Revenge
The nobles decided to force through the appointment of a successor after Belia’s own declaration seemed to deny the imperial bloodline entirely.
“Your Majesty, how can you say something so reckless! The previous emperors would be pointing fingers at the empire from their graves!”
“Indeed. Neighboring kingdoms may already be stirring, using the empire’s unstable succession as their excuse!”
“You must appoint Her Highness as Crown Princess at once!”
Yeah. They sure could talk.
“Haa. I gave birth at seventeen and I’m not even forty yet. Am I dying tomorrow? Why are you all rushing the succession so desperately?”
The emperor was still young. Her appearance, which still looked like the early twenties, made every noblewoman burn with envy. Even the nobles found it hard to believe she had borne four children. She almost didn’t seem human anymore.
“The matter of the successor cannot wait even a single—”
That damned phrase again. They had been just as obnoxious when they pushed Aslan onto the crown prince’s seat.
The emperor let out a long sigh. These people were truly tiresome. Their own power had run dry, so they could achieve nothing in the council. All they could do was crawl to her—the one who still held absolute authority—and beg her to wield it for them.
“I respect my own children. Since that pathetic Aslan finally realized his inadequacy after this incident and stepped down from the position himself, I intend to watch quietly for the time being. By what right do you lot come before me?”
The creatures before her possessed no such right at all.
“T-that is…”
“Do you think I don’t know? You’re terrified that provincial nobles will steal your seats, so you want to lock in a successor to protect your own positions. Isn’t that it?”
It was obvious.
“T-that is…”
“How many necks do you people have, exactly?”
“Your Majesty, we are only worried for the empire’s future—”
“Even Ashtar, the closest confidant of the imperial family, has not come to babble about the succession. So who are you to do it?”
Whenever a succession crisis arose, Ashtar was always the first to appear. This time, however, he had stayed away. With his own daughter’s mess on his hands, he probably meant to leave the entire matter to the imperial house.
Thanks to that, these useless scraps had come swarming, screeching about reinstalling a crown prince or crown princess.
“W-we apologize.”
The conversation itself was growing nauseating. They would simply repeat this farce again if she let them. It was time to be firmer.
“Or what? Are you telling me to spend the night with every one of you and produce a new prince? Fine. Who wants to be first to share my bed?”
The moment the emperor uttered words even she found indecent, the nobles lowered their heads even further.
“Your Majesty! How can you speak of such shameful things!”
“Then stop your yapping and get out of my palace immediately.”
“““……”””
While the nobles stood frozen, the emperor drew the treasured blade she had hidden beneath her maid uniform. It was the Holy Sword passed down through the imperial line since the founding ancestor— a weapon only those of Armenia blood could wield. No one knew who had forged it.
The instant she lifted the sword, an indescribable pressure crushed the nobles. Though she merely stood with her head slightly bowed, they saw visions of a blade pressed to their throats.
“Will you only leave after I cut off the heads of those who dared lay hands on the emperor’s person? Or will you go quietly now?”
At the emperor’s grave voice the nobles submitted at last and fled the palace.
In the emptied chamber, maids remained, kneeling exactly as the nobles had. Their foreheads were pressed to the floor. They had no other choice. They had failed to stop the emperor when she decided to play at being a maid, and the result had been a noble’s hand striking her cheek.
“Y-Your Majesty! We failed to stop you—please kill us for our sin!”
Always the same. Kill us, kill us. At this rate she really would become a tyrant. The succession issue was already noisy enough; if she started carving up nobles and maids with a sword, the word “tyrant” would follow her forever.
“I told you I would act as the maid. You merely obeyed an imperial command. Correct?”
“T-that is…”
They had nothing to say in return. The maids’ faces twisted.
“Right, then. Let’s keep playing. I’ll be the maid again, so who wants to try being emperor this time?”
“Your Majesty, we beg you! Please spare us! If you do this our heads truly won’t stay attached!”
With fear like this, could they even be called imperial maids? They needed more backbone. That was exactly why she had deliberately acted out the role of a confident maid in front of the nobles earlier. This was what she had meant.
“Is there anyone who would dare defy the emperor? Even if power and policy flow from the council, I am still the emperor. Who claims they will kill my maids? Do I look like someone who would?”
The emperor had no intention of killing them. Their distressed faces were rather adorable. In fact, if anyone tried to make an issue of this—whether central nobles or high council officials—she was perfectly willing to cut them all down.
“Your Majesty… we know it is not our place as mere maids to speak, but if the supreme ruler of the empire behaves this way, we fear the dignity of the empire itself may falter.”
