Book 2. The Grand Gathering. Chapter 13. Another Evening.
“Whoa,” Shei exclaimed in amazement and took another sip of the incredibly delicious wine from the Ciene Kingdom which Cran put forward partway through Laien’s story. “I thought I and Kuan make Master Roderick feel an endless headache, but it seems like Master Rudford doesn’t have it easy either,” she pointed out with a laugh and smirked at Laien.
“Come on, it’s not that bad!” Laien pouted, hearing this remark not for the first or second time. Was he really being such a headache?
“Yeah, it’s not that bad,” Kuan said with a smirk. “But that’s only because Master Rudford is so lenient towards you. Geez, I can’t believe how easygoing he is about everything you do!”
“He is spoiling him just a little bit,” Cran supported with a chuckle, sharing the twos’ opinion about Laien going overboard.
“Okay, enough about me.” Laien rolled his eyes helplessly. “How’s it going for you guys? Anything interesting happened to you recently?” he asked curiously. Technically, he could have kept in contact with these three through letters… but it wasn’t exactly his nor their cup of tea.
“You could say so,” Shei mentioned mysteriously. Instead of explaining, however, she looked away and picked at her shirt, revealing a bit more of her cleavage along with a golden necklace and a hexagonal medallion resting on her fair skin.
Laien’s eyes instantly went wide and he hurriedly turned to look at Kuan, who laughed in a somewhat embarrassed manner and brought out an identical medallion from under his shirt.
“You’ve gotten married?! When?!” Laien nearly shouted in shock. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?” he asked, amazed that these two had gotten married so fast.
“What, were we supposed to be like ‘hey, by the way, we hooked up for life, just to let you know’ the moment we started chatting?” Shei shrugged her shoulders with a smile. “Now you know, so it’s all good,” she added, showing something quite unusual to her; embarrassment.
“It kind of just happened at my sixteenth birthday a month ago,” Kuan brought up happily. “We ended up talking about me officially becoming an adult, then got to the subject of marriage… I asked her to marry me and she agreed,” he said happily, then glanced at Shei’s rarely reddened face.
“We just went to the cathedral in the middle of the night, found a priest and went through with the ceremony,” he added carefreely. He was quite happy with how it all happened.
“You chose Nasheira, the Goddess of love and happiness as your patron, huh?” Cran took note of the fact, seeing the image of Nasheira engraved on both of the medallions.
“What did you pick for the back?” Laien asked quickly, knowing that the two weren’t from any kind of noble families and thus, had no official sigils they would be obliged to use.
“Something like this,” Shei said and flipped the medallion, revealing a craving of an entangled nightingale and dragon above which their two names were written in small letters.
“Nightingale… wasn’t it Master Roderick’s family sigil?” Cran recalled, having learned about it from his father way back when he was still a child.
Apparently, Roderick was actually a son of an old and powerful noble family from the Ciene Kingdom. He was born during the Great War, but at his young age and without having even mastered a martial art he had been sent to the frontlines by the leader of his family. His uncle probably feared he would outshine his son and take over the family in the future, so he sent him out to his death.
After all, in the Ciene Kingdom hereditary system wasn’t as strictly followed as in the Sarkcente Kingdom. As long as one had the same blood running through his veins, anyone could take over the position of the family leader.
The cases with adopted sons and bastards was a bit more complicated there… but it wasn’t relevant to the subject at the moment.
Either way, a few months after Roderick had been sent away to the frontlines, as luck would have it the unit he had been assigned to had been ambushed and wiped out by a superior force of the Sarkcente Kingdom; to which force Rudford belonged.
The commander of the Sarkcente Kingdom’s unit had insisted on beheading all those who were captured or had given up, but Rudford, seeing a child who had seemingly abandoned all hope and only stared blankly at the ground without any emotions in his eyes had stepped in and requested Roderick’s life to be spared.
Although what followed was an unpleasant argument with the commander, Rudford already had begun making a name for himself and had many strong friends in the army. In the end, the commander agreed to spare the kid under the condition that Rudford would take the full responsibility for his actions.
That commander probably never had imagined that even before the Great War would end in twenty years, Roderick would become a martial master of the fourth rank and as one of Rudford’s closest friends would have a major impact on the final outcome of the war.
After the Great War ended, Roderick had apparently returned to his family, only to find out that his closest relatives had been preemptively killed by the family leader in fear of a rebellion.
With Rudford having gone into a seclusion, Roderick didn’t dare to go on a rampage and risk causing the war to erupt again. He simply returned to the Sarkcente Kingdom and focused on making the Red Dragon School powerful. He never threw away his family sigil and still used it in formal situations… but he did it rarely, preferring to use the Red Dragon mark whenever possible as to avoid the bitter memories.
