NOVEL NEXT Chapter LI – He that is without sin among you.
30th of Summer, 5859
Adventurer’s Guild of Casamonu, Casamonu
Brown was emptily staring out the window of the adventurer’s guild once more. The morning sun irritated his eyes, and he could barely see the small trickle of people going about their business. He was being idle and idleness irritated him more than the sun directly shining upon his face. Outside of the theological implications of not working, Brown was bored due to not having much to do in the city other than wait. He had planned for things to be simple, back in the US things would have been as simple as finding a willing seller and striking a deal with them. But no, the Lord had decided to tax and test him through tariffs and medieval economic BS, and what a test of patience it was! Ayomide and Shinasi had began fraternizing with each other rather than the old man, leaving him even lonelier. He wasn’t much surprised to see the young’uns prefer each other rather than an old man, but still. Other than Harriet Tubman, the old man had no conversation partners who could understand him in any reasonable capacity.
“Sigh… O’ Lord, please spare some of your grace and help us…” His staring-out-the-window session was briefly cut short by an inconspicuous figure stopping right outside the window. A normal-looking man, with ordinary white tunic and brown trousers with no discernable features. This man was standing right in front of where Brown was staring out of the window from, blocking the old man’s sight. This foreign man leaned on the window, turning his back to Brown and the rest as if he had no interest in them while clasping his hands towards the back. To an outside this seemed to be the case, and Brown intended to shift around his seat to gain a view outside again. His shifting was interrupted when this ordinary man took out a small piece of paper, and clasped his hands to his back again with the paper stuck between the window and himself. It was positioned so that Brown’s body blocked the paper from being seen by anyone indoors, the paper reading (in English) “ARE YOU I.S.? KNOCK IF YES”.
I.S.? Was old J.B. an I.S.? The answer was yes, Isaac Smith was the name he had gone with when introducing himself to the folks here. He knocked on the window, and the man took out another paper, “FOLLOW”. One thing that Brown had learned was that, if there was one thing that the shady people of this world loved, it was communicating with paper. Perhaps there was some deep cultural reason behind it or, perhaps, Brown was too quick to judge shady people by the small group of shady folks he had experienced and not all of them used paper. It’d be unchristian of him to be generalizing people like that, so Brown decided to wait it out before he labelled every shady person in Gemeinplatz as a paper-user.
No matter what Brown thought of shady people, the shady people needed him to follow them, and his definitely non-shady comrades-in-arms needed to follow him in following them. His eyes followed a path towards Ayomide and Shinasi, who were busy following a long convo between themselves following their after-following up follow-up. “Young man and lady, the time has come.”
“The time has come…?” replied Shinasi, before remembering why they were here in the first place. “Right, right, right.” He got up, Ayomide following him in unseating herself. The young man knew of how the so-called Smuggler’s Guild operated with their overly dramatic calls to follow one of their agents and whatnot. He’d have liked it better if they gave a time and place to meet like any courteous person would, not aware of the fact that even organized crime is called by that name because it’s ran by an organization and not because organized crime is organized enough to work on a schedule. Some organized criminals were organized enough, sure, but these organized criminals were quite unorganized as was apparent. Perhaps they could use the help of an isekai’d mafia boss, though prospects of isekai’d mafia bosses were currently way outside what John Brown or anyone in his local area was thinking at the moment.
The trio made their way out the door of the adventurer’s guild, finding themselves becoming passersby among a large crowd of passersby. “It’s that person.” whispered Brown to Ayomide and Shinasi, pointing to the man who had become even more inconspicuous as he blended into the masses. Both of them actually didn’t get who Brown meant, so they had to suffice by following the old man following the shady man. They continued blending with the crowd for a while, not making any detours from the main road. Perhaps a hundred people passed by without awareness of the abolitionists among them. It felt quite nerve-wracking to be the abolitionists hiding in the crowd. Shinasi and Ayomide did their best to maintain a poker face as to not end up being executed, which’d be a less-than-agreeable event for them. Dying wasn’t a nice thing. Neither was living too nice for them, but death was a luxury reserved for radical abolitionists who were radically misplaced by rhetorical-or-real alien space bats.
Eventually, as Shinasi expected, they diverged somewhere along the main road to the ever-present backstreets of the city. A turn to the right, another to the left, a hop forwards and a great leap backwards, all of that combined into a confusing mess of directions. Brown had done his best to keep track of where they were going, but he was eventually lost in the midst of this alien urban sprawl. Ayomide could swear they were walking in circles, and Shinasi was barely managing to keep his mental map correctly tracking their convoluted route. He had actually faltered somewhere along the way, meaning that his carefully constructed mental map was quite useless unbeknownst to him. The smugglers were clever enough to know that it was a good idea to not have any nosy customers poking into their locations. It’d be quite the trouble if, let’s say, Shinasi was to talk to his eldest cousin’s second husband’s younger brother about having gone to [REDACTED] Street on [REDACTED] Avenue while drunk.
