Ascendance of a Bookworm Chapter 77

Interlude: A Gatekeeper’s Job

I’m Gunther. I’m thirty-two years old, and today I’m standing watch at the south gates to protect my beloved family.

Otto is being extra annoying today. He just can’t stop himself from constantly grinning, and he isn’t actually doing his job at all. My guess is that something good’s happened to his wife, who he just adores. I get it, sure, but that face he’s making is just begging for a couple good punches.

“Get yourself together, Otto. Is that the kind of face a gatekeeper makes?!”
“I am keeping myself together!”

When I call him out on it, he smacks himself in the cheeks, making an effort to shape up, but he barely manages anything. His cheeks are a little redder, but he can’t keep a straight face at all. As I sigh in astonishment, I hear a low chuckle behind me. I turn around and see my commanding officer, shoulders quivering with laughter.

“Your subordinate’s just like you, isn’t he?” he says. “He’s paying exactly as much attention to his job as you do when you’re worried about your daughters.”
“Ah…?! Uh, no, sir, what I―”
He claps me on my shoulder. “Have a talk with him,” he says, sauntering off. “He always does it for you.”

Back when I had to miss Tuuli’s baptismal ceremony, and whenever Maïne’s in trouble, Otto’s always been there to listen to me, so I guess I owe him one.

Gotta do it, then. It’s not gonna be great, but maybe I should go keep him company after work. …Although, whenever he really gets started talking about things he loves, he gets completely unstoppable.

I sigh again. Learning that that’s what people think of me was pretty unexpected, and I really had no way of knowing that everyone wanted us two irritatingly doting family men to be friends with each other, either.

After we hand over our posts to the night s.h.i.+ft, Otto and I start walking towards the eastern gates. The eastern gates are connected to the main highway, so it gets the most pedestrian traffic, and the road that connects to them is lined with inns and eateries. The side streets and alleys off the main road are packed with shops too, and these are the ones that the people who actually live here tend to use.

Since it’s the summer, every single shop has its doors flung wide open, an here and there I can hear the rowdy voices of people enjoying a drink or four. We make our way towards a bar that’s a favorite among the soldiers here, taking care to avoid b.u.mping into anyone else along the way.

The bar is full of the smell of food and drink. When we walk in, the two medium-length tables in the middle of the room are full of a party of about ten or so people having a loud conversation about something or other. The handful of smaller, round tables around the edge of the room that are meant for a few people are also almost all full up.

“It’s really busy,” remarks Otto.
“C'mon, over there,” I say.

I head towards the back of the room, cutting my way through the noisy party in the middle. On my way, I call out to the manager standing behind the counter.

“Hey, Ebbo! Two bereas this way. And some boiled sausage too, when you get the chance.” “Comin’ up!”

I put in an order for two bereas from Ebbo, the manager. To someone like me, who’s been a gatekeeper ever since his apprentice days, basically everyone in this little city’s an acquaintance, except for the n.o.bles and rich people that keep the curtains closed on their carriages.

I slap down a large copper coin on the counter to pay for the drinks and the sausage, and Ebbo sets out two large wooden mugs, filled to the brim with berea. I grab the mugs, careful not to spill anything, look around the room for an empty spot, and start moving towards a round table near the back of the bar.

The table’s still got all the tableware on it from the previous customers, but when the two of us start heading for it a sharp-eyed serving girl quickly runs over to clear off the wooden cups and forks. There’s a piece of the bread that they serve meat on instead of plates left on the table, already damp with juice. She uses it to roughly wipe down the table, then tosses it to the ground. The shop dog runs over, tail wagging, and hungrily scarfs it down. Otto and I set our mugs down on the freshly cleared table and sit down, our chairs clattering against the wooden floor.

“We give thanks to Vantolle,” we both say, lifting our mugs in grat.i.tude to the G.o.d of alcohol, and take a drink.

I down my entire mug in one go, gulping noisily. In my opinion, this is the absolute best way to enjoy a frothy mug of berea. The feeling of the drink pouring down my throat after it’s gotten so parched from work is irresistible. The sensation of the tiny little bubbles and that special bitter flavor hit my mouth an instant later.

I let out a satisfied sigh. “That’s the stuff! …So, what’s happened?”

I set my empty mug down on the table with a clack. Otto, who still has some froth around his mouth, takes a plate of boiled sausage from the serving girl and orders us another round. As I reach for the chunk of hard bread they served my sausage on, Otto starts acting absolutely lovestruck, foppishly shrugging his shoulders.

