Not Such a Grand Trap
It was no grand trap.
When you could not tell who was betraying you, you had only to let a different scrap of information slip to each of them, then watch to see which scrap came flowing back in the end. It was the most basic way of catching a spy—the sort written down even in the old books.
Laniakea summoned the ministers one by one into a private chamber, and there she showed them a face quite different from the one they had seen only moments before.
"I put on a calm front, but the truth is I'm terribly worried about what may have become of His Majesty. As you know, I don't have any real power of my own…… If I don't press this hard, I'm afraid they'll think me a joke."
She had raised her voice in the council chamber, yet now she spoke as though she had no idea what she ought to do next, and the ministers each offered her their own advice.
Once she had heard them out, Laniakea told them that in this crisis, she was trusting them. So please, she asked, help her—so the matter might end quietly, without turning into rumor, and so the Emperor might be found.
She did not make the words exactly the same each time, but the substance never changed.
In the midst of it, one of the special operatives returned. At the place he had been sent to check, he had found the knight who had been with Hyperion, and the man was on his way back with scarcely a wound. He was, moreover, a knight who had come from the border in Hyperion's company.
Laniakea found the news strange. His Majesty's knight came back without a scratch?
Whenever she talked with Hyperion, stories of his days on the border would sometimes surface.
"They are men who held on, even in a hard place, through patriotism and loyalty. Troublesome fellows—tell them there's no need, and they still keep trying to throw their lives away."
He had clicked his tongue as he said it, but she could tell well enough how exceedingly proud he was of them.
And those were the men who, in the very hour Hyperion went missing, had come back without a single wound?
If what Laniakea had been told was true, they would have set out at once to track the vanished Hyperion—all the more so with their bodies unhurt. And yet they were returning all the way to the Imperial Palace?
It struck her as odd, but it did not sit wrong with her. Hyperion trusted them. Then she had no choice but to trust them too.
She said she needed a little rest and set off for the rear garden with Lucy.
Behind her came grumbling—what time was there to rest, at a moment this urgent?—but she ignored it and hurried on into the garden.
"Mole, can you hear me?"
She had hoped he would appear the instant she called and tell her he had found the Emperor, but though she waited a long while, Mole did not come. Has something happened?
If she had known it would come to this, then back when she introduced him to Hyperion, she would have told him not to cling quite so long.
Laniakea paced, restless. She could not linger in the rear garden. At last she could bear it no longer and was just about to turn back—
"Puhah!"
Panting hard, Mole burst up out of the earth as though he had erupted from it.
How frantically he must have been rushing about. He was gaunt, of course, and his body had gone so nearly transparent that the ground beyond him showed through with perfect clarity.
She had often seen Mole's body turn transparent, but never to this degree. Fear swept over her: if he kept forcing himself like this, wouldn't it end in the vanishing of his very being?
When she was little, she had asked him what happened in a case like that.
"What do you think happens? I disappear, and the next time you call a spirit, some other earth elemental shows up."
He had said it as if it were nothing at all. Hurt had welled up in her then, and fear of what she would do if that day ever came, and she had sobbed and sobbed. Looking at Mole now, nearly transparent, that same childhood fear rose in her again.
When Laniakea started toward him in alarm, Mole waved a forepaw as if to say he knew perfectly well what she meant to tell him, so she ought to stay still. Then, still gasping, he spoke.
"The Emperor—last they saw him, he was definitely fine, not a scratch on him! They say he went to a place near the capital where the houses are all crowded together!"
With that, Mole vanished. He must have sunk into sleep, to keep himself from fading out of existence altogether.
"Haa……."
Once he was gone, Laniakea let out a breath of relief.
The last the earth elementals had seen of him, he had been safe and unwounded. Then, like the knight said to be on his way back, he must have come through the ambush unharmed. Then why didn't he return straight to the Imperial Palace?
The safest place in the Empire was the Imperial Palace. He might even have joined the special unit that had gone out looking for him, and yet he had not.
