Chapter Text
"You dare summon this King in such a place? Presumptuous mongrel." I stand in a summoning circle, golden armor lining my body in its brilliance as the room stays silent besides my own words. "Answer me! Are you the mongrel who summoned this King?!"
The red-haired boy flinches at my words, his eyes wide wh—
*CLINK*
I turn my gaze from the boy and settle my narrowed eyes upon a new mutt. Blue hair with a similarly dark blue outfit fitted to his body, blood-like spear held tight in his hands as he tries spearing me like some common peasant.
Except a shield from my Gate blocks him. "Oh? A mutt attacking me before this King's properly settled?" I flick my hand at the man, tilting my head to get a better view of my surroundings. "State your name before me and I shall be generous, granting you a quick death in exchange."
The spear wielder—Lancer no doubt—glares at me with a grin, his grip tightenng around his weapon. "Nah! I think I'm good. How bout we just fight instead?" Lancer quickly backs off as my treasury reopens, shooting four swords from different angles.
Lancer dodges three then deflects one while backing further from me and the boy, a lust-filled look of violence entering his eyes. "Man~ You're WAY better than that kid behind ya!"
I scoff at the lunatic, arms crossing in contempt. "At least your eyes aren't as defective as your brain."
The boy behind me, chest covered in blood and arm bleeding, looks between us in confusion. "W-What's happening? Wait! STOP FIGHTING!"
Both Lancer and I pause, our faces filled with genuine confusion as we turn toward the red-haired boy.
"Are you perhaps stupid?"
"Ya gotta be dumb kid."
-----
My eyes flicker open, the sudden memory ending in a flash as I settle my gaze upon the window on my side. It's been a few hours since our departure.
Looking out I spot traffic thickening past a bend where the road drops toward a river crossing, by the time our carriage rolls to a halt we've joined the rear of a stalled line.
Wagons with ground dragons shifting in their harnesses, travelers on foot drifting between vehicles with the aimlessness of people who stopped expecting progress some hours ago and the cause sits plainly ahead.
Waters chewed through one span of the timber bridge, dropping half the deck into the current. What remains will carry a man on foot while refusing anything with axles, such as a carriage... Ahhh, of course.
"That's a problem..." Subaru leans out the window for a better view, counting wagons under his breath until he loses interest in the total. "That's a lot of stuck people. Is anybody actually fixing it, or..." Nobody's fixing it, that becomes obvious within minutes of stepping outside. What the crossing hosts instead is an argument with excellent attendance.
Village men from the settlement on the bank near stand in one cluster with their arms folded, merchants in traveling coats forming a second, a third group of smaller travelers orbiting both while contribting sound and NOTHING else. A stack of cut timber sits in plain view behind the villagers' position. Coils of rope hang off the lead of a merchant wagon. Tools lean against a cart not twenty steps from the damage. Every material component for repair is present yet idle and not used by ANY of the people present.
I gather the shape of the dispute from one slow walk along my way, it disgusts me. The villager's have timber and hands, but refuse to donate either so that wealthy traders may roll on without spending a copper.
A fruit merchant with two wagons of produce softening in the sun wants the bridge mended within the hour while declining to fund timber that villagers will use for years after he's gone.
A caravan refuses to pay anything on the reasoning that whoever pays, everyone crosses, so the wise position is to be among the everyone rather than the whoever.
Each party is correct... Along with substantially stupid as well. Collectively they've produced a monument to why this kingdom requires a king. In my Uruk, this crossing would've been rebuilt and tolled. Turning profit before midday with the arguers conscripted for the labor as a fee for wasting the crown's waste of time.
My treasury could bridge this river in the time it takes to describe doing it. But producing a treasure of legend because merchants can't organize carpentry would demean my treasure in a way I can't begin to comprehend..
"Yo Gil, imma go talk to them." Subaru's already rolled up his sleeves, which historically precedes his worst decisions. "This is fixable ya hear!Everybody needs the same thing! This is the single most solvable problem we've ever run into. No assassins, no murderous servants, just a group project. I ate four plates at dinner for this exact moment! Just watch me!"
"That is not what the helpings were for and this will fail." I inform the idiot, settling against our carriage to enjoy it as he again confirms why he's an idiot.
It fails.
Subaru's opening effort is sincere, yet lands exactly as I predict. A rousing appeal to common benefit, delivered to the space between all three factions, met by the fruit merchant demanding to know whether the enthusiastic foreigner intends to reimburse two wagons of ripening stock, by a village elder observing that fine speeches lift no timber, and by the border caravan's driver spitting sunflower shells then asking what the boy's selling.
Subaru retreats to my position wearing the specific frustration of a man whose good idea was correct and useless at the same time.
And it quite literally is
"Uhh... So appealing to teamwork was a bust." Subaru scrubs a hand through his hair, watching the factions resettle into their trenches like animals. "They all want the bridge but none of the dam guys wanna be the sucker who pays for the bridge. Everyone's more scared of getting cheated than they're of losing the whole day, which is—" the complaint dies in his throat as something in his face changes gears. "—Which is actually the whole answer isn't it? Nobody's going to sacrifice? Fine! So nobody sacrifices, but how about everybody trades?!" Subaru goes back in with renewed determination, eyes ablaze with a fire.
He goes back in, and this time I push off the carriage to follow at a distance, because the boy has stopped performing and started working.
Subaru works the crowd the way he once worked a slum fence and a grieving grandmother, one conversation at a time and asking before proposing.
