Empire Chancellor Marquis Gregor Gram wakes up early, while the first people to wake up in the imperial palace are normally the servants who start working before the sun rises. But the time Marquis Gram enters his office is no different from the servants. Sometimes he is even earlier than them.
This has been a habit of Marquis Gram since before he became Chancellor – or rather, since the days when the Marquis first served the great emperor two generations ago, Cassius. Seeing a young official who started work earlier than anyone and kept working later than anyone, the great emperor Cassius was impressed and once said, “You’re just like a migrant bird,” Cassius remarked.
A migrant bird means a bird of passage. Migrant birds that fly long distances over many days are believed to be “birds that never sleep,” and so the great emperor compared the young Marquis Gram to a migrant bird.
Marquis Gram, who was nothing more than a low-ranking official back then, is now the Empire Chancellor. The Chancellor, who holds the greatest power in the imperial palace, works before the sun rises, so the people under him have no choice but to follow along.
The current Urgalia Empire is probably the country that starts government business earliest among all the nations on the continent.
For the officials who are forced to wake up early every day and rub their sleepy eyes while working, this must be rough.
Still, for the Empire, starting government work early has brought more good than harm. If the time spent on government work increases, they can tackle that much more work.
Opening farmland, controlling rivers, making laws, building roads, developing mines, collecting taxes, punishing serious criminals – the kinds of government work brought to Marquis Gram are all over the place, and not one of them can be neglected.
A single day’s delay could threaten the lives of hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of people. Thinking of that, the longer the government work time, the more it helps the nation.
Of course, just working long hours blindly is no good – efficiency and productivity matter too – but when it comes to the Urgalia Empire, there was no need to worry about that.
Marquis Gram’s ability to handle government work is unmatched. He is the best in all of Urgalia, and maybe even the best on the whole continent.
That Marquis Gram spends more than half of each day on government work, from early morning to late night. Since the new emperor took the throne and Marquis Gram was appointed Chancellor, the Urgalia Empire’s government work has never once piled up. The sight of countless tasks being cleared away like flowing water was almost a spectacle.
- That day, when the early morning government work had settled down for a bit, news from the western border reached the Chancellor.
The first messenger sent by General Oswald had already arrived, and it had been reported that the Empire’s army had won a great victory by capturing the king’s younger sister Mito, and that the Holy Kingdom had been scheming behind this battle.
The messenger that day reported that there was no movement from the Selseta Army in the royal capital, and that in response, half of the twenty thousand Horned Cavalry (Rongāra) would be returned to the imperial capital.
Along with that, General Oswald’s request to send the Fifth Army to guard the western border was also written in. Once the Fifth Army arrives, the remaining half would also return to the imperial capital.
Marquis Gram stroked his thick beard and muttered.
”So he judges that if the Fifth Army is stationed there, Selseta cannot move. The Fifth Army alone is only ten thousand soldiers, but… for a king who cannot move because his sister was captured, ten thousand is enough,” Marquis Gram muttered.
The courtiers think Marquis Gram and General Oswald are like dogs and monkeys – bitter enemies. That was a fact beyond doubt.
But Marquis Gram acknowledged General Oswald’s military talent. And refusing a veteran general’s request over personal like or dislike was not something Marquis Gram would do.
The general of the Fifth Army led two thousand Horned Cavalry (Rongāra) under his command and had marched to the western border together with General Oswald. What remained in the imperial capital was eight thousand infantry led by the deputy general.
The Chancellor sent a subordinate to the Fifth Army and ordered them to march to the western border. Since all the regular armies are already on standby to respond to trouble in the east and south, the march should not take long.
After handling General Oswald’s request, the next thing the Chancellor opened was an anonymous secret letter. In his office, where he had ordered everyone else to leave, the Chancellor ran his eyes over the page.
It described in detail Emperor Arses’s words and actions during this battle, and the Chancellor read through it in silence.
”- Hmm. He did not butt into General Oswald’s command, did not go against Duke Inselm, but did not get friendly with him either, and did not lay a hand on the female soldiers under the Duke’s command. Just like when he is in the imperial palace, he understands his own value well,” the Chancellor murmured.
The Chancellor said that while tapping his office desk with a light knock.
His eyes narrowed sharply, staring hard at the characters written in the letter. It was as if he were trying to see through to something beyond the words.
