“Y-You are too kind.”
I have to correct myself; there was one thing that was strange here. There was something like the sort of serving table used at elementary schools during lunchtime in the corner of the room, and there, the maids Serina and Carla were waiting to serve us food. That was out of place.
“And wait… Were any of you listening to me?” I protested.
“Sure,” said Roroa. “We’re listenin’, we’re listenin’.”
“There’s a response from someone who’s clearly not…” I muttered.
“I am listenin’. You’re short of hands, right?”
When Roroa said that, Liscia furrowed her brow. “Are you going to gather people again? I think we have a pretty diverse group of people already…”
“The more talented people we have, the better,” I said. “What I’m after this time is a bit different, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hm… It’s not good to say this, but if I were to rank people on a scale that goes S, A, B, C, D, E, the kind I’m looking for now fall into the B to C range. I want a very large number of them.”
“Sorry,” said Liscia. “I’m not sure I get what you’re saying.”
I put my hand on Roroa’s head. She was sitting next to me with a spoon in her mouth. “For instance, Roroa’s economic sense is anything but mediocre. She can manipulate large amounts of money, find funding, and bring in greater profits. If I were to rank her as a member of my staff, she’d get an S. But one Roroa isn’t enough to run a country, now is it? Roroa needs a bureaucratic system that will serve as her arms and legs. On top of that, she needs people who are capable of doing math to work under her. What we’re short of is those people who can do the math.”
The literacy rate in this world was low, and pretty much the only ones outside of the nobility and knightly class who could do arithmetic were the merchants. Basically, in this world, those who could both write and use numbers would be B or C class personnel. Right now, in this country, we had a shortage of them.
“If that’s what you’re lookin’ for, how’s about hirin’ some merchants who’re closin’ up shop ’cause they couldn’t turn a profit, or who were reduced to bein’ slaves for one reason or another?” Roroa suggested.
But I shook my head. “I tried that already, but it didn’t pan out. If anyone is the least bit talented, someone from the nobility or the knighthood will already have taken them in. Well… that’s my own fault, though.” I said, scratching my head.
Roroa tilted her head quizzically. “What do you mean, your fault?”
“I changed the way evaluations work,” I explained.
In this country, the nobility and knightly classes were, to put it simply, the landholders. Military officials with land were called knights, while civil officials with land were called nobles. That was why there was no distinction between counts and viscounts in the nobility, and anyone with a large amount of land was just addressed as “Lord.”
There were “bureaucrat nobles” who traveled to the capital and regional cities to work in the bureaucracy, leaving their lands in the care of magistrates. There were also “regional nobles” who went to their own domains to manage the land personally. In terms of those I knew personally, Hakuya and Marx would be bureaucrat nobles, while Weist, the Lord of Altomura, would be a regional noble.
The balance of power between the two groups worked in a variety of ways. There were bureaucratic nobles who were involved in affairs of state like Hakuya, while there were also bureaucratic nobles who went to serve in the cities of powerful regional nobles.
In comparison, knights generally left their lands in the hands of a magistrate while they served in the military. This wasn’t absolute. Retired knights, like Weist, might become nobles, and there were also knights who passed their duty to serve in the military on to their children while they managed their lands.
Now, as to the promotion and demotion of these nobles and knights (or, to put it in another way, their acquisition or loss of territory), up until now, the knights had been promoted if they’d distinguished themselves in battle and their rank had risen in the military, while if their conduct had been bad and they’d violated orders, or they’d failed to carry out an operation successfully, they’d been demoted.
In other words, knights had never been held to account for the management of their lands. So if their lands had been mismanaged, the fault had lain with the magistrate, and if they’d sacked and replaced that magistrate, the knights themselves would not have been held responsible. Then again, if the same thing had happened over and over, there would of course have been repercussions.
As for the nobles, they could be promoted by traveling to the capital or cities to work as bureaucratic nobles. For those who didn’t have a strong desire to involve themselves in the affairs of state, it was normal for them to switch to being regional nobles once their lands had expanded to a degree. That was because being a regional noble was more profitable. If there was a noble who had no strong drive for self-advancement, if they were satisfied with their current holding, in many cases they would become a regional noble. However, once they did become a regional noble, they were responsible for any mismanagement of their lands.
Now, as for how I changed our policy on the assessment of nobles and knights…
“In addition to the policies in place up until this point, I’ve placed a heavy emphasis on their ability to manage their land,” I said.
To put it simply, in addition to the assessment metrics in place before, I had announced a system of evaluation that gave more land to those managing theirs well, while reducing the size of their holdings or confiscating them entirely if they were managed poorly.
I had sent the clandestine operations unit that reported directly to me, the Black Cats, to keep watch, and those nobles or knights who ruled well were being given more land, while those who ruled poorly were having their holdings reduced or confiscated.
This clamped down on evil lords and magistrates of the variety you might have seen in period dramas, and my aim was to make the lords communicate with their people and bring them closer together. For good government, it was necessary to know what the people wanted, after all.
Now… as for what had happened as a result, the nobles and knights who had, until now, left their affairs to magistrates had hurriedly begun to pay attention to their holdings.
If their magistrates were capable or average, there were no issues; but if they were incompetent, that could now affect a noble’s own advancement.
There were nobles that had left their positions in the bureaucracy to return to their domains and start to focus fully on managing them. However, for the majority of knights who had no talent for ruling, and for the nobles who still had a path to advancement in their bureaucratic positions, they had rushed to find capable magistrates and personnel to serve under them.
When I explained that, Juna brought a finger to her lips as if recalling something. “Now that you mention it, Grandmother was saying that it had thrown things into utter chaos. There was a time when the nobles and knights would wander through the streets like hungry ghouls chanting ‘peopleeee, peopleeee,’ or something like that.”
“…Yeah,” I said. “Honestly, I think it was a hasty decision on my part.”
The passion of the nobles and knights to find talented personnel had far outstripped my imagination, and anyone able to write or do basic arithmetic, even if they were a commoner, had been welcomed almost like a sage and treated as an equal. This was because, if a noble or knight used authority to take such people away by force, they would face punishment for it.