Seventh: Volume 2, page 15
“You made her cry!” Zappa screeched, pointing at Aria. “I saw it myself!”
But alas, Aria was in no state to take him seriously. Apparently, she just wanted to lie down as quickly as possible.
“Oh, give me a break,” she mumbled, voice quavering. “Seriously. It hurts... It really hurts. So please, just...just stop, okay? Ugh, now you’ve got me sweating again...” Her voice was so faint I doubted Zappa or Lord Dale could hear her, and sweat was pouring from her skin even faster than before. I couldn’t leave her like this.
Zappa drew in close to me, his fist clenched and a grin on his face.
“How about I give this spoiled city brat a taste of reality!” he snarled. “You think you’re all high and mighty, huh, now that you’ve surrounded yourself with women?!”
Does he have some sort of grudge against me?
To be frank, it would be unbelievably annoying if he did.
“So says the small-town bully,” the third head said, laughing. Despite his mirth, his voice was throaty and low. “Lyle, why don’t you teach him a lesson. Show that boy how weak he really is.”
Zappa swung at me in a wide arc. He was faster than Lord Dale and had more force behind his blow, but he was still easy for me to avoid. I grabbed his arm and swept his leg out from under him, making him trip and fall to the ground.
“You little...! You think you’re better than me?!”
Zappa was...well...not the scariest of opponents. The vassals back home had harder fists. He didn’t seem nearly as strong as he made himself out to be.
Lord Dale rushed to Zappa’s side to help him back to his feet. Aria was grasping at my clothing now, her breath coming in heavy pants.
“Excuse me,” she managed, “I’m in quite a lot of pain right now, so we’ll listen to what you have to say later. We can fight after that, if you still feel the need.”
“Hold on!” Lord Dale cried, grabbing my shoulder. He shook me back and forth, jolting my body in multiple different directions. Aria shook with me, her condition worsening with each sharp movement. At this point, Lord Dale was glaring at me. “What are you going to do with—?”
“Shut the hell up, you bloody half-wits!”
The gravelly, threatening tone of Aria’s voice caused all three of our gazes to lock onto her face. One of her eyebrows was twitching as she glared over at Lord Dale and Zappa, though I’d be hard-pressed to tell if she was amused or furious.
“You’ve got some nerve, showing up here so early in the morning! And I haven’t forgotten about how you acted toward Lyle yesterday! If you were gonna come here, you shoulda started by apologizing to all of us! You should be kneeling with your face in the dirt, begging for our forgiveness, you absolute cretin!”
Her gangster-esque tone had reduced all the ancestors to silence. Except the founder, that is.
“Aria, my dear,” he pleaded. “Please don’t talk like that. It’s...not good for girls to speak that way, I think.”
You think?! Be a bit more assertive about it, will you?!
It appeared that Aria had spoken with more than enough intensity to leave my ancestors stunned. Even I struggled to find any words. Zappa and Lord Dale stood in front of us, faces blank, their mouths opening and closing silently.
“I mean, w-we just heard the screams, so we ran over and—”
Zappa and Lord Dale looked at one another.
“W-We both heard her, right?!” Zappa whispered nervously. Lord Dale nodded at Zappa, then Zappa nodded at Lord Dale. Then both men nodded at each other again. “That’s why we came over here.”
This response caused Aria to yell at them even louder than before. “My body is in goddamn agony! Instead of punching us over some stupid misunderstanding, how about you hurry up and get lost, you useless pieces of trash! No one called for you! Read the damn room! Now scram unless you want to be speared through!”
The two men left—or fled in a hurry, rather—while Aria took some deep breaths, trying to collect herself. She looked at me and said, “Th-That was...pretty scary when they suddenly tried to punch us, right? I kinda lost myself there.”
As she smiled at me through her pain, I was left with nothing to do but agree.
“Yeah...” I replied. “I did get a bit scared.”
I couldn’t tell Aria that she was the scary one. Not to her face. But yeah...she definitely was.
