Chapter 73

With the regime having only just changed hands, a lord going off on a trip abroad would, in a historical drama, unquestionably be a flag for a rebellion episode.

But Jirenu Territory had Kengo and Balan, and also Dodol and the others, who for all their faults were probably second to none in loyalty, and Marks and his gang to gather ominous information. On top of that, if they used the connections of the girls gathered at the convent, they could find out every last detail, right down to what people who would have gotten along well with Nodon had eaten the previous night.

Even if they grew nostalgic for the Nodon era and tried to rebel, their side held an overwhelming advantage.

“Leave things here to me without worry.”

When the gangway was laid to the ship dispatched from the church in the provincial capital, Roran, Kengo, who had come to see them off, flexed his arm and said that.

“Just do not eat all the dried dragon meat.”

Kururu, who oversaw the mansion kitchen, said that.

“I will buy lots of souvenirs.”

Iiria had been complaining that she did not want to go and that it was a pain, but once the day actually came, she had been smiling since morning, thoroughly in the mood for a trip.

“We will probably be back in about two weeks… I do not think it will take as long as a month. Please take care of things while we are gone.”

The one he said that to was Yoshu, the boy entrusted with acting as head of the company.

Ever since Nodon was driven out, Yoshu had supported the work constantly at his side, so although he was still just a boy who had not even grown a beard yet, he could entrust the company to him without worry.

“L-leave it to me!”

Though tense under the weight of the responsibility, Yoshu would likely manage well in cooperation with the other boys about his age, who, seeing Yoshu’s achievements, had all started learning to read and write.

And if Yoshu became able to run the company, then he himself would be able to undertake many more things together with Iiria and the others. This trip would be the perfect trial run.

To see off Gerario, who was traveling with them, it was not Balan and Tsatsaru who came, but a whole group of dancer-like girls, chattering noisily.

Perhaps Kururu looked a little displeased because she was jealous as his apprentice.

“Everyone, are you ready?”

The priest, judging that the round of farewells had concluded, called out to them.

On the church’s side, Clover would remain in the territory and handle both the church’s work and the work at that convent.

“Yes, Father. Well then, everyone, we are off.”

Iiria waved, then boarded the ship after the priest. Kururu, he, and Gerario followed, and once the sailors who had been bustling back and forth across the pier also boarded, the anchor was raised.

“Set sail!”

Someone shouted. It was slightly amusing that the method of handling a ship seemed to be the same whether it belonged to the church or a company.

“Lady Iiria, this way.”

Iiria was led by the priest and assigned the guest cabin at the stern of the deck.

They, on the other hand, were in the cargo-and-passenger space below deck.

Overhead, the sail bearing the church’s crest fluttered with imposing dignity.

In this world, it was the only power structure capable of standing up to imperial authority.

Apparently even pirates did not attack ships flying that flag, because the church existed everywhere in the world, and they knew it would hunt them to the ends of the earth.

By borrowing a portion of that authority, they had managed to connect the beastfolk livestock venture with the newly established convent and evade the butcher guild’s restrictions.

But no authority could possibly always remain pure, and of course he was aware that after this church ship had entered the harbor, wooden crates of unknown contents had been carried out with hardly any attempt to conceal them.

They were smuggling quite openly, and now that they too were considering smuggling magic stones, he found himself wondering whether they might somehow be able to hitch a ride on this secret network.

“So then, how many days was it to Roran?”

Below deck was packed with cargo, and the poor ventilation made it damp and clammy.

After everyone had ended up coming back up onto the main deck after setting down their luggage, Gerario said that.

“I heard we are not going straight to the provincial capital. We are making port at two places along the way and arriving the day after tomorrow.”

“So we are loading up a mountain of fishy-smelling priests along the way. Well, at least we should not run short on liquor.”

It was a rather dicey remark, but the deck was noisier than expected. Perhaps they thought ships meant scraps from the catch, because seabirds were crying out all around them, so it was unlikely anyone would overhear Gerario and take issue with it.

“By the way, Kururu-chan, would it not be better for you to stay with Iiria-chan?”

“Hm?”

“What if that priest gets her drinking and she ends up dead drunk?”

“…”

Kururu looked displeased, but she must have thought it plausible enough.

Iiria was not exactly a drunkard, but she did not seem to dislike alcohol either.

If the priest urged her to drink, she would have no reason to refuse.

“And staying on a ship with a hangover… that would be quite an experience.”

At Gerario’s meaningful smile, Kururu sighed and headed for the ship’s guest cabin.

“Gerario-san, are you used to ships too?”

After seeing Kururu off, he asked, and Gerario, who was chewing what was probably leftover bread from breakfast while tossing pieces to the seabirds circling around, looked at him.

“Not ships this leisurely. With ordinary soldiers, you get crammed in so tight you can hardly even lie down, and then you are hauled from one battlefield to the next whether you like it or not.”

