The Reward
"Your Highness. It is time you kept your promise."
Sienna stared straight at Allan Madoff as he made the demand without a shred of shame.
Until recently she had treated him as little more than a hunting dog. Lately, though, this particular retainer had risen sharply in value. What she had promised him was a million thalers, and a leave of absence lasting a month or more. The leave she could swallow. A million thalers was excessive—ten times the salary Allan officially drew in a year. He already skimmed a handsome side income from the businesses she owned, with her tacit blessing, but a fortune was still a fortune.
Even so, it would not strain her. Her reputation might be foul, but she was still the Second Princess of the Empire. Every year the stipend for running Thames Palace and maintaining her dignity landed in her coffers, and the property held in her own name was considerable in its own right. On wealth alone she stood ahead of the other princesses. Whenever she ran short she simply went to her father, invented some passable excuse, and came back with the money—openly, unlike her half-sisters.
Right. Of course I ought to pay him.
Allan's service was the sort of thing money struggled to price. Anais's political footing, shrunk to a fraction of what it had been? That alone was a triumph. And quite apart from that, the look on the girl's face—pure, exquisite humiliation—had been a victory all its own.
A half-sister who had thrown her weight around since childhood on nothing but the Empress's backing. Lately, now that she was of an age, she had entered the Academy and started winning over the students as well. Sienna hated to admit it, but the girl had begun to make her uneasy. That little enterprise was finished now. The image had collapsed: the gracious princess, kind even to commoners; the diligent princess who accepted the same treatment as the other students and still posted excellent marks. Anais seemed to want to wrap the matter up with a leave of absence. Sienna meant to see her withdraw for good.
A million thalers to be rid of her is cheap.
Allan seemed to know it, which was why he could press his claim so brazenly.
"Your Highness. Why the hesitation? I carried out every order you gave me."
Sienna said nothing.
"I can promise you this. From now on the Empress cannot live without psilocybin. I do not mean she will lie awake with a ruined stomach, the way an opium user does in withdrawal. Her body will be perfectly sound. But she will never forget how good it felt in the moment she took it."
"From what I saw, I'd say you're right."
"And she certainly will not be helping the Third Princess strike back at you. She knows perfectly well that one wrong move and the supply stops."
Yes. The Empress could be trained with the drug. Sienna would never drag her fully onto their side, but at the very least the woman would cease to be an enemy. All of it was good. It was good, and yet one thing still snagged.
I want to know. Badly.
Where in the world had Allan Madoff acquired so much knowledge? Opium, psilocybin, and whatever else he was still keeping in reserve. It certainly had not come from the Academy. She had sent people to look, and there was no institution in the Britannia Empire that taught anything of the sort. Nor was it some house secret handed down by the Madoffs, a textbook case of fallen nobility. Which meant he had come by it through some channel known only to himself. The talk of elves sounded like rubbish, but she could not be entirely sure.
Sienna wanted to know what Allan was hiding—how much he knew, what use that knowledge might have, and above all whether it could be turned into a business. So she held her answer back a little, and decided to sound him out.
"...Allan. Now that I think of it, I'm a bit worried. What if the Empress tries to get the stuff on her own? When you come down to it, it's just a mushroom."
"She may try. She will be fortunate if she does not eat the wrong one and die. Even herb-gatherers who have spent their whole lives in the forest find it difficult."
Then how do you know something that hard?
The question surged up, and Sienna nearly flung it back at him before she shut her mouth. This man was never going to answer straight. He would invent some excuse and talk circles around her again. She understood. He would not want to hand over a precious asset for a mere million thalers.
"Your Highness. Please keep your promise."
Watching him press her, restless as he was, he looked like nothing but a vulgar little mercenary—fretting that the reward might fall through, that he might miss a fat purse and the pleasures it could buy.
"What do you mean to spend it on? I can ask that much, can't I?"
"Well... haha."
"Women? Gambling?"
"Both. I will not deny it."
Allan laughed as if to ask why she was bothering with such a question, all the while watching her face. Was he itching to roll through cabarets and gambling dens until his bones wore thin? Given Allan Madoff's usual habits, that would have been the natural assumption. He worked off the stress of killing with nothing but pleasure.
But I don't think that's it this time.
There was something. She simply did not think she was going to get the answer she wanted out of him here. She was not disappointed. She had another plan—a way to glimpse what he was sitting on without Allan ever having to open his mouth.
"Fine. I'll have it paid first thing tomorrow morning, so stop worrying."
