The World Still Turns (1)
After Arto was dragged off to the bedroom by Artraia.
At a glance, it looked for all the world like a minister being kidnapped and imprisoned by the Empress herself.
"Mm, so the day has finally come, yeah."
"I told you, didn't I? All you had to do was give her a little push."
Amazingly, not a single soul present—aside from Arto himself—felt the slightest seriousness about the situation.
"Ah, Imperial Guard? Looks like Her Majesty and the Minister are about to forge a whole new era in there, so please keep a good watch, yeah."
"It would be our honor, Advisor Riel."
If anything, they seemed downright delighted by it.
"At last… the day has finally arrived when our great Empress takes a consort!"
"Truly a blessing upon the entire Empire!"
Of course, to Riel and everyone else standing there, it was only natural.
The Imperial Guards who faced Artraia every single day, and even Riel herself—who had accompanied Arto into every report session—all remembered just how many open displays of affection Artraia had shown him.
"Her Majesty has suffered so much heartache all this time…"
"Khuhuk… we can't keep this joy to ourselves!"
So the moment Riel passed on the news, the guards immediately reached for the communicators built into their powered armor, ready to broadcast the glad tidings far and wide—
"Ah, hang on a second, yeah. Better if only the Imperial Guard knows about this for now."
Riel cut them off with a firm shake of her head.
"While those two are right in the middle of the main event, if we go running our mouths and somehow mess things up, that would be a real problem, yeah."
At her words the guards nodded, admitting they had gotten ahead of themselves.
"Then I'll leave the rest of the guard duty to you. We've got a mountain of work waiting, yeah."
"Rest assured. That is precisely what we do best."
Riel had already turned to leave when she paused, glancing back at the assembled guards.
"Oh, and just in case I should mention this, yeah."
"Yes?"
"If our Minister comes out looking perfectly fine and says it's all over, yeah?"
"Yes."
"Then pretend you're escorting him out of the palace… and toss him right back into Her Majesty's bedroom."
It was the sort of cold-blooded suggestion that would have made Arto wail "You traitorous little—!" at the top of his lungs, yet Riel delivered it with perfect nonchalance.
"E-eh… is that really all right?"
"Even so, His Grace the Duke is still of the imperial bloodline. We cannot simply lay hands on him as we please."
"It's fine, yeah. If he walks out without a single bone out of place, that just means he pulled some trick to escape."
The sheer malice and thoroughness with which she sealed off every possible escape route was a far cry from the usual Riel who got a lump on her head for sassing Arto.
"I see. Understood."
"Hmm… then, Advisor Riel, in what condition do you believe His Grace the Duke Arto ought to emerge?"
Riel took a long moment to consider the question.
Of course, with a quantum-core brain that outclassed any ordinary human by an overwhelming margin, that "long moment" lasted less than a second by normal standards.
"Nothing special, yeah. Unless Her Majesty herself is the one dragging our Minister out, you can safely assume he's up to some nonsense."
"Understood."
"And if anyone from outside tries to contact the Minister, that's just another escape scheme of his, so feel free to ignore it, yeah."
"Pardon?"
"Isn't that… potentially extremely dangerous?"
Even the relatively sane Imperial Guards felt a flicker of doubt at her words—
"Any call meant for the Minister comes to me first anyway, so it doesn't matter, yeah."
"Ah."
The odds of that situation ever arising were not 0.1 percent. They were a perfect zero.
Having sealed every last escape route with absolute thoroughness, Riel finished the hand-over to the guards and—
"Hmm-hmm~ hmm-hmm~♪"
—hummed a cheerful little tune as she headed back to the Foreign Executive Ministry, a humanoid robot somehow radiating pure delight.
"NO, STOP!!!"
A desperate scream that sounded suspiciously like Arto's voice seemed to echo behind her, yet—
"Is that… all right, Miss Riel?"
"It's fine, yeah. He's saying 'NO (I like it), STOP (please do more),' isn't he?"
"…"
As if exacting revenge for every time Arto had tormented her, she casually ignored the pitiful cries.
Of course, Riel's return to the Foreign Executive Ministry did not mean her work was finished.
If anything, this was where it truly began.
"Advisor Riel, what has become of Minister Arto?"
"He's currently handling something of enormous importance to the Empire, so for the next few days we'll have to run the Foreign Executive Ministry ourselves, yeah."
On the surface it sounded like a rather serious crisis.
After all, until now Arto had almost always been present inside the ministry, directing traffic and steering the grand strategy.
Especially after the Foreign Executive Ministry had been expanded and reorganized, the newly arrived junior civil servants seemed to feel the tension even more keenly.
Yet the veterans of the ministry simply continued their work as usual, as if it were nothing special.
It was not resignation that drove them.
"All right, everyone move quickly, yeah. No need for any weird thoughts."
Every detailed matter inside the Foreign Executive Ministry that did not require Arto's personal attention—personnel affairs and the like—had long been handled by Riel herself.
Naturally she was neither a minister nor a duke like Arto, so her authority had its limits, but—
"How are the refugees looking right now, yeah?"
"With the chaos in the north and west having settled down recently, the refugees currently staying in the Empire seem to be gradually preparing to return home."
"Is that so, yeah?"
"Yes. Meanwhile the Ministry of National Development, the Ministry of National Labor, and the Ministry of Colonization appear to be desperately offering residency rights in an attempt to secure as many of them as possible."
"Let them do as they like, yeah. More importantly, what's the reaction from other nations regarding the refugees?"
"Aside from Ztrakpor, the other nations are maintaining a wait-and-see stance."
"Heeh. And what about Ztrakpor, yeah?"
"They have requested that we provide support for the return of any refugees currently in our Empire who wish to go home."
Thus Riel convened meetings with the department heads of the Foreign Executive Ministry, skillfully gathering opinions and driving them to conclusions—something she handled with far more polish than Arto ever did.
"We can't just do it for free, so squeeze every last concession we can out of Ztrakpor, yeah."
"Understood, Advisor Riel."
Where Arto painted the big picture, Riel focused on the fine details and made certain every one of them benefited the Empire. In doing so she proved her own competence so thoroughly that the undercurrent of doubt that had briefly run through the ministry vanished without a trace.
"Advisor Riel, the overall number of refugees has not actually changed."
"Hm? Why's that, yeah?"
"Due to the recent turmoil in the east, the races living in that region have been migrating here in search of safety."
Of course, the disappearance of doubt did nothing to lighten Riel's workload.
"So we're basically at plus-minus zero, yeah?"
"That is correct. Ideally we would need to renew the migration treaty, but…"
"Ah, that's under the Minister's exclusive authority, so we can't touch it. Rejected, yeah."
No matter how hard Riel worked, there were hard limits to her authority.
In practical terms she was simply riding the back of the enormous dinosaur that was the Foreign Executive Ministry, aiming for nothing more than to keep things running as they were.
The one small mercy, from Riel's perspective, was that she did not even need to glance at counter-espionage work.
The Minister really did set up the counter-espionage side so tightly that I don't have to lift a finger, yeah.
The thought of her minister currently pinned beneath Artraia and thoroughly ravaged made Riel quietly hope the two of them would be happy… then she turned back to the mountain of work piled in front of her.
As for the man she had just wished happiness upon—
"I don't wanna, nooo, stop it…"
"Huff… huff…"
"Stop!!"
—he was currently having every inch of his territory thoroughly conquered by the absolute tyrant of the bed, the Empress herself, thanks to the overwhelming difference in hardware specs.