The Letter She Meant to Discard
The moment Laniakea's name was spoken, Hyperion's expression went cold.
"To my empress? Why?"
The drop in his voice said everything about his mood. Signo answered while silently cursing the former empress.
"How should I know? All that's certain is that, whenever she isn't in her right mind, she hurls curses at Her Majesty the Empress several times a day. And between those curses, they say the Fourth Imperial Prince's name comes up as well."
At the mention of the Fourth Imperial Prince, Hyperion's face turned puzzled.
"I never heard there was any trouble between that bastard and Laniakea."
"Who can say? The palace is full of things that happen in secret."
"No. Laniakea didn't tell me."
He spoke as if it were only natural that she tell him everything, and Signo shut his mouth. No matter how he turned it over, his emperor seemed to trust the empress absolutely.
"Your Majesty may tell Her Majesty everything, but from her side of things, it may be different."
At that, Hyperion fell silent. He looked so stunned—like a man who had never once considered the possibility—that Signo could only stare in disbelief.
"In any case, I'll do my best to put more eyes and ears on the former empress. If she stirs up the Imperial Palace before everything has settled, the people of the Empire will grow uneasy."
"Yes. I'd rather she didn't make a nuisance of herself."
Murmuring that, Hyperion pushed the documents concerning the former empress aside.
Anyone else would have found the gesture strange. Was she not the very woman who had shoved his life as an imperial prince into a corner and left it there? That she was not even keeping to seclusion, but raging and cursing the reigning imperial couple, was more than enough grounds to put a hand around her throat. Yet Hyperion had done nothing more than send her out of the Imperial Palace.
He turned his feelings toward the former empress over in his mind. In truth, he felt nothing at all. No hatred, no resentment, no anger. To him, she stirred no more feeling than a figure written on a page.
For her, sending me far away must have been the best she could do.
She would have wanted to kill him and be done with it, but she must have feared the infamy that would cling to her if she did. And so, when Hyperion was a child, she had even sent the occasional letter of greeting, playing at the part of a loving mother.
Nor had he felt any grievance when, after coming of age and leaving the monastery, he was sent to the border on the empress's orders. Beyond the great northern forest, they said, there was no nation that could stand against the Empire—yet barbarians showed themselves from time to time. They came down out of the woods, plundered imperial households, and slaughtered the empire's people without mercy. If one was of the imperial blood, protecting subjects in pain was a proper duty, and so Hyperion had guarded the border in silence. It was one of his obligations.
He had lived quietly enough. Then, after he had gone to the frontier, the empress began, little by little, to send assassins. Death on the border was an ordinary thing, happening every day; if he died, she would have laid the blame on the barbarians. Even as he dealt with the killers she sent now and then, Hyperion thought of them as nothing more than a nuisance. If he dug any deeper into the feeling, annoyance was mixed with pity.
Her children must be remarkably untrustworthy.
The former empress had borne three children. He had never met them, but all were said to be princes in sound health. In that case, she had no need to concern herself with Hyperion. In place of a prince who barely existed, one of her sons should already have won the people's support and distinguished himself as the next emperor. Then there would have been no reason to spare a thought for some prince stuck on the border.
And yet she kept sending assassins, because the moment Hyperion returned, he would become a threat to her sons. And so he decided to pity her. For decades she had held the imperial house in her grip and done as she pleased, and still she had not a single child worth using.
Once, in the middle of the night, as he was dragging away the corpse of an assassin he had killed, Signo—woken by the noise—caught sight of the body. He, too, yawned long and slow, as if this were simply another day, and muttered.
"They say when the children are worthless, the parents go mad... haaah... She's a real nuisance."
It was a remark that took a swipe at both the emperor and the empress of the Empire at once, but Hyperion said nothing. He agreed. The former empress had done nothing well, but holding a poor hand, she had perhaps done the best she could.
Suddenly he found himself wondering what he would have done in her place. Not his own child—but if there were a capable member of the imperial blood, what would he have done?
