Fools.

Fools.

There was no word for it but grotesque. What in the world? Had someone made it out of ice and balls of fur? Yet step by step, as he drew closer, he began to see that the thing resembled the silhouette of a small human.

《Lady Aspara?》

“I have been waiting.”

Only when he came close, only when he heard the voice, did he realise. It was Aspara, swaddled head-to-foot in every kind of cold-weather garment imaginable.

《Wh — what is this.》

“Where is the castle lord?”

Two eyes blinked between the wool and the leather cloth.

《Castle lord. Where.》

She asked the soldier nearby, in awkward, halting speech.

《Ah, the castle lord is…》

He hesitated to answer.

In the soldiers’ glances, Aspara could feel the resentment they harboured toward her.

“Ah —”

The woman’s mind, dulled by the cold, wavered for a moment.

“He’s dead?!”

“He is not dead.”

“He can’t die! Aagh! Castle Lord, I’m sorry! The truth is, I didn’t dislike you that much…!”

“He is not dead, I said.”

Ugli plucked the sobbing Jack up by the scruff of the neck the way a mother cat lifts her kitten, and set him aside.

“Hostage, take this fool over to Lady Aspara. She is in the medical room.”

“Ah, yes.”

Jack was carried off by his two friends, propped between them on the way to the medical room. He sniffled and swallowed back his sobs as though he were the one wounded.

“My lady, the castle lord is dead…!”

“He is not dead, I said.”

“I didn’t even get to say I was sorry…! He’s a man with a bit of a rubbish disposition, but really, I’d been thinking he wasn’t a bad fellow at heart…!!”

“I’m sorry. Jack has a touch of trauma about this sort of thing. Leave him with me.”

Aspara had pouches of hot water wrapped about the tips of her toes and her torso. The ends of her body were still flaring an angry red, but mercifully there were no patches gone blue or black.

“So, then — what is his condition, precisely?”

“It is a miracle that she has come through without serious harm. She may suffer a few days of cold, but as for her skin, fortunately —”

“I am not asking after myself.”

Ugli, who had been deflecting the question, drew in a breath and resumed his report.

“He has injured his eye.”

“His eye.”

“Yes. His left eye has been crushed.”

Aspara furrowed her brow.

“…Then is the bone shattered? What of his brain? Is his jaw intact?”

“There is a fracture in the bone, but it is not shattered. It was not a single blow that burst the eye — rather, the eyeball was pushed outward by the shock and then crushed. It is something that happens often enough when a man takes a blow with his helm on.”

Ugli, who had been delivering this account without expression, suddenly realised that the person he was reporting to was not an army surgeon but a noblewoman, and a faint Ah, blast flickered through him.

Perhaps I described that a touch too plainly.

It was a tale that could easily have shocked a delicate young lady. But Aspara only let out a breath, as though relieved.

“Ah, well. That is fortunate.”

“…Pardon?”

“I said it is fortunate. That much should heal soon enough, should it not? The lost eye is a thing beyond mending, of course, but if he is able to rise from his bed, that alone is something to thank the gods for.”

“Ah, yes — well, that is true, but…”

Ugli was stricken. Among the hardy soldiers of the north, there had been men who broke down weeping, and yet this woman — why was she so unmoved? She seemed not to care for the castle lord’s condition at all, and it set an unpleasant taste in his mouth.

“Are you not worried?”

“Are you?”

“I —”

Aspara spoke as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, her gaze level and unflinching.

“The master you serve — is he the sort of man to be broken by merely this much?”

It was not a proposition meant to test or interrogate Ugli’s loyalty. That she said it because she sincerely believed it, every person there could feel with absolute clarity.

Watching Ugli, who could not answer, Aspara gave a small smile. A smile that carried, somewhere within it, a faint bitterness.

“— From now on, then, every arrow he misses, I shall have it laid at my door.”

“What does that mean?”

“Ugli.”

She rose from her seat. Her legs trembled a little. They tried to keep her from rising; she would not listen.

“I am sorry.”

She bowed her head deeply. To a mere subject, the second master of the castle bent her head far down, below her own knees.

“Oh, no — please, you mustn’t…”

“This incident is, in full, my responsibility.”

“It is all right. As you have said yourself, the wound poses no threat to his life as a warrior, and a fight of this scale is always —”

“That is precisely the problem.”

Aspara did not raise her bowed head as she continued.

“A problem has plainly arisen through my own fault, and yet the castle lord’s exertions have brought it to a close without harm to anyone. How infuriating that must be. Where my responsibility ought to have been called to account, my own faction would, no doubt, have said, ‘In the end it ended without trouble — what is the use of dwelling on whose fault it was,’ and let it pass. And then public opinion would — well, perhaps it would seem fine for the moment, but the next time even some trifling incident were to occur, it would surely have brought catastrophe.”

