“That was quick. How did things end up—?”
Just as she started to speak, she saw how the two looked when they alighted the carriage, and her eyes bulged.
“I thought it was strange that none of them was thinking about betraying the Church, but to think that all of them already were!”
While Myuri had gone to change her clothes, Col gave a rough outline of what had happened and Hyland shook her head in amazement.
“If it’s true, then their plan does seem a little more realistic, but…you still find something suspicious about it, do you?”
“Myuri pointed this out as well, but it sounds like there is a reason that Miss Eve has to have us on her side. Myuri noticed that if she had confidence in her plan, it would have been easier to go straight to the king himself.”
“You’re right…Perhaps she was afraid of it being too preposterous, just like she said…”
After a moment of dropping her head as though in deep thought, Hyland continued.
“If there’s a possibility for it, then maybe insurance. They are betraying the Church, so they have to have thought of what would happen if they were exposed. So perhaps you could say getting you on their side would be the very least they could do to be ready. With you on their side, that means the people of the Kingdom are on their side, at least. Or…” Hyland paused and mischievously curled her right hand like an animal’s claw. “They get a good grip on you to use you when the time calls for it.”
Col did not have to think very hard to imagine how they would use him.
“…They would hand me over to the Church in order to make up for the crime of betraying them.”
They knew they were about to cross a very dangerous bridge, and Myuri had said that there was a reason Eve and the others could not continue any further with their plan.
If that reason was the guarantee of a lifeline, then that was more than a good enough reason to try and pull in the Twilight Cardinal to their side.
“It might not be like the exchanging of heads from the wars of old, but if you were to surrender to the Church, then it might be easier for them to gather the distant feelings of the general public. It’s not a terrible value to use you for that. Oh yes…That’s very possible. You want to be a priest, don’t you?”
“…So you mean I would not be forcibly sold over to the Church but that I also have advantages, correct?”
“And also, what would happen if my own person was ensured?”
Hyland’s? Col thought, and when he considered what sort of position Hyland might be in at that time, a bitter taste spread through his mouth.
“I would be made to work in exchange for your life, wouldn’t I?” he asked.
Just as Hyland chuckled, as though something about it was funny, the door opened and Myuri came in. She was wearing her normal clothes that she had been wearing from Nyohhira.
“Even these clothes feel super stiff after wearing such a nice outfit like that…,” Myuri grumbled and sat in the chair beside Col. “Were you guys talking about fun stuff?”
“Not at all.”
“We were talking about a situation in which I was captured and your brother had to come and save me.”
“Oh yeah, that’s no fun.”
“Myuri!”
Hyland’s shoulders shook as she laughed, and Myuri only looked away when Col scolded her. She still seemed to be angry about what happened in the carriage.
After a good laugh, Hyland tapped the table with her finger.
“But position-wise, we are at a disadvantage here. Especially if war was to break out.”
“And…it’s likely that will happen, isn’t it?”
He had felt like Eve was confident it would.
Hyland sighed weakly.
“Typically, the excuse of an outbreak of war is a defensive one. For us, we don’t want to have a war, but we don’t have a choice. In that respect, the aggression of the riled tax collectors is a good enough reason for it.”
And when war broke out, they had to wholly accept Eve’s plan in order to procure supplies. There were only so many options they could take.
“If we don’t like the thought of getting on board with Eve and company’s intentions, then we need to also consider suppressing the actions of the tax collectors. But I’m unsure if we can persuade them with words to stop.”
Sharon’s hate was real.
And Myuri, who had been looking away in a huff, turned to Col with surprise.
It was almost as though she was asking if he was planning on getting in Sharon’s way.
“Eve and the merchants are talking on the presupposition that war will start because the Church is likely showing indications that it will. In that case, if we don’t accept what they say, then that means we will have to conduct war with the Church without any of the traders. We stand absolutely no chance of winning. We would need to change our direction to removing the spark that would lead to war.”
“But I’m not sure if we can convince…”
Hyland also apparently seemed to know of Sharon’s personality, so she nodded and responded.
“If the time calls for it, then I will suggest to the king that he cancel the tax-collecting permits themselves.”
Drifters like Sharon could publicly attack the cathedral because they had tax-collecting rights based in royal authority.
Of course, there were times they were used in a bad way.
The king could cancel the collection rights at his own discretion, and then Sharon and the others would immediately lose their grounds to fight against the Church.
“You can’t!” Myuri cried, standing with such vigor that her chair fell over. “That would just mean withdrawing against the Church, right?! You can’t do that!”
Col was surprised to see how determined she was.
As he wondered if she really empathized that much with Sharon’s story, Hyland, who had spent all her time doting on Myuri, turned to her with a sharp gaze.
“We cannot expose the entirety of the country to danger due to our own personal sentiment.”
