What Was Bound to Come
With a new emperor upon the throne, the line of succession had to be drawn up anew. If the emperor had children, his own direct descendants held first claim, and only after them did the right pass to his brothers and sisters. Now that every one of the emperor's brothers was dead, it was their children who would stand at the head of that line. Left as things stood, the Second Prince's children would take first and second place in the succession.
But the confirmation of the succession can be put off for about a year.
Several generations ago there had been an emperor who ascended with no children of his own. The succession was therefore settled upon his siblings—only for the empress's pregnancy to be confirmed a week later, so that the documents drawn up seven days before had to be rewritten entirely. Another week passed, and the pregnancy proved a misdiagnosis; the papers were amended yet again. Then, a month later, the empress truly was with child. And what came of it? The order of succession had to be changed once more. That the palace archivists were worked until they broke in the meantime went without saying.
From then on, it became customary for a new emperor to let a certain interval pass after his accession before settling the succession.
But the imperial statutes say it is to be settled as soon as possible.
As soon as possible.
A vague phrase, with no fixed span of time attached to it. From this moment on, Hyperion would have to stretch that as soon as possible for as long as it would go.
The Empress Dowager will be working to make it short.
That the Second Prince's consort was meeting so often with the Dowager meant only one thing. With no heir yet in place, she meant to force the Second Prince's children into the succession by whatever means she could—and then arrange some misfortune around Hyperion himself.
Word that I spend so much time with Laniakea in the Main Palace will have driven her into an even greater fury.
Should the imperial couple have a child before the succession was settled, that child would of course become first in line. Over that first place, Hyperion and the Dowager were now forced to compete.
As things stand, she won't come straight for me or Laniakea.
That was a menial's trick—the sort of thing only a fool attempted, like the idiot who had tried to ambush Hyperion not long ago. Inquiry had turned up no direct tie between the man and the Dowager. Still, she would have known the attack was coming, and she would have watched. Only then could she take a true measure of Hyperion's strength.
For the time being, the Dowager would not be the one to lead an assault. However calmly Laniakea had carried herself that day, as though it were no great matter, and however thoroughly she had kept the palace's uproar to a minimum, the incident had not ceased to exist. The knights had their guard wound tight, and the nobles were keeping their heads down. To move in such a climate would only make her conspicuous, so for a while the Dowager would stay quiet.
The problem is how long that silence will last.
And there was something else that caught at him.
The Dowager disliked him. He had assumed, naturally, that her rage and hatred would be turned his way. Yet she seemed to bear an even deeper loathing for Laniakea than for him.
"She needs somewhere to spend her anger, and Your Majesty is hardly an easy mark. I wondered whether that fury might have turned toward Her Majesty the Empress…"
Signo had said as much, but something else weighed on Hyperion. Since the accession, he had gone through the papers and records that concerned her.
At first the Dowager had favored Laniakea. A woman who lived quietly, exactly as she was told, would have pleased her. And since Laniakea was the official consort of the First Prince, it was more profitable to keep her close and turn her as one pleased than to cast her aside.
But a little more than a year after Laniakea entered the Imperial Palace, the Dowager had suddenly shut her out without remainder. She was no longer called to banquets, and her allowance was cut.
Hyperion had known even then that something was wrong, but it was only after he came to the palace that he understood how much colder the Dowager was toward Laniakea than he had imagined. When he returned, the meal set before him that day was shabby beside what it had once been.
"I never received word, so I had to order the meal prepared in a hurry… There will be a great deal lacking."
So Laniakea had said—but that a prince's consort inside the Imperial Palace should have to fret over such a thing at all was the problem from the start. It was a mercy that she had found some pleasure in that life. Any of the other princes' wives would not have endured a month.
It was around then, too, that Hyperion increased the number of people he had planted within the palace, and that he turned his attention to his estate far from the capital and ordered a manor readied there. Looking back, that was when he had first begun to think of taking her out of the palace the moment a new emperor took the throne.
Until then, I thought she would be better off remaining in the palace.
Hyperion's hand went on stroking her hair, though it was already neatly arranged and there was nothing left to set right. The other, of course, still held hers.
Seen from so near, the shadows beneath Laniakea's eyes stood out all the more clearly. He could feel, without any need of words, how hard the coming banquet and coronation had been wearing on her.
I wish it were already over.
More than anything else, he wanted Laniakea to pass her hours a little more easily. After watching her sleep for a long while, he carefully drew her deeper into his arms.
He remembered her voice, thick with drowsiness, insisting that there was still work she had to do. The only task Laniakea needed to see to now was sleeping peacefully in his embrace.
Time kept moving forward. At last the Spring Festival began—the festival some had awaited with aching impatience, and others had begged never to arrive.
"Careful there!"
"Out of the way. Move!"
"Preparations are complete!"
The uproar was such that one could hardly tell whether this was the Imperial Palace or the floor of a market. In the middle of it, Laniakea had of course been in motion since morning, scarcely a moment to breathe.
In truth, the labor fell to the ladies-in-waiting, the maids, and the rest of the palace staff. She herself had only to keep still and move as the day's schedule required. But even that stillness was anything but easy.
"Have the rest of the ornaments brought in."
"This part is catching. What should we do? Should we take one off?"
"Do you have any idea how much the number of ceremonial buttons matters?"
The voices were not as loud as those outside, yet every murmur was urgent. In that hushed commotion, Laniakea called the day's order back to mind.
From noon the gates of the inner palace would open, and the nobles would come in. Once they had all entered by the appointed hour, the coronation would begin at once. It opened with the priest's prayer and passed into the consecration.
When the consecration of the imperial house's new regalia and the old is finished, I take the crown from the priest—and I have to carry His Majesty's as well.
Between those moments, though, there was a brief wait. While the empress received her consecration, the emperor would stand in the Grand Hall of Assembly, accepting the nobles' greetings and hearing their oaths of fealty.
When the oaths are done, I bring the crown, set it upon him, and that is the end.
Immediately afterward, the banquet would begin. In truth, the imperial couple had relatively little to do there. They need only stand in the highest place and receive, one by one, the greetings of those who came forward.
From then on, she said, we won't eat a bite all day.
Hilde had said it with genuine regret—that stretch of time would be the hardest of all. Even so, there was no eating anything beforehand. Amid a day so relentlessly busy, a full stomach might make her drowsy, and having to excuse herself too often would be just as troublesome.
I only have to get through today.
Of course, many official banquets still awaited her as empress. But none of them mattered as today's did. The first formal banquet given by the new emperor, and a coronation besides—the Hyperion people saw today would remain in their minds for a long time.
The preparations have been thorough.
Late into last night, everyone had gone over what had already been checked, and checked it again. It was plain they all knew just how much this banquet mattered.
So now, if we only carry it off as we rehearsed…
Just then a hurried knock sounded, and Hilde came in. White to the lips, she drew close and whispered at Laniakea's ear.
At those words, Laniakea clenched her fist.
What was bound to come had come.