Backstreets turned into backerstreets and those became backeststreets as they ventured further and further into the veins of Casamonu. The buildings became so cramped that the sun no longer shone down, an indication of the less-than-light business which is conducted round these parts. Brown kept his hands close to his pockets to avoid being picked by the occasional child eyeing his material possessions. This dark part of town was also dark in another manner, being the only place where one might see free people with skin darker than pasty white. Unaccepted into any proper jobs, these freemen would either perish or enter into a life of crime to live. Most chose the latter willingly; the rest would have to “choose” the former unwillingly. Perhaps being a bit too optimistic, Brown thought that maybe they could be recruited in the future, though he had also seen how reluctant urbanites were in giving up their lives in the city to throw away their lives outside the city. He couldn’t blame them at this point, Brown wouldn’t follow some stranger to his death either. Most sane people obviously wouldn’t.
Empty thoughts of throwing away lives for strangers aside, Brown and co. had reached an end which was seemingly as dead as Watanabe Generico. They all took a pause while the not-so-inconspicuous man stopped to make a series of very confusing moves. He stomped on the ground, several times in several different places, then pushed a few loose bricks in and out of the wall. Then he pulled in a hidden rope in the wall, stomped the ground a few more times, knocked on a nearby door and tapped the wooden window frame of another nearby building. Finally, after all of these seemingly meaningless moves, a door belonging to a house he hadn’t even approached opened. No one could tell which of these moves was actually instrumental in opening the door and which were meant to misguide onlookers. The man entered the newly opened door, Brown and co. followed him in. Further following in after Brown and co. were a group of lightly armed men who had been following them discretely to make sure nobody would try to hurt the guide.
As expected, the room wasn’t the most pleasant to enter. It was dank, cramped and dark, a combination of words which don’t go well when experienced together. Inside there were a couple more people, all sitting on stacks of various textiles. They all got up when their expected guests arrived, each taking a large load for themselves. Without any words being exchanged, these porters followed the really-not-inconspicuous man into yet another hidden trapdoor, this one hidden under a badly damaged rug. Down from the trapdoor was a cramped tunnel where everyone had to march single-file to fit. There was no light, so the porters went off of their training while Brown and co. had to follow them. This tunnel had various paths leading to God-knows-where, and one would probably get lost if they hadn’t been trained to navigate it. Stuffy, claustrophobic and full of unwashed men, the tunnel was quite the unpleasant experience to be had, one that was reminiscent of the slave quarters for Ayomide (the only significiant difference being the gender of the unwashed people).
Like all tunnels, this tunnel had light at the end of it too… eventually. After solid hellish hour of transporting goods, they all saw a small point where sunlight barely reached the tunnel. The guide pushed a bunch of leaves and twigs aside to reveal that they had finally reached the surface. Brown and co. practically jumped out of the tunnel, breathing in the fresh summer air. They had been dropped into the middle of an opening in the forest, where an empty cart awaited them. Marching in line, the porters dropped the textiles into the cart one by one before they stopped to touch the grass and take a break.
“Go straight from here.” said the guide, speaking for the first time “See those markings on top of those trees? Follow them and you should come straight out to the main road.” Brown looked up to see that, as the guide said, there were big dots carved on top of the trees of the forest, all presumably leading outwards. They’d be only be properly visible from one side, which meant that following these markers from outside-to-inside would be very difficult if wanted to track back to the tunnel (which was also hidden behind a small group of bushes). Not to mention that one probably couldn’t navigate the tunnels without the guide, quite the problem for any customs guards wanting to clamp down on smugglers. “Goodbye, and we hope to conduct business with you again soon.” With this last comment, the guide gathered up the porters and entered the tunnel again.
Brown and co. were alone once more, only the birds and the bees chirping and buzzing to accompany them. The leaves gently rustled as the wind blew by, the air was quite cool thanks to this grove being isolated, and there were armed men coming out of the woods.
“Wait, who are you?!” exclaimed Ayomide upon seeing their unexpected visitors. Brown and Shinasi got ready as well, as ready as they could be with their reduced combat gear. Shinasi carried his spear, Brown had his sword and Ayomide could only reasonably bring out a concealed knife.
“The boss wouldn’t allow us to get the catgirl.” replied a big chap, carrying around a club that was as large as himself. “We’re taking over this biz for ourselves. Please come along with us, miss. We wouldn’t want to damage any cargo.” He had ten more comrades with him, all looking equally ready to capture a valuable catgirl for themselves.
Things had gone too well, and it seemed that the Lord had intervened by sending them another challenge as was required for tension to be generated in the story.