It would only be when she was old enough to drink ale that she would understand the appeal of such tales.

  “Anything stand out?”

  After going through them, Lutia brought back a handkerchief she had wetted at the well near the chapel.

  “Not to my knowledge, no…”

  “You’re so nice.”

  After wiping off the mold and dust stuck to his face, Col wet his fingers, dried from handling paper. Lutia stood nearby, gazing at the mountain of texts that represented an entire lifetime.

  “The people who come here are wanderers.”

  Even those called professors, who shared their knowledge, were seen as drifters in society.

  Very few received benefices in churches and abbeys; nothing was better for them to make a living than being an adviser to the nobles and great merchants who paid for their knowledge. Not many could speak of what happened to these people after their long days spent in contemplation. Only a handful of scholars were stellar enough to leave behind biographies or other works.

  “They come to this city one day, and howl to let everyone know they’ve arrived. And sometimes, surprisingly, their howls draw people in. But that can’t last for very long.” Lutia closed her eyes, brushing her finger over the faded paper. “What I really learned when I first came to this city, was that the wolves aren’t the only lonely ones here.”

  “………”

  Spirits with fangs and claws were mostly said to have died out in the battle against the Moon-Hunting Bear. Col considered telling her about the wisewolf in Nyohhira, but he decided that would have to be Myuri’s job.

  And perhaps, he thought, the reason Lutia was commanding this group of students from the north was not solely because she was being spurred on by indignation.

  It was also because she had learned what loneliness was during her life in that castle.

  “But putting an end to it is not easy, either.”

  “…I once heard from a poet that finishing a story is much more difficult than starting one.”

  Lutia’s shoulders shook as she laughed. And that reminded Col of how Myuri, when she was young, would retrieve toys from her storage, then get upset when they did not fit back in place when she tried to put them away.

  “Memories only grow in proportion when we look back on them.”

  Lutia turned to Col, the corner of her eyes crinkling, just as there was a knock on the cathedral door and the bookseller poked in his head.

  As the bookseller looked over the list Col and Lutia had put together, his expression grew sullen.

  “Hmm…”

  “None seem to be viable products, I suppose?”

  Col had figured as much, but he had the faint expectation that one of them could have been a rare gem that he was not aware of.

  But that small hope was quickly snuffed out by reality.

  “The one who collected all these copies must have been a very diligent person.” What Le Roi said was not necessarily a compliment. “There are some here that could be sold, but when taking into consideration the cost of copying and transportation, I believe the sale would just break even. None of these are the sort the eccentrics would salivate over and spend all their savings on. But I do see some that are not in circulation, yet could make for good textbooks. It would not be impossible to turn them into treasure maps.”

  If they could turn the original texts Lutia and her gang were hoarding into textbooks, then the copied manuscripts could fetch them a pretty penny.

  “But that would be…”

  “Yes, the same as the dirty textbook trade you are hoping to do away with in this city.”

  Bards often wryly sang that the main difficulty of living a virtuous life was that lofty ideals often became an ever-tightening noose.

  “Then…we don’t have to sell these books, right?” Lutia said, her tone not disappointed, but relieved.

  While that could be seen as consideration to the bookseller who came all this way to help them, it was clear that she did not want to believe that a student’s lifelong learning should be measured in coin.

  “I believe we should allow these books to remain in their slumber,” Le Roi agreed, and Lutia laughed. But her laugh was a dry one, meant to encourage herself.

  “But that leaves the problem of our keep.”

  While they were having this conversation, the agile Myuri was dashing between alleyways, writing down where the young students were being held on her map.

  “How do you normally earn money, besides donations?” Le Roi asked.

  Lutia replied tiredly, “In the end, most of it comes from manuscript work. It’d be nice if we got more scrivener work for letters and contracts and the like, though. Some are teaching the children of poor merchants who are hiding in the professors’ guild how to read and write, but the rest of the students are earning their keep through regular day jobs. Apprenticeships at the bakers, persisting through awful smells at the leather workshops as they help with tanning, and the like.”

  The reason they wore what they did when they faced off against the southern eagles was because they had rushed over from their beds at the workshops.

  “If we can keep the kids safe, then the townsfolk will hire them, but that would leave us strapped for cash in the end. A lot of these kids really want to learn…”

  “Hmm. That’s a pity. Earnest students who can read and write would be in great demand in any other city.”

  But one needed to go to a city where professors gathered in order to get an education, and it was precisely because this was a city where so many people were able to read and write, so it was difficult to turn their specialties into money. There was no point in memorizing a logic textbook while working at a bakery.

  And that was why, even if they were to save all the kids at once with Myuri’s help, a very realistic problem stood in their way: they still did not have the means to feed them.

  Solving one problem only created another—this was beyond their control.

  But as that thought crossed his mind, he suddenly recalled their nickname: the northern wolves.

  And that inspired him—had he not solved a similar problem in the past?

  “We may be able to solve the question of money.”

