“It’s good to be back,” I replied. The fighting had ended sooner than I’d expected it to, but it had still been several months since we’d seen each other, and I was more than a little happy that streak was at its end.
“I’m so glad you’re all right,” Licia said, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes.
“Sorry to make you worry,” I said.
“Don’t apologize. To ride into battle is a lord’s duty. I only wish I were more able to carry my own share of the burden as your wife…”
“You’re carrying plenty already. Don’t you realize how often you pull me out of the fire? I couldn’t get by without you, you know?” I replied. She seemed sad, so I did my best to cheer her up. Licia was still young, so it wasn’t surprising she’d had a hard time coping with the circumstances of the past few months.
“Y-You couldn’t get by…? Well…I-I feel the same way about you!” Licia bashfully insisted. It struck me that this was a pretty embarrassing conversation to be having in public. Good thing no one was around to listen.
“I’m so impressed with your contributions to the war this time, Ars,” said Licia. “You were responsible for Missian’s victory! I couldn’t be more proud to be your wife.”
“It was my retainers’ work, not mine,” I admitted. “The airship and Charlotte deserve all the credit, really.”
Licia and I had corresponded by letter over the course of the war. I’d ended up writing an awful lot about how the campaign was going, so she was well-informed about everything that had happened.
“You mean the retainers that you discovered with your power! It’s fair to say that their skills and accomplishments are your own!” Licia insisted. Personally, I thought she was going a little too far with that one. “But I do have to say, it’s astonishing just how much of a difference the airship made. It really is incredible, isn’t it?”
“It sure is. King Couran thought so too, so it looks like we’ll be making a few more of them in the near future.”
“I see! We’ll never lose a war again with a fleet of airships on our side.”
“Right?” I agreed with a nod.
For a moment, Licia hesitated. “When do you think the fighting will resume?” she nervously asked. “The War with Seitz isn’t over yet, is it?”
“No, but it’ll take quite a while to manufacture new airships, and to make sure things are calm and stable in Kuat and Purledo. I think it’ll be a good long time before it all starts up again.”
“O-Oh, I see!” Licia replied, a little relieved. She’d probably been worried that I’d barely be home at all before I had to head back out into battle again.
“I think I’ll be able to take it easy for a while, this time,” I said.
“I’m very glad to hear it,” Licia happily replied.
I was not able to take it easy. In fact, the upcoming days ended up being very busy for me.
The sources of my woes were the conquered counties of Purledo and Kuat. Couran dispatched officials to temporarily reign over them, but those officials hadn’t had much luck, and since Canarre was the closest county to them, we ended up being asked to send people over to lend a hand.
Purledo was in a fairly stable state, at least comparatively, but things had taken a turn for the worse in Kuat County, and its current rulers were having a very hard time asserting control. A few explosions had landed in the city during our bombing raid on Castle Kuat, and those explosions had done more damage than I’d expected, resulting in a number of civilian casualties. Those deaths hadn’t done the locals’ sentiment toward their new Missian rulers any favors, and signs pointed to the presence of a resistance that was beginning to form.
I ended up sending Mireille to help out in Kuat. I sort of just got the sense that out of all my retainers, she’d be the most qualified to put down a brewing rebellion. I also dispatched the Shadows to help her, on the off chance that someone was pulling the strings behind the uprising. I kept Pham back in Canarre, since we needed his skills to prevent any sabotage back home, but about seventy percent of the Shadows ended up making their way to Kuat, leaving me uncomfortably aware of how short-staffed we were in terms of counter-espionage on the home front.
Finally, since Mireille wouldn’t be able to manage Lamberg while she was away, I entrusted that territory to the Fujimiya siblings, who’d already been working as Mireille’s aides. They hadn’t been in my service for all that long, and I was a little worried that it was too soon to give them such an important role, so I sent Virge to Lamberg as well to support them as needed.
Purledo, meanwhile, I left in the hands of Thomas and Braham’s squad. The problems in Purledo weren’t as dire as those in Kuat, but they’d been having an escalating bandit problem, and the region seemed to be growing less and less safe by the day. Thomas and Braham’s soldiers’ skill sets were suited to rooting out brigands, so they seemed like just the right people for the job.
In the end, Canarre was left with a diminished staff who had to handle a veritable mountain of work. With Virge off in Lamberg, Rietz had lost his trusty administrative aide, which would have been a problem even if he wasn’t also taking on the workloads of several other people who’d had to go abroad. We were desperately in need of more staff, and I knew that I couldn’t just sit back and relax while things were this dire, so I started taking on a variety of chores and odd jobs that I often would’ve left to someone else to handle. Rietz was aghast when he found out─“Lord Ars, surely you must realize that such tasks are beneath you?!”─but I managed to turn him around in the end.
Licia was helping lighten the workload as well. She was smart, and a very quick learner, which let her pick up jobs that she’d ordinarily never be involved with and master them in no time at all. I don’t know how I would’ve gotten through my own mountain of tasks without her there to help me.
As for the airships, Couran made good on his word and brought craftsmen from all across Missian to help with their mass production. The current airship design wasn’t monstrously big, so it took a surprisingly brief period of time to churn one out, as long as you were familiar with the process. They’d put together a second airship in what felt like no time at all, and the goal was to build five in total. Considering how game-changing one airship had been, I knew that with five, our enemies wouldn’t stand a chance against us.