MHDG 04

Chapter : 4

A rough-handed female maid followed Jack into the room.

“So, Jackie.”

“Yes?”

“Have you happened to see anyone who’s close to the Lord?”

Jack answered casually, looking as though he wanted to finish breakfast as quickly as possible.

“W-Well… I mean, lots of people are close to him, I guess. He’s the boss around here.”

As the young maid approached Aspara to help her get dressed, Jack turned toward the opposite side of the wardrobe, making sure not to look at the young lady in her disheveled state.

The girl began helping her new mistress into her outer skirt. Compared to the castle back home, the number of attendants was laughably small, but the girl’s nimble fingers tightened the collar with remarkable speed.

“So he ran away? On the wedding night? Wow… the King of the Barbarians really has kingly manners.”

While the northern maid attended to her, Aspara and her knight chatted about the previous night’s events in the southern language.

“So you think he has a lover? If you find her, what are you planning to do? Fight your romantic rival? Leave it to me—I love that kind of thing.”

“Your vulgar expressions are sometimes harder to understand than the northern language. And what nonsense are you talking about? A romantic rival is someone who competes over the person I love.”

“Well, that man’s your husband. If your husband has a lover, then she’s your romantic rival, isn’t she?”

“Did I come here to play games of love? Considering the state of this barbarian country and the size of my dowry, there’s no danger of me being openly cast aside. If anything, if that man has an affair, it gives me a respectable reason to get rid of him when the time comes. Of course, we’ll need to produce at least one child in name, so I thought it would be better to become acquainted with her beforehand.”

“Even so…”

What kind of ridiculous farce ends with the wife becoming friends with the mistress?

His lady’s one and only knight barely managed to swallow those words.

“You nobles really have a bizarre view of marriage.”

“I think your mouth is even stranger, you ill-mannered fool.”

After finishing her grooming and a simple breakfast, Aspara was guided around the castle by an elderly servant who appeared to be the head steward.

The Lord’s seat at the breakfast table had been empty. When she pointed at the vacant chair and asked where he was, the kitchen servant explained that the master had suddenly gone hunting during the night.

Naturally, neither of the two southerners understood a word of it.

“Uh… this is the office… and over there is where the horses rest.”

“I can see that.”

Jack, believed to be the only interpreter available, spent the entire day following his mistress around, providing what could only generously be called interpretation.

“Are you sure you’re actually translating what I say? It takes you ten words, plus waving your hands and feet around, just to deliver one sentence.”

“Ah, translating from your native language into a foreign one is harder than the other way around. I told you back then—we should’ve cut off that gentleman’s wrist instead of his head.”

“Hmm…”

The Lord of Fang Castle wasn’t the only one who had stayed awake all night.

Jack, though a little slow-witted, was a loyal knight. Throughout the night, he had agonized over whether he should finally tell his mistress the truth.

In the end, he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

There was no need to remind his young mistress—who had nowhere left to rely on and nowhere to return to—just how hopeless their situation truly was.

Right. As long as I can hold out until they find a new interpreter for this castle…

Jack wasn’t particularly bright, but he had a soft heart.

【2】

Just as Jack had hoped, Aspara remained blissfully unaware of everything, curiously examining the documents in the office.

Fortunately, she seems to understand numbers, charts, and maps fairly well.

She was quite familiar with paperwork and accounting.

After all, back in her homeland, all she had ever done was lock herself in an office reading financial statements and organizing reports, only to be stabbed in the back at social gatherings she never even realized she had been dragged into.

Because of that, understanding the documents of this northern castle—which had very little commercial activity—wasn’t difficult for her.

The servants simply watched without objection as a woman who had only arrived the previous evening began leafing through the financial records.

Aspara quickly understood why.

Calling them “financial records” was generous. The castle’s entire trade history for the past two weeks fit comfortably onto just a handful of sheets.

“So… this must be my dowry.”

She murmured while staring at the financial ledger, where the numbers had obviously jumped dramatically all at once.

As she looked through the records more carefully, however, something struck her as odd.

“Wait a minute. Seven wagonloads of limestone went out, but only one wagonload of yellow beans came back? Were they attacked by bandits on the way?”

“Around here, it’s more likely that others get plundered by Fang Castle than the other way around. Grain is simply extremely expensive in this region. Especially at this time of year.”

Even so, it was still a terrible trade.