  Both Lutia and Le Roi turned to look at him. He had once come under the tutelage of a former traveling merchant, and the basis of their trade was to align the goods and demand of those who had traveled from far away.

  “Not every student here wants to be a high-ranking member of the clergy or a theologist, correct?”

  Not long after Lutia and Le Roi looked to each other, the noon bell rang in the distance.

  Myuri had certainly been excited. Of that, there was no doubt. It was after noon before she finally returned, her body covered in soot, with cobwebs still clinging to her here and there.

  She had likely squeezed her way through tiny gaps in the walls that even the stray cats would refuse to crawl through, and snuck into dirty attics that even owls would avoid. The map she handed to Lutia was crammed full of charcoal writing, and Lutia, too, almost felt awkward praising her.

  “But the kids weren’t being treated as badly as I thought they were, so I’m a little relieved, I think.”

  They received hot water when they returned to the inn, and Col wiped Myuri’s face with a damp cloth. He then cleaned her hands, feet, and—since she pestered him—he combed her hair, and finally the tension of her infiltration mission drained away.

  She had been tense moments earlier. But when she spoke, she did so with a sigh.

  Hearing this about the kids was good news; the boys controlling them were likely also wary that treating them too harshly would cause them to run straight to Lutia and her gang.

  “I think I was treated a lot worse when you were teaching me how to write.”

  Col had had his hands full with Myuri, considering she would always slip away when she had the chance. He had literally had to tie her to the chair.

  “But it is because of all that, that you can now write all the stories you like,” he scolded her, and she thwacked his hands as they gathered her hair with her wolf ears.

  “You’re not kind enough, Brother.”

  “………”

  Then why have I washed your hands, feet, combed and braided your hair? It was tempting to ask this, but when he saw how delightfully her tail swished, he knew she simply wanted to play. She had concluded her first adventure in a long while, and she was in high spirits.

  He sighed—she was the rambunctious girl she always was—then took the ribbon draped on her shoulder, and tied her hair. She had apparently gotten this from Hyland. It was red to show one’s noble status, and it reflected boldly on her silver hair.

  “There, done.”

  “Hee-hee.”

  Myuri cheerfully ran a hand over her braid, like a pup who had noticed their own tail for the first time, and stretched.

  “And you sent a letter to Mister Hilde, right?”

  When Myuri handed the map detailing the locations of all the kids to Lutia, she insisted they save them immediately. But Lutia then explained to her the problem of feeding them all.

  Though Myuri typically wanted to do things right away, she accepted reality fairly easily, because she knew how difficult it was to manage Sharon’s orphanage. The trapped children easily numbered around thirty, and it would cost the same amount as building another small orphanage in order to feed, house, and clothe them all.

  Lutia was the one fighting in the city; though she lamented just how powerless she was, Col and Myuri had connections and experiences they had gathered over the course of their journeys, and they could support her.

  “The problem of feeding, clothing, and housing the orphans is a lot like how we solved Miss Sharon’s problem. Honest boys who left their poor villages and came to Aquent on their own to learn how to read and write should be spoiled for choice when it comes to employment.”

  The first thing Col thought of when he heard the phrase “the northern wolves” was Eve and the Debau Company.

  When it was agreed the monastery would be built as an annex to Sharon’s orphanage, they had struck a bargain. Since they would be borrowing money from Eve, Eve would get priority when it came to hiring out the exceptional children from the orphanage who could read and write.

  Col thought that if Eve’s company was big enough to support Sharon’s orphanage, then the even bigger Debau Company could give money to support even more boys.

  “Mister Hilde and the Debau Company originally worked with Heir Hyland in order to widen their market. They must always be in need of talented workers.”

  “You’ve gotta station new soldiers at a new fort, after all.”

  In her mind, Myuri was picturing a war of encampment or something of the sort, and companies establishing branches in new regions in order to take over was, indeed, very similar.

  “Was Lutia shocked?”

  Col wondered if she was referring to the skill he had that brought them straight to a solution for a problem that could not be solved within the bounds of the city. Regardless, Myuri must have felt some sort of rivalry with Lutia, and she asked because she wanted to know for certain just how well she had done in this battle.

  “She was impressed.”

  In truth, Lutia had been so bewildered by the idea that Myuri would certainly jump for joy if she knew, but Col said nothing to preserve Lutia’s honor.

  And just because Lutia herself had not been able to find a solution, that did not mean Lutia was lacking. Col and Myuri had simply traveled a different path.

  “Hmm. Then the problem should be solved for the minute, but…”

  Satisfied they had been able to show Lutia just how amazing they were, Myuri sat on the bed to relax.

  But when she lifted her legs to fold them in front of her, she crossed her arms and pouted.

  “We didn’t get Chicken’s friends to bring the letter to Mister Hilde, did we? It’s gonna take so long to get there.”

  Aquent was very far from the northern city in which the Debau Company made their home. Following the human systems that made up society, it would be a very long while before the letter reached Hilde and they received a response.

