Crimson and Gold

In the year 1678 of the First Era, the Helis continent housed eighteen kingdoms. Out of that eighteen, no other was more just and egalitarian than the Sun-Empire of Aelius.

…Or so the domestic scholars loved to preach in their theorems and essays.

All thanks to a rather unique political system developed in the Empire at the beginning of the era.

While most kingdoms and empires around the time were organized around one sovereign and a handful of advisers, Aelius took a different approach.

The final word and the decisive power belonged to the Emperor, the second power to them was the Senate.

Consisting of three hundred members divided by ten sections representing ten provinces of the Empire, the Senate was a structure designed to even out the scales of power between the Emperor and their subjects.

Each section had a guaranteed one seat. The rest was assigned based on the amount of taxes paid by each province. The most seats that could be taken by one section were a hundred.

On paper, this kind of division seemed fair. Those paying higher taxes had more voting power, while the poorer provinces still were guaranteed to have their voice heard.

In reality, one third of the seats were quickly snatched by the Aervelis Province, and the remaining rest was divided between Vitis, Lacia, and Lopos provinces—the second, third, and fourth richest regions in the Empire.

The Senators were chosen from among the lesser officials who were a part of Publium.

Publium was an administrative structure directly overseeing the lives of common folk. It consisted of a Small Senate where the officials called ‘Secundi’ discussed the immediate matters of the province and aided the designated overseer—the Princeps—to govern the Province.

The lowest-ranking officials were the Preators. The Praetoria were divided into smaller sections designated to supervise various parts of the industry, trade, education, craftsmanship, and anything related to the daily life of the common people.

The position of a Praetor was granted only to those who passed the civil exam, which was available to any free citizen of Aelius.

For many commoners, this was the highest rank in society they would ever achieve. There were, however, unique cases when a Praetor was selected to represent the province in the Aervelian Senate.

One of those cases was Aegon of Karteia.

“D-Do you want m-money?! I-I c-can give you m-money! Just say!” the man cried out.

His entire head and even the neck turned so red it was almost glowing.

After hanging upside down for half an hour, a good portion of the blood had already drained from his limbs and gathered in his head. Ever since he woke up, the fear had made the effect only worse.

Saria leaned forward on the stool, leisurely observing the man.

Aegon of Karteia was quite young for a Senator, being merely halfway through his thirties. He wasn’t ugly, but he wasn’t good-looking either. His forehead was already bearing the signs of a receding hairline, and his belly was hard to overlook.

He had no outstanding background, nor did he have any impressive feats attached to his name, save for entering the Senate at a younger age.

Perhaps that was why Aegon made a terrible decision to align himself with other Loukios’ supporters. He was also one of Lysandra’s most vocal critics and the source of the worst rumors surrounding the Princess.

He was so devoted to his actions that his name was one of the only three names Drusus ever wrote down on his list.

Until now, there wasn’t a good time for Saria to start working on it. She was planning to take care of it once the wounds on her back healed, but then she was sidetracked first by Rosa, then by the situation with Husks.

Fortunately, escorting Oppia out of the Palace created the perfect opportunity for her.

After arriving back in the city, Saria made her way to Aegon’s house. Since she already did a comprehensive research on the man beforehand, getting in and apprehending him was a piece of cake.

“I don’t want your money,” Saria answered him eventually.

“What do you want then?!”

Hanging upside down in a dim room, Aegon couldn’t see much. He definitely couldn’t see his captive’s face—obscured by a hood and a mask—but he certainly could see the crimson liquid in the bucket below him and the carcases of butchered pigs hanging all around him.

“Tell me what you want, and I’ll get it for you!” he pleaded again. “Just get me out of this place, and I’ll get it for you!”

Under the black mask, the corner of Saria’s lips twitched. It would appear that her setup was working as intended.

When she first learned that Aegon was terrified of blood, she was a bit doubtful if it was enough to get him to talk. Seeing him flopping around on the hook, desperately trying to distance himself from the bucket of blood below him, put those doubts to rest.

“I’ve heard you like to spread unflattering rumors about the Princess.” Saria began her interrogation unhurriedly.

Aegon stopped wiggling for a moment, seemingly dumbfounded by what he heard. “Huh?” He craned his neck to look towards Saria. “The Princess? That whor—”

Before Aegon could sound the offense in full, his head dived into the bucket below. Suspended upside down, he couldn’t stop the blood from pouring into his nose and mouth, yet he wasn’t drowning either.

The panic took over him in seconds.

He began thrashing around, desperately trying to pull himself out.

Half a minute later, he was lifted again.

Through the thick blood welled in his ears, Aegon heard Saria’s ice-cold, threatening voice.

“I advise you to choose your words carefully from now on.”

The man trembled. He would have never expected that the person who took him was one of the Princess’ people. He wasn’t expecting her to have any people at all, let alone someone this terrifying!

“F-Forgive me!” he stammered. “I-I-I misspoke! Princess Lysandra is the brightest gem, a true national treasure!”

The shift in Aegon’s attitude was so jarring that Saria couldn’t help but roll her eyes. She suddenly understood why Lysandra was so lukewarm about the praises sung to her.

“Why is Loukios so obsessed with ruining Lysandra’s reputation?” she asked, cutting off the Senator’s barrage of worthless flattery.

“W-wha— T-the Crowned P-prince? I know nothing of it! I do no work with—”

Saria loosened the rope tied to the peg next to her, and Aegon’s lie was cut short once again.

