Seeing Her Off.

Seeing her off.

[17.]

Inside the half-empty old carriage house.

Ugli tugged at a pulley to draw the carriage-house door shut. Watching the hurried wheel-tracks the departing carriage had left in the snow, he thought back over the conversation he’d just had with the southern young lady before she left.

“Took you ever so long to get here, and now you’re gone in no time at all! How terribly sad.”

“Brought it on yourself, I’d say.”

“Oh, please — do pass my regards along to Lady Aspara.”

The woman had clasped both his hands tightly as she spoke.

“I’d been waiting to tell her a little more carefully… Listen — it seems Lord Flower keeps trying to reach out to Lady Aspara, over and over.”

“Your husband? So — you want him stopped?”

“Hm? Why on earth would you stop it? My bosom friend and my husband, getting along.”

‘Is she serious, this woman…’

“But somehow… it feels a bit too aggressive.”

“Aggressive?”

“I overheard it by accident, but…”

He glanced quickly over his shoulder, as if to check that his attendants weren’t listening, then dropped his voice.

“From the sound of it, he seems to be preparing to move the private troops to bring her in, if it comes to that.”

“…What?”

“I suppose he must be awfully worried about Lady Aspara. He’s such a warm-hearted soul, after all…”

Sebinya smiled a soft, rueful smile, as if to say, ‘What can you do with a man like that.’

In her own mind, she believed she had been the one who exiled Aspara north — no, who arranged a marriage for her with a northerner. But in practical terms, it was self-evident that the one who had orchestrated the whole thing was her husband, Aspara’s ex-husband, Flower.

And now he was trying to take Aspara back? How long had it even been since he’d chased her out with his own two hands?

“Say more about it.”

“More? Hmm… ah, please tell Lady Aspara to go for a proper walk whenever there’s even a bit of sunshine out. They say sunlight is so very good for someone low on energy. Fresh fruit and vegetables are good too, so I’m leaving a whole stock of them — see that she’s fed them at every meal. And tell her to get on well with Jack, and… ah, and to exercise regularly as well. Horseback riding especially! She looked so splendid on a horse, truly…”

“No, not that sort of thing… never mind. I’ll look into it myself.”

It appeared this woman, who carried a flower garden atop her neck, knew nothing further, so Ugli gave up on pressing her.

“Now, off with you. Quickly.”

“Do pass it all on, all right? Figs are supposed to be wonderful for depression.”

And so Sebinya was bundled into her carriage, unable to resist her attendants’ urging. Her expression, right up until the end, was one of sincere regret.

《So she sincerely believed this marriage was a good thing for Aspara when she sent her here, that woman….》

Ugli let out a heavy sigh. She isn’t a bad person. She isn’t a bad person, but….

There were, in this world, cases more infuriating for having no malice behind them. Ugli found it truly, deeply distasteful that the woman, pure-white as she was, shared his blood.

The carriage house looked a little wider than usual now, with one large carriage gone. Just then, from outside, came a crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch. The sound of someone unaccustomed to snowfields stepping on snow.

“Why’d that carriage leave just now?! It went tearing off so fast…!”

A familiar figure soon poked its head in. Jack. He must have bolted out in quite a hurry; snowflakes clung to his shoulders, which weren’t even covered by a coat.

“Ah, thank goodness, you’re here! How’d it go? Did my lady win?”

“Win?”

“Seb… Sabu… her — I mean, that lady’s carriage left in such a tearing rush. Don’t tell me Lady Aspara grabbed her by the hair?”

“Doubt it.”

Ugli spoke with flat disinterest, shrugging off his coat. “Probably stepped over a line thinking the castle lord would take it quietly, and got herself booted out,” he added.

“Thank goodness. As soon as my lady went to see her, the carriage tore away past the window and it gave me quite a start.”

“They didn’t seem on bad enough terms to come to blows.”

“True, but… whenever my lady sits still and then makes up her mind about something, something dangerous always ends up happening.”

“And what did she make up her mind about this time, then.”

“Uh… you heard that promise, didn’t you? At the last holiday.”

Jack launched into a scattered account of the morning’s many events.

The Sehhhhhbinya young lady’s rambling argument that ‘love is an act of will,’ a strange button being pushed on my lady once again, the absolutely delicious snacks, the story of the two of them slipping out to chat about romance novels, a wildly entertaining novel Jack had recommended, and, this time, Aspara’s resolution that she would be the one to provide a splendid date.

“A date, huh.”

“The castle lord really put in an effort last time, didn’t he. Seeing that, I think it stirred up her will to try a bit herself.”

“You’ve got the button done up wrong. Let me.”

