The Clown, the Merchant, and the Snow-White-Haired Man

"People-suffering is truly beautiful…"

The clown was walking the corner of art-city Vergilia in hop-hop steps.

Awareness running clean to the toe-tips, on anomalously smooth motion, as if staging hopping on a stage, he hopped.

The line dripping from the mouth was the line about the woman he'd been talking with at the opera-house just now.

The clown, on the bewitching smile on his androgynous face, slipped from Vergilia's main street into a one-back-from-the-front lane.

"Caesar."

Suddenly, as if to call him back, a voice ran.

The source was behind him. Near the entrance of a thin alley.

Cutting from his back through the front, the line carried a sharp tone.

The clown noticing it, first his hands covered the smile-bearing face; after a few beats, on a heel-turn, looked back.

In the heel-turn motion the hands came down, and from under them surfaced — different from the prior smile in quality — a pasted-on smile.

"Yo — late-hours work, well done. Anything for me? — Saisalis fanatics, gentlemen."

"…"

In the line of his turn, three white-robed figures.

Each, in the wide robe's deep-pulled hood, hiding the face, standing at the entrance of the thin alley feeding the main street.

One of them, taking the lead, answered the clown's line.

"Forget not, you are part of Saisalis too, Caesar. Hold your tongue."

"No no — I have a condition where, if I don't run light-banter on a regular schedule, I die-die-die."

"To the Pope —"

"You'll tell? Fine — but I, strictly, am working under a direct contract with your head, the 〈Saisalis Pope,〉 — not a believer of Saisalis, in any sense. The Pope agreed to that; whatever you lot say will, in fact, change nothing."

"!! — Sly clown!"

"That feels like a rough charge, but it's a bother, so fine. Talking with executives like you is truly dull. You read like the puppets that come out of a puppet-play — ah, no no, don't be cross, don't be cross. Slipped, that line."

The clown, on a theatrical up-shrug, continued.

"Mind, I am, properly, doing what's been requested, so, on light-banter and light moves, give me leeway, yes! That I bought that opera-house, Reve Opera, was my delivery. If you lot would just have flowed the church operating budget down on time, it'd have run smoothly — but —"

"Money for that is not on offer. For new-Saisalis's rise, the better uses for money lie elsewhere —"

"Oh — fine, fine. My fault. Strange light-banter and your speech-switch lit up. — So, what is the matter."

"Tell that woman to use the secret art, faster."

"Ah? — That you'd realised she's not been."

"That those are bewitched is no question. But that's all. Looking at the conversion-process shows it. Far too much self still left in them."

"Oh-la."

"With the secret art there'd be no labour in the conversion."

The white-robed man muttered with a hate-laden register.

The clown, watching, laughed small, through the nose.

"Humans — I get the wish to lean on what's easy — but, somehow, watching those who used to be the clean-poor and graceful believers of the old-Saisalis — and now, getting cross when things don't go smooth — I become sad. You are new-Saisalis-allied believers, and have, by that, become worldly-rich; but compared to those still practising the old-Saisalis teachings unchanged — which of you is happy, do you suppose."

"Quiet, Caesar. To begin with — you, who has no god, has no business saying so."

"Gods are anywhere. I am, in that sense, not no-god but many-god. I'm easily charmed, so I wag my tail at gods everywhere."

The clown — Caesar — on an Aha-ha and a staged tail-wag-twice-or-thrice motion.

In it a strange feminine charge hid and showed.

"Mind — me being so is exactly why I can stand against her charm. By that, I've been put on baby-sitter duty by the Pope."

"Then carry it out faithfully. Get her using the secret art, fast."

"Hah… right, right. Soon. — Right — I, also, am tired. Today, that's enough."

In the closing of the line, that prior light register had switched off; the tone now carried the sharpness of a rapier-tip, as if the voice itself could thrust people through.

And — Caesar's expression, peeked-from-under-the-bewitching-makeup, was no longer the pasted-on smile but, by the look, somehow cross.

The white-robed man, catching it, by the atmosphere pushed back a step —

"Next time, no. Caesar."

— such a line dropped, then he vanished into the main street.

The other two white-robed figures, in tail, slid away too.

Left alone, the clown again covered his face on both hands, then surfaced a pleasant smile.

But the voice still dragged the prior register —

"— If there were a decent god, I, also, would gladly worship one. In this age, contemptible vulgar people multiply."

— that line dropped from the clown's mouth.

---

After that, walking some back-alleys, Caesar shifted to the next-over alley and emerged onto the main street.

The cheap inn he was using as his bed was further along, in the alley across from this main street.

The main street he had just stepped onto runs straight from Vergilia's west gate; in season, foreign travellers, merchants, and nobles cross here in great numbers. A particular artery.

"Plenty of people, certainly."

So the people-density was particular too.

Caesar let a fed-up line out and drew one large breath.

And — finally, made the call to throw himself into the wave of people in front.

"Every time — like a battlefield."

Just before stepping into the wave, on the lane's edge, suspicious-shape merchants were running stalls. Stalls aimed at travellers and nobles fresh into Vergilia.

Threading the gaps, checking footing, he stepped into the engraved-brick main road.

"One — two —"

Watching the gap, he plunged an arm into the wave and walked diagonally, not against the flow.

Slowly, slowly — crossing.

He'd checked there were no carriages coming before stepping in, but once inside the wave, far-off conditions are unseeable.

In his chest, please let nothing inconvenient pass through, praying — not rushing, steady, foot-by-foot.

