I Hope You Are of the Empire
"Prepare yourself."
The princess's words were brief.
At that single phrase, the air in the room grew taut once more. Even the banter they had been trading moments earlier was shoved aside in an instant.
His Majesty the Emperor was summoning him.
Before those words, even the temporary cooperation appointment under the princess's direct authority dropped a full rank in importance.
I rose from the chair. My shoulder pulled with a dull ache. The inside of my palm throbbed as well. Of all days for my body to be in this state.
The princess swept a glance over my face, then spoke to the knight.
"There won't be time to change him into formal audience attire. Just tidy the exterior."
"Yes, Your Highness."
Lady Adelaide approached me quietly. Without a word she picked up the gloves from the table, eyed my bandaged right hand once, and held out the left glove first.
"Left hand first."
I offered my hand without protest. She tugged the glove into place, aligning it carefully to the tips of my fingers. It was not the practiced motion of a servant, yet it was careful enough.
Once the left glove was on, she paused. The right would be troublesome because of the bandages. I started to do it myself, but Adelaide reached out first.
"Stay still."
"My lady need not go this far."
"I am doing it because it is necessary."
Her answer was matter-of-fact. She fitted the glove over the bandages with care not to disturb them. Each time her fingertips passed, a faint coolness brushed across my skin—just enough to ease the swelling without discomfort. Only when she finished did she withdraw her hands.
"If you push yourself, the wound will open again."
"I know that much."
"You always seem to know."
"If I were better at putting it into practice, I wouldn't have gotten hurt this badly."
Beside us the princess let out a short, dry laugh.
"Still joking even now."
"If I stay silent, I think I'll only grow more tense."
"You always do have a way with words."
As she spoke, she straightened my collar once—truly only once. The moment her fingertips brushed past, she stepped back a full pace.
"Good. At this rate, standing you before His Majesty won't make it look as though you're about to collapse on the spot."
"If I looked ready to collapse, would you send me back?"
"No. If you looked like a corpse, I simply wouldn't have the face to show His Majesty."
True to form, she never disappointed.
When we stepped outside, two knights fell in behind us at once. As we moved through the corridors, every passerby bowed their heads. Plenty of those gazes still flicked over us in assessment. By now, everyone would know.
We climbed two flights of stairs, crossed a long gallery, and stopped before a door marked with a crimson crest. Two eunuchs and four imperial guards were already waiting. The eldest eunuch stepped forward and bowed.
"Your Highness. His Majesty has ordered that only Lord Elverhart be admitted."
It was not unexpected, yet hearing it aloud still tightened my chest for a moment. The princess's expression did not change.
"Understood."
Lady Adelaide said nothing either. Their composure only made me more uneasy. I drew a steadying breath and started toward the door.
Then the princess called me.
"Lord Elverhart."
When I turned, her face was the same as always.
"Whatever you hear inside, do not let surprise show first."
"That is no easy order."
"If it were easy, I would not have bothered giving you the advice."
At the end of those words her gaze wavered, ever so slightly. For all the cold composure she wore, she was still concerned, at least a little.
Lady Adelaide added in a low voice,
"Do not use your hands."
"Are you worried I might draw a sword in front of His Majesty?"
"You are occasionally beyond common sense. And you have no sword anyway. Do not say anything that might be misunderstood in front of the imperial guards."
I let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
"Both of you have a truly unique way of putting a man at ease."
The princess did not answer. She only gave a short nod—go in, and quickly.
The door opened, and I stepped inside.
The Emperor's study was neither particularly large nor ornate. Half of one wall was covered by a topographic map of the northeast; a single dark wooden desk stood near the window. The Emperor stood before it.
It was the first time I had seen him this close, yet somehow he did not feel unfamiliar. He shared the same eyes as Princess Isabella, and even without smiling he filled the entire room with quiet pressure.
I offered a formal bow.
"Rion Elverhart greets Your Majesty."
"Raise your head."
His voice was low and even. There was no bluster, no unnecessary intimidation—and that made it worse. Before a man like this, every single word made the flesh crawl.
The Emperor indicated the chair opposite the desk with a lift of his chin.
"Sit."
I hesitated. Sitting first in the Emperor's presence was not something one grew used to.
"I said sit."
"…Yes, Your Majesty."
The moment I took the seat, my palm throbbed again. I kept my expression still. He would already have noticed even that small movement.
For a while he simply studied my face in silence. It was the gaze of a man who read people. Where Isabella measured with sharp sparring, this man seemed already to see straight through whatever I was thinking.
"I have received every report—from the banquet hall to the waterworks."
I inclined my head quietly.
"Some reports were excessive, some incomplete. But they all shared one point."
His gaze dropped to my bandaged hand, then rose again.
"That you threw yourself into a place where you could have died."
I had not done it for the sake of hearing those words.
"Because it was necessary."
"Because it was necessary."
The Emperor repeated the phrase as if tasting it.
"Not because you wanted to live?"
I paused. Answer too high and it became bravado; answer too low and it became craven.
"I wanted to live. But there was something I had to stop first—for the people living in my territory."
A brief silence. The Emperor did not smile, yet the light in his eyes shifted, just slightly.
"For a noble of your age, that is a decent answer."
