The Sun And The Traveler

A suffocating silence stretched between them.

“…”

“…”

At last, with a low, pained groan, Keith picked up the teacup again. The moment the tea touched his lips, his tongue seemed to shrivel in his mouth.

He slid his gaze away from the guileless eyes waiting on his verdict, and spoke.

“…Are you new here?”

“Yes, young master. How did you know?”

“Because I know how things stand here.”

“Ahh.”

Heliaria, the Paragon domain, was the finest city in the North, and yet anyone who laid eyes on the White Castle would tilt their head and think, That’s it? The place was plain to the point of monotony.

Few guests bothered with the long journey to the far north, so the household never kept more than thirty-odd staff, hardly enough hands for something as large as a funeral. They must have taken on short-term workers in a hurry to wait on the mourners, and this woman was surely one of them.

“I’m good with heavy work, so I applied as a general laborer, but for some reason they sent me upstairs…”

She wore a look of genuine bafflement, but Keith thought he could guess the reason. Strong backs were easier to come by than a face lovely enough to bewitch a man at a single glance; in the employer’s place, he too would have put a silver tray in her hands rather than an axe.

“…”

Keith knew it was rude, and still he could not take his eyes off her. For some reason a sense of déjà vu stirred in him, the memory as far off as a landscape seen through glass backed with organza.

She did not shy from his stare but met it head-on. They were plainly looking at each other, and yet he had the impression she was gazing somewhere far away. Her aquamarine eyes, ringed in a thin band of black, seemed to hold a past he had never lived and to be staring down some distant future all at once.

“Have we, by any chance, met somewhere before…?”

In the end he let the question out, and at that she smiled faintly. The firelight in the stove trembled, quiet, as though someone were tickling it.

“Do you suppose we have?”

“…”

“Maybe we have.”

“…”

“Or maybe… we haven’t.”

“…”

“Mm. Believe it or don’t.”

In that instant a bolt of lightning seemed to pass through him. A groan rose in his prickling throat, and to smother it he threw the whole cup of tea back at once.

“Cough, cough—!”

He scrubbed at his mouth with his sleeve, and she snatched up the pot.

“I’ll pour you some more.”

“No—!”

He had shouted, to his own embarrassment, and his earlobes flushed red.

“That won’t be necessary. It’s truly excellent barley tea, but—”

“It’s rose tea.”

“Pardon?”

“Not barley tea. Rose tea.”

“Ah.”

“…Pfft.”

She giggled like a mischievous child and poured a little tea into the very cup Keith had drunk from, then lifted it to her lips without the slightest hesitation and took a sip.

“Ugh. It’s awful!”

“…”

Passing a single cup from mouth to mouth was a thing mercenaries and wandering knights did. What astonished Keith was not being caught out over the tea but the sheer absence of reserve in her.

…Come to think of it, she did say she wasn’t a Northerner.

Only then did curiosity about who she was stir in him. He had no wish to be a man of prejudices, but he was only human, and the plain truth was that he had let his guard down in front of a beautiful woman. It had been the same in the study earlier, when she picked a quarrel with the Count and her face alone bewitched the whole room into swallowing whatever she said. The thought appalled him.

“You—”

“Young master—”

The two of them spoke at the same moment. Keith gave a small motion of his eyes, telling her to go first, and she did not refuse the courtesy.

“You’re a thoughtful man, young master.”

“…”

“I don’t know much about His Grace Elrod, but I do know he was a benevolent lord.”

“…”

“And I think I can understand, a little, what was in his heart when he left that will to a younger brother who takes care even over a mere maid.”

“I—”

“If I may be so bold.”

The woman took a step back. She bent her knees a little and bowed her head, and a few strands of silver-thread hair slid down to veil the side of her face.

“Protect Lady Ardine from that pack of blind jackals.”

In the end, Keith had refused the office of Regent Duke. He never found a suitable replacement either, and it was Count Luigi Husslix who took the regent’s chair in his stead. That choice became poison for Ardine Paragon, for the North, and beyond them for the Empire and all of humankind.

“If I may be so bold.”

Keith Paragon had to become Regent Duke of Heliaria, without fail.

