TRHK Chapter 20

"I appreciate the thought."

Arranging an expression and tone of genuine difficulty wasn't as hard as I expected. I'd watched Eifel turn down persistent servants before.

"It's just that the hall is short-handed right now."

"The castle won't stop running because you're gone."

"Still, it would make me uncomfortable..."

"Maylin."

Joel's expression shifted—more urgent now. As though he actually loved the Maylin he expected to find there. As though he actually loved me.

"This time..."

He started to say something and then, abruptly, closed his mouth. What had he been about to say?

"No. I think I moved too quickly."

Joel exhaled, and the smile that followed looked like someone suppressing something difficult. It was a feeling I couldn't quite place myself in.

"Go on, then, if you want to go."

"Yes. I'll be going."

I left promptly. Joel watched me go with an expression that could only be described as faintly bitter. If the original Maylin had been standing there beside me, I could imagine her grabbing my shoulder and shaking me—that look—you fell for that? He's going to stab you in the back later. But she wasn't here. Only I was.

I made my way quickly back to the party hall. The head maid spotted me and appeared, for some reason, relieved.

"Well done."

I wasn't entirely sure what I'd done well, so I gave a vague, slightly sheepish grin and let it go. The head maid reverted to her usual self immediately—smacked me on the backside and told me to get to work.

The larger party, said to be on an entirely different scale from the last one, was drawing steadily closer on the calendar.

It was my first time coming to the back gate in the middle of the night, and my heart was going thump-thump before I'd even arrived. The only sounds were the insects in the grass, but every time a stray creak came from somewhere—wind through something old—I startled and looked around.

Kahron turned out to be, somewhat surprisingly, reliable about keeping scheduled times. Getting him to agree to a time was the hard part; once it was agreed, he appeared without being late. Apparently, slacking off was reserved strictly for training. I smiled watching him arrive on schedule again tonight.

"Why are you smiling like an idiot?"

Completely sincere. A genuine question, no malice in it. I felt my expression sour in real time and redirected us both toward the closed gate.

"Do you know how to get out?"

"With a key."

"There's no key, though..."

Jingle. He tossed a key up with one hand and caught it. I looked at it.

"Where did you get that?"

Kahron didn't answer. He fitted the key into the lock. The back gate—barely more than a mouse hole compared to the main entrance—opened with a worn, grating sound. I followed him through quickly. He pulled it shut behind us.

"A black market—I'm already nervous." The words were out before I'd decided to say them."

I was already walking toward the village, wrapped head to ankle in a robe, and the thought had just escaped me.

Black markets were a recurring feature not just in 〈The Sword God's Adventure〉 but in many of the novels I'd read. Protagonists typically found treasure there, or met companions.

"Have you been to a black market before?"

He nodded. The faint narrowing of his eyes—like he was reaching back for something—was, for some reason, not unpleasant to look at.

"Once. Somewhere else."

Was he talking about where he'd been born? Originally, he must have been... a noble from another country. I pressed down the urge to ask more.

Where Kahron brought me was a tavern. Just before we'd entered the village, he'd pulled his dark robe up and taken the lead.

We crossed through the interior of the tavern, and the people drinking at the tables glanced our way. Was it the robes pulled half over our faces that drew attention? Though—some of them were dressed the same way.

"Black wind to the wind, wind to the ground."

Kahron said this to a rough-looking man who appeared to be the proprietor. The man nodded and opened a door behind him. The whole scene felt like something out of a novel, which made it strange and interesting at the same time. I held my fluttering chest steady and followed Kahron through the door.

"Oh."

There were stairs going down, and it was dark enough that I nearly caught my foot wrong. Kahron offered his arm without a word.

"......"

Moments like this made it feel like we'd gotten closer after all. I held his arm firmly and went down the stairs.

At the bottom of a fairly long staircase was one more door. When it opened, an entirely new world spread out before me.

Vast—there was no comparison to the castle's training grounds. An impossible number of people from who knew where. Stalls stretching in every direction. Auctions happening here and there. It was a space where the words underground world fit without any excess.

"Are you here to sightsee?"

Kahron tapped my parted lips with one finger, scolding. But this was the very black market I'd only ever encountered in novels. How could I not look? And besides—finding herb sellers was going to require walking a fair amount of the place anyway.

"Finding herbs and sightseeing at the same time."

Kahron snorted at my shameless answer. I tugged his arm and started with the nearest stall.

"This is a love gem. As long as your target isn't a mage of the fifth circle or higher, it will make anyone fall in love—anyone at all."

