Chapter 26

On the very day we trapped Eder, I returned to the company and sat in on the magic stone transaction as though nothing had happened. While I was working at the company after the transaction ended without incident, a shipment arrived from the Eder Company. Nodon did not even bother opening it, but inside was a huge amount of coin gathered through fraudulent taxation.

After watching that wooden box be put away, I was able to confirm that Nodon had swallowed the bait whole.

That meant the magic circle powerful enough to destroy in one blow the king who ruled Jirenu Territory’s economy had been firmly inscribed right beneath his feet.

Because that magic circle itself would prove that he was the chief culprit behind the vicious abuse of taxation rights.

Even so, there was still a chance that this alone would not be enough to bring Nodon down.

With Nodon’s shamelessness, he would surely rattle off excuses without the slightest hesitation. That he had not known what Eder had been doing, that he had not known the money regularly sent to him was tainted, and so on.

More than that, if he claimed that while he had known absolutely nothing about it, there was no doubt that the money did indeed seem to be tainted, and therefore he would make restitution out of the fortune he had amassed, then he might just slip away from punishment.

Even I did not know just how much gold sat by Nodon’s pillow, and there was also the possibility that Nodon might go crying to the Bax Company and secure economic or even political backing. Nodon had connections and wealth enough for that. But in the end, the source of all that power was the magic stone trade.

That was why, if we wanted to make absolutely certain, we had to tear away that source of wealth.

“So then, why am I the one…?”

Several more days passed after our visit to Eder’s company.

On the day we were to carry out the third phase of the plan, we had gathered at Marks’s hideout around the time the company had closed for the day and the taverns in town were becoming lively.

With Iiria, Kururu, Marks, and me all there, the decrepit house felt suffocatingly cramped, and similar shacks stood all around it, leaning against each other as though to keep from collapsing.

If the beastfolk slum was the waste-stone dumping ground outside the mine, then the old quarter spreading out behind the district of taverns in town was the human slum.

“Wasn’t Kengo supposed to go for this one…?”

“He suddenly had work come up.”

As she said that, Kururu was quickly sewing together a cloak by the light of a candle.

As for its mistress, Iiria was placing an awkward wig onto my head while wagging her tail in obvious delight.

“Besides, after the Eder business, we now know you’ve got a fair bit of nerve too. Or what, were you planning to send only me to the magic stone processors?”

Kururu was dressed as the wandering magician Dorasutel, and after lightly brushing off the large cloak she had crudely sewn together, she held it against my back to check the size. It was something so heavy and sturdy that it felt more like leather goods than cloth.

“That’s not what I mean… Also, Iiria-sama, why the wig?”

“Apparently the previous lord used to wear it during trials, but since it’s an antique, it has just the right amount of suspiciousness.”

The black-haired wig smelled strange, and the hair length was uneven all over.

Without a mirror I could not tell, but there was no way it made me look anything resembling respectable.

The fact that Iiria looked like she was having so much fun only made me more uneasy.

“Well, for a magician’s attendant, maybe that’s about right. Never seen one myself, though.”

Marks, the owner of the room, was leaning against the wall and saying irresponsible things like that.

“More importantly, if we don’t get moving, the head and deputy head of the magic stone processors’ guild are going to finish work and head home.”

Of course, there was a reason we had gathered in a place like this while avoiding attention.

Putting on the misshapen cloak Kururu handed me and stuffing my enlarged head into the hood with the wig under it, I said,

“The guild head and the deputy head are both there, right?”

“That’s what I heard. They should be collecting and counting the interest on the loans the craftsmen have to pay that bastard Nodon.”

The debt collars wound around the craftsmen’s necks.

As long as those existed, the craftsmen had no choice but to obey Nodon, and it made it impossible for anyone other than Nodon to get involved in the magic stone trade. That was because the Bax Company, which came all the way to this remote place to purchase magic stones, said it would only accept processed stones.

This was probably because if they bought unprocessed raw stones, they would have to be refined again in Roran, the provincial capital, and it would be harder to commit fraud there under the eyes of the Bax Company’s superiors. And in the provincial capital, the processors’ guild would naturally wield greater authority and would charge the appropriate processing fees as well.

In other words, it was only by working together with Nodon, who ruled this isolated island of Jirenu Territory, that Cole was able to secure illicit profits.

But on the other hand, that also meant that if we could get the craftsmen of Jirenu Territory on our side, we could knock out the ground beneath Nodon’s feet.

The way to win the craftsmen over was simple and direct: to assume their debts.

The problem was that neither Kengo nor I had that much cash, and even with the money saved from the prospecting operation, it still was not enough.

From what I had inferred from Nodon’s ledgers, the craftsmen’s total debt came to over eight thousand gold coins across all magic stone processors. That figure had been created by piling up unpaid interest, and surely everyone understood that it was an amount that would probably never be repaid.

Since Nodon wanted to keep them alive without ever letting them escape, he seemed satisfied with collecting interest forever, and the craftsmen too appeared to have more or less resigned themselves to the situation.

