Valkyrie's Shadow

Chapter 14

What in the name of the Sorcerer King is the Sorcerer King’s wisdom?

Liam frowned at the small gathering in the secluded courtyard below him. Over the past few days, stirrings of a different sort were manifesting in Hoburns, characterised by small groups gathered out of the notice of royalist street patrols.

“Crazy, huh?” Ames said.

“Are they all like this?” Liam asked.

“Pretty much,” the thief-taker replied. “At first, I thought it was just people getting together for normal stuff, but then I started hearing some familiar things.”

He looked over at the man standing on the rooftop beside him.

“You’ve heard this…message before?”

“Yeah,” Ames replied. “It was a thing that started during the war. Some people formed a unit of irregulars called the Sorcerer King Rescue Corps.”

“They follow the teachings of someone close to him during the war. I wouldn’t take it too seriously, though. A girl I knew invited me to one of their ‘meetings’, once. That was probably my most disturbing experience during the war and that’s saying a lot. It’s like someone gathered all of the desperate, disgruntled, and mentally disturbed together and turned it into an unofficial organisation.”

That much, Liam could see. Mrs Linum taught him that people became psychologically vulnerable when exposed to various hardships and experiences they weren’t prepared for. This knowledge wasn’t exclusive to Ijaniya, as demonstrated by the sight before him.

“Do you think that masked girl believes in what she’s saying?” Liam asked.

“Beats me,” Ames shrugged. “Either way, it’s a bad thing. She’s either exploiting those poor, vulnerable people or purposely spreading that madness she’s spewing.”

Liam nodded grimly in response, but he wasn’t sure which was worse. The former was just a thing that could happen anywhere; the latter, he couldn’t figure out what to call.

To begin with, he wasn’t aware of any sort of ‘wisdom’ being officially endorsed by the Sorcerer King. His Majesty was a pretty hands-off guy when it came to everyday things. Everyone was left to do what they were supposed to be doing and ‘Ainz Ooal Gown’ was reportedly content so long as his realm and followers were prosperous and happy. It was much as the scriptures said about the last time the gods walked amongst their people.

The ‘wisdom’ itself didn’t seem like wisdom at all. Part of it he had seen before. It made even less sense now that he heard more.

“Looks like they’re finishing up for tonight,” Ames said, stepping over to the other side of the rooftop.

“Thanks for showing me,” Liam replied.

“I thought you might want to know. You think we’ll have to do anything about this?”

“Us, specifically? I don’t think so. This is more something for the street patrols and it’s not even in our jurisdiction. Sir Jorge will have us check up on them once in a while at most. I’ll go and see what he has to say about it.”

They made their way back out of the northern quarter, returning to House Restelo’s jurisdiction in the west. Ames resumed his duties while Liam informed Sir Jimena that he was going back to the camp. There was little question about what he was up to, as the trust he had earned with House Restelo gave him pretty much all the freedom he could ask for. Sir Jorge had even started suggesting that a knighthood was on the horizon.

“Liam!”

He turned his head at Nat’s voice, finding the girl smiling at him from the highway outside Rimun Gate. She was dressed in her usual outfit, which consisted of a leatherworker’s apron over a maroon dress. Nat took his arm as soon as he reached her.

“You weren’t headed into the city?” Liam asked.

“It can wait,” Nat answered. “Where did you go?”

“Ames took me to the northern quarter to look at some weird thing.”

“Weird thing?” Nat frowned.

“Yeah. A gathering of people listening to a girl in a tattered mask. She–”

“You shouldn’t go anywhere near that girl,” Nat told her. “She’s dangerous.”

Now it was Liam’s turn to frown.

“Do you know her?”

“No,” Nat replied, “but I caught her following you around the other day.”

“…really?”

He rarely concealed himself within House Restelo’s jurisdiction now, as being seen helped more with keeping order than remaining unseen. It looked like he had grown complacent with how peaceful his job had been.

“Really,” Nat nodded. “She was staring at you with her beady eyes, like this.”

Nat made an absurd face. Liam stared silently at the girl – at least until her expression crumbled and she looked away with a blush.

“Why would she be following me around wearing that kind of face?” Liam asked.

“I don’t know. She’s probably crazy.”

Going by what he had learned of the masked girl, Nat probably wasn’t wrong about her claim.

“I see,” Liam said. “Well, I don’t plan on hanging around any crazy people. How’s work?”

“Busy,” Nat replied. “Well, June is busy. She even took on an apprentice to help out around the stall.”

“You’re able to keep up with all the new sales?”

