Let's Have a Child
Mole tipped its head, whiskers twitching, as if the word refused to settle anywhere sensible.
Time spent at Laniakea's side had made the little earth spirit reasonably fluent in human custom. It knew that marriage was the promise a human woman and a human man made to live together. The man called Hyperion did not, in fact, live with Laniakea—some snarled human business, no doubt—but Mole had caught the shape of it well enough without a long explanation. Wasn't complication simply what a human life was? And his absence had its uses. With that man gone, Laniakea summoned them far more often, which suited Mole very well.
"Well… not exactly. People break the promise and part for all sorts of reasons. It happens often. In any case, His Highness the Prince is going to ask me for a divorce before long."
The moment her wits returned after she reached the Annex Palace, Laniakea had known it. Ah. His Highness the First Imperial Prince is going to demand a divorce.
His figure at the funeral rose before her, sharp as if he still stood in that hall.
Even while the princes' rites went on, no one had spared a thought for Hyperion, though he was now the emperor's only living child. Then they saw him, and understanding passed over every face. The next emperor would be Hyperion. Not merely because he was the last son left. Standing there, he had caught every gaze in the room.
It was not only his height, or the breadth of him. The pressure she had felt at their first meeting had only deepened across three years, and Laniakea could sense it herself: he carried the air of a man born to rule. However thick the empress's faction lay through the Imperial Palace, it would soon have no choice but to bow.
But that will not be the end of it.
Inside the palace, the First Imperial Prince had no foundation of his own. Even seated on the throne, he would find it difficult to steer the realm as he wished, and so he would have to gather a faction within the Imperial Palace, and quickly.
The surest way is marriage.
The empress might hold the palace, but she had never been without opposition. At the Imperial Academy, in the temple, and in other houses of long history, voices had insisted that imperial law required Hyperion to be invested as crown prince. The empress would gladly have driven every one of them out, yet the emperor had no stomach for laying hands on his aged ministers, and so they had been left where they stood. Fortunately, they had held respectable places within the imperial household ever since.
He'll want to draw them closer still.
A handshake and a shared meal, however, did not teach people to trust one another. From old times there had been a reliable way to seal an alliance in a case like this.
Marriage.
She could not say how many daughters of marriageable age the houses behind Hyperion might possess, but there would certainly be at least one woman fit to set forward as empress.
That woman will be empress.
Having followed the thought that far, Laniakea let out a short sigh.
"I should be getting back. And until I call for you, you are not to come out. Not once. Understood?"
Mole's whiskers sank, thoroughly put out. Laniakea had no mind to comfort it. If anyone had caught them, it would have been a true disaster.
"Go on."
At her word the spirit waved a forepaw as if to say it understood, then sank back into the earth and was gone.
Laniakea stamped the disturbed soil flat and went straight to her room. She opened the desk drawer at once, reached into the back of it, and drew out what she had been seeking.
"It's been a while."
Since coming to the Annex Palace she had scarcely opened it. A marriage contract was of little use when one had no husband to consult it over.
She turned the pages from memory, and about halfway through she found the clause she wanted.
"Property division upon divorce, and the other matters…."
In the marriage contracts of royalty and nobility, this was said to be the section written in the finest detail. In the one Laniakea held, it was not long at all.
"There's hardly anything."
Just as she muttered, the provisions for dividing property after a divorce had been set down with remarkable brevity.
Upon divorce, everything bestowed by the imperial household shall be left behind. No title shall be granted, nor any territory. An escort will be provided only as far as the road back to her homeland.
The allowance she had already been paid to keep up her station would not be taken back. That, truly, was all.
She had not failed to try to grow her modest fortune. The empress's eyes, however, were in every corner of the Annex Palace, and doing anything while slipping past them had proved no easy thing.
After reading the contract over and over, Laniakea swallowed a sigh and closed it. Then, as if her mind were made, she clenched her fist.
"I'll negotiate."
She could not go back to Priatra like this. No—she did not want to.
A divorce did not, of course, mean she was obliged to return.
I could stay in the Empire.
But that was a plan for someone who had money.
What I've saved won't be enough to go on living here.
