Prologue
Thud. The doors of the Royal Palace Council Hall swung shut.
Soldiers barred the entrance, hands resting on the hilts of their swords, while below the dais the officials divided into two flanks kept their heads bowed, awaiting judgment.
"Prospective Consort, my lord. Are you truly saying you'll overturn the appointments and punish me—all because a few measly soldiers died?"
Among them, only the personnel officer—who had a young man hidden behind his back—still held his head high.
"Sir Rael. Men die in battle. It happens all the time."
"True. Can't argue with that. What's funny, though, is hearing it from a man who's never sent so much as his son to a battlefield—his wife's nephew, for that matter, either."
"But this boy has a gift for logistics...."
The officer shuffled another step forward, shielding his son with his own back.
At that display, I graciously flung a stack of documents down onto the marble floor for him—sheets recording every variety of graft imaginable.
"A gift for skimming army rations, you mean? If that counts as talent, it's a truly astonishing one."
The personnel officer's gaze snagged on his son's signature.
"Stuffing the soldiers' grain sacks with sand, shoving the lot off a cliff, and reporting that the transport convoy had been ambushed. What a waste. That cleverness could have done wonders for the country."
"Those were genuinely lost when the convoy was attacked—"
"Enough excuses. I've just returned from finding sandbags piled high beneath that cliff. And that's not all. The centurion who protested—unable to bear the sight of his men starving—was dismissed, and the man who'd slipped you kickbacks was installed in his place."
"The former centurion was a man who defied orders!"
"An order to starve one's own men is one worth defying. Wouldn't you say?"
Clank. The soldiers standing with hands on their hilts shuddered hard, steel rattling in scabbards.
And the old general beside me ground his teeth together. An old general with one sleeve hanging empty.
I slid the reinstatement orders I'd prepared across to him.
"Effective today, the dismissed centurion and the three officers imprisoned on unjust charges will all be formally returned to their posts. I'll be assigning the new supply officer myself, so for the time being, please begin by verifying the existing grain stores."
When the old general nodded and clasped the papers, the personnel officer blurted out in desperation.
"The supply officer—th-that post already has a designated candidate! The appointment has already gone through!"
"Ah. You mean your nephew, the one who lives and breathes gambling? Worried about family even at this pass—how touching. But fear not. The knights have already paid him a visit. Everyone implicated will be rounded up as well, and come to think of it, a family reunion in the royal dungeon sounds rather fitting."
At my gesture, the knights drawn up in formation stepped forward.
"E-eep!"
The officer tripped over his own feet in his scramble backward, and the son quaking behind him hovered on the edge of consciousness.
"Sir Rael! Spare my boy, I beg you! He's still green—a mistake made because he didn't know any better!"
"And he didn't know any better for five straight years of diverting army rations? Pathetic, even as excuses go."
I closed the ledger and looked down at the knights.
"Take them away. They embezzled military rations, and they will be punished under charges tantamount to treason. Torture is authorized. Round up everyone involved, every last one."
"Yes, sir!"
"Ah—but see that they keep their lives. An example must be made before the eyes of the people, after all."
With crisp, disciplined bows, the knights seized the personnel officer and his son by the arms and marched them out of the Council Hall.
"Sir Rael! Prospective Consort, Your Highne-e-e-ss! I was wrong—please, I beg you, just spare my life!"
While the screaming faded down the corridor, not a soul in the hall opened their mouth.
I swept my gaze across the remaining officials, then unfolded the next set of records. Beneath the thick stack of documents, yet more documents lay waiting.
"Goddamn it. They've gorged themselves rotten on this place."
How had one tiny kingdom packed in so much corruption? If they'd gone to the trouble of kidnapping me, the least they could do was put food on my table.
Some part of me did wonder why I was the one stepping up to set this country to rights in their stead—but what use was regret now?
"Next item on the agenda..."
My name is Rael. A commoner who had once served as Personnel Section Chief in the Empire's Ministry of Internal Affairs. A background extra who had pushed back against the personnel abuses that followed a change of regime, only to be demoted to mucking out stables. And—the poor, exploited reincarnator who, in the middle of shoveling nothing but horse dung, was abruptly abducted by the princess of the South and put straight to work.
"Oh ho. Diverting the money meant for the families of fallen soldiers? How brave of you."
Thud. One of the officials dropped to his knees.
"S-Sir Rael. Mercy, I beg of you."
"Sorry. It won't do—this is the country I have to live in now. Drag him off."
"Yes, sir!"
And so the man of the Empire, who had once dreamed of a hardworking, self-improving life, dances with his sword yet again today—all in devoted pursuit of becoming a freeloading kept husband.