"Thank you, Your Highness."
"The leave is the same. Rest, starting tomorrow, and come back whenever you like. Of course, if I desperately need you, you'll come running at once. ...Will those terms satisfy you, Allan?"
"Of course!"
Only then did Allan break into a full smile, and for a brief moment the air between them turned almost warm.
Sienna fully intended to keep her word. More than that, she wanted to look after him on a scale that would raise eyebrows. Allan had earned it. Unlike the rest of her circle—people who did nothing but watch her mood and carry out orders, or fail even at that—he was useful in every direction that mattered. Neglecting a retainer like that would be idiocy. She meant to see that he had room to use his talents to the full.
The bounty would be paid tomorrow morning. The leave was already granted. Surely she would not stab him in the back now. Sienna handed her people every filthy job imaginable, but she paid what the work was worth, and he was the one who had made her look like a filial daughter.
She isn't the sort to pick a fight with me just to save a million thalers.
Even so, this was no time to lounge about waiting for the money to arrive. There was that uneasy thing Sienna had said before.
"I'm going to give you goods worth several times the million thalers you asked for."
That. Paying in kind was not exactly breaking the promise. A respectable mansion near Thames Palace, a modest farm, crafts or jewels—any of those would have been fine. That, however, was how a normal person thought. Unfortunately, Sienna was not normal.
If it were property, she would have given me warning. She's got something else in mind.
He smothered the faint rise of unease and headed home. His lodgings stood half an hour from the palace: a tenement with shops on the ground floor and three floors of rooms above. Respectable enough for an imperial escort knight, and bleak as a cell inside. It was a place to sleep and nothing more—no furnishings worth the name. Most days he ate and slept within the palace grounds anyway.
Sitting on the edge of the bed in that empty room, his thoughts began to wander, and among them the reward waiting tomorrow. He tried to spin it into something good. The longer he sat with it, the thicker the suspicion grew.
"There's only one thing it can be. No matter how I turn it over."
Something had occurred to him. He could only hope his instincts were wrong.
"Sir Allan. Might I have a moment of your time?"
The next morning Gordon came to call, the chief chamberlain who oversaw the running of the palace. A high noble, as befitted a man who served the Emperor's own blood—higher in standing than a mere knight, and older besides—he was nevertheless exceedingly careful. Was it the wickedness Allan Madoff had committed before the transmigration? Allan could readily understand the sour look, and the way the man kept taking his measure.
The papers Gordon held out, however, were not welcome in the least.
"Her Highness Sienna asked me to deliver these to you, Sir Allan."
They had agreed on payment in kind, so drawing up a contract was hardly strange. What Sienna meant to hand over, though, was neither real estate nor some expensive work of art. That it was worth more than a million thalers, at least, was certain.
"A standing-crop deal. Just dressed up."
A dry laugh escaped him the moment he saw the contract.
"Sir Allan? What did you just say?"
"Nothing. Please, go on."
"Yes. This contract transfers to you ownership of the crop currently under cultivation in the main garden of Thames Palace. More precisely, ownership of what is drawn from its pods and refined."
"All of it? That quantity?"
"Yes. You needn't worry about whether the contract will hold. The moment you sign, it goes straight to be sealed and attested."
He was not worried about whether the contract would hold. The problem was the nature of the thing she had decided to give him.
"Chief Chamberlain. There is only one crop grown in the main garden, is there not?"
"Well, yes."
That crop, of course, was the opium poppy. Even now, he had been told, the gardeners of Thames Palace were working day and night, drawing the latex and making raw opium. Short of hands, they had apparently dragged in a hundred servants and slaves. All he had to do was take delivery of the raw opium they produced.
"Did Her Highness leave any other instructions?"
"Ah, yes. She said she would not involve herself in however you choose to dispose of the opium, my lord. Act at your own discretion, she said, and do not look over your shoulder."
The chief chamberlain said it while looking at him with open envy. It did not seem like flattery. The envy looked genuine. The man probably thought of opium as nothing more than a medicine for headaches and toothaches, so of course the gift would stir him. Or perhaps he simply believed that Sienna, who punished the smallest fault with a morningstar, had taken a peculiar shine to Allan alone.
"All of it is yours, Sir Allan."
There was no need for him to spell it out. Allan sighed and looked at the contract again. It granted him, free of charge, ownership of the opium raised on a plot far too large to call a garden—more than seventy acres.
So it was this after all.
The villainess's reward was opium. Her ideas really were in a class of their own.