A Gift
This wouldn't do. She was simply going to do it.
Sienna decided she would not bother holding herself back. The moment the resolve settled, every manner of scheme rose in her mind. There was, for one, the method of tormenting the woman with psilocybin. Simply taking it away would be childish. Far more effective to plant a distrust so deep that even with the stuff set before her eyes, she would not dare drink it. Failing that—strike at Jin, the Empress's homeland...
Sienna was turning it over with her lips pressed tight when the Empress suddenly let out a sigh.
"Sienna. Do you hate this mother of yours?"
Did she truly not know? Sienna lifted the corner of her mouth and met the Empress's eyes, hoping the woman who treated people as pieces on a board would strike back in earnest. If it ended too easily, there would be no pleasure in the game.
The reaction she received was not the one she had expected.
"I may not know the whole of it, but your temper is plainly unsettled. ...I do not understand why you are angry. If I misspoke, then I am sorry—but truly, I cannot tell."
"......"
"But this much I do know."
"And what is that?"
"That if you make an enemy of me merely because you are in a foul mood, that friend of yours, Allan Madoff, will not be pleased. ...I cannot say whether that would serve you."
The Empress's warning.
Sienna felt her mind slowly going cold. A moment ago she had been calculating how to torment the Empress; why had the heat drained out of her all at once? Because there was a logic in those words she could not simply dismiss. She hated to admit it, but they had struck home.
Allan really is different from me.
Until he had begun to distinguish himself, everyone around Sienna had been people who submitted only because a princess's authority pressed them down. Allan alone had matched her pace—no, he had shown her a side of himself that ran ahead of her. Her interest in him had only deepened for it.
But chiming well together did not mean their natures matched. If she was a person who took pleasure in others, Allan was a person incapable of guilt.
Similar. Not the same.
Was he truly enduring her? Had he asked for her help only because he had no other choice, to slip the danger named Anais? Ordinarily she would not have cared in the least what Allan thought. She would have enjoyed it. Now it caught at her. Allan, always working to stay clear of danger, might bolt in any direction at any moment, and that, honestly, worried her.
The Empress seemed to read the thoughts crossing Sienna's face.
"There is time enough. Think it over carefully."
"Fine."
"You may come at me after that, may you not? I shall always be here."
"......"
With that, the Empress flicked her hand, dismissing her. Sienna decided, for the moment, to take the suggestion. The psilocybin she had brought along she would simply leave behind. Giving it and then snatching it back might have needled the Empress, but that was not what mattered now.
She could not leave without a word, though, and she did not forget to leave one.
"Mother."
"How it gladdens me to hear you call me—"
"You said you would oversee the opium cultivation, didn't you? It won't do you any good."
"Whatever do you mean."
"Think for yourself what I mean. ...I only hope you'll remember that Allan's talent is not as simple as you imagine, Mother. Hem him in too hard, and it may well turn against you."
"......"
At those words, tension rose on the Empress's face. The sourness in Sienna lightened, if only a little. The worry itself was nowhere near settled.
What am I supposed to do now?
For a long while she stood blankly before the Empress's residence. Allan might only be enduring her. He might have chosen her as the lesser evil. Perhaps it would not have mattered to him if it had been Sister Victoria and not her. New questions kept surfacing, and not one of them came with an answer. It was stifling.
She had been worrying for some time when a thought cut across her mind: give Allan a gift. Through it, she could bind him more tightly to her.
This comes first.
Sienna went straight to the Emperor's office. Not long after, the ministers of Lands, Finance, and Foreign Affairs were summoned into that room, for she had made a demand that was far too large.
Sienna, back from seeing the Empress, said something strange.
"I got the rights to the silver mine."
She said she had secured the mining rights to a silver lode lying in the Great Forest, which would soon come in as leased territory. She had demanded them of the Emperor himself, and he had given them.
What on earth is she talking about.
I had been certain she would clash with the Empress. I had expected her to suggest tormenting the woman by slowly cutting the psilocybin supplied to her, or else to propose that the two of us work out how to sabotage the Empress's demands, whatever those turned out to be. I already had countermeasures ready. I had not expected her to come back, out of nowhere, holding a mining concession.
The Emperor gave her a silver mine?
Setting the suddenness aside, I could not believe it at first. However doting a father the Emperor was, to hand over a silver mine?
The Empire did run on a gold-bullion standard. Even so, silver was a critically important resource, if only for the sake of trade with Jin. Goods bought from Jin, and from the eastern states under Jin's sway, had to be paid for in silver. There were even men in the Empire who had made themselves tycoons on silver dealings alone. In that light, the value of a highly profitable vein was nearly impossible to measure. Alongside natural saltpeter, it was in fact the resource the Empire coveted most.