“We raised prices so things are only a bit faster than before. There are just a lot more people to deal with. With what happened to the trade fleet, the armsmen arriving from the south are all scrambling to get their hands on good armour. Some of those guys have a lot of money, so I got Raquel to enchant a suit. I was headed into the city to pick it up just now. It’ll sell for at least ten times more than a regular one.”

Did enchanted armour cost that much? Liam had purchased his own set, but it was all done in barter for stuff that was selling for whacky prices and Nat had taken over negotiating for half of it.

“Wait a minute,” Liam said. “Isn’t Raquel busy with Royal Army contracts now?”

Unlike leatherworking, where one could fashion multiple pieces at the same time because there was a lot of waiting for stuff to set and dry, enchanting a single item required the complete focus of the enchanter.

“It’s not like there’s a deadline for them,” Nat told him. “The contract is basically a permanent offer with how much the Royal Army needs. They take what they can get at the agreed-upon price from whoever can provide what they want. If I offer her a better deal, they can’t complain.”

“I guess that makes sense, but do you think anyone will buy the enchanted armour?”

“June says that someone will,” Nat replied. “I don’t think she’s wrong. Even if the regular armsmen can’t afford it, there are a lot of Nobles and Knights running around who can. We’ll put it up for auction at the stand and you’ll see how many people bid for it. Once we sell one, the next one will be even more popular.”

“Are you sure? That sounds like the exact opposite of the supply and demand stuff that you two always talk about.”

“Hmm…not really? It’s more like people don’t know it’s available, so they don’t really think about it. Magic items are like that, right? Everyone knows that they exist and they admire them when they’re mentioned in stories or when they see them on Adventurers and famous people. People dream of getting their hands on one, but they also know that it’s probably impossible. Showing that they can get it should mean all that untapped demand is unleashed.”

When she put it that way, it made for a compelling case. Before everything had happened with the Sorcerous Kingdom, Liam would have never imagined that he would one day possess the equipment that he did now. Common sense for most people dictated that it was an impossibility, as Nat said.

“In that case,” Liam said, “you’re going to have a lot of money. What are you going to do with it?”

“I’m not sure,” Nat replied. “I was saving up to buy interesting stuff from the trade fleet, but now they’re gone. That’s part of the reason why I ordered the enchantment. Money just sitting around doesn’t do us any good, but there’s a limit to what we can do with it right now. Raquel’s the only enchanter that we know.”

“What about taking on apprentices?”

“Apprentices?” Nat laughed, “That’s crazy.”

“I thought the requirement was that you had to be a master. The workshop puts out beyond masterwork items, right?”

“It does, but it’s not as simple as that. The Guild recognises the workshop. They don’t recognise me as a master even though I’m the only one working for the workshop. Even if they did, it’d be hard to find any apprentices.”

“That’s silly,” Liam said. “There are thousands of people looking for work and there must be at least some people you’ve impressed.”

Nat’s smile disappeared. She pressed her cheek against his shoulder, hugging his arm tight.

“You’re probably the only person I know that thinks that way,” she said. “Well, maybe Raquel, too. Everyone else…I’m a woman, Liam. Apprentices wouldn’t listen to me even if they did sign on.”

“But I’ve seen more than a few women with apprentices. Seamstresses and stuff.”

“It might look like that on the surface,” Nat told him, “but those apprentices work for the master of the workshop. The women just happen to be married to them and it’s not guaranteed that the apprentices will listen. I’ve seen plenty of arrangements like that before and they’re filled with problems. Sometimes it’s so bad that the apprentices undermine the workshop because they’re angry that they have to work under a woman. It’s just not worth it.”

“Didn’t you say that June picked up an apprentice?”

“Merchants are different. You should know that.”

Liam sighed. It was hard to break through cultural barriers when everything about a culture reinforced them. One might think that the residents of a city would be more open-minded when it came to new ideas, but he discovered many pitfalls along the way during his time with Nat.

Much like rural society, urban society was bound by contracts, and those contracts were both defined and enforced by laws. One couldn’t just enter a trade because they felt like it.

If, for instance, a nameless orphan like Liam wanted to become a glassblower, he had to find a workshop with available masters that would take him on. Doing so involved signing an apprentice’s contract, which was basically an arrangement where training and room and board were provided in exchange for upwards of eight years of labour. Of course, he wouldn’t be paid a daily wage until he graduated and became a journeyman.

