BPOTWC Chapter 10

“Basic swordsmanship—”

The Duke got that far, then faltered.

She was a prisoner of war. He could not permit her to train with a blade.

Simple self-defense, then?

No—that was dangerous too.

If the child had any talent for combat, she could shake off the castle's knights and flee.

The Duke turned his head to look at Quentin, who had positioned himself a careful distance away.

Quentin, apparently still opposed to the whole idea of Clarisse having outdoor activities in the first place, stood there with his face screwed into a grimace and offered nothing.

"Quentin. Do you have any information on outdoor activities suitable for children?"

"Sheridan's children catch frogs, Your Grace."

"It's winter."

"Then they take hardened icicles and have war games with—ah."

Quentin flushed and clamped his mouth shut at once.

It seemed the mention of war games in front of Clarisse had belatedly occurred to him.

"H-hem. Aside from that... ah, yes! They build snowmen. Whoever puts the biggest one in front of their house wins."

"I see."

The Duke turned back to Clarisse.

"You'll enter that contest. You'll build a snowman to represent this household."

"I'm... representing it?"

"It's for the sake of outdoor activity."

"F-for the Duke's honor, I'll do my very best."

Clarisse answered gamely, her two hands clasped tight together, and the Duke, declaring he had no further business, left with Quentin.

"Now what do I do?"

Alone in her room, Clarisse's face had gone slightly pink.

"I'm already going to do something for the Duke! I'll work so hard and build the biggest—"

But there was a small problem here.

"A snow... man?"

Clarisse was from the sweltering heat of Grezekaia.

"...Who in the world is that?"

Since he'd said "outdoor activity," Clarisse went out into the corridor and raised one hand high.

Sir Benson, on guard in the corridor, came over, and the child looked up at him and carefully stated her business.

"Sir Benson, the Duke has ordered me to have an outdoor activity."

"Argh, hm!"

Benson cleared his throat and set his expression into something stern. He was trying to keep to the Duke's order that the child be treated as a prisoner.

"S-so I heard. Garden's open to you as of today—that right?"

Clarisse, a little cowed by his overbearing manner, lowered her head.

"Ye-es... He told me to enter a contest to build a snowman."

"Then you'll need a carrot."

Clarisse was quite startled.

A person made of snow was a very different sort of thing from Mallangie, who was made of stone.

It even needed feeding!

'...He's not a frightening person, is he?'

Sensing that Clarisse didn't know what to do with herself, Benson cleared his throat again.

"Hmph! I'll bring you a carrot the kitchen isn't using."

"You will, Sir... Benson?"

Clarisse looked up at him with her hands clasped together, and he hastily looked away.

"I—I'm not being kind to you! Not at all! You're a prisoner!"

"But..."

"I'm only lending a hand because you're up against the village children for the Duke's honor with this snowman business! No getting ideas about it!"

He left her that warning so she wouldn't get any wrong ideas, and pointed his chin toward the stairs.

The inconvenient stairs the servants used.

"Off you go, then."

But at that moment, another of the Duke's orders came back to him. That the child wasn't to get so much as a scratch.

The servants' stairs were dark and steep, and there was a real risk of the child tumbling down them alone.

"No help for it. I'll carry you down. Mind the stairs."

"I know how to go down stairs by myself."

"No, but..."

Benson eyed Clarisse's short legs uneasily, and in the end decided to follow along right behind the child as she headed for the stairs.

Every time her small body swayed precariously on the way down the steep steps, Benson made a sound, both hands stretched out in front of him.

"Eek! Oh no! Yikes!"

Only once he'd confirmed she'd made it down safely did he return to his post in the second-floor corridor.

Out in the entrance hall, Clarisse tilted her head all the way back to take in the vast, high space.

She realized, then, that she'd spent nearly all her time confined to her room and had never properly seen the manor.

Now that she was really looking at it for the first time, all sorts of things kept catching her curious eye.

But Clarisse made herself pull her gaze back from wandering off elsewhere. She had to get to the garden.

She needed to find out what a snowman was, feed it a carrot, and stand it up in front of the manor.

"I've heard the news, Clarisse."

Rosalie, who happened to be coming out to the entrance, opened the door for her.

"His Grace has given permission for you to use the central staircase, as well as the front entrance."

"F-for me?"

The great central door was only for the Duke and those close associates he'd approved.

'It's because I'm doing this for the Duke's honor that he's given me permission.'

Clarisse's shoulders swelled up with pride, she couldn't help it.

"I really will do my very best!"

"I'm looking forward to it too."

With even Rosalie saying she was looking forward to it, Clarisse felt more lifted than ever as she headed out past the entrance.

"Oh, right."

She belatedly remembered she needed to ask about the snowman, and turned back around.

But Rosalie had already gone off somewhere.

"I forgot. And Mallangie says he doesn't know what a snowman is either..."

What should she do? Clarisse's face fell.

But that lasted only a moment.

