Spurned.

Spurned.

Flower’s nerves had been stretched to the snapping point by the unending circus of the past few days. Yet because he did not know exactly what Aspara’s scheme was, he could not afford to start shouting blindly.

He had grasped from today’s business that the north meant to hold him in check through price manipulation. Even so, he could not be certain. Were those barbarians truly confident enough to win an economic war — confident enough to mount something like this?

Looking at Aspara’s unperturbed expression, he thought to himself:

Is this a bluff, or is it serious? Is she really setting herself against me? This woman? Against me?

Flower’s pride refused to answer that question with a yes.

“Hnh…”

He clenched his fist tight, exhaled, and swallowed down his anger.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you think you’re doing, but I cannot say I care for it. Our agreement is a matter of public record — we went so far as to bring in a notary for it. If you intend to carry on as you please this way—”

“I do beg your pardon.”

Aspara set her teacup down with a deliberately loud clink.

“But I am still a barbarian’s bride, you see.”

A faint trace of amusement clung to the shape of her mouth as she spoke the words a barbarian’s bride.

“Difficult things like notaries I haven’t the first notion of. Am I not, after all, an uncivilized woman living in a lawless land?”

“You will not be for much longer, will you!”

A small crack ran through Flower’s gentleman’s mask. From that crack seeped a thin trickle of incredulity and refined fury.

“What the devil have I been enduring your nonsense for!”

“Oh my — because you love and respect me, of course. That is why you’ve borne with me.”

Aspara met the man’s gaze without wavering. In that instant, Ugli noticed it: this woman, whose face he had always thought cloudy and unfocused, somehow had a startlingly clear-cut line to her eyes.

“I do love you, naturally.”

Flower answered with a sweet smile.

“Which is precisely why I’m trying to give you only the best of things in the most comfortable of places. Why must you make such a mockery of me?”

“Do I look comfortable to you?”

“What is there about you that is not comfortable! I’m pushing you to live idle and well in a warm place — what on earth is your complaint!”

In that moment something flashed before Aspara’s eyes. The silver gleam of steel. A sword-edge. Flower had drawn his sword.

“Er — I don’t exactly follow what’s happening right now, but.”

Jack muttered in a flustered voice and stepped in front of Aspara as if to shield her. He reached hastily for his own hip, but his hand closed on nothing. His longsword had been confiscated on entering the estate.

In front of the sword-less knight, Ugli set himself. But Ugli, too, was empty-handed.

“Well…. Looks as though I’ve missed the moment to head back, a little. I was just dragging my feet thinking I’d recover the scraps of fabric before I went.”

“You will not be leaving this estate, dye or no dye!”

“A line Sebinya, had she witnessed it, would have found exceedingly romantic.”

“That’s because it is a romantic line. Why can’t you conduct yourself a little more like that woman?”

“Because I couldn’t, which is why we divorced.”

Between the affectedly leisured lines of conversation, the tension of the drawn blade stretched taut.

As Jack took up a stance as though ready to fight bare-handed, Aspara lifted her hand in a smooth motion. The signal: I’ll handle this myself — stand down.

“I understand. My first priority is protecting the north’s economy, not returning to it. If that is your wish, I will remain here.”

“Naturally.”

“However, do send that one back. What use is there in keeping a foreigner who cannot even speak the cultured tongue?”

Aspara gestured toward Ugli as she spoke. He turned, startled, and looked at her.

“Do you suppose I’ll meekly grant a request of yours at this stage?”

“For all he looks it, that man is a close confidant of the northern king. To detain a southerner in the south is hardly a great matter — but if you hold onto him, you’ve taken a prisoner of war. An outcome that does no good to anyone, wouldn’t you say?”

“….”

“There, there. My plan is already ruined, being caught out this early. That attendant must be sent back to bring word to the castle lord — to tell him I’ve decided to remain here.”

“…Very well, in any case—”

Flower nodded, then tapped the point of his sword lightly against Jack’s chin.

“In any case, keeping this useless fellow at your side wouldn’t accomplish anything anyway.”

“Then—”

Thwack.

An instant later, a crisp, sharp sound of impact rang out.

“Wha—!”

“What was that?”

It was the sound of Ugli’s kicked-up toe striking the hilt of Flower’s sword clean out of his grip. The blade flew from the man’s hand up into the air.

Startled by the sudden development, Flower instinctively stumbled back. But Ugli closed the distance far faster than Flower could retreat, and, with the man’s eyes squeezed shut, caught the sword bare-handed just before it fell on his head.