Laws protected apprentices from having their contracts arbitrarily cancelled, so workshops were stuck with them unless they committed a major crime. This made the situation that Nat described an untenable one: she didn’t want to be stuck with a rebellious apprentice for nearly a decade. Furthermore, that apprentice would end up being a poor craftsman which would, in turn, reflect poorly on her as a master.

The source of that rebelliousness was rooted in the fact that, like their rural counterparts, men inherited over women. In short, both men and women expected men to be in charge. Just as children were considered extensions of their families, women were extensions of their husbands or the houses that they served. Working under a woman was like being a servant of a servant and an apprentice would demand ‘better’ for their time.

Merchants like June were ‘different’ because they didn’t own land. They neither held the contract to a rural tenancy nor did they own something like a workshop. Even warehouses were only leased by Merchants from whoever owned them and plots for market stalls were similarly leased from landlords.

Though one wouldn’t think so from the interactions of a bustling marketplace, Merchants were pretty much a step up from slaves. In terms of the overall social hierarchy of the northern Human countries, they were technically lower than peasants. Society would swiftly turn on any Merchant who aspired or pretended to be greater than anything that they were.

This, combined with the fact that anyone who embarked on the path of a Merchant pretty much accepted that they would essentially be near the bottom of society, was why June could sign on apprentices and not have problems with them.

Liam parted ways with Nat once they arrived at the labour camp’s administrative centre. To his surprise, he found Lord Restelo’s personal retinue standing guard around the overseer’s tent.

“I’m here to see Sir Jorge,” he told the company Captain. “Is he busy?”

“What’s your business?” The Captain asked.

“There’s a strange person stirring up the people of the city,” Liam answered. “I wanted to consult with Sir Jorge about it.”

“Just a moment.”

The Captain turned and disappeared into the tent. A minute later, he reappeared and jerked his head at the entrance.

“Go ahead,” he said. “They’re having dinner at the moment, so don’t go ruining the mood.”

How would I know if I’m going to ruin the mood?

He kept his question to himself and entered the tent. Within it, Sir Jorge was sitting at a table with Lord Restelo and several of his Knights.

“Well,” Lord Restelo leaned back in his chair with a smirk, “if it isn’t the Smiling Demon himself.”

“Good evening, Lord Restelo. I’m sorry to interrupt your dinner.”

“I was just bemoaning the scarcity of entertainment,” Lord Restelo said. “I’m sure anything you have to share will be more stimulating than discussing camp logistics.”

“A strange girl in a mask is speaking to back-alley gatherings in the city,” Liam said. “They’re keeping to themselves, for now, but it’s been going on for several days now.”

Lord Restelo frowned as he absently swirled his wine glass.

“What has she been saying?”

“Her main message appears to be ‘Weakness without the drive to improve one’s self is a sin. Everyone must strive towards the goal of becoming stronger’.”

The men at the table exchanged curious looks. One of the Knights snorted.

“It seems you’ve found Sir Luis’ bastard daughter, Liam.”

“Sir Luis isn’t nearly as well-spoken,” another scoffed. “He’ll just grunt and punch you in the face. But her message is rather banal, isn’t it? Common sense, even.”

“Common sense to us, perhaps,” Sir Jorge said. “For the commoners, though…I don’t like where this may lead.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Liam said, “Shouldn’t everyone be doing their best?”

Sir Jorge’s eyes slid over to Lord Restelo. The Noble set his wine glass down before speaking.

“Broadly speaking, Liam,” he said, “you’re not wrong. In fact, we usually have the opposite problem. People tend to settle for ‘enough’. The issue here is that what this girl says lacks any direction. It is the place of the aristocratic establishment to identify men of talent and ensure that they are suitably placed in the greater order of things. It would be nice if society conveniently ordered itself, but it is well-known that the independent pursuit of strength only gives rise to selfish interests that tend to detract from the greater good. Adventurers are perhaps the most well-known example of this.”

“Adventurers?”

“That’s right. I understand that many of the common folk see Adventurers as veritable heroes for hire, but what the Adventurer Guild organisation essentially does is hold the lives and livelihoods of the people for ransom. If you do not pay, then they do not act. At the same time, they benefit from the fruits of civilised society without contributing anything to it. They are the perpetrators of something along the lines of a protection racket.

“Imagine if the Adventurer Guild had instead been incorporated into the Royal Army? Exactly that happened during the Demon Emperor’s invasion and the benefits were undeniable. The lives that could have been saved through the generations if they had always been there…well, I, for one, am relieved the parasitic blight that is the Adventurer Guild no longer exists in the Holy Kingdom.”

“Did this masked girl say anything else?” Sir Jorge asked.

