COARV Chapter 37

Lesche got up without protest. I'd meant to say we should ask Masha, or Ben, or maybe Linon—anyway, someone in this household—to change his bandage properly, but instead, to my surprise, he pulled one out and wound it himself with the ease of long practice.

Ah, right. He'd done just about everything himself in the original too, hadn't he. A little at odds, sometimes, with his exalted rank.

I watched Lesche's silver hair catch the light and spoke.

"Your Highness, the sorcerers are coming today, aren't they. Should I just hole up in the bedroom here?"

"Why? If anyone should be avoiding anyone, it's them avoiding you."

"Since you're the one who saved my life, I won't report you to the Grand Temple for heresy."

"How generous of you."

Lesche huffed a short laugh.

"They're not the sort of people it's pleasant to run into, that's true enough. Still, my lady doesn't need to hide on their account."

"So you're saying I should do as I please."

"So long as you don't take a whip to them."

"Talking like I'm some kind of degenerate—"

I'd meant to protest further, but I shut my mouth instead and had to admit it.

Shit. Last year I actually was one.

"Anyway, I understand what Your Highness means."

I turned the subject lightly, propping my chin on the back of my hand and watching Lesche a moment before speaking again.

"Your Highness. There's something else I've been wondering."

"What."

Lesche answered without even lifting his head. I'd been curious about it ever since I first looked around the mansion, so I asked.

"Why does a place like this... no, I'm sorry. What I mean is, why keep a butler and a housekeeper in a mansion that's—well, not in a normal state? The other two don't seem to be doing much repair work on the place either."

Setting aside the shadows that had swallowed the mansion, there was no sign anywhere that a plasterer or a carpenter had ever come through to do a careful repair job. Wherever the mold hadn't reached, it was clear someone swept and cleaned every day—but that was all. And to begin with, the gardener and the chambermaid weren't people employed to fix the outside of a house.

Lesche tied off the bandage and said, without looking up, "I never told them to stay."

"Then what is it? Is there some unavoidable reason they can't leave the mansion?"

"I've thought this for a while now."

"...Sorry?"

"My lady really does have sharp instincts."

"...I was just saying something. Guess it turned out to be true."

I let my eyes wander uselessly. The silence suddenly felt awkward. Trying to shift the subject, I brought up something else, more or less at random.

"So that's why the castle didn't have a butler. Ben's tied down here."

"No."

"Sorry?"

"Only Masha's bound."

"Just Masha?"

"That's right. The others said they liked this mansion and wanted to stay. A lie, probably."

"..........."

That only Masha was bound came as a surprise. Because, out of everyone in this manor, Masha was the one whose expression seemed the most at peace. It wasn't that the others looked frightened, exactly. But Masha carried herself like the maid of a Grand Duchess with a firm, settled place in the world—someone staying in an ordinary house that would never, ever collapse.

This whole vast Laurel Manor's green mansion never appears again in the original. It even, for whatever reason, ends up completely in ruins within a year. The others couldn't possibly be entirely unaware of the bleak sense of ruin hanging over this place, even if they didn't know it precisely.

Which meant Masha, bound here, would die too. So the peace she carried wasn't born of security at all, but resignation—the composure of someone who has already seen where her own coffin will be laid. A brief thought crossed my mind: Masha was someone with an unusually strong inner core.

"Are you calling the sorcerers to get Masha out of this mansion?"

"Yes. That's why I'm calling them. I've kept calling them, all along."

"I had no idea Your Highness was such a kind man."

While we talked, Lesche, done tying the bandage, rose from where he'd been sitting.

"Because she's bound here on my account."

"...........?"

Because of him?

It was a strange thing to hear. His red eyes had sunk, somewhere along the way, into something quieter. I stared at that face. It felt, for a moment, like catching a glimpse of a boy who'd been badly hurt, and my mood turned strange because of it. I didn't say anything more.

Lesche strapped on his sword early and went out to check the boundary line. I saw him off out of courtesy and glanced up at the sky. Snow was falling without end. Even the day before, it had piled up enough to swallow an ankle whole, but today it was nearly up to the knee.

I glanced over at Linon, who'd come running out to see Lesche off with me. He was the one person in this freezing mansion suffering the most. By now he'd taken to wrapping his sleeping bag around his shoulders like a cloak.

"Linon."

"Yes, my lady?"

"With snow like this, how is His Highness going to check the boundary line? Can he even ride a horse?"

"Uh... His Highness probably just walked, I'd guess?"

"Walked? In snow like this? Won't he get stranded?"

"His Highness—stranded?"

Linon repeated it back with a look of genuine bewilderment, and I got the gist of it well enough. Right. Lesche Berke was the male lead of this novel. The strongest man alive, and a knight besides. It wasn't even a snow-buried mountain, just a sprawling estate—heavy snowfall or not, he wasn't the sort of man it could touch.

Once I chalked it up to the original novel's default setting, it all made perfect sense.