The gleaming blade halted over the crown of Flower’s skull. Ugli — the hero of our story, gripping the hilt in his fist — whipped the hand holding the sword sharply back, settling into a stance poised to strike at any moment.

“Ugli!”

Aspara cried out.

“I signalled you not to intervene!”

《—, —— ——!》

“Don’t you pretend you can’t understand me.”

For once, Aspara’s voice was unsteady.

“I had a whole plan of my—”

For a fraction of a second, Ugli’s attention broke at Aspara’s words. Flower drove his foot hard into Ugli’s knee.

“Guh!”

“I knew it — damn woman! You had another scheme up your sleeve after all!”

As Ugli recovered his footing to strike back, Aspara shouted at him.

“No — this fellow acted entirely on his own! You, stop this at once!”

“My lady, for the moment, leave it to Ugli and—”

“Don’t be a fool. Do you imagine I was an idiot who sat here holding out for days instead of simply snatching one scrap of cloth and bolting?”

Aspara shoved Jack, who was moving to block her, aside.

“The war in the south is a war of cause! The reason that man sent a letter summoning me here, the reason I played along with his ridiculous puppet show, the reason I laid out an absurdly complicated plan — all of it was to deny him a cause to invade! And now, here, if you go and take up a sword — just what in the world do you think you’re accomplishing!”

“That—”

For an instant Ugli froze.

Right, then — why did I do that?

It was not as though he wanted Jack to remain here; there would have been any number of ways to recover the fellow later. Why had he done something so reckless? Ugli himself did not understand.

“—That was… hk!”

Clang. Ugli hastily raised his arm to block the sword-edge bearing down on his face. The two pieces of steel met with a shrieking cry.

“As I said — you’re a fool.”

Flower, having drawn another, slightly longer sword from the opposite side of his belt, spoke. An unpleasant smile played on his face.

The two men crossed blades and glared at each other as though locked in a shoving-match of steel. Receiving the blade with his features drawn tight, Ugli shouted:

“The fool… the fool is you, Lady Aspara!”

Ugli threw his lower body hard into pushing back the sword-edge that had been driven up to his face. In a pure test of strength he was confident he would not be thrown, but the knee he had just been struck on was interfering with his balance.

“You calculate your own worth far too low! For a foot-soldier that’s a virtue called courage, for a priest a virtue called humility. But for one who leads—”

Ugli caught himself, faintly embarrassed at having called Aspara one who leads, and his mouth worked a moment as if groping for another word.

“…one in a position of power — that isn’t the sort of thinking you’re meant to bring to the table! You meant to spend yourself as a throwaway piece and send me alone back north? Have you lost your mind?”

“Ugli….”

“I’m not saying anything touching, damn it! You meant for me to go back alone and relay — what, ‘So sorry, I ran my mouth out of turn and Plan A went bust, so under Plan B the madam is now going to live with that man after all. Oh, and we did settle the dye matter, by the way!’ — was that how it was going to go?”

Ugli shouted with his face flushed bright red.

Right. That’s the sort of nonsense that got to me and I moved on my own, that’s all. It wasn’t that I was trying to protect this woman, he kept repeating to himself.

“…A weakness.”

Aspara murmured.

“Yes — that’s not a virtue, it’s your weakness!”

“Weakness….”

The word ran through the woman’s head. In that instant, Aspara grasped something.

She had been about to spend herself as a discarded piece and send Ugli back alone because she had believed she held no bargaining chip of any value beyond the title to her own person.

But that was not so.

“…If it’s weaknesses, I know of one, too.”

“What?”

“Flower — your weakness. Or rather, the weakness of your house.”

At the sudden murmur, Flower furrowed his brow.

“Bluffing again, I see.”

“I’ve lived with you for years. Might I not know at least that much?”

A vivid confidence seeped through the woman’s voice, and because it was so utterly unlike her, Flower faltered. Without missing the opening, Ugli drove the man’s sword far off to one side.

“Kgh…!”

“Ugli, listen. The weakness of the men of House Bat is….”

Aspara’s tone was graver and more solemn than it had ever been before. Pressed in spite of themselves by that atmosphere, the two swordsmen swallowed dry.

At last the woman’s lips parted, and in a grave voice a two-syllable word came out.

“…Hair-roots.”

“…Pardon?”

“Hair-roots!”

“Er, sorry?”

“The hair! Grab him by the hair!”