A Midnight Demand
She opened the carriage door and stepped outside. Then she slipped into the stable to see who was making such a racket in the middle of the night. The stable was just as packed as the inn; some of the horses were tied to posts with no walls around them at all.
A few of those tethered horses were in the process of being quietly led away. Lanlam approached them from behind without a sound.
“Whoa, shit. What the—! You scared the hell out of me.”
A young squire jumped at the sudden appearance of Lanlam. He was the boy whose main duty seemed to be hovering around Duke Paeroa and running errands. His youthful face hovered somewhere between boyhood and young manhood. He was younger than her, but much taller.
Beside him stood another young man around Lanlam’s age. He held up a palm-sized lantern in the darkness and shone it on her face. The woman found the man unfamiliar, but he seemed to recognize her.
“What are you doing here?”
In the dark, every face glowed the color of firelight.
That was exactly what Lanlam wanted to ask.
She brushed past the other two and looked straight at Duke Paeroa. Still half-asleep, her voice came out slow and thick.
“…Where are you going, Your Grace?”
The question began with “where,” but it carried far more weight of “why.”
From within the pitch-black darkness, a steel-colored head that gleamed suspiciously turned toward her. The helmet stared at Lanlam for a moment before tilting briefly toward the stable entrance, as if checking where on earth she had sprung from.
“Did you come out of the carriage?”
Then he asked, sounding genuinely baffled.
“You were sleeping in there?”
He looked at her the way one might look at someone chewing the pod instead of the bean—utterly dumbfounded.
Lanlam debated whether to tell him that Desidero had ordered her to do so, but in the end she kept her mouth shut. She didn’t want to sound like she was tattling. It seemed far better to come across as a woman who had simply grown too fond of this particular carriage to sleep anywhere else.
She bowed her head at a respectful angle and moved her sleep-stiffened tongue with some effort.
“There were too many people at the inn. Men were sleeping in the next room, so… I felt uneasy.”
The part about feeling uneasy because of the men in the next room was the most decisive.
“Ah… I see… That’s how it was…?”
The man fidgeted like someone who had made a mistake, as if he hadn’t considered that possibility. He reached out as though he might touch her shoulder, conflicted about what to do, then clenched his hand into a fist without making contact.
“Still, isn’t it cold out here?”
“A girl should sleep somewhere warm.”
Nyx narrowed his eyes and gazed at the inn building, thinking of the soldiers sprawled comfortably asleep inside.
But Lanlam didn’t particularly care where she slept. There was something else she truly wanted to know.
“The weather’s warm enough that I can manage with just a blanket. I’m really fine. More importantly, why are you out here instead of sleeping, Your Grace?”
When the duke clamped his mouth shut with a guilty expression, his squire Zama, who had been trying to guard his lord’s side, answered in his stead.
“His Grace intends to depart alone ahead of the others. Since he must leave quietly, keep your mouth shut and don’t cause a fuss until morning.”
“…Depart ahead of the others? At this hour, before dawn?”
Lanlam asked again, stunned.
“Without the rest of the party?”
Nyx swallowed unnecessarily. Unlike himself, who usually let others speak for him, the woman took what she had heard from someone else and turned it back to him, clearly wanting to converse directly.
Whenever she fixed those distinctively dark eyes on him, his throat would close up.
The man cleared his stiff throat and barely managed an answer.
“…Yes. That’s the plan.”
He fully expected her to ask for the reason next. What was behind this sudden nighttime flight? Why were they sneaking away like this? As Nyx wondered how he would respond to such questions, the woman said something completely unexpected.
“Then what about me?”
“…Huh?”
“What am I supposed to do?”
It wasn’t a question. It was a demand.
“Can’t you take me with you?”
An utterly outrageous demand.
Zama, who had been in the exact same position only minutes ago, exploded as if he couldn’t believe the nonsense he was hearing.
“Who the hell do you think you are, following us? Do you think this is some kind of picnic?”
The man looked ready to leave at any moment, and Lanlam, still half-asleep, grew desperate.
“I want to go wherever Your Grace is going. Please allow it.”
“Absolutely not. We’re going to ride without stopping across the wilderness. We’ll have to carve paths where none exist. Isn’t that right, Commander?”
Lanlam paid no attention to whatever the young man was saying. In the end, the decision belonged to Duke Paeroa. As if the others didn’t even exist, she looked only at him and spoke.
“I don’t want to be left alone in a place where you are not, Your Grace.”
“Left alone? What are you talking about? There are plenty of other people staying here. You can just ride in the carriage like you’ve been doing. This woman really says the strangest things.”
Nyx partly agreed with Zama’s assessment that she spoke very strangely.
‘I don’t want to be left alone in a place where I am not.’ What does that even mean?
The fact that she felt such a bond with him that she would interpret his absence as isolation left him bewildered.
In simpler terms, it made him think, ‘Were we that close?’
While Zama stood blocking her with every intention of driving her away, Nyx felt strangely trapped by this woman, unable to move an inch. She was like a narrow gate that could not be passed. He could have shoved her aside like he would any other nuisance, yet he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“I think you’re misunderstanding something…. I’m not disappearing forever. I’m only going on ahead for a short while. You can ride slowly in the carriage with Desidero, just as you’ve done until now. Our destination is the same—Loudhill. We’ll meet again there eventually….”
“It’s because I’m afraid of being with the other men. The only person in this place who treats me like a human being is you, Your Grace.”
If the man left, she would have nowhere to turn. The knights who harbored resentment toward her, and the vulgar gazes they had spread like a disease, were still here.
She needed at least one superior who could offer help or judgment when injustice occurred. The frail Desidero could not be that pillar of support. He did not appear to possess the power or authority to control the fierce knights the way his older brother could.
“If you are not here, I have no idea what might be done to me.”
“…What might be done to you?”
“The Iron Horse Knights call me a whore. They said if I’m not careful, they’ll make sure I suffer for it.”
Some of what she said was true. Perhaps it wasn’t mere anxiety, but a legitimate worry. Whatever the case, the responsibility of interpretation fell to the duke.
‘Suffer for it?’
He interpreted the words as a threat that someone would rape her. It was a statement with more than enough room for such a misunderstanding.
At that moment, Milvian, who had been quietly observing, stepped in. He wasn’t as heated as Zama, but his tone was clearly displeased.
“From what I hear, this woman has a cunning side. It seems that because the commander has continually shown her consideration, she now climbs all over him without restraint.”
When she spoke of “the other men,” she was referring to the knights he regarded as brothers. The man believed she was slandering them.
“It’s possible this woman is fabricating things. Exactly who said such words? Answer clearly.”
“I don’t know his name. He was tall, without a beard, rather slender, with light brown hair….”
“How many men fit that description?”
“He is the man I met at the Captain’s Anchor on the day the Iron Horse Knights were leaving Saltcoast. That knight tried to take me through a pimp. I ran from him and met Sir Kanne. After that, as you already know, I was able to tell you my situation through Sir Kanne….”
“So according to you, there was some lunatic who tried to buy a woman right before leaving Saltcoast just to roll around with her. And you expect us to believe that?”
“You can ask Sir Kanne. It’s a simple matter.”