The Emperor's Watchful Eyes

The Emperor's arrow flew abruptly toward Laila.

At the Emperor's question, which seemed designed to test her, Laila answered with a smile, feigning ignorance.

"Your Majesty, I am still merely a lady without a title. I know too little about military logistics to offer any useful opinion, so I ask for your understanding."

The Emperor shook his head.

"Surely you learned all manner of things at the academy? And you are the Grand Duchess of Esdelheim, are you not? You must have learned something from the Grand Duke."

Ervan read a flicker of hesitation in Laila as she glanced briefly at the Emperor before answering.

It did not look like the hesitation of someone who didn't know the answer — it looked like someone weighing whether she truly ought to give it.

"As the Viscount said, it would be best to strengthen the inspection of supply goods."

Laila offered a bland, safe answer. Just as disappointment began to surface on the Emperor's face, she spoke again.

"However, the war ended only recently, and this remains a time of confusion. Among the guilty there are likely many provincial nobles and superior officers of the knightly orders. Punishing them all would shatter the order we have only just restored."

Before anyone noticed, both Ervan and the Emperor had turned their ears fully to Laila's voice.

"Strengthen the inspections and restore discipline, but why not defer the punishment of the guilty until later? What the knights want is not to see wrongdoers punished — it is for the quantity and quality of their supplies to change. That is a matter of their very survival."

The Emperor's cold eyes swept over Laila for a long moment. At last, he burst into hearty laughter.

"What a truly brilliant mind. Where did you learn such reasoning? From the Grand Duke? Or the academy?"

"I am embarrassed by your generosity, Your Majesty."

At her modest response, the Emperor laughed with even greater satisfaction.

Ervan reconsidered everything he thought about Laila.

He had taken her for the very model of a noble lady — someone who maintained perfection through elegance and flawless etiquette alone.

But Laila was far cleverer than even he had imagined.

"Viscount, there's really nothing our Grand Duchess doesn't know, is there?"

Ariel, seated across the table, spoke with meat still rolling about in her mouth.

"Ariel. Speaking with food in one's mouth is a breach of etiquette."

The Emperor chided his daughter without any real displeasure. Ariel swallowed the food in her mouth in an instant, then opened her mouth wide to show him.

"When did I ever? There's nothing in my mouth at all!"

At Ariel's adorable antics, the Emperor burst into laughter once more. Put in good spirits by Laila's answers, he was feeling magnanimous.

While the princess, giggling along with the Emperor, held his attention, Laila leaned subtly toward Ervan.

Then, in a voice pitched low enough for him alone to hear, she said:

"Use your second fork, Viscount. Press down on the large bone in the center of the fish with your knife, and push the flesh aside on both sides with your fork. It won't fall apart."

With that, Laila began deboning the fish on her own plate as if giving a demonstration.

Pressing the bone with the knife and easing the flesh aside with the fork — her movements were practiced, yet remarkably slow. As though she were deliberately allowing Ervan time to follow along.

Ervan stared at her, momentarily dumbstruck.

Laila, wearing a faint smile as if she had never spoken to him at all, was listening attentively to the conversation between the Emperor and the princess.

"……"

Throughout the meal in the Emperor's company, Laila had maintained an elegant, dignified bearing from beginning to end.

And this woman — the perfect Grand Duchess without a single seam for a needle to slip through — had set that perfection aside for just a moment to slip him a private word.

The corner of Ervan's mouth lifted beyond his control. It was a pleasant feeling, a faint tickle in the corner of his chest.

Ervan moved his hands exactly as Laila had whispered. The fish, flaked off in generous pieces, was unbearably delicious.

And there was someone who missed none of it. The Emperor. His cunning eyes moved back and forth between the two of them, drawing a slow arc.

"I asked for a comfortable meal, and yet the conversation drifted into serious territory. Think nothing of it — speak freely."

The Emperor took a sip of the wine before him. Watching Laila follow suit with a sip of her own, Ervan half a beat later mirrored her movement.

