Chapter 3: Rimee Ruu’s Birthday Party
1
It was now the sixth of the yellow month, the day after Cheem and Ia Fou Sudra’s wedding.
We had the day off from business, but Ai Fa and I headed into the post town in the morning anyway alongside a few members of the Ruu clan. Our objective was to observe the meat market that opened at the upper fourth hour. Yesterday we had celebrated a wedding and tonight we were celebrating Rimee Ruu’s birthday. It was quite the hectic schedule, but if we were to skip going to town today, we would have to wait six more days for our next day off. As such, we had decided that we needed to make the time to check out the market regardless.
The members of the Ruu clan with us included Reina, Rimee, and Ludo Ruu. Rimee Ruu seemed to be in an especially good mood, understandably so, considering that she was getting to spend time with Ai Fa in the morning, and had a party to look forward to in the evening.
I was the one holding Gilulu’s reins as we headed to our first stop: The Kimyuus’s Tail. We were going to have Telia Mas accompany us to the meat market as our guide. When we arrived at the inn and opened the door, we found the young woman seated there at the reception desk.
She greeted us with a smile. “Good morning. Dad! The people from the forest’s edge are here, so I’ll be heading out!”
In response to her report, shouted in the direction of their kitchen, all we heard back was a gruff “Got it,” and that was it. We didn’t even get to see Milano Mas’s face.
“The workstation in the kitchen is slanted, so my dad’s repairing it, even though I imagine it’d be quicker to just buy a new one.”
“Well, it’s good to value your possessions,” I said.
As we were talking with the earnest and goodhearted Telia Mas, we headed around to the storehouse in the back, where we would leave Gilulu and the wagon in their care.
With that done, Telia Mas retrieved a hand-drawn cart that we would be taking with us. It was a rather simple one, with only two wheels supporting the load-carrying tray, and looked to be around a hundred centimeters long and sixty wide. Its handle was attached to what seemed to be the front.
“We buy enough meat for several days at once, which makes for a fairly heavy load. That’s why most people use carts like this.”
“Do you want to borrow our wagon, then? Wouldn’t it be easier to have a totos pull it?”
“No, the market is crowded, so it would just cause trouble if people were to bring totos-drawn wagons there. They’d probably have a hard time moving around too.”
After that, we headed straight to where the market was set up.
We normally started doing business at the upper sixth hour, and it was currently over two hours earlier than that. By my reckoning, the time was roughly equivalent to a little before nine in the morning. There weren’t many people walking around in traveling clothes yet; most of the people who were out and about looked like they were residents of Genos.
“It won’t just be people from inns at the meat market, but members of ordinary households too, right?” I asked.
“That’s correct. You can buy small amounts of kimyuus meat from various sellers down this street, but for karon meat, everyone has to go to the market. It’s forbidden to resell meat, you see,” Telia Mas said.
“It is? Why’s that?”
“You’ve heard that the price of meat changes depending on whether you buy in bulk or only get a little, right? So if a group of neighbors were to place a large order together, they could get it very cheaply. In order to prevent that sort of thing, buying lots of meat for other houses is outlawed.”
“Ah, I see. That’s awfully strict of them, to have actually made a law against it.”
“True. The punishment for trying to turn a profit through resale is supposedly pretty harsh too. After all, that would be a case of people stealing the profits that were supposed to go to the meat merchants. But as long as they don’t buy enough to change the price, neighbors can still ask one another to pick some up when they’re out running errands.”
Meat prices were strictly regulated in Genos. Also, if too many kimyuus were raised, it would cause the price of their meat to crash, so that was carefully controlled as well. Since we were getting involved in such a delicate market, it was no surprise that the nobles would place all sorts of conditions and restrictions upon us.
Still, in Dabagg, nobody seemed all that worried about the possibility of us selling giba meat at Zasshuma’s farm.
That led me to suspect that those regulations were more of a concern for the squabbling nobles in the castle town than they were for merchants. However, we still had no choice but to follow the nobles’ laws when doing business.
“We’ll be taking a left turn onto that street there. See how most of these people are all heading in that direction?”
Just as Telia Mas had said, the majority of the people walking along the main north-south street we were on were heading toward a T-shaped intersection where another road extended off to the west. It was a wide road with a cobblestone surface, but I had never gone down that way, as I’d never had business there before.
