“…Haah.”
Luan irritably set down the pen he'd been holding and narrowed his brow.
His head felt like it was splitting. Around his temples it pounded, as if someone were hammering away. His vision went blurry, and his stomach churned. It was like working overtime crammed into a packed subway with a body laid up by the flu.
Damn it. What crappy timing.
Something hot surged up from inside, but Luan bit his lip hard and forcibly swallowed it down. Now wasn't the time to be ill.
Just this… let me finish just this and go lie down. Exactly thirty minutes.
It was just as Luan rubbed his clouding eyes and went to pick up the documents again.
Knock, knock.
With a careful knock, the chamberlain came in wearing a troubled face.
“Your Majesty. Sir Harkan, the Commander of the Northern Knights' Order, has requested an audience.”
“…Harkan?”
“Yes. He says it's an urgent matter and won't back down. He's got the air of someone who'll smash the study door down and come in if you don't see him this very instant…”
The chamberlain trailed off. Luan heaved a deep sigh in spite of himself.
So what was coming has come.
Harkan. A man called the Beast of the North. He was famous as an upright warrior who didn't hesitate to speak frankly even to the Emperor. He'd probably heard the news of the knights' order budget cut announced earlier and come charging in with his eyes rolled back.
The furrow in Luan's brow deepened. My head's pounding and I'm on edge as it is, and the man famous for having the loudest voice in the empire comes calling.
Ah, seriously. What a pain.
He considered just sending the man away, but the savage energy felt from beyond the door was no ordinary thing. Dodging here would only make matters bigger. Luan clutched his throbbing head and waved his hand.
“Send him in.”
“But your complexion is so poor…”
“It's fine. Let's handle it fast and be rid of it. That'll be quicker.”
The instant Luan's permission dropped, the heavy study door opened roughly.
Thud, thud, thud.
With footsteps that seemed to shake the floor, a giant of a man draped in bear hide strode in. It was an intimidation that seemed to have brought the biting north wind in whole.
“I greet Your Majesty the Empress.”
The Commander of the Northern Knights' Order, Harkan. He bowed his head with proper courtesy, but in those eyes blazed anger and grievance he couldn't conceal. Were it not for the Empress, he wore the expression of a man who wanted to grab Luan by the collar and shake him this very second.
Luan propped his chin on his hand and asked dryly.
“Your expression is savage, Commander. What is it?”
“Your Majesty. I won't speak in circles. I'll ask you directly.”
Harkan raised his head. His thick voice made the air of the study vibrate.
“The knights' order budget cut. Is it truly Your Majesty's will?”
“It is.”
“Please withdraw it! This is both an insult to us Northern knights and a death sentence!”
A resounding bellow filled the study. Luan reflexively grimaced.
Ah, damn it. My eardrums are going to burst.
It felt like the hammering in his head doubled in speed. The inside of his ears rang. Luan swallowed a curse and pressed hard on his temples, but Harkan, with no idea of Luan's state, kept shouting at the top of his lungs.
“Our boys are rolling through snowfields with frostbitten feet, fighting monsters! If supplies are cut off, they'll starve to death or freeze to death. Even now they're so short on winter clothing they're patching it with leather!”
Harkan's face flushed red.
“And you call for a budget cut! How could Your Majesty, seated in a comfortable chair in the warm imperial palace, know the horrors of the front line! Are you trampling their blood and sweat to save a few coins of budget!”
Harkan's appeal was heartfelt. He was genuinely enraged. Only for the right of his subordinates to survive, for the honor of the soldiers defending the empire, was he standing up to the Empress.
He was a loyal subject, true. Which was exactly why it was more of a headache.
Enduring the dizziness that grew steadily worse, Luan opened his mouth. His voice came out lower and sharper than usual.
“Sir Harkan.”
“Withdraw it! Otherwise I won't move a single step from this spot—!”
“Lower your voice, would you. My eardrums are going to fall off.”
At Luan's cool rebuke, Harkan flinched. Luan looked up at him with eyes full of irritation.
“My head feels like it's splitting right now, so let's keep this to the point. You seem to think I'm trying to starve the soldiers to death.”
“Is that not the truth?! When the budget shrinks, supplies are the first to be cut!”
“Go confirm who it is that's skimming those supplies in the middle, and then come back and shout.”
Luan heaved a deep sigh and picked up a bundle of documents set in one corner of the desk. Then he flicked it toward Harkan, all but throwing it.
“For your eyes and ears to be blind is a crime, Commander.”
“…What did you say?”
“Take a good, hard look at what those subordinates you shield and call 'the boys' have been doing behind your back.”
Harkan, huffing, picked up the documents with a rough hand.
“What… is this?”
“Look and you'll know. I tidied it up all night in the middle of this headache, after all.”
Harkan's eyes began to skim down the document. It was the audit report on the Northern Knights' Order's expenditures that Luan had spent two nights organizing.
Harkan's expression, filled with puzzlement at first, gradually began to twist with each page he turned. The face that had been red with anger gradually went pale.
The food-ingredient supplier was under the name of the deputy commander's brother-in-law. Beside it, in red letters, was written overcharged at three times market price. The winter-clothing replacement costs were something Harkan didn't know about. Naturally—the equipment-repair receipts had been transformed and disguised as winter-clothing purchases.
The most shocking among them was…
“Th-this is… what…”
It was an entertainment-district usage record under the name of combat condolence money. Harkan's hand trembled hard enough to crumple the paper.
