Chapter 149 - As You Sow, So Shall You Reap (1)

Through the thick cigarette smoke came the creaking of wooden planks.

It sounded like the noise made by ferries swaying this way and that with the river's current.

On the docks of Soara, inside a building tangled together as if stitched with thread.

The two people sat facing each other, but for a long while neither spoke, and the only sounds to be heard were the crackle of burning tobacco and the gulping of liquor going down a throat.

"Having you sitting in front of me like this makes me realize how quickly time passes."

Only after finishing off an entire bottle did the old man open his mouth, grinding his spent cigarette into the ashtray as he smiled faintly.

His yellowed teeth and hideous bite looked threatening, but Vlad, sitting before him, did not so much as flinch.

"Truth is, you don't really need to know this, but I wanted to take you in too. Jorge snatched you up first, though."

"..."

The old man's eyes looked distant as he thought back on the past.

Although Vlad had been waiting for some time, and although what the old man was saying now was not the main point, he decided to wait quietly all the same.

As someone born and raised in the back alleys, he wanted to show a certain degree of courtesy to the boss called Captain Hoover.

"I hear Marcella is retiring too?"

"It probably won't be a complete retirement. She isn't as old as you, boss."

"Haha! True enough. At Marcella's age, she's still in her prime."

If Vlad had been an ordinary back-alley boy, that remark just now would have earned him a sharp hook through the skull.

But the one watching his step now was Hoover, the boss, and though Vlad was a guest, he was the one dominating this space.

"I am grateful to you, boss. For taking in Haven, lame leg and all."

"That was only because the bastard was sharp."

"Though you did shove him into a corner."

"..."

Listening to Vlad's words, whose true meaning he could not begin to guess, Hoover ended up opening another bottle with the hook in his left hand.

Truly, the greatest talent born from Soara's back alleys.

Vlad had already grown too heavy and too solid for someone like Hoover to prop up.

"This is not an excuse, but aside from that work, there was nowhere else I could properly use him."

"I know. I understand."

In the old back alleys, there had been five bosses.

And the knight sitting before him had lost one boss and killed two others.

Vlad of Soara was a knight whom neither glittering gold coins nor indulgences granted by god could stop, and Hoover decided not to forget that fact.

"I want to retire. Peacefully, safely."

And that was why he had decided to retire.

Before he was eaten, or before he was killed by Vlad's hand.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because if not you, there is no one who can do it for me."

The history of the back alleys had been as complicated and ceaselessly shifting as the people who lived there.

Yet if one watched from afar, it ultimately moved according to a single law, and that was the law of the strong preying on the weak.

"I know the young mayor of Soara has his eye on me. He wants to control everything in this city."

There were things one could see because one had grown old.

The old captain had sailed the seas for a long time, and he knew well that when a raging storm came, one had to lower the sails and hold one's breath.

"Please tell him. Tell him this old man wishes to retire."

"... You will have to give up a great deal. You will have to compensate him as much as Lord Joseph has prepared."

It was not a particularly appealing proposal, but Vlad decided to show as much sincerity as he could, thinking of the face of the person who had introduced him here.

In any case, back when he had been begging for scraps, there had been a time he had survived thanks to this man, so it was something like repayment in its own way.

"... Of course. I will prepare enough that he will not feel shortchanged."

Hoover did not show it after hearing Vlad's answer, but he let out a deep breath of relief inside.

So he really was aiming for me.

If he had been even a little later, he might have ended up with his neck hanging from the gallows.

"I ask this of you. I will make sure you do not regret it."

"I will try speaking to him."

It was not a definite answer, but that alone would be enough.

The man now rising to his feet was of noble blood, Joseph's trusted man, and a figure like a symbol of Soara.

"Wait."

"...?"

Vlad, who had been gripping the doorknob to leave, snatched a bottle of liquor that suddenly came flying toward him.

It was a brown liquor with some sort of unpleasant gleam to it.

"What is this?"

"My masterpiece."

Captain Hoover, taking out a fresh cigarette, winked one eye as he looked at Vlad.

"I even gave it a name. Captain Q. Truth is, I was thinking of running a brewery as something to pass the time after retirement."

Only after hearing Hoover's words did Vlad remember where he had seen the liquor he was holding now.

Back when he had nothing at all, not even enough to eat himself to death, this was the liquor that had very nearly made him drink himself to death.

"... Don't even dream of opening a brewery."

Vlad still could not clearly remember what had happened that night.

* * *

"What happened?"

"Just take this."

Seen off by the members of the organization, Vlad left the docks, and when he saw Haven waiting for him there, he quickly threw the bottle at him.

With a sickened expression, as if he had been holding a bottle of poison all this time.

"What is this?"

"What do you think? That godawful liquor."

"No, that old man was still making this?"

Haven also could not hide his surprise as he caught the bottle.

For some reason, he looked restless, as if he wanted to throw the bottle away right then and there.

"Hire Hoover. Learn what you can from him."

"Huh? What?"

"If you want to keep that man alive, that is probably what you need to do."

Vlad spoke as if indifferent, and Haven answered as if he did not understand, but the two understood each other.

It might not have been to the same degree as Vlad and Jorge, but Haven and Hoover had been people within the same fence, and men of the back alleys tended to be sensitive about these things.

Just as Haven had introduced Hoover to Vlad.