The market vendor pointed to a red gem I'd been looking at, and explained. I'd only glanced at it because it was close to the color of Kahron's hair—I hadn't known it was that sort of thing. Kahron, who'd been pulled along by my grip on his arm, looked at me with an expression that had layers in it. Surely he hadn't taken that the wrong way.

"I—I'm fine, thank you."

I waved it off quickly and moved to the next stall.

A book allegedly stolen from a dragon's lair.

A renowned sword said to have been used until its wielder's death.

An artifact crafted by a mage who had poured everything into it.

Things I'd only imagined while reading aloud in a forest hut to my mother—and here they were, right in front of me. I found, to some mild surprise, that I was moved.

When I thought about it, Kahron, the Count and Countess, Joel—they'd all been figures I'd imagined through books. Living in the castle had left no room for any of it to land. Black markets had a particular kind of romance the castle didn't touch.

"You came here to play—"

I silenced his grumbling with a special snack purchased from one of the stalls—a small, angular piece of confection. Intensely sweet. Said to be a delicacy from an island far off the continent.

"It's sweet."

He didn't care for sweet things, apparently. He grumbled further. Didn't like sweet, didn't like bitter. Still, the fact that he hadn't just turned and left without a word suggested he was willing to tolerate things to some degree.

After about half a circuit, we stopped at an auction area. The auctioneer had called out herbs among the lots, and the word snagged my attention.

The number of participants didn't look especially large. Probably off chasing flashier items elsewhere in the venue. Whatever the reason, it was good news for us—it meant fewer competitors.

"Now, the first item is—!"

The auctioneer seemed to sense no more arrivals were coming and started quickly. We took seats in the bidder section and waited for the herbs to come up.

"Third item: rare herbs! Let me introduce them one by one!"

Finally, the things we'd been looking for. I'd been anticipating this, and I grew progressively deflated as the auctioneer described each one.

"Any buyers?"

Several of the herbs sold; several remained. The auctioneer looked around the seated participants with something that might have been helplessness, and then brought out a box with a resigned air.

"Those who weren't interested in herbs might change your mind when you see this!"

What he produced from the box was a fan-shaped plant that, at first glance, could have been mistaken for something poisonous. Of course, depending on how it was administered, it could genuinely become poisonous—but what this was, unmistakably, was a medicinal herb. At least as far as Kahron was concerned.

"That's it, Kahron!"

I slapped his thigh and whispered it. The surprise of finally finding it, the relief—my hand had moved before I'd decided anything. Kahron looked at me with an expression that said something along the lines of what is wrong with you, and left it at that.

"Starting at ten gold!"

My pleased smile faded instantly. Ten gold? My wages weren't even one gold? The other herbs had started at one—why was this one at ten?

The auctioneer must have felt the dissatisfaction in the room, because he launched into a rundown of the herb's merits.

"This herb is called kisen! Extraordinarily rare—might be found once a decade if you're lucky. In the hands of a skilled physician, it can bring back someone on the edge of death!"

It was genuinely useful, but not so remarkable as to pull someone back from the edge of death. And once a decade—in the forest where I'd lived in my previous life, I'd practically been stepping on it. Had it really been this rare here? That would explain why we hadn't found it.

I tilted my head toward him.

"Kahron. Do you have money?"

If not, we had a problem. Fortunately, Kahron raised his hand without argument. The auctioneer's eyes lit up.

"Ten gold!"

I'd expected us to take it cleanly—the other participants had shown so little interest in the herbs up to this point. But from across the room, someone raised a hand. Three people in dark robes, same as us.

"Twenty gold."

"Twenty gold—bold! Anyone going higher?"

Kahron said quietly: "Thirty gold."

All three of the others, the auctioneer, and I turned to look at him simultaneously. A spike of anxiety. He did have the money, right? Surely he wasn't thinking that, being a Sword Master, he could simply make a scene and run if it came to that—

"Thirty-five gold!"

The competitors raised again. The auctioneer looked delighted. Kahron followed: "Forty gold."

"Forty-five!"

"Fifty gold."

"Ugh. Fifty-five gold!"

A brief silence settled. Past fifty-five, apparently, was the wall. I didn't even know for certain that Kahron had fifty gold to his name, so I'd already exhaled in something closer to relief.

I was starting to think we might be better off going back to the forest and searching more carefully —

"Fifty-five gold! If there are no further bids, this herb goes to—"

"One hundred gold."

That was the end of it.