Chapter 89#
Chaise a la ReineChapter 89#
It had been a few weeks since the night they consummated their relationship, a night that had proved shocking in more ways than one. Nearly a month had gone by since the first week of the Grand Feaute had concluded, yet the court was still reeling from its aftermath.
Each day, mountains of documents were delivered to the Emperor’s office, only to be swept away again. The officials, constantly coming and going with papers in hand, looked like worker ants diligently transporting food.
It had only been a week of neglecting affairs of state, but the backlog resembled that of a month-long holiday. Dealing with the administrative vacuum left by the festival was enough of a burden, but when combined with the duties that had been pushed aside in favor of the Grand Feaute over the past few weeks, the workload became dizzying.
However, it was not as though the festival’s aftermath could be indefinitely postponed. Between tasks, they conducted audits of the festival budget, which had been executed on a national scale, devised special measures to stabilize the capital’s prices after a temporary inflation from the games, and summoned merchants and city leaders who had dutifully fulfilled their roles during the Feast of Fire to the palace to bestow commendations.
The Emperor was overwhelmingly busy. He often canceled other engagements and returned to his office even after dinner.
Of course, it was not as though Eugène had been idle during this time. Far from it, as he had been equally busy. What had initially been marked as a ‘temporary’ appointment as Custodian of the Imperial Scepter had, before he realized it, become his official title.
Traditionally, the Custodian of the Imperial Scepter also functioned as the Emperor’s plenipotentiary envoy. The title sounded grand, but in reality, there was no clear definition of its authority or scope.
It was a role as ambiguous as it was elastic; what one might call a nose ring if hung on the nose, or an earring if hung on the ear, and the Emperor exploited that very ambiguity to his greatest advantage.
As a result, Eugène became an envoy who did absolutely everything the Emperor ordered.
“If you are on the imperial payroll, you must earn your keep.”
The Emperor would say with a most tender smile as he piled mountains of paperwork into Eugène’s arms.
“But since this is your first time, we shall begin with something simple.”
And so, Eugène found himself burdened with countless miscellaneous tasks. He sometimes handled ‘simple’ accounting, assisted with the ‘simple’ oversight of executive personnel when Baron Bouilhet was otherwise engaged, and occasionally mediated ‘simple’ disputes between government ministries under orders from the Emperor.
Despite being thrown into these duties without preparation, he carried them out with considerable finesse. Drawing on his practical sense from attending political affairs meetings over the past months, his long-term administrative experience as a Navy Admiral, and his natural competence, he completed the tasks assigned to him so efficiently that the Emperor never needed to issue the same command twice.
That said, the Emperor never offered praise. But judging by the fact that a man who would certainly have said something if dissatisfied merely continued assigning tasks without a word, it seemed he was not displeased.
Then, one day, Eugène found himself with a rare moment of respite during work and had a brief conversation with Baron Bouilhet. Casually, he shared his thoughts. In response, Baron Bouilhet gave a rather strange reaction.
“Depending on the case, that is not necessarily so,”
Baron Bouilhet began, his expression ambiguous to the point of inscrutability.
“In the case of Baron Amieux, His Majesty is certainly pleased. You have received a more favorable response than anyone I have ever seen in the position.”
Then, he looked at Eugène with an expression tinged with inexplicable sorrow.
“…ln many ways, it is quite grievous.”
He gaZed at EUgène in Silence for a moment, then finally let oUt a deep Sigh and Spoke.
Eugène coujd not begin to understand what the Emperor had been observing, or why His Majesty’s satisfaction with his work shoujd be a cause for grief. But Baron Bouijhet, who rarejy showed emotion, had jooked so genuinejy sorrowfuj that Eugène coujd not bring himsejf to ask further.
“l do not know what haS happened, bUt Stay Strong.”
Though Eugène did not understand the circumstances, he kindjy comforted Baron Bouijhet. Baron Bouijhet sijentjy nodded at the objivious consojation offered by a man who, had he onjy been a woman, coujd have put an end to his jong-standing worries in an instant.
“Thank you for your kindness.”
The sole cause of all my sorrow is you alone– Baron Bouilhet recalled an ancient lament passed down from the Old Kingdom Era and gave a quiet, bitter smile.
TA5E1n
He swore it. He had not intended for those words to reach the Emperor.
When common citizens thought of the Emperor, they pictured a man of absolute power. But they were utterly ignorant of the price he paid to maintain that power.
Fortunately, Eugène, having once served as admiral, was not as naive as the general public, but even he had not fully grasped the intensity of the Emperor’s duties until he had begun serving him directly.
Nowadays, he was thoroughly disabused of that former ignorance, but at the cost of learning firsthand what it meant to be crushed under the weight of labor.
From rifling through so many papers and scrolls, the tips of his fingers had developed hangnails despite the season not being dry. Though he faced the Emperor daily for work, the two of them were so busy that there was no room for personal time.
Weeks passed this way, and before long, even the storm-like memory of their second kiss, let alone the sharp recollection of that first night, began to fade from Eugène’s mind.
