The Lady's Testimony
Beyond the iron bars, Roselyne stood with a deathly pale face, draped in nothing but a thin silk dress. Inside the prison where the pre-dawn chill had settled, her frail frame looked so precarious it seemed she might crumble at any moment.
"A bit dreary for the Lady's private walking course, don't you think? What brings you here in the middle of the night? It's bad for a minor's education to be wandering into places like this, you know."
Even at my jab, Roselyne didn't avert her gaze.
No — it was closer to say she couldn't.
Her eyes, as though magnetized, kept obsessively tracing the black restraint fastened around my wrist.
"I couldn't sleep, so I came. That... the sound of the chains won't leave my ears."
"This?"
I raised my arm and gave my hand a deliberate little shake.
"It's just metal. A hundred times better than a blade at my throat. So hurry back and get some sleep. If you catch a cold, it'll somehow end up being my fault again, and I've got far too much to answer for as it is."
"Why do you keep talking like that? You saved me, so why do you keep acting like a stranger... like it meant nothing?"
Roselyne seized the bars, her grip so fierce that blue veins stood out on the backs of her white hands.
"That's exactly what I am. You're a precious Lady, and I'm a lowly prisoner. This is a place where the law is enforced, plain and simple. And I'm dead tired right now, so I'd like my right to sleep respected. If you understand, go dry your feet and get to bed. The end."
That was the excuse, anyway. The truth was—
If I get tangled up with her any further, I'm seriously fucked!!!!
Though it already felt like too late for that.
"That's a lie. You treated me like a person...!!"
She reached her hand toward the gap in the bars, then stopped. Her slender fingertips hovered in the air near my arm, where the brand was etched.
"You're the one who taught me. So take responsibility to the end. Keep teaching me, all the way to the very end...!!!"
The chilling weight in her voice pressed down hard on the air inside the prison.
"No."
That was the whole of my answer.
When I opened my eyes, the damp chill rising off the cold stone floor had seeped into my bones.
Fuck.
The briny tang of iron still lingered in my mouth. This wasn't the deepest pit of an underground dungeon, but the unpleasant stillness peculiar to a temporary holding cell hung heavy in the air.
When I shifted my wrist slightly, the clatter of chains broke the silence.
A mana-suppression restraint. This thing, cold enough to chill me to the marrow, was still clamped around my forearm, crushing my mana flat.
Beyond the bars, the corridor torches wavered. I could make out two armed knights standing guard, and I could hear their measured breathing and the faint scrape of armor against armor.
Let's start by calculating escape routes.
Lamenting the injustice of why I was here, or wallowing over being treated like this after saving someone, was a luxury I couldn't afford. I simply tilted my head and surveyed my surroundings.
One: the gaps between the bars are too narrow for my head to fit through. But if I twist them with a barbarian's raw strength, that's a different story.
Two: the corridor knights rotate on four-hour shifts. The gap during the changeover is roughly fifteen seconds. That brief window is my only chance.
The problem was everything after that. I knew nothing of the layout of this enormous ducal residence. If I blindly forced my way out, I wouldn't be carving a path to a hiding place — I'd be digging my own grave.
"Barbarian, on your feet. My lord summons you."
A knight rapped roughly on the bars, the metallic clang stabbing at my ears. I rose slowly, the chains dragging across the floor with a clatter whether I willed it or not. Their weight sat heavy on me.
Maybe I'll memorize the route on the way there.
The interrogation room was far colder and more oppressive than the cell.
The moment I was seated in the chair at the center of the room, the gazes of three men across the long table struck me like arrows.
At the table's center sat Duke Leonhardt. Deep black hair, a beard like freshly fallen frost, and frigid eyes that seemed to see through everything. He said not a word, yet his mere presence commanded the air of the room. The aristocratic arrogance gleaming above his elegantly laced fingers proved he was the absolute authority of this house.
To his right stood the Knight Commander I'd seen in the forest the night before. He glared at my throat with naked hostility, looking for all the world like a beast so desperate to draw his sword and open my neck that he could hardly contain himself.
To his left, a bespectacled middle-aged man was flipping through documents — the Duke's aide and man of affairs, by the look of him. He kept a dry gaze fixed on me, the way one might regard not a person but a specimen or an asset to be analyzed.
Only the scratch of a quill on paper filled the room.
"Name?"
The Knight Commander opened fire first, his growling voice thick with murderous intent.
"Aiden."
"Why is the barbarian pursuit squad hunting you?"
"Your questioning order is a mess. Normally you'd confirm my identity first, then ask for an overview of the incident — isn't that how it goes? If you've already settled on a conclusion before the interrogation even starts, then the answer's already written and all I have to do is recite it. So tell me: what answer do you want from me?"
I sneered, sinking deep into the chair.
The Knight Commander's face twisted an earthy gray in an instant, and he slammed his fist down on the desk with a bang.