Sorry, I thought at her, but I think you’re terrifying.
***
After I returned to the hut and laid Aria down on her mat, I noticed Sophia was writhing in discomfort on the next mat over. It seemed like every time she tried to move, pain raced through her. Every once in a while her body twitched as if she was being jabbed.
“Oww!” she moaned.
Novem moved over to the mats. “You’ll be fine,” she murmured to her in reassurance. “Just stay in bed and rest for a while. You can tell me or Miss Zelphy if you need anything.”
I was certain Novem, Zelphy, and Sophia had heard the commotion outside, but they didn’t bother bringing it up. No one mentioned my quarrel with Lord Dale, or all the stuff Aria had yelled.
Novem was tending to Aria and Sophia by herself, so I hesitantly raised a hand and asked her, “Is there anything I can do?”
Zelphy scratched at her head, thoughtful.
“No, we’re fine, milord,” Novem replied, turning me down gently. She seemed troubled. “Can you handle the work outside?”
The fourth head’s sigh rattled in my ear. “Lyle, why don’t you let the girls look after the girls? There are some things women would prefer the other sex go without knowing.”
Really...? I wondered as I walked back out of the hut.
I had nothing better to do, so I decided to take a stroll through the settlement. The first two days we’d been here, I’d been too busy to get a good look.
It wasn’t long before I spotted Lord Dale; he was helping an old woman carry a heavy parcel.
“Let me handle it, ma’am.”
“Thank you kindly, dear.”
Other citizens greeted him as he passed by, warm smiles on their faces. He smiled at them in return, children gathering around his feet as he did.
“Hey, Mister Dale, let’s play!”
“There’s still a good amount of work that needs to be done out in the fields,” he told the kids with an awkward smile. “You’ll have to wait until next time.”
As far as I could tell, Lord Dale’s populace adored him. I just couldn’t find it in myself to think of him as a terrible lord, even though my ancestors were convinced he was hopeless. He had tried to hit me, but only because he’d thought I’d made Aria cry. Taking that into consideration... Perhaps he was a decent guy after all. As far as being a decent lord, though, I couldn’t say.
As I watched him from afar, I muttered to myself, “He seems like a good person.”
“His people love him,” the second head muttered. “I can see why they pinned all their hopes on him when he first inherited.”
“Then everything will turn out okay, won’t it? I feel like things will work themselves out, one way or another.”
“Like I care!” the founder cried, aggravated. It seemed he was still angry that Lord Dale had proposed to Aria. “I hate him! Just look what he made her do... It’s his fault she got all worked up and said all those things...”
“I don’t know, I think that came pretty naturally to her,” the third head said awkwardly. “I mean, she enjoys working up a sweat, and she doesn’t stress herself out over the small stuff. Plus, she’s pretty quick to throw hands, isn’t she? I feel like that’s just who she is.”
“You’re wrong!” the founder wailed. “Aria’s a proper lady, goddammit!”
He sounded like he was on the brink of tears. Not that I cared, but the sight of an old man crying was one that I’d prefer to avoid.
I went ahead and tuned my ancestors out, my eyes dancing over the tranquil rolling scenery, the smiling people of House Pagan, and Dale Pagan, their lord.
Chapter 24: Getting Along
Back in the narrow hut where Lyle’s party was staying, noon had already zipped by. Aria and Sophia still lay on their mats, feeling just as bad as they had when they’d woken that morning. Novem had smeared an herbal paste over their bodies which was meant to numb their pain before she and Zelphy had gone out, leaving the two girls to their own devices. The harsh smell of the paste filled the air as they both gazed at the hut’s ceiling.
The hut was filled with the sounds of the two girls’ grunts and groans. Neither of them could move a single muscle without causing their bodies to ache. According to what Novem had told them, their bodies were being reconfigured so that they were in the optimum condition to utilize their Arts. Apparently, in order to use Arts, your physical makeup had to be tailored to the ability you manifested. Neither of the girls had heard anything about such a thing before.
