The Return
Half the Great Forest conquered, and the road of the triumph stretching on ahead.
Is this truly the right course, Empress?
Emperor Edmund III stared into empty air, his face worn thin. The day was so clear it stung the eyes. On an ordinary afternoon he might have taken a quiet satisfaction in it; shut inside the Imperial Palace over the business of state, he seldom had the chance to look at the sky at all. The citizens imagined their emperor dining on every rare thing the world could offer, dressed and diverted in splendor, but the reality of the seat was a good deal more austere.
Even now, the thought makes my head swim.
Sienna's conduct still tormented him. Clinging in that Allan wretch's arms, rubbing her face against him without shame; catching his hand with a desperate look and drawing it up so he would stroke her cheek; murmuring apology after apology while her eyes reddened. Sienna, who had not let even her own father hold her since she was four, showing that kind of open hunger for affection to a mere knight. It outdid every eccentricity she had committed before. He almost missed the days when she had been content to stage bouts between criminals and fighting dogs.
"Sienna went all the way out there? ...A little more forward than I expected, but not far outside what I anticipated. Even if the child is being unreasonable, look on her kindly. And if she startles you, bear it for the moment. Once she returns to the capital she will come straight to me, and I will soothe her as she needs."
Turning the Empress's counsel over and over, the Emperor had forced himself to endure.
Even so. Even granting all of that, this is too much, is it not?
A daughter the citizens might revile, and yet infinitely precious to him, infinitely beloved. Watching her beg Allan for affection hurt more than he had expected. The Empress would only say it was still better than her attaching herself to Victoria, but a father's heart did not work that way. The youngest, weaving lace in a convent; the eldest, insisting on a military uniform even at imperial banquets; the second, forever wounding her father's heart — set politics aside, and each of them was a sore finger he could not stop worrying.
I boil inside on their account, and not one of them has the faintest sense of their father's heart. They may even resent me.
The Emperor's face darkened by degrees. The officials attending him watched his mood in tense silence, none of them daring to speak.
"Your Majesty. Forgive the presumption, but the time has come."
"I am aware."
Only at the Lord Chamberlain's words did he force his expression smooth, and for no reason other than the triumph itself. He was, unmistakably, a sovereign returned from conquering half the Great Forest — a victory won by political craft alone, without spilling the blood of the Empire's precious sons and daughters. The people would have poured into the streets in a daze of disbelief, and it was a monarch's courtesy to answer them. An achievement like this would not come around again.
And the citizens of the Imperial Capital did welcome him with fervor.
"Blessings upon His Imperial Majesty!"
"Hurrah!"
"Reign forever and ever...!"
Women tossed roses with awkward smiles; old men flung their windows wide and paid their respects; merchants offered what applause they could manage. A little stiff, perhaps, but every face was glad. They seemed to believe without a doubt that the immense resources soon to pour from the concession would make the Empire stronger still, and fatten not only the purses of the wealthy but, if only a little, the households of ordinary citizens as well.
Do they know about heroin?
Not in their dreams, most likely. If someone among their acquaintances was a senior officer or a high official, they might have heard the name. But no one, he had to assume, knew in any concrete way what heroin was. In honesty, the Emperor himself could not claim to understand it precisely.
And it must never become known. Never.
Heroin was more frightening than demons, more frightening than war, more frightening than the deficit bleeding out of trade with the East. Because he understood that terror, he had yielded to the Empress's counsel, and had even steeled himself to make use of the daughters he loved. However precious one's children, the imperial throne demanded that the Empire come first.
Still, if it had to be one of them, better Anais for that man... No. No. What am I thinking?
The Emperor forced a smile and waved to the citizens, and he did not forget to play the open-handed conqueror.
"...Announce that the residence tax in the Imperial Capital shall be halved for the next three months. And look into whether some temporary relief might also be extended to citizens in the capital's outskirts and the other provinces. We cannot hold a festival, but we ought to do at least this much."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
A tax cut. Nothing answered a crowd so well.
He turned, looking for Sienna, who by now ought to have been following behind him in her carriage. But Sienna's carriage was nowhere to be seen. She had slipped the triumph with a light step and gone off as she pleased. Bitterness welled in him again.
The moment I finally set foot back at headquarters, Sienna was at my side, as a matter of course. Even after the little performance she had staged before the Emperor, the way she treated me had not changed. If there was one difference, it was that she had taken to watching my hands with her eyes narrowed, and now and then she would knead her own cheek and tilt her head. I didn't bother asking what she was thinking.
Only after we reached Thames Palace did she speak.
