“Why?”
One of the mercenaries’ eyes lit up as he spoke.
“Weren’t we here looking for new people anyway?”
“That’s true, but don’t tell me you…”
“That’s right.”
One of the mercenaries grinned. His name was Dota, a twenty-four-year-old mercenary in his fourth year.
“There was something useful in his eyes.”
“I agree with that much. But the captain’s going to ask where we picked up some beggar brat like this.”
“We can just say he had the guts to come at us. The captain likes that kind of thing.”
“Well, he does like people with guts.”
The mercenaries met each other’s eyes, thought it over, and then looked down once at Khalid lying on the ground.
“What are you doing? Aren’t you going to carry him?”
“What? I’m the one who has to carry him?”
“Then should I do it?”
Dota, the mercenary who had suggested it first, immediately went over to Khalid and lifted him by both armpits as if telling the other man to hurry up. The other mercenary, Bade, a seven-year veteran, let out a sigh and finally offered up his back. Khalid hung limp, still not conscious.
“He looks like he’s been starving for a long time.”
“And he still tried to come at us in that state. That’s something.”
“Exactly. So doesn’t that make him worth turning into a mercenary?”
“Think whatever you want.”
And so the two mercenaries headed back to the mercenary band with Khalid slung over one of their backs. By the time Khalid opened his eyes again, he was in a corner room of the inn the mercenary band was using.
*****
It was early dawn.
Khalid woke before anyone else in the estate. It was a habit he had had since childhood. Yes, the damned habit he had picked up while serving as Nox’s attendant never did go away in the end.
The moment Khalid opened his eyes in bed, his mood soured and he wrinkled the bridge of his nose. And on top of that, he had dreamed a dream he had not wanted to see. Those days when Nox had thrown him away, when the letter of recommendation had been taken from him, when he had been left with nothing and gone on living inside despair. If the mercenary band had not picked him up back then, he might really have starved to death.
Khalid brushed a hand back through his hair and looked at his bed.
Nox, who had finally fainted the day before, was lying on top of it. The hair that was always kept neat had fallen into disarray, and the skin around his still-red eyes was damp and chafed from tears. Khalid looked down at that face coldly, then pulled back the blanket covering him.
“…Why.”
Nox was lying with his back turned to him, and that back was laid bare. It was covered in whip marks. Old scars, wholly unsuited to the body of a duke’s son, were etched there.
“Why does your body have something like this on it?”
Khalid thought. Wasn’t he someone who should have lived more happily than anyone, after throwing away me, the one who loved him that much? He could not understand why a young nobleman of a great house would bear wounds like these, wounds that did not suit him in the least.
“…No. No.”
Khalid murmured quietly.
If you were unhappy during the years when I was gone, then that is better news to me than anything else.
He did not want to know what had happened. No, he thought he must not know.
“Don’t pity him.”
Khalid said it to himself. But he could not help being bothered by those scars. The fact that a body that belonged to him now carried wounds carved into it by someone else…
Khalid rose from his seat and headed for the bath. No master greeted the morning with a slave beside him.
He called for the servants and had them prepare the bath. After glancing once more at Nox, who still had not regained consciousness, he went inside the bathroom.
Some time later, Khalid emerged from his bath and changed clothes with the help of attendants. Then he stepped out into the corridor and gave an order to the knights following behind him.
“We’re going to the Imperial Palace.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Now settled in a position that had become familiar, Khalid gave the order with ease and went straight down to the first floor to board his carriage. Sitting inside, he stared out the window for a moment. Nox, still lying unconscious in his room, came to mind. Without realizing it, Khalid’s expression tightened.
His enemy. The one who had betrayed him and thrown him away. Someone who could no longer affect him in the slightest.
And yet, someone he had once wanted.
With cool eyes, Khalid looked up toward the window of his room, then at last drew the curtain across the carriage window.
By the time Khalid’s carriage left the estate, Nox slowly woke from sleep. His whole body creaked, and below the waist his senses were dulled, as though he were half numb. Bracing one hand against the sheet, Nox somehow forced himself upright. At the slow, deep pain rising up from his lower body, he bit down once more on his scabbed lips. It was pain so unfamiliar that it felt almost unreal.
Knock, knock—
Around then, someone knocked at the door. Nox hesitated for a moment. Was he even allowed to grant permission for someone to enter? But when he did not answer, the person beyond the door spoke first.
“I’m coming in.”
