Chapter 97
Even if it had to be like this, he wanted to know what lay in Lizan’s heart.
Was it not possible?
If he considered the hours of pain and resentment she must have endured in the camp, that is. To Ezekail, a career soldier, there was nothing strange about taking revenge on someone who had harmed you by inflicting even greater harm in return. But Lizan, weakened as she was, did not look as if she had the strength to strike him, and to be honest, even if she hit him, he doubted it would hurt—let alone tickle.
“Have you ever handled a rifle?”
He helped Lizan sit up. She was so light that his heart dropped, as if her body might crumble with the slightest pressure. It was difficult to read any emotion from that small face, drained of color and light.
Ezekail propped the rifle against a raised pillow and placed her finger on the trigger. He also folded a thick layer of blankets between the buttstock and her shoulder.
“The recoil is strong when it fires. If we don’t do this, you’ll hurt your shoulder.”
There was no need for her to aim. If she pulled the trigger, he would make sure to stand where the bullet would fly and strike.
After confirming that Lizan could sit upright on her own, he had just taken three or four steps back.
Lizan, staring blankly down at her own hand hooked around the trigger, moved her hand to the barrel. At the sight of her shifting her grip on the rifle, a chilling premonition surged up in him.
Even if she had a rightful desire for revenge, was she truly the sort of woman who would pull the trigger on him?
She might feel the impulse for a moment, but merely thinking of something and carrying it out were entirely different matters.
And Lizan had already made choices that harmed herself. On top of that, she also knew that if a rifle was given even a slight impact, it could fire without the trigger being pulled. Of course, because of the recoil, the chance of it hitting its mark was extremely low—but one never knew. Fortune, by and large, had not been on her side.
His vision went dizzy. Ezekail instantly threw himself forward and wrapped her in his arms. The rifle dropped from Lizan’s startled hands. Covering her entire body with his own in a firm shield, Ezekail seized the rifle she had let go of. Fortunately, it did not fire.
“Don’t tell me you were just….”
You weren’t trying to hurt yourself, were you?
He stopped before asking and swallowed the words. She was already no longer looking at him. Watching carefully to see if her breathing had gone strange again, he crushed between his teeth the lips that had once openly mocked Lizan.
“Have you gone mute or something?”
It had been a voice that resembled her nature—calm, low, and soothing enough to steady the heart. With that voice, Lizan had gently comforted him, encouraged him, and at times acted endearingly coy.
But now he could not hear her voice.
Even if he asked whether she had meant to shoot him, or shoot herself, or whether she had disliked both options and merely wanted to put the gun down, he would not be able to “hear” her answer.
And that was not all. Where and how it hurt the most, what she needed most, what she wanted, whether there was anything she wished to eat or do or see—there were so many things he wanted to hear from her, yet because Lizan could not speak, there was no way for him to recklessly press her for answers.
A belated sense of loss struck his chest.
What made it even more distant and dizzying was the fact that her voice was likely not the only thing he had lost.
He had never felt so helpless.
❖ ❖ ❖
After dealing with the inn where the chaotic fight had broken out and arranging for Mrs. Serva’s body to be transported with proper respect, Ezekail’s subordinates returned to Cleris over the course of four days. Anna and Polina also joined the party instead of returning to their hometown.
On the day the two women arrived at the Valdemaera mansion, Ezekail felt deeply relieved. Anna had been fairly close to Lizan, and Polina was also someone Lizan knew quite well, so he hoped that Lizan, dropped into the unfamiliar Valdemaera mansion, might regain at least a little stability.
All this time, Lizan had remained unresponsive even when Ezekail brought physicians to her. Thinking that perhaps she disliked the physician, he tried changing to another, but her attitude did not change.
It was not as if he thrust them at her at any random time, either. He kept watch over Lizan constantly, and when her condition seemed comparatively less poor, he called a physician and brought them along. Yet Lizan seemed to instinctively notice the identity of the strangers Ezekail brought with him. Moreover, the moment she heard the physician say they wanted to examine her throat, she instead closed her mouth firmly and went still.
Her eating drove him even more mad. It was hard to tell whether she avoided foods that had to be chewed and swallowed, eating only a little of what went down smoothly, because her throat hurt, or because she had fallen into the habit of nearly starving in the camp. He watched closely, wanting to know which foods she reached for more often, whether she found any of them tasty, but there was no change in her silent expression.
