The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom, Part III: Act 4, Chapter 3

The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom, Part III: Act 4, Chapter 3

Chapter 3

“Stop saying um. Did you become a Buddhist?”

“Don’t they say ‘Om’?”

Saye sent an unamused look across the table at her.

“I-I couldn’t help it!” Neia flopped listlessly onto one of the incalculably expensive-looking couches in her state room, “There were so many people watching me!”

“Aren’t you already used to speaking in front of crowds?”

“I am, but this is different. Plus, they were all Nobles! It felt as if a coven of Vampires was trying to suck something out of me.”

Every minute from the moment she entered the palace was exhausting. Usually, she could muster seemingly unlimited energy to speak with people, but interacting with Duke Debonei and his cohort was downright oppressive.

“Maybe they were using Skills,” Saye said.

“Skills?”

As far as Neia knew, Nobles didn’t have Skills. Only powerful warriors like her father and the elite Paladins did.

“Yeah,” Saye said. “A Skill. One that makes you go um. An Um Skill.”

“Th-that’s ridiculous. How can there be such a Skill?”

“Why not? It seems useful. It made you sound like an inferior orator and it was throwing you off.”

That’s true, but...

Only Demihumans and Heteromorphs had weird Skills. Humans were normal.

Neia rolled over to face the backrest of her couch. She was so tired she could barely think.

“At least our strategy worked,” she said.

“Kind of,” Saye replied. “We knew that they would probably use the trade agreement to hook us. How things play out hinges on us proving how useful we’ll be to them.”

Their strategy – if one could call it that – had been to take advantage of the idea that she was an unsophisticated commoner. This in itself wasn’t exactly wrong when she compared herself to the Nobles, but it felt odd nonetheless. Neia restricted herself to a few talking points and feigned ignorance or disinterest in everything else. This, in turn, would cause the Nobles to frame her as a certain type of ‘asset’ and focus on discerning her usefulness as one. In all, it wasn’t hard to accomplish since Saye’s coaching similarly focused on topics related to what they were going for and Neia had no confidence talking to the Nobles about anything else anyway.

Additionally, Saye used Spellsongs to increase Neia’s competency for the duration of the discourse, which the Bard disguised as the ‘tuning’ at the beginning of dinner and between songs. Since Nobles were used to treating servants and performers as ‘invisible’ or part of the background, they hadn’t noticed at all – they only praised the quality and breadth of the musical selection that they were supposed to hear.

Wait, doesn't that mean I'm the only one that looked bad back there?

“Miss Baraja,” Mrs Diaz entered the drawing room, “would you like to have a bath drawn?”

“I’m fine, thank you. Saye used that towel thing on me before we got off the carriage. I just want to sleep.”

“I’ll prepare everything right away,” Mrs Diaz said.

The sound of Saye’s lute filled the chamber with a soft melody. Neia flipped over to eye the Bard.

“You performed throughout dinner without breaks,” Neia said. “Aren’t you tired of playing that thing?”

“No.”

“What do you think will happen tomorrow?”

“Not much. The Nobles need time to put together a satisfactory force for their test, so we have the Merchants’ negotiations and that’s about it...I think.”

“In that case,” Mister Moro said from where he was attending to them, “would you like to speak to the people, Miss Baraja?”

Hmm...

Now that she had some sense of how her words affected people in various situations, she was actually hesitant to speak in Rimun. Everyone seemed content as they were and it would feel devastating to have her message fall on deaf ears when so many of her followers were around. Furthermore, she was still reworking key points in her message so that they were more applicable in times of peace.

“Instead of public speaking,” Neia said, “could we visit members of the Sorcerer King Rescue Corps? I’d like to see how they’ve applied His Majesty’s wisdom to their everyday lives.”

“Of course, Miss Baraja.”

That would probably help. Hopefully, she would be able to understand what was going on.

The following morning, Neia found herself lying abed in a solar that immediately induced anxiety in her. It was so big and fancy that it may as well have been a manor in itself. She couldn’t recall how she had gotten there.

After a long stretch and a yawn, she rolled out of bed and went to peek through the curtains. It was already mid-morning. Outside, a small army of gardeners and their assistants worked to restore the palace grounds to their former glory. Pretty much everything had been churned up by the Demihumans’ activity, putting the gardens, parks, and venues into a dire state of disrepair.

Neia left the window and went looking for her clothes, finding most of them draped over a chair nearby. Mrs Diaz appeared with her freshly ironed shirt.

“Good Morning, Miss Baraja,” the buxom woman smiled.

“Good Morning, Mrs Diaz. Oh, you’re growing out your hair – I didn’t notice yesterday since you had it up.”

“Keeping it short would remind me of my days imprisoned by Jaldabaoth’s armies, so I figured I’d let it grow until it starts to annoy me.”

For some reason, the longer hair made her seem gloomier than usual, but her choice was more than understandable.

“Did I miss anything?”

“The Merchants left to conduct their negotiations in the warehouse district at dawn.”

“Ugh, I should have gone with them...”

