Return.

Gus had always worn a fearsome countenance, but within that fearsomeness there were gradations: a happy kind and a sorrowful kind.

Today’s was neither happy nor bad, just a manageable sort of fearsomeness. Worth a try, the castle lord’s longtime friend judged.

The judgment was correct. Gus had been thinking about the banquet.

The moment he had danced with his wife in the hall had felt like a dream. In that instant alone, he had entertained the illusion that perhaps, just perhaps, everything might work out from here.

But one corner of his heart sat heavy, filled to the brim with a single sentence.

The last thing Flower had said to him as he fell.

‘— — —.’

After the duel had ended, he had asked the estate’s interpreter. What on earth that had meant.

The answer was not what he had expected.

[As if you have any reason to love her.]

A reason to love. The words clung to Gus’s mind like a specter and would not leave.

Do I have a reason to love Aspara?

If he answered with common sense, the answer was no.

Like castaways adrift on a sea of silence, the two of them could read neither each other’s thoughts nor each other’s desires. Could true love take root between two people who could not even exchange a simple conversation?

And yet, every time he called Aspara’s face to mind, his heart defied logic and fluttered with a maddening tickle.

…Is it her face… that I like?

Gus shook his head vigorously.

No — he refused to believe he harbored such a frivolous feeling toward her. She was a beautiful woman, certainly. Her face was very much to his taste, certainly.

But surely an emotion this rapturous could not be something so trivial. This feeling deserves a nobler, more wondrous name, Gus thought.

He agonized with a low groan, not even noticing that the arrow shaft he was whittling had been shaved too thin to be of any use.

“That man, off brooding over nothing again…”

Arms folded, standing a few paces behind, Ugli watched his younger superior. He had sunk into one of his needlessly profound reveries again.

Behind all that muscle and scar tissue, people often forgot: he was just a young man, not far past the threshold of adulthood.

No one besides Ugli remembered that. No, even Gus himself had forgotten.

I still need to make that report, though…

“Master Ugli, what are you doing? Slacking off?”

Just then, a clear, ringing voice called out from the path.

It was Star, the maid.

“I saw the storehouse keepers looking for you earlier — quit goofing around and get to work! You say ‘banquet support’ like it means something, but everyone knows you basically went there to play.”

Gus turned toward the loud voice.

“Ugli.”

“Good morning, my lord. And to you as well, Miss Star.”

Gus pushed aside the over-whittled shaft, pulled out a fresh branch, and squinted along its length to gauge whether it was straight.

His eyes fixed on the wood and knife, he asked:

“Come to think of it, I hardly saw your face the entire banquet.”

“Ah, I suppose I must be getting old. Turns out I preferred a quiet, intimate evening to a noisy party.”

“That’s unlike you.”

Star, who had been nagging Ugli to get to work, had forgotten her own errand entirely. She pattered over to the two of them and launched into chatter.

“How was the banquet? You have to tell me about it later — I wanted to go too!”

“Not bad.”

“And have you and My Lady made up?”

Gus flinched and clamped his mouth shut. Shk, shk, shk — only the sound and smell of the knife shaving wood filled the air.

After a pause, he answered.

“…She said she had fun.”

“That’s not what I mean! Honestly — the reason she was upset wasn’t about the banquet in the first place!”

The castle lord went on silently whittling, but his ears were trained entirely on the young maid.

The carving knife had slowed to a conspicuous crawl.

“The reason My Lady was angry, you see, wasn’t because she didn’t want to go to the banquet — it’s because you went and made plans without asking her! ‘The banquet was fun, you’ve cheered up, so you’re not mad anymore, right? Great, fight’s over~’ — you’re not about to say the same thing my father said right before he got divorced at thirty, are you?”

Crack — the carving knife, angled wrong, jammed into the shaft and snapped it in two.

With an expression of perfect composure, Gus answered solemnly:

“No… I did not… I did not assume it was over. There was also… for the first time there, something that connected us…”

“How so?”

“…We danced… together, the two of us.”

He answered in a voice tinged with either shyness or restraint.

A smile crept faintly to the corner of his lips, one that even Ugli had never seen before.

“For the first time—”

“And then?”

“…For the first time, that close, we connected—”

“Uh-huh?”

