The Ledger Beneath the Floor
"My lady!"
The door burst open. Theodore came charging into the room with the Guard Captain and several knights at his back.
"Are you unharmed?"
His eyes swept the room in a single rapid pass. Zeke was still curled on the floor, both hands clamped over his head, whimpering strings of nonsense under his breath.
"What in the world..."
He clearly had not yet taken in the situation, so Odelli reduced what had just happened to a few spare lines.
"A man who has embezzled the castle's stores for ten years was caught in the act of theft, and when he moved to commit an impulsive murder on top of it, I subdued him."
The words ran on without a breath between them. Theodore gaped for only a moment before the question rising in him spilled out.
"...Who subdued him?"
"I did."
"...Pardon?"
Seasoned steward that he was, Theodore managed to parse her excessively compressed account. Accepting it was another matter. His face had gone rigid.
"You mean to say that you, alone, my lady... dealt with that man?"
He looked once at Zeke, who was shaking as if in a fit, and once at Odelli.
"It ended up that way."
For a moment a strange silence settled over the room.
The Guard Captain forgot his duty long enough to creak to a halt, then came to himself and began binding the sniveling Zeke. Even through pain beyond description, even as his whole body was lashed tight, Zeke cried out as if his life depended on it.
"My lady knows nothing of this!"
The desperate will to live seethed in his eyes, and with it a hatred of a reality he could not bring himself to believe.
"Embezzler, thief—you cast those words about so freely, but they are nothing more than an outsider's claims, are they not? Just who is suspecting whom!"
He beat his chest, the very picture of a wronged man.
"I have worked in this castle for ten years. Ten years!"
In tone and expression alike, he looked for all the world like a man laboring under a false charge. Odelli said nothing. She only looked quietly down at him, her gaze seeming to see straight through to what lay underneath.
Zeke's manner began to fray, and his voice grew urgent.
"The work entrusted to me may have been nothing more than minding the warehouse, but I gave it my whole heart every time. I do not even know what I am supposed to have stolen. I only came back to finish the tidying I had forgotten during the day..."
"Enough."
Odelli cut him off, flat and final, the way a keen-edged blade shears clean through. At that single word the air in the room went cold.
Zeke still believed there was a way out. Caught in the act, a man could not ordinarily undo what had been seen, but this was different. The only one who had witnessed the crime was a single noble lady, and an outsider at that. And the man he had to move was the steward. Theodore was weak to sentiment. Zeke knew that the steward's pointless obsession with principle was only a way of hiding that very weakness. He had meant to appeal to feeling. He could perform as much as he liked. Kneel with a wronged face and a trembling voice, and a steward, at least, could be swayed...
And yet, strangely, he could not get out a single word. It was as if his breath had caught in his throat. The tongue that was usually so glib would not turn.
A spoiled child, raised to do as she pleased merely because she was a little frail—that was the lady he had pieced together from rumor and his own assumptions. The woman before him was nothing like her. The feeling came over him of a fool who had drawn a sword to conquer a mountain. Zeke swallowed, and said nothing at all.
"You would do well to leave off there, with that preposterous claim that years of service amount to a pardon."
At last she spoke. The tone was quiet, and cold beyond measure.
"The proof of everything you have done will be plain enough in the ledgers. I was certain there would be a second set of books, so I went looking... and it was exactly as I expected."
Odelli opened a drawer in the desk and drew out a ledger she had already found and set ready. She held the evidence up before his eyes, the sort he could neither deny nor wriggle free of. Zeke's eyes bulged as if they might start from his head, and the color drained from his face in an instant.
"H-how did you...!"
"Under the bed in your quarters. Beneath a floorboard that had been left loose."
Odelli said it with a blank face.
"In novels, that is generally where people hide such things. I opened it on the chance... and it was really there."
In truth, she knew the place from the memory of her previous life. She told the lie without so much as a flicker. For a moment Zeke was struck speechless, his face vacant.
Wait. She was in my quarters? When? Only that morning he had checked and confirmed the ledger was still well hidden. Then sometime after that...
"Compare the handwriting, and it will be certain that you wrote it. Set the issues recorded in the ledger against the stock on hand, and there will be nothing further to investigate."
Odelli was laying his true nature bare, piece by piece, but the words were no longer reaching him.
"Y-you entered my quarters without leave? Then who is the thief, I ask you! You're the thief!"
His face burned scarlet as he roared. Beneath that floorboard, along with the ledger, he had hidden the jewels stolen from the annex, and sweat ran down his brow. Odelli did not blink once at his thrashing.
"Dear me. I only wanted physical evidence. For the man who kept a second set of books to be the one taking offense—wouldn't you say that's rather absurd?"
She neither raised her voice nor mocked him. Rather, in that same quiet tone, she bore down on him—composed, and merciless past all measure. Her manner was calm, yet the pressure within it seemed to close his throat.
If only the second ledger had come to light, there might still have been some crack he could slip through. But if the jewels had been found as well, there would truly be no escape. Skimming the castle's goods in small amounts and stealing jeweled ornaments were not crimes of the same weight. One was mere disrespect. The other was a grave offense.
And yet. Why hasn't she said a word about the jewels? Was she simply going to let that pass?
In that instant a thought flashed through Zeke's mind like lightning. Don't tell me she just slipped them into her own pocket.
Impossible. It could not be. What lady of Cardel would covet jewels? That hers ranked among the wealthiest houses in the empire was beside the point. Was it not a "house of heroes," gathering the praise of all the world upon itself? And yet a thief, committing theft!
But Zeke did not dare speak the thought aloud. The moment he let slip that he had, in fact, stolen the jewels from the annex as well, his hand would come off at the wrist.
Odelli turned her gaze to the steward and the Guard Captain.
"I don't believe this man's words are worth hearing any further. Do you agree?"
Theodore was silent for a moment, then inclined his head.
"...I have no objection to my lady's judgment."
The Guard Captain seized Zeke roughly by the arm and hauled him up.
"On your feet. You've no right to speak, and still you run your mouth."
"W-wait! Please, let me have a word with my lady! I believe my lady has taken what is mine—something precious of mine!"
"What? My lady did what—don't talk nonsense."
Zeke began to thrash, but it was too late. No one would hear him. In the end he was dragged scraping out the door, that last plea still unfinished.