When buildings taller and neater than rural dwellings appeared on the horizon, Xialuote's excitement at nearing Telier lasted only a few seconds before being overtaken by the aches radiating through her body.
Traveling by carriage for four consecutive days made her feel as though the area below her waist and above her legs no longer belonged to her at all.
Sitting opposite her, Laila had also long since lost the novelty she felt at the start of the journey. Having lost any interest in gazing at the scenery through the window, she stared blankly ahead, her face etched with exhaustion from travel.
Just like coworkers on the bus ride back from a company retreat... Xialuote muttered inwardly. Lifting the curtain, she looked outside. Two carriages belonging to Baron Suolun's household rolled one after another onto a wide thoroughfare. Vehicles merging from other byways kept streaming together: stagecoaches packed with travelers and with trunks and cloth bundles roped down to their roofs, freight wagons loaded with wooden barrels and crates, and refined traveling carriages bearing aristocratic crests—all combining to make the previously open road grow increasingly congested.
Truly worthy of being the Northern Continent's second-largest metropolis, boasting a population of nearly a million... Pulling her gaze back from the diverse carriages and travelers, she looked toward the north and noticed an off-white stone wall stretching across between buildings and vineyards.
The wall was only about three meters high, and many sections were not even fully finished yet, flanked by wooden scaffolding for construction, with dressed but unused stones stacked on the ground.
The thoroughfare passed through a wide checkpoint in the wall. On either side stood pavilions formed by stone columns supporting triangular pediments, where blue-uniformed officials stood inside, stopping and inspecting passing vehicles and pedestrians one by one.
A city wall?
Xialuote paused in surprise. In her distant memories of this city, no such wall existed.
Naturally, as the capital of a nation, Telier had once possessed towering city walls and corresponding fortifications dating back as far as the era when the city was first founded. Later, with the city's growth and several wars with other nations, the defensive perimeter of the walls had expanded continuously, and the old walls had been reinforced and widened many times.
However, over a century ago, traditional city walls had become incapable of keeping pace with urban expansion, and the development of artillery had rendered those tall stone walls obsolete. The king at the time ultimately ordered their demolition, preserving only a handful of historically significant city gates and ruins. The stretch of the old wall on the north bank had even been converted into a tree-lined boulevard shaded by tall trees, becoming one of Telier's most famous landmarks.
Why had one been built again? And from the looks of it, work had only begun recently... The Three-Year War had clearly ended—did the royal family think Luen would attack Telier again? Questions filled Xialuote's mind. Sweeping her gaze over the wall, which was not particularly thick and clearly incapable of withstanding artillery fire, she quickly dismissed that possibility.
Just then, a wagon ahead loaded with wine barrels pulled up beside the checkpoint. Two blue-clad men stepped forward, first inspecting the seals and markings on the barrels, then taking the manifest to verify details carefully and count the items. After collecting a few silver coins from the driver, they waved the vehicle through.
Only then did Xialuote realize that the wall before her was not built to fend off enemy troops at all, but was an enclosure erected for collecting taxes.
Originally, there had been many small byways around Telier that bypassed customs checkpoints into the city. So long as goods avoided the main roads, there was a chance to evade entry tariffs. Now, however, this new barrier enclosed a vast swathe of land, including the immediate suburbs. If goods were to enter the city proper, they had no choice but to pass through the toll gates established along the wall.
A three-meter-high wall could not stop an army from Luen or Fusake, but it was plenty high enough to keep cargo-laden wagons from crossing over.
Yet this way, every commodity entering Telier would incur additional costs, and in the end, it was the ordinary people in the city who would bear the burden... Looking at the line of wagons ahead, Xialuote vaguely understood why the royal family had made such a decision despite public discontent.
That localized war with the Luen Kingdom between 1136 and 1139 had not only cost Yindisi a portion of its overseas colonies and inflicted heavy losses on its massive Fog Sea Fleet, but had also saddled it with war indemnities as high as two billion feierjin.
It seems the hole that war left in the kingdom's finances was even bigger than I had imagined, large enough that they've had to resort to this kind of method to increase revenue... The image of the older brother who had died in that war flashed through Xialuote's mind, and she let out a silent sigh.
Soon, the Suolun carriages arrived before the checkpoint. Recognizing the coat of arms emblazoned on the carriage door, the tax collectors made no demand for the servants to unload the luggage from the roof. They merely confirmed the count of people in the entourage before stepping back to clear the way.
One of the younger tax collectors happened to look toward the window. Upon catching sight of Xialuote's face, he subconsciously straightened up, as if anxious that his attire might not look tidy enough or his posture sharp enough.
At the same time, someone by a cargo wagon behind them cursed under their breath:
"Like those lords' trunks couldn't be packed with goods? A bunch of lapdogs who only know how to kiss noble ass..."
The voice was not loud, but it was clear enough for Xialuote, whose hearing had been sharpened as an Arbiter, to catch every word. She shifted her numb body involuntarily, suppressing the urge to turn back toward the speaker or scold the tax collectors to demand justice for the people.
Although this might have been a good opportunity for acting, it was more likely to cause a major scene—and her father was in the carriage, too... Musing to herself, she went back to watching the buildings outside grow denser, coalescing into city blocks.
Most of the buildings here were three to four stories high, with exterior walls of off-white brick and stone that suggested a unified plan. Yet that neatness was quickly disrupted by added attics, street-facing balconies, and shopfronts. Between buildings ran narrow alleys barely wide enough for a small carriage, while wastewater flowed unchecked along both sides of the road. It was only because the main thoroughfare was sufficiently wide that these illegal additions did not bring traffic to a dead crawl.
This is the capital of Yindisi—chaotic, yet brimming with vitality... Leaning against the carriage window, Xialuote let her eyes drift from building to building, finally feeling that her four days of suffering had not been in vain.
...
Several properties and temporary residences belonging to the Suolun family were located in northern Telier. Having arrived from the south, Xialuote's party needed to traverse most of the city and cross the Sailunzuo River, which ran through it, before reaching their destination.
This river originated in the central plateau bordering Yindisi and Feineibote, with its farthest headwaters tracing back as far as the Hornacis mountain range. The Laien River, which flowed past Suxite, merged into it further upstream, and together they passed through Telier before flowing northwest into the Fog Sea.
The carriage rolled on along the road, crossing an ancient stone bridge spanning the Sailunzuo River to reach an island at the river's center. East of the road lay a square far more expansive than the surrounding streets, where vendors selling flowers and candles gathered alongside white pigeons pecking at grain near the feet of the crowd. Beyond them, a massive church revealed itself in full from behind the dense cluster of buildings.
Two square towers rose on either side of the church's main portal, framing a colossal rose window embedded at the center. Tier upon tier of pointed arches tapered upward, and statues adorned every niche of the golden facade. The midday sun fell upon the stained glass and gilded ornaments, bathing the entire edifice in a soft, ethereal radiance.
Looking up at the church, Xialuote felt fragmented memories of living in Telier during her early childhood suddenly awakened by the sight before her.
She remembered riding in a carriage across the square, remembered the tolling of bells from the high towers, and remembered her family tutor repeatedly mentioning the church's name when lecturing on Telier's history.
No wonder she had felt an indescribable sense of familiarity the first time she heard the name of Sister Weiyefu.
This was one of the earliest churches established in Telier by the Church of the Eternal Blazing Sun.
Saint Weiyefu Church.
Chapter 53