Letter

“Have a look at this.”

The King of Barbarians held something out. Ugli approached with care and picked up the white object: a sheet of paper, folded twice.

When he unfolded it, black characters appeared in the center.

[I wish to pay the price for it.]

The letters had been written in the northern tongue, each stroke pressed firm and deliberate.

“This is…”

“Don’t ask.”

Gus cut him off in a low, flat voice. The edges of the paper were sharp but slightly curled, the kind of warping that comes from being cut out of a larger sheet.

“I wish to pay the price for it,” he says…

“The next time you bring documents to the southern knight, copy that line in your handwriting and slip it in with the rest. Once he translates it into the southern tongue, have it returned to me.”

The one doing that translating is me, though, but Ugli could hardly confess that.

The castle lord’s old war comrade nodded.

This, it seemed, was clearly the source of those strange sentences that had been trickling in lately.

Ugli mentally listed the odd words he had been translating recently. Crescent moon, the price, a single strand…

The castle lord is assembling a document in the southern tongue. And he’s going about it so that Jack — no, so that no one in the castle knows the full text.

Judging by the gravity in his eyes as he handed over that slip of paper, this was no trivial matter. There had been a steely resolve in that gaze, one that said no one can find out about this.

Ugli bowed silently and left the castle lord’s chambers. The moment the heavy door clicked shut behind him, his brow furrowed.

What on earth is he planning that he can’t even tell me…

Aspara was in terrific spirits these days. She had been building a remarkably productive working relationship with the late baron’s wife.

The trouble with the baron, which had seemed so intractable, had resolved itself neatly, and money was actually flowing in now.

After several days of drowning in paperwork, she had gotten to the point where she could more or less read the basic framework of most documents.

“So this means ‘transfer of title.’ Which would make the sale price per majigi roughly… about this much.”

The figures on the statement were not particularly large numbers.

But that was only by Aspara’s yardstick; she had not yet fully shed her southern sensibilities. By the impoverished north’s standards, they were sums substantial enough to matter.

“If we put even half the revenue toward relief, we could win over quite a lot of popular sentiment. And with half of the remaining half, I’d like to buy a few things to furnish this room.”

Aspara picked up the hefty paperweight sitting beside her.

Lifting it carefully so it wouldn’t scrape the desk, she slipped her fingers into the concave groove, and beneath it the pressed flower that had been sandwiched between the desk and the paperweight gave a soft rustle.

It was frostbloom herb, received from Gus on the day they had gone out to the flower field together.

Indeed, the fragrance really is remarkably strong.

The thick-petaled frostbloom was not especially well-suited for pressing, but to Aspara, that single bloom held an extraordinarily important meaning.

It was the lucky memento that had launched this entire venture.

She touched the petals gently. Sufficiently dried, they had flattened to the point where they could be set behind glass.

“Heh heh. When Jack comes, I’ll have to ask him to order a frame.”

Gazing at the purple petals made her feel as if her financial fortunes were piling up. The southern bride hummed a little tune as she smoothed the slightly crumbled stem.

Just then, the door to Aspara’s room flew open with a BANG.

“My lady! Oh, right!”

The door creaked slowly shut.

Knock, knock.

“Come in.”

BANG—

The door burst open again, even louder than before.

“My lady!”

“What is it.”

“This was sitting outside your door. Isn’t it dangerous?”

He set a small box on the desk.

“What danger could there possibly be inside the castle walls? Thank you for bringing it.”

“You never know — it could be some cursed object, or something unpleasant.”

“It doesn’t look like that sort of thing.”

Amid stacks of yellowed paper, the ebony box stood out. Its construction was simple, but a coat of lacquer gave it a lustrous shine.

A slender ribbon, oddly delicate against the rough-hewn wood, held the lid in place, and a neatly folded note had been tucked beneath the ribbon’s loop.

“You shouldn’t trust this castle too much, my lady. There are some good ones, sure, but starting with the castle lord himself, they’re a shady lot.”

“If you’re that worried, why don’t you read it for me.”

“Oh, I’m allowed?”

“What does it matter? It’s not as if there’s anyone here who would send me a personal letter. If it’s in the northern tongue, you’d have to read it for me anyway.”

Jack flinched, but hoping the contents were something he could actually read, he gingerly unfolded the note.

Ahem, ahem; he cleared his throat and began reading aloud. Fortunately, it was in the southern tongue.

[To my lady wife.

Do you remember the day we went to see the flowers together?

