Chapter 87:
Journey Through the Empire
“Rolling out, right on schedule! Into the ‘Empire’…”
Everyone utterly ignored Mile’s cry.
And so the caravan set out from the inn…
On an escort job such as this, it was typical for the employers to take care of arranging the water, snacks for break time, and general meals. If the guards had to carry their own food and cookware, that would be excess luggage, on top of which it would be a pain to cook separately every time. Most importantly, disparities in meals could be a major source of unrest.
In military units, both the lower and higher-ranking soldiers all ate the same food for this same reason. It would be bad for morale otherwise. Such things were typically even specified in the job contract.
“Soup’s on!”
Yet for some reason, Mile had been pulling her own cookware and ingredients from her “storage” and cooking for the group as she always did.
She was doing this neither out of consideration for the merchants, nor as some special service, but instead because the other members of the Crimson Vow were already threatening to bite her head off at the thought of having to eat garbage travel food…on their very first night camping.
Normally, at least for the first few days of the journey, they would have fresh food to eat, after which, it was time for the non-perishables to make their debut—except when the party was able to hunt small animals or find edible wild plants. Furthermore, this caravan would be traveling along the main highway, without detours, always staying in inns when they reached town and never having to go more than two or three days camping without fresh supplies. They weren’t hurting for money, so they would never run out of food and would be able to enjoy a relatively proper meal at the end of every day…at least according to any normal standard.
But of course, this group was not normal.
Most normal caravans were composed of merchants who were accustomed to life on the road—which meant they were capable of at least basic cooking. It would not be unusual for some among them to even be able to cook more elaborate dishes or come up with recipes of their own. True, drivers did not typically cook, as it was mainly the merchants who did the cooking, but still, it usually followed that for the first couple days out of town, all members of a traveling party would have proper food. Surely, this should be the case here as well.
Moreover, it simply looked bad to have Mile cook food for the entire group at every meal. Even setting aside the burden it put on her, there was no need to do such a thing under the terms of their contract, which stipulated that, as usual, it was the employers who should be in charge of providing food. The Crimson Vow had agreed to this at their pre-job meeting. However…
On the very first day of their journey, they had been greeted by the Holy Trinity of third-rate travel meals: hardtack, jerky, and soup base with bits of crappy vegetables in it. The soup, furthermore, was lukewarm and bland, accompanied with nothing but slivers of dried fruit.
The fact that they had been served this on their very first day meant that they could expect the same every time they camped, from here on out, until the end of their journey.
Honestly, what had they been expecting from a group of emaciated scholars, really? They should have predicted this from the start. And yet…
“ What the heck is this?!?! ”
“Quit messin’ with us!”
“Is this some kind of joke?!”
“Are you really sure about this…?”
There was a chorus of protests.
It was not only Reina who complained but Pauline as well. Even the typically mild-mannered Mavis had veins bulging in her forehead as she fought desperately to keep her cool. Mile was the only one who seemed to remain fully calm.
After all, Mile could always produce food from her inventory in a pinch and cook it up in a snap with her own heating magic. Given that she could just eat whatever she liked, whenever she liked, it did not really matter to her what the merchants put in front of them. Furthermore, since her previous life as Misato, Mile had never been especially picky about food.
Of course, she could discern good-tasting food from bad, and she would never pass up a delicious meal. And, in the areas where she was picky, she was very picky. However, for every time that Misato enjoyed the taste of a high-class meal, or experienced joy of encountering some exquisite morsel, she had equally appreciated the finer points of instant ramen. Indeed, she was not the sort who would flip over the dinner table at the sight of some subpar cooking. Whether gourmet or cheap fare, a delicious meal or an only okay one, she could appreciate any culinary offering. As such, Mile did not appear particularly concerned about their situation. However, she was clearly the only one.
“Mile! Next time, you’re doing the cooking!”
“Huh? But we already agreed that—”
“Next. Time. You’re. Do. Ing. The. Cook. Ing!”
“Uh? But I thought we all decided… Eek ! ”
Mile let out a shriek as she noticed the suddenly murderous gaze of Pauline and Mavis upon her.
