The day of my regular private audience with the emperor.
As always, I was summoned to the conservatory, where I waited for the emperor to set down his teacup and open his mouth.
“So. Has anything been inconvenient over the past week? Or have you brought some new story to amuse me?”
At that question, I clutched my aching chest muscles and let out a small groan.
“Thanks to Your Majesty’s consideration, there has been little in the way of inconvenience, but… I would be grateful if His Highness the Second Prince could go a little easier on me during exercise. Truly, each time feels as though I’ve died and come back to life.”
“Kahaha, it seems you’ve been exercising quite diligently with Arthur. Seeing you groan like that, the training must be quite effective.”
The emperor laughed heartily, then set down his teacup and lightly changed the subject.
“Putting that aside. Have you contacted your homeland?”
“Pardon? By contact, do you mean…”
“Sterling, of course. It has been some time since you packed your things and entered this unfamiliar imperial palace. Have you not sent even a single letter to your family? Or used a communication crystal orb?”
I blinked for a moment, then answered awkwardly.
“Ah… I have not. No, to be precise, I did not know whether I was allowed to contact them, so I could not. Since I am being held as a hostage from a defeated nation, I naturally assumed that all contact with the outside world was strictly cut off. My crystal orb is also back in my homeland.”
At my honest answer, the emperor let out a hollow laugh, as if dumbfounded.
“Hah. However bloodless and tearless the empire may be, it is not so petty as that. We even allow prisoners of war captured on fierce battlefields to send replies to their homelands saying they are alive and well. Did this empire look so cruel to you that we would completely seal the mouth and ears of a royal hostage who came under a formal treaty?”
The emperor lightly tapped the table with his finger and added,
“As soon as you return to your quarters today, contact Sterling. The king of Sterling, who sent his child as a hostage to a foreign nation, must be losing sleep worrying about whether you live or die. At least tell him you are alive. I shall also order a new crystal orb to be issued to you.”
It was a consideration I had not expected.
Well, the royal family that had sold me off here wasn’t really my family anyway, but it was only proper to send word at least once… and I felt that would be right for my mother as well.
“I am deeply grateful for Your Majesty’s consideration. I shall obey your command.”
When I bowed my head with sincerity, the emperor rested his chin on his hand and murmured in a low voice.
“Of course. I am telling you to send your regards to your family, not to leak the empire’s sensitive secrets to them or conspire in some half-baked escape plan. Just because I have shown mercy does not mean the eyes watching you will be withdrawn.”
“…”
“If even the slightest trace of such disquieting intent is found in your letters or communications… then at that time, we will have to very seriously reconsider your current position, your comfortable life in this imperial palace, and the various other things you enjoy in ordinary times. So you would do well to conduct yourself properly.”
I did not need to ask to know that the “various other things” the emperor mentioned included my lifeline and limbs.
“I shall keep it in mind, and keep it in mind again.”
“Good. Then let us return to the main subject.”
The emperor toyed with his teacup and looked at me with interest.
“That story you were telling earlier. What exactly is this dreadful and astonishing fact you say you discovered while exercising with Arthur?”
As if I had been waiting for this, I put on a deliberately grave expression and lowered my voice.
“During training, His Highness told me to increase the weight by ten pounds.”
“Hm? I understand that you do not wish to exercise, but is that an important matter?”
“The pounds, Your Majesty. If I may dare to speak, the empire must reform its weights and measures as soon as possible.”
“…Weights and measures?”
One of the emperor’s eyebrows twitched.
“That is correct. It is unthinkable that the great empire that will conquer the continent and unify the world should be using such inefficient and dreadful units as the yard-pound system.”
“The yard-pound system is a set of units the empire has used customarily since the days when it was a small kingdom. It has been two hundred years since it was properly adopted as our system of weights and measures. You call a system used for so long inefficient?”
“This is a unified empire that will continue for hundreds, no, thousands of years to come. If you are to annex the remaining nations and bind all goods and administration into one, then the very foundation of that, the weights and measures, must first be unified under the intuitive units of the metric system.”
