Chapter 23

While we were only chatting for a short while, information from all over the place came in. They must have subordinates or companions everywhere.

They seemed to range from the sort of obvious types who loitered by the roadside to earnest workers like Yoshu and Torun.

“This is way too awful.”

At Kengo’s single remark after compiling the tax information, Iiria had completely flattened her beast ears and looked dejected.

Her tail was drooping limply too, and the sight was strangely cute; remembering Marks’s words that “children of humans and beastfolk are popular with certain people,” I desperately averted my eyes.

“Actually, I think they see these purchased tax collection rights as the right to collect taxes however they want.”

Many of Marks’s companions seemed to belong to the lower strata of the town’s residents. Most of the stories they gathered came from craftsmen in small workshops who did not live comfortably and petty merchants running stalls along the main street.

The taxes those people described were not limited to property taxes levied on real estate like stalls and workshops; there were also arbitrary levies taken from daily sales under labels resembling sales tax. They would just thrust their hands into the box where the day’s earnings were kept and take money out without even counting it, which meant it was practically a “that’s tomorrow’s seed grain” situation.

Power without oversight corrupted easily.

Marks’s companions were apparently now also going to ask around among the people engaged in farm work outside the town, but the situation there would probably be more or less the same.

Kengo compiled and neatly reorganized what Marks and the others had gathered. Direct taxes such as property taxes were collected once a year, at around ten percent. The daily sales tax was the truly horrifying one, with people claiming that thirty to fifty percent was taken almost every day. Of course, some exaggeration born of anger and grief was probably mixed in there, so perhaps the real figure was more like ten to twenty percent. Even so, that was still high, and since it was not collected on any fixed schedule but rather whenever the tax collector felt like it, it must have been unbearable.

And then, from my side as someone entrusted with the Nodon Company ledgers, I added that Nodon was also collecting tariffs of around twenty percent from trading partners during imports and exports. When they heard that, neither Iiria nor Kururu could immediately say whether those tariffs had any legitimate basis at all.

“So, how did things go on Kururu-chan’s side?”

While I had the swindlers gather information and Kengo organized the numbers, Kururu had turned the mansion’s underground storeroom upside down.

Maybe the dust was getting to her, because she kept rubbing her nose, and she looked exactly like a cat washing its face.

The fact that she was not consciously trying to be cute made her all the more adorable, and just as I was trying desperately to drive impure thoughts out of my head, Kururu answered Kengo.

“I found it properly.”

After sneezing—hffshh—she set down on the table a sheet of parchment with a severe, imposing texture. I saw that kind of paper often even at the Nodon Company, where it was used for expensive contracts, since it was made from animal hide, sheep foremost among them. My awful boss’s business cards at my old job had also been absurdly high-minded parchment versions, so I remembered it well together with unpleasant memories.

“Though it doesn’t look like the amounts are written down. Is that… alright?”

What lay before the somewhat uneasy Kururu were tax documents left behind by successive lords. Based on the prediction that things forming the basis of authority would not be casually thrown away, Kengo had ordered Kururu to search the underground storeroom.

“It’s enough just to know the kinds of taxes. Iiria-chan can decide the tax amounts anew.”

“…”

At Kengo’s words, Iiria looked at the bundle of documents with a face even more anxious than Kururu’s.

“Iiria-sama?”

The one who called out to her was Kururu, covered in dust.

“Sorry, I’m fine.”

Iiria took a slow deep breath and showed a stiff smile.

“It’s just a little scary to be told that I’m the one who’ll decide the tax rates.”

It took talent to be a dictator.

Iiria would surely be able to become a good lord, but people who could become good lords probably also had many worries.

“You just have to think of it as there being people who will be helped because those taxes exist.”

At my words, Iiria widened her eyes.

The only reason swindlers like Marks and the others had cooperated was because Iiria had helped the orphanage, and Kururu together with her had supported them.

“That’s true, yes. And if I decide the numbers, the townspeople won’t have absurd taxes taken from them anymore.”

