To Get What You Want (4)

Meanwhile, in Count Leonberg's study at Pelgaroin Castle…

“You intend to withdraw your troops?”

The Count looked across the chessboard at Benelia, unable to understand her decision.

After five apparently fruitless days of the princess's supposed rebel operation, she abruptly announced withdrawal on the sixth.

His confusion was mixed with anticipation.

“It's late. We'll speak again another time. When we do, I'll tell you everything I have in mind.”

Hadn't Benelia promised him a full explanation at their next meeting? If she meant to reveal her real purpose, this was the time.

Leonberg resolved to listen calmly, however much he disliked what he heard.

As he watched, Benelia moved a white-gloved hand toward the chessboard.

“That's right.”

She spoke languidly, lifting a chess piece as if bored by the whole affair.

“By now, a secret report should have reached the imperial court. There's no reason for me to remain. The rumors spreading through the streets are ruining my reputation, which makes this an ideal time to withdraw. Meanwhile, the Count who put me in my place grows more esteemed by the day. We both get something out of it.”

“…How can Your Highness call damage to your reputation a good thing?”

“Didn't I tell you? To the ministers at court, I need to look like an incompetent princess. This performance is accomplishing precisely that.”

She set down her piece and raised her eyes.

“A princess who overestimates her military achievements, acts like a child and provokes the anger of an influential count. She is humiliated and sent away. Could we have arranged a better story?”

“I follow that much. But why does Your Highness need to appear incompetent in the first place?”

Benelia fell silent.

Leonberg watched her. A proposed political ally ought to explain the purpose behind such a dangerous deception.

Instead, she pointed to the board.

“It's your move, Count.”

“…Your Highness?”

“What I have to say will take some time. We might as well talk while we play.”

Chess was the last thing Leonberg wanted to think about. Yet refusing the princess would achieve nothing. With a sigh, he reached for his piece.

He made his move. Benelia answered, still studying the board as she began to speak.

“The Empire is in disorder. Taxes keep rising, and conscription has become increasingly coercive. The army has never recovered from the losses of the Orc Conquest War. They're calling up not only ordinary people but even mercenaries to replace the soldiers they lost.”

“I know that.”

“Then you know what my father intends. His Majesty is preparing for another war, and public anger is growing by the day. The country is dry tinder waiting for a spark.”

Less than ten years had passed since the last great war. People had only just begun rebuilding ordinary lives; now the Emperor seemed determined to drag them through the same nightmare again.

“The treasury is strained by these levies, and the imperial family is borrowing far too much from Carastane Bank. I don't even know the full extent of the debt.”

Despite it all, her father would not change course. He clung to the conviction that another war would put everything right.

“What happens if we go to war with internal affairs in disarray, diplomacy uncertain, and the people close to revolt? If we lose, will there still be an Empire to return to?”

Her voice was grave, but her hand moved calmly over the chessboard.

Leonberg made his own reply with a piece before answering aloud.

“Is Your Highness certain we would lose?”

He did not ask whether the war would happen. He had seen enough of the Emperor's worsening judgment to take that possibility as settled.

Benelia nodded.

“The Demon Lord is not the opponent he once was. The Grand Dukes of Hell have advanced their arts using demonic energy. Their magic is no longer far behind ours.”

“Even so, that alone would not be enough to defeat the Empire.”

“You're right. In an all-out battle against the Demon Lord's forces, we would win. But what good is victory if it leaves us with too few troops to defend ourselves afterward?”

She moved another piece and leaned back.

“Would the Kingdom of Agela and the Republic of Isbald simply watch a weakened Empire recover? We'd be fortunate if they waited until the war was over. If they invaded while we were still fighting the Demon Lord, we'd face enemies on both sides.”

Leonberg groaned. He'd considered something like this himself, but had avoided following the thought to its end.

“The court ministers aren't fools,” Benelia continued. “Just because my father is losing his reason doesn't mean they are. And yet they form factions and let him drive the Empire toward disaster.”

“…Why?”

“Greed. Spend long enough staring at a crown, and you begin to want it for yourself.”

She laid out what she believed the ministers intended.

The Empire would go to war with the Demon Lord. At the right moment, ministers watching from the sidelines would send secret letters to the Republic. The Republic would join with the neighboring kingdom and invade while imperial troops were committed elsewhere.

