Uppers and Downers
Why won't this bastard give me the money?
Leon Lauderdale, a second-year in the Swordsmanship Faculty, felt the impatience climbing in his chest as he stared at the purse sitting across from him.
Only a moment ago he had taken the man for an emissary sent by Heaven itself, pitying him in his syrup drought. In real time, that fondness was curdling.
And I don't even have the time.
Press the point, and the time itself was plentiful. This was Leon, who had spent the whole day rolling in opium smoke before crawling out of it. If it hadn't been for fifty thousand thalers, he would still be sniffing around right now, cursing the miserable fact that opium was all he had left to make do with.
Unlike Leon, though, the syrup had no time left. Production had stopped after Granny Chandler died. Worse, an imperial edict had gone out commanding people to quit taking it. The Emperor had likely said it only because he hated his daughter, Anais, but it was true all the same that carrying a syrup bottle in the open had grown difficult. The rotten dealers of the Magic Faculty were waving that as their excuse and driving the price up.
I have to buy now. If I don't, it climbs even higher...!
Five hundred and fifty thalers, the last time he had bought. The going rate had surely jumped again since. He needed to lay in a store before it rose any further, and a great deal of it—enough that he could dose himself every single day and never once worry about running dry. He had no intention of giving any away. He meant to eat the whole of it himself.
For that, he needed fifty thousand thalers.
Don't tell me he's playing games right now so he won't have to pay?
If that was what this was, he could never forgive it. He might shave the sum a little, given the discourtesy he had committed without meaning to, but walking off without paying a single coin was absurd. It wasn't as though Leon had begged to be paid in the first place. The man had appeared out of nowhere, promised money, and called him out.
"The money...!"
Leon opened his mouth to hurry him. The purse beat him to it.
"I'll give it to you. But there's a condition."
"No, you keep—!"
"It's nothing difficult. I simply hesitate to hand a sum like fifty thousand thalers to a student who can't even remember his patron's name. Watching you flail about in that pathetic state was rather unpleasant as well. So I want to test you."
"Ha."
A test, when he didn't have the time? His heart, already thumping from the drug, pounded harder. Leon growled, barely able to swallow his temper, but the money didn't so much as flinch. He only smiled in a way that set the teeth on edge and looked Leon up and down. If it weren't for the coin, Leon would never have given a man this base the time of day.
"Tell me what the test is!"
"Simple. I'm going to give you a drug."
"...?"
"Morphine."
"Huh?"
"Two morphine tablets. I'll also give you the ephedrine I made as a trial, to show the First Princess. It's stronger than the syrup. ...From what I can see, you like taking the uppers and the downers together."
Morphine! Leon had heard of it from a friend. A drug made from opium—people gasping with broken arms and legs were said to take on faces as gentle as angels once they swallowed it. He knew it was medicine for the badly hurt, but to Leon, fresh from smoking opium, it came with a feeling all its own.
What would that feel like, taken with the syrup.
No—he'd said he would give him that ephe-something as well. So he was meant to take them together? It was true that, a moment ago, the fifty thousand thalers had him frantic. Now the anticipation of morphine and ephe-whatever was replacing the urgency. He was curious what sort of man offered people drugs, but first he got his face under control. Belatedly, it seemed wise to make a good impression.
At that, the money—no, his patron—spoke.
"I'll give you the drugs today, but don't take them. Keep them until the day after tomorrow, and bring them to Thames Palace, where Her Highness the Second Princess Siena resides. That's where I work. Return them to me intact, and I'll pay the fifty thousand thalers on the spot."
"Who are you, working in a palace?"
"Give the name Allan to the man on duty at the guard post. ...I'll say it once more, so we're clear. Don't take them. You have to give them back to me. Come empty-handed, and the patronage is void. I don't consider it a difficult task."
It really was as simple as he made it sound. He would give Leon the drugs. Leon would not take them; he would endure. Then he would get the money.
What. That's nothing!
"Sure!"
Leon nodded, big and eager. Two measly days. He could hold out on the opium and syrup he already enjoyed. Shove the morphine in a wardrobe and forget it.
"Yes! Patron!"
He shouted it with spirit, then flashed a bright, gummy grin, the better to show a good face to the patron who had made him such a tempting offer. The patron regarded him in silence for a while, then got up and left.
Leon didn't let the smile go until a good while after that.
A few hours later, a courier came to Leon. An errand-runner with an exceedingly genial face, a fellow named Bono.
"This is the morphine and the ephedrine. Take it."
Casual speech, from a mere errand boy? It grated a little, but Leon decided to let it go, and looked at what he'd been handed. A few pills in a small bottle. Set beside the syrup, whose color alone set his appetite raging, they weren't especially appealing.
Nothing here I even need to endure!
Leon snorted and tucked the bottle inside his clothes. Then he went back to his dormitory room.
