“To this country, you mean? It seems awfully stable, so it’s a surprise to hear that.” Mary said that without her expression changing in the slightest, of course. There had been no fluctuation in her emotions this entire time.
When it went this far, I had to start thinking she might not actually know anything about the Orthodox Papal State’s dark side.
“When one of my subordinates dispatched one of those spies, I’m told that the spy said, ‘Curse you, you infidel.’ They must have been a follower of some religion. You also believe in God, so perhaps you understand what the spy’s words meant, Madam Mary?”
“I am not that spy, so I couldn’t tell you, but…” Mary seemed to think for a moment, then replied without getting particularly worked up about it. “They probably saw their own life as a trial given to them by God. Those who would oppose them were unbelievers. In short, that was how they judged your subordinate to be an infidel.”
“So, basically, it wouldn’t matter if he was a follower of another religion or not?”
“From what you’ve told me, that was the sense I got. I apologize for my self-centered view.”
“…No, it was educational,” I said.
What was it? I felt I had less and less of a feel for her. I couldn’t sense anything like a motive behind Mary’s words. She gave serious answers to my questions.
…In that case, was this a negotiation?
In negotiations, both sides had goals, and the two sides bounced ideas off one another until they reconciled their differences. That was why they concealed information that was to their disadvantage, in order to lead the discussion in a direction that was advantageous to them. I couldn’t sense any sort of attempt to lead the conversation whatsoever in the way she was speaking and acting.
“…Let’s get back on topic,” I said at last. “You wanted to make Lunarian Orthodoxy our state religion, right?”
“Yes.”
“So, what merit is there for our country in doing that? Also, if you say you’re tolerant of other religions, it shouldn’t matter who is worshiping what. Why is Lunarian Orthodoxy seeking to become our state religion?”
“I will answer your first question,” Mary told me. “If you make Lunarian Orthodoxy your state religion, we are prepared to recognize Your Great Highness as a saint. You are already a king, so you would become a holy king. In addition, I will most likely be dispatched by the Orthodox Papal State to serve as your personal bishop. I will serve you as I would God.”
With that said, Mary bowed her head.
It was going more or less how Roroa had said it would. I’d never expected that the saint herself would come to serve me, though.
“The way you say that, it’s almost like you’re coming to marry me,” I commented.
“If Your Holy Majesty wishes, you may do with my body whatever you might please. I will offer my body and heart to you as I do in service to God.”
“I haven’t said I’m going to accept this holy king thing yet.”
“Forgive my presumption.” Mary bowed her head once more. She didn’t look like she felt guilty at all… or rather, the look on her face made me think she didn’t even realize she had done something wrong.
When I mentioned the marriage thing, Aisha jumped a little, but Liscia didn’t seem surprised in the least. All she did was stare at Mary with a serious look on her face. How did Mary look in Liscia’s eyes?
“And?” I asked. “If I become a holy king and have a saint dispatched to me, what merit are you saying that will give this country?”
“This country has grown to a scale where it is comparable to the Gran Chaos Empire. That is a product of your virtue, no doubt. If you gain the influence of Lunarian Orthodoxy as well, this country will have gained a degree of power that outstrips that of the Empire.”
“There’s another bold claim,” I said. “But the Empire still has more territory and more power than us, you know?”
Well, there were areas where our technology was ahead of theirs, but I wasn’t going to let that slip.
Mary silently shook her head. “Four in ten of the people living in the Empire are followers of Lunarian Orthodoxy. Those numbers are the result of Mother Dragon worship being unable to gain much of a foothold because the Empire fought the Star Dragon Mountain Range during the period in which they were expanding. In other words, close to half the population are followers of Lunarian Orthodoxy. If this country were to get into a conflict with them, with our influence it would be possible to break up the Empire.”
“You say some pretty scary things as if they’re nothing,” I said. “We have no intention of getting into any conflicts with the Empire.”
“It was merely a hypothetical. In short, I am telling you that you can gain the power to rival the Empire; the power to be the strongest among mankind’s nations.”
…Yeah. Well, looking at the relationship between the princes of Middle Ages Europe and the Roman Catholic Church, it wasn’t unthinkable. With the power of the ruler and the church combined, they would rule the country and drive out foreign enemies. It was an easy way of handling things. But that was only if you turned a blind eye to the power struggle between the ruler and church that would occur afterwards.
Right now, we were trying to move forward into a new era. I didn’t want to go imitating something people had done in olden times. “If I may say a word,” Hakuya, who had been silently watching things unfold up until now, spoke up. “I’m sorry to do this to Madam Saint, but I would like to speak with His Majesty for a short while.”
“Please do.”
With the saint’s permission, Hakuya walked up close to me. Then, leaning in and bringing his mouth to my ear as I sat on the throne, he whispered to me, “You seem out of sorts, sire.”
“Yeah…” I whispered back. “For some reason, I can’t get into the right mindset. I feel like there’s something weirdly off about her.”
“In regards to that, I think we need to think of her as separate from them,” he whispered.
“We do?”
Hakuya nodded. “I’ve been observing all this time, and I believe she’s been exhibiting a lack of emotion.”
“Yeah, I noticed that, too.”
“I’m sure that the Orthodox Papal State had some reason for sending her here, but perhaps Madam Mary herself has no idea what that is? Could she have come here as just a saint, only to communicate the will of the upper echelons of the Orthodox Papal State, like a sort of messenger kui?”
“Huh?! She’s just a messenger, then?”
Mary wasn’t a negotiator, then?! That made a lot of sense… It had never felt like I was negotiating while I was talking with her.
I’d assumed she’d been given model questions and told what to answer if I asked certain things, and she had been negotiating with me based on that. That would explain why, when I’d given her questions they wouldn’t expect, like about that spy’s mindset, she’d given me frank and honest answers.
Either that, or it was possible she had been told to answer questions like that honestly. Even if her negotiation partner tried to extract vital information from her, if she hadn’t been told anything, she would just honestly answer, “I don’t know,” after all.
This wasn’t even a negotiation anymore. It was like having a text reader read out my e-mail for me.
I glanced over to Mary. When she noticed my gaze, she cocked her head to the side a little with no expression.
…I see, I realized. In a way, she is like a Diva.
In my world, there was an anthropomorphized text reading program called a Divaloid. It had gotten famous because you could use the synthesized female voice to read passages, or to sing songs, and it had caused a big boom, especially on video sharing sites. They’d added illustrations of a cute girl to it, and she’d even held live concerts as a virtual idol.