The Day the Heirs Died
The imperial palace was turned upside down.
Knights took up their posts throughout the grounds with tense faces, and wherever two or more people gathered, they fell at once to whispering over what in the world could have happened.
"When the palace physician saw the three of them, there were already dark red marks upon their skin..."
"Then it was poison?"
"All three at once? But I heard each of them was somewhere different..."
Ominous talk passed back and forth. Amid it all came word that the Empress had screamed herself hoarse and fainted more than once.
With the palace grown murderous in its mood, Laniakea had no choice but to hold her breath and wait.
The princes are dead? All three of them, at once?
It was something she had never once imagined. Even if one of them were to leave the world through accident or illness, two more princes would remain. Three, strictly speaking—yet whenever the succession was discussed, Hyperion was always left out of the reckoning, and Laniakea herself had scarcely thought of him.
And yet the three heirs in line for the throne had departed this world in a single stroke.
In the immediate aftermath, every servant of the Second, Third, and Fourth Princes' palaces was dragged away. The princesses consort were no exception.
Through that storm, the people of Laniakea's Annex Palace held their breath and watched what unfolded beyond their walls. Fortunately there were very few of them to begin with, and none were the sort to seek contact with the outside world beyond what duty strictly required.
Even so, they could not escape investigation. Lucy went with Laniakea as her representative and faced the questioning of the Imperial Guard.
It was over in less than an hour. For three full years the First Prince's consort had been all but invisible, and she had kept company with no one; there was not the slightest circumstance tying her to the affair. Just as decisive was the absurd flood of evidence pouring out of the servants of the Second, Third, and Fourth Princes' households.
"His Highness the Second Prince said that if this one matter succeeded, we'd never have to worry again! A-and then he gave us the medicine..."
That was the testimony of a servant from the Second Prince's palace, suspected of slipping poison into the Third Prince's meals.
"His Highness the Third Prince told me I only had to mix it into the tea leaves. I truly didn't know it was poison!"
That came from a maid paid by the Third Prince's household to tamper with the Fourth Prince's tea.
"His Highness the Fourth Prince was always looked down on by the Second and Third Princes! They mocked him constantly! I only wanted to help him. He promised me that once this was over, he would make me Empress!"
And that was the testimony of a certain lady's maid, said to have been the Fourth Prince's lover.
The Empress had interrogated every suspect herself, questioning them with a brutality little short of torture. What came of it was as wretched as it was bewildering.
The Second, Third, and Fourth Princes had each used poison upon the others. By a cruel coincidence, all of it had been carried out on the same day.
Each had swallowed a neutralizing agent beforehand, or kept an antidote ready, against the chance that suspicion might fall upon him. But those remedies worked only upon the poison he himself had prepared. Each man had taken in two kinds of poison not his own, and the very components of the poison he had used were mixed in as well. All three princes were dead before anyone could lift a hand to save them.
Their reasons were easy enough to understand. The First Prince might as well not have existed; kill the other brothers, and the next emperor could only be oneself. Even if the full truth came out later, one would already be emperor by then, and burying the matter would be possible. With no other heir, the ministers would be powerless to object.
The trouble was that all three princes had thought the very same thing.
The funeral prepared for an emperor living from one day to the next was changed into a funeral for the princes. The sudden need for two more ornate coffins set a number of people scrambling, but that was hardly the trouble now.
"This can't be! It cannot be! Why are all my sons dead!"
The Empress raged like a madwoman. Perhaps she already was one.
She had always looked down upon others from a height of unbroken, icy dignity. Now that same woman lay sprawled and wailing, her hair a wild tangle, her mourning clothes not even properly worn.
The consorts of the Second, Third, and Fourth Princes fared no better. The Third and Fourth had fainted; only the Second Prince's consort still held her place.
At the funeral, the nobles murmured behind grave faces.
"What happens now?"
"Quite so. His Majesty is hardly in any condition to produce another heir, is he?"
"Then among His Majesty's brothers..."
They were deep in calculating which of the collateral lines stood closest to the succession when a voice tore through the hall.
"You!"
The Empress had been thrashing until the maids begged her to compose herself and held her fast, left hissing through rough breaths. Now she shrieked at Laniakea, standing in a corner.
