Suddenly—what is that supposed to..."
"Why would that quiet man, of all people—!"
"The reason. Have they got the reason?"
Each of them threw in a word. The messenger, who had been dragging it out, worked his lips and only just managed to speak.
"From what we've determined so far, they say it's a journey."
"That is absurd!"
That set the adjutants shouting as if they could not believe their ears. Amael, silent until then, twisted his face through a grimace and muttered.
"A journey...? A sudden journey to an Ain village? And of all moments, the lord of Cypress?"
"Captain..."
His voice was thick with rage, and the air froze in an instant. Even the adjutants who had been cawing like crows shut their mouths and watched his temper. Amael dragged a furious breath in and out several times over, then flashed his eyes wide and roared at the messenger.
"Get me a line to command. Now!"
"Y-yes, sir!"
The messenger hurried outside. Amael brought his hand down hard enough to break the desk, and the blameless papers that had been sitting on it merely fluttered up into the empty air.
Who ruled Dusk Block—and, past it, the back alleys of Caipol?
Any number of names might be offered, but the man thought to have come closest was One-Armed Jackson.
By the rumors, he was a former officer of the White Eagle Corps, the company that had made its name in the Unification War. He was a fallen noble. He was a noble's bastard. He was the Emperor's hidden sword. And of course, every last one of those stories was something Jackson himself had sown through the back alleys!
Even in alleys like these, authority has a way of working. Add a scrap of charisma to lies of that kind, and vagrants with nowhere else to go began to follow him. Before anyone quite noticed, there was no one left in the back alleys who could afford to ignore him.
Today that man was leading his crew toward Hills, in Dusk Block. The reason was to "collect" a "tax" from the owner of Hills under the name of protection money. Doing business in the Dusk Block they managed, and still not a coin of protection paid—he could hardly sit and watch forever. What had gone on at the Nyx Inn could be overlooked, seeing as it had never properly gotten started. Opening two shops, though? Now he truly could not stay still.
His right-hand man, Fat Barnett, waddled along beside him and leaned in.
"Boss."
"What."
"Think it'll be all right? I did hear the owner of Hills is a noble..."
"You dumb bastard."
Sour-faced, Jackson rapped the bald, gleaming crown of Barnett's head a few times with his hook.
"Would a proper noble do business in Dusk Block? Try using that thing you call a head!"
"I mean, sure, but the ones who watched the place for a few days reported noble ladies' carriages stopped out front of Hills..."
"They say the owner's a looker."
"Aha."
Barnett swallowed it on the spot. Jackson wore a meaningful smile as he went on.
"They'd rather it be us, anyway. If it isn't us, they just get bled dry by that bastard Rachi."
"Exactly! We only take about ten gold a month! That's only human!"
"Right! Couldn't be more human if we tried."
Jackson flashed his gold tooth and laughed first, and the rest cackled as if they had been waiting on him. Frightened children hid themselves here and there along the alleys. Riding high, the men tapped at perfectly good windows as they passed and kicked boxes for the hell of it. Before they knew it, they had reached the mouth of the alley where Hills stood.
The moment they arrived, a delicious smell—the kind that drove every thought out of a man's head—filled the alley.
"Now that is a fine smell!"
"Business is doing real well, they say! Boss, forget the usual and take the tax up to about twenty gold?"
"Hmm... that does sound better. They said he's a noble, so a little scare ought to do it."
"Right! And we tell them to put lunch out while they're at it!"
"A fine idea, Barnett!"
They were just about to step into Hills when a single black horse came charging toward them at a furious pace.
"...What's that?"
Weaving through the people as it ran, the black horse stopped dead in front of Hills and flung both forelegs high into the sky. A few of the crew were startled enough to topple clean over backward. Into the eyes of the men swallowing dry, a woman with long orange hair and a black blade across her back came leaping lightly down from the horse. They stared, struck dumb, at a motion that flowed like water.
Eyes the very color of her hair swept over them. She let out a short laugh.
"Leave."
If a man meant to rule the back alleys, what mattered most? Nothing other than a sense for the room. The sense to put a foot forward only where a foot belongs. However you looked at it, anyone carrying a black blade that huge was dangerous—that much was plain—and they needed to be gone from this spot even a second sooner.
The instant Jackson meant to signal his crew with a look, his right hand, Barnett, stepped in front of her.
"And who are you?"
Rachel had been staring straight at him. The corner of her mouth climbed in a sinister smile.
"Looks like he'd feel good to hit."