Confession
I wish time would stop right here.
Second Princess Sienna murmured it inwardly, feeling her heart flutter against her ribs. The corners of her mouth kept twitching past any control her mind could claim; her heart hammered wildly; her face burned hot, though she had not touched a single glass of wine.
She was drunk on a sense of accomplishment she could hardly name. Call it relief, call it rapture—either would have done. Only one thing was certain. She had rarely in her life been this happy.
Even so. I have to calm down.
Sienna drew a long breath, trying to master herself. At this rate she would start swaying like the Empress lost on psilocybin, and if she meant to savor a moment this important, she needed her wits about her.
"M-Mama. I really didn't... know."
Anais's babbling face swam into view—eyes brimming, searching for her mother. She looked so hopelessly stupid that it was almost endearing. Not twenty minutes ago she had been sneering with her chin in the air, and now she could not even finish a sentence.
Simply watching her was amusement enough. The real reason Sienna sat back with her hands folded, though, lay elsewhere. The Emperor was right beside them.
"What am I to do about this. What."
He looked no less stricken than Anais. He had always loved his daughters to excess. When Victoria was first commissioned a second lieutenant and posted to the border of the Great Forest, he had hounded the military into sending him reports three times a day. He had also taken the head of the ambassador from the Kingdom of Madeine for calling Anais a mongrel in his cups, in the middle of a banquet hall.
I haven't exactly gone without his favor either, now that I think of it.
The one who had covered for Sienna when she caused trouble was the Emperor himself. Six months ago she had taken one of his hunting hounds without permission and run it in a dogfighting pit—an outrage difficult to excuse even in a royal. He had busied himself silencing mouths so her reputation would sink no further, and only after the noise had died did he summon her. All he did was plead with her to please come to her senses.
Now he showed no inclination to shield Anais. Had his affection for his youngest simply vanished? Impossible.
He's desolate because this is something he cannot cover for her.
Emperor of the strongest realm on the continent, a pitiless ruler who had all but extinguished his own blood to take the throne—and even he had his limits. Anais had not only poured a dangerous drug into the Imperial Capital without a shred of judgment; she had stood by while her own mother's life hung in the balance. An unfilial child. He sat there looking as if the world had fallen in precisely because he knew he could not protect her.
Sienna, for the moment, was only reading his face. Mock Anais in front of him now, and she was certain he would actually weep.
Fortunately, someone else was there to recall him to himself.
"Your Majesty. You must steady your heart."
Empress Yeonhwa, of course. She laid a hand lightly upon his broad shoulder and began to soothe him.
"And you—how disappointed you must be—"
"Of course I am disappointed. I carried my hopes for that child to the very last and played out the whole performance, only to be betrayed. But it is precisely at times like these that one must keep one's spirit firm."
"......"
"What if we did this? We may discuss her punishment later... but for now, have the child remain in the main palace. We ought to watch over her ourselves, so the fault does not grow any larger."
Far too composed for a woman who had just written her own daughter off. Sienna nodded—remarkable—and then a sense of wrongness caught her. It was the Empress calling her own daughter that child that grated, a beat too late. It might have been nothing, and yet the feeling sat strangely, given the moment. How hard did a heart have to be, to stay that calm? It was difficult to believe this was a woman who had been sick in the mind only months ago.
Good thing I got close to her.
While Sienna marveled, the Emperor slowly nodded.
"Let us do so. We will have to find a way together."
"A wise thought."
He clasped the Empress's hand, hummed his assent, and nodded. Then, his face a good deal calmer, he turned to Anais.
"Papa. I—!"
Anais smiled with a cringing sort of hope and started to mouth something—
"Anais. For the time being you will confine yourself in penance to the east wing of the main palace. Until your punishment is decided, every form of public activity, and every exercise of your authority as a royal, is forbidden. You will do nothing without my leave."
His mind was already set.
"What?"
"Let us go."
In the end he left the dining room with the Empress. Just before he went he glanced back at Victoria and Sienna, but he gave no further order. The Empress had drawn him quietly away, murmuring that the children would need time to speak.
The moment the imperial couple were gone, Victoria hesitated, then followed the Emperor. The compulsion of an eldest daughter, it seemed—the need to comfort her parents.
Suits me perfectly.
All that remained were two princesses and the palace attendants. With nothing left to restrain her, Sienna at last turned on Anais with a bright, open smile.
"Anais. We have rather a lot to say between us, don't we? I'll have Allan brought in soon."
At that, Anais's eyes flew wide and she glared.
Sienna was glad her little sister still had a scrap of fight left in her.
It seemed the affair had finally come to an end.
"Sir Allan. Her Highness Sienna bids you enter."