Thus, it was decided that for the rest of the journey, whenever they were on the road, Mile would be in charge of preparing the meals, snacks, and drinks. Pauline helped out, of course, and even Reina pitched in by boiling the water with her fireballs. Mavis was in charge of chopping any vegetables and trimming any meat.
In the end, mealtime went exactly as it always did…
Once humans get a taste of luxury, they are not wont to give it up. That was just the way of things.
“Reina, weren’t you the one who was saying we should try and get used to life without Mile?” asked Mavis, looking a bit guilty.
Reina’s reply was calm. “Well, it’s like Mile says, isn’t it? ‘That’s then, and this is now…’”
There was no hope. None whatsoever.
Steadily, the caravan approached the capital, repeating their performance from the first town at each stop along the way. As time passed, the merchants’ stock grew quite diminished, and again and again they ended up having to purchase a portion of the goods that the Crimson Vow had stocked up on back in Tils…at an inflated price, of course.
It was not as though they had only purchased cheap foodstuffs. They had also prepared some classier items to sell to the wealthy citizens of the imperial capital and other large cities, along with more items that they could pawn off on the merchants at a premium.
Indeed, they had predicted that the merchants’ stock would end up running so low that it would look unnatural for them to keep selling…or at least Pauline and Reina had.
“Gates of Babylon…”
Anything was possible with their near-infinite “warehouse”…
***
“So here we are now, in a large town near the capital!”
“Why are you telling us this? We’re all aware!”
Mile often felt as though she should make some announcement upon arriving in a town. It was the same as when she would declare, “We’re home!”—a statement of fact to acknowledge their progress.
“We’ve done a fairly thorough survey of the rumors in the surrounding rural settlements and the attitudes of the people who live there. We’ve heard a lot about what sorts of compulsory service local lords have instituted, and current and future conscription plans… This only covers one part of the lands outside the capital, but it’s not bad as a general survey—and it does make sense to focus on the region between the capital and our Tils.
“Next, we’ll be doing an inquiry into the major cities around the capital. Unlike those little country towns, there will be nobles and authorities there with much sharper eyes, and there’s a far greater danger of encountering spies. We should be fine, since we’re just some normal traveling merchants, but it’ll probably prove dangerous for us to ask about any political or economic or military affairs directly. Everyone, be careful not to say anything imprudent,” the merchant leader warned the Crimson Vow.
This was common sense of course, but a reminder never hurt.
“Understood,” said Reina, nodding in unison with the others.
The Crimson Vow were not involved with the information gathering in the first place, but when young girls were making the sales, customers often tended to start talking of their own accord, which meant they would often end up unintentionally collecting a fair bit of information. And of course, anything good that they heard, they would report to the merchants later.
It was time for round two of the great espionage affair to begin.
***
“Huh…?”
They had set up shop in a large town near the capital.
As usual, they pulled up into the town square, and the Crimson Vow arranged their open-air stall while the merchants readied their wagons. Yet this time, the merchants were stunned to see that the Crimson Vow’s stock had changed dramatically, almost before their eyes.
Up until now, the girls had been selling chiefly cheap, or low-quality foodstuffs, but now they were displaying luxury items and more high-quality goods. They had previously shared some stock with the merchants—at a decent mark-up—but these were even more expensive items, different from those.
Naturally, they were not marketing their wares only towards nobles and the wealthy; on the contrary, they still had many items to cater to the common citizen, but even those would count as luxury items for people of modest means.
“It’s normal to change the variety and pricing of your stock based on location and clientele, isn’t it? There’s a big difference between selling to people in the countryside and people in big cities,” said Pauline. Reina nodded.
It was normal for Pauline to think like a merchant, but even Reina seemed particularly interested in all this lately, too. She was probably recalling her time traveling with her father.
The information they had gathered up until now was really only as rigorous in quality as the results of a questionnaire—vague and uncertain rumors that had filtered in from larger settlements near the capital, and the opinions of rural citizens, who knew little of centralized affairs or politics. This was nothing compared to the freshness and accuracy of the rumors they could gather here, in a metropolis so close to the capital, where there were those who had actually been to the capital, had friends or family who worked there, or might even have lived there themselves. They would not be dealing in vague rumors, but tales of concrete, lived experiences, pertaining to specific incidents.