“There’s a medium-sized plaza up ahead. Whenever the folks from the castle town announce new edicts, that’s the spot they always use to do it. It’s forbidden to set up any sort of stall there aside from ones involved in the meat market.”
When he heard that, Ludo Ruu said from the rear of our group, “Ah, now I recognize this street. I think I remember the plaza you’re talking about. So they sell meat there, huh?”
“Oh? You’ve been there, Ludo Ruu? That’s a bit of a surprise,” I said.
“It was a good while back. When that noble girl kidnapped you, Asuta, I was assigned to search this area.”
“Ah, I see... Sorry for asking.”
“Why? It’s our fault that you got kidnapped. You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”
Even so, I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed about having reminded everyone of that incident.
“That caused quite a stir in town,” Telia Mas chimed in with a smile, as if trying to smooth things over. Thankfully, that was around when our destination finally came into view, as she was quick to point out. “Ah, that’s the place. We’re still a bit early, so there don’t seem to be that many people here yet.”
Despite what she had said, the plaza seemed rather crowded to me. There had to be over a hundred people in the space ahead of us, and they were packed densely enough that I couldn’t see through them to where the meat was being sold. It looked like everyone who managed to escape the congestion was either pulling a cart or carrying a leather bag.
“First up is the karon meat. Be careful not to get separated, okay?” And with that, Telia Mas plunged into the crowd without the slightest hesitation, and we all followed close behind her.
“Hey Rimee, make sure you don’t get trampled, okay you little runt?” Ludo Ruu warned.
“I’ll be fine. Except I can’t see anything...”
After thinking for a moment, Ludo Ruu grabbed his little sister and placed her up on his shoulders, making her excitedly exclaim, “Yay!”
I glanced over at them and the adorable sight they made, but then I felt someone’s pointed gaze on my cheek, and when I turned to look, I found that Ai Fa was staring at me.
“Uh, I’m fine. I can see okay on my own.”
“Understood,” Ai Fa replied, turning to look straight ahead once again. As a hunter of the forest’s edge, she could probably lift me up without any trouble, but I wasn’t so childish that I would find that kind of thing enjoyable.
At any rate, we finally managed to make it to the spot where the meat was actually being sold. All the way in the back of the plaza, there were a number of boxy wagons lined up along the wall. Piles of wooden crates were stacked up next to them, with more being unloaded from the wagons all the time. The meat sellers were clearly working hard.
There were also totos standing there absentmindedly between the wagons. The merchants must have led them here before the streets got crowded. Certainly, the crates all looked so big enough that they’d be very hard to move with just a hand-drawn cart.
“Excuse me, I’d like to buy karon leg meat,” Telia Mas called out loudly enough to not be drowned out by the surrounding crowd.
A short and stout merchant casually smiled at her and replied, “Ah, the girl from the Tail, eh? How much do you want today?”
“Three boxes worth, please.”
“Gotcha. That’ll be twenty-one white coins.”
That was quite a high price, but the boxes she was buying were also rather large. Each one looked to be packed with around fifteen kilos of meat, and the salt to preserve it must have been included in the cost. After paying, Telia Mas lifted the boxes onto her cart, showing surprising strength, and then she did a smooth U-turn and exited the crowd.
“That’s all there is to buying meat. Was it helpful?” she asked.
“Yeah, of course. So, are you getting kimyuus meat next?”
“Yes. That’s sold over on the left side. I always buy it from around the end of the line of sellers, though.”
Telia Mas then pulled her cart to the spot she had indicated. There, a large woman was loudly interacting with her customers.
Karon sellers came from the neighboring territory of Dabagg, but the kimyuus sellers lived in the Daleim lands. Apparently, in most cases, farmers considered raising kimyuus to be something of a side business. And they weren’t just selling meat packed into boxes, but eggs as well. That was an ingredient that businesses didn’t use too much. Instead, they usually went to individual buyers for their own personal use.
“Welcome. How much do you want?”
“Four boxes, please. And fifty eggs as well.”
