A Clumsy Start

Beside Jack, a rough-handed female attendant followed them in.

“So, Jackie.”

“Yes?”

“Have you happened to see anyone who seems close to the castle lord?”

Jack answered lightly, as though eager to get to breakfast already.

“Well, let’s see… Most everyone’s on friendly terms with him, I’d imagine. He is the man in charge here, after all.”

When the young attendant approached Aspara to help her dress, Jack turned to face the door on the far side of the wardrobe, careful not to glimpse his mistress in any state of undress.

The girl began fastening the outer skirt onto her new mistress. Compared to the retinue back at the castle in her homeland, the number of attendants was laughably small, but the girl’s hands were deft and her fingers drew the collar tight with impressive speed.

“…So he just ran off? On the wedding night? Wow, His Majesty the King of Barbarians sure has royal manners.”

While the northern attendant helped her dress, Aspara and her knight chattered away in the southern tongue about the events of the previous night.

“A secret lover, you say — so what do you plan to do when you find her? Square up with the competition? Leave it to me, I’m good at that sort of thing.”

“Your vulgar vocabulary is sometimes harder to understand than the northern tongue. And what do you mean, ‘competition’? A rival in love is someone you fight over a person you actually care for.”

“Well, that man is your husband, my lady, and if your husband has a lover, then that makes her your rival — what else would she be?”

“Did I come all the way here for a love affair? Given the state of this barbarian kingdom and the weight of my dowry, there’s no risk of him tossing me out openly. On the contrary — if the man does have a paramour, that becomes leverage I can use against him when the time comes. It’s convenient for me. Still, we’ll need at least one heir in name, so it would be wise to make introductions sooner rather than later.”

“No, but even so…”

In what kind of farce do the mistress and the other woman become friends—

The lone knight barely managed to swallow those words.

“The marriage views of you noble folk are terrifyingly strange, I must say.”

“I find your mouth far stranger, you impertinent thing.”

After a simple breakfast, Aspara spent the morning touring the castle, led from room to hall by an elderly man who appeared to be the senior attendant.

At the breakfast table, the castle lord’s seat had been empty. When she pointed at the vacant chair and asked after his whereabouts, the kitchen attendant relayed that the master had suddenly dashed off on a hunting excursion the night before.

Naturally, the two southerners couldn’t understand a word of that.

“Uh, this here’s the office, and… that over there’s where the horses rest.”

“I can see that.”

Jack, who was believed to be the sole interpreter, had no choice but to trail after his mistress all day, providing what could charitably be called interpretation.

“Are you really conveying my words properly? It takes you ten words of flailing and gesturing just to relay one sentence from me.”

“Ah, don’t you know it’s harder to interpret from your mother tongue into a foreign language than the other way around? That’s why I told you back then — we should’ve just cut off the man’s hands, not his head.”

“Hmm…”

It wasn’t only the lord of Fang Castle who had spent a sleepless night.

Jack, a somewhat lacking but loyal knight, had agonized the entire night over whether he should come clean to his mistress before it was too late.

But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. His young mistress had nowhere left to lean on and nowhere to return to. There was no need to remind her, yet again, just how desperate their situation truly was.

Yeah, I just have to hold out until they find a new interpreter in this castle…

Jack was a man whose head was a little slow, but whose heart was terribly soft.

[2.]

Just as Jack hoped, Aspara remained blissfully unaware, studying the documents in the office with eyes full of curiosity.

Fortunately, I can make decent sense of numbers, tables, and maps.

She was no stranger to paper and figures. Back in her homeland, all she had ever done was hole up in the office reading and organizing ledgers, only to get blindsided by some social function she never saw coming.

Because of that experience, parsing the financial records of a northern castle with so few transactions was hardly a challenge for her.

The attendant stood by and let the woman, who had only arrived at the castle the previous evening, handle the financial documents without interference.

Aspara soon understood why. What passed for financial records barely amounted to anything: the past fortnight’s worth of transactions fit on five handspans of paper.

“So this is my dowry.”

Aspara murmured, staring at the figure in the ledger that had obviously ballooned overnight.

But the former princess, examining the records more carefully, noticed something odd.

“Wait — seven cartloads of lime went out, and only one cartload of soybeans came in? Did they get robbed by bandits on the way?”

“Around these parts, it’s Fang Castle that does the robbing, not the other way around. Grain is just that expensive out here. Especially this time of year.”

Even so, it was a staggeringly lopsided trade.

The flustered Aspara briefly entertained the absurd thought that perhaps she should have brought barley and lard as her dowry instead, then quickly shook her head.