But Linon's expression was still far from good. When I asked what was wrong, he let out a long, heavy sigh.

"I just got word by mana communicator that the heavy snow is delaying the sorcerers even further. It's an expensive thing, the communicator—we barely ever use it—so for them to contact us urgently with one... They were supposed to have already arrived last midnight."

"Can't be helped. But is there some reason it's a problem if the sorcerers are delayed?"

"Because it delays our return to the main castle even further!"

Linon wailed the words with a pitiful expression, still shivering as usual today. Whatever god governs the original novel must have handed Linon a solid ten in intelligence and about a one in health. Part of me was curious about these sorcerers coming from the Kingdom of Nesla, but another question had bloomed in my mind besides.

"Linon."

"Yes, my lady?"

"Um..."

I hesitated a beat before asking.

"So—why is Masha tied to this mansion?"

"Ah, Madam Masha?"

"Yes."

"Well, you see, Lady Seria."

Contrary to my expectation of a brief summary, what I got instead was—

"The previous Grand Duke once insulted His Highness, when he was still a boy, together with his wicked illegitimate son."

"Sorry?"

"His Highness was only around fifteen at the time, but he was already the formally recognized heir to the Grand Duchy. Still, the previous Grand Duke and his bastard son wanted him driven out of the succession."

"..........."

"They kept finding one excuse or another to pick at, and eventually tried to make Sir Elliot—who was His Highness's young knight-page back then—into nothing more than a lowly gatekeeper for this green mansion. They even brought out the Case of the Azure Sea to threaten Sir Elliot with it."

"The Case of the Azure Sea?"

"Yes. A family heirloom of House Berke. If you put your hair inside it, you become unable to leave Laurel Manor. In exchange, it activates the protective ward guarding the manor, which is why older knights pursuing honor used to take on the role of the manor's guardian."

"And they demanded that of a young Elliot?"

"Yes. Saying—if he truly cared for House Berke, what possible excuse could he have not to become its guardian? So poor young Sir Elliot was about to become a living mummy of this green mansion under the name of 'guardian,' with no way out—when Madam Masha, who had been the previous Grand Duchess's most trusted attendant, volunteered to take that punishment in his place instead."

Linon told it all with a bright, breezy face.

"It's a very long story, but to sum it up simply, that's how it went. From that day on, Madam Masha became someone who couldn't take a single step outside the green mansion, and the others chose to stay here with her out of close friendship. If it weren't for the state the green mansion's fallen into, it might've been a fairly comfortable life for her. But given the way things turned out..."

"..........."

I lost my words for a moment. See, what I'd actually wanted to know was whether Masha was bound here by some spell or curse—that was the question. Instead I'd suddenly been handed a heavy, detailed piece of the past, and it caught me off guard. Linon, whether or not he sensed my embarrassment, went right on adding more unnecessary things.

"So please don't take offense at His Highness for bringing you to a mansion in such a state, my lady. He probably just wanted to show you to Madam Masha, at least once. She's always had a very strong sense of loyalty toward the Grand Duchess."

"I never took offense."

"Good, then."

"Is that why you explained it in such detail—because you were worried I might have?"

"Yes, my lady."

Linon nodded.

"Is it really all right to tell an outsider something so deep about House Berke?"

"Is my lady an outsider? You're a member of House Berke now. If anything, you're the person closest to House Berke, next to His Highness. Of course, the imperial approval to make you the formal Grand Duchess will take a year—but that's just convention. You can ignore it."

It was shameless, but there was real sincerity in it, and it left me lost in thought regardless.

Whenever I imagined myself as the "Grand Duchess," the word provisional was always there, quietly omitted. And a thing left out on purpose is a thing that's actually attached to every sentence underneath. Without needing to spell it out in words, I was someone who'd become Grand Duchess only because she'd been saved from a brush with death.

Of course, I had no intention of divorcing him—not until Lesche himself said the word. Because I was a person with some sense of shame. I'd borrowed the empire's finest unmarried man's first marriage, right down to owing him my life, and I wasn't shameless enough to now say, well, no further business here, I'll be stepping down from this terrifying role as mistress of the Grand Duchy.

Besides, I have a feeling Lesche wouldn't just let that go.

Just—I didn't know why, but that was the gut instinct I had. And Linon, too—sure, right now he was all silly and kind like this. But if I tried to pull my foot out first, I had the distinct feeling he'd retaliate somehow and shake me down for everything I had. He'd been fairly frightening in the original, after all.

"Linon."

I decided to try a bit of preemptive practice, seeing as I'd soon have to drop into banmal with the chief aide standing in front of me.

"I'll take what I just heard to my grave."

The moment I said it like a true Berke retainer would, Linon's mouth curved into a smile. He stretched out a finger and pointed toward the cliff standing behind the mansion's left side.

"You can't see it right now, buried under the snow, but that over there is actually a sugar rock cliff. Catches the light like jewels when the sun hits it—quite lovely. You should ride out and take a look sometime."