“Yes, it’s Master Roderick’s,” Shei confirmed with a slight smile, making Cran snap out of his thoughts. “If it weren’t for Master Roderick going out of his way to seek out talents in the rural areas of the Kingdom, we would have never met each other or joined the Red Dragon School at all. Although Master doesn’t have a wife and children of his own… the two of us and all the disciples he had helped in the last hundred years think of him as our family,” she said and smiled warmly, exchanging a glance with Kuan.
“We felt that using both a dragon and a nightingale would be a nice fit for us. We asked Master Roderick before having the medallions forged and he agreed happily,” she elaborated briefly, as to avoid Laien and Cran thinking they went through with the idea without Roderick’s approval.
“They look great,” Laien said with a calm smile. He had become friends with these two about two years ago and had similarly gotten along with Roderick; of course, he had requested Rudford to tell him more about Roderick’s past.
In comparison to Cran, Laien was aware of much more. For example, he knew that Rudford had actually come with Roderick to the Ciene Kingdom and knew that it was only Roderick who stopped Rudford from going on a mad killing spree when they learned what happened to Roderick’s close relatives.
The difference was a subtle one, but in one case, it would have seemed that Roderick didn’t seek revenge only because he had been unable to, while in the other he had been perfectly able to exact revenge had he only wished to. The willpower to choose not to wasn’t something just anyone was capable of displaying.
As the reason why wiping out the main branch of the family wouldn’t have been a problem… Well, the long war had taken a toll on both countries. Although Roderick’s family had originally been an equivalent of the three great families of the Sakrcente Kingdom, it had suffered really badly and although its foundations were still intact, it needed at least three generations to return to its previous might.
At that time not only did the family lack the power to stop an elite unit which Rudford and Roderick brought with them, but they couldn’t have even hoped for an aid from their own countrymen. In fact, the other families of Ciene Kingdom would have welcomed their demise with open arms.
Although a bunch of wild dogs would be too scared to act against an old, wounded bear, they would still unhesitatingly shred his body into pieces had someone else cut his head off.
“It’s nice that you like the medallions, but…” Kuan said with a wry smile just as Laien got a bit lost in his thoughts. He grabbed Laien’s head under his arm and pulled him over to himself. “Could you please stop staring at my wife’s cleavage already? Here, you can look at mine if you want to look at the medallion,” he teased half-seriously, rubbing his fist into the top of Laien’s skull.
“Let go already, you bastard!” Laien complained, feeling unjustly wronged. Had he really been staring at Shei, he would have accepted the punishment, but this time he was innocent!
“What, giving up?” Kuan asked with a laugh, holding Laien tightly despite him giving his best to wiggle out.
“That’s not it, you need to take a bath!” Laien responded cheekily, causing Cran and Shei to begin laughing; especially due to the overly concerned expression which showed on Kuan’s face.
Ashamed, Kuan released Laien. “Do I really smell bad?” he asked poutingly, smelling his own armpit. He was always taking so much care to always be clean, too…!
“I’m just joking, you totally smell like oranges,” Laien said with a laugh and glanced at Shei. He had often played with Kuan when the couple was staying in the Red Dragon School and Kuan always carried a smell of oranges on him. Was it because Shei liked it?
“You notice too much,” Shei said helplessly, more or less guessing what Laien wanted to say. Eh, wasn’t Laien also quick to notice her and Kuan’s feelings for each other and didn’t he end up pushing them to start going out? Truly, he was such a precious kid and she liked him very much, but sometimes his energy and lack of restraint felt a bit suffocating.
“Well, at least someone is married happily,” Cran commented with a sigh, his expression turning rather bitter.
“Marriage problems?” Laien asked, then smirked a little. “Don’t tell me your father is trying to get you married to that gorilla?” he asked, but never expected Cran’s face to turn even uglier at the mention.
“For real?” Laien laughed weakly and shuddered at the thought. He would have rather ran away from the country than marry a woman like that.
“Eh,” Cran sighed heavily. He originally didn’t plan to burden his friends with his own problems, but he simply couldn’t decide what to do on his own. Thus, since he already mentioned the matter, he proceeded to explain in a weak, resigned voice.
“You know… or maybe you don’t know how my father is. He refuses to acknowledge that I might not get married at all and that he won’t have grandchildren to whom our family’s blood would be passed onto. After he visited me in the Royal Academy three months ago and accidentally… uh, he dragged me all the way to the Crimson Fort on the western border and is trying to make me marry someone. The ‘gorilla’ you saw is only his latest candidate and at the same time, his personal disciple.”