Indeed, this town would serve as a crucial source of information—and confirm for them what sort of intelligence they could hope to gather in the capital proper.
“Let another fierce battle begin!” said Pauline, as usual.
“You’re awfully fired up…” said Mavis with a grimace.
Mile, meanwhile, beamed to hear the two playing out one of the set exchanges from her fairy tales.
Perfect! I’m getting through to them. I’m cultivating the soil to plant the seeds of my future jokes throughout the whole world!
Her ambitions were boundless.
Little did she realize that it would be more of an uphill struggle than even world domination.
***
“Imperial capital, I’m home!” said Mile, predictably.
“But you’ve never been here before…” Reina interjected, in an equally typical fashion.
So far, the group had only been gathering information from the area surrounding the capital, but it was not as though they intended to do avoid the capital itself. In fact, their previous stops had all been en route to the capital, which was their true destination from the start.
It stood to reason that gathering information at the heart of the Empire would be most fruitful in terms of quantity, relevance, and accuracy…as well as how freely people might speak. And so, they had planned their route to lead to the capital.
The countryside was fairly insular, and the people who lived there tended to be guarded around outsiders. On the other hand, city dwellers were not excessively guarded, even with people they were not acquainted with. You might expect the opposite on the logic that city dwellers tended to have more distant relationships with their neighbors compared to countryfolk, but as long as you were a little friendly, the citizens of the capital tended to warm up to strangers qiuckly.
In her previous life, Mile had not coped especially well with the sort of people who would come barging into your private life merely because they lived close by, when you had nothing in common and nothing to talk about. She disliked gossips, who exaggerated and spread all kinds of rumors. Moreover, she could not understand the philosophies of countryfolk claimed that, “It’s foolish to lock your front doors when you go out—that’s as good as saying you don’t trust your neighbors!”
During her time as Misato, she had thought that all this was just silly. However, in her current life, Mile did not mind interacting with the simple rural folk of this world.
Still, the fact remained that she meshed far more easily with city dwellers.
At any rate, the Crimson Vow had arrived in the capital.
Because they were in the Empire, this was the imperial capital. There were no opera companies or combat revues, but nonetheless, “imperial capital” was the appropriate term.
“Um, so, where’s the Combat Revue…” asked Mile.
She was met with silence.
“Uh! I made sure to teach you about this reference in one of our previous folk tales…”
The other three utterly ignored Mile, who fell into despair.
This was unmistakably the climax of their journey. Though the merchants did not plan to end their journey here and immediately head back—instead making a wider detour to continue their information gathering—the capital was the key location in this mission.
Though this was merely a job the Crimson Vow had taken on, considering the guerilla warfare they had taken part in around Amroth and their experiences repelling the invading forces in Ascham, the Empire seemed like an opponent that the Vow was going to face again and again. As far as Mile was concerned, the Empire was also the mastermind behind the incident with the farmers that she had encountered on the way back from her fairy hunting expedition. It was only natural that their work felt personal.
The first order of business was to book an inn.
Again, calculations must be made and trade-offs considered. Merchants, who had come to make money, could not book especially expensive lodgings. Still, it would be unseemly to board the drivers and guards at a separate, cheaper inn, so the perfect establishment was not too expensive but also did not have especially seedy clientele. They were looking for the sort of place that might host the clientele with whom they would like to be speaking to… Even in a place as large as a capital, the number of inns that fell right in this sweet spot was fairly limited.
“Yes! Beast ears!! ! ”
At the inn they chose, Mile was especially overjoyed to find a beast-eared girl at the front desk. None of the other guests seemed to find this noteworthy, addressing the clerk normally.
“Seems like there’s even less discrimination against beastfolk here in the Empire than there is back in Tils…”
“Now that I think about it, in your folk tales, empires always seem to be terrible places full of human supremacists, Mile…”
“C-careful, don’t say anything rash!” Mavis scolded Pauline.
Pauline, however, was no idiot. She has spoken quietly, making sure that there was no one around to hear her. It was fine.
The group proceeded to their rooms, one of the merchants heading out to the local guildhall to inform them of their plans to set up shop the next day, while the remainder of the group rested in their respective chambers until dinner. The merchant who had gone to the guild was sure to be back before dinner as well.
