Chapter 252
Side Story - A Snake Without Venom, A Flower Without Fragrance (2)
The moment that made Bije dream of becoming a merchant was a conversation she had as a child with an old man in the slums of Kimel.
"Down in those southern swamps, the crocodiles'll bite your legs off the second you let your guard down. Look at my leg, just like this."
"Didn't you lose that leg 'cause you got caught gambling, old man?"
"Bullshit!"
He claimed to have been a great merchant who traveled between the nearby cities in his youth, but naturally, most people dismissed it as unverifiable bluster and ignored him.
Bije alone clung to the old man instead of joining the other children her age, roaming the filthy back alleys and playing tag.
"Grandpa, tell me that story again today. The one about going to the sea."
"Hm? You want to hear it again?"
"Is it really true that water fills the whole world there instead of land?"
"Of course it does......."
Every time she heard his stories, Bije imagined herself roaming freely through the outside world the old man spoke of.
A life of carrying a single pack on her back, sleeping with the sky as her roof and the earth as her bed, seeing countless landscapes, and meeting countless people.
But whenever she brought up such dreams, the old man burst into laughter as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"A girl wants to be a merchant? Give it a rest. Maybe if you were a Wizard or something, but it's grueling work even for sturdy men. Look at this."
The old man pointed to his own leg, one side cut roughly in half.
"You can't even imagine how terrifying it is beyond the city walls. Ordinary wild beasts, the magical beasts they mutate into, fellow humans, and on rare occasions, even other races."
His voice as he warned her that being a Peddler meant putting your life halfway on the line was serious and grim, nothing like his usual flippant tone.
But such discouragement only set the young Bije's heart ablaze.
The one who stopped her resolve to become a merchant and see the world no matter what anyone said was none other than her mother.
To be precise, it would be more accurate to say her parents.
"This brat is my daughter?"
"Yes, Master. She is......."
"Rather pretty face. Good, this much should do."
"Thank you!"
In the autumn of her eleventh year, Bije was sold to a man she had never seen before for a handful of coins.
The man's name was Garn Mirsel, the head of House Mirsel, a Knight house and distant branch of House Aravion, and Bije's father.
There, Bije was given a new name: Bijela.
"This annex is your home from now on. Be good and receive your training."
"Training...... does that mean I can learn writing and arithmetic? My mother said we couldn't afford to learn things like that."
"Writing and arithmetic? Why would you need any of that?"
Garn, Bijela's father, scoffed when the daughter he had sired on a whim with a slum woman said she wanted to become a merchant.
Unlike the old man who had once planted dreams in her heart, his reaction carried the particular contempt of someone who considered the other person stupid.
"I'm going to raise you as a Flower. Your face is pretty enough, so with the right training, I should be able to sell you to a decent house."
"A Flower, you don't mean..."
"Your duty is to bear a Wizard's children. Don't forget it."
What Bijela had to learn was not the regional specialties or arithmetic she had hoped for.
Only how to smile well, how to speak with refinement, and how to please a man, or a woman if needed.
From what she heard there, Garn regularly impregnated pretty-faced women from the surrounding area, then bought the children with decent looks for a sum and raised them to be sold as Concubines.
Thanks to this, he lived a remarkably wealthy life for a Knight, keeping a large house with several servants.
Only then did she realize that she had essentially been sold off as a high-class courtesan.
The same was true for the others being trained alongside her.
If female, a Breeding Woman. If male, a Stud.
Flower was simply the more elegant term for the same thing.
After coming to this realization, she secretly fled the household in the middle of the night a few days later.
"She's running away over there!"
"Catch her!"
But where could a child from the slums who knew nothing possibly run to?
Bijela couldn't even make it past the guards at the city gates and was dragged back.
Knight Garn glared at her, his face flushed with rage.
"You stupid little bitch, how dare you."
"Please let me go. If it's about the price, I'll work and pay it back later......."
"It seems your training has been lacking."
It was clear that her audacity in making a bold demand rather than apologizing or begging was what had enraged her father.
He promptly kicked her stick-thin legs and snapped them.
"Aghh......!"
"I do hope you won't forget this pain. If you try to escape again, I'll have no choice but to cripple you for good."
At least he had her properly treated, perhaps because he thought a cripple couldn't be sold, and the bones set correctly. That much was fortunate.
