A New Wave (2)
At last I returned to the Imperial Capital and made my way back to Atlina as well.
The professors all seemed strangely subdued, and the reason for that was easy enough to find. It was the state of the students.
The moment I stepped onto the grounds of Atlina, they swarmed me.
"Taesa! We've missed you so much!"
"Hello, Lady Olivia!"
"Saint! It's been far too long!"
Ever since I'd put them through training back in Ryler territory, the kids had clung to me like chicks trailing after a mother bird. Beside me, Celia's gaze turned thoroughly filthy. That sly look said she found the whole thing hilarious, and it took everything I had not to smack her one.
"Ah. Yeah, yeah. It really has been a while."
"Yes, Saint."
"I heard you were on leave. What did you do with it?"
"A holiday granted by His Majesty himself—it must have been something incredible, right?"
Just who the hell did these kids think I was?
Fine. Recognizing me as Taesa was one thing. That much I could live with. But this was a bit much. They didn't know my circumstances, so of course they'd talk like that, but still.
Ribelt, the elves, and the moment I got back Katrina had put me through the wringer.
I heard you had a hard time in Ribelt and the Great Forest. Are you all right? Any injuries?
Y-yes. I'm fine. Really, I'm fine.
I still couldn't figure out why that woman was so concerned for me, but I hadn't exactly hated the feeling either. The leftover scrap of the old Olivia's mind had seemed satisfied by it. Even after everything, mother and daughter were still mother and daughter, I supposed.
"Ah, but did you know, Saint?"
"Is something happening at Atlina?"
"You came back at the perfect time. Spot-on, really! Today the Seven Stars are supposed to visit as well."
The Seven Stars were coming? That was genuinely unexpected.
"The Seven Stars? If the Seven Stars are coming, that means—"
The Emperor must have summoned them. That damn Emperor. No wonder he'd let me go so easily. He already knew I'd get dragged into whatever this was. His face had been far too smug. Sending me straight to Atlina the second I entered the Imperial Palace had been for exactly that reason, no doubt.
Once I finally finished talking with the young ladies who were so fond of me, Celia spoke up.
"The Seven Stars, huh. Other than the Radiant Blade, I don't think I've ever met them. I might have seen a few of them before, though."
"Figures. They treat wandering around the Empire like a hobby."
"Ugh, there sure are a lot of strange people. Aren't they just freeloaders?"
Depending on how you looked at it, freeloaders was fair enough. Only they weren't ordinary freeloaders. I'd thought Celia would understand at least that much—but maybe she really was a fool who only knew what I told her.
Honestly, I didn't know every detail about the Seven Stars, but I knew enough. I knew they were thoroughly rotten, for one.
"Can't be helped. The Seven Stars exist to roam the Empire and oversee its lands. Think of them as something like Heroes. Heroes travel from country to country, helping people with their hardships or hunting demons—they do work along those lines, just limited to the Empire."
"I know that much, but do they actually do it? Or is it just talk?"
"No. Catching corrupt nobles is part of their job, sure."
On paper it sounded like they traveled the vast Empire solving every hardship they found. That was only how hard it sounded. In practice, there was hardly a more comfortable profession than theirs.
"They never looked like that to me."
"Well, yeah. In the end they're all the same breed. Or rather, they just can't be bothered. Their skill is solid enough, I'll give them that."
Skill, at least, I could acknowledge. Mage, blacksmith, magic swordsman, priest, and so on—they all spent their time traveling the world, more or less. They would punish truly vicious, corrupt officials who ruined people, but if someone wasn't actively tormenting the common folk and was only skimming a little on the side, they let it slide. The clever ones knew that and kept their thievery quiet and out of sight.
"Isn't that a bad thing?"
"Surprisingly, the Empire's society keeps turning even without poking at that stuff. A huge portion of the Empire's people are farmers, and those farmers are mostly fief-dwellers. Even if the lords are rotten to the core, as long as there's a blessing, heavy exploitation and taxes get filled back in soon enough. And for nobles who go too far—there's talk that the Emperor quietly has them killed."
He had already cut down the sprouts of several noble uprisings. Now that they'd seen what Tarhana and the Capital Army were capable of, the nobles would keep their heads down of their own accord.
"Aha."
"There are plenty of real cases like that, but—"
That Emperor lived like a complete scoundrel, yet if you looked closely he had never once become a threat to the Empire. A tyrant? Power sat with the council, and there was never any real backlash from executing nobles. At the very least, it meant that no matter what nonsense the Emperor pulled, it never got in the way of the bureaucrats or the aristocracy.
"Then the Empire's corruption is actually—"
"They call it corruption, corruption, but thanks to the mages' blessings there's not that much real discontent. And besides."
If war broke out, that side of things might even work better. If the White King tried to invade under the banner of toppling a corrupt Empire, the nobles would open their coffers to protect their own necks. A standing Empire was still better for them, after all. The wealth each territory had stockpiled would convert straight into wartime production the moment fighting started, and the lands were more than capable of waging war on their own without the capital's help. Population-wise, a large fief could field tens of thousands of troops. There were hundreds of land-holding nobles alone; even raising an army only from those able to maintain private forces would easily yield hundreds of thousands. The Emperor was probably counting on that.
