Rojas, the capital of Valeroa, is a great city of a million people. Counting the satellite cities, the population is reckoned at more than double that. Given that the capital of the Remucia Empire, which styles itself the continent's suzerain, holds only a little over a million, it had certainly outgrown the scale of a mere kingdom.
It was the result of encouraging commerce early, so that the cities strung along the road from the port up to the capital had developed.
But a structure with nearly half the kingdom's population packed into the capital and its satellites is good infrastructure for growth and, where preparing for plague and keeping public order are concerned, a double-edged sword.
The side effects were considerable as well: the relatively backward provinces were left to themselves, and some of them passed into the hands of margraves.
Valeroa had been pursuing centralization all this while, but with the treasury consumed by so long a war and the provincial nobles rising, the situation was in disorder.
Happily, the wartime economy run by a handful of army merchants was beginning to stretch itself as the returning conscripts supplied manpower after the war's end.
A delegation from the Kingdom of Calemon crossed the plaza and entered the palace. Two four-horse carriages with royal guards attached front and rear made a column of proper formality.
In a local war fought with even its boundaries agreed in advance, the soldiers were no more than pieces on a board. No — the nobles who took part were no exception either. Cut open a belly and the innards spill out, noble or commoner alike.
In this age of war, being made a piece on the board by an unknowable fate was the same for commoner and for noble.
"Hmph. Splendid, for a surrender delegation."
"The official name is the peace negotiation delegation, I hear."
"And for all that, is it not a surrender delegation?"
"So they ought to look shabby, is that it? I should think that would be improper as well."
The man's eyes stayed on the delegation as he talked with his friend.
"If you had seen a shabby delegation, what would you have said? I rather think you would have called it insincere."
"Ahem. No, what I mean is that they should have kept it within reason."
There is no phrase so convenient to attach to anything as 'within reason.' To his protesting friend the man gave a nod.
"Hoo hoo hoo. I know. As if I did not take your meaning."
"Ahem. Hm."
His friend recognized his own unreasonableness and cleared his throat.
Among the people watching that column was Hans's party.
"So it's only once both sides are in difficulty that talking begins."
At Hans's remark to himself the boy nodded.
"For people who are hostile to each other, the ones at the top seem to understand each other astonishingly well."
"Kuk kuk kuk. Yes, that part is astonishing."
Memories of the battlefield came back to him and he laughed with a bitter look on his face.
Keeping a diplomatic channel open with a hostile state is, in fact, a mark of capable officials. It is only that from the position of soldiers driving blades into one another's chests, one does not want to understand it.
On a single matter, positions can be this sharply opposed depending on class and station.
Once the negotiating party had gone into the palace, the onlookers went their own ways. Hans clapped the boy on the shoulder and turned away.
"Let's go."
Taking in the splendor of the great city — the plaza's magnificent statuary, the beauty of the fountain, a band performing, all of it near enough to a small festival — they found the Administration Office on the right of the square and went in.
"What brings you here?"
A guard came over when Hans stood looking about the hall of the building.
"I'm here to submit papers regarding an ennoblement."
"Ah, my apologies. For merit business, the merit officer will be at the center of the second floor. Directly opposite the middle."
—Nod.
Going up to the second floor, an enormous office appeared, looking wider than the hall below. Hans the country bumpkin looked around helplessly among the officials working at their business. The boy gave the room one quick scan, took Hans by the sleeve and led him to the window seat at the end of the central aisle.
'This one looks quite used to places like this, does he not?'
So Hans thought as he was led meekly along.
"I wish to make a declaration regarding an ennoblement."
A young official with a pleasant expression received him.
"Let me see. Ah, merit of the second class. A barony for a single generation, and...... you are not receiving a fief separately, I see."
With a returning war hero in front of him, the young official looked at Hans with admiration in his eyes and explained obligingly.
"Merit papers connected to the victory at Cronos have almost all been approved so far, without a single rejection."