That was not the friendly Hyland speaking but a young lord of the Hyland house.
As Myuri stood there gnashing her teeth, unable to continue, Col held out his hand.
“Myuri, calm down.”
“But, Brother!”
“Then, do you think we should go along with Eve’s plan?”
He interpreted that as a teasing question as well, but it was likely because that was how much Hyland recognized Myuri as an equal.
“…”
Unable to answer, Myuri weakly plopped back into her chair.
Hyland watched Myuri with a sad expression. She, too, was pained by Sharon’s story. Hyland’s morals would never allow her to compromise with an organization practicing deeds that could only be called cruel.
However, it was unclear if they could trust Eve, and even if they could, they had to consider the mystery element that was Heir Klevend once war broke out.
From the position of Hyland and the king and all the heirs above her, pouring all their energy into avoiding war would keep an overwhelming number of things safer. That meant that even the most humiliating of compromises would be much preferable to losing the war and their chances of recovery.
Hyland sighed, then spoke.
“The tax collectors would probably get stubborn; they don’t want to lose their foundation, either. It’s likely they’ll accept a temporary pullout. If we ask them to retreat for a brief moment, then it’s possible that tensions with the Church would ease. In that case, they could keep their rights to collect taxes.”
Hyland was creating a road by placing one stone at a time. It was realistic, sensible, and reasonable.
But when Col saw how smooth her reasoning was, he suddenly felt something off that he just could not push away.
That was how calm Eve and the others were at the Golden Fern, and how Hyland acted when she cleanly laid out the next steps without a moment’s hesitation d
id not match up.
“Heir Hyland, may I?”
“What is it?”
He mentally held the odd feeling in his hands again. He checked its form and its size and converted it into words.
“I wonder if Miss Eve and the others were entirely confident they would have us on board with their explanation at the Golden Fern.”
Hyland blinked. Myuri, beside him, also made a quizzical face.
“…They weren’t?”
After she said that, Hyland turned her gaze to Myuri because she was roughly explaining what they talked about at the meeting.
“…But didn’t they actually win you over, Brother?”
There was no doubt that Col would have completely fallen for the trap without Myuri. It would have been only a few moments later that the door would have closed behind him and a collar placed around his neck. He had no excuse for that.
But that was why something felt so off to him.
“Someone as great as Miss Eve let her prey escape from a trap right before her eyes. I feel like she would be more persistent, yet we came back here like it was nothing.”
And Hyland immediately came up with a countermeasure accepting that would happen.
It was much too simple and much too logical.
“Don’t you think…it’s because they knew that I’d stationed people in the area? And if you ended up in a trap, we would have to think about retaliation as well.”
That might have been true, but he had a feeling they were misunderstanding Eve on a more fundamental level. There had to be something that would explain exactly why Eve and the others were not too bothered about convincing him right then and there and why they did not mind at all that they managed to escape.
Perhaps they had absolute confidence in their own plan, for example.
Perhaps they were convinced that the result would be the same, even if they escaped, for example.
For example.
For example…
“No way.”
When he realized the possibility, Col was shocked.
“Col?”
Col lifted his head when he heard Hyland’s anxious tone. He knew very well how capable she was. She was just as virtuous. He then looked to Myuri beside him. The rambunctious Myuri had been teaching him a terrible lesson of how easily the most honest people were controlled.
So perhaps Eve easily saw through them because of how logical Hyland’s idea was?
Eve and the others had a way to make their plans a certainty.
“What would you do if we couldn’t douse the spark of war at this point?”
“What do you…” …mean? was the rest of Hyland’s question, but she could not finish, and the blood drained from her face.
The thing that was worrying her in the first place was why the merchants, who would never hesitate to betray all those around them for a fat profit, were coming together for the Church.
Merchants would do anything they could to get money.
In that case, they should be looking at it like this:
“Miss Eve and the others are probably thinking that instead of making plans on the premise of a war that may or may not happen, all they needed to do was make that uncertain war into a certainty. Perhaps they decided they needed to mix themselves in with the tax collectors’ underlings.”
Because if war did break out, then the desperate Kingdom would have no choice but to rely on Eve, even without having to convince Hyland.
And since they would be without any other options, Eve and the others would hold the initiative for negotiations.
This could be the only reason why they were not angry when Myuri snatched up her prey out of nowhere just before the maw of the trap in the Golden Fern closed. They were confident their escaped prey would just come right back to them.
That was exactly who Eve Bolan was.
“…Starting a war for money, huh?” Hyland said, astonished.
“When I first met her, she completely obstructed a river so no other ships could carry in furs, with the aim of monopolizing the fur trade. I heard she would have been hung if she was found out.”
As intelligent as she was, Hyland was a noble and, to put it simply, had a good upbringing.
Her face tensed when she heard of Eve’s past, which could be called nothing but savage.
