“But, first… Liscia, could you summon Serina for me?” I asked.
Liscia nodded, leaving the room. Shortly thereafter, a woman in a maid uniform entered.
It was Liscia’s personal maid, the head maid Serina. The head maid, an intellectual beauty who was slightly older than me, lifted the hem of her apron-skirt slightly, and curtsied. “I have come at your behest, Your Majesty.”
“Serina,” I said. “Amidonia’s crown… no, Amidonia’s sovereign prince, Julius, is in the visitor’s room. I may be speaking with Madam Jeanne for some time, so begin the banquet without us and see to it that he is made welcome.”
When I gave her that order, Serina bowed respectfully. “Very well. In that case, sire, I would like permission to open a well-aged bottle of tequeur from the castle’s wine cellar.”
In the moment she said that, I thought I saw a suspicious glint in Serina’s eye.
Does she want to drink that alcoholic beverage, whatever it was called? I wondered. She seems like the tight-laced sort to me, but maybe she’s actually a drinker. Is she saying it’s for our guest, when really she wants to drink it herself?
“I’ll leave the matter to your discretion,” I said at last. “So long as our guest is properly entertained.”
“Understood. I will pour Sir Julius’s share and entertain him personally.”
With those words and an icy smile, Serina bowed and exited the room.
Her smile did worry me, but she’d said she would entertain him, so I figured it was probably fine. As I was thinking that, I looked next to me to see Liscia and Hakuya grimacing.
“Wh-What is it, you two?” I asked.
“Souma… tequeur is famous for being a strong alcohol,” said Liscia.
“It has a pleasant taste, which encourages heavy drinking. However, if one who is not used to drinking it does that, it will quickly send them off to the land of dreams. Normally, it’s the sort of thing you’d drink a few drops of mixed into a glass of tea or juice,” Hakuya explained, looking like his head hurt.
“Huh? Wait, if she goes pouring him glasses of the stuff…”
“The banquet will be over not ten minutes after it begins.”
“She has no intention of entertaining him whatsoever?!” I exclaimed.
The head maid Serina. She had an elegant beauty, she carried out her duties perfectly, she was polite, and she could also show great consideration, all of which made her flawless as a maid. However, she was also a little too much of a sadist.
When it came to cute girls, she always wanted to “buwwy” them. Not “bully,” “buwwy.” Not that she’d do anything that would hurt them; she just enjoyed stirring up their senses of shame a little.
Left alone with Serina, Julius didn’t stand a chance.
Well, the goal of the banquet was always to keep Julius from finding out what’s going on with our negotiations with the Empire, I thought. If she gets him to drink himself into a stupor, that’s one way of doing it…
“Just this once, I feel bad for Julius,” Liscia said, with eyes as emotionless as those of a dead fish. “Serina, she just loves to toy with swaggering types like him.”
“I–It sounds like you have personal experience with this…” I said.
“Whenever I misbehaved, Marx was the one who would scold me, but Serina was always the one in charge of disciplining me,” said Liscia. “Of course, Serina’s a maid, so she couldn’t punish me physically. No, she went for psychological attacks instead. If only… If only she didn’t know about that one thing… No, there’s that, too, isn’t there…? Augh, why does she always, always have to see me at the worst possible moments?”
As I tried to console Liscia, who was holding her head in her hands, I let out a sigh. “Just how much blackmail material does she have on you…?”
“Heh heh. This really is an… interesting country.” In the corner of my vision, I saw Jeanne doing her best to hold back a smile.
After that, we changed locations, and I showed Jeanne to the governmental affairs office. That was because, if we were going to be sitting down and negotiating at length, I felt this was the best place to do it.
It was large enough to hold a reasonable number of people, and there were plenty of pens and pieces of paper there. Being able to easily get our hands on any documents we might need was another point in its favor.
…Though, when Jeanne had entered the room, the first thing that had caught her attention was the bed off in the corner.
“Sir Souma, what is that bed for?” she asked.
“It’s mine,” I said. “I’m too busy to have a room of my own.”
“You sleep in the governmental affairs office?!”
“I am ashamed to admit it, but yes,” Hakuya, not I, said, sounding deeply embarrassed.
However, it apparently wasn’t the fact that I slept in the office itself that surprised Jeanne. “I never thought there would be a king doing the same things as my sister…”
“Come again?” I asked, startled.
Her sister… That’d be Madam Maria, right? Huh? The empress sleeps in the governmental affairs office, too?!
When I asked her about it, Jeanne awkwardly responded, “She does have her own room, too, of course, but when she finds herself busy with administrative work, she sleeps in a bed that’s been set up in the office, yes. What’s more, in my sister’s case, she doesn’t settle for a simple bed. She’s brought in a proper, comfy one. That makes it all the worse.”
I was silent.
I wonder why, I thought. Right now, I feel an incredible kinship with the Saint of the Empire.
“My sister needs to realize that she’s the ruler of a vast empire,” said Jeanne. “I keep telling her not to do it, and to consider how it looks to her vassals, but all I get in return is, ‘I don’t see the problem. I sleep so well in this bed.’ She doesn’t listen to me at all.”
When Jeanne said that with a sigh, for some reason, Hakuya was nodding along. “I understand. I don’t know how many times I’ve advised His Majesty to get his own room and sleep there. Yet, every time I do, he brushes me off with a simple, ‘But this is more efficient.’”
“Oh, I understand,” said Jeanne. “I know she’s tired from her work, but I wish she’d consider how her subordinates see her a little more. Especially since my sister has this image of being a saint, I’d rather she not do anything too unseemly.”
“I can understand that,” said Hakuya. “I’ve given up on that front. His Majesty could have carried the title of ‘hero,’ but everything he does is so…”
The two of them just keep saying, “I understand, I understand,” I thought. Why are they hitting it off so well?
“I think it’s good that when Sir Souma does it, at least he’s doing it calculatingly,” said Jeanne. “When my sister does it, it’s just laziness. She can be a bit of an airhead at times, too.”
“Well, at least that’s cute,” said Hakuya. “In His Majesty’s case, I think it’s all the worse because he’s planned it out. Why does the king who is so good at listening to his subjects in matters of state pretend not to hear a word I say when it comes to advising him on his personal life?”
“I can see you’ve been put through a lot, too, Sir Hakuya,” said Jeanne.
“No, no, Madam Jeanne, you must have had it worse,” said Hakuya.
Jeanne and Hakuya were really hitting it off. They looked like they might exchange a firm handshake at any moment.
And so, right here, right now, the “Association of the Victims of Slothful Masters” was formed. That was a joke I couldn’t laugh at. It was getting awkward for me, and I wanted to move the conversation along to another topic quickly, but if I interrupted now, I was going to get a scolding and get slapped with a paper fan, so I decided to keep quiet for a little while.