Beginning

Aspara picked up a wooden spoon.

The bread, unusually poor in texture for something made with white flour, wasn’t inedible once she soaked it in the steaming porridge.

Having finished the meal in silence, Aspara was guided to her new private room, led by Jack’s frantic gesturing and pantomiming.

Once inside the room with its blazing hearth, she changed clothes, and at last her body began to properly thaw.

“Come to think of it, those barbarians didn’t even change before eating.”

“Isn’t that normal? Honestly, I was the one surprised — watching you change clothes before every meal since I started attending you, my lady.”

“So you don’t change?”

“It wears out the fabric!”

Jack grumbled.

He had never been a knight who served nobility up close. He’d been nothing more than a common foot soldier, so he was inherently lacking in manners.

Fortunately, Aspara wasn’t one for strict decorum and didn’t particularly take issue with it. Not that she could have done much about it even if she had complaints.

That said, Jack wasn’t the type to disrespect his young mistress just because he saw her situation as vulnerable. He was simply a man who was inherently lacking in manners.

“Does the castle lord have any family to introduce me to? I heard both his parents are dead, at least.”

“Probably not. This isn’t farming country, so they don’t have many children.”

“Hmm…”

The new bride worked her mind furiously.

Mmm, what to do.

Aspara’s concern lay in securing her safety.

First, safety from that barbarian husband of hers.

Second, safety from whatever trouble her family back home might stir up again.

Her second brother had gone so far as to plant a spy, which meant he was probably guarding against the scenario where she sharpened her knives here, seized power, and marched back home.

But there wasn’t a single ember of vengeance in Aspara’s heart.

If anything, she was glad to have come to a land of fishermen and hunters who had no time for political scheming; her siblings back home had nothing to worry about.

I just wish I could show them that I plan to live here quietly, nothing more.

The northern sun set early.

In the room that had quickly fallen dark, Aspara lay on the bed with her arms crossed, thinking.

“…Don’t tell me I’m sleeping alone?”

Her escort knight Jack had been led to another room by the local servants, and in the dim room, the new bride was all by herself.

Aspara furrowed her brow, wondering if the dark-clad castle lord, whose expression had been stiff all day, intended to leave her alone on their wedding night. In truth, however, this was Gus’s clumsy attempt at consideration.

Originally, Gus had been looking forward to this night with great anticipation.

To put his bride from the warm south at ease and spend a sweet first night together, he had procured red flowers, a rarity in the north, and decorated the room, hunted migratory birds in droves and stuffed their feathers into the bedding until it was plush and soft. The night before his bride was due to arrive, he had hugged his pounding heart and failed to fall asleep.

But the moment he saw the tiny bride trembling inside the carriage, he thought:

This isn’t right.

He might be called the King of Barbarians by the southerners, but he was also an unmarried young man who held the northern tradition of courtship before marriage as simple common sense.

Forcing himself on a woman who was scared stiff and shivering in a foreign land was something even his conscience, stained black with the blood of his enemies, could not permit.

If she could hear my thoughts… she might call me despicable — a beast who forced a marriage contract, and nothing more…

Gus felt the familiar ache spread through his chest once more.

But I am still human. For now, at least.

Gus gave up the largest room, the one that was supposed to be the couple’s bedchamber, to Aspara, and resolved to spend the night in a guest room on the same floor.

Whether she knew this or not, Aspara, who had been lying in bed like a corpse, sprang upright the moment the sun set and the night insects began to sing.

She glared at the innocent bedroom door, still silently closed.

A moment later, the large door creaked open with a drawn-out squeak.

Aspara had left her room. Wearing a robe thrown over her nightgown, she walked down the corridor, not a single attendant in sight, and thought that this place felt less like a castle and more like an oversized inn.

No guard or anyone else was posted outside her bedchamber, so there was no one to either escort or stop her midnight stroll.

With feet chilled from the cool corridor, Aspara stopped in front of the largest door on the floor and knocked on the handle twice.

“— —?”

A low voice came from inside.

Aspara had picked up a handful of the most basic northern words, so she had a rough grasp of simple structures like “who,” “what,” and “where.”

That one definitely meant “who.” He’s asking who I am, the stranger in the dark castle thought.

“Aspara Bel.”

From inside came a tremendous CRASH, followed quickly by silence.

After a few seconds of quiet, the door opened.