“I wonder if the chicken knows she’s got bugs in her camp.”
When Myuri said that, Col swallowed hard.
“Miss Sharon and the others’ goal is to drag the priests out from the cathedral. It might be possible they’ve realized they have intruders on the inside, but…”
“They might think of it as a perfect opportunity.”
He did not want to think that Sharon’s ideology was that nihilistic, but it was not impossible.
“Then, they won’t delay any longer, will they?”
Col had never heard Hyland’s voice quaver like that before.
“Actually, now that they’ve disclosed what they have in their hand, I doubt they’ll leave it for later. Of course…that is if my thoughts are correct, however…”
He had proposed the idea, but it was just a supposition, and he had no proof for it. When he voiced his reservations, Myuri gave him a cool look, and Hyland gawked at him.
“Brother.”
“Y-yes?”
“Sit up straight. Arch your shoulders.”
“What?”
He was bewildered by Myuri’s words, and Hyland stiffened, smiling slightly at him.
“You’re a strange one. You’re daring but delicate.”
He felt as though Eve had said the same thing, but he was sure she had not been complimenting him.
“Either way, I cannot push your theory aside like nonsense. Instead, from how things are developing, I think you might be right.”
“Yeah,” Myuri said, standing. “Then, what are we gonna do? I hate the Church. I sympathize with the chicken…her. I don’t want to get in her way. But really don’t wanna get on board the bad fox’s plan.”
Myuri was talking about the whole thing entirely as though it was about her preferences, but even thinking about it logically, the conclusion was mostly the same.
“If there are merchant puppets scattered throughout the association, then doing something about the tax collection permits would not change anything. And how would we fish out those working for the traders? It can’t just be one person, and it’s not very realistic to capture all of them before someone does something to enrage the Church and push them over the edge to decide to start a war.”
Sharon and the others were not the villains in this story, no. They had a good reason to be angry and were acting on it. Treating them like criminals would not be right.
Think, Col desperately told himself. The worst-possible scenario had not happened yet, and they still had the possibility to do something about it.
And speaking of possibilities, there was one way.
“This might just be a theory, but…”
“I don’t care. Let me hear it.”
Col licked his lips, formed his question, then spoke.
“Why don’t we just have the tax collectors and the city cathedral come to a reconciliation?”
“…What?”
Hyland looked at him in astonishment.
But he was not afraid.
“With the way things are now, I think no matter how many tax collectors we end up catching, it would be a waste of time. Even if we threw them all in jail, they could equip someone else who sympathizes with them and attack the cathedral as much as they like. From the outside, the Kingdom’s misconduct seems like a good enough reason for the Church to start a war with them.”
“I…”
“But it’s a different story if we can get them to reconcile with the cathedral. Rausbourne is a huge city with a large diocese, and I imagine they have quite the influence. The relationship between the Rausbourne cathedral and the Kingdom will set an example for the future. If that happens, then the tax coll
ectors might officially lay down their arms, and if the cathedral is happy with that, then any other rabble-rousers who might try and attack the cathedral in the future would be harder to use to justify a war with, is that correct? And with an official reconciliation, then the Kingdom would take initiative to protect the cathedral.”
Hyland slowly thought over his words, then nodded, as though swallowing them.
“You’re right, but there’s a problem. The tax collectors reconciling with the cathedral is just a development of the reform, isn’t it? Would that not just instead cause the papal office on the mainland to stiffen their attitude? It feels like your plan is just the image of a snake eating its own tail…”
Col shook his head, cringing at how bad his own explanation was.
“Er, not exactly. There would be reconciliation, but on the surface, we would have the tax collectors step down.”
“Step down? The tax collectors? But that’s—”
Impossible should have been the next word to follow, but Col stared hard at Hyland.
“Miss Sharon and the others might be tax collectors, but their goal is not money.”
In that case, there was only one possibility left.
“If we could unofficially achieve reconciliation with the priests, then I think that perhaps Miss Sharon and the others won’t mind so much about how it looks on the surface.”
“Oh right!” Myuri said, clapping her hands together. “That’s why that nasty fox was trying to get you on her side!”
“I see! We certainly should remember what the Twilight Cardinal has done. You actually did open the doors of the cathedral in Desarev!”
Eve was plotting to get rich on a war she was counting as a given, so what she was most cautious about was an easing of tension between the Kingdom and the Church.
The one who could act as a mediator between the two would only get in the way of her plans, which would give her a reason to be wary of him.
Of course, since Col knew the facts, he saw this as a completely different situation to the one in Desarev, and frankly, he was not confident that he could bring about a reconciliation that would satisfy Sharon and the tax collectors.
But that was the only thing he could do, and if that was their course for solving this, then they had no choice but to do it.
Wolf & Parchment: New Theory Spice & Wolf, Vol. 4 Page 17