That she had summoned me was proof enough. In truth, I had followed them all the way to the Imperial Palace for this very moment. I could hardly leave Anais's fate entirely in the hands of the Empress and Sienna. I was grateful the highborn ladies had granted my request, but the closing of the matter still had to be mine.
A nuisance, I'll grant... but having jumped in, I need to see the cleanup through if I'm to have any justification for my own hand in it.
What sentence Anais received was not mine to decide. I was not particularly interested. I had already arranged things so that her life, at least, would be spared; the rest the imperial house could see to. They might shut her away under guard in some lonely stretch of countryside, or confine her to a convent near the Imperial Capital.
Before the final judgment fell, though, there was something Anais still had to do. Clean up, with her own hands, the harm the health syrup had caused. She could be sent off for all I cared—but the blight she had scattered, she would sweep away herself.
A moment later I stood before the princesses.
"A knight of the Empire—"
"Drop the greeting. There's no one here but us."
"Yes."
I let it drop and raised my head. The two of them were staring straight at me, their faces utterly opposed: Sienna, well satisfied at having brought her younger sister down, and Anais, arms hanging slack, glaring as if she meant to kill me where I stood. The bottle of syrup on the marble table was enough to imagine what had passed in this room.
"So Her Highness the Third Princess did not drink the counterfeit health syrup."
"Just as you predicted, Allan. ...Imagine if she had shut her eyes and gulped it down. Father would have tried to protect her somehow, don't you think? Only that old woman, Madam Chandler, would have died."
"I once explained the side effects of ephedra to the Third Princess in considerable detail. She would not have had the courage to swallow that quantity."
"Which is why it went so easily."
Perhaps our easy exchange grated on her. In a thin voice, Anais muttered, "Son of a bitch..."
I did not mind the name. What did it matter if I caught a little abuse.
"Your Highness the Third Princess. Did you send for me?"
"All of this... you arranged it?"
"I did. Had you abandoned the health syrup venture when I came to you before and warned you, none of this would ever have happened. ...You might even, at this very moment, be discussing the artificial cultivation of psilocybin with me."
"You're mocking me—!"
"I have no wish to mock you. I merely have a question. Answer it, and it will be to Your Highness's benefit as well."
At that Anais seemed unable to believe her ears; she even beat a fist against her own chest. What kind of bastard is this, she was thinking, no doubt.
It was not that I had no fear of royalty. Why else had I kept time with Sienna to begin with? Because she was someone who could threaten my safety whenever the mood took her. I had drawn the Empress into this affair for the same reason—my own strength was not enough to bring Anais down. But Anais, as she stood now, was nothing to fear.
"Thinking on it—yes. All of this is because of you, Allan Madoff...!"
"Resent me as much as you please. There will be time enough for that hereafter. For the present, however, you must answer what I ask."
"And why should I!"
"If you would rather not, I will take Her Highness Sienna and leave, just as we are. Do you truly wish me to?"
Who could say what might come of things after that.
At those words Anais's pupils jumped. She had only just been torn apart. Of course, given her way, she would have ground Sienna and me into the dirt. But she knew well enough that shrieking at us now—with her political life already finished—was hardly a wise choice.
And if she doesn't know, there's nothing to be done.
Anais drew the silence out, then at last dropped her head. A faint sobbing followed. I decided not to heed it.
"Your Highness. How many people know the formula for the health syrup? No—let me ask more precisely. How many people know that the most important ingredient in the health syrup is ephedra? Answer me that."
That was what mattered most. The syrup had caught on in so short a time, in the end, because of ephedra. The plant grew wild in the Empire as well, but almost no one understood its true effects. Know only that ephedra was the chief ingredient, though, and know the conditions under which it grew, and turning out an imitation of the health syrup was no difficult thing. Brew it, then sell it under the name of a restorative syrup or a heart tonic. Or stir it into drink—wine, mead, the like. Which meant that, depending on how things fell, this whole wretched business could happen all over again.
If she had any sense, she wouldn't have gone around announcing it.
Anais's answer betrayed that hope completely.
"...The investors."
"What did you say."
"I discussed the supply of ephedra with the investors. If we wanted it secured reliably, it was better to grow it. ...I mentioned what ephedra does, then."
She had already shared what she knew of ephedra with the investors in Chandler's syrup. Twenty-six of them.
"Your Highness. You are telling me that people who already know the syrup's worth as a product—people who will very soon watch a great sum of money vanish into the air—know how the health syrup is made. And I doubt you ever separately ordered them to hold their tongues. Am I correct?"
Anais answered with nothing but a nod.
If I hadn't stopped this now, it would have been a catastrophe in the making.
A little more troublesome than I had expected. I had meant to send her off quietly, if I could, but that no longer looked possible. If I wanted to lessen the aftereffects even slightly, I would have no choice but to work her rather hard.