A long silence passed between them, and then Aria spoke.
“Hey.”
Sophia started to turn to face Aria. “What is—?” Pain hit her, and she cried out. “O-Ow...”
Their bodies were still in tatters since they’d overused their newly acquired Arts.
Aria craned her neck, trying to get a look at Sophia’s pained face, but...
“Ungh!”
Agony raced through every fiber of her being.
Sophia couldn’t help but giggle at the sound of Aria’s grunt. This led to further agony, which led to even more writhing.
Restraining any further urge to laugh, Sophia asked Aria, “Wh-What is it? Did you...urgh...have something you wanted to ask me?”
“Y-Yes, I did! Why do you speak so harshly to Lyle? Be a bit more gentle with his feelings next time, all right?”
Novem had told Sophia the details of Lyle’s past, but knowing them didn’t change her opinion. “There are some parts of his story I sympathize with,” she told Aria. “But what does that matter? When you want to make your feelings clear, it’s better to be harsh about it.”
“You’re—!” Aria’s voice came out high-pitched and vehement, the force of it sending pulses of agony through her. She mumbled a soft “Ow...” before falling silent for a moment. She laid there quietly, waiting for sweat to stop beading on her skin.
After a few labored breaths, they resumed their conversation. They hadn’t moved an inch, and yet both of them were drenched in sweat.
“If you always spoil him, it’ll hold him back,” Sophia told Aria.
“I just think you’re being way too harsh out of nowhere,” Aria immediately shot back.
Sophia whispered, “You may be right.” But she had no intention of changing her attitude. “I don’t really understand how to be kind about it,” she said, her voice a bit sorrowful. “Back when I lived at House Laurie, my grandfather was always harsh with me. He didn’t hesitate to smack me around. There was a time when I thought that was perfectly normal.”
Aria recalled her own father.
My father was still kind when I was little, so he never hit me, Aria realized.
Struck by the thought, Aria found she no longer had it in her to criticize Sophia for acting the way she had.
“He was overprotective,” Sophia went on. “Or maybe it would be more accurate to call him old-fashioned. Regardless, thanks to him, I spent most of my time in the courtyard of our estate when I was growing up. On the rare times my father took me outside its walls, my grandfather was at his throat. I hated to see him that way. By the time I realized that I’d hardly ever spoken to anyone else my own age, it was too late to change anything. Every time I asked them about it, they’d just tell me I had to stay isolated because I was a girl waiting for her wedding day.”
It seemed that Sophia’s life had been quite a strict one, even though not everyone around her was unkind.
“I always thought you were weirdly stiff and formal with everyone,” Aria told her. “I guess that’s the reason why.”
Silence fell between them for a moment before Sophia muttered, “Honestly, I’m envious of you.”
“Why’s that?” Aria asked.
Aria couldn’t think of anything about herself that Sophia could be envious of. She was a daughter of a fallen house, her father had been sentenced to harsh labor in punishment for assisting a group of bandits, and in the eyes of society, she was considered a prostitute. Even if it was only for appearances, it was no less shameful.
“But...when you were abducted by the bandits, Lyle saved you, didn’t he? You had someone who was willing to come to your rescue. I envy that,” Sophia confessed. She sounded ashamed.
This answer took Aria completely by surprise. She choked on air, then burst out laughing. “Ha ha... Agh! Ha ha ha... Hraaaagh!”
The more she laughed, the more her chest ached. The more her chest ached, the more the pain in her body stirred to life. By the time she stopped laughing, her whole body was in agony. She writhed with it, screaming as her pain surged.
When Sophia saw Aria’s reaction, she flew into a rage.
That jerk’s making fun of me, she thought.
“Wh-What’s so funny about—? Hnnngh!”
The two of them made a mutual decision to wait for the pain to wear off before they continued. When they spoke again, their breathing was all over the place, making it hard for them to speak.
