14. Manufacture
Ten days had passed since she entrusted the opium venture to Allan, and Sienna Carlyle, Second Imperial Princess of the Empire, was receiving an unwelcome guest.
"Sister. I heard you threw that man Allan Madoff away?"
The question drew a faint crease between Sienna's brows. She had not been in a good mood for the last ten minutes; the guest who had barged in without a word of notice was an unpleasant creature to begin with. Sienna liked almost no one as a rule, but the girl seated across from her now was especially grating.
"I can't imagine what you hope to gain by saying that, Anais."
Anais, her half-sister. Whether she had forgotten being ground underfoot in front of her own birth mother, she had come all the way to Thames Palace of her own accord. The pretext for the visit was an apology. Once they were actually face to face, however, she had only sneered—You don't even want an apology from me, do you?—and then wandered off onto entirely unrelated subjects.
Sienna knew better than anyone that Anais was cornered. That was no reason to sit still while the girl tried to drive a wedge between her and the people closest to her. She studied her sister for a while, then answered with a sneer of her own.
"Allan is the one who cleared me of the poisoning frame you tried to hang around my neck. Why would I throw him away? If it weren't for Allan, I'd be branded a kin-slayer by now."
"Must you keep saying poi—! No. Forget it. I asked because I heard something, that's all."
"I can't imagine what you could have heard."
"I heard Allan Madoff has been running errands lately. ...Sawdust, decomposed granite, even wheat bran—the stuff they only use for animal feed? Oh, and I heard he was seen at a smithy and an apothecary, too."
"..."
"The servants told me. They must have happened to see him."
Happened to. As if. She had plainly set people on him and had him watched. Sienna let out a short, incredulous breath and shot a look at her sister's brazen face.
Personal feelings aside, it was still a pretty face. Set against the past, though, it had faded—subtly, ever so subtly. A pimple broken out high on the forehead. The faintest splits at the ends of her hair. Perhaps it was only an impression, but her eyes seemed to have taken on a damp, sunless cast as well. Proof enough of how swollen her sense of persecution had grown.
Even so, I never thought she'd go so far as to have Allan watched. What she hoped to gain by it hardly needed asking. Anais chewed her lip, then came to the point.
"Sister. I still can't forget that man chewing a pill right in front of me."
"..."
"Of course you must have ordered him to. A man whose talents stop at swinging a sword would never have done it of his own will, would he? ...But what matters is how I feel. Every time I picture that face, my teeth practically chatter."
In truth, it had been Allan's plan. For the moment, Sienna decided to hear whatever the girl had to spit out.
"And?"
"Just hand him over to me. From the way you've knocked your escort knight down to an errand boy, I'd say even you've lost all affection for him."
"..."
"I'm not like you, so I won't kill him. I'll just put him on a ship. A merchantman running to the East and back, ten years or so? ...Oh, and I'd like you to hand that man called Bono over to me as well."
Anais seemed convinced that Allan had been discarded for some reason or other. The girl was not imagining things out of thin air. Allan's recent movements really had been somewhat strange.
Lately he had been going about in plain clothes, buying all manner of miscellaneous goods. Word that he had obtained lime, Sienna had let pass without much thought. But when she heard he had ordered three kinds of sawdust from a mill, each ground to a different particle size, she had wondered what on earth he was doing. He had acquired every other sort of odds and ends besides, or so the reports claimed.
I didn't ask. That was the agreement. She was curious. That much was true. But contrary to Anais's certainty, Sienna had not cast Allan aside. She was merely waiting until he produced a result.
Sienna tapped the table and sank into a brief silence. Did that silence look like an opening? Anais's eyes took on a greasy shine, and she tossed out a proposal meant to sound reasonable.
"Allan Madoff and Bono Miller. Hand those two over, and I'll withdraw."
"From the Academy?"
"Yes. Wasn't that what you wanted? You're not even showing your face in public, all to keep the pressure on me. ...Thanks to you, getting through each day is already hell, so I'm willing to quit. All I'm asking in return is two resources you've already thrown away."
So saying, Anais lifted the corners of her mouth. It was a rather grotesque smile.
She's well and truly broken, too. To Sienna's eye, of course, it was still only cute. Even so, she could feel it plainly: of the Anais who had at least performed the part of a good child, nothing remained but venom. A girl whose attachment to the Academy had been almost unnatural—and now she was staking her withdrawal on a bid for revenge.
Sienna had no intention of accepting. She did want Anais gone from the Academy, but Allan was too valuable a resource to trade away for that.
"Sorry, but withdrawal alone isn't enough anymore."
"What? After I went so far as to—!"
"You staying at the Academy isn't so bad, either. Reading every look from the professors and your classmates hasn't been easy, has it? ...Come to think of it, you'll be running into the relatives of the people who were sacrificed in your place. That ought to be quite a sight."
