The Goddess of Spring
The Grand Hall of Assembly, where the coronation was to take place, was packed to the walls.
A good while had passed since the nobles finished paying their respects. The ceremony ought to have begun by now, and yet the empress who was meant to bring the crown had still not shown herself.
"Isn't she terribly late?"
"The consecration must have ended ages ago. Has something happened?"
Those who had waited in silence at first began to murmur once the empress continued not to appear.
Hyperion watched them, then called for Signo.
"Signo."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Go and see for yourself."
"At once."
At the command, Signo nodded, his face set and grave.
Word had come from the empress's side asking that the coronation be delayed by some thirty minutes. The one who brought the message had said he did not know the cause, only that matters there had looked exceedingly chaotic. At first Hyperion had taken it for some small snag in the preparations. Such things happened often enough at an affair of this scale, and he had expected it to be settled and done with. Yet more than thirty minutes had already slipped by, and still no further word had come.
While Signo hurried off toward where the empress waited, Hyperion turned his gaze on the high priest.
"Was there any trouble during the consecration?"
Addressed with a courtesy that honored him, the high priest bent slightly at the waist as he answered.
"None whatsoever. The consecration was completed without incident."
Even as he spoke, he glanced toward the doors, as though the worry had taken hold of him as well.
What in the world has happened?
Hyperion did not care if the ceremony itself ran into difficulty. For him, this coronation was nothing more and nothing less than a duty that had to be performed. His thoughts chased one another. If it was not some minor mishap—if something had happened to Laniakea herself—
The moment that possibility struck him, he turned and looked down the few steps to where the Empress Dowager stood. Amid the restless crowd, every face tight with unease, she alone had her back to them. She was looking up at Hyperion, wearing a crooked, unpleasant smile.
The sight of Hyperion staring back at her with a rigid face filled the Empress Dowager with a cool, delicious satisfaction. It was the first thrill of triumph she had tasted since her three sons and the emperor had died—since the day she had been forced out of the Imperial Palace.
So it worked.
She had bought three people: a clerk in the jewel administration, and two maids. The clerk had a history of embezzlement. The maids each carried debts and family troubles, weaknesses she had seized upon. One alone would not have set her mind at ease, so she had secured all three, and now, watching Laniakea fail to appear, she was certain the plan had succeeded.
I will not let you hold a single thing.
She could not keep the corners of her mouth from climbing as she looked at him waiting for the crown. He would have guessed at once that she was behind it. But what of that? There was no proof. The crown was not in her hands. Shake down the clerk and the maids as they might, they would find nothing. She had passed the orders through so many turns that those who carried them out did not even know whose bidding they had done. No trace remained. Dig and investigate as they pleased, they would never find it.
And how do you open the mouths of the already dead?
Before today's coronation, the intermediaries who had passed the messages along would already have been buried somewhere in the mountains. Success or failure, she had always meant to put them in the ground.
Listening to the clamor swelling behind her, the Empress Dowager let herself imagine what would follow. The crown was gone. Search as frantically as they might, the coronation could not be postponed any longer. In the end Hyperion would remain an emperor who had failed to wear the crown at his own coronation.
That is only the beginning.
She would plant voices to cry that it was an ill omen, and with them she would spread the rumor that this had come to pass because Hyperion had killed the other princes and climbed onto the throne. The poisoning of the princes had already been concluded as a case of them killing one another, but not to the Empress Dowager.
He must have had a hand in it.
How else could all three of her sons have left the world on the same day, at the same hour? The moment her homeless resentment and rage fixed upon Hyperion, delusion hardened into certainty.
I will never fall by that man's hand. Whatever it takes, I will take back the place that should have belonged to my sons.
I still have cards left to play.
And...
He's keeping that backcountry wench at his side and enjoying her.
She could guess well enough what Hyperion intended. He meant to get an heir out of that thing as quickly as possible. And of course, with a face that pretty, there would be pleasure in holding her as well. The Empress Dowager's smile deepened. Hyperion would not know that.
No. The wench herself hadn't seemed to know it either.
She recalled the reply she had received when she first sent a private letter to Priatra. It had said they would gladly send Laniakea to the Empire. And besides the note that the girl herself had consented, one further secret had been written there. Remembering it, she pressed down hard on the smile that kept trying to rise.
Go on. Enjoy yourselves to the full, without the slightest idea of what is coming.
Things would never go as Hyperion wished.
It was about time she put on a look of dismay herself. In an instant the Empress Dowager rearranged her face and turned.
"This is taking far too long. I find myself worried that some misfortune may have occurred."
As if her words had been a signal, the murmuring around her swelled. She turned her head again and looked at Hyperion.
Well? What will you do now?
Their eyes met across the empty air.
"Her Majesty the Empress has arrived!"
The attendant at the doors announced it in a ringing voice toward the far side of the hall.
"What?"
The Empress Dowager blurted the question aloud before she could stop herself.
Impossible.
They could not have found the crown so quickly. Then had she come to report that it was gone? At last she would see Hyperion thrown into confusion. She fought desperately to hold back the laugh that threatened to burst free. Here, before every great noble of the Empire gathered in one place, the emperor and the empress would be met with blame and rebuke.
The moment she thought it, the doors opened fully, and Laniakea came in.
In that instant the noisy Grand Hall of Assembly fell silent.
Everyone was looking at Laniakea as she walked inside. Hyperion. The nobles. Even the Empress Dowager. Not one of them could look away. They stared as if spellbound, mouths falling open.
At a coronation the empress was meant to wear the same grand ceremonial robes as the emperor: white, crimson, and gold, a very long cloak, and the imperial crown carried in both hands.
"Her Majesty's gown..."
What Laniakea wore now was not ceremonial dress at all. It was a long gown of the palest apricot cloth, without a single color of the imperial house—not robes of state, but a dress wrought in one hue alone. The full skirt, gathered into fold upon fold, swayed with elegant grace each time she took a step.
It was not only the gown that held their eyes. An empress's hair was ordinarily braided and pinned into the neat style of ceremony. Hers was worn loose, only the crown of it lightly braided and tied back, and between those braids flowers of every color had been set as if they had grown there, adorning the gleam of her platinum hair.
Look where one would, it was not attire fit for a coronation. Even so, every person in the hall stared blankly at Laniakea dressed that way.
It was not merely that she was beautiful. As she stood now, she was the very image of the goddess of spring, a figure every citizen of the Empire had known since childhood from paintings and tales encountered everywhere.
In the hush, Laniakea came toward Hyperion with a graceful step. As if the astonishment of the crowd were none of her concern, a gentle smile rested on her face.
The Empress Dowager, too, stared at her in a daze before her eyes jerked aside.
The crown?
The attending maids who followed carried a wooden box.
Impossible. They couldn't have found it already.
While the Empress Dowager reeled, Laniakea was already standing before Hyperion. She smiled at him, bright and radiant, and spoke.
Then she looked to the high priest. At her signal to begin, he lifted his voice and began the opening prayer.
When the prayer ended, the attending maids who had stood behind her stepped forward with the wooden box. Before everyone, Laniakea opened it.
In that moment a shock greater than the one that had greeted her entrance spread through the Grand Hall of Assembly.
"That is—!"