For a moment an unpleasant thought flickered through her, but Laniakea shook her head.
She remembered the body she herself had seen and touched. He was so formidable that if the god of war were ever to take flesh, she thought it might well be Hyperion. She did not believe a man like that had been brought down in an ambush from which even his subordinate had returned alive.
And yet if he still had not come, there had to be some reason behind it. I'll trust His Majesty.
Laniakea tightened her clenched fist still further.
Hyperion would come back. He had to.
And so time passed.
And now, when the deep stars of night had risen into the sky, Hyperion returned.
Laniakea wondered whether the Hyperion coming toward her might be an illusion.
She had waited all day for him to return; perhaps, in the end, she was seeing things that were not there. Perhaps all of this was a fantasy, and if she closed her eyes and opened them again, only the people would remain—those watching her with uneasy eyes, or with cold ones.
But the moment a great shadow fell over her head, together with the sound of approaching footsteps—
"I'm a little late, Empress. I'm sorry to have kept you waiting."
At the sound of his voice, Laniakea let out a long breath.
Only then did she realize it. All through this day, she had not even been breathing properly.
She steadied her breath for a moment, then answered him with a perfectly straight face.
"It's all right. Did the business you went to see to finish well?"
"Thanks to you, I wrapped it up safely and came back. It took longer than I expected, though."
It was a conversation that might have belonged to a day on which nothing at all had happened. Even his late return to the Imperial Palace was treated as though it had been part of the day's schedule from the start.
At the sight of the two of them so utterly unfazed, she could see figures in the distance beginning to whisper among themselves.
Everyone within the Imperial Palace knew an ambush had taken place. But the Emperor had come back looking perfectly sound, and the Empress was carrying on as though she had known all along. People would start to wonder. Was it never such a grave matter after all? Or did the imperial couple have some plan?
Belatedly, several of them shut their mouths. They were the ones who, excited by the news of the ambush, had let plenty of words fly without properly thinking them through.
"If His Majesty dies like this, what happens then?"
"Shouldn't the former Empress be the one to come back first?"
"Then the Empress we have now is……."
"She carried on like that, and now she just looks a fool. That's all."
"Still, she's got a pretty face. Marry her off again to one of the great nobles and she'll live well enough, I suppose."
Mixed into every word they had spat out was a desire they had failed to hide.
Hyperion glanced around for a moment, then took Laniakea's hand.
"It's very late. Let's go in for tonight."
He led her into the Main Palace.
The moment the two of them stepped into the bedchamber, the door shut behind them—and Laniakea, who until then had been standing with a perfectly unruffled face, lost the strength in her legs and sank to the floor.
"Laniakea?"
Hyperion moved at once to raise her. When he turned as if to call out toward the corridor, Laniakea caught his arm in haste.
"I—I'm all right. I just…… I think the tension simply let go."
She said so, and yet she still could not get up.
Hyperion, who had taken her by the arm to lift her, seemed to hesitate for a moment—then worked his own arm in beneath hers. Light as anything, he gathered her up in a single motion.
"Ah!"
Her eyes shot upward all at once, and Laniakea, not knowing what to do, threw her arms around his neck for the time being. Hyperion was the only thing she had to hold on to.
He carried her deeper into the bedchamber.
Setting her down at the foot of the bed, Hyperion looked her over, plainly at a loss.
"Are you truly all right? If this is too much, I'll call Gemma at once."
"I'm—I'm fine. More than that, are you really all right, Your Majesty? They said you'd been ambushed……."
Laniakea reached toward his face.
His hair, usually kept so neatly, was a mess today, as though he had ridden hard. Her fingers swept it back, and she searched his face.
Hyperion, as if startled, went still and gave himself over to her touch. Then he smiled.
"If I'd known it would be like this, I should have come back with at least one wound on me."
In that instant Laniakea stopped her hand and cried out at him.
"Don't say that!"