The moment she was faced with the pure white world spread across the garden, she was so entranced that she forgot all her troubles.

"Wow."

She'd looked at the snow-covered scenery through the window this whole time, but seeing it in front of her, in person, made it all the more wondrous.

'I always wondered what it would feel like to step on it.'

Clarisse, remembering Benson's advice, carefully made her way down the steps and hopped onto the piled snow.

Scrunch.

It felt like her own foot was letting out a little fart with every step, and for some reason it made her laugh.

"Now what?"

Clarisse hopped once more onto the deep-drifted snow. Crunch, scritch, crackle, crunch.

She kept at it for a good while, making the ground fart under her feet, and when she looked back, she found it funny that deep footprints had been left everywhere she'd stepped.

"There's no way I could play hide-and-seek with Mallangie like this."

Wherever she hid, he'd find her by the footprints alone.

The girl went on hopping over the snow again and again after that, leaving her footprints all over every corner of the garden.

But after nearly thirty minutes of this hopping about, she found herself starting to tire.

All at once, Clarisse's head snapped clear.

This wasn't the time for that.

She needed to hurry and ask what a snowman actually was.

Clarisse wandered in circles around the manor, searching for a stone that might talk with her.

The manor's inner and outer surfaces—the inner wall and the outer wall—looked like a single continuous stone, but were in fact made of different stones, so she might well meet a different stone out here than the inner wall she knew.

It would be wonderful if every stone in the world could speak the way Mallangie did, but that wasn't actually so.

The stones that could speak with Clarisse were only the ones that gave off a "special feeling."

She'd been able to tell the difference between such stones and ordinary ones since she was very young, but in Grezekaia, meeting a stone like that had been terribly rare.

"No matter how I look at it, this really is a strange manor."

There had been almost no stones that spoke with her back in Grezekaia, but here, in this manor, she'd found several stones that would tell her stories no matter where she went.

Clarisse had been receiving their help ever since the day she first arrived at the manor.

"It's a golem, right? A huge creature made of stone that became a building?"

Clarisse had only heard the word "golem" for the first time here, but she found herself liking it, simply for the fact that it was a creature connected to stone.

"What a truly wonderful stone. To become a building and help humans like that."

Mallangie might sulk if he heard her say so, though.

"Ah."

She'd finally found a stone that seemed like it might tell her a story, and Clarisse trotted right up to it.

Unlike the other bricks, shaped square and even, this one had kept its natural shape.

"Hello."

Clarisse touched the surface of the manor's outer wall and greeted it, and an answer soon came back into her head.

〈So you're the prisoner those inner-wall lot have been going on about.〉

Since the whole manor was made of stone, it seemed the stones sometimes murmured among themselves.

"You've heard about me?"

〈Hmph. As if I'd answer to a criminal like you.〉

"Ah..."

〈Those idiot inner-wall bastards may go flapping their gums at you, but we of the outer wall are knights guarding Sheridan Manor. We don't show mercy to the likes of a prisoner.〉

"You don't have to show me mercy."

〈Then scram to the inner wall already! Go rot with those spineless fools melting away in some cozy warm room!〉

"But I have to build a snowman on Sheridan Manor's honor. If you happen to know how, would you tell me?"

〈.......〉

No answer came back.

Given how much this stone seemed to value the manor's honor, she'd thought it might explain.

"...You don't know?"

〈I am a valiant knight standing full against the cold wind! Just because I don't know some children's game, you think you can treat me like a fool?!〉

That wasn't what she meant at all, so Clarisse shook her head—fast, hard, side to side.

"It's fine. I don't know either. I'm not a fool either."

〈First this, now that—and on top of it all, lumped in with a prisoner! I'll show you this instant the might held by the great outer-wall legion of Sheridan Manor! Guardian stone of the outer wall! A prisoner is wandering about unsupervised—ring the bell twice, at once!〉

At his enormous outcry, Clarisse's heart pounded.

Given how many splendid stones like this were gathered along the outer wall, she found herself expecting something truly magnificent was about to happen.

〈Heh heh heh—I've been hoarding up my mana for just this day.〉

Clarisse tilted her head back to look up.

She happened to be right beneath the bell tower. The place where the outer wall's broken clock hung.

Surely a bell hanging on such a magnificent structure would ring out with a sound to match, any moment now—

T-ting... ting!

No—somehow the sound had come out rather stingy.

Had something gone wrong?

Just then, some soldiers passing nearby looked up at the bell tower, clicking their tongues.

"That damn blockhead of a bell's gone off on its own again. Good thing you can barely hear the thing."

"How the hell did it know to ring on its own back when there was an actual crisis, anyway?"

"That's just a story people tell. Where in the world would a bell like that even exist?"

"Ugh, that piece of junk. Somebody oughta scrap it if they could."

Somehow Clarisse felt sorry for the outer wall.

"Are you all right?"

〈Get away! I don't want to talk to something like you!〉

Clarisse tried speaking to it again, but the outer wall gave her no answer.