Prologue
1
The new Emperor of the Valugan Empire: Valtrune von Felsdorf. It took no time at all for the name to ring out across the whole continent.
The moment she took the throne from her predecessor, the Kingdom dropped the mild diplomatic face it had worn until then; its envoys turned openly high-handed, sharpening the friction between the two nations at every turn. Once the Kingdom hardened toward the Empire, the neighboring states in its orbit seized the chance to follow suit, declaring their own hostility one after another.
None of it differed in the slightest from the previous timeline. All well within what I had expected. Plenty of nations had always resented how much of the continent lay under the Empire’s shadow, and, given a clear banner to rally behind — one Kingdom willing to stand against the Empire — every small state that had never dared rise against that power alone would find its voice at last.
In the old timeline or in this one, the Empire never wanted for enemies. And above all, the Valtrune administration was still newborn. With its internal politics yet unsteady, the rest of the world had the opening it had been waiting for.
“As many enemies as ever, I see.”
“I knew all of it going in. I chose to become Emperor regardless — because I resolved to see this Empire protected, whatever it takes.”
Not a flicker of doubt in those blue eyes, now that she wore the crown. She had known full well it would shake the Empire, and done it anyway: swept out the old consuls and appointed new ones chosen by the will of the people. The Imperial army she had dissolved outright, combed through for the men grown fat on privilege, and rebuilt from the foundation up, with officers who actually meant to defend the Empire set at its head. A scalpel taken to a stagnant realm, to forge something stronger than it had ever been. Crown or no crown, what she wanted had never once changed, and it was that — the will to give everything to this Empire’s keeping — that made her Emperor at all.
“I won’t let the tragedy repeat. Never again.”
“Yes.”
Every time that pure-white hair, the mark of the imperial line, stirred in the air, the old battlefield rose in my mind. Split nails, fingertips raw and weeping; she had taken that ruined hand of mine, blood and grime mingled across the palm, and folded it gently into her own. The mercy of someone who would reach for a dying man and refuse to let him go. On a battlefield where everyone else lost whatever room their heart had left, she alone could still spare a thought for another person on sheer reflex, and that, I was certain, was the only reason we had come as far as we had.
“So many people understand your ideal now, Rune-sama, and stand ready to lend their strength. It’s nothing like those days, when we were powerless and the things that mattered kept being torn out of our hands.”
“…You’re right. This time, I chose the throne. Which means history has already bent away from its old course, hasn’t it.”
Philnotes had been scorched to bare earth as the very heart of the war; the Roscheld Republic had trampled Imperial soil shoulder to shoulder with the Kingdom. And yet both of them, the neutral city and the Republic alike, now welcomed the new Emperor’s rise and showed themselves willing to meet her halfway. Her unswerving sincerity had reached them, and that had made all the difference. It was something the Empire of the previous timeline, left to fight utterly alone, had never once known. She had moved history itself, and set a new age turning.
That the future could be changed at all, she had proven by taking the crown with her own hands. From here on, however thick the wall thrown across our road, we would drive straight through it. The world revolved around her now, and it would be us who built this age and blew a hole clean through the worst of what history had been.
“Al. It’s nearly time for the war council.”
She rose, and seen from behind she stood straighter and prouder than anyone alive; before I knew it, something close to reverence had settled over me.
“Come, then. Let’s go.”
“Yes.”
I took the hand she held out. Her skin was pale, near translucent, and where it met mine it carried a gentle warmth.
“The problems are stacked to the ceiling. Whatever am I to do with them all?”
She said it as though genuinely at a loss, leaning her shoulder lightly into me, a small rueful smile at her lips. And to that question there had only ever been one answer, as far as I was concerned.
“Do as you please, Rune-sama. I’ll wring out every scrap of wit I have to make the Empire you’ve envisioned real, and when it comes to it, I’ll cut the road open by force.”
Honor her will, and hold her up until the day I died — nothing in the world ranked above that. Some universal standard of right meant nothing to me. My one and only sovereign was Valtrune von Felsdorf; I would grind her enemies to dust, every last one, and prove to the whole world that she was the measure of what was right. That was how I meant to live: as her personal knight.
“Then perhaps I’ll just leave today’s council in your hands, hm?”