If she had been left unable to walk properly, she would have had to abandon her dream of becoming a Peddler.
And so, eight years.
Bijela obediently received her training as a Flower while constantly watching for a chance to escape.
It was no easy task, with the household servants, the relatives being trained alongside her, and the foul-tempered stepmother who controlled them all.
At times she considered simply burning her own face with a brand or slashing it with a knife, but she soon decided against it.
From years of experience with her father Garn's temperament, she was certain that if his own daughter dared ruin her face just to avoid being sold off, he would kill her rather than let her go.
That, or maim her as punishment and cast her back into the slums.
Her chance to escape came in the year she turned nineteen, arriving out of nowhere.
It was triggered by the war with House Zahar, which had been the subject of rampant rumors for some time.
"Everyone, run! The Zahar army is attacking the city!"
"Run where?"
"Just pack up and get outside for now......."
"There's no time to pack! Just come out!"
Screams rang out from every direction, flames surged upward, and thunderous booms hinted at battles between Wizards.
In the chaos, instead of joining those fleeing, Bijela quickly ducked into the wardrobe her father's wife frequented and hid.
Even if she fled with them, she would die if the enemy spotted her, and if she survived, she would only be sold to someone else for the family's reconstruction.
Fortunately, the person who entered the house to loot it, seemingly a Wizard of House Zahar, glanced at the wardrobe and looked away.
'I'm alive.'
She had her stepmother's jewelry clutched tightly to her chest, so once things settled down, she could use it as capital to start trading.
She hadn't yet figured out how a seventeen-year-old girl would protect her fortune on her own, but she would figure something out.
If Bijela were the type to think through every detail before acting, she never would have attempted to run away as a child in the first place.
But after the first one passed, a second Zahar Wizard glanced around and promptly found and dragged her out.
Just when she thought it was all over.
Unexpectedly, the one who saved Bijela was the first Zahar Wizard who had come through.
"You are my spoil of war now."
He said it like that, but she wasn't so foolish as to not realize the man was acting that way on purpose.
It was obvious from before that he had known she was there and deliberately looked the other way.
The man was tall and powerfully built, among the most imposing of any man Bijela had ever seen.
Like a bear wearing a human skin, perhaps.
His face had the cold, cruel look typical of a Zahar Wizard, but at least he was better than the other Wizard from a moment ago, who had been like a dog in heat.
"What's your name?"
"Karim."
"I'm Bijela. Bijela Mirsel."
As Bijela walked out of the mansion, making conversation with this stranger, she noticed that many of the corpses strewn near the entrance had familiar faces.
Her stepmother, who had always looked down on her. Several half-siblings she had trained alongside. Servants who had treated her as invisible in front of others but had occasionally shown her small kindnesses.......
Seeing them drove it home.
The man she was clinging to right now was a member of the killing force that had destroyed this city.
Bijela bit down hard on her lip, trying to suppress her trembling body.
*
Karim headed toward the lord's estate, the designated assembly point, with the girl who had introduced herself as Bijela.
The Zahar Nobles gathered there beforehand all looked at him with surprise.
"What, you too?"
"And here you always acted so clean......."
"So that's where your tastes lie."
Karim did not bother responding to each of his comrades' jab-laced jests.
After confirming that the attack on the city was over, they moved to a nearby safehouse to avoid enemy pursuit.
During the journey, Bijela, cradled in Karim's arms, chattered at him ceaselessly.
"Wow, Karim-ssi! You're really fast."
"This is the first time I've been outside the city. Where are we heading, by the way?"
"Um, is there any chance you could let me go?"
This must be what it's like to keep a chirping bird at your side.
Karim scowled at the noise but didn't scold her.
He could feel that the girl's body, and her voice, were trembling faintly as she spoke.
Lacking the heightened senses of the higher Nobles, he couldn't detect emotions through someone's scent, but he didn't need such an ability to know that she was afraid.
Shortly after arriving at the campsite, the Zahar Nobles raised their cups to celebrate their continued victories.
"Glory to the great descendants of the Night Hunters!"
"For Zahar-!"
Their bodies couldn't get drunk on mere alcohol, but there was nothing wrong with lifting their spirits this way.
What followed, naturally, was the frenzied revelry of claiming the spoils won in battle.
When screams and moans began drifting from the tents pitched all around, Bijela's eyes trembled.
"You too, come inside."
"I, I..."
