The New Department (3)
Of course, driving stakes into the ground alone would not be enough to draw up a dragon vein's energy. Every stake needed a proper shamanic formula worked into it, one that could guide the flow of mana along its intended path.
It demanded less brilliance than sheer, grinding labor. The talismans simply had to be drawn, endlessly, like a man possessed.
Well... a duke sacrificing his own body was an Esterji family tradition, after all. The mercy of it was that I had already prepared a slave, or rather a disciple, to draw them at my side.
"You need a hundred thousand talismans?"
At my words, Laszlo's resolve caught fire.
"This should be excellent training. I'll give it my all."
In many ways, Laszlo reminded me of my past self. The me before I had tasted power and gone rotten. He threw himself into the talisman work with the guileless intention of one day gifting farmland to the common folk.
The rotten me drew talismans with considerably less noble motives. Namely, wasn't all of this my land and my tax revenue?
I could not have entrusted the work to anyone but Laszlo. Talisman craft was never a matter of copying the patterns alone. For a proper talisman to take shape, it had to be charged with Daoist power while the incantation was recited.
The job of making the Oradium stakes went to Uncle Ruka's Bureau of Armaments. When I asked him for a thousand stakes, his answer began with a burst of laughter.
"So you've gone and dreamed up another amusing task. I had been meaning to give the newcomers practice handling Oradium. Your timing could not be better."
"Your apprentices can work Oradium?"
"Not if I asked them to forge a sword. But these are only stakes, are they not?"
Uncle grinned.
"To meet the deadline, your armor knights will have to wait a while. There will not be an ounce of Oradium to spare for some time."
"I understand."
Armor knights was the term for puppet soldiers animated through puppetry, like Ivan. The reason these puppets could grow strong enough to stand toe-to-toe with senior knights was that Uncle Ruka forged their armor himself, from Oradium.
While the Bureau of Armaments threw itself into stake production and the Bureau of Development poured everything into cultivating new seed strains, the newest branch of my government, the Bureau of Intelligence, finally brought me its first completed report.
"This is the latest situation report from the capital."
The agent who delivered it worked under Adras: a man in his prime, wearing jeweled rings and silk, a friendly smile settled into his handsome face.
That was the frightening thing about the new Bureau of Intelligence. Its people could pass, without a ripple, for the sort of merchant you would meet in any market district.
The report opened with an account of Mabel.
▸ Mabel is working the banquets hosted by the Emperor, goading the nobility at every turn. The nobles are lukewarm about raising Mabel to a dukedom, but they show keen interest in the rewards he offers.
▸ The rewards Mabel has promised are the titles he could confer as a duke, the revenue of the Oradium mines, and a Class 2 mana spring.
▸ The Emperor is actively supporting Mabel's campaign. We assess that the capital's nobles will ultimately align their interests with the imperial house.
The first half of the document concerned public sentiment in the capital. As far as its people were concerned, I was well on my way to becoming a tyrant with neither blood nor tears in me, while Mabel's faction swelled like a snowball.
▸ Count Abaro attended the banquet on the 15th. In a speech accusing Iden Esterji of harboring treasonous intent toward the Empire, he drew thunderous applause from many nobles.
▸ He further testified that Iden Esterji delights in impaling the innocent on stakes to display them before his gates, and that under the pretext of awakening their abilities, he has tortured and murdered countless people.
That part was almost funny. I had, after all, just placed the order for those very stakes.
Then again, Count Abaro was the very man who had tortured people under the pretext of awakening their abilities. He certainly knew how to pin his own crimes on another man's back.
Apparently being defeated had taught him nothing. I would have to make him pay the price, then.
In the latter half of the report, Adras had set down his operational outline: how, as head of the Bureau of Intelligence, he intended to handle the situation.
▸ Reversing the verdict on Iden Esterji at this stage is impossible. I therefore judge it necessary to turn that verdict to our use instead.
▸ Prince Raphael is already claiming that Iden Esterji nearly had him assassinated. This can be worked to our advantage.
▸ It must be spread far and wide that Iden Esterji is a man so terrifying that Prince Raphael, the strongest Awakened of the Empire, fled for his very life.
▸ Let it be known that Iden Esterji is a madman who murders for pleasure, a ruthless tyrant who shows no mercy to prisoners, and that from the moment one sets foot in the imperial north, one should abandon all hope of returning alive.
▸ The operation is already underway.
I set the report down with a smile. Even here, my nickname was the Little Tyrant. At this rate, there would be no living it down.
I did wonder what Father would say if he ever woke. His eldest son was pulling in foreign powers to prepare an invasion of the ducal lands, his second son sat in a prison cell, and the youngest, the one he had doted on, had become a monstrous tyrant.
"And this is the document you requested separately."
The agent handed over a single slim sheet. It concerned Kalman.
"Good work."
I opened a drawer and passed him a bundle of talismans.
"Transmission talismans. You know how to use them?"
"Of course, my lord. The Director taught us himself."
