Then We Need Only Wash
A brief silence fell, and it was Hyperion who broke it.
"When will Mole return?"
"Mole? I couldn't say. They tell me he's recovered a great deal, but I can't know exactly when he'll come back."
At Laniakea's answer, he smiled.
"I see. Then I shall have to come and see for myself that this tree grows as it ought."
There was no reason for an emperor to come all the way to the Annex Palace merely to look after a single tree. A word to the staff that it must be well tended, and the one in charge would cherish it as if his life depended on it. Hyperion knew that better than anyone, and still he had said he would see to it himself—and that he would come here to do it.
A complicated feeling stirred in his eyes as he spoke: the tremor of a man making his first confession, desire for the one who was rightfully his, and, at the same time, a tenderness like that of someone gazing upon something precious.
Laniakea met that gaze for a long while and did not look away.
She remembered what they had promised at the start.
One year.
She had agreed to remain with him for only one year, and to spend that time striving to fulfill the duties that had always been hers. She was certain that was the promise they had made, and yet…
At first that year had seemed impossibly far off. Somewhere along the way, though, the fear had thinned. Laniakea knew now when her heart was most at ease. The bedchamber in the Main Palace, which she had once been too tense even to approach, she now walked toward with a light step. Even when a banquet ended and she might have returned at once to the Empress's Palace, she had taken Hyperion's hand and gone, as if it were only natural, to the bedchamber in the Main Palace—as though that were the place where she could rest.
Her gaze, fixed until then on Hyperion, drifted down toward the faint light below. It was still a young tree, with only a few leaves clinging to its branches, and yet those small leaves gave off a soft glow. It was the light she had wanted so desperately as a child, and at last it was hers.
Laniakea lifted her head again and looked at the man who had placed that longed-for light in her hands. For some reason, today, she wanted to stay with him.
She turned. When they had come in, every lamp in the Annex Palace had been dark save those in the staff quarters, but now a light was burning in Hyperion's old bedchamber. She looked toward his room.
"Since you've come all this way, would you care to look around the Annex before you go?"
She had no idea why a light was on in there. All that mattered was that she could use it as an excuse to linger here with him a little longer.
And so the two of them went inside.
Once, after the place had lost the master who lived there and everything within had been cleared away, it had felt bleak and hollow. Now, as in the days when Laniakea had stayed, carpets were laid again and things for those who dwelt here filled the rooms. Even so, it had not returned entirely to what it once was. Corners still stood empty, and the Annex felt sparse.
They went straight up to the second floor. She had lived here for three years, and yet Laniakea felt awkward—so thoroughly had the Main Palace and the Empress's Palace become home to her. They walked the short corridor and came to Hyperion's old room.
The moment they stepped inside, he halted, turned to her, and asked with a grave face,
"Do you, by any chance, dislike me?"
"That's not it!"
Laniakea started and shook her head. She could guess why he would ask. Unlike the rest of the Annex, his room was barren enough to seem hollow. Aside from the bed that had always been there and a handful of pieces of furniture, nothing else had been set out. Had it not been for the warmth of the hearth—where the Annex staff seemed to have hastily lit a fire—it would have felt colder still.
"Everywhere else, I only had to furnish it more or less as it used to be. But here I kept wondering what I ought to put in, and in the end I couldn't decide on a single thing!"
It was true. While refurnishing the Annex, Laniakea, unlike before, had not fretted over the budget and had put in everything she wanted. Even so, old habits did not change so easily; nothing was as lavish as the Empress Dowager's tastes. Still, she had ordered a new desk of the finest ebony, and had several more bookcases built and set into the rooms, filled, of course, with new books.
She had ordered so gleefully, and yet when she came to think of how to furnish Hyperion's room, she could not bring herself to order anything at all.
What does His Majesty like?
The Main Palace still used its old furnishings, so nothing there reflected his taste. She had asked Signo, casually, what the Emperor's Palace was like, only to hear that nothing new had been bought for it since the accession either. Rather, she was told, he had found it too ornate and sent what was there elsewhere. She knew, then, that he did not care for anything overly splendid, but it was little help. She could hardly fill his room with something crude.
Laniakea had pored over the lists of furniture made by the workshops and worried for a long time over what ought to go in his room. And as she wondered, she found herself imagining him—imagining him coming, now and then, to this Annex. If she were tending the vegetable garden, he would surely come to help. No, he would say he meant to do it with her. When they had spoken with Mole the other day, he too had shown a keen interest in the work.
If they tended the beds together, then on a hot summer day they might come up to the room for a while to cool themselves, and then they would need a chair to sit and rest in. But the chairs made in the palace workshops were all far too ornate for such a use.
"The truth is, if we'd had a little more time today, I wanted us to go and look at furniture together. Of course I didn't mean to buy something cheap for Your Majesty. I meant to learn your taste first, and then decide…!"
At the sight of Laniakea flailing her arms and defending herself as though her life depended on it, the corner of Hyperion's mouth lifted. He knew she meant every word. When he had happened to speak with the head of the workshop, he had heard that she asked for the furniture lists—and that she had kept asking what had gone into the Emperor's Palace.
While she settles her own things so easily.
On the way up, Laniakea had felt the Annex well filled, but to him it was not. He had told her to use as much of the budget as she pleased and furnish the place however she liked, and still she had kept it modest and plain. She had chosen her own things carelessly, as if it hardly mattered what she put there, and yet she had worried so long over furnishing his room. All that time, then, she had been thinking of him.
Hyperion took a step toward Laniakea, who still looked as though she had been wronged.
Today he had learned what a full day felt like. When he opened his eyes, his wife had been in his arms, and he had brought a meal himself and shared it with her. Afterward they had gone out at their leisure and spent the day walking together, seeing new things and tasting them. Then they had gone to buy the things Laniakea liked. The sight of her so delighted she hardly knew what to do with herself had shown him a fullness he had never felt before.
And just now, when they planted the tree together in the darkened rear garden and looked at one another, Hyperion had known that the feeling which had filled him all day was about to overflow. He wanted to sink completely into this fullness he could now dare to call perfect.
When he took one step closer, the distance between them narrowed until they might have collided at any moment. His face drew slowly toward hers. Then, just before their lips met, Laniakea suddenly stepped back and said in a rush,
"I—I haven't washed yet…!"
At that, Hyperion smiled and took her hand.
There was one thing he had noticed the moment they entered this room. Not only had a fire been laid in the hearth—the bath had been prepared as well. Who had prepared it did not matter now. He caught Laniakea's hand, still smudged with soil, and murmured,
"Then we need only wash."
And at once he took her hand and led her toward the bath.
