Uses
Perhaps it was because the Empire's greatest prospect had come all the way to the palace and made such an impression. Siena, mistress of Thames Palace, came out to see him herself.
"Strange. I've never seen him before, so why do I... want to kill him?"
The moment her eyes found Leon, Siena murmured it in a voice so small it was doubtful she meant to be heard.
Given half a chance, you want to torment someone or kill them. Hardly news.
Thinking on it, there was nothing odd about Siena finding it odd. She did enjoy tormenting people, true enough, but she usually had a pretext. A servant stole a bottle of wine, and it was death. Someone raised a disturbance at one of her establishments, and it was a permanent disability. Anything merely suspicious, and they simply came away gravely wounded. The excess of the punishment was the whole of the thing.
For her to feel the urge to kill a Leon she was seeing for the first time—that was the strange part. And yet this had always been the role the creator had given her. In the original, too, once the opium business was smashed by the protagonist's circle—the main couple, the side couple—it was Siena who came to hate them in earnest and set about putting them away. Some compulsion might well have been at work, stirring hostility in her the instant she laid eyes on Leon.
Or else...
Perhaps she had simply found the creature called Leon repulsive.
"Hoo—!"
Having begged forgiveness for his lie, Leon had taken what I'd given him—morphine, fifteen milligrams; ephedrine, forty—and now his shoulders jerked and heaved, lost in the trance.
"See, Dreamy and Thumpy have to go together, they do. Those two must never, ever be apart."
He spilled it out fast. Siena, who had been watching him as if he were some curious exhibit, turned to me.
"An Academy student? Wasn't it your principle not to put the stuff out among civilians?"
"He is no ordinary student, Your Highness."
"No. He certainly isn't ordinary."
"Hard to believe, looking at him now, but aside from the Masters there isn't a swordsman in the Empire who could stand against him."
"Wait. Is this Leon Lauderdale?"
"He is."
So she did know the name. Only then did the killing urge ease, and a smile rose on her face—the smile of someone settling in for an entertaining show.
"Anais is close with him."
"How do you know that?"
"How else? I heard the last person Anais spoke with, just before she left the Imperial Capital, was him. They said she called him Senior Leon, and that he was blond with green eyes. Has to be the same one."
"..."
"Come to think of it, they said she burst into tears right after exchanging a few words with him. And that she wasn't doing well at the convent, either. I don't know what they talked about, but she wouldn't have shown him tears if they weren't close."
I had no particular wish to ask where she'd gotten that, or how. For all I knew, she had her little sister watched for sport. What startled me was what Siena said next.
"This Leon. He was on the health syrup, wasn't he? And Anais sniveling like that wasn't unrelated, was it?"
"So it would seem."
"Honestly, I don't know why you gave him the drugs. Knowing you, Allan, you wouldn't sell to a student just to make a little money. But I do know this much. Once someone's had what you give them, they can't spare a thought for syrup."
"..."
"And you gave it to him knowing that, didn't you?"
No one had taught her a thing, and still she saw straight through to how the stuff worked. Addicts, by nature, went looking for something stronger in stages. Even those who started with cannabis rarely ended there. At that level—liquids were another dimension entirely—one tended to fall under the illusion that narcotics could be enjoyed in moderation, and so, little by little, they went looking for something harsher. There was no point denying it to someone who had worked it out on her own, so I simply nodded.
"So the drugs can be used like that, too."
Siena seemed to have learned one more thing today. No bitterness of any kind welled up in me. There was, however, something I needed to teach her before she seized on some wild idea.
"Your Highness. I'm only saying this in case, but a person broken in with drugs is, frankly, useless. They'll do anything if it gets them the drug, and yet there's almost nothing you can actually have them do. What would you assign a wreck?"
"That's rather a shame."
"..."
"Then what did you give him the drugs for? Where were you planning to use him? Were you going to send him to Anais? If so, I'm in favor."
Not that. His uses were rather varied. At the very least, I could send him to the border and have him swing a sword. Promise one morphine tablet and one ephedrine tablet for every elf head he brought back, and he might perform astonishingly. And even setting force aside, he had a use: the role of a cautionary case, to be shown to the First Imperial Princess, Victoria. The thought had barely formed before I opened my mouth.
"Princess Siena. I imagine the First Princess still hasn't let go of her interest in the drug of courage, or her lingering attachment to it. Am I wrong?"
"How would I know that?"
"If you're going so far as to keep watch on the Third Princess, who's already fallen into the pit, then the First Princess goes without saying. Just tell me."
At that, Siena opened her mouth readily—the air of someone gladly paying out information in exchange for having been shown something amusing.
"I hear Sister Victoria ordered someone to look into the state of the navy's penal units."
"You mean the ones who serve as the lowest seamen instead of taking their punishment?"
"Yes. The way I see it, probably..."
