Easthollow, the Eastern Void
The Principality of Lismere, where Cecilia lived, was a monarchy that had built its prosperity upon military might. It had amassed its national wealth through overseas deployments and arms exports — but gain, as ever, walks hand in hand with loss.
The clash of ideologies and the ache of a strained economy were, if anything, bearable. The true tragedy lay in the orphans, the widows, and the deployed soldiers who had failed to find their way back into society.
They had gathered in the back alleys of the city, which had rotted into a breeding ground of crime and poverty.
People called that place Easthollow — the void of the east.
The atmosphere here is...
Cecilia hunched her shoulders warily as she surveyed her surroundings. Trash rolled through the narrow alleys, too cramped even for an automobile to enter. From the sagging old wires strung between buildings, water dripped off the damp laundry hung there, spotting the foreheads of passersby.
Cecilia studied a black mongrel at the end of the alley with a careful eye — then, realizing it was a person, she startles and hastily averted her gaze. Ruby perched on her shoulder, muttering away.
「Brrr, it's cold. It gives me the creeps. Even my friends who love rummaging through garbage cans won't come to a place like this.」
「Still, they say you can get anything here as long as you have money. I've changed my face, so next I need new papers.」
Cecilia had revised her plan a little. She would need forged documents not only in this city but also once she boarded a train and left it behind.
Loopholes have no principles, and they always come dear. The seller would name whatever price they pleased, so she had decided it was best to secure identification now, while her purse was still full.
「By the way, Cecilia — you do actually know where the people who make these 'papers' are, right?」
「Hmm... I figured if we just keep walking, we'll find a way eventually?」
「What?!」
Ruby let out a shriek and beat his wings in a flurry.
「No! I am not freezing to death in a place like this! And that sly little snake in your skirt hem — I'm sure she feels the same!」
「Don't worry. If it comes to that, I can always ask for help.」
Stretching her lips into a long, patient line, Cecilia quietly drew a plastic bag from her coat.
Inside, two slices of white bread had been broken into small pieces — sized just right for mice to carry off.
「City rats know everything. Sometimes they know more than the pigeons do.」
「I suppose that's true... but do you really think rats living in back alleys like this would care about a scrap of bread?」
「I've never once met a rat that didn't like bread, Ruby.」
Despite Ruby's doubtful groans, Cecilia was brimming with confidence.
What she failed to realize was that she was profoundly mistaken about something.
Just as Davion had said, Cecilia Winterhall was nothing more than a weed in a greenhouse. Having lived her whole life shut away on a vast estate that contained everything — fields, mountains, valleys — she was a woman who knew nothing of how the world worked.
And so, naturally, she had no way of knowing the true face that back alleys showed only to young women.
「What is it?」
When Cecilia suddenly looked back over her shoulder, Ruby followed her gaze and blinked his two bead-black eyes.
It was strange. She was certain she had heard footsteps just now...
Or maybe not?
Cecilia stared down the desolate mouth of the alley where trash lay scattered, fiddling with her left ear.
「No, it's nothing. I must have misheard.」
But a few steps later, she stopped dead in her tracks all over again.
「Cecilia?」
They say human intuition is sometimes sharper than the instincts of wild beasts. Her blood began to race, and a chill climbed up Cecilia's spine.
It couldn't be.
Barely keeping her fear-warped body under control, she edged toward the mouth of the alley and leaned forward. Her eyes met a cat's, gleaming atop a heap of garbage.
“Ah...”
A breath of relief escaped between Cecilia's lips.
It was at that very instant — just as she was letting her chest unknot with relief.
“Not that way, miss.”
A foul smell of cigarettes and a low chuckle. Before she could even turn to find their source, a violent blow came down on the back of her head.
Huh...?
The world spun sideways in an absurd tilt, the garbage heap and the cat floating up to meet the sky. Like a burnt-out filament in a dying bulb, Cecilia's nervous flickered rapidly, straining with everything it had to keep her consciousness alive.
In that fragment of a moment — less than a single second — her life flashed before her eyes. Perhaps because he was a man she had spent years beside, Davion filled most of the scattered scenes unfolding like shards of glass.
