“―Your Majesty, Your Majesty, perhaps it is time to wake?”
The voice stirred Jircniv from his doze.
His fingers pinched at the bridge of his nose, and he yawned, followed by a grunt as he stretched himself out. Relief flowed through him as his stiff body loosened up and he yawned again.
“Your Majesty, it seems like you had a good rest, but are you still troubled?”
Jircniv shook his head at the man who had woken him up, the secretary Roune Varmilinen, who had been allowed to ride in the same carriage as the Emperor.
“Ah, no, it’s nothing like that. I still need some time to clear my head, I’m feeling better now. Although, it seems my afternoon nap took a fair bit longer than expected. Have I even slept that long since I was a child? After all, there’s a whole mountain of unfinished business back in the capital, and I never had the time to waste on that sort of thing… but now that I’ve begun this journey, I find that I no longer have anything to do. Perhaps I should thank Gown for this.”
“Ah, indeed, Your Majesty’s always busy, but why’s that?”
The man who spoke as though he wasn’t addressing the Emperor was the leader of the Empire’s Four Knights, Baziwood.
Normally, those words would have invited censure, but nobody in the carriage said anything.
Jircniv smiled bitterly and replied to his excessively informal, yet excellent subordinate:
“The blame for that can be laid at the feet of the Blood Emperor, because his reforms were pushed through too quickly for society to catch up with them. He is truly a foolish man. So much effort could have been saved if only he’d waited and accumulated a corps of competent men before taking action. You lot should scold him when you get the chance. Ah, but remember, when you do, you should suggest an appropriate course of action for him to take as well.”
Everyone in the cabin smiled wryly in response.
Originally, the administration of the Empire was left to the nobles ― in particular, the Court Council. Seats on the Council were entrusted to those who had been educated since birth to handle them, or to those with enough money to invent an appropriate reason to be awarded such responsibility. Given the benefits such positions conferred, that was only natural.
However, due to Jircniv’s purge of the nobles, the amount of officials and bureaucrats had been reduced, but the work that they had to do had only increased. While this was a logical consequence of such actions, it meant that the workload of everyone involved had increased explosively, and Jircniv himself was no exception.
It was only after he had done away with numerous worthless nobles by the power of the Blood Emperor that he realized that even such worthless individuals had their uses.
Still, he did not regret his decision.