* * *

Gringen was a city with advantages as well as disadvantages. That was true of any city, of course, but in Gringen the contrast was particularly stark.

Its waterways allowed trade all the way to the sea, and it had plentiful peat and gemstones. On the other hand, farmland was scarce and timber hard to obtain. That meant the city struggled to feed itself or put up buildings.

The surrounding wetlands provided clay that could be fired into bricks in abundance, but brick construction was too labor-intensive to be feasible.

Gringen had no single ruling authority. All manner of factions jostled for power, leaving nothing but an endless cycle of exploitation—with a high crime rate thrown in for good measure.

Rules and discipline did not govern the city. The strong preyed on the weak, and only the fittest survived.

Nor did becoming the leader of a gang guarantee a safe life. The gangs had their own internal conflicts, and bosses were replaced practically every other day.

No one looked to the future or considered how to survive and prosper.

Frankly, it seemed the closest a city could come to hell.

Into that hell came Valeri—the Salt Prince who had slain the Ballsack Opener in a duel.

He bought an old building on Gringen's outskirts and began gathering people there. At the same time, he purchased timber, powdered lime, food, and other supplies, bringing them in by water in an uninterrupted stream.

He paid people to pack and fire clay into bricks, dig peat, or even simply bring in stones fit for building or cut bundles of reeds. That money provided their daily bread.

People were put to work at jobs that required nothing but an able body: laying roads, carrying building materials, and building houses. And those houses would belong to the very people who built them.

Of course, the houses were being sold to them through loans, but the sums were well within their means to repay if they kept working.

Such an undertaking required enormous funding. The proceeds from selling gemstones and the gold Regin had left behind covered it all.

Capital, labor, and determination were coming together to create something. That something was a livelihood, a life, and hope.

Valeri had not undertaken all this out of some noble philosophy, ideology, or kindness of heart. Having fled with Knut, he was doing it strictly as part of his effort to seize control of the city.

Sometimes, however, the process itself revealed a purpose one had never intended to find.

A purpose worth giving one's heart for.

Yorik diligently counted on his fingers, moving the beads of an abacus up and down one by one as he worked out the figures.

After a considerable time, he picked up his pen and wrote a number. Too much ink blotted the page, and the writing was crooked. Then he looked at Valeri, who sat beside him, as though checking whether he had it right.

Expressionless, Valeri merely watched the crooked figures appear one digit at a time.

Yorik counted on both hands again, moved the abacus beads, and wrote another number. In this way, he filled the columns with figures.

Only after he had completed a whole page did Valeri point at the ledger and speak.

“This, this, this, this, this, and this are wrong.”

Almost none of it was right.

“I-I'm sorry.”

“There's nothing to apologize for. Take your time and try again. Your finger counting is right, but you're making mistakes when you move the beads.”

“Exactly. Do I have to use this? And why am I practicing recording the same transaction in different ways...? My head feels like it's going to burst.”

“You'll be dealing with bigger and bigger numbers. This will make it easier. And you should record money you've spent separately from money you still owe, and money you've received separately from money you're owed. That way, you know what the company currently has in assets. It isn't just about the cash. If you only record what you've spent and earned, you won't be able to keep up once things grow.”

“...”

Valeri had handled receipts and disbursements before, and before his return to the past, he had always scrutinized the finances while leading his army. He was passing that knowledge on.

Frankly, it was a little difficult for Yorik to learn. Even so, he kept at it diligently in his own way, never giving up.

The problem was that he felt self-conscious.

From Valeri's perspective, having to point out the same mistakes over and over while watching him struggle so slowly ought to have been irritating.

Yet Valeri had never once shown irritation or anger. Was he patient, or was he swallowing it all?

After casting needless, anxious glances at him, Yorik spoke.

“But, Master Wid...”

“What?”

“Aren't you angry?”

“Where did that come from?”

“You have to repeat the same things over and over, and I still keep getting them wrong.”

“I didn't expect anything to begin with.”

“What!?”

“What?”

“E-even so, isn't that a l-little harsh?”

Valeri answered with a faint smile.

“Don't worry. It doesn't mean I hate or dislike you. You're quick on the uptake, Yorik, and you have the will to learn. Keep at it, and you'll get there. You're only anxious because you're impatient.”

“...”

At those words, Yorik gazed steadily at him.

“What is it now?”

“You really are strange.”

“How?”

“You seem heartless, yet you're so good at saying things that give people courage and strength. As you said, I'm fairly perceptive, but I can't work out what sort of person you are, Master Wid.”

“Am I? I hadn't thought of that.”

“You told me to become a predator, remember? My life has changed so much since I heard that. The clothes I wear, where I sleep, how I think—and realizing how happy it makes me to help other people instead of only looking out for myself. Life's enjoyable these days. I suppose you could say I'm looking forward to the future. I never used to. It's all thanks to you, Master Wid.”

“Thank you for saying that.”

Thank you for saying that? Why would he be grateful? How could he say something like that?

To Yorik, Knut was the typical nobleman: sensitive and self-centered. Admittedly, he had an affectionate side too, but still.

Valeri, though... something about him was different. He was a bastard, yet somehow he seemed more noble than the nobility. Yorik thought so, though he would never dare say it aloud.

“You can be frightening, but when you're refined, like you are now, you're truly refined. If I ever saw a real prince, I imagine he'd be like you, Master Wid.”

Keeping to himself the potentially offensive observation that a bastard seemed like a true nobleman, Yorik offered the highest praise he could: that Wid was like a prince.

Valeri, however, inwardly flinched. Uneducated people sometimes displayed startling flashes of insight, and this seemed to be one of those moments.

“Just do your sums. I'll check them later, so don't cut corners.”

“I'm not cutting corners.”