The flood of memory flowed backward, toward the past.
Davion, who had worn a perpetual scowl, had at some point begun to smile at her softly. Beneath the drenching downpour of a midsummer storm, his black eyes had been quietly speaking of love.
And then the rain stopped, and just as their first meeting came rushing back to her, Cecilia finally gave up her resistance and closed her eyes.
The gates of black unconsciousness swung open.
Providing the fanfare for that descent was the mighty beat of Ruby's wings as he burst skyward from the earth.
Cecilia dreamed a dream like a faded photo album.
It was by then the hour when a sunset like scattered embers spread beyond the mountain ridge. Davion sat perched on the edge of the bed, gingerly cradling the hand of the girl just woken from sleep, as though she might break.
Cecilia didn't bother asking what occupied his thoughts as he stared into empty air. Instead, she tugged at his sleeve.
Davion turned to her with a tranquil smile. When she spoke, that smile brightened beyond measure, radiating a happiness he could not have hidden if he tried.
He whispered his answer, then bent down and kissed her. Cecilia closed her eyes and buried her face in the pillow — and then, sensing something was wrong, frowned.
“Mmm...”
What brought her back to consciousness was the floor against her cheek, unbearably cold. When she tensed her neck to turn her head, the back of her skull throbbed.
Memory drained away like an ebbing tide. Cecilia coughed and forced her heavy eyelids open.
Where am I...?
The room smelled of damp mold, the particular mustiness of an old wooden building. The faint light pouring from an aged incandescent bulb cast a dim glow over the room.
The window that came into Cecilia's view was boarded shut.
I'm trapped. The instant she understood it, she hurriedly hiked up her skirts and inspected her legs. Her shoes and stockings were untouched, but something felt subtly, strangely absent.
It's gone.
Good heavens. Where had it gone?
A crush of humiliation flared up hotter than the terror of having been kidnapped. Cecilia began frantically patting over her body, groping here and there in search of it.
Just then, the exhausted voice of a woman quietly tore through the silence.
“They don't do that sort of thing. Women are easy enough to come by anywhere.”
“Ah...”
Only then did Cecilia notice the other women confined in the room.
Four of them, all seemingly around her own age, huddled together in a corner, watching her as if observing some new specimen. Whether they'd been roughed up during the abduction or not, every one of them was in a dreadful state.
“Bad luck, you ending up here too. You're getting sold either way — might as well pray you land a kind master.”
At that desolate laugh — the sound of a woman who had surrendered everything — a dull ache settled beneath Cecilia's ribs. She clambered unsteadily to her feet and touched her cheek with her fingertips.
It had sunk in a little, but the pox scars had not vanished. Which meant less than an hour had passed since she was taken.
Beyond the thin walls, Ruby's panicked shrieks echoed back and forth.
At least it's not underground.
As Cecilia was slowly taking stock of her situation, a single drop of water landed on her forehead with a soft tap. Reflexively tilting her chin up, she groaned in despair.
The ceiling had rotted through in places, holes punched along the grain of the wood. And from somewhere above came the sound of something long-bodied dragging itself past with a faint hiss.
So that's where you were.
Relief washed over her at last — she hadn't lost Nagi on the way here. Cecilia buried her face between her knees and finally allowed herself a long breath.
“But you haven't caught some horrible disease, have you? In case it's catching...”
“No, ma'am. I was born with this face.”
“Then get over here, out of the lamplight. You don't want to be noticed.”
They'd sell a face like that too? Someone's thin mutter drifted from the far corner where she was hiding. Cecilia paid it no mind and examined herself instead. She didn't know whether she ought to be thanking the people who'd done this, but at least they hadn't bound her hands or feet.
Written on her left arm — on the other women's as well — was an absurd six-digit number.
The kind of number branded on livestock brought to market. When Cecilia unconsciously rubbed at it with her palm, trying to smear it away, someone hastily seized her wrist.
“Don't. If you rub it off, they'll beat you for it.”
And it was then that a dark shape drifted into the edge of Cecilia's vision.
There was one more person in the room, besides all of them.