Omen
The throne of gold blazed in blinding splendor.
"The Hero? Still no word from him?"
"No, Your Majesty. None."
"Tsk..."
Emil clicked his tongue, thoroughly displeased. He had thought a taste of bitterness would have the man bowing his head in no time, yet Rian still seemed to be laboring under the delusion that he amounted to something. Either that, or he was frozen stiff, helpless before a public hatred he had never once faced in all his life.
"Shall we send word to him first?"
"...No. Keep turning up the heat."
Whichever it was, it made no difference. The ending would not change. In the end the man would come before him and beg, wretchedly, for the privilege of submitting.
The minister withdrew from the audience chamber. Emil drew out his tobacco and pulled a long, deep drag. He had always been careful to restrain himself where others could see, but of late his thinking had shifted. The chamber held no one but the knights who guarded him. What did it matter if he smoked in the open?
Pale smoke threaded out on his breath. Emil's unfocused eyes drifted into empty air, and across those hazy pupils a man's shape took form: Rian, driving his forehead into the dirt hard enough to draw blood, pleading for forgiveness.
"...Haha. Yes. Go on, then. Beg a little more earnestly..."
The later the wretch came, the more he would lose. The fame and the achievements he had piled up until now would collapse without a trace, a castle of sand before the waves. Only then would he understand. Ah. I was nothing at all. A miserable nobody who could not so much as reach the toe of His Great Majesty Emil.
"The moment your face is ground into the dirt... I can hardly wait."
Lifted by the swell of his mood, a baser appetite stirred in him. He wanted to spend the night in grand style.
...Come to think of it, there was that play I had my eye on.
The actresses in it were beauties, every one of them. He had been meaning to summon them one of these days. Why not make it tonight?
He was just about to call an attendant when a knock sounded, and a royal guard from outside stepped in.
"Your Majesty. Marquis Albert is here to see you."
At the knight's words, Emil's drifting mind snapped sharp.
"...Albert? The chancellor who retired some twenty years ago?"
"Yes."
...What did that old man want, all of a sudden?
Emil frowned. Turn it over as he might, nothing came to mind.
"Is he waiting at the door now?"
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"...Tsk. And here I meant to be finished with the day's business. Send him in."
The marquis had been a close friend of the late king. However little Emil liked it, this was not a man he could simply ignore.
The knight stepped out, and in the same moment the marquis came through, driving the doors of the audience chamber open hard enough to split them.
"Your Majesty! What in the world is the meaning of—! Your Majesty?"
He broke off mid-sentence and stared at Emil, bewildered.
"Your Majesty Emil... is it truly you?"
"Who else would it be? And what is this uproar, barging in without a word?"
Emil regarded him with a thoroughly sour eye.
Long ago the man had sent his wife up to heaven and, as if some change had blown through his heart, withdrawn from office. Emil had heard that he bought a villa in the quiet countryside and was living out his remaining years there in leisure. So why had he appeared without so much as a notice, shouting at the top of his lungs?
"...You have grown most imposing, Your Majesty. But sudden? Do you mean to tell me I ought to sit still even after seeing news like this?"
The marquis drew a sheaf of paper from his breast. On a closer look, it was a newspaper. He spread it open and read, word by careful word, the article plastered across the front page in letters the size of a gate.
"Why in the world are you attacking the Hero with such groundless slander? He is the greatest treasure of our kingdom!"
Emil's face twisted hard. He had wondered what the man meant to say, and sure enough, it was bullshit not worth hearing.
"Ha! A treasure? What treasure in all the world offends its master's temper and rebels? I have my reasons, so hold your tongue and withdraw."
But the marquis did not retreat at the order to leave. He only raised his voice.
"No! This course is never right! A quarrel between Your Majesty and the Hero does not erase the devotion he has given this kingdom until now! To treat a man more loyal than any other in this fashion—the late king would never have—!"
"Enough!!"
Emil roared. He cut the marquis off and shouted on.
"Do you imagine he could have built these achievements alone? Whose favor do you think earned him that fame? And what loyal subject lifts his head and raises his voice in his king's face?"
Emil glared at him.
"And what do you know, to lecture me this way and that? A has-been who left office ages ago! When you were chancellor in your prime, this kingdom was a weak little state, forever glancing at its neighbors for permission. And now? Even that empire can no longer treat us lightly!"
Short of breath, he steadied himself.
"...The one who led us into this golden age was none other than me. The great and sagacious king, Emil Alfonso Kadema! The people in the streets cheer my name every day, and you presume to speak as if you know the truth of things?"
The marquis looked at him steadily.
"...You ought to speak plainly. It was not Your Majesty who led the kingdom's rise. It was the Hero..."
"Shut your mouth!!"
Emil bellowed. Had the man stepped on his rawest nerve? In an instant his face flushed red, and a vein writhed across his brow.
