Chapter 2: To Wrong Someone through Food Is to Know True Fury

The seasons continued to shift. Mia idled away the winter holidays in her usual fashion, and there were five days left until she had to depart for Saint-Noel. Today, she was receiving a routine report from Ludwig in her room.

“I was just informed by Balthazar that food prices have begun to spike.”

Hearing this piece of news, Mia set the cup of tea she’d just picked up back down on the table.

“Hm... So it’s here at last.” Her voice wanted to quiver. She stopped it from doing so.

The intermittent reports of crop failures throughout the past year had finally come to a head, manifesting as an undeniable harbinger of famine. She’d feared this moment. Planned for it, yes, but also hoped it wouldn’t come to pass. That hope had officially been dashed.

“It’s not yet a problem at this moment,” Ludwig continued, “but in the near future, we’ll likely start to see people going hungry.”

“Hm... And? What’s the plan then?”

He placed a bundle of parchment before her. “First, please take a look at these.”

Distilled onto the pages were the fruits of Ludwig’s tireless effort over the past two years. It presented an extensive amount of data ranging from the provisions they’d stockpiled and estimates of necessary quantities to feed the empire’s subjects to market prices of food currently in circulation, their predicted inflation, and the likelihood of each administrative region to experience starvation. The numbers were also extremely detailed.

Overcoming a famine of this scale wasn’t as simple as doling out their stockpile and calling it a day. That wasn’t nearly enough. They needed to distribute the quantities being imported from abroad, as well as account for local harvests, which were destitute but in no way irrelevant. Only with all that considered could they begin tackling the problem of how to optimally distribute their reserved provisions.

“Hmm...”

Mia held up the first parchment, making sure to scratch her chin for a good while before moving on to the next. She repeated this pattern for all the other pages. On the outside, she looked like she was carefully scrutinizing each and every data point. On the inside, she wasn’t looking at all.

“I see. Interesting.”

To say she didn’t understand the information would be giving her too much credit. She didn’t even understand what it was that she didn’t understand. It was a classic situation that had befuddled countless students and teachers throughout the ages. She had, in fact, previously gotten many good scoldings from Ludwig for being in this very situation. Could she really be blamed though? After all, to the mathematically challenged, tables of numbers might as well be code written in a foreign language. And Mia was definitely very challenged. She and math had never seen eye to eye.

After flipping through the thick stack of parchment, she set it down and with a defeated sigh, said, “I...still have no idea.”

She held up the white flag of honesty and conceded. It was her second best option...or maybe second worst. In any case, it wasn’t the worst option. She knew from hard-earned experience that when talking to smart types like Ludwig, the worst thing she could do was pretend to know something when she did not. Asking questions in her state of compound incomprehension would doubtlessly lead to a string of irritated grumbling, which she didn’t appreciate either, but it was better than remaining completely ignorant.

So, she decided to fess up...to which Ludwig replied, “My sincerest apologies. I’m aware that the data is imperfect.”

He lowered his head with a bitter grimace.

“Unfortunately, there is a great deal of uncertainty in the data gathered from the various nobles throughout the empire... We now have a decent picture of the size of their stockpiles, but trying to predict how they’ll use those stockpiles is simply too difficult,” he explained. “Though the presence of so much uncertainty in our estimates of the impact on the populace is certainly not ideal...I do believe we’ll be able to weather this famine with some room to spare.”

“Hm, I see. That’s good news.”

The numbers remained as confounding as ever, but she now knew what they meant. Rather, she knew what Ludwig said they meant, which was good enough for her.

“But there’s one thing I’d like to add, Ludwig.” She looked directly at him.

“Yes, Your Highness?”

“Don’t make any enemies in the process of doing this,” she said with a profoundly sage expression, as if she were speaking a cosmic truth.

Mia, you see, knew the terrible cost of wronging someone through food. She considered herself a compassionate, mild-mannered princess. Gentle, merciful, kindhearted... These were traits she often associated with herself. “A lack of self-awareness” was probably another one she should add to the list, but anyway. The point is that she thought of herself as a pretty pleasant person overall. But even an affable individual like herself was powerless before the all-consuming outrage of food woes. If someone dropped her cake on the ground in front of her, she’d throw a fit, and if they then told her that was the last one, she might just turn into fury incarnate.

That’s why she cautioned Ludwig. Wronging a single person through food was bad enough. Wronging an entire populace would be a nightmare.

“If anything, I’d rather you used the food to make friends. As many as possible. All of them, ideally.”

She was speaking from the heart. Learning from her past, it was a sentiment that she’d truly taken to. That, she knew, was the best way to keep the guillotine at bay.

“Please keep this in mind,” she added, growing pedantic out of concern. “Under no circumstances should you allow yourself to forget this point.”

“Understood. I’ll be sure to commit it to memory.”

She smiled contentedly as he bowed.

“Well then. That’s that. I don’t think there’s anything left to do before I head back to Saint-Noel.”

“Not to my knowledge. Please feel free to return at your leisure, Your Highness. This is the travel itinerary the Princess Guard devised for the journey. Do have a look.”

“Hm...”

Mia read over the parchment and pursed her lips.

Ludwig’s saying everything’s under control here, and the famine hasn’t actually started yet...but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t still worried.

The fear of having nothing to eat was a deep and primal one. A dwindling food supply induced profound anxiety. Just thinking about it made Mia’s stomach hurt. And it wasn’t because she’d just had way too much to eat. Well, it wasn’t entirely because of that.

If they wanted to allay that fear, they’d need people to trust that next year’s harvest would be as good as this year’s. Only by believing that their table would be equally loaded tomorrow could people enjoy the food on it today.

If I want to have any peace of mind, we can’t just keep digging into our savings. That’d be way too stressful. Of course, we’ll be counting on Chloe’s dad and Perujin to do their best, but I feel like there’s a need for something more. Some sort of...

“...Fundamental solution that’ll give me peace of mind.”

“Hm? What was that, Your Highness?”

“Huh? Oh, it’s nothing. I was just thinking... I’d like to make a detour on the way back to Saint-Noel, so this itinerary will need some changes.”

“A detour to where?”

“To Viscount Berman’s domain.”

“Viscount Berman... You’re headed to the academy city then?” asked Ludwig with curiously furrowed brows.

Mia nodded.

“That’s right. There’s something I’d like to discuss with Arshia.”