Distrust
Disgusting creatures. Did they truly think I wouldn't see through their little scheme?
Third Princess Anais Carlyle looked at Allan, seated before her, with open contempt.
Allan Madoff—president of Madoff Pharmaceuticals, and an imperial escort knight. Scion of a fallen house scarcely better off than a prosperous farmer. He had entered the Academy at seventeen, kept excellent marks all through his school years, and lived a thoroughly unremarkable private life. Not so much as a single minor disciplinary mark to his name. Then, the moment he graduated and became Sienna's escort, the rot set in in earnest.
Nothing but a tool. That's all he is.
Serve a proper lord, and he would have built an ordinary elite career. His misfortune was being chosen by trash like Sienna. If anything about him was unexpected, it was his knowledge of pharmaceutics. Where he had learned it was anyone's guess, but that hardly mattered. He had probably taught himself just to curry favor with Sienna. She tormented nearly everyone, yet she favored him so highly she treated him as a business partner. There was clearly something to the man.
When that same Allan came calling out of nowhere, even Anais could not guess his intent. He pointed out the dangers of the health syrup. A man whose specialty was killing people fretted over the lives of commoners he had never laid eyes on, and went so far as to look after Anais herself—someone who could fairly be called his rival. She had never seen eccentricity quite like it. At first, honestly, she had wondered whether the bastard had simply lost his mind.
But now I can see it.
Allan was plainly afraid the health syrup would seize the market ahead of him. He must have meant to build an official reputation through military supply contracts, then push into the civilian market and make a killing—only for this syrup to appear out of nowhere and spoil the plan, or so he believed. That was why he had come running here in such a fever. To be fair, on price alone they were not even in the same world. Morphine at a thousand thalers a gram; the health syrup at seventy-nine thalers for three-tenths of a liter. The dose differed, and so did the effect, but to most people the latter was bound to look more attractive. Unlike morphine, which could be used only on the gravely ill, the syrup was handy even for a trifling cold.
He must have been afraid of me recovering my power through the health syrup, too.
There were already people who had spotted its potential and come courting her. Bobby Duncan, dean of the Magic Department at the Imperial Academy—he had only just left—was the prime example. He was often mocked for how frequently he asked those around him for loans, but he was a personage all the same, and so Anais had sold him a small stake and made an ally of him. From their side, trying to check her was only natural.
Anais, of course, had not the slightest intention of stopping. What had she started this business for in the first place? If Sienna and Allan felt threatened by the syrup, then she ought to press all the harder. Only then could she lure them into an overreach.
"Nothing more to say?"
Anais sneered at Allan with her arms folded. She wanted to hear what the man would spout, having failed to get what he came for.
"Nothing, Your Highness."
"...You're withdrawing more cleanly than I expected."
"If your resolve regarding the business is that firm, would it not be discourteous of me to keep trying to dissuade you? And I have come to see that nothing I say will reach you, Princess Anais. You have already decided not to believe."
"That sounds like mockery."
"Perish the thought. I would ask only one thing. You refuse to believe my goodwill, yet you accept the warning about the jimsonweed alone. Why is that?"
A very simple question. Anais decided she would gladly answer it.
"I told you, didn't I? I believe in your ability. If you'd lied a hundred percent of the time, you'd have assumed I wouldn't buy it. So you mixed in just the right amount of truth. Isn't that it?"
At that, Allan Madoff let out a sigh that sounded almost hollow. For someone addressing royalty it was exceedingly rude, but she had no intention of calling him on it. Picking a fight over etiquette at this point would be childish.
She did think, all over again, that the man's acting was exceptional. At a glance he truly looked disappointed that the negotiation had fallen through. She had known it since the psilocybin, but he surpassed any ordinary stage actor.
A man of many talents, certainly. All of them the wrong kind.
At least this time she had taken only the useful information and had not been caught in their scheme. She would have to be more careful from now on.
"I'd like you to leave."
"Yes. Only, Your Highness—should you ever find yourself in difficulty, I hope you will recall, even once, what I have said today. There was a chance to end this well, and it was you who threw it away. Please remember that as well."
With that threat delivered, Allan left the office. He really was barely human.
And yet, once the negotiation was over, Anais felt a faintly bitter aftertaste.
I threw the chance away?
Was he deliberately trying to unsettle her? If not, it might have been a declaration of war—that he would make her regret it soon enough. He was not the sort to sit and watch the health syrup ride from success to success. From here on, he was likely to deploy every intrigue, every agitation, every vicious scheme he had in order to sweep it aside.
