A Big Catch
The carriage bearing Sienna and me left Thames Palace and ran for the Imperial Palace, where the Emperor and Empress kept their residence.
In truth, each of the palaces housing the imperial family had a high-ranking mage on staff who could cast teleportation. We were rattling along in a carriage regardless, and for one reason only: to give the Third Princess's faction time to prepare. Time to ready a welcome for the dutiful daughter.
"How do you think Anais will play it?"
"She has, as I understand it, a great many connections among the nobility. The influential ones in particular—those in banking, and in trade."
"That lot moves where the interests are."
"There will certainly be nobles urging an aggressive answer, if only to get into the Third Princess's good graces."
Sienna nodded, already looking forward to the meeting with her half-sister.
And if I had not stepped in? Sienna would have charged the Empress's Palace alone, opium in hand. Had the Empress shown so much as a flicker of caution, she would have smiled—You don't trust me, I see—and had the nerve to take the first swallow of opium wine herself. Overborne by that momentum, the Empress would have drunk, and been ruined into a wreck of a woman in short order.
This is better. No question.
I looked at the fine medicine case and ran once more through the scenario I had prepared. For a while, the quiet held. Only after the grounds of the Imperial Palace began to fill the view beyond the window did Sienna turn her eyes on me, the smile at her lips never once let go.
"Allan."
"Your Highness."
"If this goes wrong, you will have to take the blame. Properly. If the Empress... psilocybin, was it? If she takes that and so much as suffers some minor mishap. I'll act flustered and deny any responsibility, so see to yourself."
"Yes. If it fails, I will lay down my knighthood at once."
"You won't be dying, so relax. If I can manage it, I'll only strip you of the post and keep you working under me. Officially that would be difficult, of course. Off the books."
"..."
"How would you like managing a dog pit?"
Gracious words: even if the plan failed, she would see that I still had a living.
I was not suddenly overcome with feeling at my liege's consideration. In the end she was telling me to play the runner at a dog-fighting den she owned under another name. A life spent shoulder to shoulder with the dregs, watching dogs tear one another apart. Even so, it was far better than being shoved into the drug trade, and the thought that I had already slipped free of the worst was motivation enough, of a sort.
"I will bear it gladly."
"Smooth that face. Succeed, and I'll keep my promise. The million thalers you asked for... no. I'll give you goods worth several times that."
Not coin, but goods? It struck me as odd, but I did not press. The business in front of us came first.
"Your Highness. We have arrived."
The carriage was already within the palace grounds. A guard in red dress uniform stood drawn up to receive the Emperor's own blood, and even the Lord Chamberlain had come out. Sienna, perhaps judging that the more spectators the better, brightened and gave a nod.
"Your Highness the Second Princess. Will you pay your respects to His Majesty? He is in his office at present."
"I will see Her Majesty the Empress first. Lead the way."
The smile had already left Sienna's face. She wore a dress that met the protocols of imperial ceremony well enough, a ball gown of white and red worked together, and her silver hair, neatly arranged, was set off by a dainty tiara. To the eye she was the very picture of a beautiful princess anxious for her ailing mother. To me she was nothing but someone I needed to cut loose at the first chance I got.
The way to the Empress's Palace was packed tight with tension, and it was not my imagination. Every palace attendant who looked our way had their eyes lowered, and the guardsmen bracing their muskets in rigid posture wore faces just as hard. They had the look of people who knew something was about to break.
I learned the reason for it the moment we reached the reception room.
"It's been a while, Sister."
The Third Princess, Anais, had come to receive us herself.
Mixed blood, and so black-haired. She was one of the original heroines, and beautiful as a matter of course—not that I was in any position to be taking note of someone else's looks. A woman who ought, at that hour, to have been sitting through a lecture at the Academy was here instead, which could only mean she had gotten hold of intelligence on her half-sister, Sienna. Around her, the nobles who backed her stood like a screen.
So she decided she needed witnesses.
Which was to say she had made up her mind to start a fight. A glance to the side showed Sienna working her lips as if swallowing a laugh, though thankfully she did not laugh. She, too, seemed to be holding it in for a greater pleasure yet to come.
What was needed now was the ability to act.
After a brief standoff, Sienna stepped forward. We had arranged it beforehand.
"Anais. I... didn't expect to see you here."
The greeting left her in a trembling voice. An awkward smile rested at her mouth, and there was strength in the hand clenched on her skirt. She looked like someone with something to hide.
About that much is right. Tremble too openly and they'll grow suspicious instead.
The follow-through was just as natural. Sienna glanced about as if taking the measure of the room, then began to ease her way back.
"I suppose I shall have to look to another opportunity."