”It is only natural that light things are easier to carry, whether people or objects. But what is easy for me to carry is also easy for others to carry. So I would prefer something with proper weight,” the Chancellor said.
In that sense, for now, Arses meets the Chancellor’s demands.
Arses never goes against what the Chancellor says, and government work and policy planning can all proceed exactly as the Chancellor wishes.
The Chancellor does not ask Arses’s opinion when making political or military decisions, and Arses does not tell the Chancellor his own opinion either. So the one running the Urgalia Empire is the Chancellor, not the Emperor. If someone slandered him as making a child emperor into a puppet, there would be no way to deny it.
The Chancellor himself had no intention of denying that he was making Arses a puppet. Of course, he would not admit it openly, but he understood well enough what he was doing. He expected that eventually Arses would realize his position and try to take back real power, and he had already thought of ways to deal with that.
But for now, Arses shows no such move. He shows none at all, really.
Not only does he not show it – right after the Noble Clans whispered into Arses’s ear, “Push out the Chancellor and take back real power,” they urged, he even reported it back with names included, saying, “Some people came and said this to me,” Arses reported,
The Chancellor was Arses’s guardian, but he had never personally supported the unfortunate fourth prince, nor raised him strictly yet kindly as a parent figure.
Saying that children do not warm up to old people, he simply attached teachers and maids who were in his pocket to look after Arses.
Because of that, he did not think he was loved or trusted by Arses. In fact, Arses’s eyes had never once held warmth or trust when looking at the Chancellor.
Even so, Arses behaved exactly as the Chancellor wanted and showed not even a bit of complaint.
While thinking this was convenient, the Chancellor could not help but feel something suspicious deep in Arses’s heart.
”If he had something stored up in his belly, I thought he might let it show when he left the imperial palace,” the Chancellor said that and gave a rare bitter smile.
This was the reason the Chancellor did not object when Duke Inselm proposed Arses’s first battle.
He wanted to check how Arses would behave away from the imperial palace and away from the Chancellor.
If Arses was holding dissatisfaction toward the Chancellor in his belly, he might take this chance to get close to Duke Inselm, the Chancellor’s political enemy.
Or, taking advantage of the Chancellor’s absence, he might throw around his power as Emperor and butt into General Oswald’s command. Considering he was eleven years old, it would be no surprise if Arses wanted to decorate his first battle with a brilliant victory.
On the other hand, it was also possible he would lose to the fear of his first battle, shut himself in his tent, and drown in women.
All those results were written in the letter. For the Chancellor, it was as expected, and also unexpected.
”Knowing General Oswald, even if it was His Majesty’s first battle, he would not have slowed the march. Just managing to cling on with poor horseback skills is impressive enough. He did not butt into the general’s command, did not run from the battlefield, did not drown in women, did not flatter the Noble Clans – I have no choice but to judge that he has courage, patience, and self-control,” the Chancellor mused.
In the Urgalia Empire, the reputations of the four princes were roughly as follows.
The first prince is sturdy, the Second Prince is clever, the third prince is brave, the fourth prince is mediocre.
The Chancellor’s judgment mostly matched this reputation, but now the Chancellor admitted he needed to correct his own evaluation.
Arses is not sturdy. He is not clever enough to be called clever, and hard to call brave.
But that did not necessarily mean he was mediocre.
If Arses’s existence served the Chancellor’s grand plan –
”…His Majesty is still eleven. There are still two years until the Rite of Adulthood. It is not too late to judge His Majesty’s qualities then. In two years, Shiron will probably be pregnant too, so even if this matter was just luck, there will be a replacement,” the Chancellor concluded.
After saying that, the Chancellor struck his office desk once with a loud knock, then put away the secret letter and returned to government work.
His face was the same iron mask as always, but if Shiron had been there, she might have noticed that the Chancellor’s mood was just a little better than usual.
Trivia:
- The Chancellor’s habit of arriving before the servants is tied to a story about Great Emperor Cassius calling him a migrant bird, hinting at decades of loyal service before the current emperor’s reign.
- The Chancellor expects Arses to eventually rebel and take back power, yet treats Arses’s complete compliance as more suspicious than open defiance, suggesting he sees hidden depth in the boy.
- Shiron’s expected pregnancy is mentioned by the Chancellor as a contingency, implying she is connected to the imperial line and could provide a replacement heir if Arses proves unsuitable.