It sounded like a slave ship, and just listening to Gerario’s war stories always made something strike him as strange.

“I heard magicians are treated like nobles.”

Gerario glanced at a seabird resting its wings on his shoulder, then laughed as if exasperated.

“No matter what sort of noble they are, there are always some who ruin themselves. It is the same thing.”

After taking one last big bite of bread, he tossed the rest into the sea, watched as a seabird neatly caught it, then said with a sigh,

“The so-called noble magicians would be court magicians, right? The kind retained by lords.”

Rumors had once spread that Dorasutel, the magician Kururu was impersonating, had once been a court magician.

“Those kinds of magicians… of course they have skill, but to do that job, you also have to be rotten by nature.”

“…Meaning?”

Gerario shrugged.

“Magic is convenient, and if you spend enough money, anyone can get a huge magic stone. Then lords, being idiots, start thinking they can conquer the world.”

At that, he could more or less see where the conversation was headed.

“To be a noble’s magician, you have to be able to unleash magic without batting an eye when a lord orders you to fire on commoners making perfectly legitimate complaints that taxes are too heavy.”

If that was the case, then people soft-hearted enough to travel in search of a safe place for a blind beastman so badly injured that he could not even walk on his own stood no chance of fitting into that role.

“Those who cannot use magic are little different from lowly beastfolk. A lot of the so-called proper magicians think like that. It is not much different whether it is the Empire’s Ministry of Magic or the church’s Ministry of Orthodoxy and Heresy. So the boys who come out of the countryside cannot stand that sort of elitism and run away… and then they get to enjoy the lively, delightful life of the battlefield.”

He almost asked whether Gerario too had originally been one of those, but then thought that whatever answer he received, it would not make for a happy story, and kept quiet.

“It would be nice if there were more champions of justice like Kururu-chan.”

“You too,”

He said aloud, at least that much.

At that, Gerario looked at him and gave him a smile that was embarrassed and awkward.

“I am nothing like that. Tsatsaru is being held hostage by you people. I am just pretending to be a good man.”

Even someone as dull as he was could tell that Gerario liked to act like a villain.

There were glimpses of an awkwardness that made it seem as though he was desperately trying to convince himself that he was not decent.

Gerario sighed, looked out at the sea, and said,

“To be blunt, the way you lot run this territory—Iiria-chan, Kururu-chan, and you too—is basically just children playing house.”

That was probably about what had happened when the dragon appeared.

Because of their poor initial response, they had allowed people to swarm the harbor and wiped out every last one of the ships, which should have been the one form of transport they absolutely could not afford to lose. On top of that, when the Bax Company ships came to the harbor, they had all panicked and rushed there, without ever considering the possibility of an enemy landing somewhere else. The list of failures was endless.

“But that very playing-house atmosphere is exactly what makes it perfect for retirement living.”

What sort of brutal battles had he lived through?

Gerario turned to look at him.

“I will handle the dirty work. Your little game of house is worth that much.”

“Gerario-san…”

Just as he was about to say that he could not let Gerario alone do something like that—

Gerario closed the distance like a martial arts master and thumped his large hand down on his shoulder.

“So make sure no weird insects latch onto Kururu-chan or Iiria-chan.”

“…Weird insects?”

Gerario’s eyes might have been the most serious he had ever seen them.

“It is already so precarious I can barely stand watching. I have seen off too many princesses used as pawns in political struggles. Them being invited by the Bax Company is absolutely about that kind of marriage business too.”

“What?”

“At my age, stories about young girls being married off against their will are just painful, so painful…”

Seeing Gerario on the verge of tears, he remembered that after the celebration following the dragon subjugation, Kururu had become the clinging drunk, but Gerario had been the crying drunk.

“So be careful in Roran. Be especially careful at the Bax Company. Got it?”

Gerario grabbed him firmly by both shoulders.

But he did not think it would come to that, at least after Carini’s visit.

Cole, the one who had seemed most dangerous, had become much more subdued once his superior appeared.

Still, Gerario surely knew more about the harshness of this world than he did, and before anything else, Iiria was not just a young and cute girl at a marriageable age—there was undeniably imperial high noble blood running through her body.

If so, then she certainly might be seen as a promising marriage prospect.

Thinking of it that way, he felt he could understand why Carini had suddenly come to the territory.

To seize Jirenu Territory, one did not need to resort only to battle.

“Ahh… for two girls that adorable to be nothing more than the lord of a weak little territory and her attendant, the gods really are cruel in how they arrange things.”

Iiria was smart, brave, and had a bit of a mischievous side too, making her more suited than anyone to being a lord.

But in truth, she was a pampered girl who really preferred to nap all day and make endless demands of Kururu.

Kururu, by contrast, behaved viciously on the surface, but inside she was far more of a maiden than Iiria.

For someone like Gerario, who had spent his life looking at the harsher side of the world, it probably really was painful to watch.

But while they were talking about that, something suddenly occurred to him.