“Wellll, Corinna says we’re still not telling anyone yet, so even if it’s you, sir, I just can’t say!”
“What, you’re having a kid or something?”
“H, how, how did you know that?!”
“I mean, based on how you’re acting and the fact that your wife doesn’t want you to tell anyone, what else could it be?”

Otto gives up, scratching his cheek. To be a little more honest, I figured it out after going through the exact same thing and having someone point it out the same way. No need to tell him that, though.

Seriously, though, Otto’s going to be a dad, huh? Is this merry man really going to be okay?

Those words flicker through my head, but even that was something that people asked about me back then, too.

Yeah, if he’s so happy about having a child now, then he’ll probably be a good, doting father. Based on my own past, I’d bet there’ll be no problems there at all.

“Alright, here’re your refills! Thanks for waiting.”

The serving girl sets down fresh mugs with a heavy clack, their contents slos.h.i.+ng a little and sending a spray of foam over the sides. Neither she nor us customers pays it any mind, though, and I hand her a medium copper coin. Otto and I drink our drinks, distracted by the hubbub around us. Unlike my first mug, I don’t slam it back in one go, but instead let the complex flavor roll across my tongue, tasting the bitterness of the wheat mixed with the sweetness of the malt, before finally swallowing it down.

Come to think of it, wasn’t Otto’s wife the seamstress that Eva and Tuuli admire? Tuuli was saying that after her darua contract runs out at her current workshop, she was going to try really hard to move to Otto’s wife’s workshop next. Also, her older brother’s the proprietor of that company that’s been taking care of Maïne. I myself only really know Otto, but it seems like our families have somehow managed to get pretty close.

“Otto, make sure you do right by your wife and kid. Your kid’s going to be the heir to a major store, isn’t he? Maïne was saying something about that.”
“…About that, sir.”

His entire demeanor suddenly changes. His face hardens, his foppish demeanor disappearing, and he looks off into s.p.a.ce as if he’s searching for words. When I see his shoulders tense, just like Maïne’s did when she was trying to tell us something she’d been bottling up, my head suddenly cools, the buzz of the alcohol disappearing. Despite the fact that I’d just taken a swig, my throat suddenly feels dry. I take a long, slow drink of my berea.

“…Alright, what is it?”
“Ah~… well, this isn’t an immediate thing, but… in a few years, I’m probably going to quit being a soldier.”

The reason Otto had become a soldier was originally so that he could try to marry the heiress of a major store. A mere trader falling in love with the heiress of a major store. Basically everything about being a trader is different from being a merchant in a city. There’s no way a trader could suddenly become a merchant working for a major store. At that point, the people around her were saying that he was only courting her in order to gain the social standing of a major merchant, so she treated him with a lot of suspicion at first. However, when Otto bought his citizens.h.i.+p and found work as a soldier, not a merchant, it showed her how serious his feelings were.

That was a major shock, though, when I heard about it. That happened when I was still stationed at the west gate, so that must have been, what, four years ago? One day, a particular trader, who’d always said that he was selling his wares so he could go home to his parents one day and open a shop in the city they lived in, came through the gates as usual. A few days later, that same trader shows back up again at the gates, saying that in order to woo a woman he’d sold everything he owned to buy a citizens.h.i.+p and was now looking for non-mercantile work. The other gatekeepers had to ask him to repeat himself several times, not believing their own ears.

I’d known Otto since he was a kid, though, all the way back from when his father kept bringing him along his journeys as a trader. It was easy to understand that if a man like him who said that he was going to go back to his parents someday suddenly sold everything to buy citizens.h.i.+p, he must have seriously fallen in love at first sight.

Thanks to his life as a trader, Otto knew his numbers, could read our official doc.u.ments, and was decently good with his hands. In the end, I’d recommended him to the higher-ups in the guard, on the condition that he was mostly going to be doing paperwork. There are many soldiers who, no matter how diligent they are about training, constantly forget to do their paperwork. Otto joining the soldiery made dealing with the merchants and n.o.bility coming through the gates with their letters of recommendation a lot easier on us all.

But now he’s quitting being a soldier? Does this mean that his wife’s family has recognized him as a merchant?

I’ve known for a while that when he’s not on duty at the gates, he’s been helping out with things at his wife’s shop. I also know that he’s been making sure to keep his mercantile senses sharp by talking with the traders and merchants that come through the gates. If this is the result of all of his hard work paying off, then I’m really happy for him, but there’s something in his face that reminds me of a man who’s lost his bearings.