And, finally, somehow he made it to the alley-side opposite.

There, too, stalls were lined up like a wall.

Just where he'd cleared the wave, the stall-keeper opposite spotted him.

"Oh — Caesar, yes?"

"Yes?"

Caesar, on the clown's smile, looked.

There stood a clean-dressed man, but his shoes alone were worn — a merchant.

A face seen a few times.

"Erm —"

"Ralbas. Your inn-room neighbour."

"— Ah! Right, right — Ralbas-san. Travelling merchant?"

"That's it. Don't usually trade at places like this, but a fellow-merchant said the art-city in season is the good earner. Have to match the place, so I dropped a fat coin on these clean clothes and am running a stall here."

"Ah, I see, I see."

Clean clothes, he says — but the shoes, still, are worn.

Caesar, thinking it as he looked at Ralbas's shoes — Ralbas, too, seemed to have caught the read, and on a shrug —

"Reckoned no one looks at the feet — cheaped out there."

"Feet are, in fact, important, mind?"

That kind of carelessness, in fact, gets your merchant feet read — but apparently this merchant did not know.

To dress clean — the shoes count.

Caesar, in his head, recalled the line of a certain merchant he'd once had brushes with.

— That money-fiend — still, I wonder, in spirited fiend-mode? …though fiend-doing is a strange phrasing.

That one was, in his own way, a man with his own god.

Aware it was an incomplete one, he'd carried a strange settled register — but, even so, while a money-fiend, he did not feel worldly-vulgar.

"For reference — sales-side?"

Caesar, standing on the side of Ralbas's stall not in passers-by's way, looked at the items on the rack and said it.

"Going well. This city, plenty of fools. — Off the record — the art-pieces here, plenty of forgeries. Funny part: even past forgeries, sometimes a vagrant rolls up rags and someone slaps this is wonderful invisible value on it and buys. Among the nobles — peak to floor."

That on Ralbas's stall there were forgeries and worthless items mixed in — Caesar knew.

In the art-city, common.

It's the easiest stuff to make and amateurs are easy to feed on.

Not everyone arriving at the art-city is a connoisseur or connoisseur-fan; plenty are just rich and seasonal, coming for gleaming social occasions.

Those are easy targets.

"Art — anything not of high grade has value-shifting property. Artists who finish art with stable value over time — geniuses, what one calls them — but even they can produce something hard to read."

"Clown talking art lands strange too, mind."

"Really? I, in fact, know plenty, mind?"

"Oi — stop, stop, don't lean closer. Despite being male you smell woman-shape, and on a wrong slip the hand might go."

"Aha-ha, trying, that."

Caesar, on a laugh, cut the line.

— Talked too much, perhaps.

So thinking, on that closing line, he was about to leave.

But —

"Oh! Found a good prey! — Look! That's the country-bumpkin type."

"…Hm?"

Suddenly, on an excited register, Ralbas pointed.

His finger pointed at the tail-end of the long queue running down from the western gate.

Among the flashy carriages mixed into the people, behind a particular carriage, a certain group.

The dress was not, by any means, poor.

But in this quarter where flashy dressers are normal, also not standout in particular.

A group with exquisitely-balanced luxury.

If their feature were that alone he might have passed without notice.

But —

— Whoa… country-bumpkin…

The transcendent-shape man at the head had eyes shining with no end of curiosity.

That this was curiosity-shape came across in his motions. The body fidgeted; the eyes kept slipping to the art-stalls along the side.

Eye-darting in textbook form.

"Ah… country-bumpkin, yes…"

"Right? Dress isn't shabby, prey-able. I'll go! Sorry — watch the stall!"

"Eh? Wait —"

Ralbas, scooping a generic item from the rack on his arm, ran straight at the group.

Caesar, left to mind the stall, stunned in place.

Could leave it as is — but if he did, the stall would have no minder, and light-fingered passers-by might lift items.

— Inn-rooms are next-door, after all…

He'd hate the complaints later.

Caesar, reluctantly, took the stall-mind.

From here he can see the group and Ralbas; might as well watch the unfair fight as time-fill.

So thinking, Caesar, arms folded, watched.

But —

"E-eh…?"

In the next beat, Caesar let a question-toned line out.

"That, possibly —"

In the group Ralbas was running at, there was — somehow — a familiar figure; Caesar, rubbing his eyes a few times, threw a stare at him again.

"Ah… as I thought."

No mistake.

In that group, there was a gold-haired man Caesar recognised.

A man he had had brushes with once.

— The 'money-fiend,' 〈Shaw Jule Sherwood〉.

Why him — here.

— No — more —

"Why is that man walking behind someone —"

As if attending the country-bumpkin-shape man at the head.

At least — the money-fiend Caesar knew was not the kind to walk behind someone.

As a merchant, as the head of a firm, always walking in front.

If he were ever to attend someone, he'd said — only to one of higher virtue and capabilities than mine. — Caesar had heard it once.

— He's found one.

Surely.

That man is loved by the strongest authority humans built.

That man, painfully gifted at making money, by using it can do most things.

A man like that, attending — and the strange snow-white-haired man at the head —

In the next beat, Caesar caught that something had passed between Ralbas and the snow-white-haired man.

The body had moved, big.

From Caesar, Ralbas's back was in the way; the fine details were unclear.

Caesar — that caught him.

So, sorry to Ralbas, he took a few steps from the stall to a position that lets him see them better.