Less than an hour later, outside the palace gates…

Straf is sitting in the driver's seat of a horse-drawn cart, wearing his stylish coat with a Ministry of Security hat on his head while holding the reins. Sitting in the back, Cycelia is wearing the exact same coat, although smaller than Straf's to fit her size, buttoned up, and tightened at the waist with a belt. As people clear the way for the cart, they stare at Cycelia with mildly confused, curious eyes.

「…Straf, are you sure it wouldn't be better to ride in a carriage?」

Rendered lightly discomforted by the people's stares, she leans forward onto the driver's seat.

「Come on, Lia… We used to walk, and now you can't live without your carriage anymore?」

Smirking, Straf lets out an amused huff.

「It's not that… I'm just saying you could have let the driver know where you want to go, and he'd take us there.」

「Lia, some people say it's the journey, not the destination that matters. In this case, the destination is literally a bunch of villages that can only afford to trade dirt between each other…」

He replies, and lets out a large sigh.

「…With that in mind, do you really want to take away the journey part, and head back to get the carriage?」

Straf asks, looking at her with his mouth aslant, and lightly amused.

「…No. I'm fine with the cart.」

She shrinks back to her seat, shaking her chestnut head.

「Alright then. Off we go.」

Straf gives the horse a light whip with the reins as they ride out of the city gate…

…

A few hours later, in the afternoon…

After riding through the capital region's plains and rolling hills, Straf and Cycelia reach a small village. The bitter cold of winter sneaks into the occasional gusts of autumn wind, but both of them are now protected well enough in their coats. A few peasants straighten out and stop planting the carrots and beetroots in the fields to watch Straf ride the carriage closer.

「Right. First stop…」

Straf says as he hops out of the wagon.

「…This village doesn't actually have a name. I just asked around and found out that this, in fact, isn't just a long and empty stretch of a road.」

He adds, shrugging his arms.

「Interesting… I think updating the kingdom's maps for all the small villages like this is in order. When we're back, I'll tell Sir Vinis to record the population numbers.」

Cycelia hops out of the wagon and looks around the dirt-poor village. Most of the homes are in disrepair, fixed up however and with whatever was on hand.

「Yeah, uh… Might want to wait a little before doing that… For both of those.」

With his fists on his hips, Straf's face gains an awkward grimace as she joins his side.

「Do you mind if I talk to the people while you do whatever you came here to do?」

She asks with a warm smile while the peasants mutter something amongst themselves.

「Go ahead. It'll literally take just ten minutes at most.」

Straf shrugs, then places his hands in his coat's pockets as he heads towards the village center.

Cycelia gingerly approaches the peasants. They look at each other, then turn their unenthused faces bordering on disapproval back to her.

「Hello?…」

She smiles at them with a polite nod of her head towards the group. They continue staring for a few moments.

「…Pfoot. What's a fine noble lady such as yourself doing around these parts?」

One of the peasants loudly spits off to the side, then asks with a tone dripping sarcasm and disdain. Another handful of curious peasants gather around them.

「Um… I just wanted to ask how the village and its people are doing.」

Cycelia replies, shrugging her coat-covered shoulders as her emerald eyes turn aside to one of the collapsed ruins of a house, already partially reclaimed by nature.

「Poorly, young lady. We're doing poorly. Everyone's getting old and the kids are either leaving for the military, flocking to the city in hopes of finding a job, or Mercia knows what else.」

A middle-aged man chimes in from the side. Cycelia turns her gaze to him, nodding.

「That leaves us to toil the fields. And when we're too old to do that, what then? We'll all end up like the poor Highwoods… The whole village was keeping them fed…」

An older woman points her hand at the ruins, then turns her eyes back to Cycelia.

「…But we had to keep some harvest aside for sale, or we'd be even worse off. Poor Ms. Highwood probably died of bad health from eating too little. Woe to the last old man to live here.」

She helplessly shrugs her arms with a sad frown.

「That's terrible…」

With her brows furrowed, Cycelia says quietly while listening to the peasants.

「That's our life. Why did you come here? To look at the poor peasants and appreciate your wealth more?」

An older man asks in a frustrated tone, poorly veiling his scowl.

「No! I just want to know what my troubles my subjects are struggling with! This is an incredibly difficult situation… I'll have to think about a solution…」

Cycelia shakes her chestnut head, then thumbs at her lips over and over while thinking intensely.

「Subjects?」

The irate man echoes, and the angry peasants' faces turn pale.

「But that would mean…」「It can't be…」「Now that I think about it…」

The less irate ones begin mumbling and muttering loudly, glancing at each other while peeking at Cycelia every few seconds.

