Queensmen

Chapter 37

~Traitor~

It was always cold in the mornings, especially during spring. Everything would be wet with dew and the floors would be damp from the atmosphere's humour.

The furniture would need a wipedown once the waking bell was rung, and the books in the library would require daily shining to keep the moss and lichen away once the raining season arrived.

But it was cool, and that was a blessing compared to the summer heat and winter chill.

Inae was quite a strange place, located in the center of what millennia ago was a dessert. It rained, it snowed and it hailed without warning yet in the end such a land ended up housing the capital of the New World.

Till now, no one could believe it. Hermes II had conquered all the states behind the Great Sea and unified them under one banner, and he had done so all before he was eight and twenty.

His army had been raised with the same hands that had slain all who had opposed him. His adoptive mother had been his only ally yet somehow he had worked his way up from a no-name soldier in his father's army to Emperor in one decade.

The world was as astounded as it was terrified, but the head maid of the Inae Royal Palace was too busy losing her voice from screaming to take note of the change. A sturdy ruler in her hand, she pointed furiously at the maids scurrying about in front of her.

The waking bell hadn't even rung yet the throne room was bustling with activity.

"Move it, move it. We don't have time to waste," she smacked the ruler hard on her own palm. "The prince... I mean, The Emperor is arriving in Heshera today. This will be the home of the new royal family, nothing can go wrong. If it does, you'll pay with your very heads!"

All the maids paused for a moment to nod their heads and curtsey before returning to their business, dragging wet rags over furniture and drying the dew-covered floors.

"Get rid of everything with a lotus design!"

"Replace the gold cups with Jade cups."

"Hang up purple curtains in the dividing hall."

"Arrange for two seats to be placed on each side of the throne."

Seeing that her instructions were being followed to the letter, Mii allowed herself to be relieved. The Emperor's coming arrival had been announced unexpectedly in an imperial degree. He had just left for the State of Orse two weeks ago and yet he was already returning. It was unprecedented in all of the world's war history and some rumours said that he won without the enemy putting up a fight.

With a tight grip on her disciplinary ruler, she swerved to the right and exited the throne room to check on the kitchens. Most wouldn't know that the tough, cold-blooded Emperor never ate meat, they wouldn't even guess it. But she knew all his habits, it was why she had been put in charge of all the departments in the palace even though there were others more qualified.

It was not as though there was a line of people waiting to snatch the job from her though, being the head meant bearing all the responsibilities when mistakes were made. Everyone knew that any head could roll in the the presence of the Emperor, even hers.

It was the reason no one questioned his self-appointed title even though he had yet to be officially crowned. The last free state had fallen, no one could resist now. Opposition would be as futile as splitting a mountain with a snowball.