A Dispatch.

If Aspara went back like this and ended up bound in the south, the odds were high that Jack would be there at her side.

And if that happened,

“Jack won’t be able to come back…”

Ugli flopped onto the bed and stole a glance, as if at someone who wasn’t even there.

“No, I shouldn’t be worrying about that kid before the country… no, but come on…!”

So much for me being in any position to lecture the castle lord. Here I am, in a situation like this, putting one person’s love life ahead of the country.

Aaaargh — his head muddled by the first real confusion he had ever tasted in his life, he buried his face in the pillow and stifled a yell.

“This is infuriating…”

Unable to master his own temper, he flopped onto his back and sprawled spread-eagle, thinking darkly,

“Jack… what’s going to happen to him…”

Knock, knock —

Just then, someone rapped at Ugli’s door.

“Who is it!”

“It’s me.”

“Jack?”

The man outside took that as a signal and flung the door open. Standing in the hallway was indeed Jack.

“What, were you shouting or something? I heard a weird noise.”

“Aah, sorry… was it loud?”

“You’re low on iron. Eat a cherry.”

There’s no iron in cherries, though…

Ugli thought to himself, but since the fruit had been shoved straight into his mouth, finger and all, he didn’t get the chance to refute it.

Only after he had chewed and swallowed the pulp did he manage to open his mouth.

“What’s up — did you come because you’re worried too?”

“Hm? Worried about what?”

“No… never mind. So, what is it?”

“Um… about what was in the messenger bird’s letter. You heard, right? That my lady can only bring two attendants at most. Just to be safe, we ought to bring along the full count.”

“Right.”

Ugli thought,

So Jack really is going, then. Maybe he came because he’s worried about being apart from me too. Maybe he’s come to talk about the two of us running away together.

“…And so?”

“About that… I’m going to be going along with my lady.”

“I see…”

“And you’re going to come along too.”

“I see— huh?”

Jack explained the story he had heard from his mistress.

“Um, there’s a lot to get through… first of all… what was it again — ah. My lady says, me and my lady, the two of us, are basically locked in to go.”

“…You already told me that part.”

“But the thing is, the two of us are likely to be kept together as a matched set. So the idea is, we slot in one northerner and go as three — that way that person has a good chance of heading back separately, so it won’t be like we’re totally cut off.”

“…What?”

“And there’s something else my lady said, you see…”

“Jack.”

“Yeah?”

Ugli stared long into his lover’s eyes and said,

“The plan is to send only me back? While you and the castle lord’s wife get left behind in the south?”

“Yep, that’s the plan.”

The southern knight smiled sheepishly, with puppy-dog eyes.

Ugli thought.

Did this airheaded idiot really not understand what that means?

He wants me, alone, to head back north?

Leaving Jack behind? Me, by myself?

Already any thought of Aspara’s return had vanished from his head. He hadn’t dreamed that this dimwit of a lover would speak so casually of a parting.

No, wait a moment.

For an instant, a single notion flashed across Ugli’s mind.

Jack, Jack. My stupid, lovable lover who can’t read a situation.

‘This might actually be a chance, no?’

Ugli began to turn the wheels in his head.

Aspara got dragged into some strange scandal with Jack and ended up divorcing her ex-husband. This Flower character probably isn’t going to welcome Jack. Or at the very least, there’s no reason he’d take that piece of baggage into his own house as a hanger-on alongside Aspara.

In that case — what if I go along and negotiate separately with Flower?

Hand Aspara over to Flower, tuck Jack under my arm, and I might just land an agreement that gets us back north.

Turn Aspara over straight away, get that wretched purple cloth back, and in exchange, negotiate for Jack to be returned safely.

So long as the plan goes as laid out, everything will fall right into place.

The north becomes safe,

the foreign bride I don’t much care for gets returned,

and Jack comes back north with me.

The only one left who can speak the language would be me… no, there’s that half-blood youth too. Still, that’ll do well enough.

‘This… this is actually a pretty good turn of events, isn’t it?’

“What have you been doing this whole time?”

Without a single thought in his head, Jack pushed one more cherry between his lover’s lips.

Things moved along far faster than anyone had expected.

Gus stood there, staring blankly at the carriage as it left the castle. Or rather than watching the carriage itself, it looked more like he was staring at the empty space between the castle and the carriage.

