Fools.

Fools.

Aspara could not understand why on earth Ugli had said such a thing. What was she supposed to say in front of a man who could not understand a word of her speech? Was she to talk to herself, perhaps?

“Excuse me.”

She did not understand it, but pressed on by the force of Ugli’s manner, Aspara drifted toward the castle lord’s sickroom as though carried along. The little room at the very innermost end. Inside it was warm, and quiet.

She stood gazing quietly at the face of the castle lord lying on the bed.

It was a face some would call frightening, and others handsome. Both brows and nose were drawn long and straight, the overall lines bold. Bandages hid them from view, but the outer corners of his eyes ran long and clean, and that, she thought, was very much to her taste.

“Cas—”

She had been about to call him Castle lord, but Aspara corrected herself.

“My husband.”

《——…》

The man, who had been lying there mumbling and groaning, after a few seconds bolted upright.

《…M-my wife?》

“Pray, stay lying down.”

Aspara pressed lightly down on his shoulder with one hand. Gus, as though he had grasped her meaning, laid himself back down. His head remained turned all the while toward Aspara.

I ought to apologise.

Aspara furrowed her brow. When she had been told to apologise without an interpreter, she had thought it would do simply to drop to her knees. But to a man whose eyes could not see, how on earth did one apologise?

《My wife…》

Oh.

As her hand rested on the castle lord’s shoulder, Aspara registered something familiar to the touch. This was —

“…Did you go out wearing this?”

The pearl-coloured shoulder-cape. The thing she had once given him as a gift. Tiny flecks of dried blood, like scattered drops, glowed redly across it, bearing witness to its companionship on the battlefield.

《——.》

“If you meant to wear this, would you not have done better to put on another layer of armour — why ever —”

“《——. —— ——— —————?》 Why?”

“Pardon? Ah, yes — ‘why.’ Why did you do that?”

“Whut for. Becau— becuz of.”

The castle lord answered as though he had seized hold of his chance, his face beaming. It was an exceedingly happy face, hard to credit on a man laid up in bed with one eye crushed to ruin.

“Sha-mo-ka-mi-ta.”

“Pardon?”

Gus did not say it a second time; he only kept his face, slightly flushed, turned in Aspara’s direction.

“Sa-mo…”

Sha-mo-ka-mi-ta. Had that not meant What a pretty bird? What on earth was he saying now, here, all of a sudden?

Sha-mo —

Ah. Only then did Aspara grasp it. The words this clumsy man was trying to say.

“Because you adore me?”

The man — the man smiling faintly from behind the blood-soaked bandages — gave a small, shy nod of his head.

“Sha-mo-ka-mi-ta…”

In that instant Aspara grasped the meaning of that strange exchange the other day in the woods. He had been telling me he adored me. This man had told her he adored her, and she had gone and said the very same in return. To this man, she had said that she adored him.

Her heart sank with a thud. Ugli’s shout from a moment before came back to her. This man —

This man could not, surely, truly love me?

The castle lord loves me.

It felt as though her heart had dropped clean out of her chest.

Gus was a man clumsy at expressing himself, and Aspara was a woman clumsy at taking such things in. But these feelings, which had missed the mark of one another for so very long, could no longer be turned away from. Even Aspara, even she could turn from them no longer. A suspicion that had always lain settled at the very bottom of her heart now floated up to a place too plain to ignore.

Yes; the castle lord had been in love with the woman. Aspara, having at last come face to face with the rose-coloured truth she had so long struggled to look away from —

“Ugh.”

Retched, in disgust.

《——? Are you all ri—?》

“Ah — yes. I am all right.”

Aspara, her face gone deathly pale, covered her mouth with her hand and answered.

The castle lord loves me.

That ought not to be. It was not to be that way. Aspara had to beg, as quickly as could be. To say, Never mind any of that, hold me to account for what has happened, drive me off somewhere far away. Lock me away in solitary confinement. Use that to defend your own dignity and your own authority.

That was what she had to say.

“Me too. I am al— I’m al— I’m all-right.”

The man, tapping lightly at the bandage wound round and round his eyes, spoke in awkward southern tongue. As though to say Do not worry. Pointing to his own face, from which one eyeball had been lost.

“I…”

She had to apologise. She had to beg for her judgement.