He took in the petition for elevation as he spoke.
"Normally it must pass through five stages, an elevation review among them, but since the postwar settlement of merits connected to this victory is being conducted under His Majesty's own direction, it is going through without a hitch."
—Nod, nod.
Hans understood what he meant and nodded. It was a way of saying it would proceed without any grubby rites of passage or bribes.
"Please write your name here."
"......."
"Have you settled on a middle name, by any chance?"
"I have not yet."
"Ah, in that case......."
The young official first asked where Hans was from, and made him a middle name based on the name of the Gale district. Then he obligingly explained what would have to be dealt with afterward.
"Does the middle name please you?"
"It does. Thank you."
"This is the schedule for the victory ceremony and the party presided over by His Majesty."
The official held out a single sheet of parchment, neatly written. Receiving the precious thing, Hans looked at him.
"It is the state's courtesy to a hero of the war."
Parchment is precious. It is made entirely to order and is costly, used in small quantities for state records or for making books for high nobles. On a battlefield they still use wooden slips shaved from timber. A parchment with a capital party schedule set down on it in a flowing hand was near enough an ornament in itself, and could even be traded.
"With this the paperwork is complete."
"Thank you."
Seeing that Hans did not move from his seat, the official asked.
"Is there some other business?"
"Ah, yes. I wonder if......."
Once Hans had gone out, the young official went over the papers carefully one more time.
"From commoner to baron, a two-step elevation. Remarkable......."
That their own side had broken through the enemy's right flank, built an encirclement, destroyed the enemy's main force and taken the surrender of the retreating enemy was a fact well known among the nobles of the capital.
"The nobles who took part divided the prisoners among themselves as spoils, and......."
Nowhere in the rumor is there any subject for who broke through that right flank. This clever young official drew his conclusion from the information he had.
"This may well be the man who took the enemy thousand-commander's head."
He sighed inwardly. The very man who led four years of attack and defense to victory and ended the war, and he gets a barony for a single generation? It was absurd. To his eye, as the man in charge of merit business, this was service that should have earned a hereditary barony at the least, with a fief granted besides. Had he been recognized as the man who ended the war, and had a faction behind him, a countship might even have been possible.
"And I, with a bare three years in the Administration Office, am a baronet."
His had been a legitimate elevation, granted for graduating top of the Capital Academy and for the achievement of simplifying administrative procedure. But to set it beside merit earned on a battlefield with one's life at stake was nonsense.
'If honors are not just, who will give his life for the kingdom?'
He sighed inwardly but let nothing show. He knew perfectly well that even this was less corrupt than other states on the continent.
'Still, His Majesty is working at it, so it will improve from here.'
He was one of the Lord Chamberlain's back channel, a young official of the royalist faction.
He moved his gaze to the pending papers on the right of his desk. It was a document added at that war hero's request a moment ago. His eyes glittered.
"This might just be......."
Opening the extra document out, the official thought that at last he had found the work he was meant to do.
***
Hans looked up at a respectable two-story building hung with a wooden sign that read 'Redstone Mercenary Company.'
'Roughly 10m on a side, ten or so per floor, so twenty at most.'
"Wait here."
"No! I'm going to earn my keep too!"
At the boy's retort as he strode on ahead, Hans was left with nothing to say.
—Creak.
Eyes turned on Hans's party as they opened the door and came in.
'Five?'
The ground floor was done up like a pub, with empty tables here and there, figures lying across chairs pushed together or flushed with beer, and one man who had set up a reception desk where a manager would sit.
—Nod, nod.
At a mercenary company's own headquarters, and in a royal capital where public order is secure, there is indeed no need to put effort into a guard.
The watching eyes of those few were nothing to dismiss, but to two men tempered on a battlefield they posed no threat whatever. They merely thought a cool wind was blowing.
—Tromp, tromp.