"She may mean to test the effects on them. It seems she does intend to keep her promise to proceed with caution."
Victoria was probably thinking of a clinical trial. A compulsory one. She would draw up a plausible picture and propose that we test the effects on them. Her interest in the drug seemed undiminished.
I'll have to change Victoria's mind first. There's no need to feed stimulants to soldiers.
Having decided as much, I turned to Leon. A moment ago he had been dancing with his shoulders; now he was looking at me, awkward. A wreck like this was, if anything, worth showing her.
The next day, I requested an audience with Victoria. The answer, of course, was yes. The moment we met, she launched into a detailed plan, as if she had been waiting for exactly this.
"...Sir Allan. After hearing Siena's criticism the other day, I thought the matter over from several angles. I concede that distributing it in earnest, before I'm convinced the gains outweigh the losses, would be a mistake. Which is why I have a scheme."
That scheme would be the experiment on the seamen of the penal units.
And how did she arrive at an idea like this?
Her face alone told me the enthusiasm was considerable. She trusted me that much—no. She trusted the drug I had made. A pity. I meant to disappoint her.
"Your Highness. Before I hear any more of the details, there is something I ought to show you."
"Show me...? Ah. Have you brought this ephedrine? Now that I think of it, with the morphine, too, you brought a sample and had me try it. If it's that sort of thing, it runs along the same lines as my design. Show me."
"I'm afraid it isn't."
"Then—?"
"...What I wish to show you is a person. A man who has already taken, several times, the drug whose effects you want. Ephedrine. He has had some morphine as well, though the Imperial Army has been exposed to morphine in any case."
"..."
"If, after seeing him, you still want the drug, I will gladly cooperate."
The moment Victoria nodded, I called for Leon, whom I had left waiting outside. Leon Lauderdale entered at once. He was not in the grip of the drug just then. The face was vacant, yes, but he observed proper courtesy toward Victoria, and his eyes were not rolled back.
"Your Highness. Do you know who this is?"
"...I saw him when I went to observe the Academy festival. The student who won the martial tournament held as part of the event. ...But Sir Allan. You fed ephedrine to this boy? To one person? I fail to see what reference that provides."
"It wasn't that I fed it to him. I was left with no choice. He was already contaminated by the syrup, past any turning back. And Your Highness—in my view, a single case is enough."
"What do you...?"
Better to show her than explain it point by point. I turned to Leon, standing there awkwardly, and asked.
"Leon. As I understand it, you're the finest student in the sword faculty, even counting the third-years."
"The professors, too."
"...Right. Stronger than the professors, then. Graduate as you are, and advancement is already laid out for you. Break through the wall and become a Master, and you might even leave your name in history."
"Yeah... guess so."
Not a flicker of feeling on his face. Then a crack ran through it.
"If I told you to quit the sword, on the condition I give you two ephedrine tablets every day—what would you do?"
"..."
No answer. Part of it was probably that he preferred his stimulant mixed with something from the sedative class rather than taken plain. But the very fact that he was weighing a thing like this was already the end of the road. A few miserable little tablets, set on the scale against his own future.
"Then what about three?"
"Uh... that..."
"Four."
"..."
As the offer kept changing, his eyes began to dart, busy.
"Then five a day?"
"Ooh!"
Leon Lauderdale started to answer at once, then caught himself. He drew it out, and then the corners of his mouth crept up and his fists clenched tight. He must have been under the delusion that if he held out, he would be offered six, and then seven—with no idea he was being used as an example before the First Princess.
"Sir Allan... what is this?"
Victoria looked shaken, just as I had expected. She stared back and forth between Leon and me with her eyes wide, so I put on the performance of a man chewing over some bitterness.
"Your Highness. I only learned it recently myself, but the harm is more serious than I thought. If even the Empire's most promising swordsman is reduced to this, what of anyone else?"
"..."
"If they died in battle, at least some honor would remain. This is not that. Knowing side effects like these, and still giving the drug to elite soldiers who aren't even ill...? It is something a person simply cannot bring himself to do."
At that moment Leon cut in, urgent, as if a princess were of no concern to him at all.
"Six, and I'll quit!"
By then the words had slipped from Victoria's mouth. "This is wrong." The way her fair face twisted was merely extra. I had been prepared to show her something even uglier if this didn't take. Fortunate that it had.
"Leon Lauderdale. Return to the Academy now."
"Or five's fine, too."
"Just go."
I sent the dawdling Leon out, then looked straight at Victoria—not to soothe her, obvious as the shock was, but because I had something to propose. The ephedrine supply was already off the table, but in the matter of putting narcotics to military use, it might not have been so different a proposal after all.
"Your Highness. There is something else I must tell you."
All I meant to change was the kind of drug, and who it would be given to. Nothing said a narcotic had to be fed only to one's own side.