“If that’s your wish, I’ll take every last piece of the busywork off your shoulders, all but the final call.”
“Fufu. I’m only teasing. But when I lean on you, I’ll lean with everything I have… I’m not carrying this throne alone. It’s because you walk beside me that I’ve been able to go forward with my head high, before now and from here on too.”
The one personal knight who held an Emperor up: that was what I was, and today, as ever, I walked at her side.
“Al. You, at least — stay with me to the very end, won’t you.”
“From the day I inherited my memories, I settled it: I would spend the whole of my life holding you up, Rune-sama. Until I have seen with my own eyes the view at the end of the conqueror’s road you walk, I will remain your knight.”
“Yes.” The vow only settled the deeper in me as I said it aloud. “I am Rune-sama’s personal knight, after all.”
I would go on being her knight — of that I had no doubt — wishing all the while that as many of the futures she longed for as possible would come true, right up until the day that conqueror’s road reached its end. That, and nothing else, was the whole meaning of my having been flung back into this age. Or so I believed: that this, and only this, was the reason I had returned at all.
2
“Military Lord Gerreschiff.”
I’d pitched it across the castle archive to a silver-haired man I knew well enough, and without turning to look he answered in that nonchalant drawl of his, knowing perfectly well who stood at his back, an armful of books still clutched to his chest.
“…Hearing that stiff little title out of your mouth, of all people, turns my stomach. Just call me like a normal person.”
“Then I’ll take you at your word… Lord Linos. Have you managed to get a read on what Duke Felsdorf has been up to?”
The Military Lord’s seat, vacated when Duke Felsdorf was stripped of it, had been filled anew under the Valtrune administration by this man. Linos von Gerreschiff, second son of the Gerreschiff ducal house. His overweening pride and his gutter mouth were the flaws in the stone, but he threw himself at the work with a plain, unbending honesty and a real gift for military administration, and it showed: he had done a great deal to expand the reorganized Imperial army and build up its strength.
He slid the books back onto the shelf one at a time, then turned, unhurried, to face me.
“Your pack of nosy spies finally got hold of his tail. Word is he’s raising a resistance army against the Valtrune administration, mustering it around the Felsdorf domain out in the Theresia region, in the Empire’s northeast. Though if you want my honest opinion, ‘resistance army’ is too kind. They’re a filthy little huddle of traitors to the realm, nothing more.”
His briefing done without a hitch, he folded his arms and fixed his stare on me.
“Knowing you, you’ve no intention of letting them run loose. Am I wrong?”
“You’re not. From next week I’ll be sending troops out to press the resistance army into standing down.”
“…And the real version?”
“They were never going to listen to a word we say, so I’d like you to take the reins, Lord Linos, crush the resistance army, and get the northeast freed up fast. Any abscess that stands in Rune-sama’s way is best cut out early.”
Linos snorted, and at once a clean, satisfied look crossed his face.
“Hah. Just confirms it. You really are a zealot for Lady Valtrune.”
“Aren’t we both, though?”
“…Much as it galls me to admit it. Yeah.”
Two men who served a lord they each held in the highest regard, and who would never once be at ease with one another. That was the measure of the distance between Linos and me.
“That’s the whole of my report. I’m off to the council now to nail down the plan for freeing Theresia. Later.”
The necessary words said, Linos turned on his heel, threw out that curt goodbye, and started off.
“I’m counting on you.”
I sent the words after his retreating back, pressing the point home, and for a heartbeat he stopped and muttered, cool as ever.
“Hmph. You didn’t have to ask. Though if I were you, I’d be saving that worry for my own neck.”
“Your concern is appreciated.”
His real meaning I caught in an instant: the Saint, the one no one could locate. A threat so far beyond us that even every champion the Empire could scrape together might not be enough to meet her. At his words I turned my mind once more to every contingency that could go wrong, and steeled myself.
“…Anyway. Don’t lose sleep over Theresia. The army’s troop dispositions, the infighting inside the ranks — I’ll see all of it squared away.”
The reply was gruff as ever, but there was no mistaking it for anything other than encouragement, his own brand of it.
“Thank you.”
I dipped my head, and he pulled his eyes from me and walked out of the archive without another word.
Left alone, I stood there in the enveloping silence, unable to move for a long moment.