Valeri rose and stepped outside. The midday sun hung in the sky, but the weather was cool.

A new fence surrounded the house, and a separate roof had been erected right beside it to form a stable. There was little of note to see, but compared with when they had first arrived, the place certainly looked tidier.

Already, a month had passed since they came here.

Valeri led Snow out of the stable and mounted. Beyond the fence, he looked around at the nearby houses taking shape. Some were nearly finished.

Bricks were being laid with mortar, timber supports stood inside and out, and makeshift awnings had been stretched overhead to keep the rain off during construction.

The plasterers and bricklayers he had hired demonstrated their skills from time to time as they directed the workers. Elsewhere, bread, dried fish, and other food were being handed out.

As Valeri rode past, the people working on the buildings and those sitting in the road eating stopped what they were doing to greet him.

They hurriedly removed their headwear and held it to their chests. Some bowed at the waist, while others even knelt and lowered their heads. It was like watching a great nobleman's procession.

Valeri had not ordered this. It was a spontaneous display of respect. After all, thanks to him they could feed themselves; they could hardly feel anything but profound gratitude.

Valeri did not particularly welcome such displays, but he could hardly tell them not to do it.

Still, things ran better when he came out and showed his face occasionally. Even if he was not supervising or inspecting anything, they needed to know that the person paying cared.

The problem was that people called him “Your Highness.”

They did not know he was a real prince; they were simply shortening the Salt Prince to a princely form of address. That, he had told them to stop.

Feigning indifference to their greetings, Valeri rode on down the road toward the river. Before long, he saw people coming downstream on what looked like rafts.

They disembarked at a spot that was not even a landing, and the people waiting there set to work dismantling the rafts. In fact, these were not rafts so much as shipments of timber.

Several workers dragged the logs away to dry off to one side. The logs that had already dried were being cut, shaved, and dressed at an open-air sawmill.

Arne was among them.

Mounted as Valeri was, he was easy to spot even from a distance. Arne soon noticed him and walked over. As he came, he took off his work-soiled gloves and slapped them against his leg, sending clouds of dust into the air.

“How's the work going? Any trouble?” Valeri asked first.

“No trouble. But do we really need to use timber and mortar? It seems like we're spending more than we need to, and we're short of hands.”

Despite the considerable number of people who had gathered, there was so much work that they still lacked labor. Moving and dressing the logs was particularly dangerous, too.

“No. If we're going to build them, we should build them to last.”

“These people used to live in tents and things. Do we really need to...?”

Arne meant that gathering people and providing them with a livelihood was all well and good, but wasn't this a little excessive?

Materials commonly used in construction elsewhere were something of a luxury in Gringen. Every bit had to be bought.

“If you think of their sons and grandsons, their grandsons' grandsons, and their grandsons after that living in them, sturdy is better, isn't it?”

“You're thinking that far ahead...?”

“Keeping costs down and doing the bare minimum would feel like I was using them. I don't want that.”

The plan was to win the people's support, use that support to establish a legitimate claim, and then seize control of the city. But Valeri did not want to be calculating about winning their hearts.

He had met a frontier knight on his patrol some time ago—the man whose father had sold his horse and used the money to secure their livelihood. Valeri hoped the people of Gringen could have the same.

Money could corrupt people, but it could also breathe life and hope into them. He wanted to spend the gold he had obtained from the dwarf on that life and hope.

Arne considered this quietly, then a mischievous smile touched his lips. Looking up at Valeri on his horse, he said,

“I do think it'd be nice if someone like you became king.”

He was turning Valeri's earlier irreverent joke about the king back on him. It was half a joke and half sincere.

First Yorik, now Arne. What was wrong with everyone today? When I mentioned princes or kings, it was a joke, but hearing it from others felt decidedly strange.

And even if he sincerely cared for these people, the roots of his actions did not lie in goodwill. I'm not a good person.

“Your Highness! Your Hiiighness!”

As Valeri spoke with Arne, someone came running up from behind, calling to him. He had told them not to call him that.

He turned with a slight frown, but the man running toward him looked terribly urgent.

The man reached Valeri and spent a while catching his breath.

“What's happened? And don't call me that. I have no wish to commit an offense against the Crown.”

Arne privately wondered how he could say that after making far more irreverent jokes himself.

In any case, the man who had rushed over struggled to speak through his breathlessness.

“Thugs—those thugs stole the food and ran off. They even beat a bricklayer to death!”

The moment Valeri heard that, he pulled the reins and wheeled his horse around. Then he galloped back the way he had come, hooves beating urgently.

When he swiftly reached the scene, the crowd was murmuring. The food distribution area was in utter disarray, and a man lay on the ground, bleeding from the head.

Valeri dismounted and approached. The man's skull was cracked, frothy blood seeped from his nose, and he was already dead.

It was contradictory to call the damage slight when someone had died, but to Valeri, this was not a full-fledged attack. It was a warning.

“Who did this?”

As Valeri asked, his distinctively intense gaze shone as keenly as a blade. Frightened though they were, the people kept their mouths firmly shut, unwilling to speak carelessly.

They trusted and followed Valeri, but Gringen's people were notorious for saying nothing about crimes. They feared retaliation.

Valeri knew why they would not speak. In a sense, they could not—but to his mind, they would not.

He stood and turned to address them. No, to give them their first and final warning.

“Listen to me carefully. I'll let it go this once. But if you refuse to answer my questions again, don't expect to ever see me again. Whether you starve, get murdered, or kill yourselves will have nothing to do with me. I won't bat an eye. You'll mean nothing to me. Understood?”

Valeri had always turned cold when angry. His frosty words made the people tremble, as though their hearts had frozen solid.

“Go fetch Skard.”

Then he passed through the crowd and headed home, leading Snow. It seemed the time had come to start cracking heads.