And so, we continued on our journey with no issues. Nia, who I’d been the most worried about, was tougher than I expected, and the female attendants and maids seemed hardy enough to make it smoothly through the trip as well. According to them, it was way better than the discomfort they felt back in Sylvario’s royal palace, and all the extra work they were forced to do there had given them great stamina.
So it seemed that not only was Princess Sonia mistreated, but her servants as well. That meant that not only would they probably not object to any conquering we did peacefully, but they might even actively help. And His Highness had probably incorporated this into his strategy too. In the first place, his plan had been not to attack and destroy Sylvario, but to only hit the places necessary and annex them more or less peacefully. By doing it that way, we could keep potential harm to the general populace to a minimum and make future governance go that much smoother.
To be honest, the average citizen (especially the commoners) didn’t really care much at all about who was ruling them. What they cared about were things like land taxes, other taxes, if they’d be conscripted, and how their daily lives would be changed. That was why they were more concerned with whether the person governing them directly would change or not.
And Prince Alphonse was just the sort of person who fully and carelessly accepted such a thing and simply folded it into his plans. Normal royals might fuss about their dignity as rulers and how that was lèse-majesté, but His Highness understood where authority would work in a situation and where it wouldn’t.
I mean, to a villager who’d never even seen a royal in the flesh, the power of the crown would mean nothing. For city folk, it wouldn’t even be odd if they just considered royals as nasty people who stole away their money through taxes. If you suddenly started telling them to obey because the royal family was ordering them to, then it would just invite conflict. In the worst-case scenario, you could be attacked and lose your life.
This was all why His Highness never took his power as a royal for granted and made sure to include the perspectives of the common people into his plans. Sometimes I seriously wondered if he was a demon or something, and honestly, I didn’t think I could be blamed for it.
Anyway, the female servants of McGuine Viscounty were, of course, included in his planning. Nia had been told this, and she’d agreed to it, so there shouldn’t have been any problems. We weren’t planning on exposing them to any danger, after all. All we asked them to do was talk about their lives in Sylvario’s palace and send letters to their kith and kin. And obviously, those letters didn’t have any content that could get them arrested as potential spies.
We were just slowly, safely, and secretly spreading our scheme. I wasn’t aware of all of the details either, but I knew that His Highness would never leave any openings.
I thought all this while following the sway of my horse but still keeping an appropriate level of alertness since Laura wouldn’t stop giving me looks that seemed to question if I was properly doing my job.
And so, we arrived in the province of Stonegaze and its capital and largest city, Bigden, all without being attacked.
“I see, so this is why His Highness was rushing us,” I murmured my true thoughts accidentally.
The town itself had no special features and generally looked like any provincial city, though I did question why it had such low defensive walls for a city near the border.
The real problem lay outside those walls. There were a number of temporary residences lined up, where a ton of people, mostly muscular men, were coming and going. I probably don’t even need to tell you that this was where the brigade led by Count Farlon was garrisoned.
Bigden itself had a population of under three thousand, so having a military twice the size of the actual city right outside its doors was no doubt not very comfortable for the people living there. Of course, parts of the brigade were probably patrolling throughout the province and keeping the peace, but from the looks of it, most of them were in the garrison. I couldn’t blame them for wanting to avoid splitting up their forces too much when Sylvario could strike at any minute. But the citizens wouldn’t care about that at all.
This was all why I, the new lord, had to come ASAP. As I was a fellow Brigandian, my presence in the city meant that the chance that the brigade would attack or harass the people of Bigden would lower considerably. Of course, logically the people would know that if the brigade hadn’t attacked so far, they probably wouldn’t ever attack them, but it was feelings, not logic, that was the issue here. So my arrival today probably rid them of that worry. Or, at the very least, softened it a little.
“I’ll have to go greet Brigade Commander Farlon first. Damn, there’s so much I have to do and we just got here,” I grumbled to myself as we entered the city. We hadn’t arranged for any welcome parade or anything to be held, so all we got on the way to the lord’s manor were just confused gazes from afar.
“Good work, Nia. You aren’t hurting anywhere, are you?” I asked, having tied my horse to a nearby post before running over to her carriage to help her out.
“I’m fine. Thank you, Lord Ark,” she replied with a smile.
Cute. No, Ark, get your head back in the game! With Nia’s personality, she probably would have hidden any exhaustion, but from the look of her, it really did seem like she wasn’t forcing herself at all. I gave the other servants a lookover too, but they all looked fine as well. I figured I could classify this as a safe arrival.