"You said he went out to sea when he was young, right? Learn this and that from him, like navigation and smuggling routes. Bayezid has been interested in the sea lately anyway."

"Will he teach me that easily? That's the foundation of his business."

"He will if he doesn't want to die."

Whether they kept him alive and made him cough it up, or killed him and took it from him, everything Hoover had would be for Joseph to decide.

But if they showed that even a back-alley boss had uses while alive, then there would be no need to take his life.

"... And for the time being, don't do anything they can use against you."

"Got it."

Sensing the sudden change in Vlad's mood, Haven wiped the smile from his face and nodded.

"It is about time everything gets swept clean once."

"Yeah. Keep the boys in line."

Just as the old captain had seen the storm approaching from far away, Haven too could sense a meaningful weight in Vlad's drifting words.

When the mayor of Soara had changed, there had been changes of their own, so now that the Northern Alliance and the Orthodox Church had appeared, it was obvious that a purge even greater than that time would begin.

"Haven."

"Yeah?"

In front of a fork in the alley.

Vlad would head to city hall, and Haven to Rose's Smiles, so this was where they had to part.

"This is an opportunity. It has come now."

"..."

Although Vlad did not say much, Haven could understand what he was trying to say.

It was the same for anyone, but to children of the back alleys, an opportunity was something like a dream, and the two of them had struggled without rest to seize one.

And now, before the two of them, stood Soara as it tried to change anew.

"Let's do this right."

"Yeah."

You take the main road, and I take the back alleys.

Though the paths they walked were different, what the two of them were aiming for was one and the same.

Perhaps it was the thing they had spoken of back then, when they had wrapped each other in a single straw mat and said they would do it someday.

* * *

NEIGH!

SNORT!

The stable set up inside Soara's city hall.

It was a place filled with the cries of horses, but the spot where the black horse and the green-haired girl were was utterly quiet.

"So everyone avoids you too."

SNORT!

Noir made a sound as if answering Charles's words, but the truth was completely different.

Noir, with his rotten temper, was merely warning the horses around him not to come near.

"Yeah, yeah. I know exactly how that feels."

But young Charles did not yet know Noir's temperament, and seeing the black horse alone with no one around, she felt a sense of kinship.

Noir was famous for rejecting servants, but for some reason he was lenient only with Charles, and the way he acted was similar to the way he acted toward Zemina.

Though it was not the red color he liked, perhaps the color of Charles's hair reminded him of the plains of his homeland?

"This is all because of that one-eyed bastard."

Charles, who had her arms around Noir's neck, narrowed her eyes as she thought of someone.

A knight whose personality was as nasty as his appearance.

He was also the man who, the moment he saw Vlad teaching her, smacked him on the head and struck at his ankle.

"If it weren't for him, I'd be learning something by now."

Whether it was because she could not learn swordsmanship, or because she could not be with Vlad, no one knew, but all of Charles's anger was directed at Jager.

The knight who had shouted at Vlad for being a brat teaching another brat.

If not for that man, she might have been swinging a wooden sword together with Vlad by now.

"Seriously, what a jerk."

Since she was in an unfamiliar place as an outsider, she could not say anything, but if this had been the Ravnoma estate, she would have given him a proper piece of her mind.

That was how angry and aggrieved Charles was.

"Hey, hey, hey! You brat!"

"Huh?"

Then someone shouted at Charles.

It was far too sudden, and also a sound that could only fluster her.

"Me?"

"Yeah, you! You little runt over there!"

Thinking it might be her, Charles raised a finger and pointed at herself, but the man's expression only grew harsher when he saw it.

"You bastard. Do you know how precious that horse is? Get out of there right now!"

"Huh? Eh?"

Back when she had been disguised as a slave, she could naturally endure being treated like this, but this was Soara, and Charles was a noble Ravnoma.

Since she was here as a guest, Charles had no reason at all to be treated this way.

"What kind of man goes 'huh? eh?' like that? Get out here, brat!"

But the man shouting at her now also had enough reason to act this way.

"How dare some greenhorn brat try to take someone else's place."

"... This is your place?"

"Wow. Look at this bastard talking down to an adult. Rotten little sprout, just like someone else."

Anyone would have no choice but to act like that if the position they had barely managed to secure was threatened.

Until now, managing Vlad's horse Noir had been his job.

"Hmph. Still, you wear a wooden sword at your waist like you're some kind of man. What, are you a squire or something?"

"Yeah, I am a squire! If I'm learning the sword from a knight, that makes me a squire!"

But Charles, who had already been seething, began to bristle at the long-jawed man shouting at her without any regard for the situation.

Just as the man had said, Charles Ravnoma was already a truly rotten little sprout who had even killed someone.

"I'm Knight Vlad's squire! I learn the sword from him every day!"

"What did you say?"

Of course, she was not actually a squire, nor had she properly learned the sword, but Charles, driven by spite, began spouting whatever came to mind.

However, as if those words had landed a sufficient blow, the man's face began to turn pale.

"Why the hell would you be Vlad's squire!"

The man was dressed shabbily, as if he had gone through all kinds of hardship somewhere.

His hand, beating his chest as if wronged, was trembling little by little.

"I'm Vlad's squire, brat!"

A guide and stableman, Vlad's squire and also a swindler.

Got had returned.