From the fruit merchant he extracts the real number, two days of delay ruins the cargo entirely which means the man's true choice is between paying something today or losing everything by the day after tomorrow.
From the village elder Subaru learns the settlement's wanted that bridge properly repaired since last autumn, has the timber already cut for it but lacks the coin to justify pulling men off spring field work.
From the tool cart's owner he learns the man would rather rent his gear at a fair day-rate than hand it to strangers for nothing. The border caravan wants its cheapness accommodated, so Subaru agrees to accommodate it, smaller travelers contribute a token crossing fee scaled to what they drive and the shell-spitting driver discovers he would rather pay a little than remain the only party still stalled at dusk while everyone watches.
"Alrighty! Let's get to work guys!" Subaru shouts with a grin as he tries helping... And promptly leaves a second later once realizing he has no clue what he's doing.
The work itself proceeds acceptably until the river reminds everyone why the bridge failed. The replacement span requires seating a main beam across the gap, as the dragon team draws it out over the water, the surviving support pile—waterlogged since winter by the honest look of it— groans under the temporary framework then begins to lean.
Standing on the side, I open my treasury at an angle beneath the framework, let it deliver a column from some structure whose remains entered my treasury long ago directly onto the riverbed beneath the failing pile.
The staging drops half a hand's width, meets stone built to endure considerably greater burdens then stops. Chains follow from a second portal, lashing the drifting beam steady until the dragon team recovers its footing and hauls the span home into its seat.
The golden light closes as I eye the men watching me in shock. "Proceed," I advise the silent men. "The column stays. Consider it this kingdom's first adequate foundation by me."
Work resumes at roughly double the previous pace, motivated by the universal desire to stop standing on anything above my patience. Subaru appears at my elbow, gratitude clear on his face. "One, thank you, that was about to be six injured people. Two, you had a spare column? You deployed the thing like it was a coaster. What else is just... rattling around loose in there?"
"Rattling? Nothing rattles idiot."
---
The evening returns interest neither of us anticipated. The caravan camped nearest the far bank belongs to a westbound freight company eight wagons deep. It's master finds us at the communal fire once the crossing settles for the night.
He's a compact man past fifty with gray shot through a tidy beard, from either age or stress I know not. The man introduces himself as Denbei with a bow shallow enough to respect and deep enough to mean it.
"Been runnin' this road since before you were born boyo and I never once seen an argument like that end before sundown." Denbei's speech carries a unique flavor, the cadence familiar enough that beside me Subaru sits up as though stung. "Usually it ends when somebody rich loses patience and pays for the lot grumblin' the whole while. You had the fruit man thankin' you for chargin' him double. Where'd you learn to haggle like a westerner?"
"Your accent." Subaru's abandoned the question entirely, leaning over his bowl of food with his eyes wide. "Where are you from? Originally I mean. Say-Say 'this soup is good.' Please, It's important."
"Hahah? Odd request, but the soup is good." Denbei obliges amused, even I can hear what the boy hears. The cadence bends the way Subaru described Kararagi's speech from Roswaal's books, close enough to the Kansai dialect of his homeland that recognition hits him before reason catches up. "Born in Ivada, Third City before the company moved me east. Kararagi-raised and Lugunica-weathered. Uhh, why's the lad look like the soup confessed to somethin'?"
"No reason! Great soup, totally normal soup!" Subaru recovers with the subtlety of a landslide. The interrogation he conducts across the fire lasts until the stars are fully out.
Idiot.
Denbei proves a patient man. Kararagi's ten major cities are represented by their mayors through the League of Cities, with a chief selected from above that structure rather than a king ruling as Lugunica understands the title. Trade sits close to the heart of the country, businesses carrying influence that Subaru finds suspiciously familiar after everything he read at Roswaal's estate.
Mercenary organizations are common enough that Denbei discusses hired protection as ordinary business rather than some peculiar western institution. Kararagi's clothing and architecture carry the wafuu style Subaru's already encountered in written descriptions while talk of sake, soy sauce, sashimi, wasabi, chopsticks, and other western foods gradually leaves the boy staring across the fire with increasing disbelief.
"And every western merchant knows the founder's name." Denbei refills his cup from the communal pot, comfortable in the role of the fire's oldest voice. "Hoshin of the Wilderness. Four hundred years past, the man brings the western lands together and turns scattered countries into what became Kararagi. Introduced customs folk still use today too. Merchants love the old stories about him. Half the sayings attributed to the man probably aren't even his anymore if you ask me."
Denbei makes his offer over the last of the pot. His caravan runs toward the Kararagi border with Ivada as its eventual destination, a party containing one negotiator who untangles crossings alongside one man capable of preventing bridges from collapsing strikes him as worth accommodating.
In exchange we travel with people who know the western routes, settlements, tolls and border procedures far better than two newcomers possibly could.
"How bouta ya boys join us? Get some protection and won't be having to worry bout any those bandits or shit." Denbei asks with a smile, spoon entering his mouth as he eyes me and Subaru with a merchants gaze.
"Your caravan may accompany us." I allow the man this honor which Denbei absorbs with silence, Subaru translates around a mouthful of soup before I can continue. "Gil means yes by the way. Also thank you, we're definitely in." I glare at Subaru for talking over, I'll let it slide this one.
"Great! Finish tonight and camp out, next day we on the road! Hope y'all ready for the morning!" Denbei cheerfully announces between mouthful's of food, his attitude rubbing off MY property.