Lucifal and Nizshok

"About fifteen days."

At parting, Zodia told me that.

If that was the travel time from the royal capital to the Imperial capital, it was astonishingly fast. Traveling by carriage at a normal pace would take twice as long, no matter how hard we hurried. But that was exactly what I’d expected of Zodia.

No matter what the border, a traveling troupe could pass through without being challenged. Of course, they had to be on reasonably familiar terms with the border guards.

What’s more, well-known traveling troupes hardly ever had to worry about being attacked by bandits. Bandits, too, were their “customers.”

Bandits didn’t consort with a traveling troupe just for entertainment. They also relied on the troupe to pass along information about nearby patrols—a lifeline for them.

When they heard that bandits were being hunted in their territory, they scattered in every direction and fled, returning once things had quieted down.

Whether it was right to pass information to bandits wasn’t for me to judge here. To a traveling troupe, there was little difference between dealing with a king and dealing with bandits.

That was why bandits who knew a lot of people in traveling troupes tended to rise through the ranks.

A bandit gang led by someone who didn’t understand its relationship with the traveling troupes usually didn’t last long. I’d heard about a gang that had attacked a troupe in the past and earned the troupes’ enmity...