Until You Grow Used to It
The conference room of the Main Palace was in a stir.
The ladies-in-waiting of the Empress's Palace had gathered there all at once.
Stirred though it was, everyone knew precisely where they stood, and so no voice rose very loud.
When the maids of the Main Palace brought in the tea, the ladies' soft murmuring picked up again.
Then the door opened, and Laniakea came in.
"Your Majesty the Empress!"
Those who had been drinking tea started and scrambled to their feet. The commotion startled Laniakea more than anyone, and she waved them down.
"That greeting will more than suffice. Sit, all of you, and drink at your ease."
She settled comfortably into her chair, and the ladies, who had been watching her face, took their seats once more.
"Nothing amiss, I hope? Hilde reports to me every day, and still I worry, being away from my post as I am."
At her words the ladies answered, smiling.
"With Your Majesty gone, the office feels so empty that none of us can settle to our work."
"Would it be impertinent of us to wish you would come back soon?"
The teasing threaded through their replies drew a bright smile from Laniakea. Watching her, the ladies thought to themselves.
That talk of emptiness was no empty flattery…
They had all supposed that, with the Empress away, they might enjoy themselves without having to mind their step. The first day had indeed been pleasant. The ladies, too, had worked day and night in the Empress's Palace since their appointment, and they were worn thin.
By the second day, though, their eyes kept drifting, for no good reason, toward the Empress's empty place.
On the third day they understood. Even in the thick of all that busyness, the work had gone so smoothly only because the Empress had been there.
Looking back, they had never once seen her rest while she was in the office. Even when the ladies took their afternoon tea, the Empress was receiving belated lessons in palace etiquette, or hurrying about to prepare imperial ceremonies. When she returned she sat down at her desk again and cleared away everything that had piled up in the meantime. Unlike the ladies, who left the palace when the hour came, she remained in the office long after they had gone. It was an office within the Empress's Palace, which meant that, in practice, she worked until the moment she went to bed.
The flower vases on the ladies' own desks had their share in the emptiness they felt.
Every day a great bouquet arrived from the Emperor, and the Empress who took it in her arms would flush as she read the card tucked among the blooms. Once she had savored the flowers to her heart's content, she sent the maids to divide the bouquet among everyone's places.
At first the ladies had taken it for the Empress's quiet display of favor — an unspoken warning. See how the Emperor dotes on me. Mind yourselves. They had wondered if that might be it.
But the sight of the empty vases made them realize that all along she had been sharing with them the simple pleasure of looking upon something beautiful. Thinking on it, she had never dropped a veiled word their way, nor had she particularly watched their comings and goings.
I heard the surveillance was terribly strict in the previous Empress's day.
Back then, some were barred from taking so much as a single step into the Empress's Palace according to the standing of their houses, and even when a lady went to the privy a maid trailed after her. Displease her in the slightest, and she replaced you without a second thought. It happened constantly. The former Empress, in short, had never deeply trusted her own ladies.
Among the present ones, a few disliked the empty vases enough to bring flowers of their own and set them in. The arrangements were far more lavish than the divided bouquets had been, and yet, somehow, they felt hollow.
The ladies understood. It was not the flowers alone. That beauty had been complete only when the Empress stood beside it, delighted and flustered at once as she looked upon the bouquet.
Within the Imperial Palace and beyond it, there had been no shortage of talk about the two who had so suddenly become Emperor and Empress. To the ladies' eyes, though, the pair were like people only just beginning to fall in love — the sort of couple that left those watching from the side more restless, more impatient, than the lovers themselves.
Nothing in the world is more entertaining than someone else's romance. On the fourth day, at last, the ladies caught hold of Hilde and asked.
"Lady Hilde, when will Her Majesty the Empress return?"
At their question, Hilde considered.
The imperial physician did say she would keep her in the Main Palace for a full week, without exception.
Curious herself as to when the Empress might come back, Hilde had gone to ask Gemma, the court physician. Gemma had fired back without so much as drawing breath, glaring all the while.