So that was their angle. The emperor’s dignity. As if such a thing existed. To keep the empire stable for so long, she had deliberately shifted power to the council rather than maintain imperial dictatorship. And now, in her generation, the emperor held little real authority. What dignity was there to protect? Of course the fifteen-hundred-year bloodline was noble, but was it worth this much fuss?
If the maids were going to be like this, there was another method.
“Hmph. Very well. I’ll overlook it today.”
“Your Majesty!”
The maids brightened, thinking the ordeal was finally over. They shouldn’t celebrate so soon. Tomorrow she would raise the difficulty.
“We’ll play again tomorrow. Ah, perhaps I should call the imperial guard knights next time. Then—”
The maids’ faces drained of all color. Calling the knights? Did she mean to play at knights becoming emperor and the emperor becoming a knight? Knights were loyal servants of the imperial house. Nobles might not dare raise their heads, but the imperial guard existed solely to protect the emperor. No matter the reason, the fact that the emperor had played at being a maid would inevitably reach them. And unlike the nobles, knights were rigid and impossible to reason with. She would really die then. Better to simply indulge the emperor’s whims.
“We apologize, Your Majesty! We will handle everything among ourselves and stake our lives on it! Your Majesty!”
They should have said that from the beginning.
“I told you it was only a joke. You must have been startled today, so we’ll stop here.”
“However…”
Something had suddenly occurred to her.
“Do you have something to say?”
“The child who triggered this incident was Olivia—the one who nearly became my daughter-in-law. Is that correct?”
When all was said and done, the person responsible for sending those annoying nobles to her door was that girl. She had seemed clever the first time they met. Yet not only had she awakened as a saint, she had also executed her own sister and purged every noble her sister had manipulated. The central faction was now cowering. Even Aslan had surrendered his position.
If you think about it, that girl is the root of all my irritation.
“Yes.”
“Strange. That child never had the qualities of a saint.”
It wasn’t dismissal—she truly possessed no divine power. The connection with her son had been severed, but the girl had once been a prospective daughter-in-law. Calling her to the palace once would be acceptable.
“Before that. You all memorized the faces of those nobles earlier, correct?”
“““Yes.”””
Perfect timing. There was work to be done.
“Kill them.”
“Your Majesty? But—”
The maids faltered. They were not ordinary maids. They were former members of the assassination guild. The imperial family and House Ashtar had always been tightly linked, and the imperial house had benefited greatly from that connection. In the current generation, Emperor Belia had rebuilt her personal maid corps using guild members, supported by the assassination guild now absorbed into House Ashtar.
Emperor Belia used these maids without hesitation—whether for her strange games or to eliminate those who displeased her. On the surface they were mere maids who could be scolded at any time, but the moment an order was issued they transformed into an execution squad more terrifying than the emperor’s own guard.
“They dared raise a hand to my cheek and then presumed to speak of the imperial succession.”
“But they are central nobles…”
The maids, though low in status, possessed the guild’s vast information network. Even if the central nobles were corrupt, removing their pillars might bring unpredictable chaos.
“Most of the so-called central nobles are parasites clinging to named houses. The truly powerful families didn’t send anyone today. Therefore…”
There was logic to it. None of the nobles the maids had seen today carried a prestigious name. Killing them would cause temporary disorder, but compared to the empire as a whole it would be nothing more than a drop of blood.
Even so, the maids could never have predicted the emperor’s next words.
“…Bring me every one of their heads by tomorrow morning.”
An absolute imperial command. The maids dropped to one knee and bowed their heads.
“““We obey.”””
After Claire had gone, I slipped out of the dormitory under cover of night. If I’d thrown that woman into the Planon River, her corpse should still be there. Even a body could be useful. I could always turn her into a zombie. The previous Olivia had died without taking revenge; the least I could do was settle that grudge for her. Simple drowning? That wasn’t nearly enough.
“It’s been a while since I visited the Planon River.”
I knew the route. Although it was far from the capital, I remembered the location perfectly, so a single teleportation spell brought me there instantly.
The overturned carriage bearing the Ashtar crest lay half-submerged. Ashtar would probably claim it had been an accident and send knights to clean up the mess. With an impact like that she should have died instantly. Would I really have to resurrect her as a zombie after all?
That had been my first thought—right up until I heard the splashing.
There were sounds coming from inside the sunken carriage. Not the natural noise of water filling a wreck, but something deliberate. The frantic sound of someone paddling. It grew louder and louder until the voice I had been waiting to hear finally broke through.
“Glub—cough—help! Someone help me! Gah—save me!”
“Oh ho.”
The bitch was still alive.