“So now that you’re having a kid, is that dutiful older brother of Corinna’s finally recognizing you?”
“…No, we’ve occasionally had conversations about that before, so that’s probably not it. I think this is because of Maïne.”
“What?!”

I slam my cup down, eyes nearly flying out of my head. I hadn’t expected that my daughter’s name would come up at all. Otto, however, looks a little more relaxed, reaching for his cup and taking a drink.

“Sir, when I was looking for work outside of being a merchant, the reason I thought being a soldier was the best choice for me was so that I could make acquaintances with the people living in this city. I wanted to make sure that I could remember everyone’s faces, and that they’d all remember mine. Also, I wanted to be able to know about all the merchants and n.o.bles coming and going, so I decided that being a soldier would be a good way to gather a little intelligence.”
“Hmm,” I say, noncommittally.
“I’d planned to keep being a soldier for a while longer, but things around the store have started changing. The rinsham and hairpins that Maïne brought us have been extremely good products for us, so the Gilberta Company’s been achieving great things lately.”
“Huh, because of the products Maïne brought you?”

I’m happy that Maïne’s being praised, and as a parent I’m pretty proud about that, but something feels a bit off about all that. From where I’m standing, rinsham is something that Tuuli made, and the hairpins that Eva and Tuuli made were much prettier than Maïne’s. When Maïne tries to make things, she doesn’t have enough strength to do it, so she winds up making a whole lot of mistakes. I can’t even count all of the times I’ve seen her look at something that hasn’t turned out quite right with her head tilted to the side in confusion.

“But the Gilberta Company’s main business is in clothing and accessories, so when she and Lutz made a vegetable-based paper and brought that to us… it’s very profitable and influential, but it doesn’t fit the direction of our store. Benno wants to expand the scope of what we sell. Corinna, though, really doesn’t have any interest in anything but clothing, so she’s been saying that she doesn’t want to do any expansion.”
I frown. “Are you telling me that Maïne bringing you things has been causing conflict?”
Otto frantically waves his hand back and forth. “Oh no no no, I wouldn’t call it conflict at all. From a merchant’s standpoint, all those things are amazing. I totally understand why Benno wants to get involved. It’s just that Corinna doesn’t want to sell them. That’s why Benno’s thinking that he wants to hand over the Gilberta Company to Corinna earlier than we’d planned, get me to help, and own his own shop… He’s going to start a new shop in order to sell the things that Maïne comes up with to other cities.”

If the proprietor of a major store is going all the way as to start a new store, then selling and distributing these products must be generating colossal sums of money. A little while ago, an extremely excited Tuuli had been trying very hard to explain to me that Maïne was actually extremely rich, but I figured, reasonably, that she was just exaggerating. There’s no way that a girl just barely out of her baptism would have any real amount of money.

“…So it’s true, then, that Maïne’s been earning a ridiculous amount of money?”
“It really is. But, she’s been extremely careful about controlling her finances. Maybe someone taught her about that, because she’s far better at it than you’d expect a kid to be. I don’t think you’d have managed to teach her how to calculate transactions at that level, sir, so where in the world did she learn it?”

He grins teasingly at me. I stare back at him for a moment, then snort. There’s only one being that could have taken notice of my cute little girl, filled her to overflowing with mana, and gifted her with knowledge beyond understanding.

“The G.o.ds taught it to her. My daughter is beloved by the G.o.ds, after all.”
“I kept thinking you were just exaggerating like a normal father, but it’s kinda scary how persuasive that idea is now.”

Otto laughs, shrugging his shoulders, then takes a big bite of his sausage. I take a bite of my own, then turn the conversation back to him.

“So, when are you planning on quitting? We don’t have anyone able to take over for your work, you know?”
“Oh, yes, there’s no way that I’d be able to hand off my post anytime soon, so I was thinking that it would be sometime in the next two to three years. I’ve been thinking I want to train up someone to be good at calculations, though.” He sighs. “Ahh… Maïne getting caught by the temple was a miscalculation on my part.”

I recall that Otto had advised Maïne to not become a merchant’s apprentice, trying to convince her that both her physical weakness and the strain she’d put on human relations.h.i.+ps meant that it would be better for her to work out of her home. What she decided back then was that she was going to work at home, sometimes come along with me to the gates to do some work there, and keep living like that for as long as she could, wasn’t it? I don’t think anyone was thinking that she might get caught up by the temple.

