“To think they’d use the Jewel Voice Broadcast like this…”
In front of me, a girl dressed like an adventurer stood with her back facing me. She stood with her back straight, her airy golden ponytail swaying behind her. For a moment, I thought she looked a lot like Liscia, but this girl had her hair tied back in a higher position, and Liscia’s hair was medium-short now. The girl turned to show me her pretty face in profile.
“We absolutely must implement this system in our country,” she said. “When I return, I’ll draw up a proposal for it. Still, just how would you come up with such an advanced idea?”
She asked me that with a straight face.
What’s this, out of nowhere? I was thinking, when Juna stood up beside me. Then she placed herself between the girl and me.
“Juna?” I asked.
“Be careful,” Juna cautioned as she stood there to protect me. She had a grim look on her face, and it was apparent from her tone of voice that she was worried. “This girl is an accomplished warrior. It’s regrettable that Aisha isn’t here. Even if I were ready to die taking her down, I don’t know that I could stop her…”
“Is she that strong?” I asked.
Seeing the cautious reaction from Juna, the girl with the ponytail grinned. “You needn’t worry, I have no hostile intent, Lorelei Juna Doma.”
Juna inhaled sharply. “You know me…”
“Of course,” she said. “I approached you because I’m aware of who you are. We have agents of our own, after all.”
That means she knows who I am, too, huh, I thought.
She must have planned to make contact here knowing that I would be coming in disguise. This had happened because the establishment of an intelligence corps for the kingdom had been delayed by my doubts in the personnel I had to run it.
But, if she says she has no hostile intent…
“You’re with the Empire?” I asked.
“Yes,” the girl said, bringing a hand to her chest and bowing her head. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sir Souma Kazuya. I am the younger sister of Empress Maria Euphoria of the Gran Chaos Empire, and the one who handles military affairs in her stead, Jeanne Euphoria.”
I whispered to Juna, “What happened to our guards?”
“It seems she has guards of her own, so they can’t move,” answered Juna.
“That would be why she came alone, huh,” I said. “…Take care of Tomoe for me.”
I left Tomoe, who was groggy from being suddenly shaken awake, with Juna and stood facing Jeanne Euphoria. She had been in the reports I’d received. There was a princess who handled military affairs under the Saint of the Empire, Empress Maria Euphoria; and, as Maria was currently unwed, she was also the first in the line of succession. This must be her sister, I reasoned.
“Does Madam Maria’s younger sister have some business in our country?” I asked.
I made a point of talking down to her. Because our country hadn’t signed the Mankind Declaration, I didn’t have to pay respects to Empress Maria as my leader. In other words, as both of us were leaders of independent nations, my rank was equal to Maria’s. And seeing as Jeanne was the younger sister of the empress, her rank was that of a vassal, and so I was above her. I had no desire to put on airs with my own vassals, but when dealing with foreigners, it was important that our positions be made clear.
Jeanne responded as if that were perfectly natural. “No particular business. I simply wished to see how the person I’ll be negotiating with rules for myself, but my agents received information that you would be sneaking into the castle town today, so I thought I might as well come introduce myself.”
So she hadn’t originally planned to meet me. She’d just happened to learn I was taking a day off while she was here, so she’d attempted to make contact.
“Still, it was quite bold of you to come into Van while we’re occupying it,” I said.
“I’m the type that only believes what she’s seen with her own two eyes, after all,” Jeanne replied. “The rumors about you have reached as far as the Empire, many of them unsubstantiated, so I wanted to find out for myself.”
Rumors? There are rumors about me in the Empire? I thought.
“What sort of rumors would those be?” I asked.
“They say things like: you’re ‘the brilliant ruler who rescued an economy on the brink of collapse,’ or that you ‘invented ways of preparing foods that there had been no custom of eating before and saved the country from a food crisis,’ or that you ‘demonstrated unparalleled strength in battle, mowing down swarms of enemies one after another’… and more.”
“There’s been a lot of embellishment along the way, huh,” I commented.
Not one of those things had been accomplished by my strength alone. The economic restructuring had been the bureaucrats’ hard work, and gathering the ingredients and teaching us how to prepare them had been Poncho’s accomplishment. As for the war, I’d only set the armies in motion, then left the fighting to stronger people. In the end, if you were to name one thing I’d done, “I delegated tasks to people who could handle them” would be it.
“Oh, and there were rumors that you were an ‘insatiable sex fiend,’ too,” Jeanne added.
“Wait, hold on!”
Who’re you calling a sex fiend?!
“Where did those rumors come from?!” I exclaimed.
“The rumor says: ‘Despite being betrothed to the beautiful daughter of the former king, he gathered beauties from around the kingdom to select a concubine,’ or something like that. Is Madam Juna here not the one chosen to be your concubine?”
What a horrible misunderstanding! They must have been talking about the Elfrieden Pretty Girl Grand Prix I’d run as part of my search for talented personnel. When I’d said I was searching for people with any gift, there had been a lot of applications in the fields of martial arts, beauty, and arts. All I’d done was create a tournament format for them to compete in.
I hadn’t even come up with the plan for Project Lorelei at that point. Come to think of it, at the time there had been rumors that “The beauty tournament might be for the king to find mistresses,” and the nobles had all tried to send their relatives to participate. Had other countries seen it the same way?
“A-A concubine, am I…? Well, yes, I did know there were rumors to that effect,” Juna said, her face turning red.
Was she serious?
I hadn’t known there were rumors like that… and it was kind of hard to accept it. Ever since I had taken the throne, I had been struggling under such a murderous workload that even my relations with Liscia had stayed completely chaste. Actually, it was a bit late to say this now, but my relationship with Liscia had skipped over a lot of important steps, hadn’t it? We were betrothed to be married, and yet we hadn’t even been on a proper date, let alone kissed.
While I was thinking about all that, Jeanne looked at me pensively. “Hm… If that rumor was false, I suppose I can’t use that method.”
“What method?” I asked.
“Well, if you were a lecherous king, I thought if I had my gorgeous sister welcome you and ask really nicely, you might accept our requests quite easily.”
“What were you planning to make the Saint of the Empire do?!” I yelped.
“It seems my sister is not overly fond of that ‘saint’ title, but… maybe men find her being a ‘saint’ quite appealing?” she asked.
“Well… I can sort of see that,” I said. “The Saint of the Empire, Maria”… The words themselves had an incredible impact. For one thing, if a woman is being called a saint, it makes you want to see her. It raises the expectation that she’s beautiful and noble.