***
“Everyone, I have a very upsetting announcement to make,” Mile said, as soon as the party had filtered into their own room.
“Huh?” Reina and Mavis tilted their heads in confusion, but Pauline’s expression turned sour, as though she could already predict what Mile was about to say.
“Despite all of our careful preparations, it seems we’ll be running out of merchandise soon.”
“What?”
“But we bought so much stuff!”
Reina and Mavis’s surprise was inevitable.
“Business was just much better than we imagined. Sharing some of our goods with the merchants had a bit of an effect on supplies as well. If we had run out of goods on the way home, we could have just switched from selling things to stocking up, or focused on information gathering so as not to interfere with the merchants’ sales. After all, it would be good for us to stock up on some Albarnian specialties. However, the capital itself is not a resource-rich place, so we can’t do much buying here. There are certainly works of art and expensive industrial goods available, but this caravan doesn’t really deal in those things. Plus, it’d be odd to pay relatively high prices to stock up on goods that we can get manufactured back at home, when we would have to carry them over long distances…”
The other three were silent.
“Wh-what do we do…?” asked Mavis, starting to grow flustered.
“I mean, we don’t really need to do anything?” Mile shrugged, unbothered.
“Huh?”
Once again, Mile could as good as see the question marks floating above Reina and Mavis’s heads.
“I mean, our job is to guard the merchants and their wagons and their merchandise. There’s no reason that we actually need to be selling things ourselves.”
“Oh!”
Apparently, at some point in the process, the pair had become convinced that making sales was their actual goal. Clearly, they had lost track of their priorities.
Though Pauline had by no means forgotten what their actual duty was, she was also the one of the four who most regretted this turn of events, and so her expression was dark.
“I suppose we miscalculated. Losing a business opportunity is the greatest shame for any true saleswoman…”
“Wait! Since when did the Crimson Vow become a merchant company?!?!”
Pauline was utterly hopeless.
“Huh? What of it?”
After dinner, the Crimson Vow gravely informed the merchants that they had only one day’s worth of their own stock remaining and were met with dumbfounded expressions.
“I mean, it was guard duty that we hired you all for in the first place. It was helpful to have some young ladies doing business nearby us to help attract customers, but that wasn’t something that we asked you to do, and we hadn’t planned for that kind of support in the first place, so…”
So, what are you so concerned about? The man didn’t say those exact words, but it was clear what he was thinking.
“You’re right!”
“I knew it.”
“I was pretty sure. It makes sense!”
“I mean, that’s what I was saying…”
Each member of the Crimson Vow tried to play the whole thing off, hoping to push the responsibility—or really, the role of “idiot who said something embarrassing” onto anyone but themselves. Mile was the only one who was being truthful. Even Pauline, who had already seemed to understand this implicitly, had pushed forward anyway, convincing herself that the whole thing was a mistake.
“Well, anyway, our shop will be closing down after tomorrow. After that, we’ll just be buying up anything good that we find on the way home. Which means that here in the capital, we will devote ourselves to protecting you,” Mile said to the merchants.
“Actually, I think we’ll be plenty safe in the capital, so you’re free to do whatever you like here until we leave.”
“Huh?” All four members of the Crimson Vow were perplexed.
“I’ve checked out the general conditions in the capital, and it seems like there haven’t been any notable disturbances of the peace. Whatever it is that the upper brass in this place might be thinking, it doesn’t seem to have had an immense effect on the daily lives of the citizens yet. So, it doesn’t seem like there will be any particular trouble for a foreign merchant who has made a proper report to the merchants’ guild and sets up a stall in the city square.
“If we were out in a rural area, there might be some corrupt lord, restive locals, or general rabble who might make trouble, but no one would be stupid enough to bother some foreign merchants right in the middle of the city square, in front of temples and guard stations.”
Sure enough, the square where they would be setting up shop seemed to be packed to the brim with temples, various government buildings, and guard stations. Letting a group of foreign merchants be attacked right in the middle of the capital would be a great embarrassment to the imperial government, which meant that the man was probably right that there was nothing to worry about for now.
“So, as a thanks for all of the extra help you all have given us thus far, for the next few days you all are free to do whatever you like in the capital.”