“— —? — —? — — —…”

Gus faced his new bride with a look of bewilderment.

His shoulders were unusually high even by northern standards, so Aspara, whose line of sight was considerably lower, didn’t notice, but Gus had his cloak on inside out.

“Is it customary here to leave a bride alone on her wedding night?”

“— — —? —?”

Gus stared in stunned silence at Aspara, who had perched herself on the edge of the bed and was patting the spot beside her.

“What are you standing there for? Were you never taught what a wife is for?”

“— —? —…”

What is he doing? Aspara narrowed her eyes and glowered at her younger husband.

It was a political marriage, after all. At this point, there was only one thing left to do.

No matter how poor the communication, surely he understands at least this much. The act of mating and its signals are things even a stray dog on the wilderness plains knows by instinct, without ever being taught by its parents.

Frustrated, Aspara pulled off her robe and slip in one motion.

“- - - - –– —!! ––… — — ––!! ——!!”

SLAM!

Aspara was taken aback.

Her new husband had left her sitting on the bed and bolted out of the room.

“Hmm, hmm.”

The bride who had been rejected on her very first night nodded to herself, her expression remarkably unscathed.

“So he does have another woman, just as I thought.”

Arms folded, Aspara tilted her head this way and that, taking her time to think it through.

“Or perhaps he’s into men.”

Aspara deliberated for a short while, but since her bare shoulders were cold above all else, she picked up the blanket, wrapped it around herself, and fell asleep facedown on her husband’s bed.

Aspara was left alone in a bedchamber once again. This time, in an even darker one.

Anyone watching would think I’m the tragic heroine of some melodrama.

She stretched out her shoulders, stiff from the long carriage journey.

Though if we’re being precise, the real tragic hero is probably that man — the one who was sailing along just fine until an older wife who doesn’t even speak his language suddenly dropped into his life…

The princess briefly imagined the hulking, dark figure of that man striking a tragic-hero pose under a spotlight, shedding glistening tears.

It was so absurdly ill-fitting that she laughed.

Well, I suppose the shock can’t be helped.

Throughout that first night in the north, where the cold had driven even the drowsiness away, Aspara organized her strategy for the days ahead. In the process, her hypothesis that her betrothed had a hidden lover only grew stronger.

If only we could communicate, I’d just tell him to come out and say it. A concubine bold enough to defy a king over sharing him with an outsider from a political marriage and bearing an heir or two — does such a woman even exist?

That was how it looked from Aspara’s frame of reference.

Marriage meant producing heirs. For someone raised in a noble culture where that was simple common sense, the first hypothesis she arrived at wasn’t terribly creative.

The question is who she is…

It was too late to slink back to her own room without looking pitiful, so that night Aspara lay in her husband’s bed, mulling it over, until she fell asleep alone.

The nights in the north were long, but the morning sun came eventually.

Aspara woke, stretched, and for the first time in a very long while, tidied her own hair and smoothed out her clothes by herself.

By the time she had barely managed to get her hair in order, someone spoke from beyond the heavy door.

“—, — — —.”

A low, flat language. So this is what it feels like — to a crow, even human speech must sound no different from the cries of wild birds. She was struck anew by the reality that she was in a foreign room, in a foreign country.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re saying. Fetch Jack for me. Or better yet, how about hiring a servant who speaks the southern tongue?”

The door rattled and swung open with a bang.

Standing in the corridor was a curly-haired attendant with a startled expression, clutching a bundle of papers.

She remembered seeing him briefly yesterday. He had been one of the young ones among the welcoming party.

“More importantly, I’d like to change clothes. There’s a large bag in my room. Please have some female servants bring it here.”

Aspara gestured calmly at her skirt and hair as she spoke, slowly and deliberately, as if speaking slowly enough would somehow make a foreign servant understand her words.

Whether he understood or not was unclear, but the young man gave a quick bow before retreating down the corridor with polite backward steps.

He has manners, for a barbarian, Aspara thought, but the moment the door closed, the thundering sound of footsteps sprinting down the corridor echoed through.

A few minutes later, another sound came from beyond the door.

This time, a knock-knock: the southern way of announcing a visit. It was Jack.

“Come in.”

“Let’s go eat, my lady. They say they’re going to give us a tour of the castle today. Probably.”

Whether the message had been successfully conveyed was anyone’s guess, but in his hands were a honey-colored set of clothes and gloves, retrieved from Aspara’s luggage.