Chapter 84 - The King's Silence (2)

During the fortnight or so Ivan spent in the hospital, Elizaveta never visited his room once.

She simply stayed shut away in her office, as though taking after her father, who never ventured outside the palace.

Instead, she sent Dmitry.

“Wow, look how thick this peel is, Miss Isabelle. You'll never find a husband at this rate. Good graaacious, you've practically diced the flesh off.”

“How am I supposed to peel it any thinner?!”

“Hmm? Shall I show you?”

Dmitry took the paring knife and apple from her and began brushing the blade over it. That was literally what it looked like: rubbing, not peeling.

Before long, the peeled apple sat on the plate, its skin removed so thinly that it was translucent—and all in one strip, at that.

“Ta-da!”

“Holy shit....”

Isabelle stared blankly as she lifted the peel. It was so thin that merely picking it up with her index finger made it crumble.

“What, does Counterintelligence Command put you through bridal training? How did you do that?”

“Heh heh. There's a terrifying secret behind it.”

“It's a torture technique.”

Ivan tossed out the remark with a bored expression.

“Basic flaying. You shouldn't have much use for it these days. You've kept your touch remarkably well, Dmitry.”

“Oh, it pays to prepare in advance. I'll probably have a use for it soon.”

“... Soon?”

“Well. This is top secret....”

Dmitry glanced at Isabelle and tipped his head.

“Miss Isabelle, could I borrow our commander today? This is official business, after all.”

“A-are you going to torture him?!”

“What? Even if I went at that ‘mister’ of yours fully armed, I'd be the one getting tortured....”

“Isabelle, go home.”

Ivan spoke sternly to the pouting Isabelle.

“Don't you have things to prepare?”

“Mister, you're really serious about this.”

“I'm always serious.”

“The problem is that it's those weird salted vegetables you're serious about. Fine, fine. The civilian will leave!”

Grumbling, Isabelle left the room. Dmitry closed his eyes for a moment, gauging the sound of her receding footsteps, then set the apple aside, his expression suddenly grave.

Pavel began happily eating the apple he had set aside.

“Have you noticed anything strange about the mood in Prizhenkaya lately?”

“The mood?”

“Well... uh. Counterintelligence Command is outside the city right now. For training.”

Dmitry shot Pavel a resentful look. Pavel shrugged and finished the apple.

“How many direct attacks on the city have we had this year alone? Two train attacks, one attack on students just outside the city, one demon attack inside it, and then this fellow...”

“Now, now. Show your senior some respect, junior. What class were you in? Oh, Ivan. That brat wasn't in the Royal Guard, was he?”

“... One spectacular attack by my esteemed senior. And now the King of Droan has barged in personally. Wow. Even during the entire war, Prizhenkaya never took a beating like this.”

Dmitry carefully drew an envelope from inside his coat. It contained orders bearing the royal seal—or, more precisely, Elizaveta's official seal—stamped into the sealing wax.

As Ivan opened the envelope and began reading, Dmitry supplied an explanation.

“The trouble at Jansk University, which Her Highness personally oversees, was particularly decisive. The court nobility have begun to think relations between Her Highness and Counterintelligence Command are somewhat... strained. And she really has expelled the entire command from the city under the pretext of training. To make it look like a reprimand.”

“Make it look like one?”

“Yes, make it look that way. And then you recently got your ass kicked by Einar—”

Ivan's eyes settled squarely on the space between Dmitry's eyebrows. Dmitry hurried on.

“... Had that fierce battle of wits with him, and even ended up hospitalized. So we, um... spread a little rumor that ‘the Berserker King, enraged by Counterintelligence Command's excessive foreign intelligence operations, personally lodged a physical protest.’”

Counterintelligence Command primarily specialized in domestic rather than foreign intelligence. The Foreign Ministry had been Alexander's domain, and Krasilof had been on the brink of civil war.

Naturally, the command excelled at spying on the country's nobility. And information flowed in both directions, even when it did not appear to.

Being able to gather information meant being able to plant false information as well. That accounted for most of the command's work.

