Chapter 1270: Eagle’s matters(3)
Chapter 1270: Eagle’s matters(3)
The Yarzat envoy rose with an unhurried air around him, offering a comfortable bow as the Emperor finally swept into the luxurious reception solar. The man had been made to wait for the better part of half an hour, surrounded by gilded trimmings and heavy silks reserved for the friend of Romelia.
"Your Imperial Majesty," the envoy murmured, his voice as smooth as the oiled hair Marcellus had.
Mesha offered a concise, imperial nod in return. "It has been quite some time, Ser." He glided toward the velvet high-backed chair and took his seat, letting the heavy folds of his state robes settle around him.
"Ser Aron," Keval muttered then from a halfstep behind the throne. The Spymaster gave a sharp, lordly nod that was entirely laced with an inquisitive gaze. Keval’s eyes practically peeled back the layers of the envoy’s appearance, dissecting everything from the quality of his southern tailoring to the precise angle of his formal boots.
Somehow, his uncle had never shared Mesha’s personal fondness for the ruler of Yarzat. Respect was certainly there, Keval was too clever a statesman to deny genius when he saw it, but there was zero love, and certainly no illusion of friendship.
Mesha wasn’t blind to the politics; he knew exactly what Yarzat could become, and seemingly wasbecoming, right on their southern border. Yet, the Emperor’s personal history with its sovereign did a massive amount of heavy lifting to dampen the cold suspicions that statecraft should have watered.
"Indeed it has been, Your Majesty," Ser Aron replied smoothly. He took his own seat only after the Emperor offered a lazy gesture of consent, completely unbothered by the heavy, soul-searching stare of the imperial uncle. "I only hope I have not uncharitably imposed upon Your Imperial Majesty’s dwindling hours. I would deeply loathe to disabuse the notion of your legendary hospitality."
"I would say we have broken bread enough times for that to be an impossibility, Aron," Mesha said, a ghost of a genuine smile touching his lips. "I always have time for our friends in Yarzat. And besides, you may yet find yourself hosted in our grand guest halls for the week, unless, of course, you intend to state your secret business and vanish the moment the sun falls past the horizon."
Ever since Romelia and Yarzat had struck their grand alliance, diplomatic correspondence had shifted from a rare formality into a constant, roaring river of ink. The profound cooperation between the two courts didn’t stop at a mere military pact to keep the peace. The construction of the Magna Strata, the colossal, all-weather stone highway joining the heart of Romelia directly to the capital of the Yarzat, may have been the southern prince’s original concept, but it had been fiercely pursued and mutually benefited by both crowns.
A highway that could be aggressively trudged upon by merchant caravans at all times of the year and through every bitter season had radically uplifted the trade volume between the two realms. They weren’t just trading fine soaps, textiles, and cider anymore; they were trading paper. Both Yarzat and Romelia shared a remarkably complex, ravenous state bureaucracy.
The administrative costs of running the empire had been practically halved thanks to the widespread adoption of pressed paper sheets instead of expensive animal-hide scrolls, cutting down the domestic expenditures of a court that was already suffering grievously from the crushing military costs of the late civil wars.
"Before we speak of the south, I must offer my profoundest congratulations for the Mad Dog’s long-awaited execution," Ser Aron said, his lips curling into a slight, deferential smile.
Had those exact words been uttered by any other foreign diplomat, Mesha would have instantly fished for a hidden, mocking meaning. He would have assumed it was a subtle insult regarding how a common bandit lord had managed to evade imperial justice for so long, subtly contrasted against the pristine, banditless highways of Yarzat. But when dealing with the envoys of the Fox, such defensive notions didn’t easily cross his mind; he simply owed too much to the man’s discretion.
"It is deeply warming to know that imperial justice has finally been served," Aron continued smoothly. "Tales of the beast’s viciousness and outright cruelty made their way all the way down to our southern ports, soiling the delicate ears of our ladies and fiercely spurring the warrior blood of our knights. We would have loved nothing more than to march our own lances north to aid you in hunting him, but unfortunately, we were disallowed from the notion by our own pressing circumstances."
And what a monstrous storm of circumstances they had been.Fighting a war for their own right to exist.
"And I must return the praise, Ser Aron. My highest decorations and congratulations for your spectacular victories against those vile southern princes," Mesha spoke next, his voice carrying a genuine ring of triumph. "When word first reached our halls that the very treaty we had dried our ink upon had been unilaterally and dishonorably broken by Oizen, we wished for nothing less than to watch that dishonor washed away in Oizen and Habadian blood. It is a profound pity my own army did not have the grand occasion to share the field of glory with yours."
Though you certainly had your hands full with that mad bastard of Kakunia, Mesha thought silently, feeling a sudden, sharp pang of political jealousy tighten in his gut.
He would have truly wished to share the field with him.
