Master of Demon Lords and the Pocket-Watcher

The next person Merea ran into — with a frankly theatrical freight wagon at his back — was the money-fiend, striding the main road from Lemuse's western side into town.

Shaw Jule Sherwood.

Alias.

A name on the 〈Alchemy King〉 line — a Demon Lord.

Shaw, gold-thread fine hair lifting on the wind, parchment-glaring in one hand, was threading skilfully through the standing crowd.

The freight wagon trailing behind already had a just-hired-from-somewhere young subordinate up on the seat, working the reins with equal dexterity.

"Honestly — leave him alone, this one'll keep on living…"

Merea, before Shaw spotted him, watching from a distance, said that line.

His face carried exasperation, and at the same time, faint amusement.

After a little, as Shaw closed in, he finally noticed Merea.

A bright smile lit, one hand raised.

"Oh — my master."

"Why does it sound like sarcasm —"

Merea, returning the greeting on long-familiar light footing, shrugged and stepped a little closer.

Shaw, slightly taller, met him as a young man meets an old friend — naturally easing his face — pulled Merea inside his personal range without putting a wall up.

To an outside eye, the two looked simply like two well-acquainted young men.

Without prior knowledge, no one would have guessed that Demon Lord was the right label for either.

"Is that so? I feel pretty grateful to you, you know."

"Because you got to set up a new firm-branch in Lemuse?"

"Well — primarily, roughly there."

"Honest. Good."

Merea let a wry smile up, Shaw a small grin.

Hardly an unpleasant exchange.

A standard light banter.

But — Merea had, lately, started catching, in Shaw's near-perfect smile, occasional flickers of something rainy mixed in.

Whether Shaw was letting his guard down around Merea, or Merea's eye had simply got sharper for it — Merea did not know.

In that frame, Shaw, on his end, also evidently had things tucked in his chest — but Merea, deliberately, did not press.

The mutual trust had, by now, grown plenty deep, but pressing the wrong way could still come off as crude.

Personal-interior matters, Merea felt no pressure to understand on a fast clock.

Where it counted, he trusted — properly.

— That, for now, is enough.

"What did you get done today?"

"Glad you asked. — Trade with the western-of-Lemuse countries, finally opened."

"Oh?"

Since opening Sherwood Firm's Lemusan branch, Shaw had been pouring effort into bringing it up to speed.

The Lemusan Sherwood branch was, simultaneously, connected to the Demon Lord Alliance's wallet.

The branch was, on the surface, an ordinary firm-branch — but the substance was the cloth wrapping the Demon Lord's purse.

Built on Sherwood Firm's already-secured distribution routes, with goods and otherwise gathered and pushed in by 〈Wallet (Listale)〉's Demon Lord crew, and with Shaw, somewhat unwillingly, holding the 〈Alchemy King〉 Demon Lord title — the operation was, near as makes no difference, an independent Demon Lord organisation.

Putting that shape and that name up front would only invite avoidable trouble, so the Sherwood Firm branch wrapping was kept on for now.

"That's why you look in good spirits?"

"Hah, roughly so."

Surprisingly, the proposal had been Shaw's own.

Shaw, who showed an absurd, fixated attention on his own wallet's situation, was now pointing that same fixation at the larger cloth-bag of the Demon Lord Alliance's wallet.

Possibly he had read it as good investment-target found, or possibly he was angling to expand his merchant base on top of it.

Either way — for the Demon Lords, the situation was a strong card.

A bit grasping, certainly — but if this man held the books, the alliance's finances would be handled. That was the read.

"Not that I'm doubting you — but I thought, once things settled, Shaw would head outside again."

With Mūzeg's threat in stand-down, Shaw, with branches spread over the eastern continent, could go anywhere he liked.

But Shaw had not stayed away from Lemuse for any long stretch.

He went out for trading trips of a few days now and again, but he always came back to Star-Tree Castle, spent some days in his room, and then was back doing something at the branch. There was even a slight habit-feel to it.

While diligent at trade, he was, evidently, conscious of staying near the Demon Lords too.

"I, on my end, have thoughts, you see — my master?"

"Stop with the address — Marisa alone is already taking up my whole bandwidth."

"Hah. Weaknesses are to be grasped, after all."

"Lesson learned."

Yare yare, Merea shrugged again.

Watching, Shaw — Mind, I have no plan to become like that strange maid — let a small breath out his nose, and put the topic back on rails.

"— Returning to the subject. The big merchants and lords on the peddler's road, who had been afraid of Mūzeg cutting in, finally trust the recent slack in Mūzeg's grip and have eased the eastern-side trade restrictions. Logistics will recover substantially. Worth all the rear-end-kicking we did to them."