“……”
Nox pulled the blanket up to cover himself. The state of his body, marked all over with bite marks, was not something he could show another person.
The maid who entered the room placed both hands over her abdomen and greeted him.
“I am Marlene, the head maid.”
“……”
“You may address me as Head Maid.”
“Why are you…”
Being polite to me?
That was what Nox wanted to ask, and perhaps sensing it, Marlene shook her head.
“I will only speak to you politely for the moment. From now on, you are to remain with His Grace as the Duke’s slave, so you should understand that.”
“The duke…”
“Yes. Duke Khalid Via. He is the master of this estate.”
Nox nodded. If he had stood at the Second Prince’s side and distinguished himself from the front, then a ducal title was hardly impossible. Especially now, when the Second Prince no longer had any brothers left.
When no answer came from Nox, Marlene continued with what she had come to say.
“The bath has been prepared. On nights when you attend His Grace, you may use His Grace’s bathroom. On days when you do not, you may use the bath attached to the room you will be shown.”
At the words attend His Grace at night, Nox thought of the night before without meaning to. Yes. Attend him at night. Attend him at night.
Nox smiled faintly.
There were moments when he wondered how on earth he had ended up like this, and then moments when he thought perhaps it was fortunate enough simply to still be alive. But is it really fortunate? That question took hold of his mind. And before he could even begin to find an answer, Marlene continued.
“Once you have washed, I will show you the room where you will be staying from now on.”
“…Understood.”
Marlene raised one eyebrow as if surprised. Even if a nobleman—and not just any nobleman, but a man born of a ducal house—had fallen into slavery, she had not expected him to use polite speech toward nothing more than a head maid.
Nox paid it no attention at all. He reached for the robe hanging at the end of the bed, slipped it on, and headed into the bath.
Removing what was inside him on his own was difficult. But as unpleasant as it was, the thought of relying on someone else’s hands for it made his skin crawl. Nox pushed away the useless thoughts, dried himself, and stepped back outside.
For a moment, the image came to him of Khalid carefully drying his hair whenever he came out washed. But that was no longer something that could ever happen.
“Please change into these.”
What she held out looked like a servant’s—no, an attendant’s—clothes. The black vest and trousers were smooth, and the shirt looked soft. When Nox stared at them in puzzlement, Marlene explained.
“You are expected to accompany His Grace in his public appearances from now on. So this as well.”
What Marlene held out next was a bolo tie to fasten at the collar of the shirt. It was decorated in silver and ornate, but Nox knew all too well what it meant. The slave of a great noble. Pretty, but not something permitted a mind of its own. And a favored bed companion.
Slaves apparently considered it an honor to receive a bolo tie like this, but for Nox, who had once stood in the place of a high noble himself, the situation could bring out nothing but a bitter smile.
Even so, he accepted it meekly. His throat already seemed to tighten faintly.
Something that would keep anyone from seeing him as himself anymore. Something that would let him be seen only as someone else’s possession.
No—not something.
It was he himself who was becoming a thing.
“Then change and come out.”
“…Yes.”
After Marlene left the room, Nox, left alone, took off the robe. Then he looked at his naked body reflected in the full-length mirror some distance away.
Shoulders, nape, chest, upper arms, waist, thighs—there was no single place he could point to. Bite marks remained everywhere, so many that they had already begun to darken into purple with time. Pain pulsed wherever he touched.
Nox let out a sigh and changed clothes. It seemed unlikely that his body would have many whole days left in the future.
Rustle, whisper.
Slowly, he dressed himself and tied the bolo tie, and when he did, he looked every inch a perfect slave. At least, that was how he looked in Nox’s own eyes. The fact that he had once carried the blood of a noble ducal house already felt like a story from the distant past.
Nox opened the door and stepped outside. Marlene, who had been waiting for him there, tipped her head for him to follow. Nox started walking after her. His stride matched hers naturally, the easy pace of a nobleman walking beside a lady. Marlene glanced at him once, then quietly kept her mouth shut.
The two of them walked toward the guest rooms on the first floor of the main residence. Nox asked,
“I’ll be staying in the main residence?”
“So that if His Grace calls for you, you can appear at once. This was decided with His Grace’s approval, so there is no need for concern.”
“No, it isn’t concern so much as…”
The treatment was better than he had expected. He had thought he would be treated like the other servants—no, worse than the other servants.
Perhaps reading that thought, Marlene leaned closer and murmured quietly,
“They would never treat His Grace’s favored bed companion that way.”
“…I see.”