Apparently, when strength began filling a person’s eyes, it was something you could clearly see.

But more than anything, what made me happy was that even after being treated coldly by the townspeople to that extent, Iiria had not wished for revenge.

When I stayed at the tavern with Kengo, I could see that there were also quite a few humans who got along well with beastfolk.

Even Torun, that boy with the broken leg, had his leg treated by a beastfolk bonesetter and worked at rope-plaiting in an area where many beastfolk lived. The conflict between humans and beastfolk was surely serious, but it was not absolute. People like that, whether human or beastfolk, ought to welcome Iiria’s fair rule.

That same Iiria placed her hand on the dusty parchment Kururu had found.

“The words written on this parchment need to recover their power.”

She looked like a mage placing a hand upon a magic stone.

“And we’ll take this town back from that rotten bastard. Kururu, it’s your turn to lend me your strength.”

Taxes were the gold that welled up from the vein of power that only a lord could mine.

But just as you needed a pickaxe to break bedrock, you needed force to maintain authority.

At the root of taxation there always had to be force, and in terms of force, we possessed the nuclear-weapon-level technology of synthetic magic stones.

And among our group, the only one who could wield that was Kururu.

“Leave it to me, Iiria-sama.”

Kururu placed her hand atop Iiria’s.

“Though the fact that this was those two idiots’ idea is, well, irritating.”

Kururu looked at Kengo, then at me, and smiled mischievously, showing her canine teeth.

“We’re counting on you, okay? Whether our lives settle down from here depends first on Kururu-chan’s acting skills.”

Kengo’s hand came down atop Kururu’s.

Kururu let out a displeased little growl, but Iiria was laughing happily.

Then all three of them looked at me.

“…I’m not really the type for this.”

Even as I said that, I did not dislike it, and then it occurred to me that although Kengo, Kururu, and I had done this same thing before, I had never done it with Iiria.

I placed my hand on top of Kengo’s and looked down at the sight.

I suddenly remembered that every merchant house and craftsman’s workshop in town had a signboard hanging under the eaves.

If we were going to make a signboard of our own, I thought something like this would not be bad.

“We’re counting on you, Iiria-chan, Kururu-chan.”

“Don’t add -chan when you say my name!”

“Hehe, it’s fine, isn’t it?”

“Iiria-sama…”

That was how lively we were.

I filled my chest with that atmosphere, one that held nothing but forward momentum.

“Damn it all!! What the hell is this?!”

The moment Nodon’s roar rang through the company and I heard the sound of the piled-up cargo being kicked over, I understood that Iiria’s work had gone well.

The Bax Company had probably agreed to let Iiria take over the mineral prospecting at the magic stone mine.

Prospecting required quite considerable expense. You needed to hire a mage and prepare magic stones in order to blast holes into the mountain, and you also needed labor costs for the beastfolk who handled all the work of digging out the shattered rock, carrying it away, reinforcing the inside of the hole with timber, and turning it into a tunnel. If the lord offered to take on all of that at half the usual price, even Cole of the Bax Company probably could not refuse.

He could not expect the kind of kickbacks he got from Nodon, but if someone could find a new vein cheaply, then Cole stood to make a large profit from mining-related transactions. He had probably weighed private embezzlement against improving his standing within the company and decided which would be more profitable.

And perhaps there was also the calculation that if he clashed recklessly with Iiria, there was no knowing what sort of meddling might come from Iiria’s father or the nobles connected to him. Kururu had said with obvious bitterness that relatives including Iiria’s father would never lift a finger to help Iiria, but if they saw a chance to sink their teeth into some profitable rights, they would greedily make their move.

For all those reasons, Iiria had probably succeeded in taking on the prospecting work, but that meant Nodon alone was the one left taking the loss.

Meanwhile, I was trying to understand the flow of taxes the people of the town had been collecting however they pleased by examining the Nodon Company ledgers. I relayed the progress of that, step by step, through Torun—the boy who had left the company after being injured—to Marks and from him to Iiria and the others.