“Yeah. Ah, so my lady went straight off to see the castle lord, then? I didn’t tag along — Suphhbinya‘s face is a bit much to look in the eye — but had I known she was leaving, I should’ve gone with her. I’m a bit worried.”

“Don’t worry. Volmo’ll be there too.”

“No, I mean I’m worried about your castle lord.”

Jack folded back the extra cuff of his sleeve, tidying it, and sighed.

“Every single time my lady tries really hard at social life, something always goes a bit—”

‘Something always goes a bit wrong, whenever I try really hard at social life.’

Aspara lay alone on the empty bed, thinking. She had been waiting to talk with Gus once he was properly awake, but by the time she came back to her senses she’d been left lying there all by herself on top of the bed.

‘Still, I suppose — social life is something you learn by running into things, isn’t it.’

If one runs into something too hard and dies, then so be it, she thought, and fiddled with the grubby scrap of rag by her pillow. It was the rag with the extremely abstract rabbit drawing on it.

“Hmm.”

Aspara scraped a bit of soot off the surface with the nail of her little finger, got it onto her fingertip, and began scribbling something in the corner of the rag.

“Good.”

She looked down at the clumsily completed little scrawl, satisfied.

‘With this…’

Just then.

Thump, thump, thump — something set the corridor ringing loudly. Very fast, very heavy footsteps. But not the sound of running. More likely the sound one would make striding urgently down a stone-flagged corridor at an alarm pace. The footsteps drew steadily closer, and came to an abrupt halt outside Aspara’s door.

《Ahem, ah-hem—!》

She half-expected the door to be thrown open, but the air remained perfectly still. Only a few stiff, strained clearings of the throat could be heard. Did I mishear something just now?, and just as she was beginning to wonder, at last the doorknob began to turn slowly. At a sluggish pace, as if someone were trying to smother the creak of the hinges.

Without meaning to, Aspara held her breath and closed her eyes. Like a child who pretends to be asleep whenever its parents come in at night. Beyond her shut eyelids, a heavy bulk was dragging its feet, swish, swish, drawing closer.

‘The smell of a freshly washed dog….’

It’s the castle lord. Aspara realized it with her eyes still shut.

Swish, swish — the great beast, coming closer, slowly leaned its body down against the bed. And then it set about struggling, unh, ugh, to wedge something log-like between Aspara’s head and the bedding.

He seemed to be trying to get his arm beneath her head and reproduce the arm-pillow posture from earlier.

‘You can’t just shove a thing that thick underneath by force, be reasonable….’

《— ——…!》

The strained grunting of someone who dared not apply real strength came drifting over. By now one might even reasonably suspect the other party of not actually being asleep, but he seemed intensely focused.

The castle lord pressed down firmly on the surface of the bed to make a gap between Aspara’s occiput and the bedding. The straw-stuffed furniture dipped easily, deeply; in fact it dipped a little too deeply, and the sunken bed—

“Uwah.”

Riding the slope of the sunken mattress, Aspara’s body rolled a half-turn.

《Ah…!》

Startled by the sensation of rolling, Aspara opened her eyes and met Gus’s gaze head-on. He must have applied such force that she tumbled, roll roll, right into his arms.

“…”

《Er…》

“…Good morning. Though it’s afternoon.”

The flush of their pressed-together upper bodies was awkward, so Aspara offered a pointless greeting.

《―… Madam, ―….》

“Ah, I know this. That… it looks like the book Volmo was reading.”

Aspara, for her part, marveled at it with a head that had gone rather cold instead.

Skin had touched, eyes had met. The room being a disaster zone on top of it all felt somehow like the grown-up nights you read about in novels — a touch vulgar. Surely there was a rule that, just before a pair of vulgar lovers made love, they had to topple the nearby furniture with a great crash and tumble onto the bed.

—Of course, now was still not the time to be doing such things.

《―, Madam.》

“I know. After three meetings, you said.”

Aspara said, shifting her body a little away.

“In fact, that’s exactly why I came looking for you. Here — this. Do you recognize it? Thi—s.”

Aspara held up the scribble-covered rag she had just set beside her pillow.

“Can you make it out? I drew it while waiting for you.”

It was the rag Gus had brought over. In one corner, a crude little scrawl had been drawn small enough not to intrude on the rabbit drawing.

The castle lord, as if he didn’t want to see the rabbit, pointedly looked away. Aspara, displeased at the castle lord’s lack of attention, gave a small huff of irritation and tapped the drawing, tap tap.

“This. Do you see? Numbers, I’m told, are a language common to both north and south.”

《Three.》

“Yes, a 3. Three times — you remember, don’t you? Three meetings. You promised.”