A Fiery New Year - 2

The Minister of Finance, second in the ministerial hierarchy. The Commander of the Central Army, ranked among the ten most powerful figures in the entire military. And wedged between this spectacular lineup was a mere department chief. What was a man in that position supposed to do?

The answer was simple. Pour the tea and play secretary. And if there was no tea, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠flip a few cartwheels and put on a little show.

Anywhere else, I'm the one people treat with respect.

It was pathetic. What good was a department chief's title when you spent every other day getting bounced around by ministers? No matter how many people sat beneath you, the moment the ranks above you piled up like a mountain, the whole thing became meaningless.

"Is it to your taste?"

"Mm, not bad. Used to taste like plain water. You've improved a lot."

A perfectly polite question, and back came an evaluation dripping with sincerity. It was enough to drive a man insane. It was clearly a compliment, and somehow it still managed to sour his mood.

Back in the days when he was being ground into the dirt up north, earning recognition from the Minister and this man had been a genuine goal. But unlike the Minister, this one never handed out praise no matter what you accomplished—not even after a soul-baring deathmatch that ended with one of Kagan's Eight Steeds, Saray Dobra Tala, dead by Karl's hand. All he ever got was a flat good work and a pat on the back.

And now he was being praised for brewing a decent cup of tea.

Life.

Tala, you bastard—are you watching from hell? I broke half my body and lost an eye trying to kill you, and it turns out I would have been happier tucked in a corner making tea.

Even Tala, somewhere in the underworld, would probably beat the ground and wail if he saw this. Was that all his life had been worth?

"I regret that my gallop has ended—and yet I am satisfied! For the one who set that end is a new hero! Yes, Karl Crassius. In your eyes, was I a wolf of the steppe?"

The last words the man had spoken rose unbidden in his mind. If there is a next life, come back as a tea bag.

"The military already gets more than any other department. How much more do you plan to bleed us for, coming here in person?"

"Come on, don't be like that. I just wanted to see an old friend's face."

"Spare me the nonsense."

While the Minister and the Commander sparred, Karl quietly took his seat.

Something about this was off. Ever since the Great Subjugation War, the military had been allotted the largest budgets the Empire could manage. If the numbers fell short and someone wanted to complain, sending a staff officer from High Command would have been enough. So why was a commander-level officer here in person—and one on friendly terms with the Minister, at that?

Don't tell me they're trying to build a flying fortress.

The image of a certain man's romantic dream—realized once by Apels—flickered through his mind and was promptly discarded. That thing had been a white elephant that dropped out of the sky the moment it actually had to fly.

"I need to buy horses."

After a long bout of bickering, the Commander finally got to the point.

"And you have a seller?"

"Which is exactly why I have to name a high price."

The Minister clicked his tongue, resigned. When the justification was horses, even he had no room to argue.

Horses. The indispensable foundation of any cavalry force. If you ran short of soldiers, you could always conscript. If you ran short of horses, there was no answer in sight. Horses were not chickens or pigs; you could not simply raise them overnight.

Worse, Kagan's devastating campaigns during the Great Subjugation War had gutted the Empire's cavalry. The northern tribes loyal to the Empire had been all but annihilated, and with them vanished every reliable supply route for warhorses.

Restoring those routes would take years—and the Empire could not simply suspend cavalry training until then.

If money can solve it, that's a bargain.

Of course, horses were treated as strategic assets across the entire continent, and their export was tightly controlled. Selling warhorses your own country needed to a foreign power? You could be branded a traitor and no one would call it unjust.

But money had a way of outrunning loyalty and patriotism, no matter where you went. If an officer of the Commander's rank was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠walking in this confidently, the groundwork was already done. Karl almost felt like crying for the military staff who must have scraped and clawed to find even a temporary supplier.

"If this deal goes through cleanly, we can finally breathe. Full recovery is impossible, but we can get back to seventy percent."

Faced with that overwhelming justification, the Minister made a low sound in his throat. If the cavalry problem the military had been dragging around for two—no, three—years could be restored to seventy percent capacity, then inventing a budget that did not exist and handing it over was simply the right call.

"Think about it. Up north, that bastard Dorgon is still raising hell. The day he brings a few tribes under his banner, you'll look back on today and think, I should have smashed open my piggy bank and given him everything—"

"Enough. I get it."

The moment the Commander pressed the Imperial civil servant's emergency panic button, the Minister finally nodded.

Another upheaval in the north was a disaster no one wanted. And when that disaster was not merely theoretical, it became something else entirely. As long as the remnant of that heaven-defying rebel, Dorgon, still lived somewhere in the north, something was going to break eventually. That much was certain.

"Give it here."

At the Minister's faintly deflated voice, the Commander produced a document as if he had been waiting for exactly that cue. The Minister skimmed it, then stamped his seal without a second glance.

Impressive. Other departments had to build towers of paperwork before a seal so much as considered landing on the page.

"Ahh, the Empire's peerless and loyal soldiers will rejoice at Your Excellency's great decision."

Apparently satisfied with the clean transaction, the Commander clapped with theatrical enthusiasm—though, being one-armed, the sound came from his palm striking his knee.

The Minister, who had just watched a fortune drain away with a single stamp, looked thoroughly haggard. But what else could he do? If he held the money back and genuine trouble flared in the north, the fallout would be unmanageable. Armies existed, after all, to eat money precisely for the sake of that "what if."