"I showed you courtesy out of regard for your being my father's friend, and still you cross the line to insult me! I will hear no more. Royal Guard! Drag the marquis out at once!"
"Your Majesty! It cannot go on like this! You must set this right, now! Your Majesty...!"
The doors opened, and the royal guards came in to seize him. The marquis struggled on, trying to press his case, but a body well into old age had no hope of overcoming a knight's strength.
"Unhand me. I shall walk out on my own two feet."
Hauled along the corridor, the marquis came back to himself and spoke. Released from their grip, he moved without strength.
He left the palace and looked back.
The royal castle was crammed with costly works of art and exquisite statues. It had changed beyond all recognition from the last image he had carried away, more than twenty years ago, before he left the capital. That the kingdom had grown wealthier than in the days when he served as chancellor was a fact he could not deny.
But it was not purely a good thing. The overflowing gold had blinded the king.
The marquis remembered him in his youth. He had known how to listen when a minister spoke—a young man who could admit his own shortcomings and learn. Now he had sunk into flattery and into feasts of wine and flesh, an ignorant fool who could not even tell right from wrong.
He was walking the gardens with a bitter taste in his mouth when something strange caught his eye. Women were passing along the corridor in gowns that rose no higher than the breast, their bare skin on open display.
It was not attire befitting a royal palace. He caught a passing servant and asked, and the answer that came back was more shocking still. They were the king's mistresses, he was told—women with whom His Majesty often enjoyed lavish revels.
"...I have come up far too late."
The marquis let out a sigh thick with regret. After losing his wife he had fallen into despair and taken no interest in affairs of state. By the time he finally came to his senses at the end of that long wandering, the Hero's appearance had set the kingdom on a breakneck rise, and he had thought everything was running well.
He had never imagined that the surface could look so sound while the inside had rotted through to this degree. Truly, he had not even conceived of it. Drunk on an easy country life, he had never once tried to look properly. Had that been his fault?
"Your late Majesty..."
Had he known sooner, he would have come up to the capital long ago. He would have driven out the flatterers who dealt only in sweet words and given his whole body for the kingdom. But regret was always late, and the marquis could not escape the current of years flowing on without mercy.
He no longer had the courage to risk himself and offer loyal counsel for the nation's peace, nor the strength to stand against his many political enemies, nor the will to carry any of it out. All that remained standing in his place was one frail old man.
"...I shall have to leave the kingdom."
Those with ability ought to be treated as precious. What one had received, one ought to repay in fitting measure. A self-evident law. Yet the kingdom had been breaking that principle since long ago, trapped inside the frame of hereditary rank. There had been time enough to reform the system, and still they had not, drunk on comfort.
Every collapse begins from a tiny crack. Found when it was only a hairline fissure, it might have been reinforced with ease—but now it was too late. The crack had already spread across the whole wall. Touch it carelessly, and one would only hasten the ruin.
"...I shall have to prepare to settle the family assets."
From the start, it had been a triumph made possible by the existence of a single man. They had climbed aboard an enormous stroke of fortune, enjoyed a growth far beyond their station, and made no preparation for the fall. Perhaps the catastrophe had been appointed from the very beginning.
"To the family estate."
Weep and regret after the dam has burst, and it will already be too late—everything swept away. Thinking that he would have to look into a country to emigrate to as soon as possible, the marquis climbed into the carriage. That he had no children, and so was not bound body and soul to the kingdom, was the one small mercy in it all.
"We set out at once."
Once his mind was made up, he moved without delay. No lingering attachment to the kingdom remained, and with the choice already made he had no wish to drag it out. Above all, he wanted to be gone before word of his contact with the empire reached those above. The watch on the border might grow strict.
Of course, sealing the whole of it would scatter their numbers, and a cordon full of holes could be slipped through easily enough. Even so, he did not want to be seen crossing into imperial land. That could all too easily flare into a dispute between the two nations.
Even if they learned he had met with someone from the empire, that alone would not serve as proof he had turned. But being caught in the act of heading into imperial territory was different. Between mere suspicion and solid evidence lay a gap as wide as heaven and earth.
Under cover of a night sunk in darkness, he crossed the border in secret. Even after he entered the empire's lands, he did not slow. Khalifa had told him the empire's situation was not entirely good.
He passed the cities by without entering them and kept driving on, taking only brief rests before moving again. How many days went by like that?
"We're almost there!"
Khalifa cried out, bright with joy. Beyond the horizon rose more towering buildings than he could count, landmarks of the sort that had marked the great cities they had passed along the way.
"At last..."
Rian nodded, heavy with the weight of it.
The heart of the Drakess Empire. A vast city the color of ink, bearer of the epithet Holy War of Blood, Iron, and Fire. At last, they had arrived at the imperial capital, Drakenheim.