She even flicked a look at me where I stood beside her, signaling that I ought to do something. To anyone watching, she was a woman frantic to flee, and the performance seemed to lend the Third Princess courage as well.
"No need for that, Sister. I can hardly make you come twice for the same errand."
"It isn't important anyway."
"Not important? I heard you'd found a medicine that could heal Mother. The moment I heard, I was so glad I came all the way here."
"You heard that— ah. No. What is it you think you're doing?"
Sienna faltered for a beat, then widened her eyes and snarled. Anais smiled brightly, as if the sight amused her.
"I'm not trying to do anything. There's just one thing I'm curious about, Sister."
"What?"
"I simply find it strange that you're being so cautious. It isn't like you. If you'd found such a fine medicine, you ought to be offering it quickly."
It was not an attitude she could possibly have shown unless she believed Sienna had come bearing poisonous herbs. It was also proof that Bono, whom I had sent out as bait, had done his work entirely too well. Had he wept, and played the conscientious whistleblower?
"Sister. If the medicine is that good, I'd like the chance to broaden my own knowledge."
"I'm not sure what you mean by that."
"It isn't that I don't trust you. I'd simply never heard of a medicine for homesickness. I was so puzzled I asked the professor who teaches herbalism."
"And?"
"He told me no such medicine exists. But... in the midst of that, I heard something interesting. Sister. Do you know what they do in the slums, where getting through a single day is hard enough, when a madman turns up?"
"I don't. I'm sure you'll enlighten me."
As the two princesses set their edges against each other, the air of the hall grew cold along with them.
Unlike Sienna, who was acting, Anais seemed genuinely tense. Sweat had even beaded on her brow, and she had the look of someone hesitating before she struck. Confronting her half-sister head-on could not have been easy, for all of that. But she had already said too much to take back, and in the end Anais slowly opened her mouth.
"They say people often feed the patient an herb called jimsonweed, to make them docile. They even give it to infants. If you take it long enough, they say, you go blind, or come down with a disease of the lungs—but what poor person has the luxury of being particular about that?"
With those words, a dead hush settled over the hall.
She thinks we really brought jimsonweed.
The remark was as good as one princess firing point-blank at another—Are you going to feed poisonous herbs to my mother?—and in front of dozens of people watching. A straight fight between the two of them might have made the smaller scandal. I had not expected it to go this far.
But Anais had laid the board, and there was no need to decline. More precisely, declining was no longer possible.
"Your Highness the Third Princess. May I be permitted a word?"
I broke the silence and stepped in.
"A mere knight."
"I am truly sorry. I simply could not go on watching the concord between such exalted persons come apart. If Your Highness will allow it, I have only one question. Are you suggesting that this medicine contains poisonous herbs?"
"Not exactly."
"I trust Your Highness will not answer that you were merely sounding us out, without grounds."
The more I pushed myself forward, the more the Third Princess's lips worked, wearing an expression that asked what in hell was wrong with this bastard.
By rights, this was the moment for her people to bark and cut in, so that the difference in rank might be properly met. The Third Princess's screens, however, only watched, their faces drawn tight. They were heavyweights to a man—bankers, chairmen of the exchange—and heavy bodies are slow to move. Or else they were simply waiting to see which way the wind blew.
"This is appalling, Your Highness. That you would allege a conspiracy of poison."
"When did I ever—!"
Anais was aghast, but I ignored her. It was time to teach the truth to a Third Princess being hauled about by a tawdry conspiracy. Once this was finished, a hard season would come for her, but it could not be helped. My own living was hardly an easy one.
"Allan Madoff? I've heard your name. You do this to me—how do you intend to answer for what follows?"
"What follows—I have no confidence I can answer for it. Frankly, I am afraid of whatever retaliation may come. But as a knight I must keep my lord's honor, and so I have scraped together what courage I have and stepped forward. That is all."
"..."
I held a mournful smile for a moment, then opened the medicine case. What filled it were white pills made from hallucinogenic mushrooms. They were not all psilocybin. More than half were fakes, shaped only to look the same—prepared, of course, for the sake of the deception. I took one at once and swallowed it.
"Sir Allan—what are you doing!"
"There is only one way to prove it harmless, is there not? I am no sufferer of homesickness, so I can expect no virtue from it. But if my serving as taster is not enough... then it cannot be helped. Princess Sienna?"
At my call, Sienna let a hollow smile slip and took up one of the false pills herself.
"So in the end you force even this humiliation on me. I won't forget it, Anais."
She put the pill in her mouth, staring straight at the Third Princess.
"Ah...?"
"Has your suspicion cleared now?"
The face of the Third Princess, Anais, crumpled. She had the look of someone realizing that something had gone wrong. It was already too late.