SN Chapter 7

The broad gardens of House Redwheel. Kallix stood at the window and looked down.

Below, in the flower beds the estate's gardeners had coaxed to brilliant perfection, people were taking their afternoon walk. One woman had her black hair bound back in a single tail, wearing a white shirt, gray trousers, and suspenders. It was not the sort of dress one expected of a noble daughter. But Rosaline had always found dresses cumbersome—for someone whose livelihood required constant movement, they would have been a particular torment.

As she strolled along the flower beds, a train of maids trailed faithfully behind her. One held a parasol against the sun, for the young lady's complexion. One carried a shawl, in case the young lady grew cold. Another came rushing after with a fan, in case the young lady grew warm, and a fourth toted a basket of snacks, in case the young lady grew hungry. They were near his own age, these women—the same years he'd spent learning to read rooms, to manage estates, to hold his face still when it wanted to do otherwise. They had spent theirs learning her. Following her through gardens she didn't care about, holding parasols against a sun she never noticed, laughing when she said you're prettier with the absolute sincerity of someone who had not calculated the effect at all.

They weren't troubled. They were delighted.

Kallix's expression twisted.

"Miss, look—the flowers have bloomed so beautifully."

"You're prettier."

Oh! Oh! The maids dissolved into delighted laughter. Kallix had seen this before. Spring days, blossoms opening—a half-hearted outing made for the sake of young maids who'd wanted an excuse to go outside, because Rosaline herself had never particularly cared for such things. The maids would chatter about how lovely the flowers were, how pretty, how lovely, and Rosaline would

'You're prettier, Illya.'

—steal some stern heart away, precisely like that. The maids were astonished that their young lady, even without her memory, was behaving exactly as she always had.

"How extraordinary, Miss—you're exactly the same even without remembering!"

"She really is our Miss, isn't she!"

Their words circled his head.

That wasn't Rosaline. That isn't Rosaline. That isn't his sister.

It wasn't.

Kallix riffled absently through the papers in his hand—Alter's report on shadows. He'd been staring at it long enough by now that he could recite it word for word, not a syllable out of place.

'I came to protect.'

Protect what?

'I came to protect him.'

Protect who?

'The master of the White Night.'

A complete stranger. A simple monster wearing his sister's skin. That was all it had been, until those words. Until the very moment he had settled, through all his doubting and doubting again, on complete stranger—and she had been saying exactly what his sister would have said. The name Rosaline had defied their father to protect. The name that had forced Kallix to sheathe his sword.

He found himself, without quite meaning to, letting out a hollow laugh.

Perhaps, Kallix thought. Perhaps this was something she had sent. Perhaps this was the best choice available to someone with death at the door. Perhaps—this was the shape she had wanted.

That night, he had beheaded the spy sprawled across the study floor. A man dead with his neck twisted wrong was the kind of thing anyone might question.

'The night air is cold. Please go in carefully. Sister.'

The word came out like something he had to reach for—then he gathered up the spy's body and left.

Two weeks had passed since that night. Rosaline's wounds had closed to scarring, nearly entirely healed. She used fork and knife with ease now, and no longer retrieved fallen food from the floor. During her convalescence, Edelweiss had seized on her daughter's lost memory as an opening and purchased dress after dress—but at some point Rosaline had simply stopped wearing them. Shirts, trousers, boots cutting off just below the calf. She wandered the estate in the exact outfit that had once driven Edelweiss to weeping, just as before.

And she was learning to read and write. Still incomplete, but swift. It looked less like acquiring new knowledge than gradually reawakening something she'd known long ago and only misplaced.

Rosaline, who had been examining the flower beds, abruptly turned her head. Her gaze found Kallix where he stood watching from the window, arms crossed. She raised her hand to her chest and gave a small wave. Kallix's expression went briefly off-balance—a little stunned—but he lifted his hand and waved back. Rosaline turned the corner of her mouth up in a shallow smile, then walked on alongside the maids. Her figure grew smaller, then disappeared behind the building.

"Are you all right, sir?"

Alter, who had been standing quietly behind him, spoke. The question held several possible meanings at once. Are you all right as in are you yourself all right—or is it all right to leave her as she is. Kallix had been thinking of nothing but Rosaline for the whole of the day, and so he took it as the latter.

He fed the papers in his hand into the fireplace. Whether Alter's expression went stricken or not, Kallix picked up the flint, tak-tak, and lit the fire with practiced ease. Alter looked as though he might weep. His blood, sweat, and tears were about to become ash.

"I'm a good younger brother, you see."

Good Kallix. Our Cal. What a good boy. Words Rosaline had often said to him as a child. Kallix smiled, a little bitterly.

"If this was truly what she wished for—"

The flames, just catching, flickered in Kallix's eyes. They burned through every scrap of paper, every drop of ink, and went on wavering when there was nothing left.

"—then I'll follow it."

Thick black smoke trailed along its path and out through the chimney. Rosaline, walking below, glanced up at the smoke rising into the sky—then turned back and walked on.

"Young master!"

