Chapter 37
Ael sighed and took her hand, wrapping his own around it.
“How were you living before this? Cleaning, laundry, ventilation — even the basics. You still need them to survive.”
Ael, still holding onto the blanket, began to unfurl Kiara’s clenched fingers — one at a time, starting from her pinky. Her expression remained wary, but she responded to his question in a halting voice.
“W-well… if I do it myself… then it’s fine…”
“Even laundry?”
He paused mid-motion, eyebrow raised. There was a well near the northern tower, but hauling water up this high was no small task.
At his pointed look, Kiara let out a sheepish laugh.
“These days… Madam Raelin brings up some wash water. And if I leave the laundry out, someone usually takes it away…”
“And bathing? Wait, these days? What about before?”
By now, he’d pried open one of her hands entirely, freeing the blanket. Without pause, he reached for the other. Kiara pointed toward the window with her now-empty hand.
“…Rainwater… or snow…”
His fingers stilled halfway through straightening her ring finger. How had she managed like this?
With a furrowed brow, he resumed unfolding her hand, sneaking a glance up at her. Her head was bowed so low her face was hidden, but the tips of her ears had flushed red with embarrassment.
“For someone with such… limited resources, you’ve kept things surprisingly tidy. The room too.”
“I—I didn’t have much else to do… If I moved my body, at least the day passed faster…”
“Still, no matter how much you moved, the weight of it all couldn’t have been easy.”
In the northern region of Altenebra, winter lasted more than half the year. Because of the many lakes and wetlands, when it snowed, it piled thickly on the rooftops. Given that, perhaps bringing snow into the room wasn’t all that difficult.
But rain?
“Even after you started getting help, were you still collecting rainwater? Or was it Madam Raelin? Carrying bathwater with a woman’s strength couldn’t have been easy. Was she all right?”
“Ah.”
Kiara let out a small exclamation. Worried that he might have hurt her fingers, Ael released her hand.
“Oh, I see. You didn’t notice it.”
Now clearly excited, Kiara let out another burst of delight and jumped up from the bed, hurrying over to the window.
“Here, look! Look at this!”
Standing by the window, Kiara pointed up at the ceiling. Her voice was bright and lively, as if her earlier fear had been nothing but a lie.
Still a little dazed, Ael followed her gesture with his eyes and looked upward.
“That’s…”
Kiara’s room was at the very top of the tall tower, just below the spire. The ceiling was high, and although the room was on the cold northern side where sunlight rarely reached, it surprisingly wasn’t unbearably hot or cold.
Well, “surprisingly” was an understatement.
In any case, beneath the high spire roof hung a number of strange contraptions whose purpose was unclear, yet one in particular caught Ael’s eye.
“…A pulley?”
Ael murmured absently, then let out a short chuckle. Well, yes, if it was a pulley, it would make moving heavy things easier. Weren’t they often used to draw water from wells, after all?
“It is a pulley… but a bit different, isn’t it?”
As he studied the ceiling more carefully, a faint crease formed between Ael’s brows. The pulleys he was familiar with usually had no more than one or two wheels, but the contraption hanging from Kiara’s ceiling had far more wheels and a noticeably more complex design.
Perhaps glad he had noticed, Kiara’s voice grew more confident.
“If you adjust the number and position of the wheels, you can reduce the amount of force needed. I’m hopeless at math, so it took me a while to calculate… but I had nothing but time, anyway.”
At her confident tone, Ael’s gaze shifted back to her.
“So that thing… you made it?”
“Who else? No one else comes in here.”
Kiara shrugged, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Ael stared at her for a long moment, taking in her calm expression.
‘So this witch’s power… lies in something like this.’
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