This Place Is Heaven
As they walked the market, the things in their hands kept changing.
The cups from the juice they had bought and finished first were tossed into the barrels set out all through the market. Crash! The sound of breaking glass was clearer than she had expected.
The cups were made to be used once and thrown away just like that. There was even a superstition that the louder they shattered, the more the evil spirits would startle and flee. Laniakea was peering down at the shards inside the barrel, delighted by the novelty, when Hyperion pressed his own cup into her hand and asked whether, if she didn't mind, she would throw his away as well. She did not refuse. His went into the barrel too.
Crash!
The breaking rang out wonderfully clear.
The next thing Laniakea bought was a hair ribbon worked in a pretty pattern.
"It's for Lucy. She's quietly rather straitlaced — she won't take anything beyond the bare minimum she's issued. But as you know, she never stops moving, so she loses a hair tie somewhere every single day..."
Talking of Lucy, she told Hyperion about all the little things the two of them used to do back when they lived in the Annex Palace.
The place where her steps next halted was a stall selling roasted potatoes. Roasted potatoes appeared even on the Imperial Palace table. What had caught her feet was the dozens of spices heaped along one side of the vendor's cart — pepper, cloves, cardamom, cumin, and the rest. She knew those. But there were also dozens of powders whose identities she could not begin to guess.
The moment Laniakea stood staring at them, the merchant darted over.
"Miss, what can I get you?"
"What are all of these?"
"These here? This one's fried onion ground to a powder, this is mastic, this is mace, this is kaffir lime..."
Dozens of names rolled smoothly off his tongue.
"If you want them powdered, I'll dust them on for you. There are sauces here too."
Laniakea's face, as she listened, was perfectly serious.
"Could you put a little of all of them on?"
"Then you'd have to order at least two portions... Aigoo, your husband's right behind you. No problem, then. Come on, just a moment."
Afraid she might change her mind, the merchant hurriedly piled potatoes into a bowl made of leaves. Watching him, Hyperion asked abruptly.
"How did you know I was her husband?"
"How wouldn't I? You're stuck to her like you're standing guard."
The merchant gave a hearty laugh, as if to say what a question that was, and went on filling the bowl.
"I could be her lover. Or family."
"Well now. I've been selling for decades — you think I can't read a thing like that? Glued right to her so no other man can so much as bump into her. Obvious. Haven't been married long, have you? Very nice to see."
Rummaging through the pot of oil, he said it with the firm conviction of a man who needed only a glance.
"It's been three years..."
When Laniakea murmured that in answer to whether it had not been long, the merchant only laughed harder.
"Aigoo, your husband must love you deep. Three years on, and he still looks at his wife as hot as if they were married yesterday."
At that Hyperion cleared his throat, then spoke to the merchant.
"Two more portions, please. Sprinkle on everything my wife wants."
"Aigoo, don't you worry!"
The delighted merchant's hands flew even faster.
A little later, watching the two walk off with their arms grown heavy with potatoes, he tilted his head. He had been certain, from the look in their eyes, that they were a couple in a good season — and yet, strangely, he could not remember their faces at all.
"Mm, this is good. This was the peri-peri sauce, wasn't it?"
"It was."
Laniakea and Hyperion sat on a bench in a park a little way off, eating roasted potatoes. She worked through everything the merchant had named, one taste at a time, and fixed each flavor in her memory. Hyperion asked.
"Why did you suddenly ask the names of all those spices?"
"Well... when I read the documents, I see what the territories produce, don't I? But so many of those things are never used inside the Imperial Palace. I wanted to know them properly."
Priatra, Laniakea's homeland, was a country of long winters. Spices there were nowhere near as varied as in the hot south. Even if her sisters could call up the Great Spirit of the Earth, they had never bothered to cultivate what they were not already used to. And so Laniakea did not know the Empire's spices well.
