When was it that I first noticed that some in the castle looked at me with cold eyes? It might have been shortly before Deir was born that I realized there were adults who detested me.
“I mean...his hair color...”
“That’s not the color of a Belisario... Whose...?”
“Did the margrave...an adopted...?”
They’d gossip even when they knew I was nearby. How would a boy of only two years, so small he only reached their knees, possibly understand what they were saying? They thought I wouldn’t care even if I heard them.
And in a sense, they were right. I couldn’t care less what a stranger had to say about me. I’d always thought it odd that my hair was a different color from everyone else in my family, but my parents said nothing about it, so I got the sense it wasn’t something I should bring up, and I wasn’t sure whom I could trust outside of my family.
The one person I could trust was Luther, my valet. He was much older than me and he was from a family that had long served the Belisarios—in fact, he was the grandson of Sebas, our family’s head steward.
“Huh? You’re here again?” I asked Luther one day. “Are you making sure to take holidays?”
“I am, my lord. But I live in the castle grounds and it’s much more enjoyable spending my time with you than lazing around.”
“But why?”
“Because serving one’s master is a valet’s job.”
Luther’s family was filled with men who were tall and slender, effortlessly appearing like a typical valet. In comparison, Luther came across as strange, both in appearance and in personality. Rex had a likable pleasant face and was so refined and sophisticated that it was easy to imagine him becoming a model valet. Luther, on the other hand, looked odd. Even though he had well-defined features, he was commonly told he looked like a villain—not that he looked suspicious, but that he looked outright evil. He was of a medium build and not very tall. He also moved so precisely and cautiously that you couldn’t help but wonder if he’d killed at least five people before.
The first time Chris had met him, he had asked Sebas, in complete seriousness, “Is it really safe to leave this guy with Alan?” It was thanks to how he looked that no one dared flash a cold look my way if he was around, though. They probably thought they’d be killed if they made eye contact.
Once I began having guards assigned to me, people stopped talking about my hair color in places that I could hear them. Occasionally, though, I would spot ladies-in-waiting or other servants whispering among themselves while casting glances at me, so they must have found me quite the fascinating topic of conversation.
It was around then that Deir was born—I now had a little sister. She looked a lot like my father, my mother, and my brother. I was the only one who didn’t look like her. A part of me had hoped that, whether a brother or a sister, the baby would have the same hair color as me, but that wasn’t what happened.
Still, her cheeks were so pudgy, and her hands were so small that she could barely wrap them around my finger, and with those big sparkling purple eyes of hers, the balance of her facial features looked so strange as she smiled wide. I couldn’t ever hate such a cute creature.
This was my little sister. I was her older brother, and that meant I had to protect her. Maybe there would come a day when she would realize that my hair looked different from everyone else’s and distance herself from me, but I wanted to be friends with her for as long as I could.
✦ ✦ ✦
Just as I’d been assigned my own valets and guards when I’d reached a certain age, my brother began seeing prospective retainers begin to show up at the castle when he turned five. They were the sons of castle staff or army officers or nobles who had been assigned to manage different areas of the March of Belisario. Since children knew no restraint and had no idea about the real power dynamics within the castle, they thought their noble status was enough to grant them safety. As such, even with Luther by my side, they didn’t bother holding back—he might have looked evil, but he was just a lowly commoner.
“This kid is Alan, huh?”
“His hair really is auburn. That’s not the Belisario coloring at all.”
“Whose kid even is the brat, really?”
We were all nobles, but my position should have been higher than those boys’—and yet, all it took was my hair being a different color for them to decide it was perfectly okay to make me the target of their bullying. They probably thought my parents and Chris would be more likely to believe them over me if I told on them.
“It’s fine,” I whispered to Luther as he stepped forward.
“What? Does this peasant think he can do something to us?”
“We’re going to become Lord Chris’s retainers, you know. How about we kick you out?”
“Ain’t the kid a bastard?”
“Oh man, did the wife cheat?”
That was too far, though—even I was getting angry.
“Are you daring to insult my mother?” I demanded.
Luther was quietly seething beside me. Goose bumps broke out across my skin even though his hostility wasn’t directed at me.
“Eeeeeeeeeek!”
“Y-You insolent man! I’ll tell father on you!”
“You’re just a filthy commoner!”
The fact that they weren’t planning to tell Chris must have meant that they didn’t want him to know what they were saying to me.
When the children ran away pale with fright, Luther suddenly apologized to me. “I am deeply sorry. I know you told me to stop, but I just...”
“It’s okay. Bad-mouthing mother is something I cannot stand to ignore either.”
“Lord Alan, do you intend to leave those boys be?” Luther was strict on those who showed any disrespect toward me. If I hadn’t stopped him when I did, at least one of them would’ve been in trouble by now.
“They’re my brother’s retainers. We can’t fight with them carelessly. Go find out who their parents are.”
“Understood, my lord.”
At that time, my relationship with my brother was still a little distant. Even though we were siblings, like many upper-class nobles, we didn’t see each other much outside of mealtimes. Our parents were so often in the capital or at social functions that they were barely home. On those days, I’d sit with Chris alone at a big table to eat our food, but there were a lot of other people in the room with us, such as our valets or the footmen, so it was hard to have a conversation knowing we’d be overheard. We always ended up just silently eating. We never got much of an opportunity to speak outside of that.
That wasn’t to say my brother was cold to me. Anytime we got the chance to have a conversation, he was always warm and kind.
“Luther, you’re a valet, right?” I asked.
“Yes, that is correct.”
“You were quite scary a moment ago. What was that about?”
“I truly am deeply sorry about that,” he told me. “It is necessary for a valet to be able to protect their master at all costs should they be in danger, so I am trained in self-defense.”
“Self-defense...”
“I found it so enjoyable that I spent a period of my life invested in my training and did a little work in surveillance.”
He really was a strange man. But that eventually came in very handy, and it was thanks to Luther that I learned the importance of possessing information.
I learned later that two of the boys who’d tried to wind me up were sons of barons, and the last was the son of a viscount. To be blunt, their reputations were horrendous. I was curious why my brother was letting them be, but it wasn’t my place to speak up about it.