“Mister Moro went along,” Mrs Diaz carefully placed Neia’s shirt over a chair before going to make her bed. “None of the Nobles were present so it’s probably for the best that you didn’t go.”

“I see. What about Saye?”

“She’s in the solar office. That girl refuses to stray very far from you, so you two must be very close. She’s astonishingly strong, as well. Mister Moro has a bad back so she carried you from the couch in the drawing room to your bed.”

“Saye slept in the office? Honestly, this bed is so stupidly huge that she could have–hmm...have you seen my mask?”

Mrs Diaz’s gloomy look faded as she smiled slightly.

“Why, it’s on your face, Miss Baraja.”

Neia’s hand went to her face. She hadn’t even noticed that the mask was there. Her face really was going to disappear, at this rate.

Does that mean Saye left it on my face on purpose?

“It depends on what you think is desirable,” Saye replied. “Due to the aggressive pursuit of its imbalanced policies, the Baharuth Empire is a country of haves and have-nots and the vast majority of its people are a part of the latter. Its people believe in their version of meritocracy, and that also means they believe that those have-nots deserve to be in the situation that they’re in. Even the have-nots believe that they just have to work harder to cross over to the other side of the economic fence. In reality, their economy isn’t much stronger than Re-Estize’s and the Empire just came up with a way to justify one person being rich at the expense of a thousand others.”

“But how can that be? No one ever portrays Re-Estize in the same light as Baharuth.”

“Because they would be insane to do so. The difference between the Kingdom and the Empire is that the Empire was much better at organising their resources and they put those resources to good use. Also, the Empire conveniently doesn’t have a powerful criminal syndicate feeding off of them like Re-Estize does. After six generations or so, the gulf between them has become so vast that most wouldn’t imagine that they’re roughly equal in economic terms.

“Also, what Merchants and the like – who serve as the primary source of information from foreign lands – see is what the Empire wants them to see. Someone visiting Arwintar stays in the First or Second-class Districts, depending on what their business is. They don’t go to the Third and Fourth-class districts where all the poor people are, nor would they ever want to. Those parts of the city rarely see any security patrols, if ever.”

That almost sounds like how things are here these days...

Due to the Holy Kingdom’s limited resources, public services went to the most ‘valuable’ places. It was almost as if people didn’t deserve a decent quality of life if they were poor.

“Mister Moro,” Neia said, “is it like that around Rimun, too?”

“To an extent,” the middle-aged man replied. “Miss Saye paints a dire picture, but the truth is that no country in existence can afford to provide high-quality public services to every single one of their citizens. That is, unfortunately, reality.”

“But that sort of inequality feels unjust,” Neia frowned. “There must be a better way.”

“I suppose it is a matter of expectations, Miss Baraja,” Mister Moro said. “As you’ve noted, you harbour the biases of urban society. People in the city expect regular patrols and sentries at every corner, well-stocked markets, a temple on every fourth block and all sorts of other amenities. Nine out of ten people in the Holy Kingdom do not live in the cities, however. A patrol coming by once every other week to check in on their village is fine. So long as there’s a temple within a day’s walking distance, they feel that their spiritual and medical needs are met. If they need specialised goods and services, then they go to the local town which is a day away, at most. In their minds, they have everything that they need.”

“That seems like an excuse,” Neia said. “They’re fine with it because they don’t know better and others take advantage of that to put their resources to use elsewhere.”

“I believe that was the rationale of our late Holy Queen, Miss Baraja. Some may even assert that it was a condescending viewpoint, so it may be advisable to reserve those notions for another time – especially considering that we’re dealing with the conservative camp.”

Why does everything have to be so complicated? No, that’s wrong. It only seems complicated because we currently lack the strength to uphold our justice.

Weakness was a sin that facilitated iniquity and the suffering that it wrought. Strength was required to enact true change and maintain it.

Their carriage slowed as they crossed into the common area inside Rimun’s walls. Neia still quite couldn’t believe what she saw. By almost every measure, the port city – which was perhaps a fifth the size of Hoburns before the war – had eclipsed the capital. The streets and markets were as busy as ever and the masts of ships filled with cargo could be seen peeking up over the southern wall. Rimun had already left the war behind while Hoburns only continued to deteriorate in its aftermath.

“Who are we visiting first?” Neia asked.

Mister Moro produced a folded parchment from his coat pocket.

“I’ve taken the liberty of spreading you out,” he said. “We’ll be seeing people in different parts of the city so that you can, in turn, be seen. Our first stop is the workshop of one Jan Soto in the southeastern quarter.”

“The industrial quarter, huh...what does he do?”

“Mister Soto runs a lumber yard with three hundred employees.”

Wood and wood products were some of the only exports that the south purchased from the north, so Mister Soto sounded like an extremely wealthy man. She wondered if all of his employees also followed His Majesty’s wisdom.

Would that be genuine? Or would it essentially be coercion?

Their carriage came in front of a workshop – or, rather, several workshops – attached to a yard the size of a city block. Just before they stopped, a well-dressed man with a mop of brown hair came running out the nearest door. He fidgeted nervously as Neia and her party disembarked, bobbing his head several times as she approached.