At my firm assertion, the emperor rested his chin on his hand with interest.
“The metric system, is it. Why is it superior to the yard-pound system?”
As if I had been waiting for that, I confidently presented the emperor with the materials I had spent the past few days organizing on parchment whenever I had time in the library.
“This is a brief summary of its intuitiveness based on the decimal system, as well as the convenience of calculations in which length, volume, and weight are perfectly compatible.”
The emperor picked up the parchment I handed him, then slowly scanned the writing without the slightest change in expression.
“…”
A heavy silence settled over the conservatory.
Just as a bead of cold sweat rolled down, making me wonder whether I had gotten too carried away, the emperor placed the parchment down on the table with a thud.
“Very well. Leave these materials here for now.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
After that, the emperor did not bring up weights and measures at all.
Instead, he exchanged a few more bits of light conversation with me—such as whether muscle pain subsided after a few days, and whether I was reading well—before dismissing me.
#
Ian Sterling left the conservatory, and the heavy door closed.
Once his footsteps had completely faded away, the emperor relaxed the stiff expression he had maintained until just a moment ago and smiled lightly.
“What do you think?”
At the emperor’s call, the sound of someone’s footsteps came from behind the thick curtain hanging in one corner of the conservatory.
“Astonishing.”
The man who emerged from the darkness picked up the parchment Ian had left behind, his eyes shining.
“This content perfectly matches what I have spent the past several years racking my brains over while organizing the weights and measures reform project. No, in some places, it actually points out the core issues even more clearly.”
“So that is how it is.”
“Yes, Imperial Father. That fellow… I do not think he can ever return to Sterling.”
There was a strangely sinister and sticky obsession in the young man’s voice.
The emperor lifted his teacup and laughed softly.
“Why? Are you already excited at the thought of using such a capable talent as your own hands and feet?”
“Is that not only natural?”
The man answered while gripping the parchment tightly.
“Such a capable talent must be made to devote himself to the empire as soon as possible. We must grind down his flesh and bones and make him offer them up for the administration of the empire. Imperial Father, I simply cannot understand it. How could someone like that emerge from that horde of uncivilized fishing-village wretches down in the south? The mind of that one man, Ian Sterling, may be far more valuable to the empire than the entirety of that kingdom, which, even if squeezed dry, would yield only a bit of fishy seawater.”
The emperor looked at his eldest son, Crown Prince Maximilien, whose eyes were sparkling, and smiled with interest.
“How amusing. However, think of it the other way around. That fellow’s official status is, to the end, a hostage of the empire. We cannot seat someone of hostage status in the imperial administration and allow him to handle affairs of state as he pleases. So, do you have a good plan to drag him all the way to your desk?”
At the emperor’s question, the crown prince toyed with the documents and smiled.
Across his face, which had long looked weary from being worn down by administrative work, there flashed a cunning light that had not been there before.
“My two foolish younger siblings are already impatient because they cannot monopolize one useful toy, are they not?”
“Ho.”
“I intend to let Victoria and Arthur clash over that toy. Then, when the heat has risen to an appropriate level, I, as the eldest, will reconcile the two of them and very naturally confiscate the toy.”
The crown prince pushed up his glasses and smiled coldly.
“I am saying that before the toy is torn apart in the hands of my ignorant younger siblings, I shall snatch it away and put it to better use. As the eldest, is that not only proper?”
“Kahahahaha!”
At the crown prince’s brazen plan, the emperor burst into hearty laughter, unable to hold it back.
“Yes! That is how my successor should be!”
“Then will you permit it?”
“Of course. Grind him up as you see fit. If he becomes the cornerstone of a thousand-year empire, he will be pleased as well.”
“It is for the sake of the empire.”
Naturally, there was no such thing as the consent of the person in question.
If he felt wronged, his nation should have been stronger. Since it was weak, this was how things had turned out.
And so Ian Sterling’s fate seemed to be decided.