“Fifty eggs? Ah, you’re the girl from the Mas house, aren’t you? Thanks for the business, as always.” Some of the recipes I had taught the folks at The Kimyuus’s Tail used eggs, so they needed a fair number of them. The seller loaded the eggs into a woven basket that Telia Mas was holding out, then bound it shut with vines. “There you go. Take care not to crack them, okay?”
“Yes, thank you.”
After placing the basket between the wooden boxes, Telia Mas swiftly pulled away from the crowd again. Then, in a spot a short distance removed from the worst of the throng, she used some straw ropes to fix the boxes in place so that the eggs would be properly protected.
“That’s everything. Simple, right?”
“Yeah. But there are some people who buy small amounts rather than whole boxes, aren’t there?”
“Yes. You have to buy at least three boxes to get the cheaper price, but many inns will buy three and a half or four and a half boxes. And ordinary townsfolk will make small purchases like two karon legs or three kimyuus wings.”
“Hmm, I see... What do you think, Reina Ruu?”
“I imagine that most of us would be able to handle selling full or half boxes...but smaller amounts than that could prove to be a bit of a problem,” Reina Ruu said, bringing a finger up to her mouth in a rather cute thinking pose.
Telia Mas tilted her head in confusion. “What’s so difficult about it? The prices are fixed, so all you would have to do is hand over the amount people ask for, right?”
“The people of the forest’s edge aren’t accustomed to doing that kind of calculation. And the price of giba meat changes based on the cut, so at the bare minimum, they’d have to remember the prices for four different varieties: chest, back, shoulder, and leg meat.”
The people of the forest’s edge most certainly weren’t slow-witted or anything. They didn’t find doing business at the stalls to be particularly hard, for example. But it would be rather difficult to memorize and calculate the prices for four different cuts of meat like that. And with this many customers crowding around, it could easily get overwhelming.
“Then why not just refuse to sell in small amounts? I can’t imagine anyone from the inns would want to purchase a portion smaller than half a box,” Telia Mas suggested.
“But then ordinary citizens wouldn’t be able to buy any. I don’t know how many would want to, but I’d hate to simply deny them the opportunity,” Reina Ruu explained.
It was a problem that probably wouldn’t have occurred to us if we hadn’t come here to see the market with our own eyes. Reina Ruu and I had to take a moment to ponder the issue.
“I’m pretty sure the others would be able to master calculating the prices once they get a little experience with it,” I said. “It would be best if I could always go with whoever we send, at least initially...but if I did that, I wouldn’t be able to help out with morning prep at all.”
“I suspect we’d have more issues if you could no longer help out in the mornings, and besides, that’s an awful lot of extra work for you to take on, Asuta. It would be rather difficult to return to the forest’s edge after selling meat and then come back to the post town in order to run the stalls,” Reina Ruu noted.
“In that case, we’ll have to rely on Tsuvai Rutim.”
“Yes, you’re probably right. I imagine she would be able to handle the work without any issue. We would simply have to remove her from stall and prep duty on the days when she would be coming to town to sell meat.”
There was another issue, though. We were hoping to have the smaller clans handle business with the meat market. We hadn’t decided which ones we would ask yet, but the candidates included the Fou, the Gaaz, the Ratsu, and the clans under the Dai. Would Tsuvai Rutim be able to interact with them okay all on her own? I couldn’t help but feel a bit concerned about that.
“It wouldn’t be any issue if we could leave everything up to the Rutim, but we can’t do that, can we?” I said.
“It wouldn’t be an issue in terms of workload or burden, but my father Donda and mother Mia Lea believe we need to let the other clans play a role wherever we can.”
That had consistently been the stance that the Ruu clan had taken, based on their desire to avoid hoarding too much of the money we were making. Also, they wanted to broaden the viewpoints of the other clans. I was definitely in support of both of those goals, so we needed to solve this issue in a way that would be consistent with those two aims.
“Well, it’s not something we need to figure out on our own. We should discuss it with Donda Ruu and Gazraan Rutim, as well as the members of the smaller clans, and of course Tsuvai Rutim herself.”
“I agree,” Reina Ruu replied with a nod.
Just then, Rimee Ruu seemed to spot someone from atop her brother’s shoulders. “Ah! Hey, over here!” she excitedly called out, waving her hand. I figured she had probably seen the members of Dora’s house, or someone like that, and turned in the direction she was looking in, only to be left at a loss for words, because the person I saw there was an exceptionally burly middle-aged woman we had recently become acquainted with.