If Carini was looking at Iiria as a candidate for a political marriage, then there was something he needed to consider.

“Do you happen to know who Iiria-san’s noble father is?”

If Iiria continued to distinguish herself as a lord, word would eventually reach her father, somewhere in the Empire.

Even if it was a frontier territory, he was someone powerful enough to casually bestow a landholding with a magic stone mine.

And if he was indeed a selfish father, then once Iiria had grown into a pretty young woman, he might come up with all sorts of awful ways to use her.

So he thought they needed to know who the enemy was.

“Was Iiria-chan’s family name Araratom?”

“Yes… it does have a slightly strange ring to it.”

There were patterns in beastfolk names—Kururu, Dodol, Gorgon—repeated sounds like that.

But Iiria did not have that pattern in her given name; instead, the sound appeared in her surname.

“Judging from the sound, that is her mother’s family name. Beastfolk with citizenship tend to prefer those sorts of surnames.”

“I see.”

“But it is also possible that it is the name Iiria-chan chose for herself.”

“Hm…?”

In sharp contrast to how he had been speaking of Iiria and Kururu like beloved nieces, Gerario now wore the face of a man on the battlefield.

“Normally, the most likely explanation is that Iiria-chan’s mother was a beastwoman without citizenship, and some great noble sampled her and threw her away.”

At Gerario’s gesture, like when he had tossed bread to the seabirds, the birds misread it and flocked closer.

“And on top of that, Iiria-chan and the others were passed around here and there for quite a while, right? A great noble fathering a child with a beastwoman would be a scandal, after all. But considering the effect on beastfolk society, they could not simply discard her either. At the same time, they could not stain the family name, so the truth is they probably schemed to make it impossible to tell whose child she was. During terrible campaigns, I used to see pitiable child lords like that every now and then, planted there to take the blame for a lost battle. Just because they had noble blood, they were made to sit on the defeated general’s throne.”

That illegitimate children could be used that way sent a chill through him.

Someone had to take responsibility for a losing war, but no one wanted to, so they made a child with an illustrious bloodline pay the price…

“In that sense, Iiria-chan and the others were lucky to have settled in Jirenu Territory. Or maybe it means her father cared for her at least a little.”

When he had first come to this world and begun taking over Nodon’s work, he had once gone to get Iiria’s approval for a magic stone transaction, and when Kururu scolded her to work, Iiria had said this:

There was no one left who would cry for the sake of the family name anymore.

Though he felt that the two of them trusted him, he had never heard the details of that side of things from them, and it had never seemed like something he ought to ask about either.

Still, as they worked to stabilize Jirenu Territory, he had the sense that in the end, that would be the thing they most needed to be wary of.

He asked Gerario,

“Should I… confirm it with Iiria-san?”

Rather than waiting for her to tell him herself.

Gerario made an unhappy face and rummaged in his breast pocket.

He realized Gerario had been searching for tobacco.

“Do not spring difficult questions like that on an old man.”

It looked as though he was grimacing at the sea breeze, but also as though he was genuinely struggling with a topic he disliked.

Also, Gerario was probably around the same age as he was, but he kept that to himself.

“Those girls do not seem very good at relying on anyone…”

Gerario said that tiredly.

Even in the matter of the girls mistreated by Nodon and the others—Nodon’s parting poison—Iiria had not told him anything until the frills issue forced her hand.

“Well, people change when the setting changes. Funny thing for me to say on my way back from the mines.”

Gerario gave a dry laugh and continued.

“They say travel makes people more open. If all you do is gently probe a bit during this trip to Roran, maybe you can avoid hurting her.”

When he said that, the hand he placed on his shoulder was much gentler than before.

“But do not shove anything too big in all at once, or it will tear!”

The way he roared with laughter after saying that made him the worst kind of middle-aged man, but he understood that it was Gerario’s way of hiding his embarrassment.

He was also teaching Kururu very earnestly how to use magic, and he came by the workshop often too.

Originally, the agreement had been that in exchange for a pension he would receive even if he did nothing, he would slay the dragon.

Gerario was, contrary to appearances, a good person.

So much so that he probably could not fit into the harshly elitist world of proper magicians.

“Still… I am bored.”

“I am not drinking.”

“You need something to ward off seasickness!”

He knew the theory that you could blunt seasickness with alcohol was nonsense. He had once traveled to Ogasawara in college and gone through hell on the ship.

The sea was not rough yet, but the opposite shore was only just visible on the horizon, so once they went farther offshore, the ship would probably pitch a fair amount.

“Drinking alone is so lonely it makes me want to cry. Come on!”

Gerario dragged him off in something like a headlock.

It was oppressively overfamiliar, but as long as he had alcohol in hand, Gerario was satisfied even if he did not drink, so he just went through the motions.

And then Kururu, coming out onto the deck with Iiria, caught them there and shot them a cold look, as if to say, We are not drinking.