The Spaces Left Blank
The past few days had been busy enough to be the death of her.
Even so, she had not managed a proper sleep in the Empress's Palace. The first reason was surely that she could not bring herself to set the documents down until the moment sleep finally took her.
In the end, Lucy stole them away.
Laniakea thought back on what had happened in the Empress's Palace.
Only two people were free to come and go from her bedchamber without leave. One was Hyperion. The other was Lucy.
Lucy, it seemed, had been listening at the door all along. The instant the papers fluttered under Laniakea's fingers, she shot in like lightning, barked, "Sound sleep! Disturbance!" and snatched them clean away. Then she cradled the stack neatly against her chest, scooped up the rest from the table, and bolted.
Lucy's flight with the documents did not mean Laniakea could fall asleep at once. Close her eyes, and the matters she had reviewed by day rose up again, and with them every task still left unfinished.
The poorhouses have to come first... and most of their directors are the sort who pocket the money...
The former empress had put a great many policies for the poor into practice. On the face of it, that was a good thing. The trouble was that the directors of the poorhouses funded by the imperial household had, nearly to a one, been committing fraud. Outwardly they trumpeted how devotedly the empress looked after those in hardship, while behind the scenes they skimmed away a fortune.
So I ought to replace them—or find some other way to send the aid.
When her thoughts reached that far, Laniakea let out a small sigh. The work was necessary, and it had to be done. But was it work she was permitted to undertake?
It will take a long time.
Every one of those poorhouses would have to be torn out and rebuilt, and whoever was newly appointed would have to be examined by people she could trust. There was no world in which that finished in a day or two. It was the sort of labor that demanded steady oversight across a long stretch of time. Was this something she ought to put her hands on?
She needed to sleep, and yet, before she knew it, her eyes were wide open, fixed on the dark ceiling. Still lying where she was, she reached up over her head toward the drawer. Wood clicked, the drawer slid open, and a moment later the marriage contract she had put away was in her hand.
Laniakea narrowed her eyes at it and spoke softly.
"Firefly. Come out."
Nothing in the room changed. She pressed a hand to her brow and tried again.
"O great Spirit of Fire. Descend, I beg you, to this place, and reveal the strongest, purest source of the beginning."
⟨ Summoning ⟩
An irritating voice answered, and the space above her head grew bright.
The instant Firefly appeared, Laniakea shot out a hand and seized it.
"Can't you come the first time I call? Do I really have to recite some embarrassing incantation every single time before you'll show yourself?"
Once the childish quarrel was over, Laniakea let it go. Firefly fluttered upward, blinking the light at its rear, and spoke.
"It's dark. I can't read."
"I don't feel like getting up for it."
Firefly had no face to speak of, and yet she could have sworn it was glaring at her—what nonsense is this—with open disdain.
Of course, that was not the only reason she had called it.
"I also wanted to know how far Mole has recovered. Have you seen it since? If not, you can just go back. I'll call Minnow or Baepsae."
The mere suggestion that she might call another spirit sent Firefly into a huff. Laniakea pressed it, thinking that if Baepsae had been here, it would have tried to peck the firefly up and swallow it whole.
"How was it? Has it recovered a lot?"
At that, Laniakea breathed out in relief. Mole had never slept this long before. She knew that a long rest would bring its strength back, and still the unease kept creeping in.
When it comes back, I really ought to give it something wonderful.
The grapevine Hyperion had promised would be enough to delight it, but she wanted to give Mole a gift of her own.
If I looked inside the Imperial Palace, I could find any number of things...
Now and then Mole would turn up with a plant she had never seen and demand to know what it was. Asked where it had come from, it said the market outside the palace. The wilted leaves and the vegetable roots rotting in patches made it plain enough that it had scavenged them off the market floor. Even so, Laniakea recognized very little of what it brought. Priatra's climate was different, and the Empire was so vast that crops from distant lands were sold even in the capital. She had wondered whether the botanical guides in the palace library might have them, and looked, only to find that many were missing. The greenhouses and flower gardens held nothing but beautiful things. Plants that people outside the palace actually ate scarcely existed there at all.
It would be nice if I could go out and come back.
When she had been the prince's consort, the empress's watch had kept her from leaving.
It would still be difficult now.
If the empress announced that she meant to step outside the palace and have a look, how many people would be put to trouble? And trailing dozens of attendants was not the picture Laniakea wanted, either.
And first, His Majesty would have to agree...
Thinking of Hyperion, she stretched out her hand again and caught Firefly where it had been drifting slowly about. Then she set it atop her head.
"Reading this."
Firefly grumbled again at her perfectly calm answer. She ignored it. Her eyes ran quickly down the marriage contract. There were still a great many blanks.
When they had first drawn it up, they had agreed to fill it in slowly, whenever they had the time. But Hyperion was almost never in the palace, and on the rare occasions he returned, he shared a single meal and left again. She could not catch hold of a man who looked that pressed and tell him they ought to finish the marriage contract. It was no different after he ascended as emperor. Once he had handed her the supplementary contract accepting every condition she set, he said nothing more about the marriage contract at all. And so it remained a document full of empty spaces.
Her gaze came to rest at the end of the contract they had written first.
The two parties shall share a bed for the production of an heir ____ times per ____.
It was the clause that had flustered her so badly the first time she saw it that she had slammed the contract shut.
For now we're managing it, more or less, by agreement...
Whenever their schedules opened, they settled it between them—once every few days. They had never written it down. Roughly, that was the understanding.
At this rate, I don't think I'll have any particular reason to take this contract out again.
She could not be certain of the future. But Laniakea trusted Hyperion. He had kept every promise he had made so far.
So once we have an heir...
Even if she left, he would not hold her. He would do as he had promised. It was plainly what she had wanted, and what they had promised each other, and yet, strangely, some quiet discomfort stirred in her.
She looked at the marriage contract for a long while more, then slipped it back into the drawer. Then she spoke to Firefly.
"Thank you for coming."
It sounded like a snap, but Firefly's voice had softened a great deal. Firefly, too, was a friend who had been with her since she was small. Inside the royal palace, where Mole could not come, it had often shown her the way. When the hearth in her room burned more weakly than the ones in her sisters' chambers, Firefly would slip quietly into the fire and nurse the embers until the wood blazed. In winter it had crept into her pocket and left behind just enough warmth to keep her hands from going cold.
With those words, Firefly vanished at once. Even after it was gone, Laniakea lay awake for a long while.
That had been yesterday.
Now her eyes were closing, as if the sleeplessness had been a lie. As if this place were more comfortable than the Empress's Palace, where she spent the whole of her days.
Thud.
The document in Laniakea's hand slipped onto the bed. Before she knew it she was breathing soft and even, sunk deep in sleep.
An hour later.
"Oh, dear."
Hyperion looked down at her—collapsed asleep on the bed, never even knowing he had come in—as if the sight put him in a difficult position.