Wondering whether it could be real, I turned to look at Sienna, but she was as composed as ever.
"It's true. I've been granted the mining rights. The Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Lands were calling it the Cobija Silver Lode. They said that once it's properly worked, it could yield as much as two tons a month. Maybe more."
"It strikes me as a resource that ought to be managed by a state enterprise under the Ministry of Lands."
"I know. But I took it. On good terms."
If it was true, it was news that would draw the envy of every noble in the Empire. More than a few were waiting on the concessions that would fall out of the Great Forest, and Sienna had claimed the choicest cut before the market even opened.
In any case, congratulations were what the moment called for.
"Congratulations, Your Highness."
"You're the one who ought to be congratulated, Allan."
"Pardon?"
When I asked again, thrown, Sienna stared straight at me as if to ask what was so strange about it.
Surely not.
"...Did you secure the mining rights in the name of Madoff Pharmaceuticals?"
"Yeah."
Two rounds of military morphine supply had already brought in more than forty million thalers, and bleeding Medellin's treasury with heroin was yielding another enormous profit—and now a silver mine on top of that? The enterprise was starting to feel too heavy to carry. And I was that company's majority shareholder.
"Isn't it about time we dropped Pharmaceuticals from the name?"
"Your Highness."
"Madoff Industries ought to do. I'll take charge of hiring the laborers and the technicians myself, so there's no need to worry. Pay them handsomely enough, and people willing to run off to the Great Forest will be lining up to apply."
"......"
"The moment the armistice takes effect, I'll set it in motion. You agreed to handle the management decisions, but I trust you won't turn this down."
From the look of it, Sienna had resolved to seize as many concessions as she could under the name of Madoff Pharmaceuticals. I did not need to be told she would reach for more than the silver vein. She meant to leave not even the scraps.
The problem was why she was going this far.
Simple greed?
Impossible. Sienna was not a woman who could be satisfied by merely making money. There had to be another reason, and I could not see what it was. Was she dangling concessions to string the merchants along with false hope, then cast them aside? That fit her tastes well enough. But her face was too hard-set for that to be the whole of it. She shot me a few sidelong glances, then told me I could go. That was all.
"Be as glad as you like, Allan."
Even after I returned to the workshop, the question would not come loose. Asking Sienna outright would have been a tactless thing—all the more so between the two of us, who had been understanding each other without a word. In the end I could only infer from the circumstances.
What in the world did she talk about with the Empress.
A meeting between Sienna and the Empress that had ended in peace, against every expectation. Her strange conduct in securing business rights instead of taking revenge. And last of all, the fact that she had placed those rights, of all things, into the company that bore my name.
In the end there was only one answer. She was doing this because of me.
What other reason would there be to hand so vast a concession to a man who already found it hard to leave her side? She meant to multiply the points where we touched. And she had probably refrained from a mud fight with the Empress for the same reason.
I could not tell whether she was obsessed with me, or with the drugs I made. Sienna herself might not bother to distinguish. In this world it was fair enough to say that I was the drug, and the drug was me.
In any case, it was certain she was swallowing her temper for my sake. I could feel that she was restless about something, too.
I never thought it would go this far.
I had no idea how long Sienna would keep her patience on my account. Push her past the limit, and she might well tell me to throw the drugs away, and everything else with them. For my own safety, I needed to repay her properly. It would not be easy, but the gratitude, at least, was sincere. This was far better than her going to war with the Empress.
I had gone so far as to picture her burning psilocybin in front of the Empress just to provoke her, and now here I was, at leisure to wonder how I might repay her. I could ask for nothing more.
Of course, nothing had been solved at the root. I had stopped the war with the Elves using heroin, but that was not the end of it. Even now I had no way of knowing where the villains of the original story were stirring, or how. I had taken this body before the original was finished, so it would be no surprise if some disaster I knew nothing of broke loose.
Still, I avoided the worst.
For the moment, I was grateful simply to have bought the time to catch my breath.
At the same hour, in a coffeehouse in the Imperial Capital where the political set came and went.
"This is a secret pact."
"Even if it isn't, we cannot look the other way."
"Then what are we to...?"
There were those holding forth on the movements of Second Princess Sienna, who had secured the silver-mining rights the instant her audience with the Empress ended. They were not mere idle gossips.
They were the faction that followed First Princess Victoria.