A Request
Three days after Anais had been sent off to a better place, Second Imperial Princess Sienna made her way to the Grand Hall of the Imperial Palace.
In ordinary times the hall was nothing more than the nobility's everyday ground for society. The moment she arrived, she could feel how her standing had changed.
"We pay our respects to Your Highness, the Second Imperial Princess."
No sooner had she appeared than a dozen nobles crept toward her, hesitating at every step. None of them pretended at intimacy. The most they managed was to fold their hands prettily and offer a servile smile. Even so, every one of them hovered at the edge of Sienna's orbit, watching her mood.
"Don't shove."
"I was only passing through."
"Then pass."
They were even squabbling among themselves for a better place, almost sweetly.
More amusing than I expected.
Sienna understood their feelings well enough. The nobles would have a fair idea of the process by which Anais had been driven out, and not one of them would dare slight a woman who had worked her own blood kin into a convent. They might never grow close to her, but they certainly had no wish to fall from favor.
"Something to say?"
"Well, that is—! Ah, child! Offer your greetings to Her Highness at once."
Pressed by their parents, several young ladies of about Sienna's age tried to fasten onto some topic or other, but it did not go well. Theater, music, romance novels, dresses and ornaments — none of that rubbish interested Sienna in the least.
"Um, Your Highness. What do you use on your complexion? Your skin is simply lovely...!"
"Whatever the maid brings me."
As Sienna answered in nothing but clipped phrases, tension slowly flooded the young ladies' faces. Entertaining them was no fun at all.
So this is all they amount to.
Finished with her viewing of the nobility, Sienna left the Grand Hall. Her true reason for coming all the way to the Imperial Palace had never been to look at noble faces. It was to see the Empress, and to comfort the woman who had sent her own child away to a convent.
If not me, who would?
The Empress, however, did not seem to need comfort of any kind.
"I am sorry, Sienna, for having hindered you without meaning to."
Seated aslant upon her throne, it was she who offered the apology. Sorry for what? When Sienna tilted her head, the Empress let slip a quiet laugh.
"Dorothy Chandler. You meant to secure that old woman's family, did you not? You must have had some design of your own. It is a pity the matter went awry."
"Ah. That."
It was true that Sienna had tried to get her hands on the Chandler household. She had never settled on a use for them, only that they would prove useful somehow. Someone, though, had moved first. By the time Sienna acted, the surviving family had already vanished. She had assumed her elder sister Victoria was behind it; looking at things now, it seemed to have been the Empress's doing.
"It's fine. I didn't have any concrete plan. And it wasn't exactly something I tried in order to torment Anais."
"You moved as instinct bade you. Is that it."
"Of course."
When Sienna nodded without a trace of shame, the Empress smiled as if she might have known. By all rights the air ought to have turned awkward, yet Sienna felt not the slightest discomfort. If anything, she found it pleasant. From the moment she had joined hands with the Empress and unfolded their intrigue against Anais, she had already set bashfulness aside.
Watching her, the Empress soon offered a brief appraisal.
"Sienna. Even should you fail to ascend the throne, your name will remain for those who come after."
"It might. Half the credit is Allan's."
"That friend of yours will remain in history beside you, I should think."
Whether it was a warning or a kindness, she could not tell. Sienna had no intention of straining to read the Empress's heart in the first place. She knew Yeonhwa's sense for people was far from ordinary, and she acknowledged that the woman was not simple enough to be steered at will. What mattered was that they stayed close even while each knew the other's cunning.
"I'll work even harder from now on. Mother."
"I know."
With the answer, the Empress reached out and laid her hand against Sienna's cheek. Fingers unusually warm for a woman, yet rough from long years at her instruments, stroked the girl's plump cheek and chin. Sienna's expression stiffened for a moment. They had grown familiar these past few months, but yielding her cheek was another feeling entirely. The surprise did not last. Soon she was nuzzling her face into that hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world. If a beloved mother wished to fuss over her daughter, meeting her partway was a child's duty.
Sienna was not, as a rule, a person who lived by duty. For the Empress alone, she wanted to play along. Carrying on like this while each knew what the other was thinking felt thoroughly entertaining — almost like acting in a play. She was simply grateful that the Empress, slowly withering away in the palace's inner rooms, possessed a side like this at all.
After humoring her for a while, Sienna brewed a cup of lemon tea with her own hands and offered it up, a piece of welcome news served alongside.
"Allan is cultivating psilocybin. It seems to be going well."
At that the Empress brightened and nodded. For a moment, harmony brimmed over between mother and daughter.
Did I perhaps have a talent for manufacturing drugs?