The moment he opened the door, a faintly sharp smell stung his nose, and four students lay sprawled across the carpet, wrapped in opium smoke. A first-year junior was among them, and a girl from another faculty. Kids whose names he didn't even know. When they had multiplied to this extent, Leon himself couldn't have said.
Who were they again...?
Leon tipped his head and checked the bottle against his chest once more. His conviction that he could endure had not changed in the slightest. Hold out two days and fifty thousand thalers would be in his hands—where was the moron who couldn't manage that? All he had to do was pretend he'd never received it, and forget.
"I can endure. I can endure."
Muttering, Leon stepped into the smoke. He accidentally trod on the foot of some nameless opium friend, and didn't give it a second thought.
I knew perfectly well how futile it was to put drugs in an addict's hands and tell him to endure.
An addict is a creature who can think of nothing but the drug, even if their parents go down on their knees and grind their palms together begging, even if their own child sits starving at their side. The craving doesn't run any weaker simply because the drug is one they've never tried. If anything, the anticipation of an unknown high would be driving him out of his mind. How good was this one? Opium and syrup alone already opened a theater inside the skull; mix in something better and it would be to die for. Maybe, once he'd taken them, he could palm off some lookalike and get away with it. Leon was certainly turning that over. It was obvious.
Knowing all of that, I had given him a choice for one reason only.
Because there was a chance he might actually endure.
If Leon summoned some astonishing patience and brought the drugs back to me, that would mean there was something to work with. It would mean that with narcotics in his possession—drugs better than what he already took—he had still forced himself to hold out. If, on the other hand, he gulped them down, that was no loss either. The elf problem would fall to me, but I was already resigned to it.
When it comes to that, I just proceed as planned.
I couldn't very well stare at the wall until then. I prepared for the days just ahead at the same time, ordering the materials for solvent in bulk, splitting the menial work among employees I trusted so as to spare my own hands even slightly, and setting the nobles of Siena's faction to watch the Church's movements. Knocking together a prototype while I was at it wouldn't have been a bad idea. There simply wasn't time.
"Um, Sir Allan? There's... someone asking for Sir Allan."
A report from an officer of the Guard. Just from the way he called them a person, this was no ordinary visitor. Either they didn't look human, or they weren't acting like one. Possibly both. From that much alone, I knew who had come. The only surprise was how fast.
It's still morning.
I had sent Bono with the drugs only yesterday evening. I had expected him to last about a day with fifty thousand thalers in his head, but it seemed he had already finished the job. Either that, or he had tossed them back the moment they reached him, spent the night inventing an excuse, and crawled over. I might be about to see something uglier than I had imagined. I hardened my resolve and made for the guard post.
"Sir Allan. Over there."
The Leon Lauderdale I actually met was more intact than I had expected. His hands weren't shaking, and his mouth was shut. He even seemed to have washed his hair. Not that he was entirely all right—he had his uniform on, and slippers.
What grated above all else was that look peculiar to addicts. Eyes that told you neither whom they were watching nor what thoughts moved behind them. Even after I appeared, Leon only stood there blankly, staring at somewhere. I couldn't stand it. I snapped my fingers right in front of his face.
"Leon. Look this way."
He watched me vacantly, not even startled. His lips worked a few times, and then he began to speak in a voice with no rise and no fall.
"Sir Knight Allan. I'm sorry for showing you that side of me yesterday. A friend told me what an incredibly amazing person you are. But about that promise. My friend ate all the medicine. I didn't break it because I meant to break it. My friend ate it in secret."
"......"
"My friend really ate it. So I'd really appreciate it if you didn't cancel the patronage."
Having spun all that out, Leon avoided my eyes. An ordinary person would have looked away, or looked down. This one rolled his eyes up and put his whites on display, as if to show me how clear they were. What was I even supposed to call it. Grotesque was the only word that came to mind.
So he wolfed the whole lot in a single night, in the end.
He was in no state for a conversation, so I simply informed him.
"Leon. If that's true, I can give you the fifty thousand thalers."
"Whoa—."
"In exchange, I'll cut you off so that until the day you die, you never touch morphine, or ephedrine, or any other 'real' drug. You can't obtain them unless I allow it, in any case. If you're still fine with that, I'll give you the money right now."
At that, Leon set his pupils back where they belonged and looked at me. Then he spoke in a rush.
"I'm sorry. It wasn't my friend. I ate them. I ate all the Dreamy and all the Thumpy. I really did wrong. You don't have to give me the money."
After that the apologies spilled out without end.
"I'm sorry. I was wrong. Please don't make me quit."
A surrender quicker than I had expected, and a condition worse. The Guard officer who had shown me in bolted outside, as if he couldn't bear to watch. I couldn't do the same. I had to consider what use was left in a Leon who had fallen all the way into addiction. If I meant to wring something out of whatever swordsmanship talent remained to him, I was going to need a plan.