I'll have to prepare as well. These are people for whom secretly mixing poison into the health syrup and sending it out would hardly be strange.
Given whom she was dealing with, she would need at least a minimal safeguard. Anais thought for a moment, then remembered Mrs. Chandler—the woman whose kindly smile and easy, homespun chatter were driving the syrup's success. She had said she was commissioning a skilled craftsman to prepare posters bearing her own face. Hadn't she even talked of carving a woodblock and printing them by the stack? Business was going so well that Mrs. Chandler herself seemed delighted. Repaying that effort was only proper.
Anais summoned the chief attendant at once.
"You said Mrs. Chandler's husband was a soldier?"
"Yes. He has since been discharged, but he was once a sergeant in the military police."
"That will do. Hire him as head of factory security, and pay him generously. Better for him than idling at home with nothing to do."
"Head of security, Your Highness? An old man with no learning—how could we...?"
"Do as you're told. Ah—and hire his children as well, if you can."
"Yes, Your Highness."
And so, for a start, Anais offered Mrs. Chandler's husband a chance at reemployment. She also decided it was time to give Mrs. Chandler herself—handling the sales in her capacity as head maid—a title that sounded respectable. She would make her an officer of the factory Anais had acquired to produce the syrup, the one registered with the authorities as Gordon Lennox & Company.
"This ought to be enough."
Anais sighed and picked up a bottle of the syrup. Opium, jimsonweed root juice, ephedra, alcohol, and the rest. From now on she meant to leave the jimsonweed out, but she didn't think the effect consumers felt would change. She only had to add a little more opium and ephedra. There was even a quiet satisfaction in having used Allan to patch a weakness.
This is where it truly begins.
Anais's plan for revenge was proceeding successfully again today. At least she, the one carrying it out, believed so.
The negotiation had failed. If I had gained anything, it was one thing only: the jimsonweed was coming out of the health syrup.
At the very least, the number of people dying pointlessly, without ever knowing why, ought to drop by something that mattered. So would the number of poor souls who suffered eye pain so severe it felt as if their eyeballs were being torn out, hallucinated, and went blind. Opium and ephedra alone could still leave a person a wreck, of course. All I had done was shrink the number who dropped dead on the spot.
In a sense I had helped debug the health syrup, but I didn't care. Left alone, they could keep selling the stuff for fifty years, or a hundred, and I had no intention of allowing that. Not because I worried for the empire's future. Because if I left her be, Anais might grow into a true monster and come to threaten even me. Ending her here was best.
No point dragging it out. It's selling even now.
The next morning, the moment the plan was set, I went straight to Sienna.
"Allan? Talking was never going to settle it, was it?"
Violet eyes stared straight at me. One look at my face, and she seemed certain the negotiation had failed. I nodded in silence, and she even let out a short laugh, as if she had known all along.
"I wasn't sitting on my hands while you negotiated, either. No matter how I thought about it, I didn't see this as something talk could fix. I've got a good idea. Want to hear it?"
"Please."
"It's simple. We fight fire with fire."
Having said that, Sienna looked at me with an expression that said you know what I mean. Mischief filled that small face, and her straight silver brows twitched faintly. I had a fair idea what she was thinking.
"You mean we should put out a product of our own, aimed at civilians. Are you perhaps thinking of mixing morphine into a syrup, Your Highness?"
"Morphine works better anyway."
She meant to cook up the original soothing syrup outright. Watching them take after each other, I had to admit it: sisters were sisters. The one mercy was that she wasn't seriously urging it. She knew that would turn me against her. If Anais were even at Sienna's present level, I could not have asked for more.
"I'll pretend I didn't hear that. Do something like that, Your Highness, and you will fall right alongside your sister."
"Is that so? What a shame."
Contrary to the words, not a trace of disappointment showed on Sienna's face. The word fall had probably caught her interest.
"Handle it well, and we might manage a stripping of rank... even confinement?"
From the way she prattled, she seemed to be picturing something on the order of losing the right of succession and house arrest. Only that much. The girl was gentler than I had thought. Forfeiting a right of succession was nothing beside the estimate I had already drawn up for the operation.
"I'm sorry, but this isn't a situation we can end with that. Stopping the Third Princess will require sterner measures."
"I'd like that. But is it possible? Over something this small?"
"From this moment, I will make it possible. You and I, together."
At those words, the amusement slowly drained from Sienna's face. She didn't seem tense so much as aware that this was no longer a moment for smirking. I took that as a good sign and opened my mouth again—to explain how I meant to be done with Anais.