The words slipped out of me unbidden as I watched the mushroom substrates laid out in orderly rows. Decomposed granite soil, sawdust, wheat bran, gypsum, and a fermenting agent of my own making — a growing medium assembled from all of it. I had set it up in a modest greenhouse within the grounds of Thames Palace. What was growing there was no wholesome sort, shiitake or neungi. These were hallucinogenic mushrooms of the psilocybin family.
I hadn't expected it to turn out this well.
It was not the first time I had done this sort of thing. I had already had the experience in my previous life. When my younger sibling, then a first-year in high school, asked, I prepared a precise mushroom substrate and even taught how to inoculate the spawn — only to learn afterward that the crop was hallucinogenic. Having glimpsed the potential, my sibling began scaling the operation in earnest from the second year.
The environment here was different. Half the work had to be done by feel. Borrowing the mages' power, I managed the high-heat sterilization and the cooling back to room temperature easily enough, but the rest was hand labor. I had been stealing hours for it while operating on the Third Imperial Princess, so it was not as if I had poured myself into mushroom cultivation alone. For all that, the results were remarkably fine. The psilocybin, fruiting successfully and growing fat and vigorous, was proof enough.
In truth, if I counted the money sunk into it, I would have been better off not bothering. Making morphine in the same hours would have been a hundred times more cost-effective.
It was never for the money, anyway.
The mushrooms' only customer was Empress Yeonhwa. Once a presence that might as well not have existed, she was now the second power of the imperial house, wielding formidable influence. From what I had seen, she did not seem especially hungry for power — but she was a woman who could step into affairs of state whenever the need arose. Securing enough to drown that Empress outright in a sea of psilocybin was a satisfying result. What to do with whatever remained after I offered it to her was a worry... still, having it was far better than having none.
Best, of course, never to create a situation where I had to borrow the Empress's strength.
How pleasant it would be if this ended as nothing more than insurance. Muttering as much, I stepped out of the greenhouse — and found a guest waiting outside.
A tall beauty with golden-blond hair and blue eyes, and, quite at odds with that handsome face, a drab dark-green combat uniform. A mere major by rank, yet accorded precedence above the Minister of the Military Ministry: First Imperial Princess Victoria.
"Your Highness, the First Imperial Princess."
"It has been some time, Sir Allan. I came all this way without sending word, and yet you show no surprise. Did you know I would come?"
"How could I have? I am only ashamed to receive you looking like this."
I certainly had not expected her to track me all the way to the place where I grew mushrooms.
Still, I'd had a feeling I would be seeing her before long.
Victoria was a woman whose identity as the Emperor's legitimate eldest daughter sat firm. Unlike her younger sisters, her strong sense of responsibility was probably born of that. Naturally, her feelings as she watched the Third Imperial Princess's fall could hardly be ordinary. All of it, after all, had been carried out as a joint work of Sienna and the Empress, with Victoria shut out. That she should be displeased was perhaps only to be expected. From the gravity of her expression, she also seemed to know that the one who had designed the entire operation from the shadows was me.
If she meant to give me a piece of her mind, I was prepared to hear it. Matching, at least that far, the benefactor who had opened the military supply for me was simple courtesy.
"Sir Allan. ...I know it was you who ordered that poor old woman, Madam Chandler, to eat it and prove it. The commander of the Imperial Capital Gendarmerie passed it along, discreetly, through my maternal uncle. Hard as it may be to believe, I did not go looking on purpose."
"No. I believe Your Highness."
"You have my thanks."
"I also know that I overstepped my authority, Your Highness. I will not excuse it by claiming I acted out of loyalty. Whatever you wish to say—"
I had been ready to accommodate her to a reasonable degree, but Victoria raised a hand and stopped me.
"Enough. I did not come to reprimand you."
"Then...?"
"His Majesty has already proclaimed Dorothy Chandler a villain who did harm to the citizens of the Imperial Capital. Questions remain, it is true, but quibbling with an imperial command is not an officer's work. ...Nor do I mean to hate you simply because you set yourself against my sister."
"......"
"Anais received only the judgment she deserved. That child's mind was already— no. Never mind."
It was a little unexpected. I had thought she would at least give me a light warning not to overreach. If she had not come to warn me, why come all this way? For idle talk? Victoria was not that sort of person.
She must have some other business.
The guess struck true at once.
"...Sir Allan. The truth is, I have a request."
A request. Frankly, I was not glad to hear it. Of the three imperial princesses, Victoria was the only normal one, and she possessed a morality that left ordinary people far behind. Could I grant a personal request from someone like her? If it were something shady, I could manage it one way or another. If it were not, I had no confidence.
A moment later, however, what left Victoria's lips departed somewhat from what I had expected.