Side Story 13 - Division of Interests

"While some people do live for loyalty, and others for things like patriotism and principles, for most people it is a much based thing that governs their decisions. Most people make their choices based on interest and benefits, opting for situations that benefit them the most. True zealots who disregard benefits in their decision making are rather the minority." - Garth Wainwrought, Dean of the Levain Institute for Higher Learning, circa 675 FP.

Imperial Palace

Capital City

Al-Shan Archipelago

6th day of the 2nd week of the 8th month, Year 677 FP.

As he returned to his private chambers from the palace's audience hall, Xain Haroone sighed deeply, half in disappointment, half in frustration. Without a care for the image he would have projected - not that there was anyone to see him anyway - the young emperor, barely eighteen years of age, threw himself onto the large bed that dominated his bedroom in the palace.

He looked around the room as he laid on his back. His formal turban was somewhat disheveled from his rough treatment, but he did not care about it. The large bedroom was quite heavily decorated with expensive items from all over the world, a plush orcish carpet - handmade and woven, the best quality - laid on the floor, while on the racks and dressers were items from other regions of the world on display.

Fine examples of wooden carvings made by elven hands stood beside equally well done statuettes of metal, forged by dwarven hands on a display rack. An idol of good luck from the goblin lands was set atop an ivory table handcrafted from the bones of a wendigo from the far southeast.

Most of the display pieces he enjoyed looking at to calm his mind were souvenirs and presents from Celeysria Ambervale, the retired warrior who had been crucial to the loyalist cause during the civil war and who he considered to be as close as a mother to him. Even the bed he laid on was one such present, a very comfortable water bed imported from Paradise long before it hit the open markets.

Thinking of Cal just made Xain miss her more, even though she had visited - with her newfound family even - just the last winter. He wished he could be as carefree as she was, gleefully running around the world just because she felt like it, but alas, the responsibilities of an emperor made that rather an impossibility for him.

It was those responsibilities that troubled him these days, as the empire fully shifted back to peaceful times after decades of civil war. Xain had a lofty vision for the empire he had inherited, a direction he wanted to head towards, yet of late he kept finding himself stymied at court.

The reason for that was precisely because the nation was once again at peace. When they were at war, even when they were busy purging the last of their enemies after the war, people had yielded to his wishes far more easily, the battles and massacres of the purges still clear in their minds.

Now that the nation was at peace for years, many had forgotten those harsher days, and in his court, factions had already started forming again, tied together by their own interests instead of the nation's interests.

While the loyalists had indeed won the war, most of them were soldiers and generals, with few capable of the sort of work a minister of the empire needed. As such, the loyalist faction at court had always felt a bit anemic, even if it was led by Halmout as the current prime minister.

Many of the other ministers were from houses that had remained neutral during the civil war, and it was these ones that gave Xain a headache to deal with. At times he almost wished he could just order the military to purge them all, but he never gave in to the temptation, as that would probably just plunge the nation into another civil war.

No, what he needed more was for someone of those factions to make an inexcusable blunder that would give him justification to punish them severely without others being able to protest, probably even stripping their powers entirely, to be an example to scare the rest, but such a thing was not so conveniently found.

The sound of a door opening woke Xain up from his thoughts and plans, and he turned to see Layla as she entered the room. Of course, the only person allowed to enter the emperor's bedroom without even knocking like that would be the empress, and nobody else.

"More headaches from the ministers?" Layla asked teasingly as she approached and sat beside him on the bed, the slight bump on her belly starting to show. She was two and a half months along in her pregnancy now, and ever since the confirmation, ministers and officials had been shamelessly promoting their family members as concubines to the emperor.

"You guessed it. That old shithead Dong-Lu tried to present his grandchild as if she's the reincarnation of a saint or something," replied Xain with obvious annoyance at the prospect. The way Layla chuckled at his words improved his mood some, though some annoyance still remained. "I often wish I could just ask Cal to help purge their whole houses at times, really."

"If only things were that simple, huh?" Layla replied with another chuckle. Technically, if Xain wanted to enact a purge he had the tools to do it, as the military was mostly of the loyalist faction and thus loyal to him. That said, the nobles who stayed neutral had their own personal house guards, effectively militaries of their own, which was what allowed them to remain neutral in the first place. "No, we need some of them to slip up first. A proper justification to get rid of those fat ticks sucking the blood from the empire."

"You know… maybe you can get one. Dong-Lu is a staunch traditionalist, isn't he? Despite him being a Huan?" asked Layla with a conspirative tone after she pondered for a moment. "I recall him strongly advocating for nobles and many of the older traditions."

"He is probably the staunchest of them, yeah. Most of those traditionalists only followed his lead because of benefits I'd say," answered Xain to her question, not sure what his wife had in mind. He had to admit that she was often more cunning than him, as her grandfather, the current prime minister, had taught her personally since she was young. "Why do you ask?"

"Do you think he would be provoked enough to do something stupid if you were to do something that goes entirely against his traditional values?" queried Layla further. "Like, say… inducting a Huan woman of the lowest birth into the harem. One with a checkered past at that."

"What?" asked Xain with surprise and bafflement at the implications of Leila's suggestion. He only knew of one person who fit the description she gave, namely Ying Xiao, the young girl they saved and put under Cal's tutelage two years ago. "Are you seriously suggesting we take advantage of her of all people and use her like a pawn!?" He asked, a hint of anger audible in his voice.

"Okay, it's good that being emperor hasn't changed you. You can still get genuinely angry on that girl's behalf," said Layla as she playfully prodded Xain's nose with one finger, which stopped his angry tirade on the spot. "But seriously, how could you be this dense a boy sometimes?"

"What do you mean?" he asked in return, unsure by what his wife meant.

"Xain. If you were to tell Ying Xiao that you needed her head that girl would happily offer it to you without blinking an eye," said Layla with some exasperation in her voice. "She practically worships you and would do anything for your sake. How different is this than her being our blade in the dark like we had thought to employ her before?"

"You have a point…" conceded Xain after a moment of thought. They had indeed planned to employ Ying Xiao to do things they could not do openly, a secret agent for the empire, as the current circumstances made it hard for people like her to fight their way up the ladder openly, one of the changes he wanted to make but kept getting stymied on. "Even so, we need to discuss this with Cal first. She is her student by now. She deserves to know."

"I couldn't agree more. We'll go together this winter then?" asked Layla.

"Together? But I thought pregnant women aren't supposed to be exposed to too much magic of a different affinity- oh. Right."

"You dummy, the gates are space affinity too~" said Layla teasingly as she prodded Xain's nose again.