“Sure, he saved me...but it’s not like...he really cares about me...as a person,” Aria panted, teary-eyed from the pain. “We don’t...have the sort of relationship...you’re thinking about...”
“The result...is the same,” Sophia panted back, equally badly off. “A-And...I hear you...got a marriage proposal. It must be nice...to have so many men...courting you. I’m...jealous.”
Having finally caught her breath, Aria replied, “That didn’t make me happy at all. I mean, the lord’s got someone else he likes anyways.”
“He does?”
“That’s right. Umm, Paula, was it? Sometimes you can catch that Dale guy looking at her with this conflicted look on his face. The only reason he went after me was because he wanted my magician’s blood. It’s idiotic. He wouldn’t have acted that way if he knew how worthless the Lockwood bloodline has become.”
Sophia fell silent. Now that Aria had mentioned her family name, Sophia remembered the situation Aria’s father had put her in.
A short time passed, then she said, “I’m sorry, Aria. It was silly of me to say I envied you without considering the circumstances you’re in...”
“Don’t worry about it,” Aria answered. “I’m an adventurer now, thanks to Lyle. I wanted to thank him, you know. But...I’m just completely useless. I figured being nice to him was the least I could do.”
“Honestly, I’m always wondering if I’m just using Lyle,” Sophia said, the words coming straight from her heart. “I might as well forget repaying my debts. At this point, I’m just dragging him down and forcing him to look after me on top of everyone else. It’s pathetic. I tried to figure out what else I could possibly offer him, but being firm with him about his faults was all I could think of...”
They’d been thinking the exact same thing! Upon realizing this, the girls burst out laughing. Their laughter was almost immediately interrupted by agony, though, and they began to writhe once more...
***
I stood in front of our hut with a pail of water in hand.
“Can I go in yet?” I asked. My ancestors had instructed me not to enter.
The second head seemed like he was getting fed up with me, but he agreed to let me go inside. He told me that I should wait a little longer, though.
“If you go in there now, Lyle, they’ll think that you overheard them.”
“But...I did overhear them.”
Indeed, the girls had been speaking—and yelping and groaning—loud enough that I could hear them from my place outside the hut. I’d been listening when the topic of their conversation had drifted to me.
“Don’t you say a word to them about how you eavesdropped, Lyle,” the fourth head cautioned me. “Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
At this point, I was already used to people insulting me behind my back, and I didn’t mind when people gossiped about me. Until recently, I’d had to deal with the servants and vassals of House Walt spreading malicious lies about me on a daily basis. Whenever they complained about me, they’d always compare me to Ceres. I’d gradually learned to just live with it. It occurred to me, now, that perhaps they’d meant for me to hear the awful things they said. They could have been purposely speaking in places where they’d known I would pass by.
But this time was different. I felt strangely embarrassed. The way Aria and Sophia had talked about me had made me feel...treasured.
The founder’s choked voice filtered into my ears as I stood there, waiting to go inside. “Aria, you were thinking so much about how to support Lyle...”
Maybe our founder just cries strangely easily...?
“Is that really something you should be crying about?” asked the third head. “More importantly, Lyle...good for you.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, cocking my head in confusion.
The fifth head sighed. “You’ve got some fine women around you, even though they’re kind of awkward. I’m not going to tell you to marry them, but you’d better treat them well.”
“Hey, don’t be so wishy-washy! Just marry Aria!” the founder demanded. “She’s such a wonderful girl!”
“Well, I mean...you’ve got to take Lyle into consideration, you know.” The sixth head’s voice seemed troubled. “He doesn’t have that kinda resolve, and they’re not anywhere near that stage yet...”
It was clear that as far as my ancestors were concerned, I was completely unreliable.
Maybe that’s why they get so anxious about me...
“The sixth head’s right,” I told them. “I mean, I don’t even know if I can make Novem happy, let alone... Hey, it seems pretty quiet in there. Guess I’ll go in.”
I stepped into the hut. Aria and Sophia were both sound asleep, exhausted either from their conversation or the writhing that had followed.