Spreading rumors and manipulating public opinion could therefore be called Counterintelligence Command's true purpose. Torture, abduction, terrorism, and sabotage were really just extras.

“So the idea that Her Highness has effectively lost all her backing is starting to spread. She hasn't fully seized control of the Foreign Ministry yet, the military is still declaring itself ‘neutral’ apart from Capital Command, Counterintelligence Command has grown ‘inattentive,’ and Jansk University keeps blowing up at every turn.”

“What about Enrique?”

“Oh, she's busy with something else at the moment. Add that to everything else, and Her Highness's leadership is now somewhat... in question.”

“Is she planning to prune the branches?”

“Yes. She needs a gardener.”

There was no need to read the orders. Ivan was an experienced agent who had seen this sort of situation often enough.

There was only one reason someone in power deliberately exposed a weakness. It was a test of loyalty.

Prizhenkaya's nobles were not stupid. When the Princess suddenly declared a constitutional monarchy after taking complete control in the wake of Alexander's mysterious ‘disappearance,’ they had all kept their heads down.

It would have been a form of propaganda. She was effectively declaring her confidence that she could control the entire nation even after relinquishing her explicit authority.

But not anymore. Her power had suffered crippling blows over the past few months, and the country happened to be a constitutional monarchy now.

From the nobles' perspective, it was a situation that might well tempt them to institute a ‘constitutional monarchy’ in the true sense.

“Her Highness must be receiving a great many matchmakers.”

“You can say that again. Every sort of riffraff is desperate to join the royal bloodline.”

“How obliging.”

Ivan nodded.

With royal authority in collapse, the most attractive option available to the nobles would be a marriage alliance with the Princess who had lost her backing.

Marrying into the family, usurping royal prerogatives through the newly ascendant power of the nobility, and then running the kingdom as they pleased was hardly a novel idea.

And that meant...

“They're writing their own death list.”

“Yes. How obliging.”

Dmitry nodded with a sly grin. Any noble sending a matchmaker to the Princess now was an ambitious schemer who wanted to usurp royal power.

This list of ‘prospective royal consorts’ was effectively a list of people awaiting execution before Elizaveta's gun.

Ivan slowly tidied up around him and rose. He was already fully recovered.

“Give me the list. If Her Highness wants the branches pruned, so it shall be.”

“No. Her Highness would prefer a more time-honored method of resolving this.”

“... A time-honored method?”

“She said she'd handle it according to the old laws of the court. You haven't finished reading the orders yet, have you? Read the rest!”

Ivan looked down at the unfinished orders. Courtesies laden with convoluted political rhetoric took up half the document.

Skimming past them, he found something strange in the lines below.

[Therefore, Vanka, I have arranged a position for you. While searching for things I could do for you, I happened upon a clause stating that your humble origins prevent you from receiving your full pension.]

Astonishingly, Krasilof's military pensions were paid at different rates according to social standing.

Despite nearly twenty years of military service, Ivan had difficulty collecting his full pension. He had been born a tenant farmer.

[Thus, I intend to give you a suitable position. Viscount Yermov, whose lands lie among the northern colonial territories, has just suffered the unfortunate loss of his third son. You are now Yermov's third son. Congratulations. I have given your father a considerable sum in compensation.]

Hmm. He was a noble now.

Why, all of a sudden?

[You are now one of my suitors. Your house is hardly of sufficient standing to provide a consort to a Krasilof, but am I not, astonishingly, a true sovereign who cares nothing for rank or family? Even royalty must be held to the same standard under the august laws of the kingdom. Your proposal has been accepted in accordance with legal procedure.]

Apparently, he had proposed to the Princess, too.

Ivan nodded.

[However old a law may be, it remains a sacred law of the land, carrying the words of our forebears. I therefore intend to issue a proclamation based on court law. Under the law promulgated by my ancestor five generations removed, Andrei Fyodorovich Krasilof, I shall choose my royal consort through dueling.]

Ivan now understood the Princess's intentions completely.

