I Have Not Been Well

Of course, Chesian had no idea.

He had no idea that the zombie before his eyes had judged him a weak specimen.

In the forest, the search for Princess Isabel was in full swing.

"Your Grace, perhaps you might rest a moment before we look about—"

"Let's try that way."

Duke Alpheus Pancrazio had come out into the forest early again this morning to join the search himself. The knights trailing after him, on the move without pause since dawn, wore their exhaustion openly. Does he think the rest of us are built like him?

Alpheus took the rugged forest track as if it were level ground, not a single breath falling out of rhythm. The look he cast back from far ahead—what was taking them so long—was, from where the knights stood, a kind of death.

"Isn't the place we're heading somewhere we already checked yesterday?"

"Even so, I mean to circle this area once more."

They were going back to ground they had already seen?

The faces of the knights who had been gasping along behind him hardened at once, and the man at the very front found his voice.

"The forest search... we could manage it ourselves, without Your Grace coming in person..."

"Sir. Am I to understand I've come somewhere I have no business being?"

The knight wanted to bite his own tongue. Worn thin with fatigue, his mouth had moved before he could stop it, and he seemed to have struck Alpheus's temper dead-on.

He was not, of course, wrong. It would have been better for Alpheus to command from one place and leave the searching to the knight order.

"What you just said—are you telling me to go and sit at a desk?"

But the one missing this time was Princess Isabel, fiancée to that fearsome duke. The knight had, in effect, asked a man who had come to the field to find his betrothed what he was doing there at all.

The color drained from the knight's face until it was waxen, and he began to stammer out an excuse.

"Th-that's not it. I only worried that Your Grace might have your time stolen by a matter like this..."

He rushed to explain, but the more he did, the further Alpheus's expression crumpled. Then the duke let out a hollow breath of laughter and scoffed.

"Ha. Are you telling me, now, that my searching for my own fiancée is a waste of time?"

"That was not my intention—!"

"Duke."

A clear voice cut cleanly between the two of them.

The other knights, the one beside Alpheus among them, went wide-eyed, then bowed low.

"May the Empire prosper."

"M-may the Empire prosper! We greet Your Highness!"

A man who seemed to carry with him the gentle air of a soft spring breeze had slipped in among them before anyone noticed.

I didn't sense him coming. Not at all.

The knights clenched their teeth against the chill that rose unbidden up their spines. Not even a breath. Not even a presence. It was only fitting for Joshua Ramirez, the Second Imperial Prince who bore the title Sword of the Empire.

"Raise your heads, all of you."

Prince Joshua laughed lightly and told those paying him their respects to lift their heads. He was Isabel's own younger brother, and he resembled her a great deal.

"Is Duke Pancrazio well?"

"Your Highness. Have you been well?"

When Alpheus asked with due courtesy, Prince Joshua answered with a bright smile.

"No."

For an instant, the knights lined up beside Alpheus doubted their own ears. Prince Joshua had smiled and given a nod; they had been certain he would answer that he was well.

"My sister has vanished. How could I smile and claim to be well? Going a little madder with each day that passes is only natural. Isn't that so, Duke?"

But the words he carried were nothing one ought to say while smiling. Prince Joshua was telling Alpheus, plainly, how he suffered because his sister was gone.

Going mad day by day? Now that he mentions it, he doesn't look well at all.

Alpheus narrowed his eyes and studied the prince's. He had been told the prince learned the news only yesterday, and whether from weeping hard over it, those eyes were still red and swollen.

"And has Your Grace been well?"

"I..."

Asked as easily as if he knew nothing at all, Alpheus parted his lips and closed them again. By form, I ought to say I've been well.I've been well—words he ordinarily kept ready on his tongue. Today, strangely, they would not come.

"..."

As Alpheus hesitated, unable to answer, Prince Joshua watched him in silence, then smiled faintly.

"Of course Your Grace must have felt the blood drying in you day by day, just as I have. The two of you were always so devoted to each other."

"..."

"Weren't you?"

Alpheus, head slightly bowed, creased the corners of his eyes.

Taken at face value, nothing Joshua had said was out of place. If anything, it sounded like comfort offered to a fiancé grieving his vanished betrothed. But that was not what it was.

He's speaking with killing intent. The eyes smiling at him were not smiling in the least, and though it was only a thread, killing intent ran through the words—a warning that he already knew everything, and that playing ignorant would not be tolerated.

