I looked at the empress, then at the general, then at everyone else and let my head tilt to the side.
“It’s been about ten days since I last met with Your Imperial Majesty.”
“To be precise, it’s been eight days,” she said.
“The topic of spirits had come up well before then,” I continued.
“Yes. And?”
“So why have the people in the imperial palace not raised their spirits further? Do none of you give them mana? Your Majesty’s spirits are still so small, and the spirits of the people over there look like they’re about to disappear.” The chancellor’s little earth spirit was already half gone. Do you even realize that the Royal in your area is the Earth Queen? Are you trying to pick a fight? “They aren’t going to give spirits to people who ignore them and don’t even feed them food.”
“O-Oh, well, we’ve...been a bit busy, you see,” the empress said.
“Right. We’re much busier than you country bumpkins,” scoffed Chancellor Dalimore.
“And that’s more important than your spirits? So important that you couldn’t spare the tiniest bit of time to feed them?”
“We’re talking about work that is vital to the running of the empire. Of course it’s more important,” the chancellor said.
“This is why children shouldn’t be involved in these talks,” muttered his aide.
The empress was sitting speechless, her eyes wide, while the general was frowning with his arms crossed. At least they understood that it was bad. Unfortunately, there was an unscalable wall between the imperial palace staff who had never met the Royal Spirits and whose only spirit beasts were those owned by the chief and deputy mages, and those of us living in our castle where we saw spirit beasts every day.
Ugh... I guess my quest is far from complete after all. The path to harmony between humans and spirits is long indeed.
“Then why do you require spirits?” Chris asked with an angelic carefree smile.
What was that face? He looked like he was challenging them. Should I join him in battle?
“As a proof of your status?” I asked. “As an accessory?”
“The Belisario children seem very taken with the spirits,” the chancellor said with narrowed eyes.
“It may be necessary for you living out in the countryside, but we have magic tools that reduce our need to use magic,” his aide added.
“So you don’t need the spirits, then?” I said. “Okay, I’ll make sure to tell Her Sacred Majesty that.”
The air went cold the moment I said those words.
Take that! Flash freeze!
“You can speak to the Spirit Queen?”
“Are you able to meet with her that easily?”
The chancellor and his two aides were staring at me in shock.
Hey, I’m the one who should be surprised here. Didn’t the empress already mention that we were invited to the Water King’s domain?
“Ah, I must not have told you about it,” Her Majesty cut in. “I’ve been so abnormally busy the past few days, you see, that I forgot to inform you. This is the child who received the blessing of the Water Spirit King and who has also received the backing of all the Royal Spirits of our empire.”
Huh? Was this...deliberate? Were the empress and the chancellor engaged in a power struggle? I was still acting like a child around my father, so I wasn’t well-informed on those sorts of conflicts. But I was sure that Chris would tell me anything he knew that was important, and there had to be a reason for why his and father’s moods had suddenly soured dramatically. Why, though?
“It appears not all the members of the imperial court are fully informed on the current situation,” father said. “There are only four Royal Spirits, so the Earth Queen is in charge of not just the capital, but also the surrounding territories. Your family, Count Dalimore, lives in the territory of Marquess Trier, which neighbors the capital. Were the Earth Queen to hear that you do not believe you need spirits, then she would ensure that the spirits who live there would not approach humans.”
Father’s words had clearly ruffled the feathers of the chancellor and his aides, their hostility far from hidden. The other aides had looked nervous from the start of this whole argument, and the court mages had visited our castle several times over by now, so they all had to know the situation.
“Are you saying that the reason all the spirits disappeared from this forest was to prevent them from approaching us?” the chancellor demanded.
“Is it not highly likely that Her Sacred Majesty is angry?” father countered.
“There is also something you appear to be forgetting...” Chris was directing his signature smile at the chancellor again! This nine-year-old boy was flashing a cold smile at an empire’s chancellor! This was about to give me a heart attack for more than one reason!
“We have been told that areas with large spirit populations are guaranteed to have a bountiful harvest,” Chris began. “The Earth Queen guaranteed that this year’s produce in the March of Belisario would be blessed. Starting from next year, several other regions will also have successful harvests, I imagine—apart from those lands on the edges of the imperial capital it seems.”
“Are you insinuating that we would be to blame?!” spat the chancellor.
“Not simply insinuating.”
H-Hold on. This isn’t like you, Chris. Why are you so angry?
That wasn’t to say that I wasn’t mad too—both at the empress for using the spirits in her silly power struggles and at the chancellor for acting so flippantly toward them, even though all it would’ve taken was a bit of interest to have realized he was missing a report.
Isn’t this pretty bad? On the one hand, we had the imperial princes unable to obtain even their first spirits, while on the other, we Belisario children had managed to gather spirits of every element. Then there was the empress, who had angered the Royal Spirits, versus my dear papa here, who was building a good relationship with the Water King, even if it was through his child.
If the imperial capital ended up falling to ruin because of all of this, were we not at real risk of the empire splitting into two?
“The capital’s impending desertification is of far more importance to us than whether there are or aren’t spirits,” the chancellor said.