Unlike Kengo, who was a mine overseer and could easily make excuses to see Iiria as the lord, it would look unnatural if I kept going to Iiria’s mansion. And on top of that, I ought to avoid being seen by townspeople getting along with Marks, since that would make me stand out in the wrong way.

Because we had to proceed as quietly and secretly as possible so that Nodon would not catch wind of our plan.

In that respect, if I met with Torun, the former dock laborer from the company, in an area with many beastfolk, I had any number of excuses I could give. Surely not even Nodon would imagine that this was part of a plan involving the lord to take back the magic stone trade.

“They found what they were looking for right away, apparently.”

And then, several days after Nodon had gone red-faced with rage and I had been beaten as an outlet for his frustration, Torun said that while braiding rope when we met up. At first I thought it was surprisingly thin for rope, but apparently it was an ornament like false hair that beastfolk used to dress themselves up.

“It’s amazing. They say one blast opened a hole in the middle of the mountain that looked like it went all the way to hell. Everyone’s making a huge fuss about some master wandering mage.”

Torun’s eyes were shining like a boy’s.

Even if some of it was exaggerated rumor, I could vividly imagine Kururu panicking because she still had not learned how to adjust the size of the magic stone and the strength of the spell, and the output had come out far stronger than expected.

Also, while Marks, who stationed himself in front of the mansion, had been informed, the fact that Kururu was disguised and acting as a mage was still secret from Torun for the moment. So the cover story for the disguised Kururu was that she was a wandering mage who served no noble and roamed freely.

For someone as strong-willed and practical as Kururu, she had seemed to be having a suspicious amount of fun getting into character.

At her core, she might actually be more childlike than Iiria.

“So Iiria-sama got fired up because of that mage too, huh?”

Torun also knew about the scheme to recover the taxes. Nodon probably had not realized that much yet, but since Iiria had stepped into prospecting backed by the power of a mage, he must have become much more wary.

From here on, if we dawdled, we would give Nodon time to mount defenses and counterattacks with his schemes.

We needed to press the attack all at once and create facts on the ground.

“Then could you please pass this message on to your older brother?”

Torun stared at me.

“We’ve more or less grasped the flow of the river. The Eder Company’s owner is the intermediary handling the taxes sucked up from the town. They’re completely off guard, so they surely never imagined Iiria-sama would make a move on them.”

“The Eder Company… ah, that guy. He’s one of Nodon’s toadies, and he has the same taste in women. Quite a few of the girls have been made to cry by him.”

Without lifting his gaze, Torun spat to the side and kept busily tying the thin strands with only his hands, as if to prevent something from bursting inside him.

Since Torun was an orphan, “older brothers” and “older sisters” meant his companions from the orphanage.

“Is the mage-sama going to blast him away?”

Torun’s eyes still held a strong trace of boyhood, and precisely because of that, they felt a little dangerous.

In that sense, Marks and Kururu were both far more adult than I was, which made them more reassuring.

“If she blasted him with magic, he’d turn into minced meat, so… I think it’ll just be enough to make him shake so hard he can’t stand.”

Torun looked at me, blinking, then laughed at the word “minced meat.”

“I’m looking forward to it. And if Brother Marks is with them, I guess there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Yes. I think they’ll handle it well.”

Swindlers with an oddly crisp style of dress that suited back alleys.

If I imagined them suddenly storming into a company building together with a wandering mage whose face was hidden by a hood, it was completely a scene from a movie.

“I’ll make sure to pass your message on to Brother.”

“Please do.”

I said that and started to rise, then remembered something I had forgotten to say.

“If dried meat gets too old, it turns hard and tastes bad, so please eat it soon.”

“Huh?”

Still blinking in puzzlement, Torun found several fresh slices of dried meat pressed into his hand.

“And get well soon too. The unloading dock is always busy.”

Torun compared the dried meat in his hand with my face, then smiled shyly.