"In a situation like this, how can you ask when the Empress might return to work? Have the ladies of the Empress's Palace never had blood or tears to begin with?"
Then she declared, with absolute firmness, that Her Majesty would remain in the Main Palace for at least a week, just as she had said from the start.
Listening, Hilde thought.
Then couldn't the ladies simply go to the Main Palace?
Of course they could not haul in a mountain of work. Still, if each of them brought only the most urgent document and obtained her approval… By the time her thoughts had reached that far, Hilde was already gathering the papers.
Gemma glared with open displeasure at the ladies filing into the Main Palace, but Hilde, Chelsia, and the rest pretended, desperately, not to notice.
We're going to see our Empress!
And so they had all poured in together and waited for her.
They had brought work, true, but they had come as much to pay a sick visit, and the mood in the conference room was easy. Seeing the healthy color in the Empress's face, they felt a wash of relief — and, in the same breath, quietly held out the documents they had carried in, waging a subtle contest over who would go first.
Then a cool voice came from behind them.
"Did we not settle the order before we came?"
The one who spoke, the corners of her eyes lifting, was Chelsia.
"W-we did."
Chelsia walked through the ladies who were drawing back and held out the papers she had brought before Laniakea.
"So please, review mine first. Your Majesty."
She bent at the waist with perfect courtesy and, in a respectful posture, set the matter under her charge before Laniakea. Laniakea looked from Chelsia to the ladies standing behind her.
Until now Chelsia had been exceptionally good at her work, yet she had seemed to keep an invisible wall between herself and the other ladies. She was kind enough, but a conversation never ran long. Perhaps for that reason, the others did not speak to her unless it concerned the work.
Now, even when Chelsia tossed out a blunt remark, the ladies beside her laughed and flung light jeers her way. It felt less like the purely businesslike relationship Laniakea had known, and more like colleagues grown closer.
Then Hilde whispered, her voice small.
"Since that day, Lady Chelsia's manner has changed a great deal. Something in her heart seems to have shifted."
She added that Chelsia had asked to stay in the lodgings within the Imperial Palace, saying she wished to give herself more fully to the work.
Why would she do that?
Laniakea accepted the documents and studied Chelsia. Rooms in the palace would make dealings with her family more inconvenient than they already were. Did it not look as though she were deliberately putting distance between herself and her house?
All the better. Chelsia's ability was excellent, but her family had always been the snag. And unlike before, the gaze she turned on Laniakea had grown markedly gentler. Even when the visit ended and it was time to leave, Chelsia lingered a long while, as if reluctant, before she finally turned away.
Laniakea did not know the reason, but she was certain now that Chelsia held friendly feelings toward her.
I must speak of it when His Majesty returns.
After all the ladies had gone, Laniakea waited eagerly for him to come back.
But that night, Hyperion did not return.
"He will come today."
Signo arrived at the Main Palace carrying a bouquet Hyperion had chosen himself, and went on with his explanation.
"He said he would remain in the Main Palace through tomorrow, so he has been rushing to clear his work."
In other words, he was working himself half to death for the sake of a single day's leave.
Laniakea took the bouquet Signo had brought, returned to her room, and hurriedly searched among the flowers for the letter. As always, there was one this time as well. Its contents, though, were shorter than ever.
Tonight I will continue until you grow used to it.
A single short sentence, and no more — yet Laniakea dropped the paper as if it had caught fire.
Coming back to herself, she picked up the fallen letter, cooled her flushed face against the back of her hand, and thought.
He didn't stop last time, either.
Hyperion had gone on tormenting her sensitive ears. That day, too, she had asked him, half in tears, whether it was not enough by now and he might please stop — but he had only said she still startled every time he touched her, and he had plagued her until exhaustion dragged her under.
It had been difficult even then. And now he was sending a letter to declare, outright, that he meant to keep going.
Heat gathered in Laniakea's eyes as she looked at the sky beyond the window. Her heart began to beat quickly. She could not tell, even herself, whether she feared the coming of night, or longed for it.