Not Bad

When he pried the hands open, something small and soft was sitting inside.

“What is this? A chunk of resin?”

“— —.”

The northern attendant said something as he popped the chunk of resin right into Jack’s mouth.

“Ow, your fingernail hit my tooth.”

Jack scrunched up his face to scold him, but then felt an unfamiliar sensation spreading across his tongue, one he hadn’t tasted in a long while.

The sweetness of sugar.

“Whoa. What is this? It’s sweeter than sugar beet. I don’t think I’ve had anything this sweet since coming here.”

“—!”

When Jack showed signs of enjoyment as he chewed, his lover got excited too, wiggling his hands with glee.

The knight realized he had let himself get carried away and looked sulky for a moment, but soon replied in his oddly accented northern tongue.

[Thank you.]

“—…!”

Ugli narrowed his already long eyes, which made him look like a grinning snake, even further, and beamed.

Jack found him unsettling.

Of course it was natural to be unsettled by a foreigner who had stolen his lips out of nowhere and then started following him around like some sort of lover.

But that wasn’t even the bigger problem.

Jack had been doing his best to avoid interacting with the castle’s barbarians as much as possible. It was to hide his actual level of language skill.

But Ugli, who apparently had nothing better to do and trailed after Jack whenever time allowed, had surely figured it out by now.

The fact that his northern tongue was at a toddler’s level.

I wonder if he’s told the castle lord already…

For Jack, who still didn’t trust the inscrutable dark-clad castle lord, this was a deeply unsettling scenario.

But he was too scared to bring it up with the lady.

Jack was the type of worker who, whenever he had something to get yelled at for, would put off reporting it to his superior until the very last moment, and then get chewed out like a dog once the whole thing finally blew up.

Besides, by this point, shouldn’t he have realized that what I did back then wasn’t actually a confession?

He swallowed the last of the snack lingering in his mouth and spoke.

“Hey.”

A sticky sweetness still clung to the inside of his mouth.

[You… me… why… like? Me… like?]

Jack asked Ugli in his halting sentences.

At some point, Ugli had settled in beside Jack, leaning against the railing with the balustrade between them, and now tilted his head as he looked at him.

“Well… I mean, I AM a totally dashing guy, but it’s not like you even know me or… well, I AM good-looking. But honestly, am I THAT… good-looking? I’m not sure, kinda.”

Embarrassed, Jack muttered to himself in the southern tongue, which Ugli had no reason to understand.

“More cute than handsome, I’d say.”

“That’s not true. I’m a totally tough knight, and a man, and…”

…

Huh?

“Hey, you… did you just speak the southern tongue? You can speak the southern tongue?”

Jack leapt to his feet from where he’d been leaning against the balcony railing.

In the moment it took the startled knight to steady himself, Ugli had already vanished into the distance with a faint smile.

“W-wait…! Hold on!”

A large room, the table dragged beside the blazing hearth.

There, Aspara sat poring over financial ledgers and a copy of the local map.

“Haah—”

“Honestly. There’s no answer here…”

She wanted, somehow, to produce a political and economic achievement in this place and establish a foothold for herself.

But the extent of her abilities amounted to little more than knowledge of high society and paperwork. Neither was of much use in this village masquerading as a capital.

No specialty goods, terrible geography. They’ve already formed alliances with all the neighboring peoples, so there’s not even anything to raid. And to push south — no capital and no military strength…

She was beginning to understand why the central government left the northern barbarians alone.

The weather was brutal, the roads were long, and even if you made the trip, there was nothing to plunder in the first place. The place was all skin and bones, like the rib meat of a chicken.

And the spacing between villages is needlessly wide. What even is this population distribution?

Aspara studied the map.

This was the reason why Gus, despite being the man who had united the tribes to found a nation, looked more like a tribal chieftain than a king.

The north’s population density was extremely low. This settlement, where the palace stood, was the largest village, and even the second-closest village was over thirty li away.

“I’d like to know exactly what’s in all this empty space.”

Aspara tapped the blank stretches between the villages on the map.

“I’d need Jack to ask, but where did that little brat wander off to…”

She stood and peered out over the balcony.

Just moments ago, he’d been lying on the floor scribbling a letter, but he’d already disappeared somewhere.

Gone off to catch a rabbit or something, that little rascal.