“It was a miscalculation for me too, I guess. Maïne had been saying that she didn’t want to make any n.o.ble’s acquaintance, then suddenly she started saying she wanted to go apprentice as a priestess. Just to read books whenever she wanted, huh, that girl…”

Just remembering the time when she’d told me that she wanted to go to the temple and be a priestess makes my grip tighten painfully on the mug.

“It seems like Benno had been gathering information and trying to pull some strings, but… Sir, are you happy with the way things turned out?”
“Do you think I am?” I say, shooting him a sharp look.
He raises his hands in defeat, shaking his head. “No, not at all.”

No matter how many good conditions we got, Maïne attending the temple isn’t anything I would have picked by choice.

“I don’t think I possibly could be happy about that,” I say. “They’re promising that she’s going to be treated the same way that the n.o.bles are, but once you start thinking about those guys’ sense of privilege, there’s no way that that’s actually going to wind up happening.”
“…Yes, exactly.”

It’s just lip service. Sure, to make it look good, they’ll probably give her some blue robs, but I know for a fact that they’re not going to treat her the same as a n.o.ble in any meaningful way.

“Although, we did manage to avoid getting her thrown in the orphanage. If she can come home, then I still get to see her. Those guys are n.o.bles. Even if all we got out of this was that she didn’t get completely s.n.a.t.c.hed away by them, then that’s still a win in my book.”
“It’s a very precarious position, though.”
“…Yeah.”

Maïne’s magic had gone berserk, coercing the temple master into backing down, so things are somewhat hazy right now, but he was originally planning on sentencing me and Eva to death and throwing Maïne into the orphanage. She saved our lives, and we won her the ability to live at home, but that was an enormous concession on the temple’s part. Wis.h.i.+ng for any better treatment than that is futile. Rather, the temple master is going to be livid that he was coerced by a mere commoner, and is absolutely going to treat her terribly. Just thinking of what might happen once she starts going to the temple fills me with dread.

“Sir. This is second-hand information, but according to Benno, Maïne has at most five years of relative peace at the temple. Since there aren’t that many n.o.bles around right now, people that have mana are very important, but once their numbers start to increase then there’s a very real danger that they’re going to treat her as a burden.”
“…Just five years, huh? It’s still better than the alternative, though. If she doesn’t go to the temple, then it won’t even be half a year from now before she dies.”

I’m letting Maïne go to the temple for the sake of prolonging her life. That is all I can do for her. If I had magic tools, I could do it myself, but I don’t have either the connections or the money to be able to get any. I’m too worthless as a father.

“If she can’t go to the temple, then making a contract with a n.o.bleman would be fine, too. She has a lot of value: she has mana, and she can make money. If she can demonstrate how valuable she is before things start getting dangerous, then there’s a good chance that she’ll be able to secure better conditions on the contract than just being kept alive.”
“Maïne said that she wanted to stay with her family, so she didn’t want a contract with a n.o.ble, but… as her father, I think I’d prefer her to keep living.”

She suffered with her fever for so long, but now that she’s finally able to do the things that she wants to be able to do, I want her to live for the sake of her dreams. But, does her wish to live extend all the way to making a contract with a n.o.ble? What kind of n.o.ble would she contract with, and what conditions would she be able to get on that contract? Everything is all up to Maïne.

I’m her father, yet there’s so little I can do. Benno consulted with his relatives to gather all sorts of information for her. The guild master sold her one of the magical tools he’d gathered for his own granddaughter’s sake. I can’t help but wonder if they’ve done so much more for her than I ever could.

“…Just what can I do for her, as her father? I don’t have money, I don’t have connections. No matter how important she is to me, in the end, I’m just a soldier that can’t even protect his own daughter, aren’t I? I’m just a bad joke.”

I let the alcohol do its work, letting out the feelings I can’t ever let out at home. I’ve been so self-importantly declaring that I’d protect all of the families of this town, when there’s nothing I can really even do for them.

Otto slowly tilts his head doubtfully to one side as he listens to me grumble.

“No, I’d say that you, the soldier who guards the gates to this city, are the G.o.ds’ baton of command.”
I narrow my eyes. “…What do you mean by that?”

Otto glances around the room, which still roils with noisy activity, then leans a little closer, lowering his voice.