Whether it was praise or merely the next stage of the test was hard to tell. He picked up a document from the desk.
"The waterworks incident will be closed here. The operational lines inside the palace will be cleaned up by the end of today. Outwardly it will be treated as administrative corruption and misuse of the barrier."
I drew a slow breath. If his words were true, at least my business in the palace ended here. But the reason the Emperor had summoned me alone could not be only that.
Sure enough, he opened the next document at once. This time it was a map—the northeast. Land whose outline I could draw with my eyes closed. The Elverhart territory, the surrounding barrier lines, and the outer towns were all marked in thin red.
The Emperor tapped a point on the map with one fingertip.
"The problem begins here."
The place he indicated was beyond the third northeastern line, close to the Elverhart viscounty.
"Since dawn, two faint aftershocks have been detected along the northeastern barrier. Not large in scale, but they will concern you."
Without taking my eyes from the map I asked,
"…The Elverhart viscounty?"
"More precisely, the outer reservoir section adjoining Elverhart."
He did not close the document.
"Once someone inside the palace has touched the line, continued reactions from outside are only natural. The problem is that the outside happens to be your home."
Of course it came to that. I bit the inside of one cheek.
The Emperor looked straight at me.
"I will ask you one thing."
"Please speak, Your Majesty."
"Do you trust your father?"
My father's face flickered across my mind. The head of House Elverhart was not an incompetent man. If anything, he was a man who commanded more trust from those around him than was strictly necessary.
The air in the room seemed to halt for a moment. The question was so blunt that my expression did not change at all. After a brief consideration I answered,
"I trust his ability as head of the house."
The Emperor waited. I did not look away.
"But I do not believe he is a man who tells me everything."
The Emperor's brow lifted a fraction. He tapped the edge of the desk once with a finger.
"Good."
Good? I repeated the word only to myself.
Only then did he lean back against the chair.
"Men drunk on loyalty contests would have said no without fail. Men drunk on filial piety would have said they trusted him without fail. Both are useless to me."
A clean summary of the situation.
"You, at least, look at the person in front of you as a person."
As expected.
"Therefore I am sending you back to the northeast."
I lifted my head at once. The Emperor's face already wore the look of a decision made.
"Temporary cooperation officer for the northeastern barrier inspection under the princess's direct authority. The pretext has been prepared, and the protective lines laid. You will go to the northeast alone."
My heart skipped a beat late. Alone. It was not something I had failed to consider. Still, hearing the Emperor confirm it with his own mouth changed the weight of it entirely.
He added one more remark on top of that.
"You look as though you did not expect to be sent alone."
"That is so. We had been traveling as three until now."
"You already know Isabella and Lady Adelaide are not women with that much free time."
This time the words truly stuck in my throat. I had known. They were the pillars who would support the next age of the Empire.
The Emperor continued as if my reaction meant nothing.
"I trust you understand. Formally, a barrier inspection mission. In truth, confirmation of the real state of affairs."
"What real state of affairs, Your Majesty?"
Instead of answering he drew a sealed document from a drawer—a thick letter stamped with the imperial seal. The sound of it being set before me seemed unnaturally loud.
"This is a personal letter to the head of House Elverhart."
I lowered my gaze. The crest on the seal was clear: the direct imperial seal. The recipient could not treat it lightly.
The Emperor spoke slowly.
"If the head of the house cooperates, well and good. Then the inspection ends as an inspection."
His voice dropped another tone.
"But if he tries to hide something, the story changes."
The inside of my throat went dry by degrees. He pushed the sealed letter toward me.
"In that case, you will open this letter yourself."
For a moment I failed to understand the words. Open it myself? A personal letter addressed to the head of the house—opened by the son?
Seeing my expression, the Emperor did not spare the explanation.
"Inside is a second decree."
A short silence. Then the next sentence.
"Should the head of House Elverhart refuse the imperial inspection, this decree recognizes Lord Rion Elverhart as the Empire's proxy."
My fingertips stiffened of their own accord. I could not fail to grasp the weight those words carried. Did he mean to set father and son on a direct collision course?
I stared down at the sealed letter. Only after forcing myself to swallow did my voice come out.
"Your Majesty."
"Speak."
"Is this not excessive trust?"
For the first time the Emperor smiled, very faintly. In that moment the resemblance to Princess Isabella became a little clearer.
"So you see it as trust."
I could not answer. The smile vanished.
"No, Lord Elverhart. This is not trust. It is a weighing."
The words fell coldly.
"How far you can go. Whether you can place the Empire before your house. And whether, even then, you can still protect what you wish to protect."
The room fell quiet. Outside the window, wind scraped thinly across the glass.
The Emperor drove the final nail home with absolute clarity.
"Every anomaly is centering on Elverhart, the place where you were born and raised. You understand what that means now, do you not?"
Something irreversible was already underway.
"If you understand, depart at dawn tomorrow."
I rose from the chair at last. The bandaged hand felt heavy.
"…I receive Your Majesty's command."
The Emperor did not rise with me. He simply watched me and spoke.
"One more thing."
The foot that had been turning toward the door stopped.
"Lord Elverhart."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"I hope you are a man of the Empire. I mean that sincerely."
Those words remained strangely long in my ears.