“Julius…”
Colbert looked at him with clinging eyes, but Julius didn’t return the emotion.
Some hours later, as the dejected Colbert dragged his feet through the corridors of the princely castle, a young girl with an adorable face poked her head out from behind one of the marble pillars.
“Hey there, Mr. Colbert. What are you lookin’ so glum for?”
“Princess?! Um, that’s, well…”
The one who had stepped out from behind the pillar was Roroa Amidonia, the first princess of this country. Colbert panicked a little as he realized he’d let Roroa see him feeling down.
Roroa had had a good sense for economics from a young age and, as she’d grown up, she’d come to hang around with the owners of large businesses and the bureaucrats of the Finance Ministry increasingly often. For Colbert, who was Minister of Finance, Roroa was a compatriot who understood the ins and out of the economy. She was also something akin to a needy little sister.
“Lookin’ at that face… you tried to talk some sense into my old man for me, didn’t ya?” Roroa asked apologetically, looking at the bruises on Colbert’s face.
“Huh? Ah, no… These are, uh…”
“No need to hide it,” she said. “Sorry about my idiot father. Good grief… If he’s pushin’ away vassals who’re tryin’ to give him solid advice, he’s leadin’ this country straight down the road to ruin. Honestly, what is he thinkin’?”
While saying things others would have been too terrified to, Roroa made a big show of how angry she was. Colbert was satisfied just to see Roroa looking like that on his behalf.
“Thank you, princess,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”
“You will? Well then, get yourself ready.”
“Huh…? Get myself ready for what?”
Unable to keep up with this sudden turn in the conversation, Colbert blinked repeatedly.
Roroa waved her hand at him with a laugh. “The old man just gave ya all the free time in the world, so you’ve got nothin’ to do, right? Well, maybe you can help me out with what I’m doin’, then. I’ve already talked to all the bureaucrats who seemed amenable to it, but I could still use more people to help, after all.”
“Huh? Um, princess? Just what are you planning to do?”
“That’s obvious,” she said. “We’re all gonna disappear together. Sebastian’s movin’ forward with the plans, but for now I think we’ll go stay with Uncle Herman in Nelva.”
“Huh? Whaaaaaa?!” he exclaimed.
Roroa grabbed him by the sleeve and walked off quickly, dragging Colbert behind her.
Some days later, at the same time as Gaius VIII and Julius departed from Van, there was an incident where Princess Roroa and a number of bureaucrats vanished.
It was an incident that ought to have caused a big stir, but it was craftily covered up by Roroa, and neither Gaius or Julius ever noticed it.
It was the Royal Capital Parnam, late September, the 1,546th year of the Continental Calendar, in the royal palace of the Elfrieden Kingdom, Parnam Castle.
In the governmental affairs office, I was listening to reports from Poncho and Tomoe.
First, I heard from Poncho.
Until just the other day, his title had been Minister of State for the Food Crisis, but with that issue now resolved, I had made him the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry. In addition to agriculture, forestry, and management of military provisions, I also had him overseeing the construction of terraced rice fields and other projects that would establish new crops in this country.
By the way, the reason he was not also in charge of fisheries was that this country did not manage fishing rights. The various fishermen’s guilds each had their own zones, to a degree, but all that the country did was receive taxes from the guilds in exchange for protecting their rights.
Eventually, I wanted to set up something for that, but it would likely have to wait until I had the navy under my control. In order for the country to guarantee the rights of fishermen, we were going to need something like a Maritime Safety Agency. If we tried to force obligations onto the fishermen without any protections, they wouldn’t obediently go along with that.
It looks like I’d gotten off-topic, huh?
I asked Poncho a question. “How are things going with the supplies (military provisions and cavalry horse fodder) that I asked you about?”
“All right. Somehow I managed to procure them, but…” Poncho sounded awfully non-committal, especially considering he was saying he’d managed to get the supplies ready.
“Is something the matter?” I asked.
“No… I was just worried whether these numbers were correct,” Poncho said, wiping the sweat from his brow. “The supply totals you requested could easily support the Forbidden Army for over a month, you see… It wasn’t easy to gather them, so if the numbers were in error, it will mean we’ve taken massive losses, yes.”
Ah, that made sense. When he looked at the numbers I could currently mobilize from the Forbidden Army, he worried that the amount of supplies was too high. There were only around 10,000 men, after all.
“It’s not a problem,” I said. “We do actually need all those supplies. In fact, you could even say that this massive stock of supplies is what will decide whether we win or lose.”
“I–It is?” he stammered. “…It’s a good thing that we had such an abundant harvest this year. If you had asked me last year or before that, I wouldn’t have been able to gather this quantity.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Though this is the fruit of everyone’s hard work. Of course, that means it’s thanks to you, too, Poncho.”
“Y-You are too kind, yes!” Poncho, humbled by the sudden praise, stood up so straight, it looked he might bend over backwards.
I gave a wry laugh at his behavior, then shifted my gaze to Tomoe. “How have things been on your end, Tomoe?” I asked.
“R-Right. I think I have another five rhinosauruses that will help us.”
Because Tomoe was gifted with the ability to understand animals and monsters, I had sent her to “recruit” some of the giant lizards, rhinosauruses, that we used during our mission to provide relief to the God-Protected Forest.
Their ability to haul cargo, as I had seen during the road construction, was truly amazing. I wanted to increase the number of them held by the Forbidden Army, but because they were living creatures, it took quite some time to train a rhinosaurus. Still, if we tried to deploy them without substantial training, if the worst were to happen and they went berserk, their bodies were huge. They could do a lot of damage.
That made this a job for Tomoe, who could understand the languages of all living creatures. Tomoe could listen to requests from the rhinosauruses.
Mind you, it seemed rhinosauruses weren’t all that smart (maybe on the same level as stegosauruses, which they say had brains the size of a chicken egg?), so their requests usually amounted to “tasty food” and “a place to breed safely.”
In order to accomplish that, I had ended up creating a rhinosaurus preserve in the kingdom, but it was a small price to pay for a long-distance, high-speed means of shipping, roughly equivalent to a train, that would be loyal and require no training.
“M-Madam Tomoe’s ability truly is incredible, yes,” Poncho said.
“It sure is,” I agreed. “I’m glad I was able to take her under my protection before she fell into the hands of some other country.”
“Y-You’re flattering me.” Tomoe turned a bright red and looked down in embarrassment.
The doors to the governmental affairs office opened, and Liscia walked in. “Souma…”
There’s something troubled in her expression, I thought. …I’m a little worried.