The Envoy Who Came Quietly
"Uh..."
One of the sharper-eyed mercenaries stopped dead in his tracks.
"What's wrong? You know those guys?"
"They're... talking about us, aren't they?"
"...?!"
The mercenaries were aghast. Come to think of it, it made perfect sense. Short of a madman, no one would be spreading tales about Johan across the White Duchy right now. Get tangled up with the wrong crowd and you'd find yourself hitched to the gallows alongside the rebels before you could blink.
"What kind of bad rumors?"
Johan had more or less caught on as well. Apparently the things he'd done on his way here had started circulating as gossip.
It might have been the work of scattered stragglers from the broken armies, but that seemed unlikely. Those men had only been able to scurry up to nobles and shoot their mouths off, not parade their grievances around openly.
"I couldn't possibly repeat such insolent slander, my lord..."
"It's fine. Go ahead and tell me."
"They spread false rumors that Your Excellency is violent and savage, that you punished the nobles with cruel excess..."
Those noble bastards work fast.
Johan thought to himself. The fact that the very words he'd used to probe the local lords had arrived intact in the city meant the nobles who'd greeted him had been quite diligent with their tongues.
The nobles, who had no desire to be lumped in with suspicious outsiders they'd so much as acknowledged, had heaped abuse on the mercenaries with great enthusiasm...
And thanks to that, the rumors had traveled to the city with remarkable speed.
"They also said that despite his youth you take no interest in women, and instead shut yourself away in some corner of the castle, devoting yourself entirely to killing and torturing nobles."
...That's not something I said, though?
Johan faltered. No matter how he looked at it, that rumor wasn't his doing. It was an entirely different species of gossip. The mercenaries seemed to sense it too, and began to mutter among themselves.
"That son of a bitch... he shoved his own thoughts into it, didn't he?"
"Where does that piece of stonemason trash get the nerve... I'll tear him apart."
"Your Excellency is a most vigorous man in his private life!"
Aricu, of the Masons' Guild, carried on entirely unaware of the situation he was standing in.
"We were deceived by such vile fabrications into believing you would not come to this city's aid. Please, forgive us!"
"Is that so."
Johan's voice had gone a touch cold, but the council members didn't notice. Seeing that Johan appeared willing to let the matter pass, the others chimed in around Aricu.
"Should we catch sight of those mercenaries, we shall seize them and hang them in the square without fail. Please forgive us!"
"Pray lean upon Your Excellency's generous mercy!"
"Very well. I shall forgive you."
"Ooooh...!"
Johan privately slashed his assessment of Aricu to a fraction of its former value, but no one noticed. The people were simply relieved that the whole affair had been smoothed over.
Once the hospitality concluded, Johan moved straight to business. He hadn't come all this way for pleasantries — he'd come to slay a monster.
"The city's soldiers will gladly follow Your Excellency's commands."
"That goes without saying. There's no need to say it."
"Ah. Yes."
The council members tried their best to score points and make up for their earlier blunder, but it wasn't so easily done. Of all days, they'd pulled that stunt the very day Johan arrived — and failed at it.
"The most important thing is drawing the creature out. You say it has surfaced several times before?"
At Johan's question, several nodded. The sea-armed dragon was a creature that attacked ships from beneath the waves, but when it grew truly hungry, it would sometimes haul itself up onto the harbor itself in search of prey.
"Do you see the broken section down there, by the harbor? That is where the beast came and rampaged."
Aricu pointed below the castle, and Johan nodded.
"Then if we simply wait, it will come up again?"
"......"
"......"
Everyone fell silent. In the beginning, the creature had been unmistakably aggressive, surging up over the harbor and thrashing about with abandon. But it was a clever beast. After taking a few vicious counterattacks, it had learned that the harbor was unfavorable ground.
Its appearances grew steadily rarer, until it struck only on dark, rainy nights — and lately, it hadn't risen from the sea at all.
"So it's gone quiet on us, and now we're the ones suffering for it."
Those with nothing to say — and even ten mouths would have given them nothing to say — merely hung their heads. Johan spoke with an air of perfect indifference.
"Even if we want to fight it, we must first drag it into the open. Post a bounty. I will reward whoever devises a way to lure the creature out."
Knowledge and experience had always been hoarded by the few.
What good was shouting such a thing at people who'd never had access to it? The likelier outcome was some greedy fool chasing the coin and pulling a pointless stunt.
"Is that truly necessary, my lord..."
"Enough. I won't say it twice."
"...Understood. And should the beast surface, how do you intend to respond?"
The people gathered here had a rough idea of the monsters Johan had felled. But only rough. Rumor had a way of swelling and blending, and nothing could be trusted until it came from the man's own mouth. The council members were desperate for the precise account.
Especially since so many of the tales of Johan slaying monsters bordered on the unbelievable...
"When I find a way, I'll think about it then."
"Might we hear the tale of how you slew the Cyclops? Everyone gathered here is dying of curiosity."
"Hm. I'm rather tired at the moment."
At his refusal, the people could not hide their disappointment. To come so close and not hear it from the man himself.
But Johan was a Count. Were he a mere sellsword, they'd have snapped, 'Did you really do all that? If you want to be paid, then talk!' — but with Johan, no such thing was possible.
The council members swallowed their regret, bowed their heads, and assented.
"I fail to see what good this is meant to do."
"His Excellency must have his reasons."
"What's the point of asking for wisdom from men who know nothing? We'd be lucky to get nothing worse than mockery out of it."
Gilsina was a city where the guilds held real power.
Instead of electing a consul, the city chose several administrators from among the council members and entrusted the running of the city to them — and those administrators were usually drawn from the ranks of guild leadership.
