Chapter 28: The Schemer is Flustered!

How did this happen?!

The man known within the Kingdom of Remno as Graham was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He'd been contacted by his associates currently working undercover in Tearmoon, who informed him that efforts to sabotage the empire had failed and that he was to proceed with the plan in Remno early.

Are you freaking kidding me?!

Originally, the plan to bring down the Remno monarchy through the chaos of revolution was to be put into motion after the Tearmoon Empire had fallen. It was meant to be slow and pernicious, taking a good ten years or more, and would have gradually eaten away at Remno's foundations by spoiling its lands and corrupting its government. Only after the kingdom was resting on a fertile humus of its own decay would they water it with the blood of its people and watch the wild germination of revolution. Then, after all this was accomplished, they would finally reap the rewards of their long-awaited harvest. Except now they were telling him to get on with things right away. The plan was designed to unfold over a decade. How the hell was it supposed to work with so little time?

But I have to... I'll have to make it work. We have no choice.

If they didn't act now, all their plans — everything they'd worked toward — was at risk of being dismantled by the Great Sage of the Empire. It'd taken them so long, but they'd finally managed to infiltrate the Remno government. They were going to be the seeds of ruin that sucked the kingdom dry of its life, only now they were staring down the blade of a massive plow that threatened to unearth them all in one fell swoop. He pressed at his throbbing temples, trying to keep the growing sense of panic at bay.

What in the world was making him so desperate? The cause lay in a series of letters — that's right, the chain of correspondence Mia and Abel had been secretly engaging in since they parted ways for the summer holidays.

Graham and his fellow agents had embedded themselves deep in Remno's government. There were limits to what information they could access — official missives from the King, for example, were beyond their reach — but spying on private correspondence between princes and princesses was comparatively trivial. And when they opened those letters and read their contents... they were baffled. Because what they found were love letters. Just regular love letters, filled with the awkward sentimentality of youthful inexperience and expressed in language so banal one wondered if the writers understood love at all.

Faced with such trifling content, letting out a collective sigh of relief, patting each other on the backs, and not giving the letters a second thought... were, of course, the kinds of things they absolutely didn't do. Rather, they only grew more suspicious. They stared at the letters, thoroughly discombobulated by how innocuous they seemed.

"This is Princess Mia we're talking about. Is she really the kind of person who'd write such cheesy letters?"

She didn't write just one either. She kept writing them. Very frequently. The blistering pace at which she was exchanging letters with Abel was entirely abnormal. If they'd been dealing with a regular girl, none of this would have been remarkable, but they were up against the Great Sage of the Empire. None of them believed for a moment that these were plain old love letters. As a result, they redoubled their efforts to decode the messages that were undoubtedly hidden within the ostensibly innocent passages. To their endless dismay, they could find nothing — no patterns, no ciphers, no double-entendres.

No matter how hard they stared at the pages, the words failed to reveal anything but the mutual affection of their authors. They even considered the possibility of invisible ink, which could be revealed by applying heat, but they ultimately decided to forgo testing. After all, anyone who received a browned letter was going to realize that someone had been snooping through their correspondence. If they blew their cover, their slow and arduous infiltration of Remno would have been in vain. Not to mention, if they hadn't found anything after all that, they would have jumped off a cliff in frustration.

Abel's present for Mia confused them even more. Who'd send a teenage girl horse shampoo as a gift? Surely, they figured, this was some sort of message. Was it a directive for the cavalry? Or maybe a suggestion to amass warhorses? Addled, exhausted, and out of ideas, one of them even tried to pour the shampoo on the letter in the desperate hope that words would appear. To their collective relief, his attempt was foiled. Had they heard from their co-conspirators in Saint-Noel that the two lovebirds had spent a lot of time together in the horsemanship club, they might have been a little less bewildered, but even spies had communication difficulties. The end result was that none of them had any idea what was being discussed through the letters.

"We know one thing for certain, though." There was definitely information of a highly confidential nature being exchanged between Prince Abel and Princess Mia, the latter of whom was the very person who'd dismantled with masterful precision their meticulous and long-running plan to topple the Tearmoon Empire.

"We have to do this... and we have to move now, before it's too late... before this Great Sage ruins everything."

In a fit of desperation, they'd hit the go button on their plans far earlier than they'd originally intended.

The first stage of their plan was to identify a representative for the masses who supported them and spoke on their behalf. Then they needed to either kidnap or assassinate this individual. In Tearmoon, this role would have been played by Outcount Rudolvon. In Remno, it was taken up by the chancellor, Count Dasayev Donovan, who had a reputation for being upright and sensible. The veteran politician, on the verge of turning sixty and concerned with the well-being of his people, had voiced his opposition to the king's decree to raise taxes to bolster the military. That made him the perfect target to kidnap.

Meanwhile, they'd spread rumors about the king imprisoning the old minister for standing up to him. Next, they'd approach those they'd previously taken note of as holding grudges against the Remno government and stir up their anger, pushing them to revolt. Their demands would be simple, there was no need at the outset for lofty goals like overthrowing the government.

"We're fighting to get our beloved lord back. We demand the safe return of the man who was our voice."

Placed on the moral high ground, the rioters would feel their actions justified, greatly enhancing the movement's persuasive potential. Once they built up enough momentum, their angry activists would move to occupy a town within Count Donovan's jurisdiction. In response, the Remno government would have to send in troops to suppress the rebellion. Should the revolutionaries win the ensuing battle, the rest would be easy; they'd loudly announce their victory to the rest of the kingdom and appeal to the masses to join their cause. Conversely, if the army successfully crushed the rebellion, they could simply denounce the government for its cruel act of suppression. Once the news spread, it would feed into the simmering anger harbored by the people until the fires of revolution began burning throughout the kingdom.

So far, both the first and second parts of the plan — the kidnapping and the occupation — had gone without a hitch.

"...Or so we think. Did it really go that smoothly?" murmured Graham as he scanned the reports from his fellow agents.

Something didn't feel right.

"Peaceful surrender of local government facilities... Nonviolent disarmament of guards... The results so far are definitely ideal, but..."

He couldn't shake the feeling that he was somehow being manipulated, as if this was all a game, and he was not a player, but a mere piece on its board.