“Miss Baraja, I’m sorry that you had to come all the way here for us.”

“Ah, no,” Neia bobbed her head several times, “I’m sorry for imposing on you like this, Mister Soto.”

“I-It’s no imposition at all,” Mister Soto bobbed his head back. “We’re honoured that you’ve taken an interest in our work!”

Neia jumped mid-head-bob as Saye poked her in the ribs. Mister Soto was too preoccupied with bobbing his head to notice. A small crowd started to gather at the spectacle. Mister Moro cleared his throat.

“Mister Soto...”

“Ah, of course. Please, this way.”

They were led into an office that had all of its doors and windows opened, yet remained miserably hot. Mister Soto crossed the building to enter the yard behind it, which was filled with people hard at work.

“I don’t remember this facility being here before,” Neia said.

“It wasn’t, Miss Baraja,” Mister Soto said. “But demand for our goods was seemingly unlimited during reconstruction. In accordance with the wisdom of the Sorcerer King, my sons and I worked as hard and as long as we could every day, challenging ourselves to grow stronger. All of the training that the Sorcerer King Rescue Corps conducted during the war undoubtedly helped.”

“In what ways would you say that it helped?” Neia asked.

“Well, we became physically stronger as a result of that training. That, in turn, gave us an undeniable edge over our competitors. Can you imagine eating and sleeping the same as everyone else yet being able to accomplish twice as much? Er, I guess you could, Miss Baraja, but it was a complete mystery to anyone who didn’t understand His Majesty’s wisdom.”

It made sense for physically intensive vocations. One could use the strength that they gained from the war in their profession. The Sorcerer King Rescue Corps was the only group amongst Roble’s defenders that spent most of their free time out of battle training to become stronger, so the performance of its members probably couldn’t be replicated by anyone else.

“Anyway,” Mister Soto continued, “between our profits and the Crown’s recognition of our performance, we slowly started buying up the empty shops and yards in the area. After that, we moved on to our competitors. Eventually, we consolidated all of the lumber workshops in the city under us and we were even granted some of the woodlands around the city by the Crown.”

He’s sort of like Mister Lousa, except for lumber.

“That’s amazing,” Neia said.

“It’s all thanks to the Sorcerer King,” Mister Soto said. “His Majesty is truly great.”

“What about your employees?” Neia asked, “Have they come to realise the Sorcerer King’s greatness, as well?”

“Not at first, but they eventually came around to it. It was hard to ignore the fact that normal people just like them were doing so much more than they could. We did more work at a higher quality and got paid accordingly. People who heeded His Majesty’s wisdom went from barely getting by to being able to buy abandoned properties in the good parts of town, fix them up, and furnish them. They can afford what their families deserve and go to bed without worrying about the next day.”

Hearing his account was truly edifying. The Sorcerer King’s wisdom was unlike the ways they had before the war where one could only tighten their belts and suffer what they must whenever hardship came along. For the first time ever, they could take control of their lives and forge their own destinies.

Mister Soto stopped occasionally to speak with people and show off their work as they laboured in the shaded areas set up around the yard. For some reason, unassuming things like frames for housing and even planks had a sense of being masterfully made.

“Your workshops produce really high-quality items,” Saye said.

“Don’t they?” Mister Soto grinned, “I don’t mean to brag, but our business has the distinction of having two certified grandmasters. At the rate that things are progressing, we’ll have over a dozen by next year.”

“Won’t that make your products common enough to affect the price?”

“Only if we stick to local markets. There’s a whole world out there that’ll purchase goods of grandmaster quality. We haven’t been dropping our prices at all: instead, we’ve been stockpiling inventory for the fleet. Our ship is literally coming in.”

Neia couldn’t help but be impressed by Mister Soto’s good business sense. While the trade fleets were run by the Holy Kingdom’s people, one could rightly say that Rimun and Debonei were merely tiny ports of call along the fleet’s massive trade route. The majority of their business was conducted in the distant southeast and exporting any goods from the Holy Kingdom would help bring in more wealth from there.

After two hours or so, their tour brought them back out of the yard and across the street. There, Neia was surprised to find a second, smaller yard where dozens of men were drilling and sparring with practice spears.

“What’s this?” She asked.

“It’s not exactly the same as our time in the army,” Mister Soto said, “but we’re continuing to strengthen ourselves using a training regimen similar to what we followed during the war. It works just as good now as it did then; even the new employees show improvement within weeks so long as they don’t slack off.”

“Mister Bertrand,” Neia turned to the former steward, “is every member of the Sorcerer King Rescue Corps following similar routines?”

“The specifics vary according to vocation, but yes, everyone that I’ve personally spoken to.”

Neia sent her gaze over the rows of men training in the yard. All of them were at least as strong as the average career soldier in the Royal Army. Perhaps the Nobles’ reaction to her statement about noncombatants wasn’t concern over her unwillingness to commit, but disappointment over the fact that she wouldn’t mobilise a two-hundred-thousand-strong army of battle-hardened veterans to sweep aside all opposition.