Chapter 29
We are verifying whether the consensus—that the emperor cannot be deposed immediately and that only the birth of his first heir will allow for his removal—still holds true. The empress attempted to separate the emperor from his new lover, while the former empress’s aristocratic relatives, eyeing the empress’s throne, sought to recover their assets and move them overseas. The emperor focused on reforming the court, and the current empress is powerless and serves merely as a figurehead in diplomatic affairs_TITLE: A Letter Among the Flowers
Laniakea started and rose from her seat. Three maids, groaning under the weight, heaved a bouquet onto her desk, and in an instant the bleak surface that had been buried in documents only moments before became a garden. The flowers must have been cut just now. The office filled with the green, sharp scent of freshly sheared stems and a sweet floral fragrance—a lavish perfume that drew a smile from anyone who breathed it in.
Nestled among the blooms lay a small gold envelope. Recognizing it at once as a letter from the Emperor, Laniakea snatched it up and looked inside.
Did you sleep well? It weighed on me that urgent business this morning kept me from bidding you farewell before I left. Your clothes seemed uncomfortable, so I changed them for you. I hope you will forgive me for having done so unasked, and I send these flowers with that hope. I will be waiting for the next night.
It was not a long letter, and there was not a single word in it that ought to have heated her face—yet Laniakea flushed and hastily thrust it into a drawer.
His Majesty was the one who changed my clothes?
When she had opened her eyes that morning, she was lying in the bed. Sensing no presence but her own, she turned and found the place beside her empty. She sat up and felt along the sheets. No warmth remained. Either Hyperion had never stayed, or he had left early, and the realization left her strangely unsettled.
They were still awkward with each other. Relief ought to have been the proper feeling. Instead some odd emotion she could not name—neither quite the hurt of being left, nor quite regret—rose unbidden inside her. The faint creases in the sheets suggested that he had, at least, lain there beside her.
More pressing was the question of when she had come to the bed at all. She searched her memory, and only then realized she was in her nightclothes.
When did I change?
She remembered neither coming to bed nor changing out of her clothes. She must have slept deeply the night before. And yet she had not changed them herself. Hyperion had changed them for her.
Laniakea looked toward the window. Did I leave it shut? Why is it so warm? Anyone else might have said that dressing her was nothing, now that they had already shared a bed—and yet, strangely, this embarrassed her far more. Just as her imagination began to sketch the scene in rather more detail, she became aware of the eyes upon her. To think she had been so lost in other thoughts that she had failed, even for a moment, to notice so many gazes.
"Ahem. Hm."
Laniakea set the letter down beside the bouquet and turned to the candidates as if nothing whatsoever had happened.
"Forgive me. Let us continue the introductions. Who is next?"
"Ah, I... I am..."
The woman standing beside Chelsia launched at once into her introduction. A moment earlier, the candidates would have been listening closely to someone who might become both rival and colleague. Now their eyes were fixed not on the speaker, but on the bouquet atop the desk.
One of the things everyone in the Imperial Palace most wanted to know was how matters stood between the Emperor and the Empress. The moment he returned, he had brought every knight from the border with him and filled the Imperial Guard entirely with their number. Even those who had supported the former empress could not contemplate pulling him down. Hyperion was the only heir left. The Empress, however, was another matter.
Had not the very faction backing Hyperion begged him to divorce the current Empress and take a new one who might actually be of use? Small wonder, then, that the former empress's people had set their sights on the seat. Everyone knew how much wealth house after house had piled up over long years, thanks to the former empress. For the moment the Emperor had only just taken the throne and was absorbed in setting the palace in order, but once that urgent sorting was finished he would surely turn next upon her old faction, and seek to reclaim everything they had siphoned away across decades in collusion with her. Already some were laboring to move their fortunes overseas. That, however, was a course open only to those whose wealth was trifling.
There was no nation on the continent safer or richer than the Empire. Better to find some means of carrying their old glory forward than to liquidate in haste and spirit the proceeds elsewhere. For that, they thought at once of the Empress. Set a single ambitious, beautiful woman in that place, and a house gained tremendous wealth and honor. Enjoy it a second time, sink their roots properly, and they themselves might become the Empire.