When she slept… he thought something had gone wrong. Lizan slept pressed tight against the wall, her limbs drawn close to her torso as if she were a log. On some days, she drew up her knees and fell asleep crouching, with only her head drooping forward. It was a posture that made even the onlooker ache. Unable to bear watching, he picked her up to lay her down properly, only for her to wake with a start and turn deathly pale, leaving him even more flustered.
“Did you have a nightmare?”
“…….”
“Why do you sleep in such a painful way?”
“…….”
He tried to reassure her that it was all right to lie down and sleep comfortably, but it was no use. On a bed large enough for three or four grown men to roll around in, she could not move beyond a very narrow space. The sight made it seem as if she were trapped inside a rectangular coffin. Utterly puzzled, he sent people to investigate and learned that because there were too many people imprisoned in the camp, they all slept that way. They curled up as much as possible so as not to get in one another’s way, and even then the environment was so cramped and poor that their limbs soon became tangled together. In rooms where there was truly not enough space, it was common to sleep sitting or even standing.
At the Derosa mansion, she had been a woman who slept comfortably in his arms. They had spent nights as one, limbs entwined, sharing body heat. But now she was uncomfortable with his touch.
“Lizan.”
Because she had reacted with rejection to the name Rose, Ezekail could no longer call her by the name familiar to him. Lizan. Since she had said her parents called her Liz or Lissy, it seemed likely that her real name was indeed Lizan.
Her appearance and her name had all been lies. But he had no time to be buried in shock. She was a woman he had barely rescued from the verge of death.
If I hesitate, she dies. If I delay, she dies. The moments when he had lashed himself on with those words and raced day and night were still vivid. He had witnessed with his own eyes the sight of Lizan becoming a spectacle for the crowd, a noose around her neck. He also could not forget the way she had changed her grip on the rifle when he placed it in her hands and told her to use it if she had resentment she wished to vent.
Only the shell remained, the inside hollowed out. Her life, her vitality, were frail. She was so faint that it would not be at all strange if she shattered at any moment.
What could he possibly demand of you as you are now?
It was all futile.
“Your body is too weak. You can’t hold out if you eat like that.”
What should I bring you so you’ll at least put it in your mouth?
Despite it being the dead of winter, Ezekail obtained all sorts of fruit and placed them in abundance within her reach.
As he remembered, when she stayed at the Derosa mansion, Lizan had liked fruit quite a bit. That was why, in trying to procure good fruit, he had allowed Merlo—who had come from the main house to spy—into the mansion. Mrs. Serva, at least, had been unable to distinguish colors due to a problem with her vision, but Merlo had seen Lizan imprisoned in the camp and still deceived him. Even when he mentioned her appearance and confirmed it, Merlo had brazenly spun a lie. If Merlo had revealed the truth to him even a little earlier, Lizan would not have been strung up on the gallows.
He had no intention of tolerating an errand boy who deceived his master. For the moment, however, he could not take his eyes off the precarious Lizan for even an instant. Yet if he summoned Merlo to the bedroom to interrogate him, it was certain to disturb her stability, so for now, he had merely confined him under probation. He intended to postpone the punishment and, once Lizan’s condition improved, hold him thoroughly accountable.
Because Lizan kept her distance from physicians, proper treatment had not even begun. But he could not simply do nothing, so drawing on his own experience of being afflicted by poison, Ezekail met the bare minimum of treatment and nutrition by mixing painkillers into her soup at every meal and adding finely minced meat.
Given that each passing day had drained him dry like this, it was only natural that he felt as though he could breathe again at Polina and Anna’s appearance.
“Lizan, Anna and Polina have arrived. Don’t you want to see them?”
Thinking that meeting people she knew well might make her feel better, he asked indirectly. But Lizan still merely lowered her eyes, her face emotionless. Her lifeless complexion made her no different from a puppet with its strings cut.
In one way, she seemed to have blankly lost her soul; in another, she seemed sunk in complicated thoughts. He wished she would show something—anything—even if it was crying or anger. But the woman who had become hardened to enduring everything since the Derosa mansion did not share even a fragment of what was in her heart.
Ezekail looked at her profile with feelings too difficult to put into words.