Having a death list did not mean she could simply start executing nobles. That had been impossible even when royal authority reached the heavens.

Quietly eliminating them one by one would be difficult, too. The nobles were not stupid. If the Princess's suitors began ‘disappearing,’ they would likely recognize her ploy and devise another course of action.

And the ‘other course’ available to cornered high nobles ultimately meant a coup.

With the loyalty of the frontier military and provincial nobility still uncertain, apart from Capital Command, Krasilof—which had already been on the brink of civil war—could turn into a powder keg at any moment.

The poison Alexander had sown under the name of ‘democratic revolution’ would still be running rampant beyond the reach of royal power.

Hence, duels in accordance with the law.

And duels in this barbaric premodern society were generally fights to the death.

“When?”

“They start in five days.”

“She moved quickly.”

“We can't have word spreading beyond Prizhenkaya. If the provincial nobles start trying to get a piece of it too, things will spiral out of control. First we clean up Prizhenkaya, then deal with the others one at a time.”

“So that's why she moved Counterintelligence Command out of the city.”

A trained agent never pursued only one objective with a single action.

As the woman commanding those trained agents, Elizaveta had already established additional objectives on a broader scale.

First, she would put Counterintelligence Command through serious training to make up for its recent intelligence failures.

Then she would make that training look like a reprimand, creating the impression that she had lost the command's loyalty.

And one more: by naturally deploying the agents who had left the city, she would strengthen her intelligence network among the provincial nobility.

It was an astonishingly intricate and elegant piece of work. Ivan nodded in satisfaction.

“She's becoming an excellent sovereign.”

Throughout history, an excellent sovereign had never been someone who merely received the loyalty of their subjects. A truly excellent sovereign created circumstances in which those subjects had no choice but to remain loyal.

From that perspective, Elizaveta was absolutely perfect. Machiavelli would have wept at the sight of her. Ivan felt a quiet swell of pride.

* * *

“Did Vanka have anything else to say about my proposal?”

“No, Your Highness.”

“Heh... heh heh heh....”

Elizaveta smiled faintly in the darkness.

A well-trained agent never pursued only one objective at a time.

Every objective Ivan had anticipated was, of course, real.

But what if there was one more he hadn't anticipated... and it was the most important of all?

“Vanka. Now you have no choice but to become my consort. Allow me to congratulate you in advance... Heh... heh heh heh... heh heh heh heh!”

The entire operation had been planned on the assumption that he would win the ‘courtship duels.’

Which meant that once he won... he would have no choice but to marry the Princess!

Dmitry bowed his head, not daring to look at Elizaveta as she laughed ominously.

With a sovereign so accomplished in plots and schemes, ah, what a bright future the country had.

* * *

The world's foremost practitioners of foreign espionage were the elves. As previously recalled, elves were masters of Mind Sorcery.

Through friendly rapport-building that made active use of making friends (brainwashing) and playing pranks (memory manipulation), they had established intricate intelligence networks across almost the entire United Kingdoms.

Thus, upon encountering the major news that ‘the Princess is looking for a husband!’ and the astonishing cultural curiosity that ‘good heavens, humans choose husbands through duels...,’ the elves immediately began pondering how to turn this to ‘the benefit of intelligent beings.’

For the record, ‘intelligent beings’ meant elves. Intelligence was clearly far too difficult a word for humans. (Such was the kindness elves showed the lesser races.)

And when the daughter of one influential noble family heard this news in turn at an elven social gathering in Prizhenkaya, her hands trembled with bewilderment.

“Sir Petrovich was actually a noble...?”

What did human nobility really matter? It was no more than the difference between a pedigree dog and a mongrel. And Elpihera was a daring young elf with a remarkably open mind, so she did not concern herself with the bloodlines of lesser races.

In this particular matter, however, it presented something of a problem.

“Sir Petrovich has entered the courtship duels...!!”

Wouldn't it take someone like her father to beat that man...?

But if he won... didn't that mean he would get married?!

Elpihera crushed the ‘Krasilof Monarchy Courtship Duel Entrant List’ in her hands and screamed.