84. Might As Well Be Together
The next day, word came from the Princess in the morning.
She intended to visit our estate sometime in the afternoon.
Had this been any ordinary day, my first thought would have been, Ah, there goes another day of my servants running themselves ragged.
But thanks to the conversation I'd just had with the Emperor, a peculiar, nagging feeling crept over me the moment I heard the news.
As a matter of reason, what do you make of the Princess?
My answer to the Emperor had been, She is a good person.
There was no lie in it. None whatsoever — because the Princess truly was a good person. As the Second Princess of the Empire, and simply as a human being.
Honestly, I doubted anyone who had spent time in her company could dislike her. Her bloodline was exalted, to start with, and yet she never once behaved with the slightest discourtesy. On the contrary, she strove to set an example worthy of the imperial family, exhausting every effort to do so — and the occasional airheaded slip she tried to hide was quietly endearing on top of it all.
“A good person. A good person….”
“I beg your pardon?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. My heart practically leapt out of my chest. I turned my head to find the very subject of my musing standing right there.
She'd said afternoon, so I'd assumed she'd arrive toward the late afternoon — but she'd come barely past lunchtime.
“Your Highness. You honor us with your visit.”
“Why so startled? I heard just now from a servant that you'd been informed I'd arrived.”
“I did. I was merely lost in thought for a moment.”
After standing there blankly for a beat, I promptly invited her to take a seat. Naturally, I gestured toward the seat of honor — but the Princess chose a different chair instead.
“I hear there was a small party for you yesterday, Lord Kael.”
The chair directly across from me — the seat where we would be looking straight into each other's eyes.
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“What a shame. I wanted to go. Things have been rather busy since I returned to the capital.”
“Think nothing of it, Your Highness. It does not trouble me in the least.”
She said things had been busy, but strictly speaking, the Princess had no pressing business at all. She was simply being cautious — wary that other nobles might get strange ideas in their heads. There were those who might begin to wonder whether the line of succession could be thrown into disarray at this late stage, and she was guarding against precisely that.
A wise course of action. I, for one, believed it was exactly what she ought to do.
It wasn't just me — the Princess had distinguished herself from Novogord through the entire Eastern campaign. After that, she had even turned the hearts of the Southern kingdoms toward the Empire.
True, I was the one who supplied the strategy, but her share of the credit for those achievements was beyond dispute. And others, watching her claim that share, would see it as her proving herself. They would take it as a declaration — a cry urging the Emperor to reconsider the succession once more.
Ridiculous. Our Princess never had any such intention to begin with.
The Second Princess, Isabel. That woman belonged to the War Hawks' camp, yet she took no pleasure in conflict. Her heart brimmed with love for the Empire; she would never lift a finger to harm it. Above all, she knew herself well — and she never underestimated her opponent.
Not in any respect. Not for any reason. The Princess was simply not the kind of person who would do such a thing.
Yes. Just as I had seen her with my own eyes. Just as I had told the Emperor. The woman before me — the Second Princess, Isabel — was, well, truly a good person.
“Honestly, I know I ought to be keeping a low profile again today too. Maybe it's because I've been running here and there only to come straight back, but my body feels heavy, and once I heard the news about you, Kael, I decided I simply couldn't stay away.”
“I see.”
“Do you think I judged wrongly?”
At the anxious look on her face, I shook my head at once.
“Not at all. In fact, I believe there is no longer any need for such caution on your part.”
“You think so? Those around me have been saying it's wiser to stay careful.”
“Have I not just had audience with His Majesty the Emperor and Her Highness the Crown Princess? Not a whisper of concern on that score crossed either of their lips.”
I'll speak frankly: short of rising from the dead, the Princess could never surpass the Crown Princess. The very lens through which they viewed the world was different. One might call it the poise of an heir already fully prepared for the throne.
The Princess was by no means lacking — but the Crown Princess occupied a plane so far above that it seemed right to call their stations simply different. From the moment I first met her, she had stood several steps higher than the Princess already. She had been granted authority so sweeping it bordered on excessive, and I had grasped at once why. The Emperor knew the gap between the two — and knew their characters as well. That was why he did not worry.
There's a chance the Princess is concealing her true intentions, I suppose….
But if that were really the case, she would have had to reveal them to me at least once. No — more than that, she would have avoided exposing herself above the surface at all. Yet the Princess had acted solely out of her devotion to the Empire and the imperial family.
So the worries voiced by those around her were for nothing. Why? Because I would stake everything I had to vouch for the sincerity of her heart.
“It puts my mind at ease, hearing you say that, Kael. Is that another one of your prophecies?”
“…I beg your pardon?”
A prophecy? Where on earth was this coming from?
“Don't bother telling me it isn't. Have you forgotten what you said to me not long ago?”
“If you mean something I said—”
“That some sort of occasion would arise in the East.”
…Hold on just a moment, Your Highness. Me? When exactly did I ever say anything like that?
“Though I'd need something that could actually serve as the occasion.”
Yes. That was all I had said. And right after it I'd added: Frankly, I have no idea what would come next!
In other words, far from being a prophecy, it had been nothing more than idle grumbling. So why was she remembering it as some grand foretelling?!
“Even then, I took it for idle complaint.”
It was idle complaint, Your Highness. No modesty, no shtick, no misunderstanding, no cunning — none of it. I truly said it without a single thought behind it, I assure you!
