Resolve
The day I received Sienna's gift, I headed for the poppy fields.
The place was the main garden of Thames Palace. A garden in name only—it was a farm. By the contract it ran to thirty-one hectares, and every span of that vast ground was poppies.
Mad, once you actually looked at it. Filling all of this with poppies.
Poppies were pretty flowers, at bottom. Even in my previous life, old women caught growing them would turn up on the news now and then, insisting they had only planted them because the blooms were so lovely. These, moreover, had been tended by skilled gardeners who knew their work.
And what did pretty matter. The flowers had already withered, and all that remained was opium.
"S-Sir?"
The gardeners drawing latex from the poppy pods stopped dead at the sight of me. Gardeners in name, every one of them scraping opium with a vacant look on his face.
"Scraping them out one at a time, I see."
"We have to finish before the pods ripen."
"You don't. Pierce the top of the pod with a needle, let the latex inside half-set, then collect it. You'll lose less, and you'll spare the labor. Do whatever's left that way."
"Wouldn't that weaken the effect?"
"No."
I would know.
I answered dryly, and the gardeners bowed and scraped and did as they were told. They seemed to know Sienna had signed the ownership over to me.
So it really was mine. Now.
In my previous life, opium had been cheap. At its lowest, word was you could get it out of Afghanistan for three or four million won a kilogram.
This world had no notion yet of poppies grown at scale. Farmsteads raised a little for their own use, and that was the whole of it.
What I already had processed came to no small amount.
"Sir. There are three hundred and fifty kilograms of raw opium in the warehouse."
"..."
"Shall I show you?"
"Yes. If you would."
The moment I gave leave, they brought in raw opium set neatly in square molds—hundreds of black lumps, each with a fair weight to it.
However I disposed of this, I would come away with money.
The problem was Sienna's intent in handing it over. Had she truly meant it only as a reward?
Not a chance.
She meant to watch from a distance how I disposed of the opium, and if it looked like a sound business, to open the venture in earnest. When that time came, she would of course put me out front to do the work.
There were ways to spoil the game she was playing.
Dispose of it like a fool, and she would be disappointed too.
If I set my mind to it, I could do so this very moment.
"If I asked you to destroy every bit of opium here, what would you do?"
"Well... we would obey, of course. We were told to follow whatever Sir Allan ordered, and not to talk back."
"And if I ordered you to take it out of the palace?"
"Yes. Of course."
I could walk it out right now and sell it off in small lots to the countless clinics of the Imperial Capital, and no one would say a word. Or I could bury the whole of it, just to make Sienna give the idea up—a declaration that I had no interest in the opium trade.
But that was not the wise course.
Destroy the opium, and she would wonder why I was throwing away that much money. Knowing that woman's temper, she would dig until she had the reason. ...And moving it off a little at a time would take more time and effort than I could spare.
Whatever I did, the villainess had already taken an interest, and that could not be undone. With her power, she could raise farms and manufactories so vast that opium grown in a garden would be a trifle—and she would treat it as one. Burying it would not end this.
What the hell is this, anyway.
I let out a weary breath and looked at the lump of raw opium in my hand. The sweet, biting scent peculiar to opium stung my nose.
If it were up to me, I would have thrown the whole thing in and resigned.
But the Allan Madoff I had transmigrated into was a man carrying far too much bad karma. Those he had killed or left crippled already numbered over eighty. Those he had only beaten—massaged, in the polite word for it—short of maiming them, ran into the hundreds.
The victims came in every variety. Gamblers making trouble in the gambling houses. Deadbeat debtors who had borrowed and failed to pay, and their families. Palace attendants, and soldiers and officers of the Imperial Guard, punished because Sienna had found a pretext. How many people bore a grudge against me was impossible to reckon.
That a man who had lived that way had never once been investigated by the military police was entirely thanks to Sienna's protection.
Even so, I had no wish to spend my life holding her back over evil I had never committed. That was why I had asked, in the first place, for a million Thalers and leave of a month or more. I needed a chance to put a safe distance between us. The opium had made that difficult.
Stay still, and it would go on like this.
I would spin petty schemes to stop her wrongdoing, and she would use me as study material and grow ever shrewder—a vicious circle. A life dreadful even to imagine. And even if I ground my own life down to nothing, there was no guarantee I could stop her. She was a woman who, knowing nothing, had instinctively arrived at lemon tek. Shut her down outright, and the resentment might only build until she wrought some greater evil later. Or she might mark me as a hindrance and have me put away.