“L-Lema Geit? I didn’t expect to run into you here.”
The man accompanying her was pulling a cart, while she herself shot us one hell of a frown as she glared our way. Looking at her now in the light of day, she had even more presence about her than I had sensed before. Though she was only around 160 centimeters tall or so, she looked like she probably outweighed me.
“Oh, it’s you lot. Are you selling giba meat already?”
“No, today we’re just here for a preliminary inspection. We haven’t gotten permission from the castle town to go ahead with our plans yet.”
“Hmph. I’m sure the nobles give you their approval for whatever you want to do without even thinking about it,” Lema Geit grumbled, already moving away from us.
But then, Rimee Ruu called out from her perch, “Hey, have you managed to make any delicious sweets yet? Are you going to sell them at your inn too?”
Lema Geit came to a stop, her brow furrowing even more. “It’s none of your business! Regardless of what I sell or don’t, it’s got nothing to do with you.”
“But sweets can be pretty tricky to make, can’t they? It wasn’t too bad for me, since Asuta taught me all sorts of stuff, but I’m sure I never would have managed it on my own!”
Lema Geit roughly tousled her curly dark brown hair.
At that point, I went ahead and chimed in too. “Are you having some sort of trouble? You don’t exactly have any examples to work from, so I’d imagine it must be proving difficult to get it right.”
We had given out the basic recipe for pancakes and chatchi mochi back at the meeting, but afterward, even Milano Mas and Naudis had found them pretty tricky to make.
“It can definitely be difficult to get the correct proportions when it comes to sweets. I thought I could at least manage to follow your pancake recipe, but when I tried it, they came out too sweet and their taste seemed a little off...so I’ve been having a bit of trouble with them myself,” Telia Mas commented.
If even she was having difficulty after she had tried our desserts at several banquets, the others were undoubtedly going to find it even tougher.
“And they feel kind of lacking somehow if they’re only sweet,” she continued. “Should I try using some of the more unusual ingredients that you guys do, like gigi leaves?”
“No, gigi leaves are very difficult to use. But you could try making stuff like jam out of fruit, or cream out of karon milk.”
“By fruit, do you mean things like ramam, arow, and sheel?”
“Yes. Arow and sheel are sour, but if you boil them in sugar water, or even just steep them in it, they can be used as ingredients in desserts. Why don’t you try that out too, Lema Geit?”
“Hmph!” the inn owner snorted, turning away. But since she didn’t leave, she must have had some interest in the topic.
As for the man pulling her cart, he’d been sending some rather uneasy glances at Ai Fa and Ludo Ruu for a while now.
“It seems we didn’t explain things well enough on the night of the meeting. Maybe we should borrow the kitchen at Tanto’s Blessing sometime in the near future to hold a study session centered on desserts. Yang’s been giving lessons there on how to work with new ingredients for a while now, hasn’t he?”
“Hmph! Why should I have to beg you to teach me?!”
“Well, it would be Yang’s job to lead the lesson. We’d simply help out however we could, without getting in his way.”
Lema Geit looked us over with an appraising eye for a long moment without saying anything.
Then Rimee Ruu smiled earnestly at the grumpy woman, with her hands atop her older brother’s head. “If you make tasty sweets, I’d love to try them! I’m looking forward to it!”
“Hmph!” Lema Geit snorted one last time before finally stomping off.
As her burly figure vanished into the crowd, Ludo Ruu called up to his sister, “Hey, why are you bothering with that woman? What good does it do to go out of your way to mess with someone who hates us?”
“That’s not what I was doing at all! I just wanna get along with everyone! Besides, I’m sure she’s not a bad person!”
“It’s not like I think everyone who doesn’t like us is bad. But you shouldn’t go around poking your nose into trouble like that.”
“Eh? Mama Mia Lea is always saying you won’t grow up into a fine person if you always pick the easy path, right?”
“Don’t be so cheeky,” Ludo Ruu replied, and then he suddenly started jumping in place.
Rimee Ruu squealed with joy, clinging tightly to her brother’s head. Her birthday was getting off to a wonderful start.
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