Laniakea turned over the life she wanted. A house with one room, a small kitchen, and a sitting room large enough for a table. A yard would be pleasant, though she would not complain greatly without one. She did not even wish for a great city. She wanted the country: quiet, and not crowded with people.
There won't be much I can do in a place like that… but I want to live without worrying where the next meal comes from.
Bread and vegetables for the day, and a book she could read. If she had only that, she could be happy for the rest of her life.
She sank into the thought.
The emperor's death was only a matter of time, and then Hyperion would take the throne at once. The trouble was that Laniakea, in that same moment, would become empress. A prince's consort might be divorced with difficulty enough. An empress's divorce would be a far more troublesome business, as anyone could see. Hyperion would certainly move to end the marriage at once.
So I ought to be able to settle the terms.
I will sign the papers at once, exactly as you wish. In return, once I have left the palace, might I ask for a little money, so that I can go on living in the Empire?
If she put it that way—
"He'll agree without a moment's hesitation."
A smile touched her mouth as she pictured it.
She had never imagined leaving the Imperial Palace so suddenly, and by way of a divorce, but it was not a bad thing.
She dropped onto the bed as if her strings had been cut and turned over what she still had to do. First, see that the people in the Annex get their severance… Lucy will serve the new empress, I suppose. And which of her own things could she carry out? Would they let her take the book she was reading? She would not be able to remain in the capital, so she would have to go somewhere far. Where?
Most people facing a divorce would have been sick with worry. Laniakea's heart was racing.
Then, all at once, she thought of Hyperion—her husband, with whom three years had held nothing but a handful of meals.
In truth she felt nothing particular for him. He was handsome, frightening, and only rarely seen: a husband on paper, and no more than that. She neither liked him nor disliked him.
If I had to choose, I suppose he falls on the side of… liking him.
She remembered him standing between her and the empress when that woman came at her. The marriage had been the empress's arrangement, and Laniakea had wondered whether he might hold a grudge against her for it. Apparently he did not.
So if I tell him I'll divorce him at once, he might show me a little consideration.
What good could come of parting on bad terms with the man who would soon be emperor?
Thinking that she would grant whatever he asked, Laniakea slipped slowly into sleep.
The next day, just as she had expected, attendants came from the Main Palace to fetch her.
Walking in with them, Laniakea felt the air of the Main Palace grown heavier still. After the princes' funeral, preparations for the emperor's would surely begin before long.
An attendant led her somewhere she did not know.
"This place…"
"It is His Highness the Crown Prince's office."
She had been told the room stood empty because the emperor had never named a crown prince. No one, it seemed, had raised an objection to Hyperion using it.
I knew it would come to this.
Laniakea stepped carefully inside, and every gaze in the room turned to her. Most of the ministers were unfamiliar faces. These would be the men who had stood against the empress. They stared at her blankly for a moment, and then their expressions soured.
Catching the displeasure written there, Laniakea looked away. She could guess why they glared. They had gathered around Hyperion, it seemed, for no other reason than to speak of her.
"That will be all. You may withdraw."
Just as the air threatened to grow colder, Hyperion rose and spoke. At the low sound of his voice the men bowed at once and filed out of the office.
Left alone, the room filled with silence.
Unable, in the end, to bear the weight of it, Laniakea spoke first.
"You sent for me…"
"Ah. Yes. I did. The thing is…"
Unlike the way he had dealt with the ministers a moment before, Hyperion hesitated over the answer.
"There is something I must ask of you."
His face was grave, as if he had braced himself for it, and Laniakea swallowed against a dry throat. So it's come at last. They were a couple little different from strangers, and yet even he must falter at asking for a divorce the moment she walked in.
"I know what you want. Don't worry. I mean to do exactly as Your Highness wishes."
"You do?"
At her answer, Hyperion's expression brightened.
He looked so openly relieved that Laniakea felt, just a little, hurt. The marriage had held neither of their wills, but to welcome a divorce this plainly seemed rather much. Still, seeing how pleased he was, she thought that so long as her request was not unreasonable, he would grant it without trouble.
Telling herself that was a mercy, she spoke at once.
"Then let's sign the divorce agreement."
In the same breath, as if he would wait no longer, Hyperion said,
"A son or a daughter makes no difference. Let us have a child."