She took a faltering step back, but how could she possibly resist the strength of a Noble?
Dragged along as if seized by a wild beast, Bijela was pulled inside the tent and thrown onto the bed the moment the entrance closed.
Just as she was about to scream, Karim wrapped his arms tightly around her and whispered, his hand clamped over her mouth.
"We need to let our scents soak into each other, so we have to stay like this. Just keep moaning in this position. Understood?"
Allowing them to claim Flowers in the form of captives was ultimately a reward for the Raiding Party, who fought with their lives on the line.
If it came out that he had brought one back and done nothing with her, they would obviously not look kindly on it.
The worst case would be an order to hand her over to someone else, and Karim, though the Family Head's nephew, was among the lowest-ranked in power among the Nobles and had no ability to refuse.
Fortunately, the girl nodded as if she understood.
*
After the capture of Kimel, the Raiding Party destroyed two more cities before finally returning to Bigen, where the main Zahar forces were stationed.
Those who had claimed Flowers, Karim included, carried their Flowers on their shoulders or seated them on the front or back of magical beasts as they traveled.
"Hey, Karim-ssi."
"What."
"Why haven't you done it?"
"Shh. Wizards have sharp ears."
Karim frowned at Bijela's question and signaled her to be quiet.
Fortunately, everyone was chattering loudly enough that no one had overheard their exchange.
Confirming this, he let out a small sigh and whispered.
"......Because I don't want to take a woman who doesn't want it."
"You really are a good person, Karim-ssi."
"Hardly."
If he were truly a good person, he wouldn't have participated in the war in the first place.
Karim was simply a coward.
One who could only extend his hand within the boundaries where his own safety was assured.
From then on, they were always together, talking as they made their way back to Bigen.
He was afraid that if he left her alone for even a moment, one of the other Zahar Nobles, still riding high with their reins loosened, might snatch Bijela away.
"Hey, you're gonna wear her out."
"That good, huh?"
Karim let the crude remarks go in one ear and out the other while he mulled over how to set her free.
Even though she had no surviving family, sending her to a nearby city would still be better than this.
But unfortunately, no such opportunity ever presented itself.
During the day, Karim himself was busy operating as part of the Raiding Party, and at night, sentries were always posted in numbers, monitoring all movement in and out.
"You said we're going to Bigen? The one in the Grey Zone?"
"Yes."
"I've heard about it a few times...... is the ground there really all grey?"
"So they say. I don't know if the soil color is related, but I heard the land isn't very fertile around there."
Meanwhile, Karim and Bijela grew closer as they chatted about this and that.
He was usually a man of few words, but with this girl, he found he could carry on a conversation well enough.
Bijela was more interested in the ways of the world than in cosmetics or clothes, the topics common women typically favored, and while Karim was not particularly old for a Noble, he had traveled here and there enough to have picked up a fair number of stories.
In the end, the two never found a chance to part ways and ended up traveling together all the way to Bigen, where the Zahar army was garrisoned.
Aril Zahar, who had come to greet her brother, glanced to his side and narrowed her eyes.
"You made it back in one piece, Karim. But the one beside you...... a Flower?"
"Yes, Sister."
"I see."
The look of scorn in Aril's eyes, as though she had never expected even him to stoop to such a thing, stung, but he couldn't protest otherwise.
It wasn't that he didn't trust his sister, but there was no telling where such words might travel.
Karim had Bijela placed with the other captives as his personal prisoner, then set out for the battlefield once more.
The main Aravion forces had recently arrived in the Grey Zone, so from here on it would be a true clash of strength against strength, not the probing of each other's weaknesses.
"There, Aravion scum!"
"Strike!"
The Zahar Wizards, taking turns using Tracking Magic, were always the first to detect the Aravion Wizards and could approach under Concealment to launch preemptive strikes.
In contrast, the Aravion Nobles, always forced to yield the first blow to the enemy, excelled at turning losing battles around through the mobility of Flight Magic and the offensive power of Lightning Magic.
Of course, both sides had their Nobles hold back and sent their Knights in first, so the real sacrifice fell to them.
And so, a year passed.
Even as Karim fought fierce battles against the Aravion army as a Zahar Noble, he visited Bijela whenever he could.
He knew that if the Noble who had claimed a captive lost interest, that captive could be passed along to other Nobles, or even to Knights.