Transmission talismans were communication charms crafted with such care that even ordinary people could use them. Burn one, and it became a dove that flew to its intended destination. It was thanks to these that a network like ours could exist at all.
"Then I will await your next report."
"With your leave, my lord. Rest well."
The agent bowed deeply and withdrew.
Until now, I had simply assumed Kalman had been born a noble. As it turned out, he had come from common blood.
Kalman's father had been a mercenary named Antel. An ordinary hired sword, nothing more. Yet he had raised his son properly, and at the very moment that son came into his own, Antel met his death for reasons no one could name.
Only Kalman himself knew the truth of why Antel had died.
But the record of the examiner who inspected Antel's body read as follows: "The wounds upon the corpse match the sword Kalman carried."
Some claimed, therefore, that Kalman had killed his father with his own hand. That claim was quietly buried once his Awoken Ability bloomed.
Wielding the terrifying Awoken Ability known as the Sure-Hit Sword, Kalman climbed the ranks at a startling pace. His career had begun at Intermediate Knight; he won the imperial martial tournament and was raised to baron, then, bathed in the Emperor's favor, rose all the way to count.
The staggering part began there.
No sooner had Kalman won the tournament than a woman appeared before him out of nowhere. She was the one who had borne him and fled when he was small, and the moment word spread that her boy had made good, she came running.
There was no way to prove she truly was Kalman's birth mother. Antel was dead, and Kalman did not even know his mother's name.
Still, Kalman took her in. He was a hero showered with public acclaim by then; casting out his own kin would not have looked kindly.
This woman, Julia, installed herself in Kalman's residence and lived in open dissipation, spending his money like water. She dragged men into her son's house and brewed every scandal under the sun.
And the worse she became, the more Kalman kept away from home.
Reading the file, I finally understood why Kalman, alone among nobles, had never founded a family of his own. He possessed no picture in his mind of what good parents were supposed to look like.
Small wonder he had become a bachelor for life.
The file closed with an account of Julia's current situation. I carried the letter with me and went to find Kalman. He was staying at the Frost Knights' headquarters at the time.
"Where is Kalman?"
"In the back yard, my lord. He is sparring with Lady Thalia."
A knight escorted me to the yard behind the headquarters.
A crowd of knights had already gathered there, no doubt unwilling to miss the rare spectacle of one of the Empire's Seven Pillars crossing blades with the commander of the Frost Knights.
"Waaah!"
So absorbed were they that not one of them noticed their lord's arrival. Beyond their shoulders, I could see Kalman and Thalia's swords meeting.
"Hah!"
Thalia's blade was tenacious. A clinging, smoldering grudge against the demonkin had been smelted into every technique she knew.
Kalman, by contrast, was like a lake. No situation could ever pry his composure from him. Wherever Thalia slashed viciously at a gap, Kalman sealed it behind a wall of iron.
But a spar was still a spar. Neither had touched their Awoken Abilities. With those unleashed, the whole shape of the bout would change.
"We'll stop here."
Kalman said, halting his sword upright.
"The young duke has arrived."
"...You've taught me a lesson."
Thalia bit her lip, frustrated. The fact that Kalman had presence of mind to spare for his surroundings meant he had been meeting her at her level.
He could hardly do otherwise. Grandmasters they both might be, but Kalman and Thalia stood years apart in experience. Holding her own this long against the finest swordsman of the Empire was a feat in itself.
"Kalman. Let's have a talk."
I beckoned to him.
"Just the two of us."
"Understood."
The knights withdrew and cleared the space. Kalman changed out of his sweat-soaked training clothes, and as he stripped off his shirt I saw the countless scars seamed across his back. Old wounds that had never received holy magic in time. That alone proved the record true: he really had been a poor mercenary's son.
"What is this about?"
"News you have been wanting."
I passed him the letter. Truth be told, I had gone back and forth on whether to hand it over at all, but the right to make that call was not mine.
"..."
Kalman began to read.
This was what the letter said.
The moment Prince Raphael left Esterzy territory, he mobilized his knights. They invaded your fief and arrested Julia.
From her cell, Julia gave Raphael her answer: she was not that man's mother. He had imagined it all on his own.
He meant to hold the mother hostage and use her to threaten Kalman, no doubt.
The letter was only a few lines long. Yet long after there had been time to read it twice over, Kalman stood rooted to the spot, the page clutched in his hand.
"Kalman."
I called his name, still unable to decide what ought to come next.
"So I have nowhere left to return to."
Kalman said it flatly.
"Would you have me impose on you?"
"Stay as long as you like."
"I will earn my keep."
"There's no need for that. Your simply remaining in my territory is profit enough for me."
"...Then I put that poorly."
Kalman closed his fist and crushed the letter.
"Earn my keep I must."
"How?"
"The Steel Guard has lost its master, has it not?"
His voice was as calm as ever. But somewhere inside him, something had changed.
"Leave them to me."
After all, the Emperor's own Sword was about to bare its edge toward the Emperor.