Secret Pact (4)
At Artraia's puzzled reaction, I felt my mind go blank for a moment.
Our girl isn't the type to act like this. Why is she doing that?
But the bewilderment lasted only a second. I realized where Artraia's gaze was fixed.
...Ah. Ah. Ahhh.
Thanks to her overflowing maternal instincts from the Motherhood Pocket, Artraia had been watching Gaia, who clearly wasn't following my explanation at all.
If this keeps up, I'm the only one who looks like trash.
I could almost hear phantom voices jeering "Boo, trash!" in my direction, so I squeezed my eyes shut, opened them again, and spoke.
"Th...at's right. Mm."
Right then Artraia gave me a subtle little wink, and I knew my guess had been spot-on.
"Ahem. Then allow me to explain."
"Yeees."
"The reason Rixi is demanding a secret pact is simple. They're just trying to protect their reputation by any means necessary."
"Reputation... is it?"
Gaia finally managed a question for the first time in a while.
"Yeah. They already sacrificed their freedom to become a vassal state, yet the moment their original master Kerzin falls into crisis, they immediately try to switch overlords."
"Nuuuuh..."
Even as the words left my mouth I wondered if I was being a bit too scathing.
"Arto's right. If those guys had openly shown that kind of attitude here... we'd be the ones turning them down."
Coming from Artraia, whose main interest was the expansion of the Empire, that was basically permission for me to speak freely.
"Exactly... It's a matter of credibility in the international community. There's no other way."
"Is that so, yeah."
If a nation openly violated international law(?) simply because it felt threatened, who would ever trust them enough to take them in? Accepting such people would only make others say you were no better than them.
"Of course, the fact that they're not saying it outright and are coming at us with a secret pact instead is something I rather like!"
"Ah."
From Artraia's perspective, it seemed she was pleased that the Rixi Republic was at least reading the room.
"Is that so, yeah?"
"Yeah."
And so we spent quite a long time exchanging opinions about the matter.
How much profit—or loss—this affair would bring. We piled on various hypotheticals and kept discussing...
PAUSED
PAUSE RELEASED
PAUSED
PAUSE RELEASED
As far as I knew, holding a conversation with someone whose intelligence ranked near the top even in this world ultimately looked like this.
"So, about the conditions we'll demand from Rixi..."
PAUSED
Please stop. I can't just spit out answers like that on the spot.
Whenever Artraia spoke after thinking for mere seconds or minutes, I would hit pause and wrestle with my own thoughts. That was the pattern.
After yet another long stretch of agonizing over every angle—
PAUSE RELEASED
"...What do you think?"
"Your idea sounds better, so let's go with that."
And when even that failed, I had no choice but to gloss things over roughly.
Anyway, after an extremely long time (by my standards, at least)—
"Good. We accept the secret pact with Rixi?"
"Yeah."
Through this tidy little closed-door meeting, the Holy Sevelian Empire was about to place the vast nation known as the Rixi Republic under its heel.
"Mmm... Still, the actual decision will only come after the next confidential council, I suppose."
"Plus we still have to talk things over with the Rixi Republic side, so it could drag on even longer."
"Yeah. So Arto, I'm counting on you to handle the talks with Rixi, okay?"
"Ah."
And of course the practical work for that fell squarely on my shoulders...
Under the pressure rolling off Artraia, I let out a long sigh and said,
"Riel, you heard that?"
"You're kidding me, Minister?"
Naturally, whatever Riel did was effectively my work, so there was no problem with handling it this way.
"Don't mess around, Minister."
And in our Empire, the human rights of robot friends were on the same level as graduate students, so that wasn't an issue either.
Thanks to the small sacrifice known as Riel, negotiations with Rixi were wrapped up before the confidential council.
Of course, the story was far from over.
"The Rixi Republic's request for vassalization still has far too many issues that require judgment."
"Indeed. Above all, how are we supposed to trust people who have neither faith nor honor?"