“So that’s why the trade volume is this low? Well, I suppose buying two more bushels of beans would bankrupt the whole kingdom.”

“Oh — the castle lord.”

Through the office balcony, the fields behind the castle stretched out below. Riding a horse straight across the center of those fields was unmistakably the castle lord, Gus.

He was deep in conversation on horseback with someone clad in leather. Since the clothing here barely differed between men and women, it was impossible to tell exactly who the other person was.

“Two grown men sharing a single horse around here.”

“The horses are bigger in this region, so maybe that’s why. Hold on—”

Before his mistress could ask him to question the elderly head attendant in the northern tongue, Jack quickly rose on his tiptoes to peer out the window.

“Ah, that one. Probably a fellow called Ugli. I saw him at the servants’ quarters in the castle last night. I was wondering where he disappeared to in the middle of the night — looks like he went out to attend the hunt.”

“The bedroom was freezing, so I was up all night,” he added.

“Hmm…”

Aspara thought for a moment.

“Jack, I need you to look into something for me.”

“Huh?”

Aspara cut the castle tour short and spent the rest of the afternoon sipping leaf tea.

She borrowed hot water from the kitchen, unwrapped a cloth bundle, and brewed a deep crimson tea in a porcelain cup she had carefully carried all the way from home.

The attendant clinked the silverware as she tidied the table. They couldn’t exchange words, but the girl’s work was quite tidy.

It was the same girl who had helped her dress that morning. Aspara poured a cup of tea for the young attendant as well.

“—… — — —? — —.”

She had no way of knowing what the girl was saying, but from the look on her face, it didn’t seem to be to her taste.

“It might be a bit astringent if it’s your first time.”

“— — — —.”

“I know. It’s my first time brewing it myself, so the flavor’s lacking. Next time, you give it a try.”

Neither understanding the other, the two simply chattered away as though talking to themselves.

Before long, Aspara wondered what on earth she was doing and let out a sigh.

The wind was cold.

The bride from the south focused on the taste of her tea and quietly began reflecting on the morning’s tour.

As I thought… those trade records really bother me. No wonder the castle’s in such a sorry state when they trade like that.

The tea she sipped for the second time had already gone slightly lukewarm.

But perhaps there’s nothing they can do about it. To get fair prices, they’d need to haul goods all the way down south to an ice-free port, and driving a carriage across the snowfields just doesn’t add up. It’s not as though they have the capital or infrastructure for large-scale, sustained trade, either. Even our country, being an island nation, was quite a distance from the central continent — but nothing like this.

Aspara thought of the unpaved snow roads she had spent day after grueling day traversing not long ago.

That’s because we had a waypoint harbor. Our homeland’s specialties — handicrafts and spices — had both rarity and high value-to-volume, which gave merchants a reason to come to us directly… But why would anyone from the central kingdoms bother coming all the way up here, when the only specialties are hides and fish?

“Even if merchants did come, this barbarian kingdom doesn’t even have the structure to accommodate a proper market…”

The attendant cocked her head briefly at the voice that had slipped out of Aspara unbidden.

What does he plan to do with my dowry, I wonder.

Just as she found herself worrying about the fortunes of an unfamiliar kingdom, a familiar patter of footsteps announced Jack’s arrival.

“My lady… my lady, I’m back.”

“Oh, welcome back, dear. How did it go — did you find out anything?”

“Yes — well, no — maybe… Uh, is it all right to talk here?”

“What does it matter? Who else here speaks the southern tongue besides you and me?”

The maid stared with wide, curious eyes at the two distinguished guests who had begun conversing in an unfamiliar language.

“So, what happened with this Ugli fellow?”

“It’s a bit of a long story, if I may…”

“Keep it short.”

“I started going out with him.”

“I’m sorry. Make it long.”

Here is what happened.

Jack, who could barely speak a lick of the northern tongue, did his stumbling best to strike up a conversation with the foreign attendant.

[You… Gus… um…]

[— —? Gus —?]

[Um… you… love… him?]

[—?]

[You! Love him?]

[—? — — —!]

Ugli burst out laughing, a great, booming laugh, and replied with a few words in the northern tongue that Jack couldn’t parse.

The sentence was made even harder to catch by the force of his laughter.

[No, you… you… Gus…! Um… like kissing and stuff! Are you two like that? Like this, like this. You know — smooch, smooch…]

At that moment, Ugli planted a kiss right on Jack’s outstretched, puckered lips.

[— —. — — — — —.]

Gah! What the—!

Ugli smiled.