Opium
Thames Palace.
The residence of my liege, the Second Princess Sienna—granted to her by the Emperor in the year she turned sixteen.
It was vast enough that, long ago, it had served as the Imperial Palace itself, with a resident staff of more than five hundred. It was also the den where Sienna carried out her misdeeds.
Even so, for the time being, it was my place of work.
The moment I stepped into the spacious office, a sigh escaped me. Allan Madoff's revolting life kept surfacing in my mind, and I couldn't stop turning it over.
This man really is garbage.
A butcher with no experience of war, who had nonetheless killed or crippled more than eighty people. An escort knight in name alone—no better than a thug. Whenever trouble arose at one of the businesses Sienna held under a false name, this body was the fixer she sent in.
And yet… it still wasn't the worst.
Absurd, saying so when I'd half-crippled a servant the instant I took over this body, but it was true. Sienna had not yet committed herself to villainy in earnest, and the infamy of her closest aide—me—was still at a level I could bear.
"Allan Madoff. I'm disappointed. You did that to a servant who didn't even have the strength to resist? And I'm not raising this solely because of what happened today."
The proof of that burst in without warning: a knight in uniform, staring at me as if I were filth. An aggrieved sort of face, and a build that called a dachshund to mind. A man named Bono—a classmate of this body from the Academy.
Common-born, with talent only a shade above ordinary, he was a diligent knight who had clawed his way to a post as escort to royalty through sheer, grinding effort. But perhaps because he was decent and naive by nature, he was also the man who sickened of Sienna's conduct, resisted her from within, and was eventually repaid for it. Not with a mere dismissal. His entire family was slaughtered before his eyes, and then he himself died miserably.
And the one who wiped that household out was Allan Madoff.
That this boy was standing in front of me, whole and unharmed, was a good sign.
"That's a relief."
At that, Bono cocked his head and took a step closer.
"A relief, you say? …Allan. You weren't like this at the Academy. What happened to you?"
"I only followed my liege's orders."
"Orders are orders, but there's a limit…! When I transferred from the front lines to Her Highness the Second Princess's escort, everyone I knew was worried for me. I'm not deaf. I've heard more than enough of the ugly rumors about her."
"Badmouthing my liege to my face?"
"Part of why I came here was you. I heard about your filthy reputation too, but I believed someone had deliberately ruined it."
"And after what happened today, it seems you've decided all of it was true."
Instead of answering, Bono gave a silent nod. His eyes were wide; he looked genuinely furious at a friend's fall. I had nothing in particular to say to him.
Should I fob him off with something plausible and send him on his way?
Knock, knock.
A timid rap at the door. Furious as he was, Bono didn't seem to care, but I couldn't afford that luxury. I wanted to know exactly who was knocking. A mere servant running someone's errand? Another colleague come to rebuke me for my misdeeds? Or else…
No need to gamble.
I opened my mouth on the assumption that Sienna was listening from outside.
"At a glance, what I did will turn your stomach, Bono."
"You think that even needs saying…!"
"But there's one fact you've overlooked. The servant I punished took money and goods worth eight hundred thalers from a noble in the faction that follows Her Highness the First Princess. …When bribery is suspected, someone has to be held to account, doesn't he?"
"Over something that small."
"Small? You're calling that small?"
Bono said nothing.
I rose, my face gone hard.
"His Majesty came to the throne with the blood of a great many royals on his hands. Half-brothers. Full brothers. …He even cut down collateral kin who had been sitting quietly at home. Only after that did he ascend a throne stained with blood."
All of it was true. The current Emperor was a man who had raised a storm of blood in order to become emperor. So many of the imperial family died back then that palaces sat empty, which was why the three princesses—half-sisters—had each claimed one and set up on their own. The same man who had seized power that way was, these days, living as a fool doting on his daughters.
"Why are you suddenly… talking about that?"
The sensitive subject had taken some of the wind out of Bono.
"Those bloodstains still haven't been wiped away."
He was silent.
"Three princesses, each born of a different mother, are fighting tooth and nail over investiture as crown princess. And at a moment this delicate, a servant attending our Princess Sienna at close range was in secret contact with someone from the opposing camp. You don't call that a crime?"
"Whether it's a crime or not is for the military police to determine through an investigation. You can't just go on guesswork…!"
"So you've concluded that Her Highness Sienna seized an innocent man. I'm not sure that's a fitting attitude toward one's liege."
At that, Bono couldn't bring himself to answer, and looked away.
He'd come in a fit of anger, only to have his fitness as an escort knight suddenly called into question—of course he was thrown. Talking behind your liege's back to a colleague is hardly something to be proud of. Left as he was, he'd snap one last line at me and bolt.
But he was not given the chance to run.
"Allan. Are you in there?"
Sienna flung the door open and appeared, a faint smile on her lips.
"Your Highness."
"No one answered my knock. You had a guest?"
"My apologies."
I received her as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I had suspected as much from the start. Bono's face, by contrast, had gone corpse-pale.
"Your… Highness?"
He was so startled he forgot even to offer a bow, his lips merely working. Every grim possibility imaginable was no doubt racing through his head by now.