"Well then. See you next time."

"Don't ever come back."

"You love it and you know it."

The Commander rose without a shred of lingering attachment and vanished as swiftly as he had arrived, gone on the wind.

Watching someone casually thrash the Minister like that… someday, Karl thought, he wanted to be that kind of man.

Thoroughly drained by the military—specifically, by the Commander—the Minister sat for a long time with his fingers pressed to his brow, saying nothing.

Was he that bitter about the money? If it had to be paid anyway, better to pay it quickly and be done—

"Hey."

"Yes?"

"What do you think would happen if a Minister went to war?"

Only then did Karl understand what the man had actually been brooding over. It was not the spectacularly plundered budget that had left him silent. It was Dorgon—the cancer cell still alive in the north.

Of course the Minister already knew Dorgon was out there somewhere. But hearing a senior military officer say it to your face—we need to prepare for Dorgon going full lunatic—was a different feeling entirely. A vague threat, a nightmare from the past, suddenly pressing right up against the tip of your nose. For a Minister who had once clashed with Kagan himself, it must have been enough to drive a man mad.

"Would that even be possible?"

Still, the answer Karl could give did not change. The head of the Ministry of Finance, on a battlefield? Absolutely not. Did the man still think he was running the Audit Department?

"Even if that heaven-defying rebel crawled back from the dead, that still would not happen."

"Damn it. You're right about that."

The Minister clicked his tongue, tipped his head back, and let out a long breath.

Yes. Even if Kagan himself clawed his way up from hell, the Minister of Finance would never take the field. An Empire obsessed with prestige and appearances would never deploy its Finance Minister instead of regular forces or special units. It would be an open advertisement that the Empire no longer had the luxury of choosing who it sent.

"Besides, we still have His Grace the Duke of Victory, and the Ministry of Special Affairs. And if it comes to it—there's me."

Karl spoke carefully, trying to soothe the Minister's peculiar anxiety. The Empire was weaker than it had been before the war, yes—but so was the north.

Kagan was dead. Of the Eight Steeds, only Dorgon remained. The Empire, by contrast, still had the Duke of Victory in full health, Mukgwangdae carrying on where the Fourth Division left off, and Karl himself—still serving in the Audit Department, still more than capable of taking the field—

"You're the reason I'm even more worried."

"I'm sorry—what?"

What kind of thing was that to say to the person trying to comfort you?

With every department's eyes locked on the Ministry of Finance, a rare pocket of free time had opened up. Knowing that this was one of only a handful of rest periods he would get in an entire year kept him from enjoying it quite as much as he should have.

Should I stretch the window?

For a fleeting moment, he even considered using the Crown Prince's authority to extend the supplementary budget period. The longer the allocation season ran, the longer his own rest would last.

But a stunt like that would only breed chaos, so he quietly locked the thought away. Better to be content with what he had. Nothing was more foolish than getting greedy and losing even the little you already held.

Though it feels like I've already lost it.

At last he faced the reality he had been carefully ignoring.

In the middle of every department hunting the Ministry of Finance, a single petition had come flying straight to him alone. The moment he saw it, he knew even this precious rest was about to evaporate. Holding on to what you had was the smart play, and letting go was for fools? Then he was already a fool—and not even by his own fault. Outside variables had done the job for him.

Massaging the stiff nape of his neck, he opened the petition. This was no ordinary submission. It had come from the Master of the Magic Tower. You did not take a petition from the Magic Lord lightly.

Yes—a petition from the Master of the Magic Tower. Which meant Beatrix herself had written it and sent it up.

What on earth does it say?

In all her years as Master of the Tower, the Magic Lord had never once filed a petition. With her abilities, she could resolve nearly anything herself long before she needed to trouble the Imperial House.

And that was precisely why it was terrifying. A matter serious enough that even the Magic Lord would appeal directly to the throne. What kind of request could possibly be inside?

He skimmed past the ceremonial greeting and dropped his eyes to the substance. The formalities were in order; the content was what mattered.

And the moment he reached the point, his mind locked solid.

It was even less of a crisis than he had imagined. Was this truly a petition from the Magic Lord? Had he somehow opened the wrong document?

No. It's real.

He checked again. It was unmistakably hers. Which only made the question louder: why?

The request itself was not strange. Mages of the Magic Tower were routinely dispatched across the Empire. As the person managing more field agents than anyone else in the realm, the Magic Lord might well have spotted problems he had never noticed—and proposed leave as the remedy.

But why send it to me?

That was the real issue. Did this even need ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to be a petition? Granting leave to the Tower's mages was well within the Magic Lord's own authority.

And once the Imperial House accepted a petition, that petition did not remain a local policy for one department or institution. It became a standard applied to the entire Imperial bureaucracy—

The entire Empire?

His frozen thoughts lurched back into motion. If the true goal of the petition was to create a policy that bound the whole Empire, then this peculiar request suddenly made sense.

The one dispatched agent the Magic Lord would be watching most anxiously—the one she would be desperate to give leave to—was obvious. Anyone with eyes and ears would know exactly who she meant.

Hah.

A hollow laugh escaped him. Was the Audit Department Chief already complaining to his future wife?

No. Even so, the Audit Department Chief would never lower his pride that far.

…Would he?

The fact that he could no longer say for certain made him hate—and fear—the image the Audit Department Chief had so carefully built for himself.