Then wasn't it time I compromised as well?
I didn't need to agonize over an alternative. Put the emphasis on myself rather than the world, and the answer was surprisingly simple.
No need to reason it out at length.
The moment I had it, I went straight to Sienna's office.
Sienna was diligent to an irritating degree, and spent much of the day there. Today was no different. In a dress rather plain for an imperial princess, she was issuing one order after another to her aides.
"The charity affair the Duke of Camberdon is hosting? Obviously I'm not going. The hurt I took from that conspiracy theory of Anais's still hasn't healed. Until she drops out, I'm not taking one step outside Thames Palace."
"Sister Victoria offered to mediate between me and Anais? She must have decided it was her chance to play the peacemaker. And why exactly would I give her that? Decline it. Politely."
"And station people around the Academy..."
Orders of that sort. She was working to put the Third Princess down for good, and to keep the First Princess in check.
The moment I appeared, though, her gaze swung my way. As if she had expected me around now, she dismissed the others with nothing but a jerk of her chin, and soon the office held only the two of us.
"Allan. Did my gift arrive all right?"
"Yes. I received it."
Perhaps it was the plain dress. I was struck anew by how young she was—nineteen, at most. The baby fat had not quite left her, so she looked younger than her years, and being a villainess had packed no venom into her features. That was what made her frightening.
"Allan. Thanks to you, the opium's lost its use. If it'd been grown on some farm outside the city, maybe, but this was cultivated inside the palace, so handing it off to someone else feels risky. I was turning it over, and you came to mind. That's all right, isn't it?"
"There is no need to ask my leave. If anything, you have done me a great kindness."
"You really think that?"
"Of course. You even had the primary processing done for me, free of charge. And with my leave granted, I will have time enough to dispose of it. I am simply grateful."
At that, Sienna broke into a bright smile and said that was excellent. Reading her, though, she clearly had a great many questions for me. Before she could speak again, I got there first.
"Your Highness. I know why you gave me the opium."
"...What?"
"I imagine you meant to watch from a distance, and see by what means I disposed of it. And should you judge the prospects sound, you were prepared to step in yourself."
"What am I so hard up for, that I'd go that far? I was only—"
"Then why did you give it to me?"
"..."
"Even now, Your Highness owns a number of enterprises. Gambling houses, a lending concern, farms on the outskirts of the Imperial Capital, even several merchant ships. Opium, depending on how it is handled, could outstrip the returns of every one of them."
"You sound sure of yourself."
"I am. And I know how to maximize the profit. It is also true that your gift has given me an interest in the business."
At my words, the light in Sienna's face brightened by degrees.
Leave her be, and I could already see how she would move. She would urge me to found a company and begin in earnest. She would give me money to spare and a measure of discretion—and in the end, the leash would stay in her own fist.
"Good, Allan. If you're going to meet me this openly, there's no need for me to talk in circles either. Mind if I make a proposal?"
Just as expected.
"Please, go ahead."
"Like you said, I'm interested in the opium trade. Oh—and psilocybin, of course. If you'd take on managing it, I think I could start the business with an easy mind. What do you think?"
As she said it, expectation filled the eyes she turned on me. A faint flush in her cheeks, and fingers that wouldn't keep still—those came extra.
I could not answer that hope.
"I am grateful for the offer, but I must decline."
"What?"
"I mean that I have no wish to be a manager in service of Your Highness's business. I already have the opium, and though it is hardly ample, I have savings enough to stake the initial capital."
"..."
"I am sorry to say it, but I wish to build a business of my own. An enterprise under my name, that I manage myself."
Open dismay began to settle over the face turned toward me. Before the Empress she had shown a superb gift for acting, but now she could not even govern her expression. She had never imagined I would come at her this way.
"So... you're telling me to get lost?"
"Nothing of the kind. If you would be the first investor in my venture, I would be honored to have you. Dividends, of course, would follow in time."
What I meant was simple enough. Sit quietly, and collect the dividends.
Sienna stared at me, blank. Silence held for a while. It was not uncomfortable. I had already hardened my resolve. If this was going to happen regardless, better that I take the helm myself than leave it to the villainess.
"This way profits Your Highness as well. If I rise as a man of business, does that not give you—who haven't even a proper faction—a powerful supporter?"
"That is true, but..."
"I will see to everything. Your Highness need only remain an investor."
Of course, spreading the drugs in the villainess's place would not make the harm disappear. But at least fewer people would die. Far fewer.
That was the best I could do, for now.