“Well…”

Star was the youngest worker in the entire castle. Because of that, she was also the only attendant who did not remember the era when her lord came home caked in blood every other day.

At the same time, she was the daughter of the officer Gus had served under when he was still a common soldier, which meant that even Gus, without quite realizing it, lost some of his authority in front of the girl.

“This isn’t some thirty-year-old penny romance where the man kisses the woman to shut her up when she’s angry.”

“Um, Miss Star, in front of His Lordship, perhaps you could be a bit more…”

“No — I’m saying this as My Lady’s number-one attendant— oh, right. I was on my way to run an errand for My Lady!”

Leaving behind the castle lord, whose eyes had gone strangely dim, Star picked up the bundle she had set down and finally headed off on her original path.

“Hey, Star — I’ll deliver the item, so could you pass along a message to His Lordship for me instead?”

“No thanks. I like running errands for My Lady.”

Star gave a sharp, prim toss of her head.

“And by the way — I found out who the traitor was. The one who told His Lordship about the kitchen dog hole?”

“Wait, I was a victim in that too…”

Watching the girl trot off and disappear, Ugli could only manage a rueful smile.

When he turned back, Gus’s mood had sunk considerably, and so the storehouse tragedy would have to wait a little longer to be reported.

Knock, knock. Star rapped on the bedroom door.

“I’ve brought the item you requested!”

“Come in.”

A private chamber unnecessarily large, having originally been intended for a married couple. At the desk by the window, Aspara was gazing at a flower.

The pressed frostbloom herb she had kept flattened beneath a book. The thing she regarded as her good-luck charm.

“I’ve brought the frame.”

Star set down the pressed-flower frame Aspara had requested. It was not ornate, but the woodwork was sturdy and well-joined; a quality piece.

Perhaps because she had failed to secure any new business connections at the recent banquet, Aspara had grown even more attached to the pressed flower than usual.

“Oh?”

She had been holding the bone-dry flower up to the ceiling lamp to examine it when something caught her eye.

“This— — —.”

“Hm?”

As befitting a flower of the snowfields, the stem was coarse and thick. As it had dried, a tough strand hidden inside had worked its way out, thinner than pig bristle, thicker than horsehair.

“Ah, that. Frostbloom herb has really thick, tough vascular fibers. Hunters snap off the stems after a meal and use them as floss.”

Star mimed flossing her teeth as she explained. Flo-o-o-ss — drawing the word out, as though speaking slowly would help get her meaning across.

The stem fibers were indeed tough. In the end it was still a plant, so a hard tug eventually snapped them, but the resistance was enough to explain why even this impoverished country did not use them for food.

“Hmm, — really ——.”

“Aren’t you going to put that in the frame?”

Before anyone noticed, the outer bark of the stem had crumbled away and scattered, and Aspara was staring intently at the dried flower.

After a moment’s deliberation, she spoke.

“Star, — Jack — — — here.”

“You want me to fetch My Lady’s knight? Understood.”

Star promptly located Jack, who had been slacking off nearby, and brought him back. To him, standing stiffly before the desk, Aspara said:

“Your father was a textile maker, wasn’t he.”

“What? No, I’m, uh, from a distinguished line of knights.”

“What was your family name again?”

“…He does work a bit with leather, too.”

Aspara carefully extended several long, brownish cord-like strands.

They were tough fibers extracted from the dried pith of the flower.

“Have a look at these.”

Jack lifted them gently, taking care not to let them crumble, and examined them.

“Hmm.”

“What do you think?”

“What are these, hemp? No, they’re too straight for that. Not glossy enough for silk, either.”

“Does it look like textile material to you?”

Jack turned the stiffened fibers this way and that, flicked them, and even touched his tongue to them.

“What can you learn by licking them?”

“Nothing…”

Even under his careful handling, the dried pith crumbled a little.

“They can’t be used for textiles. To turn thread into cloth, you have to put it on a loom and go clatter, clatter — and if it can’t withstand that, it’s no good. They’d need to be tougher… I suppose you could maybe make tassels with them, though.”

“I thought as much.”

Aspara wore a look of disappointment. So lightning doesn’t strike twice after all, she thought.

Star, who had fetched Jack, watched the whole affair from the sidelines.