Flustered
Was it because I had hesitated, and given him no answer?
Emperor Edmund III regarded me steadily and said it again.
Even through the blankness, I gathered what I could by instinct. A betrothal, not a marriage. Not will you, but you will. And what grated most of all was that he had not named which princess — only "my daughter."
He could hardly mean for me to pick one of the three at my leisure, so there had to be an intention in that as well. I was still straining to read him when a single question welled up in my chest.
This is supposed to be a reward?
Of course the emperor had promised more than his daughter. He had also said he would grant me commercial rights — specifically, the right to do business in whatever stretch of the Great Forest was secured as a concession. Natural saltpeter and silver mines, both treated as strategic assets in this world, and the silver all the more vital for the trade with Jin, he would most likely withhold. Everything else I could probably extract. Timber alone would be enough to raise me into a magnate with thousands of employees under me.
He did say he would give me a title, too.
It was relatively common for a man of business to receive something on the order of a non-hereditary barony. But a title spoken from the emperor's own mouth was not going to be some dignity that died with its holder. He would give me a rank befitting a princess's betrothed.
Up to that point, it was a reward. The betrothal itself, however, was not a reward no matter how I turned it over — and less so once I considered what the betrothal was for.
I needed more information first.
"Your Majesty, forgive me, but I—"
"Allan Madoff."
"Yes."
"I have already, with my own mouth, urged this betrothal upon you. I have no thought of taking that will back. Whatever you say, it will be the same."
"…"
Meaning that a refusal would be received as an insult to the imperial house. There was a faint Eastern scent to that as well. It might have been because the scheme had come out of the empress's head, but as a matter of justification it was not wrong. The emperor had urged a mere knight to take his daughter, and a refusal would amount to forgetting one's place.
What would happen if I refused here? He would not kill me outright, but he would arrange for me to die by inches. He was hardly going to turn loose a subject he could neither trust nor watch. Nor could I simply accept.
I can already see how this ends. How am I supposed to say yes?
The empire had three princesses. In practice, two. Whichever of them I betrothed, my life was scheduled to become exceedingly tiresome. It was obvious enough why that daughter-doting fool meant to make me a member of the imperial house even at the cost of handing over a precious, beloved daughter. He meant to set me somewhere he could see me and watch me in real time — and to spend my talents thriftily, only when he had a use for them.
I had to put off a definite answer and buy time, but for the moment I had no clean move. And while I hesitated, the emperor was steadily making refusal harder.
"I have already looked into your background. …I will be frank. I looked when you were going about taking lives in our second daughter's service. After word reached me that you had manufactured a substance called morphine, I inquired in greater detail."
"Your Majesty."
"I thought your house seemed unfamiliar. It was not for nothing."
"…"
"A house whose fortunes failed more than two hundred years ago, that sold every right to its domain to the imperial house and has barely kept its name alive since… I have no wish to disparage your family, but to take as a prince consort, it is honestly too humble. That is the fact of it."
"It is so. I am far too lacking to become a member of the imperial house."
"Which is why I mean, first, to see that you are qualified."
"…"
"On the day the armistice is signed, I will make your merits widely known and, on that pretext, grant you a title. Announce the betrothal a little afterward, and no one will find fault with your measure. It will be accomplished within a month at the latest."
So saying, the emperor fixed me with a steady look — the air of a man determined to drag a yes out of me on this very spot. That obstinate face brought the thought home again. This would be hard to dodge.
Have I ever been this cornered?
I had not known the empress's play would be this artful. Even now it felt as if her shadow were creeping along behind the emperor's back. Sienna had startled me more than once, but the empress was beyond that. Honestly, she seemed to hold the advantage even over me.
That in itself did not matter. The problem was that she was aiming at me for reasons I could not fathom. As I tried to guess her motive, a suspicion flickered through my mind, and I opened my mouth at once to test it.
"Your Majesty. The offer is so far above my station that I hardly know how to receive it. Only… there is one thing I must ask."
"Speak."
"I have not been told which of the two princesses you have in mind as my match. Of course I know that either would be more than I deserve. Both are accomplished in talent and in beauty, and neither is wanting in character."
"Surely you are not worried I mean to pair you with some bastard?"
"It is not that."
"I have only three children of my own blood. I do not know why I must offer you even this explanation… but I have never once, in all my life, been unfaithful. Pairing you with a bastard who does not exist is impossible."