“Castle lord…”

“I’m all right.”

Star said it in a worried voice. The little attendant felt partly responsible for the whole chain of events, which was why she had stayed at the capital’s entrance with the castle lord until the very end, gazing at the horizon.

“It’s cold. Go inside.”

“Castle lord, are you really all right?”

He gave no answer at all, merely stood still for a while.

“So.”

“Yes.”

“You were aware that Jack could not speak the northern tongue — is what you’re saying.”

“That I was.”

Inside the rattling carriage. Two attendants and their lady rode along together on the southbound wheels.

“Then the fact that I can speak the southern tongue—”

“I found that out around the same time. If I hadn’t, how would Jack manage to play with you every day?”

Aspara said it nonchalantly, gazing out the window at the passing scenery.

“When did you first learn that Jack cannot speak the northern tongue?”

“It hasn’t been all that long.”

“From the start?”

“I said it hasn’t been long, didn’t I.”

“Be honest with me. When a fellow who can’t even do two-digit addition claimed he could speak a foreign language, you never once had the slightest suspicion?”

“I’ll have you know he can manage addition at that level.”

“What’s twenty-five plus thirty-six?”

Ugli had shut Jack’s mouth in an instant.

“And the original interpreter — you deliberately let him die?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Then what exactly did this fellow here — dragged into the snowfield and trapped here because of you — ever do wrong?”

Aspara looked over at the knight beside her, who was folding and unfolding his fingers. Whether he had failed to grasp the weight of the confession she had just let fall, or had grasped it and forgiven her, his face wore its usual guileless expression.

“For that, I am sorry.”

“Thirty-four… thirty-five… thirty… huh? No, I’ve been having a good time ever since I came here, so you really don’t have to apologize for anything… ah, I lost count. Now I have to start over.”

“Jack…”

“Ugli, my lady really doesn’t have anything to apologize to me for. Without her, you and I never would have met. That’s all right with you too, isn’t it?”

He went back to folding his fingers twenty-five times and then thirty-six. Aspara turned her words to Jack again.

“…You know, when a tree falls in a forest with no one to hear it, what sound does it make?”

“Huh?”

“It makes no sound at all.”

“Right.”

“That’s how it is.”

“Huh?”

Jack’s eyes went wide and he glanced left and right, as if to say what on earth are you talking about?

Ugli understood exactly what the woman meant.

That isn’t being said to Jack — that’s being said to me.

A place where she couldn’t speak to anyone, and could understand no one’s words. So she had been overlooking all these foolish goings-on in order to live there like a corpse; no, in order to die there.

“Language, in the end, is nothing more than the trembling of air. How foolish it is, then, to be wounded by it and to wound others with it. I learned that very well back home. Truly foolish.”

She’s a far more pitiful woman than I had thought.

“Human tragedy began the moment people started attaching pointless meaning to mere tremblings of air. So if one could just give up that foolish habit, how wonderful that would be. Then even the filthiest slander in the world would have no power beyond tickling your ear for a moment.”

“Ah, yes. May I go back to my addition, please?”

Ugli understood the woman’s words. But that was all; he neither pitied her nor was persuaded by them.

“You speak all very grandly, but in the end, you’ve just run and run until you wound up here.”

“So I have.”

“Do you know the saying — ‘there is no paradise in the place you run to’?”

“Do you think the people who run are looking for a paradise? They run because they just want to live.”

“No—!”

Ugli flared up, unable to rein in his temper, then flopped back down in his seat. For the life of him, he could not follow the logic of the woman sitting across from him.

“Lady Aspara, I do not mean this as an insult, but…”

“Mm.”

“Please go get some mental counseling.”

“Why — do I look like a madwoman to you?”

“…Counseling is not only for mad people.”

“You’re not going to tell me I’m not mad, I notice.”

Heh heh, laughing softly, she turned her gaze once more to the window. The carriage was passing through the black mountains.

Clatter, clatter —

The frost laid across the road seemed to be thinning, and the rattling gradually eased. Beside the faintly swaying scenery of the snowfield, Ugli thought,

This settles it. This woman is without hope.

She was a woman Jack revered. If even a sliver of hope had remained, he had been willing to offer his help. But that had been arrogance. It isn’t a question of whether I save her or don’t. This woman has no will to save herself.