He seems to know it all. What am I meant to answer? Prince Joshua would certainly have known that things between him and Princess Isabel were far from good. Beneath the courtesy, then, lay another sentence entirely. You dislike my sister, don't you—and yet here you stand, her fiancé, perfectly fine.

In truth, the prince is not wrong. Alpheus granted it without flinching. He and the princess had been on wretched terms, and more than once he had thought it would be better if she simply disappeared—she, who stood in the way of the road ahead of him. So now that Isabel was gone, by the prince's own reasoning, he ought to be doing perfectly well.

Then why does it feel as if I'm about to lose my mind?

Well was the last thing he was. He felt a breath away from coming apart. And so even that stock phrase—I have been well—Alpheus could not force past his lips.

Not once had there been anything devoted between us. Not once anything tender. And yet he had set every other matter aside and come out to search. Like a man who had lost a lover he truly loved, he returned to this forest day after day, and his thoughts were never empty of Isabel.

I'm going to lose my mind.

Alpheus bit his lip, then bowed his head toward Prince Joshua, who was still waiting for an answer.

"I... have not been well either. I hope we find her soon. Even a single day sooner."

With that he offered a courteous bow and stepped back.

At those words, Prince Joshua's eyes went round for a moment, as if he had heard something he had not expected.

After that, prince and duke were silent for a while. Prince Joshua stared wordlessly at the duke's white hair stirring in the empty air, then turned away.

"...Then I will go and look further into how matters stand."

Alpheus gave no answer.

"This way, Your Highness!"

The knights hurried to attend him, and Alpheus bent in a bow where he stood. Even then, Prince Joshua did not lose his smile.

Step after step. How far had he walked after turning away? Already his face had gone cold.

"Y-Your Highness!"

From a distance, Haas, the prince's aide, came panting up.

"Haas."

The moment Prince Joshua caught sight of Haas scrambling after him, his eyes curved at once into crescents.

"Your Highness, the knight commander is waiting to report on how far the search has progressed."

"Let's go."

"D-did you meet His Grace the Duke?"

"Yeah. Though..."

Walking slowly after Haas, Prince Joshua suddenly recalled something he had once heard from the servants of the Imperial Palace.

"It was rather different from the rumors."

"Pardon?"

"The duke, I mean."

The prince tilted his head, as though something did not add up.

"So terribly..."

As if he were longing for her. For my sister.

When Prince Joshua swallowed the rest and closed his mouth, Haas, beside him, asked again.

"What was different from the rumors?"

"What I heard was plainly that the duke disliked my sister."

"Ah. That's famous."

Haas nodded, as if the rumor were no news to him either.

However tight-lipped the attendants might be, this was still the imperial household—the wellspring of rumor, the place where every whisper gathered. Even those with no particular taste for gossip picked up a fair amount if they spent a few days at court.

Prince Joshua had only ever seen the two of them at official functions. He had heard talk like that for the first time then.

The murmur of someone speaking as if it were a pity rang in Prince Joshua's ears like an echo.

He stopped short.

Prince Joshua, who had been walking with his eyes only forward, halted where he stood, brow furrowed, and called back the face Alpheus had worn a moment ago.

"No matter how I turn it over, that rumor seems to be wrong."

If the rumor was not wrong, then wasn't this truly strange? The Alpheus he had seen looked, to anyone's eyes, like a man who had lost his lover.

The phrasing had been blunt, but it had sounded sincere. And like Joshua himself, Alpheus had seemed unable to accept Isabel's disappearance—or her death. And so, in that moment, even he, who had been preparing a sneer for Alpheus, had found his mouth closing of its own accord.

He faltered.

"Your Highness?"

When Prince Joshua reached the lake and stopped, Haas called to him, puzzled.

His reflection lay held in the water. Blue eyes the very image of Isabel's, and hair of pure platinum blond.

"My sister."

Prince Joshua looked bleakly at his own face in the lake, then lifted his gaze to the trees pressed close around the shore.

"Where in the world could she be?"

As if to ask whether they knew the answer, Joshua smiled a sorrowful smile and tapped his reflected face with a fingertip. The lake shivered, and swallowed his afterimage.

But the forest, cruel in its silence, gave no answer at all.

"Hey!"

Chesian's voice rang through the great mountain and came back to him in echoes. Hey, hey, hey, hey...

"Get over here!"

Pale-faced, Chesian was screaming like a man unhinged as he ran toward the zombie. So frantic, so stripped of all composure—it was hard to believe this was the same Chesian who never lost his calm.

"Who told you to eat dirt!"