“Wait a second,” Laien spoke up right after Cran finished. “So you had other choices apart from her too, right? Also, what happened at the Royal Academy that got your father so angry?” he asked, wondering why Cran chose to omit this part of the story.
“That is…” Cran groaned. “He caught me making out with my boyfriend…” he revealed, his face flushing quite strongly.
“Wow,” Laien laughed a little, all in all not too surprised by this revelation. He had a ‘guess’ or two about Cran’s preferences since quite a while ago.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“So that’s why your father seemed so angry when Laien was fooling around with Anatis, huh,” Shei mused aloud, only now understanding why General Vatras’s mood had suddenly turned sour during the meeting.
“Pretty much.” Cran sighed for the second time. “He said that he won’t accept anything else than me marrying a woman, being faithful to her and giving him grandchildren,” he pretty much groaned the words out, then added helplessly. “Right now, he is pretty much attempting to ‘resocialize me’ with all those set-up marriages and meeting.”
“So stupid,” Laien said with a snort. “Can’t you just refuse to tag along with his demands?” he asked straightforwardly.
“He promised it’s only until the Grand Gathering is over, so I just went along since he insisted on it so much,” Cran answered in a roundabout way.
“We can safely assume that none of those women were to your liking?” Kuan asked with a slight, wry smile.
“It’s not that.” Cran shook his head resignedly. “There some with whom I would love to be friends with, but I’m simply not attracted to them,” he said along with another sigh.
“But, have you tried it before? You know…?” Kuan inquired, not sure how to ask the question without beating around the bush.
“You mean sex?” Cran asked with a laugh. He was pretty sure this freshly married couple had done it many times already, so why was Kuan fretting over saying the word itself?
“I tried to have sex with women, but it wasn’t enjoyable,” Cran mentioned offhandedly, clearly not wanting to speak about this subject too much.
“So anyway, what’s the problem?” Laien inquired, failing to understand what Cran was so concerned about. It wasn’t like his father was forcing him into a marriage against his will, right?
Cran smiled helplessly and looked Laien in the eye. “If there was something you really didn’t want to do, but uncle Rudford very much wanted you to do it, would you feel okay with just refusing him flat-out?” he asked with a meaningful smile.
“Ugh.” Laien smiled awkwardly, conceding the point. He really would have found himself between a rock and a hard place if such a thing was to happen.
“That’s why I was hesitant to talk about it.” Cran shrugged his shoulders. “There is no easy solution, or at least I can’t see one,” he added, barely stopping himself from sighing again.
“Well, it really is problematic,” Shei said resignedly. Kuan simply nodded, agreeing with her words. Based on what Cran told them, they couldn’t think of any good solution to this problem.
“Why don’t you just find a woman who you like and who doesn’t mind a platonic relationship?” Laien suggested, wondering if that would be all right with Cran.
“Where did you even learn this term?” Cran asked with a laugh. “You really think something like this would work?” he asked, not convinced at all. He needed to admit though; he hadn’t even considered this idea beforehand.
“Why not?” Laien smirked a little. “Aren’t there countless political marriages amongst our nobility and even in the middle-class? I’m sure you could find a woman who would be happy with marrying a friend instead of a husband,” he said without minding what other people would think about such a deal.
To begin with, he never truly cared what other people thought about anything. Unless somebody was his friend or a person he respected, he really couldn’t be bothered about what he considers as correct or wrong.
Cran frowned at first, but the more he considered Laien’s suggestion and the more he thought about it, the more realistic it was beginning to seem. “Maybe if I really found someone who would be fine with it…” he murmured to himself, suddenly recalling one of the young women, slightly older than him, to whom his father had introduced him to.
At the time, he didn’t even consider the possibility of agreeing to the marriage and the woman quickly realized that and didn’t try to convince him otherwise; the two of them had simply spent a few days talking about unrelated things and going around the border city together. They quickly became good friends and parted without ill feelings.
If he remembered correctly though, she had mentioned something a few times about preferring a friend over a lover, but he had failed to take the hint back then. Obviously, she must have heard about his preferences from his father beforehand and apparently, didn’t mind them and unlike the other women, didn’t try to ‘cure him’ of them.
“You know, that might surprisingly work out,” Cran stated carefully, still trying not to get his hopes up too high.
“Really?” Shei and Kuan said at the same time, appearing to be equally surprised by this sudden statement.
“Yeah, as long as she would be happy with it, I don’t mind going about the marriage this way,” Cran said with a smile. Although it wasn’t a surefire way of dealing with his problem, at least he had a way out and wasn’t left groveling without any options.
