“Your Majesty, may I enter?”
A familiar voice came from outside. Liard pulled himself out of his thoughts and straightened his head.
“Come in.”
The study door opened, and the welcome face of a dear friend appeared. But his expression wasn’t particularly good. He seemed to have brought news that wasn’t especially welcome either.
“Valen.”
Valen Roscar — a plainly agreeable-looking man with brown hair — stepped into the study.
He was Liard’s one and only friend and right hand, serving as the commander of the imperial guard. He was also the man who had married Liard’s younger sister, Shuria.
The Roscar earldom was virtually the only noble house that could be called loyalists to the Emperor. Valen’s eldest brother currently held the earldom and served as Minister of Justice.
Without the support of the Roscar family, Liard would have found himself in circumstances far more dire than these. There would have been no one within the imperial palace he could trust to entrust anything to.
Valen’s green eyes moved slowly over Liard with quiet attention.
“Your Majesty, you seem a bit off-color today.”
“It’s just your imagination.”
Valen, a friend since childhood, had always been quick to notice things. Liard tensed at the possibility that he might catch on to the irregularity in his health, and steered the conversation elsewhere.
“What brings you?”
“It’s regarding the matter you asked me to look into. You mentioned incidents in the capital had been increasing suddenly…”
“Ah, right. Was it confirmed?”
“Yes. It appears illegal substances are circulating in the streets — seems to be coming out of the upscale salons.”
“So that’s why the cases kept getting buried.”
Nobles were undoubtedly deeply involved in this. Valen reported the findings of the covert investigation he had quietly commissioned.
There were several kinds of substances circulating in the streets of late. The most serious problem was a drug that agitated people to a dangerous degree, made them impulsive, and stoked violent tendencies. The sharp spike in incidents recently was no coincidence.
The capital’s security force was rotten to the core at this point. They regularly accepted money from high-ranking nobles staying in the capital and buried case after case without a word. Nothing was making it past them and up the chain.
The organization was in need of a complete overhaul. Liard had wanted to dissolve the security force and establish a new public safety bureau under direct imperial jurisdiction — but he had run into opposition on multiple fronts and it wasn’t going smoothly. Even if he pushed it through by force, the Prime Minister’s people would drag their feet in the middle and it would end up a hollow shell of an organization.
Liard exhaled a long breath. He could afford to let himself look a little more undone in front of a friend.
“There’s a great deal that needs fixing.”
An empire that had persisted for centuries had rotted through in more places than one could count. With everyone so consumed by managing the external common threat of the rifts, the many problems festering on the inside had gone largely unattended.
It wasn’t as though no previous emperors had tried to change things. But ground down by the resistance of the noble houses, idealism faded and resolve eventually broke.
Liard was different. His greatest strength and his greatest flaw were one and the same — he did not know how to give up. Even when it meant running himself into the ground.
“Good work. Though I’m going to need you to push a little further.”
“Your command.”
“Pick out five people skilled in undercover work and bring them to me.”
“Understood.”
Valen never asked the reasons behind an imperial command. He simply carried it out faithfully. Liard smiled faintly and said,
“Right, then — head home for now. It’s gotten quite late. Shuria will be angry again. Always complaining that I keep her husband away from her.”
Valen laughed a little sheepishly and scratched his cheek.
“I’ll have to shamelessly rely on Her Highness Shuria’s patience once more.”
“A new husband shouldn’t be doing that too often. You both married late on top of everything — from here on, it’s best to spend as much time together as you can, don’t you think?”
Shuria had spent years worrying over her one and only brother, and had only held her wedding the year before. By the Empire’s standards, she had been several years past the typical marrying age.
“And when does Your Majesty intend to rest? It seems well past the hour to retire to your bedchambers.”
“After I finish this.”
“Am I the only new husband here? Your Majesty will soon be one too, won’t you?”
Valen let out a worried sigh. Liard had been about to pick his pen back up and paused.
“What do you mean by that?”
“The Prime Minister’s son finally entered the palace today, did he not?”
“Ah.”
He meant Erger Crowell. Liard smiled with a touch of bitterness. Valen scratched at his hair and said,
“I happened to catch a glimpse of him earlier in passing… He resembles the Prime Minister. Though he’s considerably better-looking.”
“He’s his son, so the resemblance is natural.”
Those violet eyes, identical to the Prime Minister’s. Looking at them, Liard had been unable to help thinking of Cezar — the man who was forever trying to pull him this way and that.
“Even if it’s unavoidable for the sake of an heir, the thought of Your Majesty keeping the Prime Minister’s man at your side is… troubling, in more ways than one.”