"It was you! You, you wretch! Living as if you were quietly dead—that was all to deceive me, wasn't it! You! You conspired with that bastard Hyperion and killed my sons!"
And she lunged at Laniakea like a woman possessed.
"Your Majesty!"
"Please, calm yourself!"
The maids cried out, but they did not seize her. They were already exhausted from spending the whole day restraining an Empress who had lost her mind. She struck the cheek of any maid who stood in her way and raked them with her nails as she rampaged, and the maids, naturally, were worn to the bone.
If only she would take her anger out on someone else instead of us.
Now that the Empress had chosen an easy mark, they had no reason to stop her.
"Bring my princes back to life!"
Shouting, she flailed wildly, trying to lay hands on Laniakea.
In that instant—
"Stay back!"
Lucy, behind Laniakea, threw out an arm and blocked the Empress as she charged without mercy.
To Lucy it would have been nothing more than a light shove. But that was only by Lucy's measure. At a single motion of her hand the Empress's body lifted clear of the ground, sailed through the empty air, and came down hard.
"Heavens! Your Majesty!"
"What have you done!"
The faces of the maids, who had been watching at their leisure, went white as sheets. Mad though her behavior might be, the Empress was at present the highest power in the palace—as good as the emperor herself—and someone had thrown her.
One of the flustered maids looked at Laniakea, standing blank with shock, and burst out.
"Your Highness, Consort of the First Prince! How dare you commit such an outrageous act!"
If word got out that the Empress had been hurt because they had failed to attend her properly, they would be in trouble. The blame had to be shifted onto someone else at once, and that someone, of course, was Laniakea.
"Me?"
At the maids' outcry Laniakea could scarcely believe her ears. It was already beyond belief that the Empress had charged her—and now they meant to ask what she had done?
Then the Empress's knights came running.
"It's the Lupin maid!"
"She has the strength of a monster! Everyone, take care!"
To the eye, Lucy was nothing but a short, cute girl. Even so, the hulking knights of the imperial household closed around her, and in an instant a tension wholly unlike what had filled the funeral hall a moment before ran through the room.
Lucy looked around at the knights leveling their sword points at her, snorted, and spoke.
"Worthless bastards. I'll kill every last one of you."
Unlike her usual speech, smooth Imperial flowed from Lucy's mouth.
At those words Laniakea clutched her head.
The girl could read reasonably well, but she could not speak well. Worried that Lucy's conversation never seemed to improve, Laniakea had suggested they begin by practicing simple expressions. Lucy had then produced a book from who knew where and declared that this was the line she wanted to practice.
"I really don't think there will be many occasions in your life to say this..."
"Learning. Important. Must!"
Ordinarily, when study was proposed, Lucy wilted. She was asking now with a rare sparkle in her eyes, and there had been no refusing her.
So Laniakea had pronounced the line over and over, and taught it to her.
"All right. Repeat after me. Worthless bastards. I'll kill every last one of you."
"Worth... less? Worthless... bastards..."
Unlike the other phrases, Lucy had picked that one up quickly.
And that was the line she had just spoken.
"She meant to assassinate Her Majesty the Empress!"
"Seize the traitor!"
Before anyone quite knew how, Lucy had become a traitor. Resist any further now, and she truly would be one. The Empress, not in her right mind, might well pin the princes' deaths on them as well and vent the whole of her rage.
"Lucy! No! Stay still!"
Lucy, who had looked ready to throw herself at the knights at any moment, stopped dead at Laniakea's cry.
Then the Empress, hauled upright in the maids' arms, let out a shriek.
"Aaaah!"
Unable to master her fury, she thrashed—and charged Laniakea once more.
Lucy moved to block her, but Laniakea shook her head, warning her not to come. Better to have her hair seized once and take the blow. That was the fastest way to end this.
The Empress had just reached for her when—
Thud!
With a dull impact, the Empress's body flew through the air again and rolled across the floor.
"...What?"
Laniakea, who had squeezed her eyes shut, braced for her hair to be torn out at any second, opened them in shock.
Lucy stood several paces off, ringed by knights.
So it had not been Lucy.
Then who?
Had someone protected her, in a moment like this?
In that instant an unfamiliar voice came from above her head.