Nothing Goes According to Plan
"Then I shall see you again later, my lady."
The instant the signature was finished, he turned on his heel and walked away.
With that, her meeting with the First Imperial Prince was over.
He did not return to the Imperial Palace in all the time Laniakea remained at the guest pavilion, preparing for the wedding.
At this rate, will he even come to the wedding?
Under the Empire's law, a marriage contract, once lawfully executed, took effect at once. From that moment the pair could be recognized as husband and wife. He might well mean to skip the bother of a ceremony altogether.
Contrary to that fear, Hyperion did attend the wedding—though he arrived only on the morning of the day itself.
He came in bloodstained clothes, and the moment the ceremony ended he was gone again, just as he had been the day they signed the contract.
After the wedding, Laniakea—left starkly alone—was installed in an annex palace of the Imperial Palace.
"It's the most beautiful of the annex palaces. A broad wood, and a lovely garden."
At the Empress's words, Laniakea answered with a bright smile.
"It reminds me of my homeland. What a wonderful place. Thank you for taking such care, Your Majesty."
The Empress regarded her as if she had done something praiseworthy—the look one might give a newly brought-home puppy showing off an adorable trick.
From then on, Laniakea's life drifted along in peace.
For the first few months the Empress took her to banquets, seemingly eager for everyone to see how attentively she was looking after the First Imperial Prince's consort. Half a year was the limit of even that. The Empress was a busy woman, and she had many others who required her attention. The banquets Laniakea had attended once a week soon became once a fortnight, then once a month.
And so three years passed.
Laniakea gazed at the papers sent from the Main Palace.
Once a month, the Main Palace delivered to each annex palace the schedule of engagements its master was required to attend. The masters of those palaces were, of course, the Emperor's four sons and their wives.
A few months earlier, she had happened to see a schedule bound for another annex palace. That one had been a remarkably thick bundle. The schedule now before her was a single lonely sheet.
And no wonder.
"This month's schedule is empty as well."
The other princes' consorts shouldered two or three engagements a day—nearly ten, on a busy one—while Laniakea's schedule was utterly bare. She tucked the sheet into a drawer with perfect composure, as if it were nothing worth remarking on.
Just then a knock sounded, and a voice came from outside.
"Your Highness. Entering."
"Lucy? Come in."
At Laniakea's answer the door burst open, and a woman in a maid's uniform came in.
Only those who had come of age could serve as maids in the Imperial Palace, yet Lucy had a face that, however one looked at it, belonged to someone better called a girl. Pushing a cart with a teapot upon it, she came up beside Laniakea.
"New tea leaves. Tasty."
With that, Lucy lifted the pot and poured into the cup. By rights there ought to have been the thin, delicate trickle of a proper pour.
Splash!
With a vigorous sound like water being dumped out, tea sprayed across the cart. Laniakea watched without a flicker of surprise. This was ordinary now.
Having sloshed the tea, Lucy wiped the spill with a clean cloth she had brought along, then set the cup before Laniakea. She was so brimming with strength that the cup clattered, and the tea brimmed over once more.
"...Sorry."
"It's all right. You're just overflowing with energy. Besides, the new leaves really are good. The fragrance is strong. Have some yourself, Lucy."
"Thanks."
Lucy bent deeply at the waist, seized the pot, and poured the scalding tea straight down her own throat in great gulps.
Watching her, Laniakea thought, Truly, no matter how many times I see it, the ways of the Lupin Tribe are magnificently bold.
In truth, though Lucy wore a maid's uniform, she was no maid. She was, at present, the only lady-in-waiting in Laniakea's service.
Of course, she had not begun with Lucy alone. After the wedding, when Laniakea came to this Annex Palace, the Empress assigned her five ladies-in-waiting. Lucy was one of them.
They sent them under the name of ladies-in-waiting, but what they had really sent was a nuisance.
Lucy came from a minority tribe called the Lupin, dwelling in a corner of the Empire. Easily told apart by their copper-toned skin, the Lupin were distinguished above all by tremendous physical ability. They were strong, of course, but their endurance, muscular power, and every other bodily capacity were exceptional as well. It was even said they took no serious hurt in the midst of searing flame.
Lucy's only weaknesses were a vulnerability to the cold, and the fact that she could never quite grow used to the imperial tongue.
