There's Always Work After Work - 1
Where there is meeting, there is parting; where there is a beginning, there is also an end.
Even the most hated person can part with a smile in the end, and even the closest of friends must eventually exchange farewells. That is life.
Over the past three years at the Academy, I had learned that lesson well. Though those years were the briefest fragment of the life I had lived and the life still ahead of me, the teachings they left behind were ones I would never forget.
I am never leaving the Imperial Capital again.
The lesson that a civil servant is best off working at the center, not out in the provinces.
There is a reason people claw their way into the capital or the big cities. If you are going to be ground into dust either way, better to be ground down somewhere large rather than somewhere small—so everyone scrapes and scrambles for the center.
I was no different. Before my Academy posting I had never understood how precious the Imperial Capital was. Only after three years of ultra-long-term exile did I finally grasp just how beautiful a place it had been.
From now on I will live and die in the Imperial Capital.
I tossed the ball Titi had brought back and let out a quiet sigh.
Honestly, sending someone of department-chief rank on a long-term posting was already absurd, but the miraculous disaster of foreign royalty studying abroad had forced my hand. Even then, the ministers themselves had not budged an inch.
And in a few days I would officially become a minister myself. Once that happened, the Imperial Capital might grind my soul to powder, but the odds of me ever being sent outside it on official business would drop to zero. It was not as if I were the Foreign Minister, doomed to wander abroad in emergencies.
...Is this really something to celebrate?
A sudden wave of self-loathing washed over me. Inside the capital or outside it, I would still be ground down all the same—and here I was comforting myself with Well, if I have to be ground down, better the capital. It felt like a slave proudly showing off the shackles on his ankles.
Still, if those shackles were golden ones, maybe they were worth showing off?
I chose to believe they were. If they were not, I would not be able to keep going.
—Wang!
"Good dog."
Titi had brought the ball back again and barked with all his might, as if cheering me on. A clever little thing who knew how to soothe his master's heart.
Yet the feeling was a little complicated. The man who first clapped the shackles on my ankles was the Retired Emperor, and the man who bestowed Titi upon me was also the Retired Emperor.
It's not even the classic 'give the disease and then the medicine' routine.
Compared to the current Emperor, who only ever handed out disease after disease, the Retired Emperor was practically a saint.
At least I had received plenty from him one way or another.
"Well, well."
I could not help the exclamation as I read the report submitted by the Imperial Knight Commander.
The combat ability of Charles Olid, designated Imperial Education Officer, is that of an ordinary knight. However, his talent for gauging the gap between himself and his opponent and for skillfully redirecting the opponent's attacks is in no way inferior to the veteran instructors of the Imperial Knight Order.
For the usually taciturn Imperial Knight Commander, that was high praise indeed.
What a remarkable talent has been sleeping under our noses.
The pages that followed were filled with more of the same—praise thinly disguised as reporting—and a dry chuckle escaped me.
Only a few days earlier the Commander had looked on the young man named Charles with open distaste. He had shaken his head, declaring it absurd for a youth fresh out of the Academy to be granted the honorable post of Imperial Education Officer, and had insisted the boy should start from the bottom ranks for experience.
Yet for the sake of the Minister who had written the recommendation, he had tested Charles's ability. The moment that ability was confirmed, he reversed course so completely that his earlier opposition became almost laughable. The speed of the turnaround was enough to make anyone smile.
If even the Commander is this impressed, the man's skill must be the real thing.
The Imperial Knight Commander, by the nature of his office, had no choice but to be conservative. The man ultimately responsible for the safety of the imperial family and the security of the Imperial Palace could not afford to be lax; that would be stranger still. Even the previous Commander, for all his occasional flexibility, had never been negligent in his duties.
And that same Commander had now approved a young man for the post of Imperial Education Officer. It meant that even in the eyes of that exacting, conservative officer, Charles was the perfect talent.
Amazing.
Yes—amazing, and almost hard to believe. That such a talent had been an Academy student only days ago was astonishing.
And the Minister's sheer tenacity in digging up this hidden gem was no less shocking.
He can't possibly believe the promise, can he?
It was a tenacity I could not comprehend, so I cast my mind back.
Sometime in the hazy past—specifically the period when the Minister kept applying for retirement at every opportunity—I had grown tired of rejecting the requests and had once told him that if he brought me a hundred talents who could replace him, I would consider letting him go. Was he truly taking that to heart and doing all this?
Surely not.
I shook my head lightly and dismissed the fancy. However blinded by retirement fever the Minister might be, he could not possibly be that pure-hearted.
In the first place, if the Minister brought me a hundred talents, I would simply put him to work as the hundred-and-first. Why on earth would I let a man who did not even understand how precious talent was walk free?
It must be the obsession of a man who refuses to die alone.
A thoroughly plausible hypothesis presented itself.
Having chosen the bureaucratic path instead of remaining a student, the Minister had spent the irreplaceable years of his youth inside the administration. So when he looked at young nobles, did he not feel the urge to drag them down the same road? Given the Minister's rather twisted personality, the theory was remarkably convincing.