“All right!”
When they thought about it, the Crimson Vow had to agree that it would be a sad state of affairs if some traveling merchants could not safely set up shop right in the middle of the imperial capital. If anyone were to try and start something with them, the guards and priests would be sure to leap to their aid, at the very least, for the sake of the region’s reputation…
And so, the girls cheerfully accepted…
“Thanks so much!!”
They could hardly turn down an offer like this.
“Let’s find a job!”
“Obviously!”
The members of the Crimson Vow were not hurting for money, but they had come all the way to a foreign land, and it was not a bad idea to take a job here to start establishing their reputation in this country as well.
Obviously, any jobs that would take them too far out of town to some faraway place—or involve accepting employment with other merchants—were out of the question. There was always the possibility of a sudden change of plans and the need for a swift departure, in which case, they could not risk getting injured or caught up in something strange and being unable to continue their guard duties.
Furthermore, they needed to remain reachable, on the off chance that the merchants suddenly needed them. No matter how confident they were in their safety, this was not something that a professional could overlook.
“If we’re looking for short-term jobs that’ll keep us in the capital, it’s mostly going to be the sort of things that G-rank children usually do,” Mile muttered, “or jobs for people who need quick manual labor. Moving things, loading and unloading, helping out businesses who are short-staffed. None of these would be the sort of jobs that—”
Reina tittered. “All that you and Mavis would be suited for is manual labor.”
“Wh…?”
Naturally, the pair seemed to object to this, but Reina handily ignored them. Of course, they were also teasing each other like this, so it wasn’t as though Mile and Mavis were truly angry. Besides, Reina wasn’t wrong…
“Well, let’s at least head to the guildhall and have a look at the board while we think about it. If there aren’t any good jobs, we’ll just kill some time sightseeing around the capital. There’s no need to take any jobs we aren’t interested in, anyway.”
Pauline’s suggestion was one they could all take to heart.
***
The next day, having sold out of most of their goods by the afternoon, the Crimson Vow pawned off the last dregs of their merchandise on the merchants and closed up shop. Giving their notice to the merchants, they headed off to the guildhall, where they discovered…
“There’s nothing good here,” Reina said. In truth, it would have been silly to expect otherwise. There was no way that any desirable, convenient jobs would still be left this late in the day. That said, it was unclear whether or not such jobs would have existed in the first place—that is, jobs that could be completed within the city in a short time by a C-rank party, that would be both good experience and teach them more about the Empire.
“I don’t think there are any…” Mavis started.
“No, probably not,” added Pauline.
“There’s one!”
“What are you talking about?!?!”
The three of them looked at the job posting that Mile had pointed out…
Personal bodyguard. Short-term: Half day. 4 to 6 people. Payment: 10 gold. Requirements: C-rank or higher. Women only.
“Ah…”
Reina’s expression was skeptical. There were only two possible cases when it came to a guard job that was restricted to only female hunters.
Case 1: The person to be guarded was a young lady.
Case 2: The person to be guarded was a creepy old man.
So then, why had this request been left untouched?
Perhaps there were no all-female parties of four to six members. Perhaps everyone around had already been informed that this was an undesirable job. Perhaps it was not worth the pay (in terms of difficulty or danger). There were any number of reasons, really.
If the four of them took this job, they would be receiving only two and a half gold apiece. Assuming that this was just a simple matter of serving as an escort to ward off any local thugs, and that it would not take them out of the city, that was not a bad wage for a half-day’s work. That said, if it was a fairly difficult escort, where they could expect surprise attacks or assault by kidnappers, the pay was too little.
And, of course…
“Let’s find out more about this,” said Reina. The other three firmly nodded.
Obviously, the Crimson Vow were going to take the jobs. Interesting jobs, fishy jobs, “red mark” jobs…
“Whether in the pits of hell or the middle of the battlefield…”
“If you call out for us, we’re there in a flash!”
“We’ll smash through any danger or hardship and get the job done!”
“We’ll send any villains flying, even if they’re the ones paying us!”
“That is our…”
“Crimson Vow!!!”
All of the local hunters in the guildhall were thoroughly taken aback at this performance.
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