"...Allan. The truth is, I spent some time deciding what to demand in exchange for helping you this time."
"I would expect nothing less of Your Highness."
"I thought it might be amusing to make a moderately unreasonable demand and watch how you wriggled out of it. And besides... this time you weren't in any position to refuse, were you? If not me, there's only Sister Victoria, and she doesn't suit you."
Had Sienna not answered the summons, it might have been another story, but this was not the moment to say so. I only nodded. Her mouth curled into a grin.
"Originally, I meant to demand that you teach me how morphine is made."
"Did you."
"Mm. Slaked lime and opium... oh, not raw opium as it comes. Opium broken down as fine as it will go, heated together with water — I worked out what that does. After that, though, I lost the thread. So I was going to ask you."
She had gotten that far on her own. Something she must have tinkered with to pass the time while I was lingering in the Great Forest. Given the talent she had already shown, it was a mercy she hadn't produced morphine already. Demanding the method in exchange for blocking an engagement was exactly the sort of thing Sienna would do, and if she was bringing it up now, of all moments—
"But you don't have to teach me anymore, Allan."
"Your Highness?"
"I doubt you ever thought you could hide it from me forever. Sooner or later you would have put some security in place and handed the manufacturing off to your people. ...I would have learned it around then anyway, so what difference does it make whether I learn it now or six months from now?"
She came closer as she spoke, slowly, and looked up at me. She didn't throw herself into my arms. She only tapped my chest with the back of her hand, smiled, and drew the word out — anyway.
"We'll be working together for a long time yet. Won't we?"
"Yes. We will."
Backing out of it now would have been ridiculous. Bringing Sienna into this had been my choice, whatever else it was. Barring some upheaval, the engagement to Anais was as good as wrecked, which meant I was no longer in danger of being poisoned by her — jimsonweed was a favorite of hers — or of taking a knife in my sleep. The price, however, was anything but cheap.
So long as Sienna did not lose interest in me, the next steps were already fixed. First she would meet the Empress, and the two of them would test each other. If the Empress moved as I expected, that contest of nerves would most likely end in a bargain. Should I give Sienna at least a light briefing beforehand, to prepare her for it?
While I was turning it over, a visitor arrived.
"General Hayden Walpole requests an audience."
Hayden Walpole. A general of the army, and one of First Imperial Princess Victoria's maternal uncles — the head of her faction as well, the man who tended all the political business in place of a Victoria too busy with her work to do it herself. He hadn't come on any errand for Sienna. He had come to see me, and in a considerable hurry.
"Show him to the reception room."
Sienna nodded readily, her interest caught. In the reception room a handsome man of middle years stood waiting, dressed in an Imperial Redcoat. He offered a courteous bow to Sienna — his niece's half-sister, a relationship that could only be awkward — and then flicked a look my way. He wanted to negotiate in private. I didn't indulge him. Sienna was not going to excuse herself in any case.
"General Hayden. You may speak freely."
"Even so."
"If it is something you cannot say before Her Highness Sienna, then I would rather not hear it."
At that Hayden Walpole worked his mouth, then managed an awkward smile.
"...You've done a very great service this time, Sir Allan. Say what anyone will, you are the foremost contributor."
"Thank you."
"And yet certain persons have taken up a baseless misunderstanding — the notion that Her Highness Victoria planned and drove this operation together with you. ...As you know, Her Highness is not the sort of woman to steal credit from those beneath her. Isn't that so?"
I understood the game from that much alone.
He wants Victoria pried away from me.
The Emperor and Empress were checking me in the open, and even the foreign ambassadors, I had heard, were scrambling like madmen to gather intelligence on heroin. They would have learned what Sienna had done before the Emperor as well. It was no surprise that Victoria's uncles wanted their niece separated from me; they must have concluded I had become Sienna's man. In all likelihood this was not Victoria's own will, but her retainers offering loyalty on their own initiative. Transparent. Painfully so.
Still, I gave Victoria's uncle the answer he wanted to hear.
"Strange. I can't imagine how a rumor like that got started. I directed this operation from beginning to end. I sought Her Highness Sienna's advice, but Her Highness Victoria will not even know the particulars."
Conduct myself this way, and Victoria's nature would leave her feeling guilty toward me. Plant a debt in her heart, and even if I could not call it in now, I could ask a favor later.
"I'm grateful you understand. We'll help see that the misunderstanding is cleared."
With that, Hayden Walpole took his leave. When I turned, Sienna was watching me, thoroughly satisfied.
An hour later, prettily dressed, Sienna left Thames Palace.
To meet Empress Yeonhwa, of course.