PDCOO Chapter 22

"When you sent me away yesterday, you said, 'counting by labor, you've repaid your debt to Hans three times over'—that was an exaggeration after all. Understood. The work you'd assigned me was too easy. From now on, give me anything. I can catch wolves again. I can peel three sacks of onions."

"Wait! I'm telling you, you don't have to repay it!"

"Please don't refuse me. I will prove my worth by any means available. Ah—the pig looks hungry. What should I feed it?"

"Squeak! Squeeeak!"

Complete disaster.

Karlah addressed the most urgent issue first.

"Don't hold the pig like you're nursing a newborn! Good heavens. How am I supposed to trust you with anything!"

"Tell me once and I'll learn and do it immediately. Where should the pig go? It can't go in the communal pen."

"For a proper pen here... ah, there's the old vegetable storage out back. Put it there for now and come back."

"Understood."

Bertram carried the piglet across the restaurant. Anna trailed after him with a warm, pleased smile that she made no effort to conceal.

She looked oddly triumphant.

Karlah watched them go, unaware that her daughter was thinking: See, I knew it—cute wins every time.

She directed her sharp gaze, now with nowhere else to go, squarely at the village chief's face.

"Chief. What exactly did I ask of you?"

"...You only asked me for a ride. You didn't say to keep him from coming back."

"Keep your nonsense to yourself. If we keep taking him in, he might actually put down roots here!"

"It's not exactly new for a stray Anna picks up to become a village worker. What are you suddenly afraid of?"

The chief rubbed his face with his dry hands and looked up. That shameless expression said he'd already decided things would go this way.

Karlah suppressed the urge to give him a proper hit.

"Most of the people we took in back then were injured, and I bore with it thinking of the husbands and friends who died in the war. Chief. I just want to live seeing only things that put my mind at ease. Peaceful things. Familiar people only..."

Even as she said it, Karlah kept glancing back over her shoulder, not knowing when Bertram might return.

The chief understood that feeling. Who among those who had lived through the war did not long for peace?

"Karlah. I can guarantee you one thing. He's not a bad one."

"Did he buy you drinks?"

"What do you take me for! Ahem. Well. The city was having a festival, and there was this strange competition—"

The chief continued.

About how, at the festival where they'd released wild boars, Bertram had carried out the injured as well. And then, drawing a long breath and leading with I'm sorry, about the human trafficking ring.

Karlah's face went pale.

The chief stumbled through an apology. "No matter how many times I say it, it won't be enough—but I'm sorry. I couldn't stop the girls from walking into danger."

"What happened—did the guards come quickly?"

"No. While the guards were fumbling, Bertram went into the trafficking den alone and got them both out."

"He..."

"This much I can say for certain. Bertram is a good person."

The chief looked at her.

The yellowed eyes of a long-weathered drinker.

But what they carried was something genuine.

The wish that good things would happen to good people. Karlah—who had not yet washed herself clean of the war's wounds—was surely included in that wish.

"If you want him gone, say the word any time. But I wanted you to know: there's no need to be afraid before the fact."

With those words, the chief climbed back into the cart. It clattered away down the road, and soon Anna and Bertram returned from the back of the house.

"Mother, I've made a pen! It was the offspring of the fattest pig in the city—it'll definitely grow huge!"

"The food they feed pigs in the city and the food we can provide are not the same thing. Don't get your hopes up."

"...Ah. Right."

"So."

Karlah turned sharply to face Bertram.

"From now on, Bertram, you are personally responsible for that pig's wellbeing. Understood?"

The sudden redirect made Anna's eyes go wide. "Is this to put Bertram to work properly? Can I now feed him without any guilt?"

"When were you ever guilty about it. If that pig loses so much as a sliver of weight, out he goes immediately."

"Bertram is just a little hard to communicate with—everything else he does well! He'll take excellent care of the pig. Won't you?"

Anna made a spectacle of herself in front of a silently nodding Bertram—bouncing, fussing, utterly unself-conscious.

Whatever had happened to the cautious, watchful Anna from a moment ago.

'Really... why does she like him so much.'

Forcing down that anxious worry, Karlah named her conditions.