“Oh? So you’ve already got someone in mind?” Shei asked with a wry smile. Since Cran accepted Laien’s suggestion so easily, then he must have had met someone who would fit the criteria.
“Gorilla?” Laien inquired with a chuckle.
“No!” Cran denied immediately. He could only smile helplessly when Laien and the other two began chortling with laughter though.
“As long as he is fine with such a deal too…” Cran added quietly. After all, it wasn’t just about him and the woman he had in mind; his boyfriend would also need to be willing to accept such a deal or the whole plan would be for naught.
“Either way, I hope it works out,” Laien said contentedly and took a large gulp of the grape wine. “By the way, do you have more of this? I’d love to buy it off of you,” he said eagerly, considering this wine to be just as good as the one given to him by Rudford.
“I knew you would say so, so I’ve brought you a hundred bottles and three barrels as a present,” Cran said with a laugh and reached out with his hand, waiting for Laien to put his own hand closer.
“Thanks,” Laien said merrily and proceeded to directly ‘suck in’ the greyish mist which was being released from Cran’s interspatial ring into his own black gold ring.
“You brought presents for him, but nothing for us?” Shei complained half-jokingly.
“So impatient,” Cran said with a laugh. “I have more wine to go around, but would just that be fine? Don’t you want something else that could count as a wedding gift? As long as I have it on myself, I can give it to you immediately. Otherwise, you’d need to wait for me to go and buy it,” he offered, not sure what Kuan and Shei might want.
“Same here.” Laien joined. These two were his good friends and it wasn’t like he lacked anything; he very much would have liked to give them something nice to celebrate the occasion!
“I don’t think we really need anything special,” Shei said with a gentle smile. “We are Master Roderick’s disciples, so just like you guys we don’t lack anything,” she said and exchanged meaningful looks with everyone. Yes, given who the four of them were, they truly didn’t lack anything.
“If you really want to give us something, then how about you use the opportunity? Merchants from all over the continent came to sell their goods during this Grand Gathering. I’m sure you’d be able to find us something nice if you looked for it,” she proposed, preferring to receive something she herself wouldn’t have thought about; something that wasn’t necessarily all that costly, though.
“Sure, why not!” Laien responded energetically. Looking for a present around the Two Weeks City was definitely something he could enjoy doing.
“Not a bad idea,” Cran nodded in approval. “Do we go now, or do you want to chat some more?” he asked, feeling that it would be awkward if the two of them just walked out right now.
“We can always talk later, just go with the flow,” Shei responded lightheartedly. There was no point in forcing themselves to chat for a few more minutes just for the sake of doing the talking. It was much better to have fun while doing so; no one enjoys things he is forced to do.
“Okay then,” Cran said and glanced at Laien. The two of them stood up and after exchanging a few more words with Shei and Kuan, left to look around the marketplace for a nice gift for them.
---
Cran didn’t think for too long about what to buy and instead of trying to find any impractical but good-looking things, he bought a bunch of various sweets and wines he liked or knew were good to try out.
As for Laien… well, he just so happened to notice an enclosure with unique-looking, charismatic horses which most likely were brought here from the deserts of the far west.
“Hey, I’d like to buy two of those,” Laien called out carefreely, startling a merchant who was in the middle of trying to convince a noblewoman to but one of his horses.
“That would be two hundred crystal coins, do you have enough, young man?” the merchant asked without getting riled up. Obviously, he was a professional and knew not to respond with contempt to his potential clients, even if they were children. Though, he didn’t believe the boy who called out to him would have enough or would be willing to spend so much on a purebred Hisan horse.
“That sure is pricey,” Laien said, raising his eyebrows in surprise. Their local War horses would at most cost twenty crystal coins, maybe thirty for the best purebreds, but this man wanted him to pay one hundred for one of those far-western horses?
“Of course it is,” the merchant said calmly. “What you can see are the purebred Hisan horses. They can gallop without rest for up to five days and nights, they are incredibly agile and fast, much more so than your local breed which you call War Horses,” the man explained patiently. His plan was to amaze the boy enough for him to lower his head and walk away with his tail between his legs. Through that, he would convince the noblewoman that only people of her status could ever dream of owning a purebred Hisan horse and make her buy at least one.
“The ones you can see here are all at the peak of the ninth mortal realm,” the merchant continued. “They are all still just two years old. With time, about half of them should be able to advance to the Realm of Heroes. By then, the price for one wouldn’t be one hundred crystal coins, but three hundred or more!” he exclaimed passionately. He could already see how the crystal coins were being poured into his sack, but then...
