The Enigma of Edel von Ravendell
Somehow, this feels like she's buttering us up in the most roundabout way possible, desuwa……
Edel von Ravendell had taken up residence in the Eisenfels Citadel as a guest, and her lodging expenses had been paid in full and generously. Whatever else one might say, it was no losing venture on her part.
I offered her warm hospitality on the surface while quietly keeping her under guard. I needed time to work out exactly who she was—and what exactly she wanted.
One morning, after breakfast had concluded, Edel sipped her tea with impeccable grace and posed a question.
"I must say, my lady, the northern mornings are markedly colder than those of the heartlands. Even within the citadel walls there is a chill in the air—however do you manage through winter?"
Northern this, northern that—every other word, and it grates on me more than I'd like to admit……
Mind you, we used words like "the North" and "the Northern Grand Duchy" plenty ourselves, but how shall I put it—it simply feels different when you claim the label for yourself versus when someone else pins it on you.
When the Empire's people called the Grand Duchy "the Northlands" and we answered to it without objection, weren't we tacitly accepting that Eisenmark was nothing more than a frontier? The thought nagged at me.
And yet……hmm, when Hildegard uses the word "North," it never bothers me in the slightest.
Perhaps it was because I instinctively counted Edel in the same category as myself that her phrasing alone managed to put me so ill at ease.
"We manage with fireplaces and fur blankets, I assure you. Compared to folk of the south, the people of Eisenmark are quite accustomed to the cold."
When I deliberately laid a touch of emphasis on "south," Edel merely smiled, soft and untroubled. Her silver-white hair caught the morning sun and gleamed, luminous as frost.
"The hardiness of the northerners is famous even in the Empire. This one received a very deep impression of it, in fact."
Her manner of speech is truly peculiar, though. Calling herself "this one," of all things.
Now, I'm hardly in a position to mock anyone for a strange way of talking—and anyway, what of it? I've long since made my peace with the desuwa register; I'm fine. Perfectly fine.
Be that as it may, this habit of Edel's—referring to herself in the distant third person—was, as far as I knew, a style employed only by the rarest sliver of the imperial aristocracy. Counts and above, say, the high lords of old blood.
She was, in a word, an enigma. At a glance she looked every inch a beautiful noble daughter, yet she carried something that had nothing to do with sight. With every word she offered, one by one, every soul in the citadel found themselves drifting toward her.
During a stroll through the gardens one morning, the moment Edel passed by, a gardener dropped the pruning shears clean out of his hand. The middle-aged groundskeeper behaved like a smitten boy every single time he spoke with her.
Even Captain Woldin of the Royal Guard—crusty, taciturn Woldin—lost all his usual gruffness whenever she addressed him, turning astonishingly gentle on the spot.
"Lady von Ravendell, you are more beautiful than ever today!"
"Lady von Ravendell, the winters in Eisenfels are bitter. Allow me to bring you an extra fur blanket!"
"Lady von Ravendell, you liked the lavender, yes? I'll put together a special bouquet for you!"
Whenever Edel passed, the servants of the citadel came tumbling over themselves with such declarations. Even the soldiers straightened their backs a little taller and puffed out their chests a little prouder as she went by.
And then a thought occurred to me, entirely unbidden. Edel was undeniably beautiful—that was a fact beyond dispute.
But here in this northern land, the very emblem of womanhood—a plentiful bosom—was entirely absent from her person. Flat. Utterly flat. She couldn't hold a candle to Bielka, needless to say, nor even to Hildegard, the acknowledged weakest chest among us.
A flat-chested woman with quite the following, I see. Well—personally, I'm still on Team Bielka……Team Bielka, that is.
Compared to a bust larger than Bielka's own head, Edel's figure was, how shall I put it…
…the kind that summons far fewer thoughts of "Fufufufu…… come to Mama!" Not that Edel was lacking in charm, mind you.
One day, I happened to witness Hildegard and Edel crossing paths. Hildegard faced her with the expressionless courtesy she reserved for what she called "the exalted"—and yet, as the two conversed, she found herself speaking more and more, and on occasion even laughed aloud.
Wait—you're telling me she's charmed Hildegard too? A fellow woman!?
With each passing day, my questions only multiplied. There was something about Edel—something that simply wasn't natural.
"You seem deep in thought, my lady."
Golden evening light streamed through the windows of the study as Edel smiled across at me. Before approaching, she had been leafing briskly through A History of the Great Frost.
"Merely organizing recent affairs in my head, nothing more."
