The Head Maid's Vow
Not long after, Freya's eyes opened, faintly.
"My lady...?"
The voice was weak, but it was unmistakably alive. Odelli closed her hand firmly around the waking head maid's.
"It's all right. I'm here."
Freya's gaze wavered, ever so slightly. She could not find another word, and only looked up at the woman looking down at her. The first feeling to fill her the instant consciousness returned was relief, for though the hand against hers was cold, an inexplicable warmth lingered in it.
"H-how did this happen? I was certain I..."
"Well..."
Odelli glanced aside, letting the end of the sentence trail away. She wanted to pass over it as lightly as she could.
"Think of it as something like a priest healing with divine power. It's an unfamiliar ability. Even if I explained, you wouldn't really understand."
She met Freya's eyes again and spoke quietly.
"In any case, you won't be in pain anymore."
But Freya's reaction was anything but ordinary. Strength surged all at once into those flickering eyes, and she bolted upright with a force impossible to reconcile with someone who, only moments before, had been hovering between life and death. From somewhere she produced a soft blanket and draped it over Odelli's shoulders.
"My lady, your color is dreadful!"
Hm?
Am I really being fussed over by a patient who has only just woken?
Odelli blinked, thrown into confusion. She had not coughed blood, nor lost consciousness; she had been rather pleased with herself for holding out so well. That small satisfaction evaporated on the spot.
"Your pulse is weak, your lips have gone quite blue, and you are breaking into a cold sweat besides..."
Freya seemed to have decided that a physician must be summoned. She started up in a rush, ready to go somewhere, and Odelli caught the hem of her skirt on reflex and held fast.
"Don't call a physician."
The tone was calm, but a strange urgency lived in the tips of her fingers. If she looked ill enough for Freya to make this much of a fuss, and Ludville found out, something decidedly unpleasant was likely to follow.
"How can you even say such a thing?!"
Freya's face twisted as she cried out, fear and guilt tangled in her eyes. She seemed convinced that Odelli had come to this state from treating her.
"You're the head maid. You can keep a secret for me, can't you?"
At the unexpected words, Freya's face went rigid. Her lips twitched as if in spasm. She stared into empty air, then lowered her gaze to Odelli's face, and a moment later shook her head, very slightly.
"That is out of the question."
It was a flat refusal, as if even a request from the one who had saved her life were something she could not possibly obey.
"If my lady has come to this while treating the likes of me..."
"That isn't it."
Odelli cut in quickly, before Freya could finish blaming herself.
"This is simply a matter of what I am. I've always been like this."
"I beg your pardon? Always? Do you mean to say you suffer from some incurable illness?"
Odelli said nothing.
Silence held for a while. Freya sat blankly, like someone struck in the head with a hammer, shock and doubt and confusion warring across her face. Only after a long time did she ask, low:
"...You have been hiding it."
"Yes."
"Then why are you telling me?"
Odelli lowered her eyes and was lost in thought a moment before she answered, slowly.
"Because you and I are alike."
A life that does not speak of pain, does not show it, and swallows it alone. For both Odelli and Freya, that had long since become ordinary.
"If it's you, you'll be able to help me rather skillfully."
What she meant was that even if her condition worsened sharply, she would need someone close enough to conceal the state of her body.
At those words Freya's eyes wavered. She understood at once what Odelli was saying.
I need at least one ally.
For the moment it was all right. The illness had not yet reached the point of showing on the surface. But as time passed, the signs of a woman living on borrowed time would begin, little by little, to appear. Hiding the state of her body alone for five years was nearly impossible.
But Leona... well.
Even if I asked her, I'm not sure she would agree. And honestly, I think it would come out almost at once.
Had Freya not been hiding a chronic illness of her own all this time, with no one the wiser? Odelli thought her the right person.
Freya bowed her head in silence, and the corners of her eyes grew faintly wet. Even so, in the end she did not cry.
"...Very well. I will tell no one. Not a soul."
Slowly she laid her own hand over Odelli's. There was a small tremor in it, but the resolve itself was heavy.
"I will see to it that no one ever witnesses you come undone, my lady."
So the head maid added, knowing with perfect clarity what Odelli had wanted when she revealed the secret. At those words Odelli smiled, just a little. Over a face that had not yet shed its exhaustion, a deep relief spread.
They said nothing more. For a while they simply remained as they were, their hands clasped. It was a comfort deeper than any healing, and one that would last longer.
From that day on, Freya gave Odelli her loyalty.
Imperial Year 1476. The Great Council.
Beneath the high, rounded ceiling, the hall where high nobles and clergy sat in ordered rows was sunk in silence. One by one, their gazes turned toward the dais. Through that silence Gawin Cardel walked slowly out to the front of the platform. A black ribbon was pinned to the collar of his formal robes, and in his left hand he carried a scroll densely written with the names of those lost to the plague. His expression was covered in a sorrow tuned with exquisite care. To anyone watching, he looked like a man who had come forward to make a confession from the heart.
"First, if I may borrow this occasion... I offer my deepest condolences to all who were sacrificed in Belader."
Gawin unrolled the scroll slowly. Paper lined with names unspooled in quiet succession down from the dais, and the hall drifted of its own accord into an air of mourning for the dead. He stopped at the center of the platform, bowed his head, and spoke.
"He was a man once demoted for stirring scandal at the Great Temple, and I had hoped I might lead him back onto the path of a proper man. The result, however... was wretched."
He lifted his head and slowly took in the assembly. The look was humble, and endlessly regretful.
"At the time, I was conducting research into diagnosing disease and inducing recovery by means other than ancient magic. And so I instructed him to observe those in Belader who had been exposed to miasma or to curses. The north is a region where monsters appear often, and Belader is a port city through which people come and go from every quarter. I judged it well suited to observation."
He kept his head bowed and, for a time, could not go on. It was a silence feigning grief.
"But he... misunderstood my intent."
"Misunderstood it how?"
Someone among the audience asked. Gawin let his gaze fall for a moment, as if closing his eyes, then looked out over the whole chamber and spoke. Beneath the shadow across his eyes lay a guilt he seemed to have forced down and swallowed, like a man bitterly admitting that his own judgment had been careless.
"Possessed of a twisted faith, he appears to have meant to spread disease through a port city where many gather, and to reproduce within it the process by which a miracle occurs. He believed that without suffering there could be no miracle, and he meant to make Belader a testing ground upon which to realize a revelation from God."
His throat worked as he went on.
"In the end, he misunderstood my will completely."
As the explanation continued, both his eyes were steeped in lament and sorrow.