Nero got back to Godmouth on the 17th of April. The docks seemed a lot calmer with news of the war ending, arriving by pigeon weeks before Nero and Keon came back to the capital. The prince went to his chambers and began packing, so he could move back to Writer’s End, but in the middle of packing, he was summoned to Wagner’s office.
When he arrived, he found the president hunching over in his chair, looking out the window. “How do you find the motivation?” he asked before turning his chair around to face Nero. “I’ve been president for a year now, but I’ve failed to do what I’ve been elected to do. The only bill that was passed is now the most controversial law in the country.”
“Did you call for me because you wanted my advice?” Nero asked.
“Well, do you have any?”
Nero sighed. “It’s always easy to think you can do a better job than the man in charge, but most of the time you can’t. To be honest, I never thought I would step foot on Roran, but now I know that the mud is just as disgusting as the mud on Leozan. There’s nothing that I can tell you that will help except that you should try your best.”
Wagner nodded. “I don’t know if my best is good enough. My best would be to get the reforms done with as much support as possible, so they work, but…” Wagner shook his head. “That’s not the right thing to do. I think that if I push hard enough I can get the right thing done. Sure, doing my best could pass twice as many bills as not doing my best, but I would rather be known as someone who failed to try to do the right thing than being really good at doing things that didn’t help anyone.”
“If you were born a royal, you could do all those things in a snap,” Nero reminded. “But doing the right thing in a monarchy would be to destroy the monarchy immediately.
Wagner stood up and walked to Nero. “A republican prince. What a thought. I suppose this is the last time we might see each other, so let’s promise each other something. How about I promise I get all my reforms done, and you promise that you’ll do what’s right if you ever become king.”
“Yeah, sure. I can do that.” Nero said. “Goodbye, Wagner.”
“Goodbye, Nero.”
#
It took a little under a month to get back to Writer’s End. He took a boat up the river and disembarked at Brain’s Beginning. He spent a night at the same inn from when he first came down to Godmouth. As he lay there in the middle of the night, sleepless, he couldn’t help but think about what was only a long walk away from him. He knew that going there wouldn’t help him, but he couldn’t resist the urge.
When he got to Lucius’s cave, he couldn’t help but stay there for a couple of hours. It felt wrong to leave after such a short amount of time. He let the last griffin die in his arms, and it only felt right to spend some time where the griffin wasted away his life. Maybe Lucius was looking down upon him and appreciated the care that Nero had for the old griffin, or the Cayoists were right, and the griffins weren’t mythical beings. Maybe only Walik was looking down in pity and shamed Nero for his ignorance.
He was soon on his way again, and when he got back to Raya’s small house sandwiched between the larger complexes, he didn’t know what to do. He stood in front of the house, still. How could he simply knock and say hello? After all, that’s happened, would it be wrong to pretend everything was fine, that he hadn’t seen the things he’d seen?
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However, Raya didn’t let him make that decision as she saw him standing in front of the house and walked outside. “What are you doing? Standing there like an idiot? Come in!” She said.
It took a couple of days for Nero to explain everything that happened. Raya rarely interrupted when he explained what happened and didn’t say anything when Nero described Lucius’s death. The prince paused for many moments during his expositions and would ask for them to stop for the day.
All the while, Nero visited those architectural firms that Raya wrote to him about. He applied to six of them, and they all asked him to draw up a model building that met specific requirements. Most of them were simple residential buildings, but the last one he went to asked him to map out a park. Nero, who twiddled his thumbs, shook his legs, and clenched his fist during the application process, didn’t understand and asked them why they wanted him to map out a park, they responded that the city needed more parks, and that was the service that particular architecture firm was providing.
After applying to all of the architecture firms, Nero felt that he would die if he had to do another. After all the interviews and delivering his submission for each firm, he had sweat dripping from his armpits, and his mouth felt extremely dry.
Before any of the firms accepted or denied Nero’s applications, or even before Nero properly settled back in, he paid a visit to the Greenwood Management Ministry’s office in Writer’s End. They oversaw the management, import, and export of greenwood lumber and extract, and Nero wanted to share his opinions on their performance.
When he arrived for his meeting, he sat in an empty office in a bare-bones wooden chair with no padding. The office was on the edge of the town, and Nero could see the recently cut-down greenwood trees and the stump that remained.
A man in his mid-30s walked in and took a seat at the desk in front of Nero. He was the man that Nero was meeting and was the vice-minister of the ministry. “It’s an honor to have your audience, Prince Nero. What can I do for you?” he asked as he sat down.
“I’m sure you are aware,” Nero said, trying to sound as professional as possible. “That the extract coming from these forests has led to the death of Titus and Lucius.”
“We express our condolences,” said the minister.
Nero paused and took a deep breath before continuing. “Please tell me what exactly you have done in response.”
“Well, we have launched an investigation on how to improve our vetting process, but besides that, we can’t do much.”
“Why not?” Nero demanded.
“You see, the people who killed Titus and Lucius converted the extract into poison outside the city. Everything that is handled by the ministry is accounted for. We have found no bad actors within our employment.”
“Really?” Nero asked. “No bad actors in the entire ministry?” Nero was suspicious of the claim.
“Not that we found evidence of.”
Nero hated the fakeness that oozed out of the vice-minister. He was trying to make it seem that he cared, but he didn’t. Nero knew that if someone actually cared they would be furious about what happened under their watch and would demand that the criminal be found and put on trial, but that’s what Nero, who was not in the vice-minister position, was saying. If he actually had the vice-minister’s power, who knew what he would do? Nero realized it was a mistake coming here. “So you are going to do nothing else?” Nero asked in disappointment.
“Unless you think that someone else is going to get poisoned, I think our security is the best it can be. I can assure you that no human will suffer the same fate as Titus or Lucius. The only way that it can be effective is if it is poured down someone’s throat, and there are much better ways to kill a man than that. We would actually be providing a handicap in that case,” the vice-minister laughed. “You can’t poison a drink or food as they would dissolve in seconds, leaving only the poison behind, so what do you suggest?”
Nero slowly nodded his head and clenched his jaw. “Alright, I’m sorry for wasting your time. I think I shouldn’t waste any more.”
“That’s no problem,” he said. There that fake kindness went again. Nero felt the urge to leap at the man and tear his skin apart. How could a man put on such a performance and be okay with himself afterward? “Let me show you out.”