As I answered, my eyes drifted to her hands. With her gloves removed, her knuckles looked—just a little, only the very slightest bit—long.
Long fingers for a woman, with the bones of the back of the hand standing faintly proud. Every time Edel turned a page, the movement of that hand struck me as strangely, inexplicably masculine.
"In this one's opinion, excessive provisioning before winter can at times prove a wasteful squandering of resources."
She remarked it quite suddenly. The neckline of her dress dipped a shade low, and the collarbone it revealed was rather pronounced. Considerably more so than most women's.
"As all of history to this day makes plain, what summons death is the cold and hungry winter, is it not? What looks like waste now would buy that many more lives saved later."
Dinner hour was drawing near, and when Edel rose from her seat, her figure beneath the dress caught my eye for just a moment.
A slender waist, not voluptuous but unmistakably graceful in its womanliness. Save for the truly flat chest, she would feast magnificently in the eyes of a certain discerning minority of connoisseurs—or so one might put it.
Above all, her voice was distinctly feminine and soft. No Adam's apple to speak of, and a face that could stop clocks.
"My lady, is your acquaintance with Lady von Ravendell progressing well?"
After dinner, Eliza asked it of me in my chambers.
"Hmm… whether she is who she claims, or what she truly wants, I still cannot say with any certainty. But I will grant that she is a fascinating person."
"Her presence is considerable, is it not? I sense no trace of magical aura from her, and yet, seeing how people are drawn to her…"
Eliza's assessment matched my own exactly. Edel's allure ran on something that went beyond her looks.
"And what of the ring on Lady von Ravendell's hand?"
Eliza asked it so abruptly I blinked.
"You mean the ring set with the lavender-colored stone? It did strike me as somehow special, yes. Why do you ask?"
"Simple curiosity, my lady. Only… that ring does not strike me as a mere ornament. I wonder whether it might be steeped in magic."
It was a plausible conjecture. Magic unquestionably existed in this world.
But then again—had a magic ever existed that could beguile an entire castle hall, every person in it? That much, I had never once heard tell of.
Goodness, I'm suddenly so very tired……
Darkness deepened beyond the window. Through the glass, the night sky over Eisenfels glittered, thick with stars.
Days in the company of my strange visitor, Edel von Ravendell, carried on—and alongside the mystery of her identity, a tension as ambiguous as the border between day and night wrapped itself around the citadel.
So the days passed—and then, one morning at breakfast, Bielka came to me breathless with excitement.
"Lady Katerina! Swordsmen from all over are flocking to the Lower City! I ran into some of the soldiers on my way to morning training, and they said there'll be duels held all day long!"
That was the spark. From then on, tidings from the Lower City began drifting up into the citadel one after another.
"They say foreign mercenaries are throwing coin around like water at the Red-Faced Tavern."
"Fights breaking out daily in the Lower City, I hear. Feuds between the outsiders and the locals."
"There's grumbling that the city watch doesn't do near enough to settle the commoners' troubles."
Such rumors reached my ears often enough in the ordinary course of things, but during Edel's stay their frequency swelled several times over. It was almost as though someone were deliberately stoking the friction between the citadel and the Lower City.
Edel von Ravendell, meanwhile, strolled the gardens as though nothing in the world were amiss, her silver-white hair swaying on the breeze in the last pale sunlight of autumn.
"Edel von Ravendell. Have you heard what they're saying about the Lower City of late?"
She answered with the faintest smile.
"This one gathers that a great many mercenaries have arrived from outside, and the mood has grown somewhat unsettled. The Grand Duke's citadel was so peaceful, I had quite forgotten."
"…Hmm."
There was a needle buried in her tone, faint but unmistakable. As though to say: you live shut up in this citadel and haven't the faintest idea how the common folk below are faring.
"How remarkable. You reside here as a guest of the citadel, and yet word of the Lower City reaches you faster than it does me."
"Information is power, my lady. Wherever one finds oneself, grasping the lay of the land is surely the most important thing of all, wouldn't you agree?"
After that conversation, my wariness of Edel deepened into something colder and harder. That very evening, I summoned my secret councillor, Vasily Orlov, to my office.
"You called for me, my lady?"
"Vasily. I wish to know precisely how matters stand in the Lower City of late."
"As it happens, I was intending to report on that very subject…"
Vasily drew closer and lowered his voice.
"There are suspicious movements afoot. Over the past three days, unknown mercenaries have been appearing throughout the taverns and boarding houses of the Lower City. They spend freely and openly—stirring up resentment against the citadel as they go."