But Marks had told me that every so often Nodon would wield those debts like a club and behave outrageously. Nodon’s fondness for women was famous, after all.

What could save the craftsmen from that mire was the secret ledger we had taken from Eder.

Those were taxes gathered through vicious methods, but the amount written there was also, in a sense, an indicator of how much money would come into Iiria’s hands if she seriously began exercising power in this town.

That amount was approximately three thousand gold coins per month.

Of course, continuing to collect that amount would surely go against Iiria’s ethics.

But even if it were reduced to a third, that would still be a thousand gold coins. Combined with various other expenditures, it would probably still allow the craftsmen’s debts to be fully repaid within a few years.

If Iiria offered to assume their debts, and asked them to find the courage to defy Nodon and process magic stones for us instead, the craftsmen should accept. And once the craftsmen stood with us, Nodon would no longer be able to prepare processed magic stones, which would mean that the Bax Company would trade not with Nodon, but with Iiria.

That was how we would strip from Nodon the source of wealth that was the magic stone trade.

With both the taxes and the magic stone trade in her hands, Iiria would at last gain an income befitting a true lord.

Kengo and I had promised that we would receive a certain share from that, and that with that money we would be allowed to conduct our own magic stone business as well. If that happened, we could rise from day laborers with no guarantee of status whatsoever into proprietors able, to some degree, to protect ourselves from the mercilessness of this world.

But whether all of that would come true, or whether it would become nothing more than a dream we spoke of while fleeing down the road away from Jirenu Territory, depended entirely on what we did next.

“Ready?”

At Marks’s question, Kururu and I nodded without a word. Iiria, who had helped with my disguise with obvious delight, seemed to understand that smiling was part of her own duty as one who stood above others.

“The two of you can definitely do it.”

When I looked at Iiria, who had not said that Kururu alone could do it, she returned a bright smile.

“Let’s go.”

Kururu slapped my back with surprising force, and I passed through the door Marks had opened and stepped outside. In the town, where night had already deepened completely, one of Marks’s younger boys, one of the sharper ones, led the way. There was not a single light in the tangled alleys of the old quarter. Through that darkness, the boy, Kururu, and the rest of us walked without anyone saying a word.

Persuading the magic stone processors was not a matter of forcing things through with brute strength like we had with Eder, but a more delicate kind of negotiation. Originally, Kengo, the former consultant who should have been good at this sort of thing, had been the one meant to handle the persuasion, so what was this sudden work that had come up?

Kengo was a mine supervisor, so perhaps accidents involving people’s lives were not all that rare…

As I was thinking that, the boy walking ahead and Kururu both came to a stop, and I nearly ran into her.

“We’re here. That building there.”

When the boy pointed ahead from the alley, toward the far side of a larger street, I saw one house among a row of four-story wooden buildings with light spilling through the gaps in its wooden shutters.

“I’ll guide you back too, so I’ll stay here.”

“Use this to get yourself something to eat.”

Kururu took several copper coins from her pocket and pressed them into the boy’s hand.

The boy, whose face had been tense until then, instantly broke into a grin.

“Let’s go.”

Pulling her hood low again, Kururu crooked her index finger, signaling for me to follow.

Unlike the tavern district, once the sun went down, the artisan quarter and residential areas lost foot traffic almost immediately.

Keeping our footsteps as quiet as possible, we crossed the road and reached the building indicated to us, where I quickly knocked lightly on the door.

“Sorry to bother you so late.”

Then Kururu, who must have sensed movement on the other side of the door, nodded to me, so I continued.

“We are emissaries of Iiria Araratom-sama.”

At those words, the floorboards creaked from the other side of the door, as though whoever was there had been startled.

Soon the bar was lifted, and the door opened.

“You are Venner-sama, head of the Magic Stone Processors’ Guild, yes?”

His neatly trimmed mustache, potbelly, and crisply tailored clothes made him look more like an honest merchant than a craftsman. The status of magic stone processors was high, and the head of their guild would count as a notable figure in the town of Jirenu Territory, so he was probably indeed closer to a merchant than to a laborer sweating at the bench.

And indeed, both of his hands were darkened from touching coins so often, something visible even by the dim candlelight.

“You… people are…”

Venner looked from me to Kururu, dressed as the magician Dorasutel, and trailed off. He was not as frightened as Eder had been, but there was still a hint of fear in him, perhaps because as one of the town’s leading figures, he was conscious of how long he had continued to neglect Iiria.

Still, perhaps because he had been taken off guard, Venner had none of the dignity I had seen in him at the festival. He looked like nothing more than a tired middle-aged man.

“May we come inside?”

Venner turned to look into the room, toward the piles of coins and the scale on the table, and toward the thin man peering uncertainly at us from deeper inside the room, then faced us again.

“It’s a bit messy…”

“That’s fine. That is precisely what we’ve come about.”

Venner’s eyes widened, and then, as if resigning himself, he stepped aside and let Kururu and me inside.