Still, whatever the case, the complete absence of a secondary war preparation had been a spectacular blessing for his recovering court. The Prince of Yarzat hadn’t dragged Romelia into a meat-grinder; he had merely asked them for a steady supply of manufactured armaments and a bit of logistical aid. It was a debt paid in iron and wagons, something vastly easier to lend than the lives of his remaining men, time and cost required to mobilise armies.
"The friendship of Romelia is a treasure my master holds above all others, Your Majesty. I am certain the grand chance for us to share a field will one day come. The Battle of the Ford may have been a spectacularly bloody affair, but yet more battles are to come."
"We have heard much of the Ford, and all of it harrowing," Mesha said, a genuine note of worry nesting in his voice, along of course with interest. As what he heard was not of the image he had of the prince of Yarzat. "I was told your master was wounded in the thick of battle and left with a grievous scar."
"A light one, thanks to the five gods’ mercy," Aron replied, "And I must humbly apologize for the correction. I wouldn’t wish to come across as uncharacteristically insolent in front of an Emperor and his esteemed lord uncle, but absolute honor demands that I do. It is no longer Prince Alpheo." He shifted in his velvet seat, his spine straightening. "It is King."
Keval found himself agape like a fool.
"What?"
"What?" echoed the Emperor of Romelia a heartbeat later, the word slipping from his lips like a dropped glass.
"My profoundest apologies once again," Ser Aron muttered, "It seems the news has not yet managed to travel past the northern border posts. A month ago, His Majesty was unanimously hailed as King of Yarzat by his loyal legions and his own leal lords, completely spurred by the miraculous victories against the vile Princely League." He offered a shallow, seated bow.
The silence that followed was so dense, so suffocatingly thick, that anyone in the room could have loudly dropped a fart and neither the Emperor nor the Spymaster would have even batted an eye to acknowledge it.
A king, Mesha echoed frantically in the hollow spaces of his mind. A king in the South, where absolutely nothing but principalities have stood since...since...forever.
Had the word merely come north through the gossiping mouths of passing merchant caravans, Mesha would have probably laughed and written it off as an absurdly exaggerated tavern rumor. And why wouldn’t he? None in the ancient, blood-soaked history of the South had ever attempted anything so wildly audacious; this was a staggering, unprecedented first.
Yet, out of all the cutthroat sovereigns of the continent, the Fox of Yarzat was seemingly the most comfortable choice for the maker of uncomfortable history.
When the initial shock began to recede, one objective reality remained staring them in the face. Alpheo most certainly possessed the vast lands, the crushing military power, and the terrifying prestige required to pull off such a stunt.
That was an unshakeable realization that all three men in the solar currently shared, alongside another monumentally important notion: What would Romelia’s answer to this be?
After all, a kingship only holds true value when the surrounding world recognizes the weight of the crown. Right now, the very next words that tumbled out of Mesha’s mouth would either solidify an eternal alliance or draw a line in the sand for a future war.
An agonizing heartbeat later, Mesha made his choice, one he knew he would live and die by.
"A king? In the South?" Mesha murmured, letting the words hang in the air.
Ser Aron’s chest went perfectly still, his breathing catching in his throat as his polished diplomatic facade tightened. His lungs only relaxed when the young Emperor allowed a broad, bright smile to break across his youthful features.
He had made his choice.
"Well," Mesha chuckled, leaning forward, "who else would have dared such a magnificent thing but our dearest friend? My highest, most profound congratulations to him, truly. The first true King in all of southern history."
He accepted it.
An imperceptible, deeply sour gaze crossed Keval’s face, his uncle’s jaw tightening as he watched the geopolitical landscape shift beneath their boots. Aron, by contrast, became the absolute epitome of jolliness, his chest swelling with relief.
"I am entirely certain my King will be deeply honored by the swift congratulations of the Emperor of Romelia," Aron said. A complex smile hung on the envoy’s lips, one that could have been interpreted as subtle mockery, triumphant satisfaction, or genuine warmth all the same. "My King already has in his immediate plans a much higher, more intimate degree of economic and military cooperation that will prove heavily fruitful for both our crowns."
"We are exceptionally eager to hear of them," Mesha said smoothly. It was the simple truth; every single grand plan the Fox had ever put his clever hands into had come out heavily lucrative for both sides, so the Emperor was genuinely fascinated to see what the man had engineered next.
"Before we delve into those grand designs, however," Ser Aron said, his voice dropping into a softer, more delicate register, "my King formally begets a small favor from his dearest friend. One that he highly hopes will be, if not accepted, at least deeply thought over."
Mesha raised his hand in a grand, permissive gesture. "Between true friends, favors are always to be expected."
The Yarzat envoy nodded, that uncomforting gaze returning to his eyes
"Indeed they are, Your Imperial Majesty. Indeed they are."