Sienna didn't so much as glance his way.
She was hardly going to let it pass out of some belief in the old saying that one may curse the king where he cannot hear. This woman? Not a chance.
She must have judged that tearing into him on the spot was the lesser play. Or she means to corner Bono and slowly squeeze the life out of him.
I decided to play along, just enough, with her murky intent.
"Your Highness. This friend of mine offered a rather interesting view on personnel management here at Thames Palace. If you permit it, might I report it to you later?"
"I'd like that. But Allan. As I recall, Sir Bono's father is…?"
"A veteran noncommissioned officer of the Seventh Infantry Regiment. His rank is low, but his loyalty to the imperial house is exceptional. I know it because we're friends."
"So the son of a mere army sergeant has become a knight. How admirable."
Sienna nodded, smiling with evident pleasure. Bono, his face drained of color, did nothing but watch for her mood. Fortunately, he showed no sign of provoking her temper to her face with talk of unlawful orders. Not that it mattered. He was already marked.
"Allan. I need your counsel. Will you come with me?"
"Of course, Your Highness."
We left Bono standing there, blank-faced.
"M-may you go in safety!"
Down on one knee on those short legs, scrambling to show his respects, open dismay was written plain across his face. A pitiful sight. There was nothing to be done about it.
The place Sienna took me was the vast garden on the outskirts of Thames Palace.
A normal royal would have thrown obscene amounts of money at the grounds until they could admire every flower in the world, in every season. In Sienna's garden, only one kind of flower grew.
"What do you think?"
"It's impressive."
Poppies. Black blotches on the blooms, round seed pods—a poisonous strain. I'd seen an old man in the countryside grow twenty or so in a greenhouse because he wanted to steep them into liquor, but this was on another scale entirely. Turn wherever I looked, and there were poppies. Score one of those unripe pods and the sap would run; collect it, dry it, and you had raw opium.
Needless to say, Sienna had not grown opium for the pleasure of looking at flowers. She said as much herself.
"The first thing I did when I moved into Thames Palace was tear the garden up. I wasn't about to pay wages to ten gardeners just to grow flowers. …But once I was looking at an empty garden, it seemed a waste."
"And so you decided to cultivate opium poppies."
"They're useful in all sorts of ways, aren't they?"
A garden laid out from the start for the production of opium. On that alone, I couldn't call it some tremendous evil.
Romance fantasy or not, this was still a fantasy world. Holy magic existed that could reattach severed limbs. But only a tiny few ever saw that benefit, because only a handful of saintesses chosen by the heavenly god could wield divine power. Potions, too, sat behind an absurdly high barrier. For anyone of ordinary means—even for a respectable bourgeois—this was a world in which opium could pass for good medicine. Roughly the seventeenth century? There were probably plenty of people who couldn't lay hands on opium at all.
The problem was that the opium made here was tied to a plotline of the original story. Sienna was cheerfully explaining that plot herself, wearing the satisfied look of someone who had accomplished something she was very proud of.
"Allan, you know as well as I do that the Empress is from Jin, in the east. Father took her in right after his accession, for the dowry. But for several years now she's suffered terrible homesickness. Leaving her homeland and living in isolation for so long will do that, I suppose?"
"The hardship must be severe. Inevitably."
The present Empress was an easterner—more precisely, a princess of Jin, the power that held hegemony over the east. She was also the birth mother of the Third Princess, one of the original novel's two heroines. When she first married the Emperor she had been the Third Empress; now she was the only one, because the mothers of the First and Second Princesses had already died, each in her own time.
"Even so, she's as good as a mother to me, isn't she? It's not as if we never see each other. I thought about what I could do for her."
"How very considerate of you."
"Thank you. This is what came of that thought."
So saying, Sienna held up a small bottle. It was a preparation of wine with a measured dose of opium dissolved in it—just the right amount to addict. Nothing of the kind had existed in this world. Sienna had devised it.
Drink that, and the homesickness would ease. That much is true.
The price would be an audience with the infinite pleasure seated in the abyss, and then a long thrashing in the side effects. From the start, Sienna had no intention of offering opium wine because she wanted to cure the Empress's homesickness. If what she wanted was to do the woman dirty, that was another matter.
What I have to worry about more is Sienna getting a taste for the opium trade off the back of this.
In the original, Sienna watched the Empress collapse into an addict almost overnight, took her idea from the sight, and pushed an organized opium business. In the end she put the name Ambrosia on the opium wine and began distributing it through the Academy. Leave it alone, and students, professors, and graduate students alike would have opium within easy reach.
Unfortunately, this body stood a very good chance of becoming the manager of that business. Later, when one accident after another broke out at the Academy because of the opium, the meddlesome protagonist would track me down and pick a fight. And that would be the end of me.
"She's a pitiful woman. The least I can do is this much."
Sienna already looked giddy at the thought of feeding the Empress opium. I could tell from the fond way she gazed at the flowers in full bloom.
Crazy bitch.
This was the moment I understood, in my gut, exactly what kind of woman she was.