“And yet that occasion came to pass, didn't it. The catastrophic rains that struck the East — no, I can hardly even frame it in such mild terms. A great flood, they say, came within a hair of drowning the entire kingdom.”
“Er — yes. So I hear.”
“I've heard about what came after as well. The Empire meant to extend aid — partly out of humanitarian concern, partly to display our supremacy — but they say you stopped it, Lord Kael.”
Stopped it? If you put it that way, it sounds as though I stood blocking the Emperor himself, arms spread wide!
All I did was voice my opinion with a certain… enthusiasm!
And from what I could see, Her Highness the Crown Princess and His Majesty the Emperor had their own ideas about it as well!
“Not a single ounce of mercy until the eastern kingdoms reach out their hands to us first. No aid of any kind. Cold to the point of cruelty — though frankly, I don't think you were wrong in the slightest.”
“….”
“Our imperial subjects' taxes are not to be spent so freely. If they want to feed at our table, they must bow their heads to the Empire and beg for our mercy. As for what we've already given freely, I'd say sparing their nation from total collapse in the last war was more than enough.”
Truly, our Princess had a surprisingly fierce streak beneath the gentle surface.
She was a good person — but that kindness extended only to the Empire and those within its fold. In true imperial fashion, she classified everything beyond those borders as a clear and present enemy.
“They say the kingdoms haven't yet bowed their heads to the Empire.”
“That is my understanding as well.”
“They seem determined to endure. Meanwhile their subjects will be dying by the hour.”
“An authority and pride that has already crumbled once is desperately hard to rebuild, Your Highness.”
“If it mattered that much to them, they should never have bared their fangs at the Empire in the first place. The words of fools.”
Having said her piece, the Princess turned her gaze on me and posed a question: How long do you think it will take?
She meant, presumably, when the three eastern kingdoms — Burkhai above all — would finally kneel. As it happened, I had given the matter some thought while discussing Novogord and Dedorant.
“A straight capitulation will be difficult. I'd estimate another month or more.”
“A month? Do you realize how much more suffering their people will endure in that month — how many more will die?”
“And if I told you that this estimate is already the optimistic, best-case figure — would you believe me?”
“…Good heavens.”
As I said, the authority and pride of rulers is a weighty matter. If they surrendered those so easily, what kind of rulers would they be?
Of course, calling them power-mad lunatics would be a touch unfair. It isn't merely a question of power. Their very lives hang in the balance. So this hesitating and dithering of theirs — well. I understood it, in a way.
“Sometimes, this world is awfully hard to understand.”
“Isn't that simply how it goes? The world turns far less rationally than we'd like, and far more sentimentally. Far more foolishly than wisely.”
“…Why do you suppose that is?”
“Because desire moves most of the people in this world.”
The desire to be recognized. The desire to love and to be loved. The desire to grow stronger than anyone, to become greater than anyone.
From the relationships between individuals to the affairs between nations. From a petty quarrel to a vast war devouring hundreds of thousands of lives. In the end, it was desire that moved and decided everything.
And I had exploited that desire, timing my moves to the moment. In the North. In the East. And in the South as well.
People called me a genius, a strategist — but if I looked at myself honestly… hmm. Yes. A lucky swindler with a knack for massaging people's hearts? No, that might be selling myself rather short.
Come to think of it, maybe strategist really is the truth of it after all.
With a single shrug of my shoulders, I turned my gaze back to the Princess.
“Once the East has fully submitted, Her Highness the Crown Princess will travel there in person.”
“My sister?”
“Yes. She is far better suited to drawing their collapsed hearts back toward the Empire. The royal house will remain untouched — for now, the goal is to siphon away a measure of its influence.”
“Do you think Burkhai will simply acquiesce?”
“If they do not, they drown where they stand. They will have no choice.”
It is, after all, the prerogative of those who have much to issue threats — and the lot of those who have nothing to suffer them. Such is the way of the world.
“Next comes the South, I suppose. To bring the Holy Nation and the surrounding kingdoms firmly to heel, another member of the imperial family will have to make the journey. If you ask me, Your Highness would be the natural choice—”
“No. Better my brother. The First Prince would be far more suitable.”
“…Is something troubling Your Highness?”
I had already told her. There was nothing to worry about over the honors she'd earned. No matter how the nobles fluttered and schemed, neither the Emperor nor the Crown Princess would be swayed in the least. And yet this reaction — just how deep did her anxieties run?
“No, Kael. It isn't that. It's only… if I go down to the South, I won't be able to move together with you.”
“…I beg your pardon?”
“It's my intuition. If things proceed south as they are, I suspect we'll be run off our feet for months on end. And honestly, I'd rather be at your side.”
“Staying beside me may well make you more busy, not less.”
In truth, over this past year alone, I had been run so ragged that sweat poured off me like a beast of burden. North, East, and South besides — I had been flung to every corner of the compass. And with the West looming on the horizon, there was simply no way not to be busy.
“Hm. Well, nothing to be done about it, is there? Even so — wouldn't you rather be busy together than busy alone?”
And with that, the Princess broke into a radiant smile — and before I knew it, I found myself smiling right along with her.
“Tell me the truth, Kael.”
“I won't.”
“You really can see the future, can't you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Reading the will of heaven, summoning rain and wind with a flick of your hand—”
“Never in a thousand years.”
One month later, Burkhai truly did prostrate itself before the Empire.
By all accounts, they had tried to hold out — and then another monstrous deluge came pouring from the skies. A great flood, stacked atop a great flood. Even the men in power threw up their hands at that combo.