"Ah, to hell with it. That side's more convenient for me anyway."
The Empire's people needed to stop their own problems with their own hands. If I cleaned everything up and they started leaning on me for everything, it would only become a pain. Better not to care. Besides, there was still the Kingdom, Ribelt, and the Holy Kingdom. The elves would at least stay neutral.
"Oh. So this is the friend they call Olivia."
"My. If it isn't Iron King Tans of the Seven Stars?"
A dwarf appeared in front of the two of us. His clothes were shabby, and a messy brown beard spilled down from his chin—the picture of a classic dwarf. Yet the way he looked at me was oddly curious, as if something about me interested him.
"Ooh, you know me well. Heard of me somewhere, have you?"
"The Seven Stars are famous, aren't they? Iron King Tans—the one who tours the Empire challenging every forge he finds."
That was knowledge from my days as Noah. I'd seen him a few times during the war.
Iron King Tans traveled the forges of the Empire one by one, inspecting the gear they produced, scolding or offering tips, and raising the overall standard. Anyone who challenged him on pure skill got settled in a single bout. Some of the ones who lost the battle of wills came out half-broken.
"Ahem. I'd prefer you call it work for the Empire. Standards need raising, don't they?"
That part was true enough. Being a great power didn't make everything about the Empire great. The forges were high-level overall, sure—but there were countless of them scattered across the Empire, and some of them turned out work so bad they deserved to close. So Tans's crusade could be justified as raising the standard.
The problem was—
"I know that. Of course it is. Even so, quite a few shops end up shutting their doors, don't they?"
Shops closed; that was inevitable. In front of me he played the affable man, but the moment he stepped into a forge he could turn violent depending on the mood and try to smash the place to pieces. His skill was real, but in the past one blacksmith humiliated by him had even put out a contract for his assassination.
"Ahem. There are new places opening too, and if the ones who can't cut it fold of their own accord, what's a man to do? Youngsters these days, I tell you."
This dwarf was Iron King Tans. When it came to working metal, no one could match him. In pure combat his gear did a lot of the heavy lifting, but his true power lay in the weapons he forged. In the past, pieces he made had even been issued to commanders of the Capital Army.
"Anyway, you're quite the famous figure."
"Kind of you to say so. And you—you're the Taesa, aren't you? Put in a good word for me, will you?"
He smiled in the friendliest way while saying something like that. As if smooth talk would get him anywhere when the Emperor already treated the Assassin Guild—the Empire's finest intelligence network—like an extension of his own hands.
"I already know this much about you. His Majesty will know everything as well."
"Haha. This is awkward."
"What would His Majesty even say? You're all more or less the same, aren't you?"
They all acted like old friends with him, after all.
"Now, now. Don't go making fun of His Majesty."
If teasing an Emperor who had arbitrarily decided his former prospective daughter-in-law was his woman was the worst I did, I was already being generous. If I'd followed my first impulse, I would have slapped him clean across the face long ago. Everything else I could live with, but because of that man I was already being gossiped about as the Emperor's woman in the Imperial Palace and elsewhere.
Anyway, that didn't matter right now.
"That isn't important. Have the others arrived as well?"
"Aye. They're already here, herding the students together."
So the Seven Stars had all come tangled up like a school of fish. The thought of them all in one place was less than appealing.
"Ugh, how dreadful."
Maybe that was why fewer of them than expected had latched onto me.
"Ho. Calling the Seven Stars dreadful? You speak as if you've met us before."
Ah, shit. I'd slipped into Noah's sensibilities.
I was Olivia. Olivia. So I had to act as if these people were complete strangers, not draw on old familiarity. Even as Taesa, my behavior just now had to count as rude. If the Seven Stars held independent status, even the Taesa couldn't treat them lightly.
"Ah. A-aaaah. I've gotten a little friendly with the Radiant Blade, you see. And that man is such an eccentric, and you're no ordinary one either, Iron King."
"Aha. So you think birds of a feather flock together."
Of course I did. That was exactly how it looked.
"To be honest—yes."
"Well, life's like that, isn't it? Don't worry. I may not look it, but I do rather well for myself."
What did him doing well have to do with birds of a feather? In the end they were all cut from the same cloth.
Which raised the question—would that absolute scumbag of a priest be here too? An Imperial by blood, but a product of the Holy Kingdom's church. Because his post was from the Holy Kingdom, the Empire never properly treated him as a high priest; instead he held a seat among the Seven Stars.
"What are you thinking about?"
"Ugh. I've just got this really shitty feeling."
Without meaning to, I wrapped my arms around myself and gave a full-body shiver.
"Are you cold?"
"No. It just feels like I should be cold. That's all."
How was I even supposed to put this feeling into words? Something was off. I really did have the sense I was about to run into that bastard. Especially since the man was a complete lecher.