Aspara decided to check the treasury office herself for a more detailed map. She rose from her chair and placed her hand on the door handle.

The instant she flung the door open, her nose collided with the broad chest of a very large man.

“Oh!”

Aspara clutched her nose and looked up to see what she’d crashed into. Standing right before her was none other than her enormous husband.

What is this giant doing, standing in front of someone else’s door like a stone guardian? He doesn’t even understand the southern tongue — what was he hoping to eavesdrop on?

“Is something the matter? Jack isn’t here to interpret at the moment.”

She enunciated “Ja-ack” clearly and crossed her fingers to signal that he wasn’t here.

“— — — —?”

The castle lord stammered something in a flustered voice.

What is he on about.

“Ah, well then, my lord.”

“—, —…”

“If you’re not too busy to visit your wife’s chambers at this hour, then let me ask you one thing.”

“—?”

“I’d like to learn more about this place. This… [— —]. I want a detailed map. [— —?]”

Aspara tapped the map with her short bits of northern tongue as she asked.

The King of Barbarians looked down with a stern, furrowed brow, then looked back up at Aspara’s face, then down again, repeating this a couple of times.

Whether he was hesitating or struggling to understand her question, his expression was unreadable. Then he abruptly turned and strode off down the corridor.

What?

A few steps out, the king stopped in the middle of the hallway and looked back. Seeing Aspara standing there blankly, he beckoned with his hand.

“You want me to follow?”

Aspara thought it over for a moment, then hurried after the castle lord with quick steps.

“If you’re going to escort a lady, you should at least offer your hand.”

[3.]

The place Gus led her to was the stables.

He unclasped the cloak from his own shoulders and draped it around his bride, then took her by the waist and lifted her onto the saddle in one smooth motion.

Aspara, recalling the horseback rides with Jack, shifted her weight toward the back of the saddle.

She figured that the castle lord, the one who actually knew how to handle the horse, would need to sit in back to manage the reins. But instead, he seated his wife at the front and pressed his stomach flush against Aspara’s back.

Oh, was this how you’re supposed to ride?

“—… — —.”

The man tapped the map clutched in Aspara’s hands and spoke in slow northern tongue.

The language was still incomprehensible. But she could tell he was making an effort to speak as slowly and clearly as possible.

“You mean to go there in person? All the way out?”

“— — —…”

“You really must have a lot of free time. I won’t refuse.”

Aspara nodded, then leaned the back of her head against the chest that held the reins.

I was wondering why he kept staring at Jackie and me with that sour look whenever we rode together.

Remembering the expression on Gus’s face from the other day, the one that had looked ready to bore a hole through the back of her skull, Aspara thought to herself:

So our riding posture was bothering him that much.

A king who once rode through battlefields, indeed, she mused, and let out a quiet little chuckle.

The horse kicked off across the snowfield and began to gallop. The wind, laden with the bite of snow, lashed at her face, but the rest of her body was more or less shielded by the man’s arms on either side and his solid torso, so even as the horse picked up speed, it wasn’t unbearably cold.

The hooves had barely begun to quicken when Gus pulled the reins and steadied the horse.

The ochre-colored horse settled into a constant speed without accelerating further. Compared to the leisure ride the other day, it was a notably slower pace.

He could go a little faster and I’d be fine. Doesn’t a king know the value of time?

But with no way to convey that thought, Aspara simply closed her eyes and savored the feel of the horsehide brushing against her thighs.

Does that bastard of a brother know? That thanks to him, I’m out here seeing this vast world and actually enjoying myself.

Aspara thought, atop the galloping horse.

If he knew, he’d probably blow his top.

The great shaggy horse ran and ran across the snowfield.

For someone born on an island nation, the northern snowfields stretched unimaginably wide, and then wider still.

Good grief. If you dumped a body out here, no one would ever find it. Nice enough for a ride, I suppose, but at this rate, wherever we’re headed won’t have much of anything either.

Aspara tilted her head back against him and lifted her chin to gaze up at the sky.

She could see Gus’s face, reddened raw by the cold wind, and beyond it, a pure white sky.

“I never knew the world could be this vast.”

The room back home came to mind. Her mother’s cramped little world. The suffocating memories of family. A homesickness that she could not feel at all.

She closed her eyes and listened to the heartbeat traveling through the back of her skull.

The horse ran on like that for a long, long time.