Startled, Aspara briefly wondered if she should have brought barley and pork lard as her dowry instead, before immediately shaking her head at the absurd thought.

“So that’s why the trade volume is so low? Well, I suppose if they bought even two more beans, the royal treasury would go bankrupt.”

“Oh, it’s the Lord.”

From the office balcony, they could see the fields stretching behind the castle.

Riding through the center of the fields on horseback was unmistakably Lord Gus.

He was talking to someone dressed in leather while they shared the same horse.

Since men and women dressed almost identically in this region, it was impossible to tell who the other rider was.

“So two men share one horse here?”

“Maybe because the horses here are bigger. Wait a second—”

Before his mistress could ask him to question the old steward in the northern language, Jack quickly stood on tiptoe and peeked out the window.

“Oh, that person. That’s probably Ugli. I saw him yesterday at the servants’ quarters where everyone sleeps. I wondered where he’d disappeared to in the middle of the night—guess he went along to help with the hunt.”

“My bedroom was so cold I stayed awake all night,” he added.

“Hmm…”

Aspara fell into thought for a moment.

“Jack, I need you to look into something.”

“Huh?”

After cutting her castle tour short, Aspara spent the rest of the afternoon drinking tea.

She borrowed hot water from the kitchen, carefully steeped crimson-colored tea leaves that she had brought all the way from her homeland, and poured them into precious porcelain cups wrapped in cloth for protection during the journey.

The young maid quietly straightened the table, the silverware clinking softly.

It was the same girl who had helped dress her that morning.

Aspara poured her a cup as well.

“…?”

Though she had no idea what the girl was saying, she could tell from her expression that she didn’t seem particularly pleased.

“It may be a little too bitter for someone trying it for the first time.”

“…”

“Well, it’s my first time brewing it myself, so it isn’t perfect. Next time, why don’t you try making it?”

Neither of them understood a word the other was saying.

They simply chatted away as though each were talking to themselves.

Eventually, Aspara sighed.

What exactly am I doing?

The wind was cold.

Focusing on the taste of the tea, the southern bride quietly reflected on what she had seen that morning.

That trade record still bothers me.

No wonder this castle is so poor if they’re conducting business like that.

By the time she took her second sip, the tea had already become lukewarm.

Still… maybe it can’t be helped. To trade at proper prices, they’d have to travel all the way south to an ice-free port. But hauling wagons across snowy plains just isn’t profitable. They don’t have the capital or facilities to sustain large-scale commerce either. My homeland was an island nation far from the center as well… but it wasn’t this isolated.

She remembered the endless unpaved snowy roads she had traveled only a short while ago.

Because we had an intermediate port. Our homeland’s handicrafts and spices were rare, valuable, and worth transporting despite their size, giving merchants a reason to come to us. But what reason would people from the central kingdoms have to travel all the way up here for nothing but leather and fish?

“Even if merchants did come, this barbarian kingdom doesn’t even have the structure to support a marketplace in the first place…”

The words escaped her before she realized she had spoken aloud.

The maid tilted her head in confusion.

I wonder what they’re planning to do with my dowry.

As she contemplated the fate of this unfamiliar kingdom, the sound of hurried footsteps echoed through the room.

“Milady… Milady, I’m back.”

“Oh, Jack. Welcome back. Well? Did you find anything?”

“Yes… no… maybe… Um, is it okay to talk about it here?”

“Why not? Besides you and me, who else here can understand the southern language?”

The maid stared at the two foreign guests as they began speaking in an unfamiliar tongue.

“So? What about that boy named Ugli?”

“It’s a bit of a long story…”

“Then make it short.”

“I ended up dating him.”

“Sorry. Tell me the long version.”

This was what happened.

Jack, who knew only the tiniest scraps of the northern language, somehow managed to stumble through a conversation with the foreign servant.

“You… Gus… um…”

“…? Gus…?”

“Uh… you… love… him?”

“…?”

“You! Love him?”

“…!”

Ugli burst into laughter and replied with several sentences in rapid northern speech.

His booming laughter made him even harder to understand.

“No, you… you… Gus…! Like… kissing! Are you that kind of relationship? You know, like this… mwah, mwah…”

At that very moment, Ugli leaned forward and kissed Jack directly on the lips that he had been puckering for demonstration.

“…”

Gah! What was that?!