How to Stop Being His Master
I won't hold a grudge.
Staring at the ceiling beams of the inn on the outskirts of Valk, Elise spent the entire night turning Kyle's words over in her mind. At first they had sounded like comfort. Then they felt like rejection. Only around dawn did she finally recognize what they truly were. They were a verdict.
Grudges are exchanged between people who still owe each other something. Only the one who still has a claim left to collect can afford to resent. Saying he would not hold a grudge meant there was nothing left for him to receive.
With the declaration that ten years had been enough to repay everything, he had essentially handed her the final seal. If it had been hatred, there might still have been hope. Hatred carries temperature. Once it cools, it can transform into something else. But I won't hold a grudge. It's fine. Take care. Those words held no temperature at all.
Her memories of returning from the embankment to the inn the previous night came only in fragments. Walter draping his coat over her without a word after seeing her mud-caked knees. The way she had kept her grip fierce on the resignation letter in the carriage, even while crying, terrified it might wrinkle yet refusing to loosen her fingers.
Only those two fragments remained vivid.
At the end of her tears she discovered one truth: he had never lied to her. Not when he said it was too expensive, not when he said he would not hold a grudge. He had been painfully honest. He had never deceived her. The one who had deceived him for ten long years was her, and yesterday it was not his world that had gone awry—only her own expectations.
So there was nowhere for her anger to go. Sorrow with no outlet for anger has nowhere to dwell either; it simply tapped against the ceiling all night and then vanished.
"...Your Highness. Have you woken?"
Walter's voice came from beyond the door. He was not asking whether she had slept, but whether she had stopped crying. Neither of them spoke of what he had witnessed at the embankment the night before.
"Come in."
Walter carried the breakfast tray himself. On a covert journey without maids, the vice-captain had been reduced to serving meals, yet he did not appear to mind the task.
"I will remain until you finish eating."
"I am not a child."
"If you were, it would be simpler. Children cry when they are hungry. Your Highness merely skips meals and endures, does she not?"
Elise lifted the spoon. She intended to stop after three mouthfuls, but Walter stood with arms folded, unmoving. Realizing he knew her habit of eating only three spoonfuls of soup, she eventually emptied the bowl.
He had told her he learned such things at the training grounds. That to serve Her Highness properly, one must know everything.
The bottom of the emptied bowl blurred once more at the thought.
"Your Highness. I must speak plainly now."
Walter cleared the tray and began.
"You must return to the North."
"..."
"The pretext of recuperation cannot last more than a month. With the Imperial Intelligence Bureau already active in Valk, if word spreads that the former fiancée who broke her engagement is lingering in this city—and it would take them only three days to learn whom she followed—then that man will suffer. Not you, Your Highness. Him."
It was a clever argument. Knowing she would not move for her own safety, he had wagered the man's instead.
"And... you saw him yesterday. He is doing well. People call him by name. He has comrades he can trust with his back. He stands in a place he chose for himself and receives his due worth. For the first time in ten years."
"I know."
"If Your Highness remains at his side, that place will tremble. In a city where the Grand Duke's daughter resides, he will once again become 'the Grand Duke's daughter's escort knight.' The name he finally earned will be taken from him again."
Elise gazed out the window. The morning market of Valk was loud with life. Somewhere in that clamor lay his new existence.
Walter's words were entirely correct. So correct they were cruel.
"Walter."
"Yes."
"Yesterday... I must have looked ridiculous to you."
Walter did not answer at once. Like a soldier making a report, he chose his words with care.
"That your eyes change only when you look at him. Half the people at the training grounds already knew. The only ones who did not were the two of you. One learned the truth yesterday."
"...Half of them knew."
"Yes. So it was not ridiculous. Being ten years too late is not amusing. It is painful."
Walter lifted the tray and walked to the door, then added without turning.
"And the remaining fool will realize it one day as well. It is not that his mind is dull. His scale is simply broken. A scale that measures his own worth as zero. That can be repaired. It will take time, but it can be fixed."
"...Give me three days."
"Your Highness."
"I am not fleeing. There is something I must settle. In three days I will return north. I swear it."
The following day, Elise dressed in plain commoner clothes and went out to the Valk market. She pulled up her hood and carried a bundle wrapped in black cloth slung across her back. Walter followed five paces behind.
The disguise was poor, but the people of Valk were not idle enough to peer into strangers' faces.
She observed the mercenaries' alley only from a distance. In front of the tavern marked with a wolf skull, the mercenaries were already loud from early morning. Their tales of the subjugation had swollen to three times their original size. How a gray shadow had swept through the alley. How the troll had died without even realizing it had been cut.
At the edge of that noise, he sat.
By the doorway, sharpening his sword. The same posture she had always seen, the same familiar motion of his hands. What differed was everything around him. Every passing mercenary tossed him a word.
Kyle, lend me your whetstone. Kyle, we're collecting for lunch—you chip in too. Kyle, the captain was looking for you.
He answered briefly each time, never once lowering his gaze. He was sitting not as someone's backrest but as a person.