“Lady Aspara…”

“But it did not happen that way. The castle lord was gravely wounded. And I think that, rather, this is for the best. That it was the castle lord who was hurt, and not an ordinary citizen. That it was not an innocent commoner but a person who may reproach and rebuke me as much as he likes.”

“…”

“Do you think me a selfish politician?”

Only then did the woman raise her head and look at the person before her.

“When the castle lord wakes, tell him that he is to rebuke me most severely. Is there, perhaps, some sort of cold palace in this castle? It would suit me well to be driven off somewhere far away, where he need not lay eyes on me.”

“There is no such place.”

“There is the place where the hostage was confined for a while, is there not? Do not fret. As for being alone, I am well used to it.”

Aspara smiled. It was not a forced smile to lighten the mood. It was the freest, clearest smile she had worn since she came to the north.

A smile as though to say, at last.

“That is the reason I came here, after all. Is it not?”

“…It is not. We do not do such things.”

“Then you are all fools.”

Ugli could not bring himself to answer.

He bit down on his lower lip.

Then he exhaled a sigh deep enough to cave in the floor.

Then he turned his eyes up to the ceiling…

“…you, aren’t you.”

He began to mutter, as though to himself.

“Hm?”

“The fool is you, aren’t you!”

“Uh, what?”

“You idiot, idiot, idiot dimwit, you absolute fool!!”

He let out a shriek loud enough that, from the next room, Jack came running.

“Wh — what? What is it? Did somebody call me?”

“H — hey, hey, Ugli, listen, your — lower your voice. They can hear you speaking the southern tongue out there —”

“Let them hear, you fool!”

He had now begun, very firmly, to jab his finger at her.

“You — you don’t even understand the castle lord’s heart!”

What in the world he was even saying, Ugli himself did not know.

“Aaagh, honestly! I’m going to choke to death from how stifling this is!! How is it that a whole year goes by with you lot and there is no progress!!”

Aspara and Jack stared at their friend, the friend who above all others had always been the grown-up, the unflappable one, with utterly bewildered faces.

“Uh… what?”

“He likes you! The castle lord likes you! Even a dog walking down the road would know it. How is it that no one can see it, honestly, there are limits to how stifling a person can be!”

Aspara and Jack, both looking equally blindsided, tried to calm him down.

“Uh, um… sorry.”

“Aaaagh…!”

Ugli, the man who in everyday life always held the high ground when it came to keeping his emotions in check, was stamping his feet as though he might burst from sheer frustration.

“Haa… haa… honestly…”

“Are — are you all right?”

He gave no answer, only dragged his hands down his face in a dry wash, then opened his mouth.

“Tell — tell the castle lord that yourself. That bit about being driven into a cold palace. I won’t do it, so you — you yourself…! Aagh, honestly, this is so stifling! For the love of it, talk to each other!”

“I can’t, though…”

“This is infuriating… If I’d known it would come to this, I should never have got in the way, all those months ago, when the search for a language tutor was on…!”

“What?”

“Don’t ever say something so infuriating again, do you hear me?”

“No, hold on — didn’t you just make some absolutely enormous confession just now?”

Ugli took Aspara by both shoulders, met her eyes, and spoke.

“You are not a political instrument. You are a single human being, and one half of a married couple. Stop doing strange things and just apologise! Like a normal married couple!”

“Now wait — that is not the issue —”

“I am aware that there is an obstacle between the two of you in conversation. But that obstacle is not language. Do you know what the real wall standing before you is?”

“You?”

“It is your damnable pride.”

“No, I’m fairly sure it’s you.”

“Stop denying it now. You are — damn it, this is not easy for me to say, either. But… but —”

Ugli spoke with distant, faraway eyes that carried, nonetheless, a sad sincerity.

“You are a person who is worth that.”

“Oh — ah, yes.”

Ugli paid no attention to Aspara’s reply, half-dazed as she was, and pressed on with what he had to say.

“The castle lord is at present in the sickroom by the staircase. If you go now, the two of you can be alone.”

He opened the door of the medical room and spoke.

“Will you not go and meet him? Beg him to send you off to the cold palace, or apologise, or kiss him to say thank you — do as you please. But say it from your own lips. That is what I am telling you.”

“…Later. After I have put my words in order, I shall meet him. I shall call for the hostage —”

“You do not need an interpreter.”

Ugli cut her off sharply.

“Forget interpreters. Just… just speak to him sincerely. Not interpretation — communication.”

“…”

“Please. Just face him, look him in the eye, and say something — that is all I am asking.”