“Listen, castle lord. I… I —”

But what came out of Aspara’s mouth was an entirely different sentence.

“I do not love you.”

Love. —.

— do not. The negation of the preceding phrase.

—pnida. Honorific form.

I do not love you.

I do not love you.

I do not love you.

I do not love you. Gus muttered the unfamiliar southern sentence under his breath.

《…》

“I…”

What in the world she was even saying, Aspara herself did not understand. And yet she went on, muttering and muttering strange things.

“…Did you know? Flower. That man, too, once loved me.”

《Flower.》

“Yes, until he met Sebinya, that is. He used to love me, you know — quite a lot. But, but… you know how it ended, do you not.”

Gus furrowed his brow. He could not understand the meaning of the sentences, but he did catch the names familiar to him.

“If you, too, should end up like that — if such a thing should happen one more time — what shall I do then, truly? If I am to be driven out once again from here, by yet another man, where am I to go? Further north? At the very ends of the north, what could possibly be there? Would there not be a single soul there at all? And then, only then — even if I should freeze to death, will I at last be able to live, alone?”

Aspara’s heart was pounding thump-thump, as though she had climbed a high mountain. To steady her labouring breath, she stopped speaking for a moment.

“…No, I am sorry. What am I even saying. No — I, truly, was very glad to have come here. I am happy to be married to you. My house… my family was not a happy one. I have no fondness for what passed for a homeland; rather, I disliked it. I always thought that if I could marry and leave that place, it would be a blessing.”

In front of a man who could not even understand southern speech, Aspara kept muttering on, with no notion of whom she was speaking to. Forgetting, even, the reason she had originally come to this room.

No; in truth, she had not forgotten it. She had not forgotten what Ugli had told her.

To speak honestly.

To, for once, please, speak honestly and say what was truly in her heart.

He, surely, had not foreseen the kind of conversation this would turn into. Of course, it meant nothing. This man did not, in any case, understand a word she was saying.

“I… I am truly glad to have come to this place. I am happy to be married to you. 《Glad.》 Marriage, you know, is such a thing. To find someone whom one does not particularly dislike, with whom one can together bring children into the world and raise them — is that not, of itself, more than enough cause for joy? With you —”

In that instant Aspara conjured up the image of herself bearing and raising a child with the man before her. The self in the vision was cradling in her arms a newborn whose face was half hers and half his.

The instant she gazed down at the face of the imagined infant, Aspara felt herself begin to retch again.

“You — you are —”

Aspara looked at the man before her. Handsome. It was a face to her liking, and so much younger and healthier. One eye had been lost, true. But not enough to be called a flaw; he was that fine-looking a man.

He was tall, strong, sturdily built. His power and his authority were both formidable, his strength was great, and, in his own way, he was wealthy.

And on top of all that, this man even loved her? If this man would only go on loving her, then from now on she could lead a comfortable and a safe life. Gus was an excellent husband, and a saviour, and a refuge, and —

“I am afraid.”

Onto her two hands folded neatly atop her knees, hot drops of water fell, tap, tap.

“In truth, I am afraid.”

Gus, not knowing what he could possibly say, only listened to the voice thick with tears.

“In truth, I knew. That you love me, I knew. I knew, too, that you would be saddened were I to ask to be banished to the cold palace.”

Aspara’s voice was trembling, quiver, quiver.

“And yet — being loved by you does not make me happy. I wish it did, but it does not.”

It was a low murmur, almost as if she were speaking to herself.

“To be loved by another no longer makes me happy. I do not want to be in such a bargained relationship with you…”

When she had come into this marriage, she had truly been glad. A husband whose speech she could not understand! What a perfect husband, one with whom she could not converse!

That Jack did not in fact speak a word of the northern tongue she had grasped from quite early on. When she had had to make up some flimsy excuse to have the interpreter killed off, she had felt a little sorry; but Aspara had been glad enough to override even that pang of guilt.

And yet, why was this man. Why was this man trying to come into the inside of her story? Why was he learning to say ‘I adore you’ in her language, why was he trying to forgive her?

Aspara did not want to understand. The two of them lived inside different contexts. He was not to step into her story.

“I…”

She opened her mouth. This time it was not a self-addressed mutter; it was slow, clearly-shaped speech of a sort the man might more easily catch.

“I — that you —”

《——.》