She kept his head immersed in the bucket a bit longer this time, just to make sure he learned his lesson.

“ALRIGHT! Alight! I’ll talk!” Aegon coughed up blood and sobbed silently over his misfortune.

“Then talk.”

“Loukios might be the Crowned Prince by the word of the Emperor, but the Senate isn’t so happy about it,” he began explaining. “They consider him haughty, arrogant, reckless. They feel like he’d be impossible to control once he becomes the Emperor.”

“So?” Saria folded her arms in front of her and stared at the Senator with her cold eyes. “It’s not the first time the Senate would intervene in choosing the successor. There are plenty of noble families to pick from. I’m sure one of them has a worthy candidate.”

“That’s the thing. They did find a suitable candidate—The Princess!” Aegon exclaimed.

“They want to make Lysandra the Empress?”

“Yes! They see her as much more reasonable than her brother. On top of that, the Senate had been squirming to put a woman on the throne for a while, to pacify the ever-growing dissatisfaction from the Oracles!”

Aegon took a deep breath. He was talking so fast, afraid that his captor would get impatient and put him back in the bucket, that he nearly suffocated.

In the meantime, Saria searched her memory for relevant information.

She didn’t pay much attention to politics before, only focusing on the matters relevant to her current mission, but she still had to know the bare minimum about domestic matters.

From what she could recall, the single rule of the Emperor as the Sun-Father wasn’t a thing until the last four hundred years. Before that, Aelius had two rulers—The Sun-Father in the image of Aelius, and the Sun-Mother in the image of Lucetta.

The Father ruled the land and the mundane, while the Mother was the spiritual leader.

It only changed after the Senate held its controversial vote to remove Lucetta from the Pantheon.

The agreement was that the Emperor would take over the responsibilities from the Mother, but as time went on, the spiritual side was given less and less attention.

In return, the Oracles refused to endorse a sovereign unless a woman was chosen.

Until this point, the matter saw no development, due to the lack of a fitting candidate among the royal families, which were plagued by mysterious deaths of their daughters.

Thinking about this, a sudden thought occurred to Saria.

“If the current Emperor isn’t endorsed by the Oracles, doesn’t that make him illegitimate?” she wondered aloud.

Aegon nodded so eagerly that he started swinging. “And that’s another problem,” he said, fighting the dizziness. “Currently, Shahriz had been pacified through the marriage between the Emperor Octavius and Empress Arvatii.

“However, the new ruler, Queen Narraya, has been looking for opportunities to break the truce and reclaim the lands lost in the war. There is a real threat that she will leverage the illegitimacy of Octavius’ or Loukios’ rule to justify the new war.”

Saria had heard about this new Shahrezi Queen before.

She had been ruling only for four years and had been looking for an opportunity to garner merit to her name ever since.

Ascending the throne in the time of peace and prosperity, she didn’t have many opportunities to show off. Many people in her place would appreciate taking over during an undemanding time, but not Narraya.

Even before inheriting the throne, she displayed a great amount of ambition, taking on a lot of official duties while still being the Crowned Princess. After the coronation, those ambitions only got bigger.

There was no doubt that leading a successful military campaign against Aelius would permanently place her name amongst the most renowned rulers in this part of the continent. An opportunity like this was something she certainly wasn’t letting go of.

Unfortunately, all of this placed Lysandra right at the center of a major power shift.

Even if the Princess was unwilling to take the throne, Loukios still saw her as a threat. The Senate still perceived her as a useful pawn, and for Octavius, her existence was a leverage.

Between the three forces tearing her apart domestically and the foreign threat looming on the horizon, Saria felt unusually helpless.

Could she really find a way to pull Lysandra out of this mess? And what if the Princess actually wanted to become the Empress? Were Saria’s abilities enough to ensure her safety during her rule?

Saria both wanted to know the answers to all of the questions and feared hearing them.

Once again, she felt so incredibly inadequate to stand by Lysandra’s side.

Before the nasty thoughts could grow roots in her mind, she walked over to Aegon and stared coldly into his eyes.

“Tomorrow you will leave Aervelis and never come back. If you ever again dare to badmouth the Princess…” Saria leaned over him and pulled down her mask. Her crimson eyes radiated with killing intent. “I’ll find you and butcher you like those pigs.”

Aegon whimpered involuntarily under the oppressive aura. His body felt paralyzed, so when the woman asked if he understood, he could only nod frantically.

After that, Saria paid him no more attention. She put her mask back on, spun on her heel, and in a few long steps strode out of the room, leaving Aegon alone with his fears.

Outside, the butcher who owned the shop was already waiting for her.

“Wait until sunrise, then let him go. Here’s your money.” Saria tossed a fist-sized pouch to the man.

The butcher first weighed it in his hand, then undid the string to look inside. Seeing the pouch filled to the brim with silver coins, his dark brown eyes lit up.

“It’s truly a pleasure doing business with you, friend,” he giggled, fondling the purse. “If you need anything else, just let me know. I can even get you a full tub of blood. Any blood you want! Chicken blood, pig blood, cow blood, boar blood…”

The butcher diligently named every single animal he ever had in his shop, however, by the time he came to his senses, Saria was long gone.

He scratched the stubble on his cheek and looked at the sky. “Eh, there are still a few hours till sunrise. May as well sleep a bit more,” the butcher said and returned to his home atop the shop.

Thanks to the generous payment he received, even Aegon’s wailing didn’t disrupt his sleep.

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