When I returned to my chambers and removed my cloak,

upon the shoulder where you had leaned, a single eyelash had fallen.

So overjoyed was I that a crescent moon had perched upon my shoulder

that I wrapped it in a tuft of cotton and stole it away.

I wish I could pay sixty-six chests of gold for its worth,

but as I do not possess such a sum, I can only lament —

so please accept this woefully insufficient payment.]

Stitched into the end of the ribbon that bound the letter and box were the words: “The price of a single eyelash.”

When she opened the ebony box, inside lay an ornate hair ornament.

A comb of purple gemstones and gold. Rare for accessories in these parts, it was studded with tiny cubic stones that caught the sunlight and sparkled, a genuine work of fine craftsmanship.

“…! My lady, it’s a love letter. A love letter!”

Jack, that hopeless devotee of penny romances, slapped his mistress’s shoulders in rapid succession and bounced around the room, more excited than she was.

“Oh.”

“You’re surprised too, aren’t you, my lady? Wow, a barbarian pulling something like this off… Oh, wait — was it okay for me to read that? I’ll keep it a secret that I read it! But I have to tell Ugli — I want to receive one too, you see. …my lady, you don’t like it?”

He asked, turning to Aspara, whose expression had turned slightly uncomfortable.

“The ornament looks very fine indeed. I’m grateful, truly — I should send a thank-you.”

“Never mind the ornament — I’m talking about the letter! Shall I read it again?”

“Mm, it’s a little creepy.”

“You have no sense of romance.”

Jack rummaged through Aspara’s desk, helping himself to paper and a quill, and insisted she write a reply at once.

His eyes were sparkling like a boy’s.

“Weren’t you the one who didn’t care for Gus, the castle lord?”

“That’s that, and this is this.”

That afternoon, the letter that Gus had spent weeks planning, engineering it so that no one but his wife would see the full text, was read aloud by Jack over forty times.

And now, Aspara was writing a reply to the first love letter she had ever received in her life.

Because Jack had been pestering her nonstop.

“There… that should do. Have a look.”

“Let me see — no, wait, am I really allowed? Actually, yes, I’m looking! I have no ulterior motives, but since I’ll need to translate it anyway.”

“You’re having fun.”

Aspara showed him the reply she had penned in elegant calligraphy.

[Received with thanks.

— Aspara Bel.]

“Are you writing a product review right now? Put some feeling into it!”

“I put my feelings into it.”

“You need a proper greeting! At least write about the weather!”

Aspara sighed and picked up the pen once more. After several minutes of labored effort, she held out the paper again.

“This time I really am done.”

“Let me see.”

[Hello,

It is cold and dry.

Received with thanks.

— Aspara Bel.]

“It got worse!”

The young knight hopped up and down as though he were the one who had received the letter.

For Jack, who had grown up reading penny romances alongside three older sisters, it was an unforgivably arid letter.

“I did include a greeting AND mentioned the weather! What else is there to say — it’s not as if it’s hot and humid around here!”

“You can write magnificent letters just fine when it’s for high society!”

“Those aren’t letters — they’re closer to official documents. This is what a sincere letter from me looks like.”

Knowing that she meant it, Jack could rage no further and surrendered.

“Then at the very least, let’s include a gift. Nothing expensive — flowers, maybe… Oh, what about this one?”

He pointed at the pressed frostbloom on the desk.

“Absolutely not. That isn’t just a decoration — it’s my good-luck charm.”

“Then let’s go pick fresh ones!”

“What flowers could there possibly be in this snowfield?”

“Ah! Then how about cutting a little of your hair, my lady, and braiding it into a ward-off-evil bracelet? I’ve done it loads of times with my Big Sisses. It’s totally roman—”

“There are sometimes small flowers in the shade. Let’s go look.”

Aspara left the room, thinking her attendant was well and truly, deathly annoying.

Gus had been weighed down by many worries lately.

Books or scholars that might help him learn the southern tongue were suspiciously impossible to come by. A nagging suspicion had begun to stir: someone, somewhere, was sabotaging the effort.

But that was a problem for his advisors to chew on.

The dark-clad castle lord’s worries lay not in political machinations but in winning the affections of the wife living right beside him.

The young lord, with no gift for words, found himself paralyzed by how fragile and unreachable his gentle wife seemed.

Then, one day, Gus happened upon a short penny romance. It was one of the old stories of the north, something he had read as a child without much feeling.