He had sunk into the thought for only a moment when a knock came at the door. Signo called for them to enter, and clerks came in with both arms full, carrying a mountain of documents. Signo asked in a weary voice, as if nothing could surprise him anymore.
"And where did these come from?"
"Documents sent from the Empress's Palace..."
Before the clerk could even finish, Hyperion was on his feet like lightning and had snatched the document from the top of the stack. The clerk, wondering what he had done wrong, trembled and looked back and forth between Hyperion and Signo. Swallowing a sigh, Signo told them to leave.
The clerks fled as if escaping, but Hyperion never spared them a glance, his attention fixed entirely on the papers from the Empress's Palace. Signo shook his head and said he would withdraw. Until Hyperion had gone through every one of those documents, he would not so much as look at anything else—and besides, they had already finished most of the day's work, so there was time. For Hyperion, reviewing the Empress's Palace papers was as good as a rest. One look at his face now was enough to see it.
No matter how many times I see it, I still can't get used to it.
The Hyperion Signo knew was a man who lived because duty required it. A man who felt neither sorrow nor suffering, who went on as dryly as a wooden doll. Saving people in that harsh land and founding a knightly order; coming back drenched in barbarian blood and still turning the pages of a book someone had brought from the capital, taking in new knowledge—to Hyperion, these were things he did because they were his duty, and nothing more. Put another way, he had never spared a shred of interest for anything that was not an obligation.
The first thing he had ever done that was not a duty was the bouquet he sent to the Empress's Palace. Something he need not have sent. Something filled with nothing but personal feeling. Hyperion had agonized over it for a long while, choosing the flowers himself, and choosing them again. Signo had spent a considerable time at his side, and that day was the first he had ever seen Hyperion move for something he did not need.
And so Signo was worried. If someone were to harm the person Hyperion thought of so specially—
"Ugh..."
Closing the door behind him, Signo shuddered without meaning to. The former empress, being dragged out of the funeral hall, rose in his mind. He could only hope she would not do anything foolish. For now, hoping was all he could do.
After Signo left, Hyperion slowly went through the documents sent from the Empress's Palace. Every one of them concerned the first official banquet.
He recalled how Laniakea had looked when he saw her at the Main Palace—the way she had come toward him the instant she caught sight of him, as if she were glad. He had been pleased, thinking she had been waiting for him, only for her to lead him straight into a mountain of papers and ply him with questions without pause. It would have been a lie to say he felt no disappointment that the documents had seemed more urgent than he was. At the same time, watching her take the empress's work so seriously had brought him an even greater joy.
She was the one who had told him, again and again, that she would remain empress for only a year. She could have put the work off as she pleased and never laid a hand on it. Hyperion had prepared so that even then, there would be no problem. But Laniakea applied herself to the empress's duties with remarkable diligence.
When he saw her scribbling down everything he said without rest and told her she need not be in such a hurry, she had shaken her head and answered him.
"I can't do that. If I'm clumsy at this, you'll be the one who suffers."
She had probably said it without much thought. In a situation that was still unstable, she must have meant that she did not want the former empress's faction catching her out. But Hyperion wanted to believe she was working this hard because she worried for him.
He pressed down the corners of his mouth, which kept trying to rise, and turned a page.
Thud.
A small paper envelope fell out. It was about the same size as the ones he always sent with his bouquets. When he opened it, he found a short letter in Laniakea's familiar hand.
Your Majesty, could we move up the day I am to see you at the Main Palace? I cannot bear to wait until then, and so this letter—
"Hm?"
The letter ended there. On the off chance, Hyperion checked the front and the back, but of course there was no other writing. Puzzled, he read her letter again. Again and again, only the last of the words caught his eye—the sentence that said she could not bear to wait until then.
At that same hour—
"Has anyone seen the letter I set aside to throw away?"
On the verge of tears, Laniakea was ransacking her desk.