Chapter 7

The Devil of Finance and the Slave Girl In northern Freyjagard, the Findolph domain, in the Port District of the city of Dormundt— “Pant…! Pant…!” A dark-skinned girl wearing tattered rags crouched behind a pile of crates. Her breath was labored. A rugged sailor with a wide, square jaw and eyes goggling out of his head like those of a fish was searching for her. “Shit! Where’d that brat go?!” He was holding a knife, and his eyes bulged as he looked around. Then he started walking toward the crates behind which the girl had hidden. “Over here?” “” She could hear him getting closer. Her lungs tightened as fear welled up inside her. But before he could reach her, he stopped. The reason being— “Hey, you! Quit slackin’ off! Get over here and unload the cargo!” —his boss, a sailor with similar facial features, started shouting at him. “S-sorry! One of the slaves we brought up from the south ran off, so I…” “What?! Which one?” “O-one of the byuma girls. The one with red hair…” “Dumbass!” “Eep!” “It’d be one thing if it was one of the men, but girls don’t sell for shit! You can deal with that later! Finish unloading the cargo first, you dope!” “Y-yes sir!” The girl heard the man run off. “…Haff…” Having survived her narrow brush with death, she breathed a deep sigh of relief. Though the immediate danger had passed, that didn’t mean she could just stay where she was forever. Her legs were trembling from both fear and exhaustion, but she managed to struggle to her feet by leaning against a crate. Have…to run…somewhere far away… She vanished into the back alleys. En route, though, she stopped and looked up at the sliver of blue sky visible between the buildings. But…what then…? The world was too vast. Too big. And she was too small. Too weak. Where could she go? What could she do? She had no idea. At the foot of the mountain down the trail from Elm Village, there was a large castle with tall ramparts surrounded by vast fields of wheat. The castle belonged to Marquis Findolph, the region’s feudal lord. Everything up to the structure’s outer walls was painted white. The castle’s towering roofs, on the other hand, were all coated in solid gold. It wasn’t hard to deduce what kind of person its owner was. That day, the gate to the citadel surrounding the castle’s outer walls was open. This was because it was the late-autumn tax-collection day. Wagons from the surrounding villages came rolling into the courtyard one after another to pay their dues, either in the form of crops, handicrafts, or hard currency. Of course, it went without saying that Elm Village had a wagon there, too. “Oh, it’s you. You people, always reeking of wild beasts…” “Ha-ha, you said it. Feels like my nose is gonna fall off.” The tax collector made a cruel jeer, and the knight clad in bronze who accompanied him piled on without reservation. However, as the village’s usual representative, Elch was well accustomed to it by now. Instead of blowing up at them, he just ignored it and unloaded the tax from his wagon. “…Here are our fall taxes. You can go ahead and store them.” “What, pelts and picked game again? You are allowed to pay in gold, you know.” “Those savages spend all their time chasing boar around in the mountains. Where are they gonna get gold?” “Heh, too true. Besides, gold’s too good for bumpkins like them.” “………” Masato Sanada sighed as he watched the exchange from beside the horse. “Thank goodness Tsukasa isn’t around to hear this.” If he had been there, they likely would’ve had a repeat performance of the other day. When someone bad-mouths him, he doesn’t so much as flinch. Even though all the stress from it is what turned his hair white. But as soon as it’s about someone else, the guy flips out. As Masato mused on that fact, Elch returned. “Welcome back. I gotta say, those tax dudes rubbed me the wrong way.”