Inside the Estate

We left the city and headed for the estate. Five of us, including Orleans. A decent-sized group.

Trying not to stand out was going to be difficult. I'd already told Orleans that if the risk was too high, we might have to end this as just a peddling trip. She knew that going in.

"I'm grateful that you brought me this far."

Orleans bowed her head.

Her speech had been halting at first, but after spending time talking with Azu and the others, it had grown quite fluent. She was probably quite intelligent.

She picked up tasks almost immediately after being shown once. If she had nowhere else to go, I'd love to have her work at my shop.

Along the way, we spotted flocks of sheep being herded. The sheep served as a source of meat, but the fact that they could be grazed in the open spoke to how safe the area was.

Strong monsters didn't come near the city, but weaker ones were fairly common. Those weak monsters could attack grazing sheep, or spook them into running off.

It had been quite a while since I'd had Azu hunt sheep monsters. Even our own city of Kassad had only recently improved its surrounding security enough to allow grazing, and that took deliberate effort.

Leaving and entering the city repeatedly meant paying the tax each time, cheap as it was, but there was no getting around that. After walking for a while, we came to a large river with channels branching off from it.

Irrigation to supply the farmland, no doubt. Continuing in that direction, grain fields came into view.

Wheat was planted as far as the eye could see, a reddish-tinged yellow stretching across the landscape. It was a grand sight.

Wheat, everywhere I looked.

The scale of it was a little overwhelming. I turned to Orleans to confirm.

"This is the place?"

"Without a doubt. This is where I was born and raised."

So this was it. I hadn't expected an estate this massive.

It could probably feed a city the size of Ateil and still have surplus. When your food supply was stable, everything else more or less fell into place.

There was no question that this estate was the backbone of Ateil's stability. Watching from a distance, I could see people tending to the wheat.

Those would be the serfs. I spotted what looked like a patrol in the distance and ducked out of sight.

"That's the estate steward."

"A manager of sorts."

Orleans identified him, and Alexia added the explanation. The person entrusted with running this estate on the lord's behalf.

He looked like a nervous sort. He said something to the working serfs as if hurrying them along, then left.

"From morning to night, all you do is tend the fields. That's the job. Children like me were no different. My mother and father couldn't accept that. They said there was no future in it."

The philosophy was simple: serfs farm, and that's that. But that meant no education. Not even the opportunity.

Without education, you gained no knowledge. Without knowledge, your options didn't grow. If that went on for generation after generation, you'd be serfs forever.

Their own lives, their children's lives, their grandchildren's lives, all as serfs. I could see how that calculus would eventually lead to the decision to run. I was able to work as a merchant because I could do arithmetic.

Beyond arithmetic, I'd had all kinds of product knowledge drilled into me since childhood. That was what made me who I was. Thinking about it that way, no matter how productive this estate was, I couldn't simply accept it.

But I also understood that a mere merchant couldn't do anything about it. The security was lighter than I'd expected.

Just the occasional patrol, and by evening, everyone but a skeleton guard had withdrawn.

"They don't seem very tense, do they?"

"You'd think they'd be more on edge."

"The patrollers have always been like that. The steward is a bit nagging, though."

For a time following a desertion, the atmosphere felt strangely lax. Almost as if the escape had never happened.

We waited a while longer, and even the guard presence disappeared entirely. Judging it safe, we entered the estate.

"The living quarters are further in."

Using only the bare minimum of firelight to see our way, we followed Orleans's lead.

Harvesting seemed to have begun; bundled sheaves of wheat were stacked in rows alongside us. We reached the residential area at the back.

The serfs lived together here in close quarters. Some people were cooking at a kiln, so I approached them.

"Excuse me."

"Who's there?"

A woman turned toward my voice. Her clothes looked sturdy but worn.

I removed Orleans's hood and showed the woman her face.

"I took this girl in after finding her, and I've brought her back. She wanted to see her parents. Do you know them?"

"… Orleans. So you came back."

The woman passed her pot off to someone else and beckoned us to follow.

Orleans was indeed from this estate. The surrounding serfs watched us with undisguised stares.

They'd remember our faces now. If anything went wrong, it would be best to stay away from this area for a while.

We followed the woman to a house.

"Orleans's parents are inside."

"They're alive, then."

"Yes… The soldiers who caught them didn't want to make a big deal of it, so it ended with a gag order. The steward doesn't even know."

I see. So that explained the lax security. If it reached the Senate nobleman's ears, the soldiers who'd allowed the escape might face punishment too.

They must have been afraid of that.

"Well, I'm glad it ended with just that. We didn't know what would happen either."

The woman said that and left. She hadn't once looked in Orleans's direction…

I knocked on the door to Orleans's parents' house.