No One but Lucy
Every last decision had been settled — the flowers, and all the rest besides.
The keepers were hurrying to put the jewels away when Lucy came in with the knights. They, too, blinked for a moment at the gems and the crown glittering inside the cases. It did not last.
"Expensive."
The murmur left her, and her eyes went sharp as they raked the staff.
By now everyone knew she was of the Lupin tribe, a people shaped for battle. Even so, that girlish face had always made it easy to look down on her. Not today. Anyone who met Lucy's gaze felt as if they had come upon a wild beast in the dead of night, and they jerked their eyes away in a fluster.
"Lucy."
Laniakea had only meant to tell her not to bristle quite so hard. Lucy turned to her with a bright, beaming smile, as if she had never been anything else, and the knights at her back stared at her with the look of men swallowing their shock.
Those knights belonged to the Imperial Palace Guard. As an organ under the Emperor's direct command, they had been charged, for this banquet, with the security and surveillance of the banquet hall and of the whole Imperial Palace, and with the protection of every guest besides. They had been in and out of the Empress's Palace a great deal of late, for they needed to be told who from the Empress's household would attend the coronation and the banquet. And the one who oversaw every guard and every watch within the Empress's Palace was, of course, Lucy.
At the start, plenty of people had raised objections to giving her the post.
"Your Majesty, that seat has been held, generation after generation, by a noble of the Empire."
"And that Lupin maid may be strong, but I hear she cannot even speak the imperial tongue properly. How is such a person to command knights?"
"It would be better, Your Majesty, to keep her only as your personal guard-maid."
They all lifted their voices to say that Lucy's ability still fell short. Laniakea, however, could see what they truly meant.
Don't give a high office to a minority tribe. That's all this is.
Command of the Empress's Palace guard was, in its way, one of the most coveted posts in the Imperial Palace. Under the previous empress, her own second brother had held it — one of the highest places a palace knight could reach. A great many nobles found it galling that a seat like that should be handed to a Lupin, whom they regarded as no better than a barbarian.
It was laughable. Laughable, the way they carried on as if the post were theirs by right, and laughable, the ease with which they looked down on the minority tribes — even while, the moment they needed something, they went to those same people for help, wringing their hands and calling them fellow subjects of the Empire.
On this, too, Laniakea did not bend.
"I never considered anyone but Lucy. You may withdraw."
The seat would pass to someone else in time, whenever its holder stepped down. And in all honesty, Laniakea had never found a knight she trusted enough to give the whole of the Empress's Palace into their keeping.
From the very first day until now, the one who has guarded my side, and this place, has always been Lucy.
She wanted Lucy there until her own last day.
There was one reason more. After the attempt on his life, Hyperion had ordered a drill built on the premise that the Imperial Palace had come under attack. In that exercise Lucy distinguished herself all over again. She was not merely strong, and not merely quick. She read them perfectly before they moved — where the attackers would turn, and how, and upon whom, they meant to lay hands and make their stand. Even the knights who had ridden with Hyperion since the border were helpless before her.
She was a presence fiercer than men who had been ground through the hell of the battlefield. In front of her, the knights no longer let their mouths run free. They only trailed after her, eyes begging for even one lesson more. Small wonder they were stunned. Lucy, who met them always with a cold stare and a clipped, blunt tongue, was all smiles before Laniakea.
"This. Guard."
She was asking whether moving the jewels would not call for a larger escort. She was not wrong. Around the staff of the jewel office there was no serious armed guard at all — only a few hands along to help with the carrying.
"It's all right. Every one of these is protected by magic."
Laniakea said it as she watched the cases the keepers were shifting.
Everything through the Fifth Emperor's jewels has a spell on it.
Of the jewels from the First Emperor through the Fifth, every piece of real importance was under magical protection. Protection, though, did not mean that no one could steal them. More precisely, the spell made it impossible for them to pass beyond the Imperial Palace.
In the reign of the Fifth Emperor, one wastrel of a prince had tried to walk out with an imperial treasure on a whim, meaning to give it to a woman he had fallen for at a single glance. The moment the ring he had hidden in his pocket reached the palace's main gate, it stopped dead, as if it had struck a wall. The carriage kept on. The ring did not. What followed was hideous: the ring drove straight through the prince's body.
He did not die, by good fortune, but the emperor was furious enough to demand of the mages what they meant by laying a spell that could do such a thing. A short letter came back. It consisted of one exceedingly long and florid sentence, and reduced to a single line, it was simple.
We will not be accepting imperial commissions from now on.
After that, no further enchanted objects could be added to the palace. Then a great withering of magic swept the continent, and the number of mages plunged. From the Fifth Emperor onward, the Imperial Palace gained no new magic at all.
"And even if someone hides them, I hear they find their way back."
Surprise crossed Lucy's face at the explanation. She seemed to be thinking that magic so astonishing could hardly be real.
Laniakea turned to one of the keepers.
"I was told that even if they're stolen, they turn up inside the case again after a few days. Is that true?"
"Yes. When the First Emperor commissioned the spell, they are said to have returned within a day. The magic is so old now that it takes about a month."
Which was as good as admitting that someone had tested it. She was about to tell Lucy there was nothing to worry over when Lucy tilted her head and put a question to the keeper.
"No box?"
She wanted to know what would happen if the case itself were damaged.
"Well... we have never dared attempt such a thing, so..."
If the jewels returned to the case, then the case, too, lay under the spell. They could hardly have smashed it to find out.
"Even so, it is impossible for them to leave the palace, and so I believe they are safe."
"...Very well."
She could not keep the staff any longer. They had to be sent on their way so she could see to the next matter. Laniakea turned her head. Officials from the other departments stood waiting their turn, every one of them smiling brightly.
The days raced past with hardly a moment to draw breath.
Between the preparations for the coronation and the banquet, Laniakea still had to keep up with the state affairs that fell to the Empress. Of all of them, she gave the most care to relief for those who had suffered through the winter just past. The Spring Festival was to be lengthened so that it would coincide with the coronation, and that made the aid all the more urgent.
We have to raise the new emperor's standing.
Beyond the palace, talk that doubted Hyperion's ability was still making the rounds. He had lived his whole life outside the palace and knew nothing of governance. His temper was rough, no different from a barbarian's. Slander that someone was plainly spreading on purpose.
If His Majesty were truly like that, would the inside of the palace have been set to rights this quickly?
Documents in hand, Laniakea stalked toward the bedchamber, still fuming. Tonight their appointed night had come around again. The work was a worry of its own, but today something else troubled her more.
"Haaah..."
Still seated, she let the yawn stretch long, then dropped face-first onto the bed.
"Sleepy..."