Lemon
"It really was wonderful."
Empress Yeonhwa let out a sigh. Half a day had passed since she received the psilocybin, and the fact that its vanished effects could not be called back felt like a genuine loss.
She had not swallowed it willingly at first. The thought of putting some nameless pill that reeked of mud into her mouth had revolted her, and the one who brought the thing, daring to call it medicine, was Sienna—the stepdaughter who turned her stomach, a child who had made vicious pranks her habit since she was small.
I only ate it to save Anais.
She had meant to force it down, offer a polite word or two, and placate the girl, her one thought being to drag her own daughter, Anais, clear of a trap with no way out. But before long, the magic began.
"Sienna...? Why has your hair gone white all of a sudden?"
"It's silver."
It was no exaggeration. The whole world burst into color. The drab office flooded with the five brilliant hues and rippled as if it were dancing. She squeezed her eyes shut in shock, and then, of all things, her body began to float.
"Wah—someone catch me...!"
"You're still on the floor, so don't worry."
What on earth did they feed me! She flailed through a few silent sobs, and then a question rose in the Empress's mind. Was she displeased, right now? Thinking on it, not in the least. Her body felt light, and her head was clear.
As she swayed along in wondering delight, a bewitching melody she had never heard in her life began to ring at her ear, and she hurriedly sent for her seven-string zither. From that moment a rapturous stretch of time began. There was a brief commotion partway through, but the Empress disposed of it lightly and sank back into her playing. She could not stop. She had no words for it, only that musical ideas shimmered before her eyes. She wished the moment would never end.
But that was only her wish.
"It ended far too soon...?"
Sienna, her escort knight, and the virtue of the medicine they had brought had all already vanished. A pity. A true pity. Empress Yeonhwa clicked her tongue and resolved to savor whatever aftertaste remained.
No—more than that, she wanted to eat. Ordinarily she could barely force down a few spoonfuls of food prepared in the manner of her homeland, but now anything sweet would do. Scones, pudding, cake. She even wanted to see her husband for the first time in a while, that endearing man who dared to style himself emperor in a country so modest it could not begin to compare with Jin, her motherland.
There was so much she wished to do, and yet, regrettably, someone stood in the way.
"Mother. It isn't too late—please...!"
Her daughter Anais had been pleading in that desperate voice for hours already. Even after Sienna left, she clung to the Empress without a thought of giving up.
"Anais, enough."
"Just say the remark about the salted fish was a slip of the tongue, spoken while your mind was clouded. Honestly, you were strange earlier—that's a fact. Forgetting your dignity to play an instrument out of nowhere, laughing so lightly. You aren't that sort of person...!"
Frivolous? What?
The Empress decided gentle words would not do, and her expression hardened.
"And what sort of person was I, originally? If you know, do tell me."
"No, I mean—"
"You seem to want to say the medicine was suspicious, but it was nothing of the sort. I am told that before it was brought to me, Sienna's escort knight swallowed several of those pills himself. And he was standing there perfectly well, was he not?"
"Allan Madoff? That man is a knight. An Expert."
"And a master at the peak is immune to every manner of medicine, is he? How novel."
Only then did Anais close her mouth. It would have been a lie to say she felt no pity for her daughter, cornered as she was. But to shield her here was more likely to poison the girl. Dawdle in the hope of overturning a fight already lost, and she might only call down a greater disaster. Above all, measured against the mistake Anais had made, the matter had been settled gently. By the Empress's standard, it would not have been strange if dozens had died.
"Simply yield, Anais."
"Mother!"
Anais sank down where she stood and rubbed her palms together in desperate appeal, but the Empress did not waver. She did want to keep taking the psilocybin, yet that was not the only reason.
This is best for her as well.
A short while later, having dismissed her daughter, the Empress went to meet her husband with a light step.
Two more days passed after we made the Empress happy. Glad tidings arrived from Minst Palace, where the Third Princess Anais resided. Glad for us, of course. For those concerned, it would be a tragedy.
