Chapter 64

Perhaps because I had grown completely used to Iiria’s mansion as well, I noticed an unfamiliar smell the moment I stepped in through the entrance.

More precisely, it was the cosmetic smell of face powder.

It was different from the scent of Iiria and Kururu, an artificial sweet smell.

“Yorinobu.”

Iiria, who was sitting in a chair in the courtyard with her cheek propped on one hand at a desk covered in documents and wearing a gloomy expression, looked over at me.

“How do you think we should squeeze the tailors?”

“Did something… happen?”

It seemed they were monopolizing the business after frills had become all the rage, but why that would make Iiria want to squeeze them was beyond me.

“They’ve been spreading the word that the right to sell frills belongs to the tailors, and they’re monopolizing the sale of paste along with them. Thanks to that, they’re making a fortune. Well, I suppose that part doesn’t matter, since we can bleed them through taxes.”

As the unfamiliar cosmetic smell faded, the smell of bread baking drifted in from the kitchen.

Apparently Kururu was making a meal.

“When you say squeeze them, do you mean by some means other than taxation?”

I did not know what she was planning, and as ever, I still did not understand the reason for her anger.

“They’re using that privilege as a shield and choosing who they’ll sell frills and paste to. Because of that, there are people suffering.”

I had been looking away, wondering what today’s meal might be, but at those words my eyes turned to Iiria.

“Suffering…?”

Frills were merely ornaments.

And so far, at least, I had not heard any talk about wheat vanishing from town because too much paste was being made.

At that, Iiria twisted her lips and sighed, then beckoned me over.

When I went closer and leaned in, she said this with a deeply unpleasant expression.

“It’s that bastard Nodon’s parting gift.”

“…”

I sensed at once that this was not going to be a pleasant conversation, but what Iiria said next made me realize I had underestimated how harsh this world could be.

“Do you know what happened to the girls that man laid his hands on after he got tired of them and threw them away?”

Nodon had been a tyrant steeped in lust.

Apparently in the courtyard that had now become the magic stone workshop, drunken orgies had been held every day.

And yes, that was right. I had forgotten about that.

The craftsmen and merchants who had been saddled with debt by Nodon and forced into unfair dealings had all come the moment he was gone to make their various appeals.

But people of that sort had never shown their faces.

In other words, the girls who had fallen prey to Nodon.

Only then did the powdery smell from earlier and the unfamiliar girls coming and going from the mansion finally connect in my mind.

“Not just girls from the orphanage with no family to rely on, but lots of girls who were born into ordinary craftsmen’s families and ended up with no choice but to sink low because Nodon got his hands on them.”

“…”

“Girls like that had no choice but to work in the back alleys once Nodon lost interest in them or threw them away. The most miserable ones were the daughters of townspeople and craftsmen. Since they had lost their honor, they could no longer remain in respectable households and were cast out of their family homes.”

Honor again.

It was tiresome, but this world was roughly equivalent to either the Middle Ages or just entering the early modern period of my old world.

It was a patriarchal, male-dominated world, with especially troublesome notions of honor spread through it like a spiderweb.

“Of course, Marks told me that girls like that have a hard life. And then, on top of that, once Nodon was driven out, other rotten bastards also cleaned up their behavior a little, which just made things even worse.”

“Huh?”

Worse because they cleaned up their behavior?

“Because the occasions for banquets decreased, and the number of men spending money on girls dropped sharply. So I had been quietly sharing food and other things with them…”

That must have shown on my face, how surprised I was to hear that.

Iiria looked at me with an expression that was pained, no, more like slightly exasperated.

“The reason I didn’t tell you was because I knew you’d make that face. Even though it wasn’t your fault.”

Apparently, Iiria was trying to spare my feelings.

“And I didn’t know any fundamental solution either. I kept thinking, maybe someday a mountain of tax revenue will come in, but…”

I had felt for some time that what held Iiria back from being lord was that she was too kindhearted.

She was clever, and sometimes even capable of being cunning, so she seemed able to handle anything neatly, but that did not mean she lacked compassion.

“Anyway, it seems those girls, who were already living right on the edge, are in serious trouble now because of the frills.”

I understood the plight of those unfortunate girls, but I still could not connect it to the frills, and Iiria responded by knitting her brows plainly.

“I’m telling you, it’s because of the tailors. Those people are trying to give frills and paste a sense of prestige so they can sell them for as much as possible. In other words, they won’t sell them to women without honor.”

“Ah…”

The frills had suddenly become fashionable as ornaments. If they wanted to sell them at high prices to wealthy women, they had to preserve the status of the product.

Meanwhile, the girls who had gone into work where they had to compete on appearance would be out of business if they did not wear the fashionable frills.

Only then did I finally understand the strange story the priest had told me.

“Then is it true, what I heard about scraps costing more than proper cloth?”

At that question, Iiria nodded with a look of deep disgust.

The fact that I, the head of the company, had not known, while Iiria did, showed just how dark the underside of this story was.

“Say there’s a piece of cloth that costs five silver coins, right? They cut it into ten pieces and sell each scrap for one silver coin. That makes total sales of ten silver coins.”

In other words, selling it in pieces doubled the price.

“Poor girls can’t pay five silver coins, but they can pay one, so it seems they buy the scraps even knowing they’re outrageously overpriced. The paste is the same. Bad sorts who got wind of the girls without honor are buying paste and cloth from the tailors at the regular price and reselling them. For all I know—”

“For all we know, the tailors are helping arrange it and taking a cut.”

When I cut in with that, Iiria shrugged in displeasure.

“It sounds like some of the girls don’t even have cash, so they’re turning the wheat they need to eat into paste and tearing up the little bedding they have left to make frills.”

Something done with the best intentions brought about a result no one had foreseen.

There was such a thing as chaos theory, and I felt I was seeing its meaning laid bare before me.

“The girls had come just before you got here to petition about that. So would it be all right if I forced the tailors not to choose who they sell to?”

Iiria was the lord and could exercise coercive authority.

I was about to agree, but instead I let out a groan.

“…Wouldn’t… that look bad?”

There was no better way to put it, so that was what I said.

If Iiria issued an order to the tailors, they would have no choice but to obey.

But from the outside, it might look as though Lord Iiria were encouraging prostitutes to dress themselves up.

Even if it was true that there were girls whose lives had been ruined by men like Nodon, was it really the right conduct for a ruler to interfere in the sale of frills for the sake of their somewhat dubious trade?

If that was the case, banning the sale of frills altogether almost seemed preferable.

But then again, would that not cause another problem in turn?

Maybe not to the point of involving mafias like Prohibition, but sumptuary laws had mostly either failed in every age or brought about fierce public resentment.

“Yorinobu… what should I do?”

Iiria seemed spoiled by Kururu and looked lazy on the surface, but in truth she had a strong core and an air about her that kept people at a distance deep down.

And yet that Iiria was relying on me this openly.

I wanted to help, and as the one who had taken over Nodon’s company, I also felt I had to bear responsibility for cleaning up what had come after.

Even if Iiria told me it was not my fault.

“…I’ll do something about it.”

Careless promises might damage one’s credibility, but even so, there was nothing else I could say.

And it occurred to me that not long ago I had said something similar in front of Dodol and had not seemed especially trustworthy then, either.

And that time too, it had involved the question of whether humans would eat meat prepared by beastfolk, another issue shadowed by rank and ideas of honor.

Problems kept pouring in faster than I could solve them.

Making a leisurely game while running a magic stone business… that still seemed to be an ideal land very far away.