  “We have Mister Le Roi’s eyes.”

  “Mm-hmm… I don’t think he would be very shocked if he learned what Mother and I really were.”

  Col had the same impression; he was more likely to pen an account with great fascination instead.

  “Never mind us. That might expose Miss Lutia’s true nature, and it might get Miss Sharon involved in all of this as well.”

  In the face of all of society’s red tape, Myuri shrugged her slender shoulders.

  “Okay, then next we need to find friends for you.”

  Originally, Col was going to search for scholars in the city, but Lutia and her gang were looking for scholars who would be willing to grant them degrees gratis. And those were likely people who made it a principle to live in honest poverty, so their ideals probably ran close to his and Hyland’s.

  “Lutia said she would put us in contact with any scholars who come to mind.”

  “People who don’t want money, right? I’m sure they’ll help us. There’s a surprising number of weirdos who you’d get along with, Brother,” Myuri said, astonished. The reason her skin had such a lustrous glow was because she was bursting at the seams with worldly desires.

  “But Lutia said those people had some kind of complicated problem of their own, right?”

  She stretched over the bed like a cat, perhaps as a reaction to having crawled through tight spaces.

  “No matter the sort of professor, calling them to the city still costs money. We would need to pay for their food, their housing, and the minimum tuition fees. And we would have to come up with the joining fee for the professors’ guild when they do join.”

  “………”

  It was plainly written all over Myuri’s face that she thought the whole thing was a bother.

  “So even if they do sympathize with Lutia’s plight and ideas, it would not be easy to bring someone over who has already established roots in another city.”

  Not only that, but if they were to come to dismantle Aquent’s professors’ vested interests, then they would have to be more than ready to make the change. Lutia and her gang had apparently been in talks with a few candidates, but Col could understand exactly why these talks were going so slowly and nothing was happening.

  “If we find people who are full of that same sense of justice that you have, then we just need to tell them they’ll be raking the evil Church over the coals with the great Twilight Cardinal and the Silver Knight.”

  She had deliberately added great to his title, and it would be foolish for him to ask who the “Silver Knight” was referring to.

  As much as he wanted to tell her there was no one as reckless in the world as she was, he figured it would be a little too difficult for her to understand that.

  “Oh, why don’t you become a professor, Brother?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  He gave her a cold look, unsure of what sort of nonsense she was going on about this time, but it rolled off her back.

  “Oh yeah, that’d be a great idea! That way you could also give Lutia a…degree…thing? And then she could use that to solve her house problem, and then she could come with us to the desert!”

  The adventure-loving Myuri turned her gaze to the horizon from which the sun rose, dreaming of the far-off desert lands.

  “Oh, but then that would make you Lutia’s teacher…” Myuri’s lips and wolf ears abruptly turned downward. “I don’t think I like that.”

  Col was not sure what Myuri thought a student-teacher relationship entailed, but regardless, it seemed she was uneasy thinking about another wolf intruding on her territory.

  “I’m not sure how I’d feel if Canaan was learning from you, either.”

  Canaan had nothing but praise for the Twilight Cardinal, and Myuri did not seem to like that very much. She was just like a child who wanted to stake her claim on a toy the moment someone else showed interest in it, even if she did not normally care very much for it.

  “Oh yeah, did you send a letter to Canaan? He’s looking into that battle you’re going to have with the Church, right?”

  “Not battle. Ecumenical council.”

  The eye roll was always palpable in Myuri’s tone when she said Church, so perhaps picturing herself swinging her sword about at the council was her way of making herself feel better for not being able to take part in the jousting tournament.

  “I left Archivist Canaan a letter detailing the reasons why we will be going to Canaan before we left the Kingdom of Winfiel. I believe he should have the letter by now, and he should be putting together a reply.”

  Considering how important the ecumenical council was, that it took place only once every century, Canaan likely had his hands full looking into it.

  Col prayed that God would watch over Canaan as he worked, and Myuri gave him a flat look. She ran her fingers through her tail, pulling out a clump of fur, and picked at it.

  “A reply, hmm?”

  Col looked to Myuri, unsure of what she meant by that, but the wolf was completely relaxed, having bathed after a bout of work, and she was already under the covers.

  She began snoring softly before long. And with a sigh, Col started picking up the clothes she had strewn about the room.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Myuri had found a good number of the captured boys, and Col was confident he could figure out how to feed them. And professors, once slow to act, might even come to the city if they knew they had a chance to fight the Church alongside the Twilight Cardinal.

  And Myuri had been excited, thinking that would mean Lutia’s fight would grow rapidly in scope instead of remaining a stalemate. That, however, was ten days ago.

  “How long are we gonna be doing this?!”

  In the run-down chapel cared for by the blind old man, Myuri’s voice echoed loudly.

  It was forceful enough that it almost brought down a cloud of dust on all those present, but at least Lutia remained calm.

 

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