Chapter 299: Prince Maxim Is Bored

The day after next, paper came under the door.

"Good morning. This is Schneider."

Maxim wrote at once.

"Has palace personnel changed at all from before?"

The reply came quickly.

"Nothing has changed."

So many lives scattered, and nothing had reached the palace. The will to reform had been heard. The people at the center of government thought it was fine for the Marie Kingdom to stay as good as a vassal of the Mainz Kingdom. They would not try to climb out of that lukewarm bath? Anger soaked through his whole body.

Paper came under the door again.

"Does Prince Maxim still wish to change the present state of the palace? Is there anything I can do to help?"

Exactly what he wanted! Maxim thought. Even if this letter was the Prime Minister probing his heart in order to kill him, he did not care. But there was one other question he had been carrying.

"Why did the rising fail?"

A watch soldier might not be able to answer a question that basic. He still had to ask. The answer was written on the paper.

"I will look into it. Please give me time."

Schneider took the watch again five days later. Paper came under the door.

"It seems the Prime Minister knew of the rising in advance. He knew Prince Maxim’s movements, waited for Prince Maxim to stand up, and then crushed it. That was the script. Lists of Prince Maxim’s comrades in the knight order, the guard, and the garrison had been passed in secret to officers in each unit beforehand, and they had already decided how to respond if a rising began."

There Maxim finally understood. Why, at the time of the rising, the palace and the roads had been empty and he had been able to move as he liked. Why the people he sent to key points had not come back, and why suppression units arrived at dawn. All of it had been in the Prime Minister’s hand? And the Empire people who had been cooperating, vanishing at some point, was that connected too? They had said they would help the rising and slipped soldiers among the commoners from the Empire, but when the rising happened those people were gone without a trace. Caught in the Prime Minister’s net? Or had they seen the failure coming and run? What exactly had happened then?

Maxim cried from frustration.

After a while he noticed paper under the door.

"People who share Prince Maxim’s ideal have gathered around me. The wish to reform the kingdom is not exhausted. How does Prince Maxim regard our wish?"

Maxim wrote a reply at once.

"My wish continues as well. Place people of the same ideal in key government posts and carry out a new politics. That is my ideal."

After a pause, paper came in.

"Understood. I would like some time. We wish to free Prince Maxim from this prison and have you stand with us."

That was what the reply said.

Paper from Schneider stopped coming for a long stretch. Was he not on watch? Had he been replaced? Maxim could only wait.

One day paper lay under the door.

"Tonight I will come with comrades to receive Prince Maxim. There is no place for Your Highness inside the kingdom. It would be best to prepare a second rising in the Empire. Fortunately we have obtained the cooperation of the Empire’s hands. You need not worry about the road from the royal capital to the Empire. Please wait a little longer."

At last the moment had come! If the Empire would cooperate, the odds were large. Schneider’s comrades alone had left him uneasy.

Maxim could already see himself riding back into the Marie Kingdom at the head of a great Empire army.

In the middle of the night, while Maxim waited and waited, there was a knock on his door and the lock clacked open.

"Prince Maxim? Are you there?"

A man with a small light looked in.

"Yes. I am here. I am Maxim Marie."

At that answer the man knelt.

"This is our first meeting. I am Knight Florian Schneider."

He bowed. When the door opened fully, four men behind Schneider bowed as well and gave their names one after another.

"These men resonated with Prince Maxim’s thought. Please speak to them."

Looking at men who would follow him, Maxim felt heat in his chest.

"You did well to decide to follow me. I thank you! I cannot reward your actions yet, but when I take the throne I will give you fitting payment."

"Hah!!"

The men answered with force.

"Prince Maxim, there is no time. A carriage is waiting below. Please board it quickly!"

Guided by Schneider, they went down the tower stairs. As Schneider had said, a plain carriage was waiting.

"It is a shabby carriage. Please bear with it. To cross into the Empire without drawing eyes, it has to be a carriage like this. I ask your understanding."

Schneider bowed.

"I understand. That much is easy."

Maxim said it as he climbed in. The carriage started at once, with a few riders. They were not stopped at the detached palace gate, and they went straight out of the royal capital.

