Not Bad

I heard that southern women love flowers, but… perhaps seeing such crude blossoms only reminded her of home and had the opposite effect.

How she had known about that place, he couldn’t say, but when his wife suggested going there first, the joy and the shock had struck him simultaneously.

That flower field was his trump card. He didn’t know how many decades it might take, but someday, when Aspara had at last forgiven him, he’d dreamed of showing it to her with the utmost care. There, he would beg her forgiveness once more, swear his love, and when the land was at peace, perhaps retire and build a little cabin where they might live together. It was a maiden’s fantasy, he knew.

And yet,

As I feared… my lady wishes to go back home.

From the very first day he met Aspara, the castle lord had been haunted by that word, “go back,” spoken in that halting southern accent. Hearing it again had knocked him senseless.

After stabling the horse, Gus escorted his wife to her room. But if he let the door close like this, it felt as though his beloved wife would vanish, simply disappear, never to return. Desperate to hold on to her even a moment longer, he spoke.

“My lady, I’ve been learning a bit about brewing tea lately — might you watch me try? As it happens, I have some very fine refreshments today as well.”

“— ——? — — —.”

The incomprehensible, song-like southern tongue felt more suffocating than usual today. He wanted to learn his wife’s language as quickly as possible, but the interpreter he so desperately needed was simply nowhere to be found.

“That… your knight appears to be away at the moment. I’ll fetch him at once, so please — wait just a moment.”

Having conveyed through every gesture he could muster that she should wait in the room, Gus shut the door and, all dignity abandoned, sprinted to the kitchen.

At that hour, the two confidants had come down to the kitchen.

“Right, this is my secret dog hole. I’m only showing it to you, so try crawling through yourself. Go straight and you’ll come out in the outer kitchen — at this hour, the kitchen attendants should all be out breaking the well ice.”

“Got it.”

Jack handed his outer coat to Ugli and crawled into the hole.

Past the thick double walls unique to northern construction, the smooth kitchen floor came into view.

The moment he entered the kitchen, Jack scanned his surroundings without even pausing to brush off the dust. One plate immediately caught his eye. Amid the rough wooden bowls sat a single porcelain dish that looked brand-new. It even had a painted pattern; looked rather expensive.

Back at the lady’s home castle, such things were commonplace, but this was the first time he’d seen such a luxury here.

“One for Ugli makes three… no, wait — he’s been through a lot too, so two for him and two for me. Five total should do it.”

With three sweet dumplings clenched between his front teeth and another three clutched in his hands, Jack was just about to leave.

“— — ——?”

A voice rumbled like a cave.

Jack turned toward the sound.

“Ah.”

Standing before him was a man as broad and wide as a door.

Behind him loomed an aura of command even larger than that enormous frame, and in his fierce eyes sat a killing edge as sharp as blue steel.

Good lord — those eyes look ready to drop a man or two on the spot.

In this moment, there were two things Jack did not know.

One.

The barbarian king’s eyes always looked like that. Jack had simply never noticed, because every time he’d seen the king’s gaze before, it had been directed at Aspara.

Two.

That said, it was also true that Gus was, in fact, angry.

Very much so.

“What have you been doing in here.”

Jack’s hand flew to his waist before he knew it. The same survival instinct as encountering a wild beast in the forest.

Seeing the knight dare to assume a sword-drawing stance before the castle lord, one of Gus’s eyebrows lifted. The fact that Aspara’s escort knight, his own wife’s knight, was looking at him as though he were the enemy touched something.

As though he were the intruder in his own kitchen.

Whatever had swelled so high inside him all morning, that was what popped.

“Not one of you will simply accept it.”

Gus stepped forward; Jack stepped back.

“Is it so amusing — a barbarian who crowned himself with sword and fire, playing at being a princess’s husband?”

Gus stepped forward again; Jack stepped back again.

“I understand. A wild beast who ruined a noble woman’s fate through greed — that is indeed a sin to atone for over a lifetime.”

Gus stepped forward once more; Jack’s back hit the wall.

“Even so —”

That enormous head blocked out the kitchen’s ceiling lamp entirely, plunging the knight’s vision into darkness.

“The likes of you don’t get to act that way.”

Looking up at the cold eyes bearing down on him, Jack realized that this man had been putting on an act in front of the lady all along.

A medium hit!

At a discovery that was cause for celebration, though not quite a jackpot, Aspara cheered inwardly.

After all, saving the highest superlative for a genuinely jackpot-worthy occasion was the only way to keep it meaningful.