「…You! Let me see your face!」

A white-maned man calls out from the back of the crowd. His mostly bald head is covered in liver spots, and his hair completely disheveled.

「Huh?」

Cycelia turns her gaze to him as he pushes through the crowd, limping towards her with his walking stick, hunchbacked. His eyes are clouded over, covered with a pale, milky white color. He grunts quietly with each step, hurrying towards her as fast as he can at a snail's pace. Most of the peasants in front of him make way themselves.

「Let me have a closer look…」

He says as he leans forward towards Cycelia, squinting heavily with his mostly toothless mouth open.

「Ah! It's you!… I knew it! Shiny green eyes and hair like chestnut!…」

「Y- Yes?…」

Amazed, the man's eyes widen. He reaches to grasp Cycelia's dainty hand. Though confused, she allows it.

「…I was in your father's army, quelling the plague rioters!… What a horrible thing, leaving those people to die!… But we all knew it was necessary! It was either that, or it spreading again!」

The old man says in a loud, raspy voice as he forcefully shakes her hand. Cycelia winces from the sensation of dirt on her prim and pristinely clean hand, but continues smiling and nodding.

「If you're talking about quarantine in our land, that's a little before my times…」

She replies, tilting her head slightly.

「Yes! Yes, it was quite some time ago!… But I still remember the crying and the begging! And the sick! When I got blood on me once, I thought I was done for!…」

「Uh…」

「…It was thanks to Mercia's grace that I didn't get sick! I've heard about what happened in the capital!… Terrible news! Your father was a good man! He handled the plague the best he could!」

The man continues talking and talking, all while shaking her hand. Cycelia's polite smile begins to turn a little discomforted and awkward.

「Yes, I'm sure… There was no right choices, only ones worse than the next.」

Cycelia nods, bearing through the incessant handshake.

「That's right! That's right!…」

The old loyalist violently shakes his mostly bald and somewhat white head up and down in a loud agreement.

「…So that's the queen?」

Someone from the back asks. The man abruptly stops the handshake and lets go, much to Cycelia's relief.

「Fools! Isn't it obvious!?… I can barely see, and I could tell from afar that it's Queen Redwing! You're all standing around like a band of nincompoops! Is this how you treat the royalty!?」

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

He turns around and shakes his walking staff at the blurry faces behind himself, scowling.

「Ah, no! It's okay! I only came for a moment while passing by!-」

Waving her hands before herself, before Cycelia can fully finish her sentence, the peasants quickly scatter into their homes, shouting.

「Fetch the basket! Get the good carrots!…」「Radishes! Radishes!…」

The crowd disperses, shouting all sorts of cryptic babble. With a resigned sigh, Cycelia's shoulders slump…

…

Less than ten minutes later…

「Right. Off to the next shithole…」

Straf declares as he hops back into the driver's seat, and takes the reins.

「Thank you for everything! I'll see if I can do something about your problems!」

Cycelia waves at the crowd of peasants waving back at her as Straf whips the horses, and the cart rolls away. Straf rides over the crest of a hill, and the village disappears below the road.

「…You are sure popular with the little people, Lia.」

Straf remarks, glancing over his shoulder at a wicker handbasket packed absolutely full of village produce.

「Eheheh… They're very kind. An old man there served under my father, he shook my hand for solid five minutes or so!」

Cycelia smiles, tilting her head as she giggles quietly.

「Ew. A peasant shook your hand?…」

「Yes, why?」

「…Give it here.」

Straf reaches out towards Cycelia, and grabs her hand.

「Eh? Straf?…」

Her head perks up, and a light blush appears on her cheeks as Straf holds her hand into his, rubbing it.

「…Okay, done. That should have killed all of the nasty shit he had on him.」

He declares, and returns back to the unattended reins.

「Huh?…」

Confused, Cycelia looks at her hand. Nothing seems to have changed.

「…Say, Straf… I've been thinking…」

She says as she picks out a dirt-stained radish from the basket, then rubs it against her coat's sleeve in an effort to clean it.

「Yeah?…」

Crunch.

「…That village has a problem where the young leave and the old can't work anymore, so I thought about it for a moment… Villages like this grow the food the capital needs…」

Cycelia bites into her radish, and continues. Straf snaps his concerned grimace over his shoulder when he hears the noise, but it's already too late.

「…And?」

He asks with his brows furrowed beneath his Ministry cap's brim.

「…What if we gave people far too old to work money, so they can live out their lives in comfort if they worked their whole life?」

Crunch.

She quizzically tilts her head and eats the rest of the radish, leaving only the greens.