While he'd been holding out at the front line chewing hard, mold-spotted bread, the subordinates he'd trusted like blood brothers had been living high and embezzling public funds. They'd drunk liquor with money meant to buy soldiers' winter clothes and gambled with money meant to repair weapons.
And selling his name to do it, at that.
“Can't believe it?”
Luan asked, propping his chin on his hand, looking askance.
“Do you know why I went to the trouble of digging through stinking ledgers? Because I know you're incorruptible. Because I had the conviction that you weren't the one eating it.”
“…”
“You're an excellent general, but an incompetent manager.”
Luan's voice was cold, but the content within it was accurate.
“The national treasury is leaking from the price of your blind faith in your subordinates, and you come and shout at the one who stopped it for you. You've got the wrong address by a long shot, haven't you.”
At Luan's cynical rebuke, Harkan shut his mouth.
There was nothing more he could say to refute it. Shame, a sense of betrayal, and self-reproach over his own ignorance washed over him like waves, and he couldn't lift his head.
The Empress wasn't the kind of person he'd thought. If anything, he'd been trying to cut out the parasites and find the share that should have gone to the soldiers. Knowing nothing of it, Harkan had come here and thrown a fit.
Thud.
Harkan dropped his heavy knees to the floor. The thud was loud enough to make the floor ring.
“…Please kill me.”
Harkan's voice trembled.
“It's my failing. By failing to keep my subordinates in check, I wasted the national treasury and committed an unforgivable rudeness against Your Majesty. This crime… I'll repay it even by offering up my own neck.”
It was a heartfelt apology. Luan heaved a weary sigh. Fortunately, the man could be reasoned with. If he'd been a corrupt official throwing a pigheaded fit, it'd have gotten more tiresome.
“Keep your neck.”
Luan waved his hand. Now that the business is done, I wish he'd please just leave. Was it because the tension had drained out? Nausea began to rise sharply.
His stomach was so queasy he wanted to lie down this very instant. The edges of his vision flickered black.
“Go back, round up the ones who embezzled, and accept the cut. And…”
Luan went to rise from his seat and swayed. He braced against the corner of the desk, but no strength would come to his hand. The ceiling spun and the floor seemed to rise up.
Ah, damn it. It's spinning.
Cold sweat ran down his spine. A sour taste pooled in his mouth.
“…And, please get out of my sight. The noise is making my head ring.”
Luan's voice trembled faintly.
“Your Majesty?”
The eyes of Harkan, lifting his head, went wide.
The complexion of the Empress, who'd been coolly chiding him until just earlier, had gone white as a corpse. Lips without a trace of blood, a forehead damp with cold sweat, the sight of him braced against the desk so precariously he might collapse at any moment, breathing raggedly.
By anyone's measure it was a grave condition.
“Your Majesty! Are you all right!”
Harkan, alarmed, shot to his feet and approached Luan.
From Luan's standpoint it was the worst. He was dizzy enough to die as it was, and now a bear of a giant was coming at him with a booming voice, all but lunging.
The pressure was considerable. The dizziness grew worse.
“Don't come… I'm dizzy…”
Luan staggered backward. Harkan's massive shadow seemed to be swooping over him, and his breath choked.
But to Harkan's eyes, that action of Luan's looked like he was shrinking back, frightened by his shout. Thinking the Empress was about to collapse from a fit of frustration brought on by his own rudeness, Harkan stretched out his hand all the more frantically.
“Pull yourself together! I'll call a physician! Hey! Is anyone out there!”
Harkan's thunderous voice once again rang resoundingly through the study.
“Ugh…”
At the sound, Luan grimaced hard, feeling like his eardrums were tearing, and covered both ears with his hands. His head felt like it would burst.
Luan staggered with an agonized expression. Harkan, flustered, didn't know what to do and flailed his hands in the air. Whether he should support him, whether he should call a physician, fretting that if he touched him it might go even more wrong.
But this scene, viewed from outside, was something else entirely.
It was as if an enraged knights' commander had driven a sickly Empress into a corner and was threatening him, shouting. The Empress, terrified, covering his ears and backing away.
Bang—!
Just then, the study's firmly shut door opened roughly, as if it would shatter.
“What are you doing!”
A voice carrying a murderous intent that seemed to freeze the space. It was the Emperor.
And the eyes of Kael, following behind him, instantly rolled back.
What they witnessed was horrific. The Empress, gone pale and covering his ears, looking like he'd faint at any moment. And before him, a giant of a knights' commander shouting with a fierce expression, threateningly stretching out his hand.
“…Harkan.”
In Kirian's red eyes, the sound of reason snapping could be heard.
“You dare threaten my Empress?”
Kirian put his hand on the sword at his waist and strode forward. He had the air of cutting off Harkan's head that very instant.
“No, Your Majesty! That's not it! I merely, Your Majesty the Empress—!”
Harkan, gone ashen, tried to make excuses, but they didn't reach Kirian's ears. Kirian had already swept the all-but-collapsing Luan into his arms.
“Luanisiel! Are you all right? What did that man do?”
Luan, held in Kirian's arms, clutched his throbbing head and swallowed a curse.
Ah, why's this one come and started shouting too? The pair of them, so damn loud, seriously…
He had neither the strength to clear up the misunderstanding nor the energy to be annoyed. Harkan was dying of grievance, Kirian was raging enough to kill, and Kael was drawing his sword and rushing in.
It was a madhouse.
Luan just wished the world would get a little quieter, buried his forehead in Kirian's chest, and squeezed his eyes shut.
Whatever… come what may. I'm clocking out.