An Empire weakened by its war with the demons would be swept away like a sandcastle under a wave.

The Emperor might finally recognize the danger, but far too late. Unable to resist attacks from both fronts, the Empire would lose its sovereignty.

Then the ministers would proclaim that they had to remove a mad ruler and found a new state.

Pamphlets and carefully revised histories would present the war against the Demon Lord as the Emperor's personal obsession. The ministers would appear as courageous patriots who had tried to save the nation from his madness.

“To the people, overthrowing a tyrant would look like an act of justice,” Benelia said. “The ministers would call it a revolution.”

With the public on their side, they could invite the Republic to help restructure the state. The Republic would insist it had attacked only the Emperor's soldiers to restrain his brutality, never the people themselves.

The ministers could then promise a new political order, one in which the people would share sovereignty and no tyrannical emperor could rise again. It would be an easy promise to make, and a sweet one for suffering citizens to hear.

In that imagined future, the Emperor would be beheaded. House Esteban, the imperial family to which Benelia belonged, would vanish into history's shadows.

Few would pause to ask who had truly brought the calamity upon them. The Empire would be gone, and in its place would stand the ministers' puppet state—a so-called Second Socialist Republic.

“I intend to stop that.”

War against the Demon Lord would cost tens of thousands of lives. To let those people die as pieces in a struggle for the ministers' power was something Benelia could not accept.

“That's why I'm pretending to be incompetent. And why I'm asking for your help, Count. I need to prevent the ministers' betrayal.”

“…Then Your Highness intends to stop the war?”

“No.”

A bitter smile touched her face.

“The war must happen. It's the only way to change the situation. But it will end almost as soon as it begins.”

“What do you mean?”

“We'll end it before the Republic and the Kingdom have time to interfere in imperial affairs. Innocent people will die even then. I know that. But that sacrifice is unavoidable if we're to give the Empire a chance to follow a better path.”

Was she proposing a lesser evil to avert something far worse?

Leonberg still couldn't fully see her plan, but the determination in her golden eyes sent a chill through him.

“The Empire will declare war on the Demon Lord before the year is over. Before that happens, the imperial court will ask you to supply reinforcements. When it does, place your troops under my command.”

Leonberg said nothing.

Answering the Emperor's call by putting Pelgaroin's soldiers under the princess rather than His Majesty himself would be a clear act of treason.

He lowered his eyes to the board—and noticed something else.

Benelia was winning.

How…?

She had broken the conventional rules of the opening without making a single apparent mistake. This was nothing like the chess she'd played when she first visited the castle.

Has she been concealing her skill?

Had she deliberately played badly to make him underestimate her?

The thought wrung a humorless laugh from Leonberg.

Benelia von Esteban…

I can't trust you. But who in the Empire can be trusted now?

He licked his dry lips. The convictions he'd inherited and defended for so long seemed to be crumbling, little by little.

“If everything Your Highness proposes succeeds, will His Majesty the Emperor still be alive?”

“Of course.”

“Then how will you justify my disloyalty? How can handing my troops to you instead of the Emperor be anything but treason?”

“Disloyalty. Treason…”

Benelia repeated the words softly, almost as though savoring them.

“When the time comes, they'll be called loyalty and merit.”

Leonberg's shoulders trembled. He understood what she meant.

Following her would seem to abandon the beliefs House Pelgaroin had handed down for generations.

He clenched his fists.

“The Pelgaroin family has served the Empire for generations.”

Benelia looked utterly unmoved.

“I know.”

She leaned forward and reached for a piece.

It was her king, crowned in miniature.

“Then, Count Leonberg…”

Benelia raised her eyes. The sleepy indifference was gone from their golden depths.

“For your family. For your children.”

Her index finger touched the king's face.

As Leonberg drew in a breath, she knocked her own king onto its side.

Tap.

The crowned piece rolled awkwardly across the chessboard.

Leonberg felt a flicker of contempt for the gesture, but he couldn't bring himself to rebuke her. There was something almost bloodthirsty in her gaze.

For an instant, the twenty-year-old princess looked to him like a lion baring its teeth.

“Not the Emperor.”

She met his eyes and spoke with quiet certainty.

“Serve the Empire.”

To follow her, she was saying, was to serve the Empire itself.

At those words, Leonberg felt he had been defeated.