It isn’t the wind that gets a traveler’s cloak off him — it’s the sun.

You cannot force a man into a chair he refuses to sit in. You have to work into the soft places until he stands and takes up the burden of his own accord.

“Protect Lady Ardine from that pack of blind jackals.”

“…”

Pai knew her words had spread like ripples across a still lake. Keith’s pupils wavered.

“And if a post for a jester should happen to open up.”

“…”

“Then I shall stay at your side and offer you laughter.”

The man covered his mouth with one large hand. Black hair spilled over his bewildered face, and beneath the pale, thin skin the blue of his veins looked ready to show through at any moment.

Pai remembered, vividly, the sight of those veins staining black.

To protect the niece he loved. And, above all else, to protect you yourself. Keith had to change.

“I have…”

After a long hesitation his mouth opened, the bridge of his nose twisting with pain.

“I have a reason why I cannot possibly do that.”

The same reason he had turned his back on the White Castle he loved, and set out to abandon Paragon.

“And as for Ardine… I will consider carefully who can look after that child properly.”

“Then at the very least there’s no one qualified among these mourners. Not one of them went looking for the young lady.”

“…I was told Ardine has shut herself away.”

“That’s the grown-ups’ excuse. They could at least have knocked, couldn’t they? The way you did, Lord Keith.”

“…”

Once the reading of the will was over, just before he set out for the crematorium, he had gone looking for his only niece. He had knocked politely and slipped a letter through the gap in the door.

Keith looked abashed, like a man caught out in a kindness he had done without telling anyone. Pai felt a touch exasperated.

How does a man this naive get himself called the Mercenary King…

She swallowed a sigh and curled her hand around the trolley handle.

“Two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”

“…?”

“If you want to meet the young lady, at that hour—”

“Captain!!!”

Just then the waiting-room door flew open on a booming voice.

A young man with deep vermilion hair came bursting in, out of breath, a slim scabbard at his waist. He was handsome, the sort you warmed to at a glance.

He caught sight of Pai and faltered.

“Ah — no — who’s this absolute stunn… no, that’s not it. Captain! We’ve got trouble!”

“Enri… Keep it down.”

Enri wore nothing but a single shirt, as if the cold were no concern of his, with a small pendant bearing a religious emblem swinging at his open collar.

He introduced himself to Pai first.

“Hello there, I’m Enri. I serve as the Captain’s nanny.”

“Hello, Mr. Enri. A pleasure.”

“A pleasure, yes. And Captain — word is Lady Ardine has vanisheeed!”

“What?”

Keith shot to his feet, and the iron chair went over backwards with a crash.

“Is it certain she’s missing? When? Who saw her last?”

“That I don’t know — I ran straight here the moment I heard…”

“It’ll have been Anna.”

Pai answered calmly. Keith and Enri both turned to her at once.

“She’s a maid of the main castle. She’s looking after the young lady for the time being.”

“For the time being? Is there no nanny of her own?”

Ardine Paragon was seven years old. As a rule, the children of noble houses stayed in a nanny’s charge until they turned ten.

“I heard the nanny who used to look after the young lady gave notice a fortnight ago and went back to her home village. In fact, that’s when the young lady stopped coming out of her room.”

“…”

“Since then Anna has been checking on the young lady on the hour…”

Enri quickly checked his pocket watch.

“It’s already… forty minutes past the hour.”

“Damn it!”

“They’ve confirmed she isn’t inside the castle, so a search party’s been put together. I came straight here.”

“Right. We’ll join them.”

“I’ll help too,” Pai said. “This past week I’ve been attending the young lady alongside Anna. With any luck… I think I might know where she’s gone.”

With that she suddenly caught up the hem of her skirt, and Enri recoiled in horror.

“Wh-whoa, I — I didn’t see anything—!”

— Rrrip.

“…”

The black skirt tore away to reveal leather trousers beneath, her legs so slim and straight it felt almost indecent. The two men stared blankly, then coughed and turned their heads away, feigning interest in something else, while Pai bundled up the scraps of cloth every which way.

Then she tapped the toe of her boot against the floor, tap, tap, and spoke.

“Let’s hurry.”