She sat alone in the empty room, studying the flower she had picked. No matter how many times she looked, her hunch was right.

On the ride back, she’d been so preoccupied with whether the familiar smell from the petals was what she thought it was that she hadn’t spared Gus a single grain of attention.

“This is definitely frostbloom herb.”

The sap of this peculiarly scented plant, when mixed into food or medicine, kept things from spoiling; it could preserve them for a remarkably long time. In the humid, sweltering south, it was quite a useful commodity.

The high cost of harvesting meant it wasn’t as widely used as other preservatives, but that same scarcity earned it a premium price.

And to think this hard-to-cultivate flower grows wild across the plains. No wonder it was so difficult to raise in the south — the plant is native to the snowfields.

It wouldn’t yield a fortune-making turnaround, but it was a product with a genuine edge. As bait to lure merchants a bit closer, it was not bad at all. At the very least, it was a more useful harvest for the territory than selling two cartloads of lime for a sack of beans.

They’ve had this all along and never thought to sell it. Then again, this isn’t exactly a place that needs to worry about food going bad.

Aspara thought of this place’s natural freezer, where you could leave food outdoors and it would freeze solid in no time. Fish heads and dead guinea pigs jutted out willy-nilly from the snowdrift outside the kitchen; she’d gotten quite a shock when she stumbled upon them during her castle tour.

Speaking of the kitchen, she remembered the man who had been miming the act of eating while trying to relay a message earlier.

“Oh, right. The castle lord.”

Only now did Aspara notice that her husband, who had gestured for her to wait before disappearing, still hadn’t come back.

“It’s been quite a while. What on earth is he doing?”

The sound of a porcelain dish shattering against the kitchen floor rang out.

“—— —, [what… what’s, going on], — —…”

“You ask what I’m doing?”

The master of Fang Castle swatted aside the sword hilt Jack had been reaching for with a single hand.

The motion was light, but the force behind it was tremendous; the sheathed sword went clanging clear across the kitchen.

“Fulfilling my role as a husband.”

He pinned Jack’s wrist to the wall with his boot and gripped the hilt of his own sword.

It was then.

“My lord!”

A frantic shout came from somewhere. Both men turned their heads toward the sound.

No, they lowered them.

“…What is going on.”

A head was sticking out of the corner wall. Protruding sideways from the masonry, it met their eyes with a dead-serious expression.

“…Allow me to explain.”

“Explain.”

Gus scowled, feeling his fighting spirit wither.

“While you two were out, my lady’s knight discovered a dog hole running through the castle corridors. He suggested it ought to be repaired for the castle’s security, and we were in the middle of inspecting it together.”

Without turning his head, Gus shifted only his eyes toward the knight. Jack’s legs must have given out, because at some point he had slumped flat onto the floor.

Only his panic-stricken eyes were darting this way and that.

“The kitchen in particular is a space where security must be a top priority, so we rushed to —”

“Is that the truth?”

“Huh?”

The castle lord looked down at the knight crumpled on the floor with a briefly contemptuous gaze, then lifted his boot.

In the time since, one of Jack’s fingernails had cracked.

“I was on edge. But if you are to be a member of this household from now on, remember this: I am particular about others handling my family’s food.”

“I will see to his education personally. This hole will be sealed at once — you needn’t worry.”

“Fine.”

“You were supposed to be focused on other matters all day today, so I was handling things on my end — but, well, here we are. You came back sooner than expected.”

A murderous aura returned to the kitchen.

Ugli instantly realized he had, for whatever reason, said the wrong thing.

“Ahhh, yes, of course — the weather was rather poor today, wasn’t it! Right, on days like this it’s better to stay indoors.”

“More importantly, why don’t you come out of the hole before we continue this conversation.”

“I appear to be stuck.”

“…”

“I heard the crash and crawled over in a hurry, and…”

Ugli said this with a face that had gone slightly more purple than before.

“…I’m sorry, but I have urgent business and cannot help. I’ll leave this to you.”

“Leave it to me.”

“And — little knight, remember this. There is one reason you are still alive.”

Gus tapped Jack on the shoulder as he spoke.

“I am not the sort of man who breaks his wife’s belongings without her consent.”

Jack hadn’t understood a word of what had been said, but since things seemed to have been resolved somehow, he raised both thumbs.

One of his fingers was bleeding.

The castle lord, breathing deeply as though to smother the last of his anger, grabbed a paper napkin from the kitchen shelf and tossed it at Jack.

“From this moment on, you will take what I say and write it down in your language.”