As a result, guild members took immense pride in their own knowledge and experience. In Gilsina, the masters of the powerful guilds — the Merchants' Guild, the Masons' Guild, the Sailors' Guild — were, for all practical purposes, the city's aristocracy.
Their fear was that the city's beggars might laugh at the guilds' incompetence.
"I'd at least like to hear how he means to catch the thing..."
"I want to hear how he took down the Cyclops. Don't tell me that was all a lie, too."
"Mind your tongue. This is not a man you can chatter about carelessly."
"Why? Do you mean to report me? And really, at this point it hardly matters."
The people of the city had accepted Johan as the new master of the White Duchy, but they hadn't exactly leapt at the chance to display devoted loyalty. Loyalty didn't spring up that way.
The common townsfolk might be dazzled by fame and rumor into singing praises, but the thick-headed council members were not so easily moved.
"Rumors always inflate. That's hardly the new Count's fault. Blame the minstrels."
"Granted, but... beating that Cyclops in a contest of raw strength? That's flatly absurd. I've got wagers riding on it with half the men here."
"Big — big trouble!"
"?"
When Aricu, speaking for the Masons' Guild, came scrambling over with his slaves in tow and left them standing, the guild's artisans stared at him in bewilderment. Why was a man who rode in a palanquin carried by slaves suddenly running about like a man with one foot in the grave?
"The Emperor's envoy has arrived!"
"What? The Emperor of where?"
"The Holy Empire, obviously. Why would the empire of that senile old blind man send an envoy to us? Regardless — Aricu, why the fuss?"
"You insufferable fools..."
Aricu glared at them as if they were beneath contempt.
"You know full well what relations between the new Count and the Emperor are right now, and you still say that? We've already rubbed him the wrong way. Make a bad impression now and forget the hunt — everything is finished!"
"Ah — no, aren't you worrying a bit too much?"
"Master Aricu is right. This is a worry worth having."
They had scraped through the fiasco of Johan's arrival by pinning the blame on unidentified stragglers, but there was no way Johan had found it amusing. It concerned his honor, after all.
And now, with the wound freshly patched, the Emperor's envoy had appeared. The people of the city wanted to weep. Of all the tactless, inopportune — what in God's name were they thinking, sending an envoy now?
"Did anyone inform His Excellency?"
"It'll have reached his ears already, obviously! Do you think that needs saying?"
"No. It hasn't. They didn't come making a spectacle of it."
"?"
The Emperor's envoy had arrived — without making a scene?
To be precise, it was not an envoy bearing the Emperor's own seal, but a delegation sent by Viscount Ginolene, one of the Emperor's proxies.
And even that was no delegation that had gone through proper channels. It was closer to a casual visit — an unofficial party of only the necessary people, arriving modestly in the name of the Viscount's house and several other houses besides.
"They came quietly?"
"They know the city's situation and are being considerate... no. That can't be it."
No one could gauge things that delicately from that far away. One of the artisans snorted.
"They must be out of money."
"Kukkukku..."
The people of the city were not on bad terms with the Viscount who ruled the Emperor's domain across the sea. They traded with him, and at times even joined hands with him.
But east is east, and west is west.
The more the Emperor was mired in his own chaos and unable to spare a thought for this side of the water, the better the city fared. They were well aware of how politically starved the Viscount's situation had become lately.
So pinched that he couldn't even afford a proper envoy, and had to come skulking in like this. Laughter came unbidden.
"If it's not an official embassy but a visit of personal acquaintance, then surely there's no harm in it?"
"Oh, I'm certain His Excellency the Count will be very understanding."
When one man sneered, another artisan shouted in fury.
"And who do you think you're talking to, you arrogant dyer?"
"And you — what kind of craftsman can't even catch a single monster?"
"Silence! Now is not the time to fight. And whatever they call themselves, an envoy is an envoy to anyone who looks. Arguing among ourselves changes nothing."
"Then let's quietly send them on their way."
The people nodded. If the Viscount's envoys had any sense of self-preservation, they'd read the room and behave accordingly.
Johan had been in the city mere days, and he was unmistakably an outsider to it. With them resting comfortably inside the inner walls, there was no way he could learn of this — all they had to do was usher them out quietly, and...
"My lord. I have quite astonishing news. It seems the Viscount has sent an unofficial delegation."
"Dear me. Is there no one but you to bring me word of it?"
"Can you blame me, when the loyalty of the others doesn't run half so rich as mine?"
The orc behind the emerald spectacles grinned as he spoke. The head of the Alchemists' Guild — Partuti.
When Johan had dealt with the old Count and consolidated support, one of his chief concerns had been the orcs. A wealthy, powerful faction that had long been treated as second-class. Ideal soil in which to cultivate loyalty.
Besides, Johan had been generous to the orcs from his days with the Aliham house onward — to the point of keeping orc scribes in his domain administration.
The shrewd orc houses had read the new Count's movements at once. The new Count, astonishingly, looked upon them with favor!
"In truth, no one saw fit to tell me either."
"Dear me. And you're the man representing a whole guild?"
"Ignorant brutes, every one of them. They couldn't recognize what's right if it bit them."
Partuti spoke with an orc's native pride. It wasn't for nothing that orcs bore a reputation among other races for being obnoxious, arrogant, and money-grubbing.
"The spies I've planted have been filing reports."
"Truly clever. I can't imagine why the city treats an orc of your caliber so shabbily."
"Exactly what I keep saying!"
Though he had known Johan barely any time at all, Partuti had already fallen head over heels for him, as if he'd met a lifelong friend.
A Count who scratched every itch, who held up his brilliant intellect for all to admire — what on earth had this man been doing all this while, to arrive only now?