In any case, on the strength of that prowess, the Lupin Tribe was bound to send one warrior from among their people to the Imperial Palace to serve the imperial house. That warrior was Lucy.
But a warrior has worth when there is a war, or when the palace itself grows extremely unstable. To the Empress, who wielded formidable power, Lucy was far too rough-hewn to employ as a lady-in-waiting. What Lucy had mastered was the art of combat, not the art of attendance.
She could not send Lucy to the other princes, either. In a palace where the Second, Third, and Fourth Imperial Princes had already begun their factional struggle for the next throne, dispatching the warrior Lucy to one of them could be taken to mean she was lending that prince her strength.
And yet keeping Lucy on in the Empress's Palace was a headache of no small order. Perhaps it was all that overflowing strength: beautiful, precious things there had been smashed to pieces in Lucy's hands time and again. What was more, the noble-born ladies-in-waiting thoroughly disliked her, for she could not finish a proper sentence and blurted out only simple words. They said she was too ignorant to associate with—that keeping company with her would lower their dignity.
So the Empress sent Lucy to Laniakea. No one would be stupid enough to mistake that for the Empress throwing her support behind the First Imperial Prince.
In any event, not long after Lucy's arrival, the ladies-in-waiting left Laniakea's palace on every pretext they could find, marriages among them. Lingering here any longer would do them very little good.
She ought then to have filled the empty posts, but Laniakea did not. Nor was it only the ladies-in-waiting. She kept the bare minimum of maids and let the rest go to whatever other palace they preferred. Those who remained in her Annex Palace were only a dozen or so elderly maids and attendants whom the other palaces did not want.
It was just as Laniakea wished.
Lucy of the overflowing strength included, they were all people who worked hard at their own tasks—people with no particular interest in news from beyond the walls, and no part in the palace's covert struggles. How peaceful a day was, spent among such people.
Laniakea's days were exceedingly simple. She rose early, ate, and read. She took lunch, walked once around the garden, returned to her room, and drank tea. She passed the hours with a book again, ate supper, read a while longer, and went to bed.
Someone else might have called it a dreadfully dull life. To Laniakea, each day was deeply satisfying.
This is what I wanted.
A quiet, unhurried life, out from under people's eyes.
But there isn't much of this palace life left.
Over those three years the Emperor had taken to his sickbed, and his condition was worsening. Everyone whispered that he would be hard-pressed to last the year. Because of that, the strife over the throne grew sharper by the day. At the last banquet she had attended, the Second, Third, and Fourth Imperial Princes had watched one another with intense wariness.
The Empress backed no particular son. Their abilities were much alike, and the factions behind their consorts were much alike as well. Whichever of them won, they were her own sons; as Empress, she could afford to be at ease.
In any case, once someone becomes Emperor, I'll have to leave the Annex Palace.
When a new Emperor ascended, it was the rule that his brothers and sisters left the palace. Naturally, once the new Emperor took the throne, Laniakea too would have to go.
His Highness the First Imperial Prince was granted a viscountcy, wasn't he.
She called to mind the lands attached to that title. A domain on the frontier. There was said to be a single small manor there. When the next Emperor was crowned, she would probably have to go to that place, and in a house the First Imperial Prince still never visited, live a life not greatly different from this one.
I've been saving against that day.
As a rule, when one left the palace, one took the servants in one's employ along as they were. The elderly would wish to retire, so she had set their severance aside; and thinking of the money she would need once she reached the viscounty, she had lived as sparingly as she could on the budget she was given. With only a single lady-in-waiting, and no banquets to attend, more had accumulated than she expected.
Lucy will have to remain in the Imperial Palace, won't she?
The next Emperor or Empress would likely keep her close again, for protection. In all of leaving the palace, that was the only thing she would regret.
When the leisurely tea was done, Lucy swiftly cleared the cups and the pot.
"Cleanup complete."
"Yes. You should rest until evening too, Lucy."
"But garden. Weeds. Wipe out."
It seemed she would rather help the gardener pull weeds than rest.
As Lucy shoved the cart vigorously out the door, Laniakea fetched the book she had closed that morning, halfway through. Today, too, a quiet afternoon would pass, just as it always had.
So she thought.
"Your Highness! Big trouble!"
Lucy, who had gone out to clear the teacups, flung the door open without so much as a knock and shouted.
"Second, Third, Fourth Princes—dead!"