“Thanks to Benno’s a.s.sistance, Maïne is more-or-less well-protected within the city by a magical contract. At the very least, there’s plenty of people here in the city who want to keep Maïne safe. Out of all of Benno’s predictions, though, the one that we should be most scared of is the possibility that Maïne might be kidnapped by a n.o.ble from somewhere else.”
I gulp. “What happens if she’s kidnapped?”

I’ve been mostly a.s.suming that the danger was going to come from the n.o.bles in the temple. I hadn’t even considered that n.o.bles from other parts of the country might have their eyes on her too.

“If she leaves the city, she’ll be cut off from the contract magic’s effects. If n.o.bles from this city do anything, and someone like the guild master or Benno decide to do something about it, then they might be able to appeal to the lord of the city to investigate the matter. However, if the n.o.bles are from another city, then there’s a possibility that they’d be out of the lord’s reach.”

Benno is the proprietor of a major shop, and it’s plain to see that he has a lot of political power. Hearing that someone like him, or the master of the merchant’s guild, or even the lord of the city himself have limits to where they can actually exercise that power hits me like a blow to the head.

If the lord of the city can’t do something, then how could I possibly do it either? How in the world do I deal with n.o.bles from another city?

I squeeze my forehead tightly, fingers digging into my temples. Otto, though, gives me a broad, challenging grin.

“If we don’t want that to happen, then we’re going to want to find out this of the priests in the temple has ill feelings towards Maïne and do some investigation into what n.o.bles those people might have relations.h.i.+ps with. Also, we’ll need to keep an eye out for any n.o.bles from other places who come to the city, then decide if they’re trouble or not. Since that’s the case, then wouldn’t you think that the gatekeeper’s job of reading every single letter of introduction and written invitation that people bring with them is, in fact, a very suitable job for keeping Maïne safe?”

I blink several times, thinking back on what a gatekeeper’s job is. He’s right in that if you want to know about the movement of the n.o.bility, being a gatekeeper is an excellent way to do so. No n.o.ble from other cities ever comes through our gates without either a letter of introduction or a written invitation. Whether by horse or carriage, n.o.bles who enter the city always pa.s.s through the gates, then based on their letter of introduction, head straight to the inner ramparts and enter the n.o.bles’ quarter. Distinguished n.o.blemen never ordinarily wander around the districts where us commoners live. If we’re alert for any n.o.ble stopping their carriages in the city or heading straight for the temple, then there’s a good chance that we’d be able to head off any kidnapping attempt.

Even if, for example, a n.o.bleman were to hire some thug to do the kidnapping for her, any gatekeeper on duty would instantly recognize them as a stranger. We can pretty easily spot anyone who makes their living doing shady business, too. If I talk to the people here as I make my rounds, asking them if they’ve seen anything suspicious, and get closer to my fellow guards, then I could, just by my every day actions, put myself in a position where I can find out very quickly if something strange is going on. This is entirely part of my job as a soldier.

“Sir, weren’t you the one who said that you became a soldier to protect all the families of the city? Maïne counts. I think that if you just keep doing what you’ve always been doing, you can protect her.”
“Now that I think of it, I think starting next spring we’re going to be rea.s.signed to the eastern gates. That might be some good luck.”

Every three years, squads are rotated between the gates. That’s probably in place to stop things from getting in a rut, help deepen the bonds between all the soldiers, and make sure the work winds up being the same everywhere, but I don’t really care too much about the actual details. All I care about is the fact that this upcoming spring, my squad is going to be rea.s.signed to the eastern gates. Those gates face the highway, so they have the highest amount of traffic out of all of the gates, and it’ll be the easiest place to get information from. It’s the gate through which the largest number of strangers come through, so it’ll be the place where I’ll need to be the most vigilant.

“You’ll need to be on your guard, and don’t let anything slip by when you’re gathering information,” says Otto. “I think it would be a good idea for you to figure out how you can use your connections with the other soldiers, and go over how they can get in contact with you so that you can start moving as soon as even the littlest strange thing happens. I’ll help, too. After all, Benno’s sticking his nose into all sorts of things these days, so it’s not like this doesn’t affect my family either.”

With a defiant grin, he makes a fist and flexes his bicep, bending his elbow, making the sign we soldiers use to wish each other a good fight.

“Sir. Let’s definitely keep her safe.”

I return his grin and down the last of my berea, was.h.i.+ng the last of my melancholy away. My cup clacks against the table as I set it down. I clench my fist and bend my elbow, then tap my fist lightly against Otto’s.

“Yeah. My family’s one of this city’s families, so I’ll protect them too.”