Episode 86
“If possible, our objective is to draw them as far as this vicinity.”
The road, a passage connecting city to city, lay about three days’ ride from Cleris. It was also the route leading to Derosa, and since it was outside the city outskirts, there was less concern about harming civilians. After the operation ended, it would also be convenient to call in personnel from the capital to handle the aftermath.
“When you first set out, act as though you’re wary of your surroundings, then make it seem as if your guard loosens the closer you get to Cleris, leaving an opening.”
“That much won’t be difficult.”
“Our collaborator is an ordinary person, and a doctor at that, so it won’t be good if her identity gets around. Conceal the woman’s details appropriately, but simply saying that Ezekail Valdemarea has finally captured the woman he’d been desperately searching for should be enough to provoke them.”
Ezekail sat in a circle with his subordinates and spent several more hours adjusting the details. It was only after sunset that he ended the meeting, ordered them dismissed, and was about to rise from his seat.
“Major, have you been eating and sleeping properly?”
Mongkam, who had stopped him, asked an odd question.
“Why do you ask?”
“We have to spread a rumor that you finally caught the woman you’ve been waiting for day and night, but I thought your face ought to look a little better than it does now.”
Ezekail let out a faint, incredulous laugh.
“Do I look that terrible?”
“Since you returned, there have been few days when we’ve seen you eat properly. Your jaw keeps getting gaunter, but your eyes alone are so sharp that we’ve been startled more than once. You look less like a man waiting for his lover and more like a man waiting to catch and kill an enemy. When you’re expressionless, to be honest, you’re truly frightening. Even if those bastards came to launch a surprise attack, I feel like they’d take one look at your face, realize everything, and run away.”
Only after hearing Mongkam’s point did Ezekail look back on himself anew.
When was the last time he had felt that he wanted to eat something, or wanted to do anything at all?
He could not quite remember. When he was with Rose, even the most trivial daily moments had made him laugh easily and softened his heart, but it had been a long time now since he had forgotten such small pleasures.
Ezekail looked at his reflection in the window, which had turned translucent with the night. An officer stood there, with cold eyes and a mouth set in indifference.
He brought a hand to his lips, pressed shut in a straight line. He tried to loosen the stiff muscles by rubbing them with his fingertips, but failed. The lips he forced upward slanted back down the moment his fingers left them.
He could not picture what it felt like to smile pleasantly, rather than in mockery or bitter amusement, nor what kind of face he had made back then.
I don’t remember Rose ever telling me I looked frightening…
The face reflected in the window was certainly blank enough to be chilling. Ezekail stared wordlessly at himself.
Rose, the man you loved could not have looked this bleak.
“Major, are you still here?”
The sound of a horse snorting came from outside the building, and one of his subordinates rushed in, calling for Ezekail. It was the man he had sent on an errand to confirm Rose’s appearance.
“My apologies. I had just returned and thought I saw the light on in your office… Since you said it was urgent news, I judged it better to deliver it now rather than tomorrow morning.”
“Good thinking.”
The subordinate took an envelope sealed with a signet from inside his outer coat. Ezekail broke the seal and took out the letter. After quickly skimming past the greetings Madam Serva had written, his eyes went first to the conclusion in the final line.
I remember the color of Rose’s hair from the day she first knocked on the manor door. Her hair was indeed red.
Ezekail read the final sentence, then returned to the beginning. Reading it twice over, he engraved the answer he had wanted into his eyes.
Her hair was indeed red.
Only then did the tension leave him. He was astonished at himself for what he had suspected. To place Rose and that woman on the same line—when a person grew desperately cornered, it seemed they began imagining all sorts of nonsense.
“You’ve done well. You must have hurried there and back without resting for even a moment, so I’ll grant you two days’ leave.”
“Yes, thank you.”
Ezekail folded Madam Serva’s letter and pushed it into his pocket. Now he could truly put his mind at ease.
“Er, but, sir.”
The subordinate opened his mouth.
“I happened to hear something on the way back. You know that woman locked up in the prison camp?”
Rizan was mentioned out of nowhere. Having been made so anxious by the woman who had toyed with him by borrowing the power of hallucinations, just hearing of her made the mood he had barely recovered sink again.