「Lia, you and I are going to be sick at this rate.」

Straf replies as she grabs another radish, and rubs it into her sleeve again.

「Hm? No, I wouldn't get sick from something like this… What do you think, Straf? As a Minister of Finances, could that idea work?」

Crunch.

She smiles, and bites into the radish.

「Yeah, it could work…」

Straf scoffs, shrugging his coat-covered shoulders.

「Great! How would we-?」

「…Until people decide that they've had enough kids, and now they're only going to have one per family. Or none. Who pays for the old people then, Lia?」

Full of excitement, Cycelia perks up, but Straf cuts in and continues.

「Um… The government?」

She replies in a hesitant tone, furrowing her brows.

「Good grief… I can tell why the economy was in the state it was in now… You are not wrong, Lia, but there is a nuance. Where does the government get its money from?」

With his mouth aslant, Straf shakes his hatted head and lets out a large sigh.

「Um… I don't know.」

Crunch.

Cycelia bashfully replies, and nibbles onto her radish.

「Trick question, Lia. The government gets its money out of thin air. The problem is convincing everyone else that your money isn't worthless…」

Straf glances over his shoulder with a small smirk, then returns his ahead ahead to the road.

「…To make things simple for you, value is production divided by supply… Meaning, a lot of production with a scarce money supply is valuable, and the opposite is true too.」

He explains while the horse leisurely trots down the hill. A distant forest past the plains on the side of the road is now mostly barren of leaves on its branches.

「Sooo?…」

Crunch.

Cycelia tilts her head with her brows heavily furrowed.

「So, you can magic money out of your ass to pay for stuff, but then you have to take it away from your own people. You use taxes for that.」

「Right! Taxes are so that the treasury has gold to pay-」

「No no no no, Lia. That's when you use real money. Taxes are quite literally just to take money away from the people. We don't need it, we just don't want them to have it.」

Straf shakes his head as he explains further.

「…That sounds kind of evil.」

Cycelia notes with a light pout while cleaning another radish.

「Yup. That's taxes, Lia. Taxes and death are inevitable, but you can evade one of those. I'll let you figure out which one it is.」

Scoffing, Straf nods, and lightly whips the horse to trot faster as they roll to the bottom of the hill…

…

A few hours later, in the late afternoon…

Straf stops by another village and hops out. Cycelia has already churned through most of her basket, leaving only the lettuce, a few carrots, and the green parts of the produce.

「Ah, don't bother. I'll be quick.」

When he sees Cycelia preparing to leave the cart, he holds his hand out towards her.

「I'll just stretch out my legs, I won't go anywhere.」

She replies with a quick wave of her hand, and a warm smile as she hops out as well.

「…Alright then. Be right back.」

「Right…」

Straf nods, and Cycelia nods back. Just as before, he places his hands in his coat's pocket and approaches the village.

「Mmnnnnhhh!…」

Cycelia stretches out her arms, twists her torso left and right, and generally flexes away the fatigue of riding in the cart. She glances at the horse, then pulls out a carrot from the cart.

「…Would you like a bite? You must be hungry too.」

Smiling, she asks the horse with blinkers on its eyes, holding a carrot out in front of its mouth. A strong gust of cold wind blows in.

Crunch!

Cycelia giggles as the horse takes a sideways bite of the carrot and chews conspicuously.

Crunch!… Fwoooom!… Fwooom!…

While the horse continues eating, the wind not only continues blowing in gusts, it intensifies significantly.

「Hm? Is a thunderstorm coming?-」

FFFFFFWOOOOOOOOOP!

A massive black shape swoops in front of the horse and the cart, completely blocking Cycelia's vision from that side. It lands, rumbling the ground, and a powerful, tempestuous wind blows right above her and the cart. It blows right past, heading for a grove of trees off to the side near the village.

CRACK-CRACKCRACRACK!…

The trees in the nearby roadside grove are either snapped in half, uprooted, or entirely torn out and thrown backwards by the gust.

「What just-!?」

Shocked, her emerald eyes briefly watch the carnage before turning to its cause. Unable to see ahead, the horse continues chewing.

「Wha-」

HUMMMMFF!…

Cycelia looks upward with her jaw dropped. Her hair flutters as a gust of hot air washes over her as if she briefly opened the door to a summer afternoon in a heatwave when the black dragon lets a loud huff out of its nose. Her dainty hand shakes as she raises her finger to point at it, grinning awkwardly. Its vertically slit, golden eyes stare directly at her.

「D… D… D- D- Dragon…」

She utters out, and glances sideways towards the village. Straf is nowhere to be found.

《Indeed!…》

A man's voice concurs, haughty and proud, booming…