“It still is overpriced,” Cran approached and spoke with a laugh. “Even if they are purebred, your Hisan horses aren’t nearly as sturdy or easy to handle as our War Horses. Yes, they are faster than them, but so what? In a clash between armies, even those Hisan horses which entered the Realm of Heroes would be trampled by our regular War Horses,” he revealed without a hint of mercy, not caring at all about the merchant’s quickly whitening face.
“I admit they are noble-looking and perfect for those who like to travel, but they aren’t nearly as great as you are making them out to be,” he added casually and before continuing, he exchanged a brief glance with the noblewoman who was about to be scammed.
“I’ve thought about getting a Hisan horse once too, and you know what? Purebreds were being sold at the price of twenty crystal coins each,” Cran stated clearly, then follow up. “Did you come here to find a few fools who would buy your horses despite them being ridiculously overpriced? I wonder what the authorities of the Merchants Guild would say if they learned of it…” he mused aloud with a perfectly serious expression on his face, but deep inside he was laughing uncontrollably.
It was terrible that there were merchants and dishonest traders who would try to scam people, but if one knew his way around, he could easily make a killing just through a few simple words.
“Perhaps they would call it a fair game and any of your clients idiots, but they could as well call what you are doing a sham and put according fines on you…” Cran suggested with a slight smile and judging by the man’s reaction, he was persuasive enough to make him panic.
By now, all the color had drained from the merchant’s face. He knew how strict the council of the three Great Merchants Guilds was with regards to their members who happened to sully their reputation; if that young man reported him and the investigation proved him guilty, he would be almost certainly stripped of all rights as a member of the Trading Guild and made to pay an outrageous fine! It would be a disaster!
He wasn’t a bad person…! He really was not! It’s just that he managed to sell one of his horses to an incredibly rich man for five times their normal price and ever since then, he had gotten greedy! He was telling himself that those rich people wouldn’t miss those coins and he could make a better use of them, but before he realized he found himself trying to scam a noblewoman!
Was he crazy? Did he think that her husband, after learning how much she had spent, wouldn’t be outraged and wouldn’t go looking for him?
Truth to be told, this young man potentially saved him from a disaster! Having finally realized that, the merchant spoke hurriedly. “I concede,” he said and raised his hands apologetically. “I was in the wrong, I will sell you my horses for half the market price; ten crystal coins each.” Yet, he still couldn’t hold himself back from trying to cut his loses.
“You will sell them to us?” the noblewoman asked, strongly accenting the word ‘sell’. “You think mere few dozen crystal coins will be enough to make up for what you did?” she asked, obviously threatening to report the merchant if he refused to give her a better deal.
“I… uh… no…” the merchant stuttered, then gave his three clients a helpless look. “I will give you three horses of your choice for free, so please forget about what happened today,” he forced the words out, the loss of money bringing him on the verge of tears.
“He gets two, but I get only one?” the noblewoman asked with a playful frown. “I would love to have a pair so I could ride out on them with my husband…” she mentioned leisurely, intending to get as much as possible out of the dishonest man.
“Fine,” the merchant agreed with a groan, his face filled with bitter pain. He looked at Laien and Cran, hoping that the two won’t now ask to get three instead.
“Mm, I want a mare and a stallion, preferably both light brown,” Laien requested simply, not in the mood to scam the man back out of everything he had. “Deliver them to the Royal Palace by midnight, okay? To the seventh Prince’s mansion,” he said with a smile, happy to have saved two hundred crystal coins thanks to Cran’s intervention.
“R-royal Palace,” the merchant trembled, looking as if he was about to faint. Had he really attempted to hoax a kid who was a guest at the Royal Palace? How bad could his luck be…?!
“Oh,” the noblewoman looked at Laien and Cran with curiosity. “I must thank you for saving me from this man’s deceptions. My name is Siela, I’m of the Fuarde family. If you happen to be in the area, feel free to visit my husband’s Heavenly Palace in the Royal Capital. I promise we will take good care of you,” she spoke courteously and giggled towards the end.
When the merchant heard the words ‘Fuarde family’ being spoken, he staggered and needed to support himself on the fence as not to fall down. The Fuarde family… they owned countless high-end brothels across the south of the continent and engaged in many other grey-area activities. They were basically the barons of the underground! Provoking them was nothing short of a death wish!
“Thanks,” Laien responded briefly, not knowing what the name of the Fuarde family or the Heavenly Palace itself represented.
“We can come for a tea, but not a full service,” Cran said with a slightly awkward laugh. Unlike Laien, after spending a year and a half in the Royal Capital he knew very well what the Heavenly Palace was and in what kind of business it specialized.
“Of course, whatever you like,” the noblewoman confirmed. She followed the two with her gaze for a bit as they were leaving, then sighed a little and went ahead to pick two horses for herself.