With their skills, I would be comfortable leaving them as Nia’s guards. After all, I was going to be incredibly busy once we got to Stonegaze—I wouldn’t always be by Nia’s side. On the other hand, it was rarer for Laura and Tom not to be with Nia, especially when she was out and about.
I mean of course, as the wife of a viscount, Nia would be assigned guards, but they would be from the brigade, and I had no clue what those people would be like. Honestly, I couldn’t be sure what the brigade would think of me either. Which was why I was checking Laura’s and Tom’s skills rather than trusting someone whose strength was a complete unknown to me.
My other reason for our training was to resharpen their senses. The two were always keeping an eye on everything around Nia, so I knew they’d be able to pick out any suspicious people near her. The problem was that things had been a little too peaceful as of late, so I was worried that their defensive senses and ability to time their counterattacks might have been dulled. That was why I’d had us fight two-on-one. And their reactions had, in fact, improved in the last half of the battle.
Oh, but in their defense, they were still pretty damn strong off the bat. I hadn’t been able to end things with my first attack, after all. But even saying that, I was sure we could get their senses to be even sharper.
“So that’s why we’ll be doing this every morning from tomorrow on.”
“S-Seriously...? I mean, I’ll do it, but,” Tom grimaced at my declaration before nodding. I wasn’t threatening him or anything. He just understood the power dynamics at play here, so he was doing as I said. It’s not like I was forcing him to do anything completely unreasonable.
“Don’t worry. I don’t want to tire you out physically and cause problems during the move, so I’ll keep the lengths short,” I reassured him.
“Sounds nice, but you can’t fool me,” he glowered. “I did notice how you slipped the words ‘physically’ and ‘lengths’ in there.”
“Oh, good job. Yeah, it’ll be quality over quantity. I’m gonna be figuring out your limits before you get hurt or die, so just know that by the end of it, your nerves will probably be totally shot.”
“Could you try not saying scary things with a smile on your face?!”
It looked like he couldn’t help but screech at me. Yup. His energy is a good thing.
I glanced over at Nia as I thought that, and she gave me a little nod before speaking. “It’s okay, you can do it, Tom. And I’m sure you’ll be protecting me a lot more once we’re there, so it will relieve me to see just how dependable you are.”
“Princess... Okay. Old Tom here’ll do his best!”
When Nia encouraged him with a smile, he straightened right up and gave her a good reply. He switched back to “Princess” from “Madam,” but it’d be tactless for me to point it out.
Anyway, it really seemed like a good idea to leave the emotional management of the servants to Nia. I’d need to be able to do things like that with them one day, but at this point, the lengths of time we’d been together was just too different. But they were already opening up to me a little bit more compared to before, so things were improving on that front.
“Ah! I’m sure you knew, but I’ll be relying on you too, Laura.”
“Yes, of course I knew. Just leave your safety to me, Princess.”
Nia remembered to bring Laura into the conversation too. Go Nia. But compared to Tom’s slipups on how he referred to Nia, Laura was definitely intentionally using “Princess” here. But I’d ignore it, because I was afraid to point it out. There was no doubt that Laura was devoted to her mistress, so that was all I needed to know.
“I’ll be busy once we get there, so Nia and I will probably be separated from each other quite often. I’m really counting on the two of you,” I added. I’d learned the importance of building things like this up from His Highness Prince Alphonse. It was why his subordinates looked up to him despite him always asking for the impossible.
“That’s right. You’ll be busy having meetings with the brigade, and I’ll need to go and greet all of my acquaintances,” Nia agreed, her tone a tad worried. That was the reason why we’d be splitting up.
The region that was becoming my viscounty, the province of Stonegaze, was actually a group of regions: Stonegaze, Stonehunt, and Diamoncut. And, as I’d learned during Nia’s quiz battle with Lady Emilia, my new wife had personally been there. Due to her past efforts as Sylvario’s princess in trying to solve their problems, all the citizens, village leaders, and town leaders had a good impression of her, so she was going to travel to ask them for their help in governance.
But of course, since Princess Sonia was currently considered missing and possibly dead, we couldn’t have the fact that she was still alive become public. That was where Nia’s conversational skills and natural virtues came into play, and knowing her, I wasn’t worried. Once again, go Nia.
“I would accompany you, but I’m pretty sure if you were to tell them that the Black Wolf was coming, then they’d probably stress or go on the defensive or possibly even get scared.”
Unfortunately, it was really easy to imagine this happening. In the first place, the reason why I had been made lord of the region was in the hopes that the negative reputation my nickname came with would spook the residents of Stonegaze into following my orders. Hell, His Highness had probably had the rumors spread just for that purpose. If I were to suddenly show up somewhere, then the citizens might just submit out of fear.
While that might’ve been a good thing for short-term governance, in the long term that would most likely invite local resistance and probably lead to a full-scale rebellion. Since we were planning on developing the region a ton, we wanted to avoid that. Which was why we were going to stealthily make it known that Princess Sonia, whom they already trusted, was back, and try to use that to make building trust with the region’s citizens that much smoother.
“I’m sure that the citizens will be relieved when they learn what sort of person you really are, Lord Ark, but with the rumors ahead of us, most people will probably be rather prejudiced towards you at first,” Nia said apologetically.
“We can’t help that, since we’re using that fact already. I actually feel bad for asking you to patch things up for me.”
Honestly, I knew the situation was a given. Since we’d used my nickname “the Black Wolf” to dampen our enemies’ morale, of course it’d make the people fear me once we were occupying and ruling the area. The only thing we could do after that was to get them to understand me otherwise through my policies and behavior. And if those policies led to more fear, then they might reject them outright. It was for those reasons that Nia was tasked with building a better foundation for them to accept us with, but I felt bad knowing how hard a task it would be.
Plus, I was just sad that Nia and I would have to part. But I wouldn’t let that show on my face. I couldn’t. Absolutely not. So I was concentrating on keeping my expression schooled, but...
“Oh? But I’m happy that I can help you. If I can finally repay you for everything you’ve done for me so far, then I need to work hard,” Nia said.
Her saying something so adorable while lifting both of her arms to pump her fists killed my schooled expression in an instant, with the force of an avalanche. Dammit, my wife is just too cute...
By the way, most of the attendants and maids watching looked at us with warm and fuzzy expressions. Though Laura had her trademark expression of looking like someone had stuffed sugared ginger in her mouth.
Anyway, if Nia is gonna be that enthusiastic about it, then I have to work hard too, I swore to myself once again.