If anything it was the man at the reception desk who tensed, recognizing the dangerous air coming off the two of them as they walked in over the wooden floor.
'This is not a commission. This is like a man coming to pick a......?'
He did not seem to be a mere desk man. Wiping a cup with a dry cloth, his sharp gaze ran once over Hans's party.
Standing at the desk before anyone quite noticed, Hans spoke in a low voice.
"I want to see whoever is in charge."
"Sorry?"
***
"So then...... he says he was attacked by our men......."
The man sitting at his ease at the desk by the second-floor window put a cigarette in his mouth and muttered it. The man who had been at the reception desk, standing in front of him, answered.
"Yes. Two of them, by the names of Hammer and Saxon, he says."
"Damage?"
"No physical damage. He demanded compensation for mental harm, and an apology."
"Is it certain?"
The desk man lifted the bamboo slip he had submitted and read from it.
"According to the report Captain Acheson submitted yesterday, it does seem certain that those two left during a caravan escort and that their whereabouts are unknown."
"To put it in order...... a quarrel started with them during a mission, and our side was overborne? Five men by one? And then two who could not stand being dismissed deserted and ambushed him? And the bastards who ambushed him were made half cripples and went to ground?"
When the man let out a snort of disbelief, the desk man spoke.
"He was certainly a man giving off a presence you could not dismiss."
"What does that matter. The ones who ambushed him — Hamster and whatsit?"
"Ah, Hammer and Saxon. Both B-rank."
"Right. Who was at fault is beside the point. What matters is that we, the company, have been made to look ridiculous."
As expected, the commander seemed not to be entertaining an apology in the slightest.
"......."
The desk man thought for a moment, then carefully opened his mouth.
"Er, Commander!"
"Speak. When have I ever cut you off?"
"The matter is not yet known, and the company has not been made ridiculous. And the man was not discourteous either."
"So what you are saying is that the company should apologize?"
"It is a matter that can be ended quietly. I do not think we need to make it bigger from our side."
"By ending it quietly, do you mean hiring a killer?"
"That is not what I said, is it?"
Realizing his voice had suddenly risen, the desk man apologized quickly.
"It got away from me...... I'm sorry."
"It's fine, it's fine. Really, man — if the two of us start picking our words, what sort of opinion could either of us put forward?"
The commander laced his fingers and rested his chin on them.
"I'll give my decision. We ignore it. If he protests, deal with him suitably."
His opinion was not accepted. The desk man kept a brief silence as a sign of protest, then answered reluctantly.
"Yes......."
***
"Your demand has not been accepted."
The desk man bowed his head. Hans looked at this personal gesture of apology as though he had not expected it.
"I see. Nothing to be done."
Taking his words for a declaration of surrender, the desk man brightened.
"Personally I regret it, and......."
"I challenge your company to a duel. God will give the answer."
The desk man's eyes went as wide as lanterns.
The ground floor of the company seemed to freeze over too. Nobody except Hans could adjust to the atmosphere, and every one of them was uncomfortable.
—Tromp, tromp.
Hans delivered the one-sided notice, 'this hour, three days from now,' and his back as he walked out was entirely composed. It made a fine contrast with the people inside, who heard it and were either dumbfounded or frozen stiff.
'A man to whom an uncomfortable atmosphere is not awkward. One who has cut his way through the line of death.'
"You there! Put a request to the back channel. Hans Zimmer, returning soldier. Quickly!"
"Sorry? Ah, yes."
The desk man used the authority of the company's second. Then he ran up to the commander's room on the second floor to report after the fact.
On a peaceful, languid capital afternoon, a brief commotion rose on the ground floor of the Redstone Mercenary Company's headquarters.
"Kh kh kh, kek."
Hans's low laughter rang down the alley. It was a laugh that called up a boyhood spent running as a punk.
"That laugh of yours is unpleasant."
At the boy's rebuke Hans stopped laughing and scratched his jaw.
"Ah. Sorry."