Even under the Emperor's direct supervision, the confidential council still displayed the Holy Sevelian Empire's characteristic political fragmentation and public opinion. Watching it all unfold again made my temples throb once more.
If we had presented this as the Emperor's and my joint opinion from the start, the nature of absolute monarchy would have rammed it through no matter what... but that wasn't the approach we took.
"But if we make the Rixi Republic a vassal state, wouldn't that be equivalent to gaining territory even vaster than the northern lands we lost?"
"Ha. The Kar-Du military fleet has completely banned navigation through the middle of it. What meaning does that have?"
"If we simply ignore Kar-Du's ban..."
"Doing so would bring massive sanctions from the Galactic League."
As the divided opinions made clear, we had quietly leaked information about this matter to a few attendees of the confidential council and steered them into proposing the agenda themselves.
It's a hassle, but given public opinion inside the Empire, there's no other way.
My own reputation was already complicated enough. If Empress Artraia voiced the exact same opinion as me? Anyone watching would think, "Ah, those two are just playing drums and gongs together in their little closed-door politics!"
...Well, a living saint of an Empress would never get that kind of flak, so I'd be the only scapegoat.
Of course they weren't acting out of pure malice; they were genuinely worried for the Empire in their own way, so I had no intention of blaming them.
And honestly, from my position, all I had to do in this meeting was keep my mouth mostly shut.
"What does the Minister of the Foreign Executive Ministry think?"
"Well... if it were merely stating my personal stance, that would be one thing, but regarding the concrete details... I would prefer to refrain from comment."
Whenever someone asked me like that, I would casually deflect and simply keep focusing on the conversation...
"As expected, the Minister is also taking a cautious stance."
"Well... hmm."
They helpfully misunderstood on their own, which made the conversation wonderfully easy.
Of course, the reason I could pull off this misunderstanding comedy was thanks to my "achievements" that weren't really achievements during the Prosnaq Rebellion.
"Is the Rixi side's opinion fully consolidated?"
"Given the relatively primitive clan-group tendencies they display, Prime Minister Aramati cannot issue an opinion alone as their representative."
"Which means their opinion has already been fully settled, then?"
And Artraia, seated upon the imperial throne, looked down upon her subjects with lofty composure.
Her expression was even more relaxed than usual; she simply watched from above.
...She's definitely enjoying this situation right now.
Maybe it was because we'd been stuck together for ten years. I could deduce that the current Artraia was relieving stress by watching her subjects bicker over something already decided.
The longer this goes on, the weirder her personality seems to get in places like this.
Reflecting on Artraia's increasingly sly side, I continued steering the council's atmosphere toward approval of the secret pact with the Rixi Republic.
And as a result of all that effort—
"As a result of the review of the treaty with the Rixi Republic, initiated by the proposal of six members including Councilor Mirat and Councilor Ermidos..."
—Gulp.
"...with 86 votes in favor, 12 against, and 2 abstentions, we shall proceed with the treaty making the Rixi Republic a secret vassal state of our Holy Sevelian Empire."
At that clean, decisive result, I almost clenched an imaginary fist of joy in my heart.
And after that, there wasn't much else.
"Your Majesty, this is a memorial submitted by our Confidential Council."
"Mm. We grant leave to present it."
Since it was an opinion being offered to the absolute monarch who was the Empire's sole living god, an extremely complicated and lengthy formal ceremony followed.
"We have carefully reviewed your opinions, and hereby grant permission for this treaty to proceed."
"We offer our deepest gratitude for Your Majesty's gracious leave."
Only after the formalities had run their full course did the confidential council's decision become reality.
And as I watched the entire spectacle once more, the same thought as always rose inside me.
What is this feeling that I'm watching some mishmash historical drama?
Of course, if I ever let that thought slip out loud, our splendidly loyal uncles would tear me limb from limb...
So I simply buried it deep in my heart.