After dinner, Ervan had naturally intended to escort Laila on her way home.

Ariel's unexpected appearance had robbed him of the chance to hear her answer.

He had grown endlessly curious about Laila — what sparked her interest, and what she looked like in a more relaxed setting.

But Laila no longer left him a single opening.

"Lady Laila, ride in my carriage. The night air is cold — mine will be far warmer."

At the princess's offer, Laila accepted without a word of protest, not even glancing at Ervan.

"Thank you for your consideration, Your Highness. Then I shall take my leave."

After a courteous bow to the princess, Laila tossed Ervan a fleeting, perfunctory nod. Then, without so much as leaving time for a proper farewell, she hopped briskly into the princess's carriage.

Listening to the drum of hooves and the rumble of carriage wheels, Ervan felt an odd hollowness and laughed.

"Until we meet again, farewell. Grand Duchess."

Ervan offered the greeting to the receding carriage, knowing Laila could not hear it.

After the princess returned to the palace, as Ervan was about to depart as well, a summons came from the Emperor.

Escorted by an attendant, Ervan arrived at the Emperor's bedchamber.

The Emperor, dressed in a nightgown of fine silk, sat in a far more relaxed posture and gestured for Ervan to take a seat.

Ervan declined and stood at attention by the door, waiting for the Emperor to speak.

"Did the Grand Duchess run away?"

The Emperor said with a low laugh.

"The sun has set. She has merely returned to the Grand Duke's residence."

To Ervan's eyes as well, it had looked as though Laila had fled. But somehow the word fled, coming from the Emperor's mouth, sat uncomfortably with him, and he calmly corrected the man's phrasing.

After a moment of silence, the Emperor spoke abruptly.

"How much do you know of House Esdelheim?"

"Nothing."

"The rumors that circulate among the people, I mean. It has been several months since you were made a noble — surely you've heard something."

Ervan lifted his downcast gaze for a moment and met the Emperor's eyes. It was the same gesture Laila had used, studying the man to divine his intentions.

"I know that the first Duke of Esdelheim was a founding hero of the Empire, and that it is the house Your Majesty trusts most and empowers most at present. That is all."

"So that is all you know."

The Emperor's eyes deepened.

"The Grand Duchess. Truly perfect, isn't she?"

The Emperor murmured. Beneath the low voice lay a strange question that went beyond simple praise.

"There is a rumor making the rounds in high society. That even the weather watches its step in the Grand Duchess's presence."

"……"

"On days when the Grand Duchess goes out in splendid attire, it never rains. As if by appointment, rain falls only when she is indoors, or when she is dressed in something that can withstand a soaking."

Ervan listened to the Emperor's words. Though wary of the man's probing questions, he found himself eager to hear these things about Laila that he did not know.

"The princess must be about twelve this year. She receives the strictest education of anyone, yet she makes mistakes from time to time. And sometimes she knows proper etiquette and simply chooses not to follow it. Like today."

Ervan recalled the Emperor correcting the princess's table manners at dinner.

"And yet the Grand Duchess — from the princess's age until now — has not made a single mistake. Not once. Not even the slips of the tongue that I myself make routinely."

"Your Majesty does not make mistakes."

"Viscount, you've become quite the nobleman in such a short time. Your flattery is exquisite."

Brushing off Ervan's words lightly, the Emperor murmured again. His eyes gleamed like a blade honed to razor sharpness.

"Truly perfect. And that is precisely what troubles me. Don't you find it strange?"

"……I cannot say that I do."

"No, Viscount. You do. I already know how keen your combat instincts are. That is how you survived death's edge so many times on the battlefield."

Ervan said nothing.

"You must sense it too, vaguely. That the Grand Duchess may be... performing perfection."

"If so, would that not be remarkable? It would mean she is striving for perfection."

The Emperor's gaze turned on Ervan.

"And if the Grand Duchess has other secrets, beyond mere effort?"

"Do you have some suspicion, Your Majesty?"