Psilocybin
The Empress's private recital had already run for more than an hour. First the seven-string zither, then the pipa—she flaunted her musicianship on instruments brought over from her homeland of Jin.
Her skill was almost suspiciously fine, but the mood in the hall was a shambles. Everyone listened with the same blank, helpless look on their faces. The best of them was Sienna, who at least clapped as if she were enjoying herself.
"Ow!"
The performance ended on the Empress's dainty little scream. The violence of her playing seemed to have split the skin of her hand.
"Your Majesty the Empress!"
The maids cried out, but she paid them no mind. She flung her arms wide with a thoroughly refreshed expression and launched into a stretch—no, a flailing that only resembled a stretch—muttering some nonsense about how stiff her body had gotten.
That was exactly when Sienna stepped in.
"Your Majesty."
In front of me she wouldn't even bother with an honorific, nothing but sneers—yet here she was, the very image of an affectionate stepdaughter. Her face, at least, looked sane enough to sell it.
"Hm?"
"I'm so glad to see you looking so well. I enjoyed the performance, too. How are you feeling just now?"
"Feeling? Wonderful, of cou—"
The Empress started to answer on reflex, then stalled on an ah. She seemed to have felt the hollow stare of the Third Princess, Anais. Until now she might have been lost in ecstasy, nothing in her head but the strings, but Anais was still the child of her own body, wasn't she? In an empire swarming with pale faces, the one person who resembled her. Unlike the sullen First Princess or the wicked Second, this was the darling daughter she had carried and borne.
Sienna began, slowly, to tighten the vise on the hesitating Empress, indicating me with a glance.
"The medicine you just took is called psilocybin. It was prepared by Allan Madoff, standing over there—my escort knight."
"A knight prepared medicine?"
"Clever, isn't he? Unfortunately, he says he won't be able to present any more of it."
"What?"
In an instant the Empress's face went hard, and she seized Sienna by the wrist. She turned a mournful look on me as well, as if to ask how I could say something so cruel. This isn't right. How could you.
Of course she looked at me that way. Feelings that had been dead for years had come back to life, and she was finally spending a pleasant stretch of time, however twisted the shape of it—and now she was being told that chance would be taken from her.
"Sienna, what are you saying? The cost? If that's the problem, I'll pay whatever it takes."
"It isn't a matter of cost. It's only that Anais seems to doubt the effects of the psilocybin. As you heard, she even called it a poisonous herb. Of course, I won't reproach Anais over something of that scale."
"That's right—between sisters...!"
"We ought to be close. I only want to protect my honor, and my knight's. I don't believe it was what Anais truly meant. Most of it was probably her people pulling the strings."
"Ah."
"I want those people punished severely for lèse-majesté."
In the end, she meant to cut down Anais's inner circle—and to have that permission spoken by the Empress herself, their mother. The drug, or her daughter. An ugly choice.
Would the Empress protect her child to the last, even with the drug still singing in her blood? Hesitation would have been the sane response, but the Empress, having tasted a new world, reached her decision before a minute had passed. Or perhaps she had simply judged the game already lost.
"Those wretches ought to be killed and minced into jeotgal. How dare they try to spoil the affection between you."
"I don't know what jeotgal is, but does that mean we may punish them?"
"Of course!"
The Empress gave a crisp, unburdened nod and rose at once, as if purging a few head of nobility were nothing worth fussing over. She didn't even seem to care how heavy a blow the decision would land on her own daughter.
"I really ought to go play the daegeum. I'm sorry, but the two of you are far too grim. I don't want to stay with you."
She pinched Sienna's cheek, then Anais's, and drifted serenely out of the room, fists clenched tight, as if some sacred duty required her to play the long bamboo flute of her homeland this very instant.
That, too, was one of psilocybin's little traits. Ideas came flooding without end, and with them a compulsion that one simply could not sit still. I hadn't expected it to come out through an instrument, but from where I stood it hardly mattered. What mattered was that the Empress was thoroughly satisfied. All that remained was negotiating the surrender.
Once the whole affair had run its course, silence held the hall for a while. By now Anais would want to chew me to pieces. Unfortunate, but foreseeable. Having taken the body of Sienna's closest aide, I could hardly avoid friction with the other princesses.
Still, my existence had been stamped into the Empress now, and they wouldn't lay hands on me without thinking. From here on she would be unable to live without the medicine I gave her. Just because it lacked opium's withdrawal didn't mean the memory of that fierce happiness would vanish with it.
With this, I've cleared the crisis.
I had kept the Empress from becoming a wreck, and I had kept Sienna from taking an interest in the opium trade. Honestly, I couldn't be sure about the latter. But it still wasn't time to relax.
"Sir Allan. Might we speak for a moment? I hear you played quite an important role."
