Efforts for the Night
"It's finished."
The moment she set her signature to the last document, the words slipped out of Laniakea before she could catch them.
Too late, she thought, and glanced around. At the desks a little way off, every maid bent over her own work kept her hands moving with perfect composure, as if she had heard nothing at all.
Watching them, Laniakea felt anew how unusual the people in this room truly were.
Was it not the first thing anyone who served in the Imperial Palace had to remember—that one must not see, though one had eyes; must not hear, though one had ears; and must not speak, though one had a mouth?
The newly made maids kept that rule to the letter. In Laniakea's presence, at least.
A few things have already leaked, I'm sure.
Her gaze settled on Chelsia, seated among them.
She had become a maid of the Empress. And not only Chelsia. All twenty of the candidates who had come that day—Laniakea had taken every last one.
We're far too short of hands.
And into that shortage, people she had screened with some care had walked in of their own accord and asked to be put to use.
Why send such people away? So she had accepted them all.
The step was so unprecedented that the clerks assigned to her on a temporary basis had actually asked whether she was quite certain.
I know well enough which risks I'm choosing to bear.
Among them were people from factions that meant to pull Laniakea down. Chelsia herself was one.
But she does the work well, doesn't she?
From the very first, Chelsia had labored to win her favor. Drawing on everything she knew of the ties between noble houses and of court etiquette, she had offered advice on the work with wholehearted sincerity. Only by doing the job well from the start could one build a trust thick enough to last.
Hyperion, too, had said at the outset that it would be better to take her in. That way her house would lower its guard, and for the time being she would devote herself to the work.
All the more so, since the post is only temporary.
In hiring them all, Laniakea had told them she would grant a year's grace. It was nothing extraordinary. However strong a recommendation or however fine a record brought someone into the Imperial Palace, how well they would actually adapt was another matter entirely. Those who entered were ordinarily given a span called an adjustment period, and only afterward signed a formal contract and received their rank. A year was a little long, perhaps, but not so long as to seem strange.
And so the candidates had signed at once the contracts the clerks brought them. From that moment, without a breath of rest, they had begun on the very first day to review the matters Laniakea assigned.
In any case, nothing they could pass outside just now amounts to much.
Thinking so, she turned her head. There, in a vase, stood several blooms from the bouquet Hyperion had sent. The bundle had been so enormous that, at her order, the maids had undone it and divided the flowers among vases—dozens of them. Unwilling to keep such beauty all to herself, she had set one upon each of the maids' desks as well.
After they left for the day, she closed the doors and called Minnow out. Minnow paddled from vase to vase, splashing through the water. The flowers would hold their freshness far longer than usual now.
Laniakea passed the last document to a clerk and rose.
Today was a day she had to return to the Main Palace.
As she stood, the maid nearest her came forward and settled a cloak, prepared in advance, over her shoulders, then slipped into a bag the papers Laniakea had set aside.
"I'll carry this."
"Thank you, Hilde."
"Not at all. It's only what I ought to do."
The woman called Hilde was the one Laniakea had chosen from among the candidates as interim head lady-in-waiting. The standard had been simple: Lucy had to like her.
Lucy has a good eye for people.
Was that, too, a gift of the Lupin Tribe? Whoever Lucy took a liking to was always honest, and always diligent.
So on the first day, while introducing her to everyone, Laniakea had explained that Lucy was of the Lupin Tribe and still clumsy with the imperial tongue, and that they were not to be startled. Startled they surely were, all the same. From the outset Lucy had gone about staring straight into every pair of eyes.
That night, back at the Empress's Palace, she had whispered to Laniakea.
"Hilde. Solid."
And she shot a thumb straight up.
Laniakea was relieved. Hilde had looked the most diligent and trustworthy even to her own eyes, and with Lucy's approval as well, there was nothing left to hesitate over. The next day she announced that, having watched them through the day before, she would make Hilde interim head lady-in-waiting.
Lucy had, in effect, been demoted from head lady-in-waiting to guard-maid, but just as expected, she did not mind in the slightest. Far from regretting it, she watched Hilde carry off the stack of documents that had sat on her desk without shrinking by so much as a sheet, and her eyes brimmed with grateful tears.
Barely two days had passed, and already Laniakea could feel that Lucy's eye had been exact. In that time Hilde had not only confirmed every item on her schedule; she had also checked how far each of the other maids had gotten with the work in her charge. They were only on their third day inside the palace, and who stood above whom was still ambiguous. Even with a head lady-in-waiting named, a subtle contest of pride might well have broken out—yet Hilde managed the others with practiced ease.
"Then I shall escort you to the Main Palace."
Hilde spoke a little more loudly than usual and took the lead, as if she meant everyone in the room to hear exactly where the Empress was bound.
Following her, Laniakea felt the weight of gazes pouring against her back. Chelsia's, no doubt, was the sharpest of them all. For the Empress to go to the Main Palace meant that tonight she would spend the night with the Emperor.
When they arrived at the Main Palace, a familiar face was waiting.
"It has been some time, Your Majesty the Empr— cough!"
On the first floor stood Signo, looking half the man he had been the last time she saw him. Lucy, who had come along, jabbed a finger into his side, and he reeled so violently that there was no mistaking it.
"The work of the Emperor's Palace must be taking quite a toll."
"Yes. I'm exhausted."
Signo answered at once, without a heartbeat of hesitation.
"From morning on, His Majesty drove us so hard that if we were even a little late he looked ready to take our heads, and we couldn't so much as breathe while we—"
"You seem well enough, the way you're running your mouth."
Hyperion's voice came from behind them. In the same instant Hilde and Lucy bent at the waist, and Signo leapt in fright.
"Y-Your Majesty. When did you come down ag—"
That enormous frame shook like an aspen in the wind.
"No, I mean, I was only—"
"Enough useless talk. Go back."
"As you command!"
At the order to go back, Signo bowed deeply and bolted without once looking behind him.
"The Empress's, is it."
Hyperion's eyes fell on the bag in Hilde's hand, and he held out his own: she was to give it to him. Flustered, she surrendered it at last, her face full of worry over whether one might really hand a burden to the Emperor. The other attendants nearby were no different. The Emperor, carrying luggage himself? But no one could step forward and offer to take it. Already he had Laniakea's hand in his and was turning inward, and his manner made it perfectly clear that no one was to interfere from this moment on.
Led along with her hand caught in his, Laniakea thought of the night before. He had asked for her hand, and she had given it without a second thought—and then drifted off to sleep.
He said it was because the Ensi couple told him to work at growing accustomed to it.
The method they had taught him was working. She did not know how long he had gone on holding her hand after she fell asleep that night, but the hand holding hers now felt deeply familiar—familiar enough that, even being caught and drawn along so suddenly, she felt not the slightest urge to startle or pull away. Just how much had he done, while she slept, to make her used to him?
They entered the bedchamber at a slightly quickened pace, and the door closed behind them. The door beyond that, too. And the one farther out still. The three doors leading into the bedchamber would not open from the outside again until the two of them called for an attendant.
From here on, it was time they would share once more.
The moment she understood that, Laniakea spoke.
"I... I was waiting for today."
At those words, the corner of Hyperion's mouth lifted, just barely.
He had been waiting for today as well. Was that not why, from morning onward, he had seized Signo and the other ministers and driven them as if he meant to wring them dry? And Laniakea had been waiting too. Then perhaps he could go straight to the day's lesson the Ensi couple had given him.
The instant he thought so, she took the bag from his hand, opened it in a flash, and drew out one of the documents inside.
"Could you help me with this?"
For a moment, he had no answer at all. It seemed Laniakea had been waiting for today in an entirely different sense.