And the present Empress was powerless, was she not? She had become Empress, and yet Priatra, her homeland, had not sent so much as a single envoy—as though she were no longer one of their own. An empress of the Empire; a delegation ought to have come, if only for the kingdom's profit. To draw the line so coldly... Had Priatra judged that she would not last, and cut her off in advance?
Whatever the reason, once they were certain her country would do nothing, only one fact remained to confirm: the relationship between the Emperor and the Empress. As far as they knew, nothing of note had passed between the two during the marriage. They had shared a meal a few times a year, and each time the Emperor left the palace without lingering. There could hardly have been anything to it. And so they had all begun at once to comb their houses for a woman fit to raise as Empress.
Then, around that time, word arrived from the people they had planted in the palace. The Emperor and the Empress had spent the night together in the Main Palace. Someone, the report said, had hurried into the Main Palace in the dead of night, and after that the guard had grown so strict that nothing more could be learned. At the news, the nobles of the former empress's faction turned grave. Powerless, and hardly close to the current Emperor—they had been sure she would soon be cast aside. And she had shared his bed?
That will not do.
No matter what happened, the Emperor's first heir had to be borne by the woman they put forward. Then, should the unforeseen come to pass, the advantage would be overwhelmingly theirs. It was into that very moment that the Empress summoned candidates for her ladies-in-waiting.
Chelsia was the candidate they had sent. In truth, no one had expected that she herself might become Empress. Her task was only to remain at the current Empress's side, take the measure of how far things had gone with the Emperor, and learn which nobles were making contact with her.
If Chelsia can capture the Emperor, so much the better.
Was that not why they had promised her their backing, and told her to try if she could? Chelsia understood their meaning perfectly, and for that very reason had walked into the palace with her head high.
One woman like that. I could have her in the palm of my hand.
She had exchanged a few words with Laniakea back when Laniakea was still a prince's consort. Beautiful, yes—but that was all. She knew nothing of the Empire's society, nor was she the sort who bought up every novelty because her homeland was rich. She did not even reach out to the other consorts, or to the leading lights of society, women such as Chelsia herself.
Above all, the empress had come to dislike her so.
The others, accordingly, had never so much as addressed her. Laniakea herself had shut herself away in the Annex Palace and never come out. A woman acquainted with no nobles at all. There was no chance someone like that could hold her own in a seat as vital as Empress.
The Emperor can hardly fail to see it.
Sharing his bed was not so strange. Her face was beautiful; he would want, at least once, to lie with the woman who had been his wife for three years. After a few nights of that, he would leave the beautiful woman where she might be enjoyed in moderation, and choose for Empress someone who could profit him. Chelsia had believed it without a shred of doubt. Then she stepped through the door, and the first thing she saw was a bouquet larger than any she had ever laid eyes on.
One glance was enough. This was not something thrown together on a casual order. The Emperor had most likely directed every detail himself.
And he is supposed to be desperately busy.
Everyone knew the officers assigned directly beneath him were groaning that the work would be the death of them. He had only just ascended; a mountain of business was only natural. But Emperor Hyperion was a man who surpassed every limit ordinary people could imagine. He cleared essential matters at a terrifying pace and, at the same time, drove everyone around him without mercy. Those who had gone in hoping for some crack through which to work their influence had despaired. In that storm of work, far from concealing past corruption, they were handing over even what they had buried—with their own hands, straight to the Emperor.
In any case, the Emperor's Palace of late never went dark, so much so that people had begun calling it the lighthouse of the Imperial Palace. And still word had come that yesterday, too, the two of them had fallen asleep together in the Main Palace. Had they misunderstood something? She had wondered. Then she saw the Empress coloring over the bouquet and the letter on the desk, and everything became certain.
The two of them were plainly burning for each other.
Chelsia grew anxious. She would have to move faster than she had planned.
"The introductions are finished. Good. Then I have a few questions for all of you."
At the words that followed, Chelsia drew herself up. Whatever she needed to worry over could wait. First she had to be chosen as a lady-in-waiting.