An aging man approached me through the unsettled air. Marquis Rikius—a leading figure, you might say, of the Third Princess's faction, and a major shareholder of Higgins Bank, one of the foremost banks in the Empire. This was a world where the market economy had already come a long way. Nobles who lived by nothing but wringing their estates had nearly all gone under, and the bankers' power was immense. Right now, though, the marquis was no titan of finance. He was only an old man sent to clean up after Anais, who had dug herself a magnificent hole.
Right. He wouldn't want to negotiate with Sienna in person.
I caught Sienna's permission with a look, then stepped into the conversation.
"Sir Allan. Surely we must resolve this affair amicably, one way or another."
"Your Lordship. We are already past the point of an amicable resolution."
"......"
"Her Highness Sienna was slandered to her face and humiliated for it. Can you even begin to imagine how wretched she felt?"
"Which is why I'm saying we should mend it, late as we are...! What about this? Before long, the two princesses hold a tea. There, Her Highness the Third Princess offers a public expression of regret—and her thanks, as well, for the treatment of Her Majesty the Empress...!"
"A tea gathering? Are you mocking us?"
When I raised my voice, Anais sent a mournful look my way, and Sienna let out a quiet little snort. Joy and misery split to opposite extremes between the two camps.
"No, that isn't— ...In the first place, wasn't all of this caused by that escort knight, Bono, and his false report?"
"He'll be punished harshly as well. In our own way."
"...Then tell me what you want."
Now that was the right note. I made a show of thinking it over, then set out my terms.
"You will have heard Her Majesty. The disloyal people who egged Her Highness the Third Princess into raising that conspiracy must be punished."
"...When you say punished."
"The nobles responsible must confess a charge of lèse-majesté before the military police. It won't be one or two of them. And I would ask that Her Highness the Third Princess personally petition His Majesty to strip them of their titles."
"......"
"Of course, that isn't the end of it. The matter is serious, is it not?"
A cold silence fell over the hall at the conditions I had named. Lèse-majesté against royalty other than the Emperor was, surprisingly, handled with some leniency. Confess your crime in open court, buy a ruinously expensive letter of pardon, contribute to the imperial purse, and you were often simply let go. This time, though, the suspicion was what it was, and it could not end there. Confiscation of property would be added on top.
And if the loss of title were piled onto that? It was nothing short of a death sentence.
They'd even have to confess to a crime they never committed.
The true culprit, from first to last, was the Third Princess Anais. She was royalty, and that was the only reason she could shove the blame onto the people around her. It amounted to cutting off the tail—except that tail was the very base of support holding the Third Princess up. No noble was going to lie down and die just because they were asked, so in the end she would have to crush them, threaten them, or buy them. She was royalty in name, so she could probably manage it, but the damage she would take along the way would be enormous. Who, after watching that spectacle, would ever offer her genuine loyalty?
"Those terms are too harsh... Her Highness the Third Princess has only just become a first-year at the Academy."
"Your Lordship. Forgive me, but if you wish to mediate, you will have to say so to Her Highness Sienna yourself. I am only a knight."
I cut him off with that, and Marquis Rikius finally hung his head. He had to know that accepting would tear his faction apart, but he couldn't refuse either. He would know perfectly well that a refusal would only make the affair grow larger.
In the end the marquis went over to Anais, who had been sitting there in a daze, and murmured something to her. A short struggle. The result, however, was surrender. From here a dogfight would break out over who had to take the lead, but that was none of my concern. Even if the fallout collapsed the Third Princess's reputation so completely that life at the Academy became impossible for her, it wasn't a matter I needed to involve myself in.
What did surprise me was how quickly the infighting began.
"You petty little bastard! You're the one who told Her Highness to do it this way! I was just dragged out here!"
"Now, now. When did I ever...!"
"My lords, compose yourselves. My sister is still watching."
"Your Highness ought to compose herself! Think about it—whose fault is all of this! How could you simply believe some knight just because he waved around an inside report?"
"I... verified it."
Nobles who didn't even spare the curses as they shoved the blame onto one another; Anais, already looking as if her soul had left her, trying to restrain them only to be spoken to with open impiety; and my liege, Sienna, savoring the spectacle from a comfortable distance before turning her back. It wasn't my place to say so, but the whole thing was a farce.
"Well done, Allan."
"Thank you. Will you be going to see His Majesty the Emperor?"
"No. I'm just going to leave. Even if Father summons me, I'll refuse—I'll say I want to rest for a while, after the humiliation I suffered today. Do that, and Father will feel guilty toward me even though he hasn't done a thing wrong. It'll weigh even heavier on Anais."
"......"
"I'll have her withdraw from the Academy and keep to her rooms for about two years. Cutting down a few retainers isn't enough."
Sienna seemed to have gotten a taste for politics off the back of this, but I pretended not to notice. Feeding that interest any further would be a mistake. In any case, the situation was over.
As I stepped out of the Empress's palace, a faint thread of the daegeum reached my ear. She meant, it seemed, to see her music through to the end before the drug wore off.