"Bertram. I'm not granting you unlimited permission to stay. At most, only until that pig is large enough to slaughter. And if you cause any trouble, you're out immediately—that goes without saying."

"Understood."

"And most importantly—you sleep at the communal farm quarters every night. You can keep the place tidy?"

"Of course."

These were reasonable conditions. Anna nodded as well.

Karlah, perhaps not pleased by how readily Bertram agreed, began thinking up more troublesome conditions. But the people gathering outside the restaurant interrupted her.

"Not opening for dinner?"

"Oh—just a moment! Coming right now! Anna, open up quickly. Bertram, follow me—I need ingredients prepped."

"Understood. I'll wash my hands first."

Bertram ran to the well. His sleeves rolled up over forearms corded with muscle. He could have passed for a blacksmith from some old myth, forging a blade for the god of gods.

The thing in his hand was a sliver of soap barely half the size of his palm.

"...By the way, Anna."

"Oh—yes?"

"What are you staring at. Did you not hear what I said?"

"I'm going, I'm going!"

Her rabbit of a daughter went running.

Karlah watched Bertram with complicated feelings.

He seemed fundamentally diligent.

He had thrown himself into danger to save Anna. That was something to be grateful for.

She took a deep breath, and for just a moment—really only a moment—let herself imagine Bertram as a son-in-law.

In the imagination, Anna was flattened within three seconds.

"No. Absolutely not!"

Bertram, who had been crossing the kitchen threshold, stopped.

"I beg your pardon? Should I not come in yet?"

"Wait there, I'll be right with you!"

Karlah ran into the kitchen, making a vow to herself.

Even if the chief acknowledged he was a good person. Even if Anna broke into that warm, helpless smile every time she looked at him.

She herself would never be caught off guard so carelessly.

The villagers showed different reactions to Bertram's return to the restaurant. Some burst out laughing—picked up another stray, did she—while others kept their distance.

When asked how long she'd be keeping him, Karlah pointed to the pigpen she'd had set up at the back of the house. No later than the day that piglet was old enough to slaughter, she said.

After dinner service ended, Karlah sent Bertram out to the yard and pressed his pack and a lamp into his hands.

"Do you remember where the communal quarters are? Should I take you there?"

"That won't be necessary."

Unlike Karlah's concern, Bertram took the lamp without a word of complaint and set out.

He had long been accustomed to walking in the dark.

Night and day are different in the countryside.

A light flickering far in the distance cannot serve as a map. It only muddies one's sense of distance and leads people astray, like a will-o'-the-wisp.

Bertram's careful steps had barely carried him clear of the restaurant when—

"Boo!"

Anna jumped out and blocked his path.

"Ha ha ha—obviously you're not startled!"

"No. Was there something you needed?"

"I came out to talk to you. We have that conversation we didn't finish the other night, don't we."

"You mean my curse."

Anna nodded, then fell into step beside him and began to walk.

Her tousled golden hair bobbed somewhere around the level of his solar plexus. Her voice sounded exactly like a bird's nest speaking.

"What kind of person put the curse on you?"

"The one who performed it was a mage under contract. The decision was entirely my own. I needed to end the war as quickly as possible."

"Even so! Getting yourself cursed just to win a war? When you end up suffering like this afterward!"

"It was the best option available to me at the time. If I'd lost without even trying, my life after the war might have been defined entirely by regret. 'If I'd done everything I could, maybe we would have won.'"

"...And you have no regrets about the choice itself?"

"None. Besides—I've found a thread of change."

It was obvious who he meant.

Anna's shoulders gave a small jolt.

The hair draped over them trembled, and Bertram noticed—but chose not to remark on it.

"I'm in your care for the duration of my stay. And all the better if I can repay my debt in the process."

"There you go about the debt again. You'll be trying to repay a debt you don't even understand the nature of, and you'll never make it out of this village."

"That would be fine."

The lightly delivered words made Anna's shoulders tremble again.

And somehow she looked up at him with an indignant expression and burst out:

"Don't say things you don't mean. I'll really fatten you up so thoroughly that you won't be able to leave."

"To render someone of my height incapacitated through weight gain would require a great deal of food. Please don't strain yourself. I would stay for nothing more than a single 'don't go.'"

Bertram was speaking the truth.

He intended to be wherever he was needed.