“I agree, but…”
Liard turned Erger over briefly in his mind before continuing.
“He doesn’t seem like a bad sort. He spent his time at the Mage Tower — he didn’t actually live with Duke Crowell.”
“But where does that greedy blood go?”
“True… So I need to get a child from him quickly and send him back.”
Liard forced himself to ignore the scene from the prophecy surfacing in one corner of his mind. The sight of himself weeping shamefully and clinging to that young man… He would not allow that to become reality. Draw the line. Give nothing of himself. Take only what must be taken.
Liard hardened that resolve once more and gripped his quill tightly. Valen exhaled and regarded him with light green eyes full of concern.
“Don’t work yourself to ruin, Your Majesty. Her Highness Shuria worries over you constantly as well.”
“So now that Shuria can’t get through to me herself, she’s taken to nagging me through you. I must say, watching you be such an obedient husband is quite a sight.”
“Please don’t brush it off with a joke. When was the last time we crossed swords in a proper, unhurried spar…”
Valen grumbled, and Liard answered in the lighter tone he used to have as Crown Prince.
“Valen, sparring with you is no fun. You go at it like your life depends on it, and you beat me more often than not.”
“Our record against each other is still about even, isn’t it? We ought to settle it.”
“Forget it. You’d win outright by now. How am I supposed to beat someone who has a sword in his hand every single day? When I spend so many hours stuck to a desk in this study.”
Liard’s skill was exceptional — enough to go head to head evenly with Valen, the imperial guard commander. Trading sword strikes with a well-matched opponent was a pleasure, and up until a few years ago, Liard had sparred with Valen at the drop of a hat.
But lately, he had been making a point of avoiding it. Sharp-eyed as Valen was, a single exchange of blows would be enough to tell him. That the Emperor’s strength had visibly diminished.
“Go on, get out of here. Enough nagging. I have work to do.”
Liard waved a hand in dismissal, and Valen, with some reluctance, gave a proper farewell and withdrew from the study. Only once Valen had gone and the sound of his footsteps had fully faded did Liard finally let out the cough he had been holding back.
It didn’t bring up blood this time, mercifully — but a sharp, splitting pain struck through his chest and lungs. For a moment, his vision seemed to bleed yellow.
“……Ugh.”
It took Liard a long while to steady his breathing. The sight of himself hiding his illness even from his one and only friend was almost laughable — but there was no room to lament it.
The light in the Emperor’s study remained lit for a long time after.
* * *
Erger sat slumped against the sofa with a bored expression. The quarters he had been assigned were a detached wing within the inner palace — the furthest from the Emperor’s own residence. The entire single-story building was his domain.
This place, which would henceforth be called the Imperial Consort’s Quarters, had everything one could need: a bedchamber, a study, a reception room, and more. It was several times the size of his room at the Mage Tower.
The imperial attendants were all seasoned professionals who waited on Erger flawlessly without being told twice. In terms of quality of life, it didn’t compare to the Mage Tower.
And yet five days after moving in, Erger was on the verge of losing his mind.
“God… I’m going to die of boredom.”
The first day, he had been too tense and disoriented to notice. The second, he had been following Haiman around learning the layout of the palace, so that had been all right. Though honestly — how could a place be this complicated? Even now, Erger still got turned around within the inner palace. The outer palace, where the administrative business of the state was conducted, felt entirely out of reach.
The third day was when the problem started. There was nothing to do. All his research equipment was back at the Mage Tower. Every book available here had nothing to do with magic and was thus boring beyond measure.
Cezar had stopped by briefly, but they didn’t exchange much. He asked whether Erger had had his audience with His Majesty; Erger said yes; Cezar nodded and left. What he had come for was a complete mystery.
And of course, there was no sign of Liard anywhere. He apparently stayed in the outer palace study until late into the night, then came back to the inner palace only to sleep. The main building where the Emperor’s bedchambers were located was a considerable distance away, even within the same inner palace.
“Who just leaves a person like this?”
Thinking of Liard, Erger found himself grinding his teeth without meaning to. For some reason, every time he thought about him, a fire surged in his chest and irritation followed right behind it.
That refined face, smiling gently and drawing its lines. What would it take to see the Emperor’s face come undone?
“Haa.”
Erger breathed out a deep sigh and tilted his head back — and just then, an attendant came to inform him that there was a visitor at the Imperial Consort’s Quarters.
“Who is it?”
Erger, who had been thoroughly slumped, shot upright. The Emperor? It has to be the Emperor, right? He had been left alone for five whole days — it was about time he came to check in.