From the shadows at the mouth of the alley, Elise watched Kyle for a long time. Her chest felt as though it were being torn apart, yet strangely the corners of her mouth kept softening. It was the first time she understood that two such sensations could exist inside one body.
You're doing well. Without me.
No—to be precise. If precision was his way, then learning precision must be part of her apology.
You're doing well because I am not there.
"Your Highness. We should go."
"...Yes."
On the way back they passed a roasted chestnut stall at the market corner. Elise walked three steps past it, then turned around and bought a bag.
"Miss, those are good, right? That stall roasts them best in all of Valk."
A voice broke in beside her. A boy of about thirteen stood holding a bundle of errands. His face was familiar. He was the child who had clung to Kyle's waist at the subjugation site the night before.
"...It's you."
"Huh? You know me? Oh, were you at the embankment yesterday? I was there too! Our uncle took down the troll in one swing, whoosh—"
The boy's hand sliced through the air. Walter cleared his throat behind her, but Elise raised a hand to stop him.
"Our uncle?"
"Uncle Kyle! He's going to be my sword teacher. He promised—twice."
"...He said he would teach you the sword."
"Yes! But he won't teach the whoosh part. He says that's impossible to teach. So stingy."
The boy stomped his feet in front of the chestnut stall, then suddenly grew serious.
"Miss, but our uncle is a good man. When I first met him he fixed the village barn, and even when the guild master cursed him he never got angry... Oh, right. Uncle likes roasted chestnuts too. When I gave him some he made this really strange face. You know the face—when someone likes something but can't say they like it."
The face of liking something yet being unable to say so. What a thirteen-year-old had read in a single afternoon had taken her ten years to see. No—she had seen it but pretended not to.
"...What is your name?"
"Pin!"
"Pin. Please look after him well."
"Huh? What do you mean... Who are you, miss?"
"Someone who likes roasted chestnuts."
Elise placed her entire bag into the boy's hands and turned away. Walter asked no questions.
On the third day, a letter from the Crown Prince reached the inn. It opened with a remark on how peculiar it was to choose a free city rather than a hot spring for recuperation, and closed with concern that such a precious person might come to harm given the recent unrest in the south. The postscript, as always, was a single line.
Valk is an interesting city. These days, interesting sword stories are coming from there.
— Crown Prince Leonard
Elise burned the letter in the lamp flame. Her hands did not tremble. Instead, the timetable was moved forward. The Crown Prince's postscripts were always half a step ahead, and within that half step she had to do what she could.
She summoned Walter.
"We leave for the North at dawn tomorrow."
"...A wise decision."
"Before then, there is something I must entrust to you. I will finish it tonight."
On the night of the third day, beneath the lamp in the inn room, a single sheet of paper lay open. The resignation letter. Three lines with worn edges. A document she had taken out and stared at a thousand times over the past three months. Beside it rested the seal and ink pad of the Grand Duke's heir.
Please approve and deliver.
That is all I ask.
Over ten years, the only thing he had ever asked of her was this. Not a raise in pay, not a promotion, not an apology. Simply to end it. To let him go.
She had known, enduring three months without stamping it. This paper was the final tether. The shackle of an unauthorized escort, the justification to come after him, the qualification of master. The moment it was sealed, all of them would vanish.
He would become a completely free man, and she would hold no rights whatsoever in his life.
Therefore she had to stamp it.
Elise understood now. In his world, there were only two places for her: master, or threat. She had learned at the embankment that no words could reach him from either position. Places where apologies became formalities and confessions became security concerns. To reach him, she needed a third place.
The third place could only be born by vacating the seat of master.
"...How strange."
Elise murmured as she lifted the seal.
For ten years she had believed that keeping him at her side meant only commanding him. As apprentice, as escort, as personal guard. She had even blocked his promotion, afraid the tether might break. Yet that tether had, from the very beginning, been what bound him to the farthest place from her.
A master does not know the name of the sword. A person's name is spoken by one who is not their master.
Before stamping, Elise spoke her promises aloud. There was no listener. Therefore they had to be exact.
She pressed the seal into the ink. Red stained the surface. Her hand trembled, and this time she did not hide it. There was no one to see, but even if there had been, she would not have hidden it. She had been taught that the Grand Duke's daughter does not tremble. That lesson, too, she resigned today.
On the paper, beneath the three lines of text, the seal was pressed. While the red mark dried, Elise did not cry.
Instead she took out a fresh sheet of paper. Three months earlier, in the office of the Grand Duke's castle, she had crumpled five sheets yet stopped at the first line.
To Kyle—
Those words had felt like theft, so she had burned them. Having never once called his name, to call it for the first time on paper seemed cowardly.
Now she called it. At the embankment, with her voice, twice. Once it had not reached him, once it had struck his back and fallen, but she had called it nonetheless.
Qualifications are not given. They are made. She had learned that on the dirt floor.
The pen touched the paper. For the first time it did not hesitate. The first line flowed freely.
To Kyle.
This time it continued on to the second line.