With a cold expression, Ezekail listened to the news his subordinate had brought.
❖ ❖ ❖
“Have you heard that story?”
“What story?”
“That woman. The one Major Valdemarea was searching for so desperately.”
Major Valdemarea.
At the title referring to Ezekail, Rizan unconsciously pricked up her ears. Whether the guards were near or far, if the story concerned Ezekail, her hearing sharpened of its own accord. Though her ears were not particularly keen in ordinary times, it seemed the realm of instinct dragged her hearing upward.
“Ah, the red-haired one?”
“Yes, that person.”
“Why?”
Even though it was a prison camp cut off from the world, news did not circulate slowly. Rather, the guards, bored from standing watch, would ask around for all kinds of rumors from outside, so the prisoners tended to overhear news quite quickly. In particular, news of the Valdemarea family was always a matter of the utmost interest.
“They say he released an enormous number of people to search for her, and in the end, he finally found her. Apparently they’ll bring that woman to Cleris soon.”
“Wow, as expected of Major Valdemarea. He’ll catch her somehow even if he has to search the entire country. I’m curious what kind of woman she is.”
“You won’t be the only one. For a while, the front of Valdemarea will be swarming with onlookers.”
Rizan stared blankly for a moment, dazed.
He found her?
That can’t be…
All at once, her heart plummeted to her feet. Rizan grabbed the bars and leaned her swaying body against them, trying to hear the two guards’ conversation in more detail. But that was all she heard. Two prisoners in another cell caused a commotion by fighting, and the guards stopped their conversation and left to bring the prisoners under control.
Rizan pressed tightly against her chest, soothing the throbbing pain.
Who on earth did he find?
He was a man who had identified her with astonishing precision even when he could not see. There was no way a man with senses that frighteningly sharp would be deceived by the wrong woman.
So if he had not been deceived in ignorance…
Had he met a woman he wanted to be deceived by, even knowing the truth?
She had heard that he had met countless women because of “Rose.” No matter how patient a man was, his patience could not be infinite. He must have gradually grown weary of Rose, whose whereabouts were still unknown, and in the meantime, it was… time for at least one new woman to catch his heart. It was not strange. Moreover, as the son of Valdemarea who had driven out his brothers and remained alone, it was not as though he could leave the seat beside him empty forever.
Perhaps, however, it was difficult to tidy up all the rumors he had spread until now, so for the time being he intended to package the new woman as “Rose” and bring her in.
…That must be it.
At the Derosa manor, she had neatly stepped back, saying she would not covet the position of Valdemarea’s mistress, and then here in the prison camp, she had volunteered to pay for her sins. What lingering attachment could she possibly have now?
She had no right to add even a single word. Sometimes, she felt that injuring her throat had not been misfortune, but divine punishment. Since she was in a position where she would have nothing to say even if she had ten mouths, it was as though she had been told not to say anything at all.
Don’t act shamefully.
Rizan repeated it to herself.
Know your place. Don’t become any more disgraceful than this. …Please.
Trying to calm her wildly pounding heart, Rizan remained curled up without moving for a long while. Then someone poked her in the back, and she came to her senses.
Bewildered, Rizan lifted her head and looked around without thinking, only to start violently when she recognized the person who had entered her sight. Ezekail, who had appeared without a sound, was watching her.
Today, too, Ezekail was dressed in an immaculate uniform. Perhaps because of the impact of hearing that he would bring “Rose” back, the already solid wall around him felt even higher today.
Rizan clutched the hem of her clothes and looked up at Ezekail. Though it was a face she had already seen many times, today his gaze, unusually observant, swept over her from head to toe.
“Christmas will be here soon. Shall I give you a present?”
Then he spoke abruptly.
A Christmas present…?
From the very first words, she could not grasp the context at all. Rizan opened her eyes wide and waited for him to continue.
“News of your parents.”
Her breath was swallowed whole. Her vision spun dizzily. Rizan tried to rise, only to collapse back down. A stiff ache pressed down on her ribs.
“They turned themselves in after hearing news of you.”
Ezekail looked down at Rizan, whose face had gone deathly pale.
“They said they would bear your crimes, so I should spare you. What do you think?”