Well, what does it matter?
From my perspective, even the product of a twisted personality was something to welcome. Whether the Minister kidnapped talent out of impure motives or not was none of my concern.
The young talents who received recommendations joyfully became bureaucrats; the Minister who wrote those recommendations satisfied his own murky desires; and I, who had done nothing, simply watched the growing pool of talent with satisfaction. A perfect world in which everyone was happy.
The only pity was that the Minister's work as inspector ended this year, cutting off the supply of young talent. It had been quite a profitable three years.
I could not simply scatter recommendations at random; there was no guarantee I would net talents of the same quality as those the Minister had carefully selected.
It was only possible because he watched them up close.
The Minister had lived at the Academy and observed the students himself. He had not merely collected second-hand reputations; he had verified ability with his own eyes. There is no more reliable method of talent evaluation.
"Perhaps I should send the Minister as next year's inspector as well."
I muttered the remark that would have made a certain black-haired man leap out of his skin, but there was no helping it. The Minister had performed the sudden inspector's duties so brilliantly.
Still, planting the Audit Department Chief at the Academy had already felt like a waste. I could not leave a man about to become the official Minister of the Inspectorate Ministry outside the Imperial Capital. That would be squandering talent.
...
Just for the honeymoon period, maybe?
A devilish whisper rose from deep in my chest. The Minister would soon be taking a long stretch of leave for the wedding and then for child-rearing anyway. If I could not use the manpower myself for a while, would it not be more efficient to send him outside temporarily?
But a whisper remained only a whisper. If I actually did such a thing, the imperial history books might one day record "the Tailglehen Rebellion." Or perhaps it would be called "the Tailglehen Revolution."
No—better to keep the Minister inside. Keeping him close and wringing every drop of usefulness from him was the best way to employ him.
—Or so I thought, until I read the next report.
"This is bad."
My brow furrowed sharply at the report from the Ministry of Special Affairs. The matter was far too serious to brush aside; I set the teacup I had been holding back down on the desk.
Crown Prince of Leon critically ill. Will not last beyond February of next year at the latest.
I had already known that Leon's sole heir to the throne was living on borrowed time. That was precisely why the Minister had concluded a secret pact with Armein while still at the Academy.
So the content itself was nothing new. If anything, it was a positive report: it allowed the Empire to estimate when it would need to move.
Grand Marshal Nerkap conducting inspection tour centered on southern Armein Kingdom.
Marquis Iskertal, Commander of Armein's Southern Combined Forces, has resigned. Currently training private troops in his fief.
The sentences that followed, however, were anything but positive.
Where Leon Kingdom was concerned, Armein's intelligence network equaled or even surpassed the Empire's. It was safer to assume that whatever I knew, the King of Armein knew as well.
And now, with the Leon Crown Prince's death imminent, the Grand Marshal was inspecting the southern regions that bordered Leon? Anyone could see it was preparation for large-scale military operations.
Resignation, is it.
Moreover, the Commander of the Southern Combined Forces—the very man who would have to take the field first if Armein intervened in Leon—had suddenly resigned. Considering the unwritten rule that one does not replace a general on the eve of a major campaign...
He is to be the field commander.
Armein was not merely planning to dispatch a few units from the Southern Combined Forces. There was a high probability they would form an expeditionary army centered on the former commander, Marquis Iskertal.
A headache. That a man who had once held the rank of combined-forces commander would take charge of an expeditionary army meant Armein's expectations for this affair were correspondingly high. Or perhaps it was a deliberate display of how serious they were about intervening in Leon.
It was not a display aimed at the Empire. On this matter the Empire and Armein were in the same boat.
Quoronos, then.
I quickly summoned a mental map of the continent and considered which nation Armein would be watching most carefully.
Quoronos Kingdom. The rising power that had opportunistically invaded Leon and seized territory when Leon lost its war against the Empire long ago.
Nothing else fit. The only state large enough for Armein to regard as a threat, and desperate enough not to withdraw even when both the Empire and Armein moved, was Quoronos.
No choice, then.
I exhaled softly and set the Ministry of Special Affairs report aside for special handling. If Armein was moving personnel of commander rank, the Empire would have to send someone of even higher standing.
By office alone there was my father-in-law, the Supreme Commander, but dispatching him for something like this was excessive. By reputation, however, there was the Minister—the Continent's Best Swordsman. Among warriors his name carried enormous weight; it would make an excellent pressure card against Armein's expeditionary force, against Leon Kingdom, and against Quoronos Kingdom, which was likely to intervene.
Sorry about this, Minister.
Fortunately the Leon Crown Prince's death was expected around February. At the very least the Minister would be able to hold his third wedding ceremony properly.
Probably.
...Being too competent really is a problem.
It was genuinely unfortunate for the Minister, yet he produced acceptable results no matter where he was thrown, so he ended up being used everywhere.
As Emperor I could not ask for a more valuable subject—but at this point I was beginning to feel a little guilty.