"...You're a crazy bitch, Sienna."
Sienna laughed and let the insult slide past. Anais muttered something else under her breath and swept out. With that, the negotiation was over.
Still, she does provide a little amusement at the finish. Was this what they called affection between siblings? Smiling, Sienna rose.
Something her sister had said made her suddenly want a look at Allan's enterprise. She had promised not to interfere, but surely observing was allowed. If all he had to do was stir the stuff into liquor and sell it, why was he taking so long? She wanted to know.
And so Sienna made for the modest detached palace she had lent to Madoff Pharmaceuticals. She had come with nothing more in mind than a quick look around. As the building drew near, however, a faint frown settled over her face.
"What on earth is he doing?"
Something suspicious hung in the air. A smell.
After I hired the Miller brothers, I put them to work fitting out a well-ventilated manufacturing room, and I procured the necessary raw materials myself. What I needed at once was slaked lime, ammonium chloride, and heat-resistant vessels in a range of sizes. The last of those had been difficult to obtain, though not beyond the reach of money. This was a fantasy world, after all; heat-resistant magic existed. I had paid dearly for it.
I had also ordered things I did not need right away. Sawdust, decomposed granite, wheat bran, agar, and the rest—all of it preparation for artificially cultivating the psilocybin the Empress so loved. They were things I could have gathered in due time, but I had ordered them early for a reason. I had felt eyes on me from a distance. To throw those eyes off, I had even bought several items I had no use for whatsoever. Nothing good could come of showing my hand, so I had indulged in a little misdirection.
Had I been excessively cautious?
No. I'll have to move the product soon enough anyway.
For the past several days I had been manufacturing without pause, day and night.
Mixing. Precipitation. Filtration. Heating.
Breaking the raw opium into small pieces and portioning the finished product into sealed containers—that much I could leave to the Miller brothers. The manufacture itself I had been carrying out alone for days. I had judged it was not yet time to share the process with anyone else.
This is some truly spectacular bullshit. Now and then I found myself wondering what in the world I was doing. Not out of self-reproach. I was simply, honestly exhausted. But what choice was there? Endure.
I was repeating that to myself, about to add the ammonium chloride from the apothecary to the mixture, when—
"Allan?"
A voice called my name. A woman's voice, at that. There was only one person who would come all the way out here. I stopped the work and stepped out of the manufacturing room for the first time in a long while.
"So this is where you've been holed up, Allan."
The investor holding forty-nine percent of the shares was looking at me with open curiosity. She had watched in silence all this time, and now impatience was finally creeping in. It had not been so very long, objectively speaking—but knowing Sienna's temperament, she had shown considerable patience.
"Your Highness. Forgive me for receiving you in such a shabby state."
"Shabby is fair, but it's fine. ...May I ask what you're doing? If you consider this interference, you don't have to answer."
"I am manufacturing medicine, of course."
"...It seems to take a great deal of labor. Judging by the state of you."
So I did look haggard. I simply smiled.
"I have not been wasting time without reason."
"I should hope not. From the equipment in here, it looks as if you've spent every coin I put in. I'd like to believe an investment of that size wasn't made for nothing. ...Which is also to say the effect ought to be far superior to opium powder with nothing but the useless fraction taken out."
"You have judged correctly, Your Highness."
"Better than the medicine I made?"
The medicine Sienna had made was opium wine—opium dissolved in port. Something she had devised entirely on her own after tinkering with this and that by herself. Excellent enough as a recreational intoxicant, but nowhere near the class of what I had just produced.
"It is, of course, markedly superior in effect."
"Then when...?"
"A finished quantity is already on hand. Would you care to see it?"
With that, I showed her the goods.
A white crystalline powder. Morphine.
A narcotic possessed of ten times the analgesic power of ordinary opium powder.
Sienna studied it closely and nodded. She would not know the particulars, but she would have guessed it was a thing of concentrated potency. She looked curious, too, about where and how a product of that potency was meant to be sold—but, gratefully, she did not ask.
She did, however, offer a kindly warning.
"Allan. A great many people are watching you. I don't need to say who."
"Yes. I was aware."
"You'd do well to be careful nothing goes wrong. They'll be looking for any excuse to pick a fight. If this were my enterprise I'd shield you, but it isn't, is it?"
"The warning alone is enough. Thank you."
The moment she heard that, Sienna turned on her heel, as if to say I could see to the rest myself.
What I had just told her was sincere. I already knew there were many eyes on me, and I was not troubled by it. I intended to put even that attention to work in the business. In truth, that was what I had been turning over while I manufactured the morphine.
The finished morphine already came to more than fifteen kilograms, and the stock was only going to grow. This was not a quantity one could dispose of like a fool.