“She did,” Liam answered, “but, based on what you just said, you’re not going to like it.”

As one, the men at the table looked up from their meals. Lord Restelo prompted Liam to speak with his fork.

“She’s…leveraging the plight of the citizens, my lord,” Liam said. “Life in the royalist-occupied parts of the city continues to be hard and she’s garnered a lot of support due to that.”

“What is she promoting?” Lord Restelo asked.

“I’m not sure if she’s promoting anything,” Liam answered. “It’s pretty confusing. She’s stirring the pot, basically – erm, cultivating discontent over how their districts have been managed.”

“So no calls to action?” Sir Jorge asked, “Encouraging people to become uncooperative or even violent?”

“No, Sir,” Liam shook his head. “She’s well aware that anything like that will invite the wrath of the royalists, especially when they have over a hundred thousand troops outside the walls. The only other thing of note that she said was that the people should go to Lloyds if things got really bad in Hoburns.”

Lord Restelo’s frown deepened at the last.

“Lloyds? With whatever destroyed the fleet out there? Surely, this is some madwoman we’re dealing with here.”

“Shall we do something about her, my lord?” Sir Jorge asked.

“Where has this woman appeared in the city?” Lord Restelo asked, “Not in the western quarter, I hope.”

“As far as the thief-takers know,” Liam answered, “the northern and eastern quarters.”

The nobleman leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms and stroking his upper lip with a finger.

“This sounds like a royalist problem to me,” one of the Knights said. “Letting this ride may produce some amusing results.”

“I agree,” Sir Jorge nodded. “If the Crown awards more of the city to us due to the problems this creates, it would be mortifying in the face of all the new witnesses.”

“Liam,” Lord Restelo asked, “are you certain that this masked girl’s activities won’t result in any open civil unrest for the foreseeable future?”

“Yes, my lord,” Liam answered. “I can keep an eye on things if you’d like.”

“You do that,” the nobleman said. “We’ll let this stew for the time being – the royalists will probably snub us if we try to help, anyway. Make sure you and the other thief-takers assigned to this aren’t detected. Good work out there.”

With that, he was dismissed from the overseer’s tent.

The following evening, he went on his usual stroll after breakfast with Nat. On their way out to the highway, they stopped to watch the small crowd that had gathered around June’s stand in the labour camp’s market.

“See?” Nat grinned.

“It’s still on its little mannequin,” Liam noted.

It wasn’t exactly a ‘little’ mannequin. It was actually a super-buff one with muscles and everything. June said it helped with sales, but she sure liked to touch it. Maybe that was part of the trick.

“We have to give people time to bid it up,” Nat said. “The auction will end a week before the next suit is enchanted.”

Liam nodded. It seemed that Nat was already more than confident and successful enough that she could stand on her own when his assignment was done. House Restelo might even let her have her own workshop by then, as they certainly wouldn’t let go of such a talented artisan, woman or not.

Once his shift started, Liam went looking for Ames. He found the thief-taker watching over the western end of the western plaza, which was even more crowded than the previous day.

“I don’t know how we’re supposed to keep track of all this,” Ames said as Liam came up to stand beside him.

“We can’t,” Liam said. “This is way too much for one person to watch over. Anything new about that masked girl from yesterday?”

“Mmh…not really. She hasn’t shown up here, anyway. What did Sir Jorge say?”

“Lord Restelo wants me to check up on her once in a while,” Liam said. “We’re not doing anything so long as she keeps going on like she has.”

Ames nodded at Liam’s response.

“A new thorn in the royalist’s side, eh? And here I thought all the new arrivals meant the end of our fun.”

“Fun, huh? What do you think is going to happen in the next few weeks?”

“Who knows,” the thief-taker shrugged. “Doesn’t matter much what we think. We work for House Restelo and there’s no reason that’ll change.”

Liam supposed that should have been the expected response. Not only had House Restelo been wildly successful in Hoburns, but they were also succeeding at instilling the strict, hierarchical rural values of the aristocratic establishment into everyone who worked for it.

“I guess I should go and figure out where that girl is,” Liam said. “Any ideas?”

“She switches quarters every day,” Ames replied, “should be somewhere on the east side, now.”

“Thanks.”

He made his way across the city, skirting around the few thief-takers that the royalist houses had managed to deploy over the past few weeks. Despite their problems in Hoburns, it seemed that they didn’t see fit to deploy their best men against him…or maybe they did and what he saw was it.