"Not bad."

Shaw was, truly, able.

That, Merea did not doubt.

Without this man on the inside, the Demon Lord side would, almost certainly, have been in a sharper situation.

"Easy to say, Merea. If you hadn't, alone, levelled Mūzeg to that extent, none of this trade resumption would even be on the table."

"Result-talk. Not big enough to gossip about."

"No. Be more proud of your own strength. I, on my end, hold a real awe and reverence for that overwhelming violence of yours."

Shaw said it, clean-toned, to Merea.

Hand to mouth, then index finger raised toward the sky in deliberate stagey flourish — but, while the face carried a smile, the voice ran lower than usual; a serious register.

He shifted next, one hand to his hip, the other moved out from his mouth and held forward, and continued —

"What I fear, with everything in me, is the kind of opponent on whom the power of money simply does not function. Your overwhelming military force and violence are exactly that. The fictional human-made authority — money, in short — would, in a square confrontation, almost certainly not register on you. The authority you wield is, more biologically primal — and for that reason, the strongest there is."

"You over-state."

Saying so — Merea was, even so, not ignoring it.

He understood the shape of Shaw's point, and was conscious that he had to keep his mind on it constantly.

Because Mūzeg was using that power best of any of them.

And, as Shaw had said, he was one of the people who weaponised that same power.

Forget that, and the power itself would, eventually, cut him.

That was its shape.

— Violence is.

"That said — you, on your end, give every sign of thinking about all this fairly hard, so I'm not particularly worried about run-aways. To begin with, your authority outranks ours."

"There's also the standing promise — if I drift off-road, the rest of you knock me back onto it."

"That part can be left to the brute-force group."

"Like Salman?"

"Yes. — And — Lady Lilium as well; I think she would, fairly severely, deliver."

"Lilium isn't brute-force, though."

"Mn — fair, that. — Mind, half a foot in, that one. The young lady."

At Merea's correction, Shaw laughed.

"Personally, I'd file her under either column. — When all is said and done, she was the first Demon Lord I met going up that sacred mountain; we conversed a fair bit on the climb; some attachment, on my end. — Yes, the grip-strength on those side-pinches she lays on me is truly worth raising an eyebrow at."

"That doesn't read as man-and-woman attachment."

"My lover is money, you see."

"Knew you'd say it." — Merea, wry-smiling, took his eyes off Shaw.

In the same motion, Shaw followed Merea's line of sight.

What the two of them were looking up at was the Great Star-Tree.

And, leaning into the Great Star-Tree as if grown alongside it — the place the two of them ought to be returning to — Star-Tree Castle.

Around it stood Lemusan houses, merchant-houses, and even a bell-clock tower; from this stretch of road, the castle's full picture was not to be had — but the tall castle running into the sky was, plainly, visible.

"— Right, then. I'll be off too. Have to log this round of trade's ledger."

"Good work."

"Money-counting is my hour of bliss! No one shall interrupt!"

— Yeah — something is wrong with this one.

Faced with that crystalline money-fiend display, Merea answered with a brow-low smile and a sigh on top.

He clapped Shaw lightly on the shoulder and stepped past the wagon, traded goods piled up on it.

Then, as if remembering at the very last, Merea turned and called Shaw back.

"Ah — right. A small request, if I may."

Shaw turned half-around to Merea's voice.

"What is it?"

"Today's a day everyone's at the castle, so — a banquet, shall we?"

With Elma and Shaw both back today, almost all the Demon Lords were under castle roof.

Belatedly noticing that, Merea floated the suggestion.

In their first days in residence, with role-divisions and policy meetings still on the agenda, banquets had been daily — but three or four days in, they'd all gone out to provision the ranks, and one way or another it had been a while.

"Good. Let's. — Right — among today's stock there's mutton from the Karsuna Plains; we can run that through the kitchen and put it out."

In Shaw's smooth-flowing line, the regional name Marisa had been drilling into him surfaced —

"Nice. As I recall — the sheep grazing on that grassland's grass have a stronger savoury note?"

"Just so. — Apparently the strange maid's lessons are, in their way, taking effect. — Still as merciless as ever to me, but for that point alone, I'll, provisionally, mark her favourably."

Merea, wry-smiling at Shaw's grumble, on the side, threw a quiet small fist of triumph at having got the answer right.

"I'll walk a little more before heading back. Pass that on to everyone."

"As you command."

Hand raised again — Shaw returned a respectful and slightly theatrical bow, and Merea's wry smile, again, widened.

The image of that flowing actor's bow holding behind his eyes, Merea stepped back into Lemuse's bustle.