He had worried that she might find being confined here uncomfortable, but to his surprise, she rather enjoyed her life as a prisoner in Bigen.
Compared to the house she had originally lived in, it was actually far more freedom, she said.
Karim, who had never known how oppressive it was to be groomed as a Flower, felt as though he had learned something new.
And, if he was being honest, he also found a measure of comfort in his conversations with Bijela.
Amid all the terrible things he was doing here, being able to feel that he had at least saved one girl.
One early evening, having returned to Bigen, Karim washed the blood from his body and headed to the building where Bijela was staying, as he always did.
After passing the Knights standing guard and the servants managing the captives inside, he sat on the edge of a bed and called out to her.
"Bije."
"You're safe, Karim."
Over the past year together, the distance between them had narrowed considerably.
Enough for one to learn the other's birth name, or pet name, and for the other to drop the formalities when addressing him.
They listened to each other's pasts and saw reflections of themselves in the other.
In that they were both children crushed under the weight of an authoritarian father, or one so overwhelmingly powerful that they could never dare defy him.
Through it all, Karim admired Bijela for always chasing her freedom, and Bijela admired Karim for possessing the strength she lacked.
Of course, she didn't know that he was not a mere Knight but one of the Zahar Nobles.
"You set the garden on fire?"
"Yeah. I was practicing making fire using only branches and dried leaves, but it caught way better than I expected......."
As she smiled sheepishly and stuck out her tongue, Karim took her hand and opened it.
Her palm was calloused, unbecoming of a well-groomed Flower.
"Looks like you've been working hard here too."
"Of course I have. Someday, when I get out of here, I need to stand on my own as a Peddler!"
He had already heard that Bijela was the biggest troublemaker among the captives here.
So much so that the Knights in charge had come to him with complaints.
The only reason she hadn't been punished was that Karim, a Noble, visited her regularly, and she wasn't openly trying to escape.
Just then, Bijela studied Karim's face intently and asked.
"......You don't look well. You're not actually hurt, are you?"
"I'm not hurt. I just did the hurting."
He thought he had been managing his expression, but apparently not well enough.
Karim recalled the Aravion Knights he had killed earlier that day.
They had just finished their night patrol duties and were napping when, thanks to a Magic Artifact that swallowed light and darkened their tent, Karim and his comrade slipped in and slaughtered them without resistance.
Mechanically inserting and withdrawing his dagger from the throats of the Knights lying in a row, over and over.
Beneath the tent, only a dozen or so corpses remained.
The memory of killing the lord of Bigen, the first time he had come here, rose to the surface, and his chest ached.
He wished he had been born without the capacity for guilt.
If only he could sink his venomous fangs into the enemy's throat without a shred of conscience, like his kin, those cruel vipers of House Zahar.
Even venting like this felt hypocritical to him.
If he truly felt guilty, he should have taken his own life.
Bijela had been watching quietly as Karim laid bare his torment in that self-lacerating way. Then, abruptly, she pulled him into an embrace.
"But it's because you're that kind of person that I'm alive."
If he had been like the other Zahar Nobles, capable of cruelty toward the enemy or even their own kin, Bijela would never have been saved.
At best, the other Zahar Wizard who found her would have raped and killed her.
As the warmth of her body, pressed tightly against his, seemed to melt his sorrows away, Karim let out a deep sigh.
Then, he felt fingers fumbling at the buttons on his chest. His eyes flew open.
"Bije?"
"These clothes are really hard to get off."
"What are you doing all of a sudden."
It had been a year since Karim had taken Bijela as a captive.
Throughout that time, he had only ever spoken with her as a friend, never trying to push the relationship further.
He knew how deeply she resented being groomed as a Flower for Nobles.
To that Karim, Bijela fixed her bright chestnut-brown eyes on him and said,
"Hold still for a second."
"I..."
"I know. You said you don't want to take a woman who doesn't want it. Do I look like I don't want this?"
"That's..."
"I like you, Karim. Not because you saved me, but because you're the kindest man I've ever known. If you don't want this, you can push me away, can't you? It's not like you don't have the strength."
It was not out of pity for his sorrow, nor a desire to sell her body to win his favor.
She simply wanted to approach him as a woman to a man, because that was what she felt.
Karim stared blankly at Bijela as she declared this without a trace of hesitation, then burst into laughter.
"Well then, gladly."
That night, the savior who would deliver this world was conceived.
*****
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