No running—a cardinal rule. No shouting—a second. No undignified speech—a third. Every principle the man had built a thirty-year career upon came down at once, crashed and scattered across the courtyard flagstones, and kept going.

Kallix, midway through his sword forms in the training yard, read from the sight of the butler sprinting toward him that something had happened. He also read, somehow, that it involved her.

"Sir Raymond of House Grandram has called to pay his respects to the young lady!"

Urgent. Yes. Damn it all. Kallix was soaked through with sweat and couldn't spare the thought of washing—only managed to drag a coat over himself. Knowledge of Rosaline's memory loss was confined to the household of House Redwheel. Internally, Edelweiss's interest lay in preserving her daughter's marriage prospects. Externally, Kallix had judged that Rosaline's current position within the White Night Order was too precarious to risk exposing.

The Order's captain had always kept close watch on Rosaline. House Redwheel was First Prince faction. Yet its eldest daughter had planted herself in the Second Prince's guard—the captain's regard for her could hardly have been warm. He'd been quiet this past month because her injuries were severe and his schedule had been consumed by the fallout from the hunting competition. But enough time had passed for matters to settle, and her sick leave was drawing to a close.

Raymond of House Grandram. One of the small number Rosaline had counted as real friends within the Order. He had come for a private sick-call, presumably—and presumably carrying some pressure from the captain along with him. But apart from the question of her recovery, there was a clear and present reason her return ought to be delayed regardless. Her speech was improving, but she was still struggling with the distinction between formal and informal address. And she had no memory of the original Rosaline's life.

Kallix followed the butler into the main building, and a cluster of maids and footmen attached themselves to him in transit. Their faces were plastered with anxiety, which told him to move faster.

"Young master—Sir Raymond insisted on seeing the young lady first and went straight up!"

"Why didn't anyone stop him?"

"He said he didn't need anyone's permission to visit a friend and simply went—he's a nobleman, sir, gentry, we couldn't very well lay hands on him—"

Kallix set his jaw and ran. Young master! Young master! The voices rang behind him with increasing urgency. Rosaline's door stood wide open. In the doorway, a cluster of maids was wringing their hands, and the moment they spotted Kallix their faces crumpled as though they might burst into tears. Young master, young master, young master! He thought he was collecting a year's worth of that particular phrase in a single afternoon.

The scene before him recalled something. That steak. The raw, undisguised, wholly wild act of tearing into a steak with bare hands—

In the room stood a man in the uniform of the White Night Order. Raymond of House Grandram—someone Kallix knew well enough. His posture, however, was rather unusual. He was on both knees before Rosaline, who stood over him with the air of a general commanding all under heaven, and he was trembling.

"How dare you touch me. Do you want to die?"

Her speech pattern had taken on a distinct resemblance to Kallix's own. He'd noticed her watching him covertly these past weeks—it seemed she'd been absorbing his register throughout. That aside—what she'd actually said was rather alarming. Touch? What had been touched? Kallix's eyes lit with something sharp as he seized Raymond's shoulder.

"You—what on earth is—w-what has happened here? Sir Raymond? Sir? Sir?"

The cold precision in his voice as he grabbed the man shifted, across a very short span of time, into something considerably more varied. Accusation. Bewilderment. Outright alarm.

Raymond's complexion had gone completely white in a way that looked serious. He caught Kallix's arm, trembling hard, made a choked ghk of a sound, and fainted dead away. Thunk. The floor shook with it. A young maid startled and began sobbing earnestly. Somewhere in the distance the butler could be heard coming at a dead run. Rosaline was at the side table, spreading jam on a scone and humming to herself.

"..."

Complete chaos.

Raymond was moved to a guest room. When his jacket was removed, a vivid red mark was visible on his solar plexus—likely to bruise spectacularly within the day. Kallix first asked his sister what had happened. She tucked a strand of fallen hair neatly behind her ear and sipped her milk tea with an expression of supreme indifference.

"That thing is a very, very bad man."

"...You shouldn't call a person 'that thing,' Sister."

Entirely unhelpful. He turned to the maid who attended her directly. The story came out: Sir Raymond had seen her and immediately swept her into an embrace. He'd been overjoyed to find her safe—had acted on the feeling without thinking. There had been no groping, nothing inappropriate, nothing of the sort.

Unfortunately, the previous day—the mild and gentle young lady being a cause for such concern, having apparently lost her memory along with all attendant common sense—her maids had sat down together and explained:

'Miss, we servants sometimes need to touch you when we dress you—things like that. That's fine. But if someone you don't know tries to touch you, or pet you, you must say something. That person is a very, very bad man, you see? We'll give him a scolding.'

'What about Kallix?'

'Kallix, the young master, is fine. But if someone you don't know does something like that...'

Just hit them, they had apparently told her. Young master Kallix will sort it out.

Kallix closed both eyes. What they had failed to account for was that to a Rosaline with no memory, everyone outside family and the household was, by definition, someone she didn't know. He walked with Rosaline to her room. Only once everyone had been cleared out did the lesson begin.