Word that Maxim had escaped the detached palace reached Prime Minister Richelieu at once.

"So Lord Maxim has left?"

"Yes. As decided beforehand, we let him leave the royal capital without interfering at all."

"That is fine."

"But is it truly all right? Lord Maxim is going to the Empire."

"It is fine. To the Empire, Lord Maxim is already a broken tool. Useless. If the Empire wants anyone, it would be Lord Robin, who is in the Mainz Kingdom."

"Lord Robin? I believe Lord Robin fought the Empire’s hands near the border and killed most of them?"

"That is why he has value. He fought the Empire’s elites. He fought more than twice his number, cut them down, and lived. That is talent, force, and ability. From where I stand he is superior to any prince we have now."

"Prime Minister, those words could cause trouble?"

"Fufu. It is fine. Her Majesty is likely thinking the same thing. And even if someone hears, there is no one who can replace me. Lord Maxim kept saying ideal, ideal, but his ideal was only that he take the throne and pack the surroundings with his own aides. He spoke of sweeping out the old blight and bringing in new blood, but if that young blood is incompetent it only ruins the country. I could not put a man who can think of nothing but that self-satisfaction on the throne. Better a man who is incompetent and will not argue with what we say. The old men will never step aside anyway."

The talk ended on words that could have been the Prime Minister mocking himself.

The carriage carrying Maxim moved from the royal capital into the outskirts. On a road boxed in by forest on both sides, several people blocked the way ahead.

"Who are you! Do not interfere! Move!"

Schneider shouted. An arrow took him in the throat. He fell from his horse without a word.

The man riding beside him started in surprise and was about to call to Schneider when an arrow took his throat as well and he went down. As if that were the signal, the men ahead of and behind the carriage took arrows one after another and fell.

The area around the carriage went still. Inside, Maxim thought it strange. Unease hit him at the same time. It had gone too smoothly. The watch on the detached palace, the royal palace, and the royal capital should not have been this full of holes. At first, high on the moment, he had not felt it. Once they reached the outskirts and his feelings settled, the sense that something was wrong sat heavy on him. Then the carriage stopped, and nothing could be heard outside.

Maxim decided to get out. He opened the door and stepped down into a ring of several men.

"Lord Maxim?"

One of them asked. The speech had Empire mixed into it, but it did not sound crude.

"Yes. I am Maxim Marie."

The man nodded.

"As you guessed, we are from the Empire. We came to receive Lord Maxim."

Empire men, coming to receive him, while Maxim’s comrades all lay in the road. Every one of them had an arrow in him. They were not even groaning. The heads must have been coated with a fast poison.

"You killed my comrades?"

He asked, holding the anger down.

"Yes. We did."

The man answered without shame.

"These people were in the way, so we killed them."

No feeling in the tone. Anger rose in Maxim.

"These men swore to rise again with me! Why would you do this!!"

At Maxim’s shout the man’s face did not change.

"Because they are not needed. Yes. Not needed at all. And to add to that, there is also no need for Lord Maxim to come to the Empire alive. Your role ended the moment the rising failed. We overestimated you. We thought you were a little more capable. Our eyes were clouded. You did not prepare the rising in secret, and your movements leaked straight to the Prime Minister’s side. A rising succeeds because it takes the other side by surprise. Done that way, it was certain to fail. Thanks to that we lost the funds we poured in, the weapons we brought, and valuable personnel. Our superiors are very angry. They decided your death would pay for it. Ah, you can die with only an instant of pain."

As the man finished saying that, Maxim’s head was taken. A man who had come up from behind cut with a sword.

Blood sprayed with the head, then stopped.

"Now put the head away and let us go home. We leave this as it is. The kingdom has to be told that Lord Maxim is dead."

The man said that to his companions. They packed the head away in silence and moved off.

"Good grief. The lower ranks have to learn how to pick who they lift up. This is a good example. No. Not a good one. A bad example? Fufufu."

The man muttered to himself and walked away.

Dawn had not come yet. It was still dark. But Prime Minister Richelieu’s people found the slaughter soon after and reported it to him.