The Box He Would Not Discard
The door shut, and stillness settled over the room once more. Before she quite noticed, only Theodore and Odelli remained in the study.
"Have you taken any injury, my lady?"
"I'm fine."
It was the first time she had used her newly acquired ability in earnest, and a dizziness still clung to her. But she had endured far more than a day or two of pain, and Odelli did not bother to say so.
Theodore regarded her for a moment, then bowed his head.
"To think a man like that served here for ten years... As the one charged with this household, I am disgraced."
He let out a low sigh and bent even deeper.
"All of this began in my failure to keep proper watch. For the harm done to you, my lady, and for the offense, I offer my sincerest apology. I will accept whatever punishment you deem fit."
In truth, he must have felt for a long while that some rat was gnawing at the stores. The warehouse, however, had been left to several servants in turn, and Zeke had skimmed so little, and so carefully, that it would have been difficult to name him.
And whenever the counts failed to match, he falsified the records so the discrepancy looked like some other servant's mistake. That is how I remember it.
The small suspicions would have gathered, little by little, yet there had never been proof enough to act on.
And Theodore has a soft heart.
As a matter of simple decency, he would not have wished to doubt a man who had served this castle for ten years. Because she understood that, Odelli did not rebuke him. She quietly held out the silver-inlaid box she had been carrying.
The thing Zeke had meant to steal. Had the seal on Ludville's vault not held, it would have been the only object in this annex that could truly be called precious. Odelli knew who would grieve most if it vanished, and so she had secured it beforehand.
"This is precious, isn't it?"
Theodore drew in a breath and went still.
"How did you...?"
"Zeke was going to steal it. It looked valuable at a glance, so I thought the steward might know what it was."
With trembling hands, Theodore carefully received the box she offered.
Odelli knew what it was. She knew, too, why it had lain in a drawer of the annex rather than in the treasure vault of the main palace.
This was the first reward the emperor had ever given Ludville.
In those days the slave called Ru wandered the battlefields with neither name nor title. Then, one day, his merits finally caught the emperor's eye, and in recompense he was granted a casket set with silver-luster stones. Ru felt nothing. His face was only that of a youth of nineteen, but within him lived a Regressor who had repeated thousands of lives. Emperor, empire, reward—to him they were already no more than scenery, repeated past counting and erased past counting.
On the day he received that casket, Ru caught the eye of the Archduke of Exepsion. That had been his purpose from the start. He had appeared at the Imperial Palace to draw the archduke's notice, and even the reward from the emperor was only one piece of the plan. Just as he intended, Ru obtained a false identity as the bastard son of House Elbrecht, a house that had fallen decades before, and became the archduke's adopted son. The casket had served its purpose.
"Where shall I keep this?"
When Theodore asked, Ludville—now heir to the archduchy—answered without expression.
"Throw it away."
"I beg your pardon? But His Majesty bestowed it... and there is even a healing stone inside, said to be exceedingly rare."
"A healing stone. Was there such a thing? It is of no use to me. Take it."
He left the words dry as dust and vanished without a backward glance. Thus an imperial gift was discarded like refuse, and by that chance the healing stone came into Theodore's hands. And it saved his life.
A monster set upon them, and the carriage overturned. Theodore was mortally wounded, yet the healing stone brought him back from the threshold of death. What he remembered then was neither emperor nor god, but the indifferent line of Ludville's back as he turned away on a single word: Take it.
Theodore had devoted his whole life to serving House Exepsion. For the first time, he thought he wished to give his loyalty not to a house, but to a person—not for honor, but for faith. To the benefactor who had saved his life. That box was where the feeling began.
Theodore did not throw it away. Somewhere no one would touch. Somewhere no one would remember. In an old drawer of the annex, then used as little more than a storeroom, he quietly sealed it away, making no report and speaking not a word of it.
He watched Ludville change—as lord, as commander of the field, as archduke. Theodore was always at his side. And at the beginning of all of it lay this box.
Which was why, on the day it was stolen before the regression, Theodore sat the whole day at the study window. Not a single word. Only silence.
In the last life, he never got it back.
Zeke, who had stolen the box and fled, was caught again—but only after he had pried every jewel and ornament from its surface and sold them.
Theodore gazed at the box for a while, then dropped his head as if to hide the tremor in his eyes. When he had composed himself, he spoke in a voice gone slightly hoarse.
It was not a simple thanks. It was the language of a loyalty grown very old.
Before the trembling in the fingers closed around the box had even subsided, Theodore straightened and asked her with careful courtesy.
"...My lady, is your strength perhaps greatly spent?"
"Hm?"
At the sudden question she blinked, puzzled.
From that afternoon, a strangely busy air began to stir through Odelli's room. Leona came and went at all hours with steeped herb tea and towels for compresses, and Theodore himself sent word to the apothecary and the tailor.
"Drink it before it cools. Your fingertips are going cold again."
Leona nudged the teacup toward her, the words half a scolding. Warm steam, threaded with the faint scent of wormbella, wrapped the room in softness. Odelli quietly lifted the cup and swallowed a mouthful.
"They say the effect is rather strong, so your head might swim at first. But if you keep drinking it, warmth comes back into your hands and feet, and sleep comes more easily too."
Even as she added the explanation, Leona never stopped studying Odelli's color. Suspicion brimmed in her narrowed eyes.
"Ever since you sent me away, my lady, your color seems to have gotten worse. Am I imagining it?"
"...And when, exactly, did I send you away?"
"You did. You even took a thief down all by yourself. And right now your face is white as paper."
"..."
Odelli had nothing to say. Nothing to say—and still she could not stop making excuses.
"I didn't take him down."
"Is that what matters right now?!"
"And my skin has always been on the pale side."
Leona folded her arms as if the excuse were not worth hearing, and declared with finality.
"This won't do. Whatever you say, my lady, from today I cannot leave your side for a single moment."
It was then. Knock, knock—as if the timing had been arranged, a rap came at the door.
"My lady, forgive the intrusion."
Low and calm: Theodore's voice. Leona tattled at once.
"Steward, come in, please! My lady keeps insisting she isn't ill!"