As If Nothing Had Happened
On the outskirts of the capital lay a district of villas, and in a darkness without a single point of light, one of them stood alone. No sign of life stirred there, yet the weedless garden, the tidy window frames, and the white curtains made plain that the place remained under its owner's care.
Behind those thick curtains, Hyperion watched the grounds outside. Summer was still some way off, and no sound of other nobles coming and going through the district reached him.
Then came footsteps on the stairs below—thud, thud. He sighed and spoke to the man who opened the door without so much as a knock.
"Keep your voice down, Signo."
"I did try. Do you think it's easy, climbing up through this dark? And you said yourself there was no one else around."
"Which is the only reason I haven't dealt with you."
The voice was cold enough to suggest that, had anyone else been nearby, he might have broken the man's legs. It was the first time in a long while that Hyperion had shown the chill of his days on the Northern Border, and at the sound of it Signo shut his mouth.
Hyperion looked out a moment longer, then lifted his gaze to the sky. Darkness had already spread overhead, and the stars of early evening were coming out, bright and close.
"Damn it."
Having taken the measure of the hour, he clicked his tongue and muttered it low. By the original schedule, he ought to have been in the Main Palace with Laniakea by now.
I knew something like this would come eventually. They just moved faster than I thought.
He had taken the throne before the nobles had any time to try their hand at anything. Coming to their senses too late, they had scrambled to hold on to the privileges they had enjoyed until now, but the effort was wasted. Their failure to get their own house in order had only let him press them harder.
Every one of them knew the new emperor meant to seize a single man as an example and make a ruin of him. None wished to be that man, and so they kept their heads down—fear of his knight order played its part as well, the men who had, by all accounts, scraped through the Northern Border at his side.
But the nobles were never going to stay quiet forever.
A few days past, the informants hidden throughout the capital had sent word through Signo. Among the mercenaries lingering in the city, the most skilled of them—the ones who would do anything if the coin was right—had lately vanished from sight.
The move was so obvious it nearly drew a snort out of him. An assassination, then. Even so, they would not stir lightly. However long those men had planted themselves in the capital, none of them had the nerve to ambush, on a whim, knights who had lived through real fighting on the Northern Border every day of their lives.
So Hyperion had laid a trap on purpose. He set an inspection of a territory a fair distance from the Imperial Palace, with a plausible excuse ready to hand: he was going ahead to look over the grounds for the hunt to be held in early summer. Nothing about the schedule invited suspicion.
And yet, contrary to every expectation, the attack had come today—though they were nowhere near ready, and though a strike this close to the capital stood an extremely high chance of failure.
The moment it landed, he knew.
Sloppy.
They would no doubt tell themselves they had gathered these men with care, but to him the assault was pathetic enough to draw a sigh. The arrows of the savage tribes might have flown truer than this.
As he slipped the first shaft, his mind raced. Kill them? That went without saying. Then how? And once he had the ones who had given the order, how should he see them executed? He had not wanted to open his reign with a beheading, and yet perhaps putting one of them to death at the start was the answer after all.
He found it soon enough. Clearing them all at a stroke and returning to the Imperial Palace would have been no trouble at all. He chose instead to turn the attack to his own use. A fool this addled would spill the name of whoever stood behind him the moment he was caught, and the trail would be easy to follow besides.
Dodging another arrow as it came, Hyperion let out a low whistle. At that sharp, clipped sound, one of his guards suddenly screamed.
"Guhk—!"
With that he spurred his horse and tore free of the formation. Another followed, breaking away in a shriek.
"Save me!"
No knight of Hyperion's would ever have made a sound like that. One of them, racing off as if in flight, turned his head and winked. It was not the face of a man begging for his life.
Watching his own knights scatter like a rabble, Hyperion broke from the group as well. Signo, who had been at his side, and two other knights rode after him, and sensing before long that someone was on his trail, he deliberately took the long way around.
"Signo. There was a safe house near here, wasn't there?"
"Yes—hah—out in the villa... district..."
"Good."
Sure enough, they had not ridden long before a well-paved road appeared, one the nobles used. The villas had not yet gathered thick along it, and the way was nearly deserted. The instant Hyperion rounded the bend, he wheeled his horse and drew his sword.
The pursuer, certain his quarry would keep fleeing, came around the corner and was seized by the man who burst out at him before he could so much as scream. There had been no need for the blade. A single punch sent him sprawling where he stood, and the knights who had come along hoisted him as if they were picking up refuse and bound his mouth, his hands, and his legs tight.
"Drag him off and find out who's behind this. You—get back to the capital quietly and make contact with the ones still there."
"Yes!"
And that was how Hyperion had come to haul his captive into this villa. Once the man was in the cellar, he left Signo behind and went back out with another knight.
The whistle he had given the others was a cipher of the Northern Border guard: feign injury, scatter from the group, then take the enemy down one by one, and wait for orders. Sure enough, when he returned, each of them had an attacker in hand. One knight was even preening over having caught two.
"As you'd expect, the palace knights haven't managed a single thing properly. They haven't even found us yet."
"I thought as much."
Unsurprised, Hyperion gave them fresh orders. Some were to smear themselves with blood, return to the palace knights, and report that they had lost the emperor. The rest were to move out and keep watch on the men he had already marked.
No need to wait for the hunt.
Since matters had come to this, better to settle them all at once.
And once word gets out that something has happened to me, they'll show what they really are.
In a crisis, some would finally let the nature they had been holding down show itself. Those, too, were men he meant to clear away. He would put an end to that tiresome problem this time.
The plan was sound, and its progress satisfying. Except for one thing.
Laniakea must be badly frightened.
More than merely startled. Who could stay composed at the emperor's sudden disappearance? Above all, inside that palace she had no faction to lean on but him. Lucy was loyal, but she could not be a power of her own, and the maids were not yet people who could serve as her strength. With neither a homeland nor a house to stand behind her, he was the only one she could trust, and he had vanished without warning. How anxious she must be.
The palace will be in an uproar as well.
Even so, no one would try to seize it. To move while his whereabouts were still uncertain would, if one were careless, risk the charge of treason.
Finish this, and get back.
Then hoofbeats came from far off. Soon, through the window, he saw his knights returning, and from the way they signaled from horseback, the work he had set them seemed to have ended without mishap. Hyperion and Signo hurried down.
"How did it go?"
"Just as Your Majesty said. We've confirmed that the ones you suspected have moved, and we've gathered all the evidence. Ah—and of course we've taken every last one of them. So you ought to be able to return to the palace now."
Having said that much, the knight drew a breath and went on.
"Only, the palace seems to have moved a little differently from what Your Majesty expected."
"What?"
"I haven't had a precise report yet myself. We thought it would be in disorder, but it seems to be conducting itself more calmly than we imagined."
At those words Hyperion brought his horse at once and mounted. His face hardened as he raced for the Imperial Palace. Everything had lain beneath his expectations, and the mood inside the palace was different?
What is going on in there?
A few hours later.
"Have you returned safely, Your Majesty?"
Laniakea greeted him as if nothing at all had happened, and at the sight of her Hyperion was thrown into greater confusion still. Contrary to his certainty that the palace would be sunk in chaos, it was tense, yet calm—as if someone were holding every part of it under perfect control.