Once, at a meal, she had asked while they ate, and the other princes' wives had laughed at her for not knowing even that and put her to shame, so she had not asked again. She had memorized a certain amount from what they ate at the Annex Palace, but there had been no way to learn what ordinary people of the Empire ate beyond the palace walls.
"I thought I might understand the documents that come to me a little more properly that way."
She said it, and bit into a small potato dusted with red spice. Hyperion rested his chin on his hand and watched her eat with such relish.
She had shown such unusual interest that he had thought the scent simply pleased her and she wanted a taste. Instead she said she wanted to know better where the people of the Empire grew what they grew, and how they ate it.
What am I supposed to do with her.
Hyperion thought of the coronation. The sight of Laniakea when the doors opened — appearing like a goddess of spring — still shimmered before his eyes, as if it had been etched onto his retinas. The crown had vanished, and she had not panicked. With an improvisation no one else had even imagined, she had turned a coronation without a crown into the greatest coronation in history.
He remembered her hands as she set the flower crown upon his head. Unlike her easy smile, those hands had been trembling terribly. Even so, she had carried every last thing through to a perfect end. She had even left the Empress Dowager and her faction — poised to pick a quarrel over the tea — unable to say a word.
And after doing all of it so well, the moment she returned to the bedchamber she had sunk to the floor and sobbed. When she had cried so hard she was nearly fainting, Hyperion laid her on the bed and asked. She could have stopped the coronation. Why had she tried so hard? Laniakea had answered in a choked voice, almost murmuring.
And when she sniffled again, Hyperion felt something deep in his chest ache and ring. Laniakea would not know what he had felt for her from the very beginning until now. It was an emotion that had begun in something trivial she did not even remember. At first it had been no more than a ripple spreading over a still pool. Now it had become a vast wave breaking over him.
She was the one who had waited for him. The one who had worried for him. That alone was enough to love her — and still his wife kept stirring a storm of feeling too enormous to endure.
It was the same now. This unremarkable sight of her in plain clothes, eating food from the street, was more provocative to Hyperion than anything else. Enough that he wanted to take her, anywhere at all, somewhere there was a bed, and have her take him in at once.
But Hyperion was a man who had spent his whole life learning patience. Today was his wife's first outing in the capital. Her pretty eyes swept busily over the goods along the street as if every one of them were a wonder, and she asked the name and price of each small thing. Laniakea was sincerely enjoying every one of these ordinary acts. So he meant to treasure this happiness of hers — to make today, for her, a day that was joyful and happy from beginning to end. Enduring his own desire for the sake of that was truly nothing at all.
Watching her hands slow, as if she were full at last, Hyperion reached out. Even at the hand that came so suddenly close, Laniakea neither startled nor drew away. As if it were only natural that he should come to her. She simply stayed still, like someone certain he would never do her the slightest harm.
He wiped the powder from the corner of her mouth. Then he drew his hand back and licked what clung to his finger.
"It is good."
"If something's on my face, say so out loud!"
"What does it matter. I think sharing it this way is rather nice."
"Don't tease me!"
Laniakea smacked his arm with her palm, not hard enough to hurt. Hyperion made a great show of agony, as if her touch pained him terribly.
His knights, watching the two of them from a distance, blinked. Did His Majesty just smile? He even pretended to be hurt? After a moment's hesitation, they quietly looked away. They had the distinct feeling they had seen something they were not meant to see.
The potatoes Hyperion had cheerfully ordered two extra portions of were, in the end, finished by him. Having tidied where they had sat, he wiped his hands and took Laniakea's again.
"Well then. Now that we're full, let's go do what we came to do today."
"What we came to do?"
"Have you forgotten? I said I would buy you a gift."
"Oh."
In the pleasure of being outside, she had truly forgotten it completely. Hyperion smiled and led her on.
"I'm certain you'll like it."
A short while later.
"This place is heaven..."
At the sight spread open before her, Laniakea clapped both hands over her mouth.