The Silence Between the Shelves
"So yesterday's little commotion wasn't worth a fuss after all."
My tone was perfectly composed. Poznan, catching the meaning behind my words, bowed her head a little lower.
"Whatever power the House of Biauby wields, it could never reach the royal family. More than that, Lady Tatra acted far beyond her station toward His Highness Henrik, to whom you are married. So I don't believe yesterday's affair is anything worth worrying over. His Highness did only what he was entitled to do."
She explained it all to me in detail. Judging by that, she had likely been present at the scene herself yesterday.
So the newspapers had ended up subject to the royal family's interference as well. So this is the weight of Henrik's authority, I thought.
From what I could gather, the disgraces that had clung to me like a tail back in the Kingdom of Francia were things the people here knew nothing about in any detail.
It was, after all, the affair of a distant country with little commerce between us—and if someone were determined to dig, they could certainly dig. But that was no concern of mine at the moment. To a reasonable degree, Henrik would block it for the sake of our bargain.
"And what do you make of it all, Poznan?"
"I merely follow His Highness's orders."
Resting my chin on my hand, legs crossed, I gazed down at her for a long moment.
"Ah. So you hold loyalty to His Highness, do you?"
"Your Highness, I am not a knight like my brother. My life is not one I would lay down."
Poznan's answer satisfied me. I judged that I had grasped where her heart stood well enough, and shifted into a more comfortable posture.
Even if she dealt in lies, there was no need to stir things up and root them out right now. There was no reason to force a cold bearing upon our very first meeting with the family of a knight Henrik trusted.
"I intend to visit the royal library. See to my dress."
When I arrived at the library, I deliberately sent Poznan away and entered alone. I had no desire to explain things to her without cause.
The library I stepped into by myself was as quiet as a forest path.
Being a royal library, I had expected it to be lavish and grandiose, but it was not.
The atmosphere was still and hushed; the smell of books poured thickly from between the densely packed shelves, and beyond the few sparse windows, the shadows of trees pooled like mist.
"Haaah……"
I drew in a deep breath and let it out. I could promise that this place would become my favorite in all of Bwendowska.
I was searching for where the books I needed might be shelved when—
"There you are."
Henrik appeared from beyond the tight rows of bookcases. Married though we were, we had hardly exchanged a word since the banquet the night before.
He maintained the same composed manner and cool voice as ever. As if yesterday's events had meant nothing at all to him.
"Yes, I was looking for something. What brings you here, Your Highness?"
Henrik walked between the brown shelves until he stood before me, then murmured low.
"There is something I need to verify among the information you gave me."
In the silence, his calm voice flowed through the air like wind.
"The same as you, it seems."
The information I had recently passed on had, in the end, concerned the spies who had slipped into this country. Instead of interrogating them or sending them back to their homeland, Henrik had chosen rather to interfere with their intelligence and turn it to strategic use.
But what information relating to that could be found in a library? Lost in thought, I tilted my head.
Henrik, looking down at me, braced a hand against the shelf and ran his fingers across the spines as though idly selecting a book.
"Tell me—are you perhaps interested in ciphers as well?"
His hand, gleaming even beneath the library's deep lamplight, drifted into my field of vision. On his finger sat a ring of a different kind from the one he had given me.
Black gemstones sat at its center, closely set with fragments of gold—a ring that looked ornate and precious. Ah, so this is how the royal family marks a marriage.
Instead of meeting his eyes, I watched those fingers gliding smoothly among the great, thick tomes, and asked,
"Do they keep books like that here? Your Highness—this is a library I'm permitted to use, I trust?"
A small laugh sounded over his even breathing. I whipped my head around to face him. Henrik was wearing a faint smile.
"This library belongs to the palace in which you reside."
Henrik finally seemed to settle on a book and picked it up. The cover had faded terribly with age, and it was crowded from edge to edge with the script of Bwendowska—no ordinary volume, it seemed.
"It will have nearly everything. What are you looking for?"
As a way of signaling that I was taking a moment to judge him, I ostentatiously touched my cheek and chin in front of him.
I thought: that's just like me—and just like him, too.
Really, to carry himself as though yesterday hadn't touched him in the slightest. Only one thing would ever truly matter to a man like that. He was even more ruthless than I was.
Of course, if yesterday produced no real scandal—neither for a prince's standing nor for that family's head—then it was a mercy as far as I was concerned.
And yet I had entertained these very thoughts, if only briefly, while reading the paper Poznan had brought me. Things like: If the head of House Biauby is truly so magnanimous, then why did his daughter behave as she did yesterday?
It didn't stop there. Even to an outsider like me, it seemed strange—a man of such standing and power in this country, personally searching for information in a library, when he could simply have set a knight to the task.
Then again, wasn't he the prince who had taken the field himself amid the tangled chaos of the battlefield? Whatever his reasons, it was no ordinary habit.
Clearly, this was a man who would know no satisfaction unless he did a thing with his own hands.
Thinking so made me a touch tense. In that moment, I resolved not to spin any needless lies.
After all, this was surely a man who would conduct the interrogations of his enemies personally. If I failed to hold up my end and showed even a whiff of betrayer, it was obvious that I, too, would one day find myself on his rack.
Henrik was still gazing steadily down at me. I played it cool, careful not to look suspicious.
"I want to study this country's history. Legends, folktales—anything at all, and the older the better."
"Your education seemed more than sufficient."
"Your Highness, those things fascinate me terribly."
"You're hardly studying myth for the first time at this stage. Tell me—does magic require imagination?"
Sharp as ever, this man. His piercing question felt as though it had suddenly carved straight through me, and before I knew it I was biting my lip.
I could have chosen to lie to him.
But what bound the two of us together was a bargain with a clear purpose and a clear price, and I owed him honest recompense in kind.
Henrik, though he knew of my disgraces, had concealed them so that others here would not easily discover them. It seemed he had done so purely because he had, with cold reason, understood the motive behind the request I made on our wedding night.
The wedding night. Tch—I nearly clicked my tongue. Knowing it was a pointless thought, I caught myself recalling that night all the same.
Like the Henrik standing before me now, I tried to carry my reasoning along a colder, more rational line.
If Henrik helped me, everything I did in this country would become vastly easier. And in truth, that would profit him as well. So this time, too, I chose to answer with the truth.
"Just as you say, Your Highness. I work my magic through imagination."
After all, he had witnessed me casting spells with his own eyes. That scene of a mysterious green glow shimmering from within a perfectly ordinary mirror.
"Tell me, my lady. You haven't forsaken the faith of Francia's patron goddess as well, have you?"