Finding the masked girl didn’t take long, as her gatherings had grown large enough that they were using one of the Earth District’s smaller plazas instead of the usual alley courtyards. The patrols and sentries working nearby didn’t appear to notice that the area was slowly filling with locals rather than visitors from the camps outside.

Not that the gathering was doing anything to draw attention to itself. Most were just chatting amicably as if it were a normal evening in Hoburns.

Which should be a big giveaway, I think? A ‘normal evening’ in this part of Hoburns doesn’t have locals chatting amicably in a public plaza…

He settled into the shadows of a chimney near where the masked girl was. As the sunset was replaced by torchlight, the girl visibly gathered herself before stepping atop a big crate in the corner of the plaza.

“Thank you, everyone, for coming,” she said. “I see many familiar faces, and I can’t begin to express my appreciation for your continued support.”

Voices of encouragement rose in response to her greeting. The sentries nearest to the crowd watched the proceedings curiously, but still showed no signs of concern.

“By now,” the girl continued, “many of you understand that you have been purposely denied the means to leave behind the sin that is weakness. This is through no fault of your own, but through those who claim to manage the recovery of the Holy Kingdom on behalf of its citizens! Never mind being denied the freedom to cultivate strength, you have been denied your livelihoods! Starved of materials and even food, you were forced into a state of weakness – a state of sin!”

Technically, she wasn’t wrong, but the way she associated everything with her underlying message of weakness being a sin made her sound more than a bit unhinged. Probably the most annoying thing about it all – at least to him – was that one could say it was three or four steps out of phase with some of the Faith of the Six’s tenets. She even claimed that her wisdom was passed down to her by the Sorcerer King, which was just plain insulting.

The last part also meant that she had cobbled together her convictions out of an experience that couldn’t have been more than four or five months in the past. Only the truly insane could think something like that could be turned into…whatever she was doing.

As the fervour of the crowd rose, the armsmen in the area started to consult amongst themselves. Eventually, several left the plaza and returned with more men. The ‘Faceless One’ – as several members of the crowd called her – seemed to pay the accumulation of patrols no mind.

Thirty minutes after the Faceless One started her address, a Knight approached the gathering as his subordinates surrounded the crowd. Liam leaned forward, wondering how the confrontation would play out.

“Alright, break it up!” The Knight called out, “It’s getting late. We’ve got another busy day tomorrow.”

The air went still as the people fell silent.

“Of course,” the Faceless One smiled as she stepped off of her box. “You heard the good Knight, everyone. Please be safe, and have a good night!”

So that’s how they’re playing it…

He should have probably expected it from the people of Roble. Some might consider the way that they did things ‘slow’, but it was more that they were both cautious and courteous in their unique way. Conflicts between people didn’t escalate so readily, which gave them time to figure out their differences. Liam thought it was a better approach than the more volatile nature of Re-Estize’s citizens.

As the crowd quietly dispersed, a royalist thief-taker appeared not five metres away from Liam. He tailed the Faceless One from the rooftops as she exited the plaza and made her way southwest through the city. Liam followed him, pondering his next course of action.

His orders were to maintain the deadlock in Hoburns, which he had done thus far by helping House Restelo rise in prominence so it could hold its own against its royalist rivals. They were still far from being able to do so, however. The Faceless One and her followers presented a new piece for him to play with. While keeping the royalists unaware of her presence was no longer an option, Lord Restelo’s idea of allowing her to continue sowing the seeds of dissent could still help Liam in his task.

The Faceless One left the eastern quarter and entered the Water Gardens. Unlike the other parts of the city, the entertainment district was far from falling asleep. Men and women in various stages of drunkenness, arousal, and general merrymaking filled the colourful lanes along the area’s many establishments.

Was the Faceless One a prostitute by trade? It would explain why she was concealing her identity, and it would also explain the air of charisma that she exuded as she spoke. Those who worked in entertainment and hospitality were considered Bards or something close to it, at least as far as the Sorcerous Kingdom saw things.

When the girl crossed over one of the canals crisscrossing the district, her stalker stopped to puzzle out a route. Liam took the opportunity to grab the thief-taker by the collar and toss him off of the rooftop. His short-lived shriek was followed by a splash as he hit the water below. People nearby went to see what had happened, but it looked and sounded like they thought the man was a drunk who lost his footing.

That’s not going to be the end of it, though…

The Faceless One would most likely continue speaking to the citizens. Now that the royalists were aware of her, they would quickly conclude that they didn’t like what she was saying. Their next response to her appearance would be faster and more effective.

Fortunately, Liam knew just the person to get in their way.

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