Perhaps it was because of that… that I made such a mistake.
Eugène thought regretfully.
That day, too, he had been crushed beneath a murderous workload. At the time, he had been assigned to a task utterly unfamiliar to him: tax accounting. The first round of taxes, collected after the winter wheat harvest in the Eastern Provinces, had recently arrived in the capital. Since there were too few hands to process it, Eugène had been enlisted in a hurry.
The region was known for its vast and fertile lands, said to be able to feed the entire Empire on its yield alone. And indeed, the tax revenue was as massive as rumored. But due to a shortage of properly trained local officials, most of the accompanying documents were so poorly prepared that even basic accounting had not been done.
This dropped a fire onto the feet of the Ministry of Finance, which had just managed to wrap up the remnants of the Grand Feaute’s tasks. Its officials were once again mobilized en masse to work around the clock.
Even so, they were so short-handed that the Empire went so far as to conscript hereditary tax collectors from nearby cities, a truly unprecedented move. For Eugène, who had become the Emperor’s all-purpose civil servant in everything but name, there was no escaping the call.
“When would be a good time, then?”
It was in the midst of this chaos that the Emperor posed a question.
“For what, Your Majesty?”
Eugène, struggling with unfamiliar figures, managed only to register that the Emperor was speaking to him, likely to saddle him with yet another task, as if he had no conscience. Still, he dutifully responded.
“Our first time passed in such a rush that We thought to give you some time. But no matter how long We wait, there seems to be no sign of a second time. We do not know how to interpret this. We understand you are busy, but you are far too indifferent. Are you not entirely neglecting Us?”
Indeed, the Emperor’s question was nothing short of shameless. Had Eugène been in his right mind, he might have fiercely protested by asking if, after being worked to the bone with paperwork at his desk until he collapsed into bed each night, he was now also expected to serve in the Emperor’s bed.
But Eugène was too preoccupied to think straight, caught up in deciphering the chaotic reports, which at times even featured Shaak-style bookkeeping methods.
“I do not intend to do it again anytime soon.”
And so, he uttered a remark he would never have made under normal circumstances.
While processing documents with his mind, he had only half an ear on the Emperor’s words. Though he understood their meaning, he gave them no deeper thought. The response escaped him reflexively, as if he were plugging numbers into a fixed equation to arrive at an answer.
The Emperor, seated across from him, fell silent for a moment upon hearing his reply. But Eugène, too preoccupied with his work, failed to notice even that.
“…Why is that?”
“Your Majesty was far too unskilled, and it placed considerable strain on my body. Attempting such a thing while burdened with this much work would be excessively exhausting—…”
It was only as Eugène neared the end of his sentence, his pen moving busily to revise the colonial Shaak-style bookkeeping into Estinian form, that he finally realized what he was saying.
The pen in his hand froze mid-air as he turned completely rigid. The language center of his brain, long dormant from being buried under endless numbers, flickered back to life, and the conversation he had just had with the Emperor replayed in full. “I want to do it again. When might that be?” the Emperor had asked. “Not for a while. Because you’re terrible at it,” he had replied.
“……”
A dark blot of ink spread across the document he had been working on. He had been gripping his quill so tightly that the nib was crushed beyond repair. Eugène rubbed his ink-stained fingers, now smeared from index to middle, with his thumb, then slowly set the pen down and looked around.
He was worried if there was anyone in the same room who had overheard this conversation, but luckily, no one was there. It seemed the ever-cautious Emperor had dismissed the attendants before broaching the subject.
They were alone in the imperial office for once. The Emperor, perched on the edge of the desk across from him, had his arms folded over his chest and was staring intently at Eugène.
“May We ask what exactly you meant by what you just said?”
The Emperor’s tone, excessively gentle to the point of being ominous, demanded an answer.
“…Your Majesty.”
“Why are you struggling to respond? Surely you do not believe We would be upset with you over such a trivial matter, do you?”
As Eugène hesitated, utterly unsure of how to salvage the situation, the Emperor chuckled and added that there was no need to be so tense over something so minor.
To the unknowing, that smile might have seemed benevolent enough to deserve a halo, but his eyes were not smiling in the slightest.
He is obviously upset. Eugène thought, growing glum, though he would never dare say it aloud. Still, even he had to admit the Emperor had every reason to be upset, so there was no excuse he could offer.
In Eugène’s opinion, the real offense was not in having thought the Emperor was unskilled, but in having said it out loud. Regardless of rank, matters of intimacy were always a sensitive subject for men, tied as they were to pride and instinct. And to have said it to someone like the Emperor, whose pride was so formidable… To be told to his face that he had performed poorly, how could that not wound his pride?
“I apologize.”
Eugène, ever upright, offered no excuses like ‘That is not what I meant,’ or ‘I misheard Your Majesty while reading through documents.’ He gave a forthright, unambiguous apology for what had been, without doubt, a blunder on his part.
… So he really does think I am no good at it.
The Emperor, witnessing this, was deeply shocked.
In truth, the reason he had not expressed any intention for a second time until now was precisely because he had been trying to read Eugène’s reactions.