He kept turning the talk aside. That was suspicious. But this once, I could not retreat. I had been offered the place of prince consort, and yet I was not even to know whom I would marry? That was absurd. There was no reason to hide it in the first place.
"Your Majesty. I beg you to tell me."
"…I already have."
For the first time a look of unease rose in the emperor, and he cleared his throat again and again. The empress would already have written him the whole script. If he hesitated even so, then the words were uncomfortable in his own mouth. It did not seem to be merely the revulsion of not wanting to send a daughter to a piece of trash.
"I do not take your meaning."
"I said I have three children of my own blood… Did I not already say so?"
Surely not. It can't be.
I turned it over inwardly and looked at the emperor.
But.
The emperor's words betrayed that expectation completely.
Anais Carlyle. The heroine of the original tale. The empire's Third Imperial Princess, shut away in a convent after her fall. I could not say when imprisonment had been dressed up as penance — no, I could, and the shock was no lighter for it.
"It will not be a bad thing for you, either."
"…"
"Anais has never been struck from the imperial register. …Ah, and as the maternal granddaughter of the emperor of Jin, she was invested as a county princess. She still holds that title. For a man of business such as yourself, it would be of help…"
The emperor labored to dress up the youngest daughter sitting in her convent. Not a word of it reached me. Being ordered to become the betrothed of a woman I had ruined with my own hands was an absurdity of exactly that order.
I knew I had brought it on myself. Replacing the opium wine with psilocybin; beating Anais to satisfy Sienna's sadism; and then, once that fury drove Anais dark, finishing her so thoroughly she could never rise again and shutting her away — all of it was my work. If I had only followed Sienna's orders and quietly sold opium, nothing like this would have happened.
"You will return to Medellin now. Have you anything to say?"
"No, Your Majesty."
I had been sunk in thought, and at last the audience was over. I had given no definite answer on the betrothal, but that hardly mattered.
"Ah. Set your affairs in order."
To the very end, the emperor showed no sign of changing his mind. He could not have expected anything like I would gladly betroth Her Highness the Third Princess to come out of my mouth. I had failed to school my face and gone cold right in front of him, and still I drew no glare.
The emperor could hardly fail to know how wrong this is.
Viewed purely as statecraft, it was a rather fine judgment. The Third Princess, Anais, had already fallen to the bottom. Of course they would walk her through the formalities and restore her, so they could betroth her to me. But the fact that Anais had flooded the Imperial Capital with Healthy Syrup was not going to vanish. It had been scarcely three months. Tens of thousands of people alone had watched Mrs. Chandler's public execution. Even now, somewhere in the capital, leftover stock of the syrup might still be changing hands — especially around the Academy.
In the end Anais was a woman whose political life was finished, imperial blood or not.
If they can put even a girl like that to use, it's found money. From the empress's side, too, this is better than her daughter dying in a convent.
It did nothing for my life. Even if it had, it was a match I had to avoid. Anais would certainly want me dead. I could endure a loveless marriage as long as I liked. I could not accept being exposed to the risk of assassination.
Fortunately, it was not as if there were no way to overturn it. The betrothal had not yet been announced. Hauling the Third Princess out of the convent where she had been branded a criminal and confined would take procedure. If the emperor simply summoned her because he meant to betroth her to me, he would only make a fool of himself. If I struck at that gap, I could arrange things so the betrothal could not be forced. Even starting now, I could still turn it over.
But before I could form a concrete plan, hesitation set in.
Dodging the betrothal doesn't end it.
The emperor of the empire would still be keeping me in check. He might reach for something fouler than merely binding me with a betrothal. I knew that everything I did in order to stay alive kept kicking up waves, and now the empress had stepped in — a woman I had to reckon as playing a deeper game than I was. In the worst case, it might play out much as my previous life had.
Back then, too, I had fought my father for years and finally sent him to a detention center, and I had slogged through a mud-fight with my mother, who had even dragged in her connections in politics to get in my way. I had beaten them all in the end, and nothing had been left. And the emperor was as good as state power itself.
Taking him on directly is impossible.
But I had no thought of giving up and accepting it, either. Nothing said I had to face the imperial couple head-on.
Besides the Third Princess, the Britannia Empire had two more princesses.