“No, um… Collecting the sheets of a man I’m closely acquainted with was embarrassing, so I…”
“What are you talking about?” Serina demanded. “If you call yourself a maid, eventually His Majesty and the princess will [censored], and you have to make the bed where they [censored] and [censored] while it’s all [censored], while keeping a straight face.”
“I–I really hope you’ll spare me from that, at least?!” Carla said with her face turning a bright shade of red…
Wait, huh? Aren’t Liscia and I being indirectly embarrassed here, too? I was feeling really awkward right now.
On top of that, Tomoe asked her mother, “What is [censored]?” and left her struggling to answer.
Don’t say things in front of a child that are going to affect their emotional development…
As I was thinking that, Serina tilted her head to the side questioningly. “Incidentally, sire. Are you going to be okay, sire?”
“Huh?”
“No, it’s just that I see someone running this way from behind you, sire.” Serina smiled.
When Serina said that with a smile, I turned around to see…
“Oh, crap!”
I got Rou down off of my back, then hurriedly tried to run away, but… I was grabbed firmly by the collar.
“Gwah!” I yelped.
“Gahaha! I’ve been looking for you, Your Majestyyyy!”
When I turned around, a muscular man who was just starting to show the signs of old age, with his gray hair combed back and a beard in the same color, was standing there with an overbearing smile.
When I had judged Castor and Carla, he was one of the two who had not been intimidated by me and continued to defend them. It was the head of the House of Jabana, Owen Jabana.
After the trial, I had hired him on as my personal educator and advisor (and martial arts trainer). I’ll talk more about that one in a parenthetical later.
Oh, by the way, as for the other person who had defended the two of them, Piltory Saracen of the House of Saracen, when I’d explained the evil deeds of the former head of the house (his father), he had said, “My word… I can’t believe that my father did such things. I can offer you no proper apology. Knowing what I do now, I am prepared to serve you to the bitter end, sire. I will go through any peril for you.”
He seemed to be thinking in the way you might expect from a serious young man of the nobility, so I gave him the very dangerous mission he was looking for. The mission of “Special Ambassador in the Elfrieden Kingdom Embassy to be established in the Gran Chaos Empire.” We were in an experimental phase still, so there was no telling how far extraterritoriality would protect him.
Now, back to Owen.
Owen was the type who could vociferously speak the truth to those above him.
By his own account, “These old bones have nothing to lose. I’m going to live out what little is left of my life being true to myself!”
He said he didn’t have much time left, but it felt like even if I killed him, he’d still come back somehow…
If I kept someone like this, who could tell his ruler the honest truth, at my side, it would reduce the chance of me straying from the right path. While I might have ordered Carla to die to stop me if it came to it, I would prefer to make it to retirement without getting killed.
So, after a bit of this and that, I brought Owen on to help educate me, but…
“Gahaha, sire! If you were free from administrative work, you should have told me! Come on, come on, let’s start our training for the day!”
I was silent.
It seemed that, in Owen’s mind, education included physical education, and any time I was free from my administrative tasks, he would try to train me. If he caught me, it meant running, practice swings, mock battles, everything on the training menu for a newly-recruited soldier.
“No, I have Aisha training me already, so…” I said.
“What are you saying? The princess of the God-Protected Forest, Madam Aisha, is much too easy on you, sire! She only makes you train with your puppets!”
“You’re too loud,” I said. “But, if I use my puppets, at least I can put up a fight.”
“And what will you do when you find yourself in a situation where you can’t use them?” Owen demanded. “Your life is the life of this country itself. If an assassin attacks, if you can fend off the enemy’s attacks for a few exchanges, or even just one exchange, your bodyguards will be able to get to you in time. That one exchange will decide the life or death of our country. That one exchange will bring our country glory.”
Urgh… Because he was right, there was nothing I could say. As I slumped my shoulders, Carla, who Serina had also grabbed by the collar, looked at me with just a little sympathy.
“I see you have it hard, too, Master…”
“You too,” I said with no emotion.
“Come, come, sire! To the training grounds!” Owen declared.
“You, too, Carla,” Serina scolded. “You need to hurry and learn how to make a bed.”
And so, the two of us were dragged off in different directions.
Some days later, we received a report that a rebellion had broken out in Amidonia.
“It’s lookin’ like my brother couldn’t win, after all,” Roroa said.
In a room at an inn in a town near Van, the first princess of Amidonia looked at the two people with her. One of them, the former Minister of Finance, Colbert, shook his head.
“This country has already been defeated. The negotiations were only to limit the damage. I think it’s too harsh to blame Lord Julius.”
Julius gave off a cold impression, but he rated Colbert’s skill at finance highly and, partially because of their close age, the two had formed a friendship. Colbert couldn’t bring himself to criticize his employer and friend.
Roroa smiled wryly at Colbert, seeing him like that. “Maybe not, but if there’re war reparations to be paid, the ones sufferin’ will be the folks in town. We call it the capital, but it’s just one city. The area around it’s not all that productive. Shouldn’t he have let the kingdom keep it for a while and avoided takin’ responsibility for the war? We’re not totally beat yet, and if we left the territory as-is, the Empire and Kingdom couldn’t say anythin’ more. If that got us past the current crisis, there were any number of moves left he could’ve played.”
Roroa said all that like it was no big deal.
Sebastian, the other person who was here with her, shrugged. “Not everyone could accept that so easily. People don’t act solely on the arithmetic of profit and loss. We all have things we’re emotionally attached to, you see. Lord Julius has them, you have them… and I am sure the young King of Elfrieden has them, too.”
“Me and Souma, too?” Roroa asked.
“Yes,” said Sebastian. “In the same way that the spirit of Amidonia was precious to Lord Gaius and Lord Julius, the smiles of the men and women who live in the principality are precious to you, right? Would you be able to cast them aside because your arithmetic said to?”
“…I see,” Roroa said.
True, that’s somethin’ I want to protect, profit or loss aside, Roroa thought. Does that Souma have somethin’ he’s attached to, profitable or not, too?
“You met Souma, didn’t ya, Sebastian?” she asked. “Watchin’ the broadcasts, he seemed like a clever, funny guy. What’d you think, meetin’ him in person?
“Well, let me think… He looked like an ordinary young man, able to listen to the opinions of others and, more than anything else, he felt like someone who valued the people close to him.”