"Who put you up to it! Why were you at the Lady's side? Why were the bandits' corpses strewn about like that?"
"I told you — I saved her. Even if it doesn't move you, at least accept the facts. If I'd been the kidnapper, I'd be lying mixed in with those bandit corpses, and your precious Lady would be up on an auction block by now."
The Knight Commander's eyes went white with rage, and his hand closed around his sword hilt.
"How dare this filthy beast...! Do not so much as breathe the Lady's name!"
"Does it make any sense to tell me not to mention your only witness? Then who's going to testify? You? Or the Duke sitting beside you?"
"Silence! We have by no means ruled out the possibility that you threatened the Lady into giving false testimony!"
Is that really what you think of barbarians...?
Somehow, I was starting to hate myself for possessing a barbarian's body.
"I'm not that kind of person."
"A barbarian helping a civilized man is an impossibility! Even if the heavens fall!"
The Knight Commander's voice boomed through the interrogation room.
Barbarians... are we really that bad?
But I was different from them.
Their attitude — treating me like a criminal already convicted — only drew a hollow laugh out of me. His questions were less an attempt at gathering information than a way of saying, I don't trust you.
But my gaze wasn't on the Knight Commander. It was on Duke Leonhardt, seated dead center, who had been observing me without uttering a single word this entire time.
The division of roles was flawless: the Duke watched coldly and with dignity, the Knight Commander with naked hostility, and the aide with dry professionalism.
I judged that here, my best move was to hold out with a dry, crooked attitude rather than bow completely. Not out of barbarian pride — I needed to prove I was someone worth talking to.
"That's enough."
A low, weighty voice settled over the interrogation room, and the Knight Commander's bluster collapsed in an instant.
The Duke spoke slowly. His gaze drifted to the restraint on my wrist, and what shone in his eyes was not hostility but curiosity — or perhaps calculated observation.
"You're remarkably articulate for a barbarian. No — more refined than the nobles themselves."
The Duke tilted his head.
"Why did you surrender so obediently last night, when you were clearly capable of fighting? Was it for my daughter's sake?"
"Your Lady was wailing too loudly to ignore. Letting a child smell blood up close is bad for her emotional education, you see. Call it a leftover habit from my teaching days."
At my answer, the Duke's eyebrow twitched.
"Teaching days? Teachers exist among barbarians?"
Just then, the massive door swung open, and familiar footsteps rang out.
"Father!"
It was Roselyne.
She hadn't quite barged through the door, but she had pushed past the knights trying to stop her and stepped into the room. Her gaze went first to the chair where I sat. Roselyne's eyes brimmed with anxiety, and her slender frame trembled faintly.
"Roselyne, you should still be resting. Why have you come here?"
The Duke's voice softened. But Roselyne did not yield an inch.
"This man saved me. I've told you again and again. The one who protected me from the barbarian pursuit squad and the bandits was not the knight order — it was him."
The Lady's testimony.
This was the decisive blow. Without it, I'd have been dangling from the gallows before the day was out. Roselyne had become the first shield standing between me and my disposal.
Good timing... really, thank you...
Though if I'd never helped her in the first place, none of this would have happened.
Still, a thank-you owed is a thank-you owed...!!!
She stepped forward before the Duke and sank to her knees.
"Father, repaying kindness with cruelty is not the way of House Leonhardt, is it?"
At her words, the Knight Commander's face turned the color of ash.
The Duke quietly rested his chin on his hand and studied me. The silence stretched long; only the ticking of a clockwork echoed through the room.
"...Very well. The execution of that barbarian is suspended for the time being."
At his words, the air in the room churned all over again.
"My lord! That man is dangerous! His identity is unclear, and we don't even know why the barbarian pursuit squad is after him!"
"Which is exactly why I'm keeping him alive. There will be further interrogations, and his merit in protecting the Lady must be verified. And we need to secure intelligence on that pursuit squad and the bandits as well."
The surface reasons were sound. But the real reason hidden beneath them was something else entirely.
He was useful. Dangerous, yes — but impossible to throw away.
...Something like that, I suppose.
Of course, it was all nothing but my own speculation. But one thing was certain: this verdict had made everyone in the room uncomfortable. The Knight Commander swallowed his objections with a flushed face, and the middle-aged man scrambled to revise his documents in flustered silence.
And I was already thoroughly sick of the fact that I was now properly entangled in this hellish main scenario.
And in the middle of it all, one person alone was breathing a sigh of relief — Roselyne.
Roselyne had no reason to be that invested in how I was disposed of.
Sitting in the chair, I stared straight at her.
What is with her?
In her eyes, as she smiled faintly at me, something had settled — something far deeper than it had been yesterday. A gaze too burning to call simple gratitude, and too obsessive to call mere admiration.
As I was led out of the interrogation room, the Duke murmured low, close behind my back.
"That one is far too useful to be a mere beast."