"Earl Dryden, Earl Soan, and Baron Aegers went to the military police of their own accord and confessed to the charge of lèse-majesté. And Her Highness the Third Princess sought an audience with His Majesty the Emperor and petitioned that their titles be stripped."
A report that three nobles of that faction had stepped forward and sacrificed themselves. Not quite the greatest magnates moving the economy of the Britannia Empire, but heavyweights all the same. They could not even be compared with Bono, the man Sienna had cleaned up yesterday.
We've lopped off a limb or two. This alone.
The Third Princess Anais had not stood level with the First Princess Victoria, but her footing had at least been firmer than Sienna's. This affair, however, had badly wrecked that foundation.
"They say the rumor is already all over the Academy. She must be in hell by now."
Sienna, vowing she would go on tormenting her younger sister, then turned to me with a thoroughly satisfied look.
"This is all thanks to you, Allan. I'll admit it."
"Thank you. I'm glad to have kept my promise."
I said it to mean that now she ought to keep hers. Hadn't I made the Empress happy and driven the Third Princess's reputation into the gutter? It hadn't merely fed Sienna's sadism; politically, it had been a boon as well. I'd crushed the half-sister who was clawing her way up from below. In return, I was to receive a million thalers and a long leave.
But... would that Sienna actually keep her word? Given who she was, I had my doubts. It was hard to guess what thoughts occupied the head of the woman smiling with her slender chin propped on her hand. She looked pleased enough, fortunately, but she was a bitch who did wicked things even when she was happy.
"That's right, Allan. There was something I promised you."
"Yes. You also said you would pay it in kind."
"I'll keep it, of course."
Welcome words, yet looking at Sienna's face alone, it did not seem she would keep them so meekly. I had the feeling she would tack on some condition we had never discussed. I wasn't saying so because her character was foul. It was human nature. How many employers hand over a bonus agreed only by word of mouth without a fuss? Of course, at the time I had hardly been in a position to demand a written pledge from her.
The ominous feeling proved correct.
"I'll give you both. In exchange."
"..."
"The medicine you gave the Empress. Could you tell me about the psilocybin?"
Sienna seemed impressed by what the hallucinogenic mushrooms could do. No surprise. She had watched with her own eyes the astonishing change in an empress wasting away in the depths of the palace. My medicine hadn't even left her a wreck. Yesterday, they said, she had taken a rare, intimate stroll with the Emperor and made a show of their harmony.
Would it really be so bad just to tell her?
Whatever I told her, she couldn't turn the mushrooms into a business anyway. To commercialize them she would ultimately have to grow them in bulk through artificial cultivation, and with this world's agriculture—stuck at an ambiguous seventeenth-century level—that was impossible. Artificial mushroom growing is an exceedingly difficult business. Arrange a bed nicely and they do not simply spring up on their own. I had studied precisely that at university, so given enough resources I could manage it, but there would be no such occasion. I only had to supply the Empress, after all. Should I sketch it out and let it pass?
In the next moment that complacent thought was overturned at once, because of something Sienna tossed out as if it had just occurred to her.
"Oh, Allan. Next time you offer the Empress psilocybin, how about serving lemon with it?"
"Lemon, you say?"
"Yes. Maybe because it's made from mushrooms, the texture and the smell seemed to put her off a little. Wouldn't it go down easier if she took it with lemon?"
She was suggesting they make lemon and psilocybin a set. It might have been nothing, and yet a chill ran through me.
She knows lemon tek? How in the world?
After one ate a psilocybin mushroom, the effects did not begin for at least thirty minutes. Soak it in lemon juice or lime juice and steep it as tea, though, and that time could be cut to under ten minutes. The taste was better, too. It was how people enjoyed them back home. Common sense said she was not speaking from actual knowledge. But Sienna was a person whose every idea led down the road of efficient evil. The notion of mixing opium into port wine because it was harsh and astringent eaten plain, and the idea of covering the poor texture of a mushroom pill with the scent of lemon—both must have sprung from that same talent. Passing knowledge to a woman like this was forbidden.
Better to fob her off. I began spinning a lie at once.
"...Your Highness. I am sorry to say that I do not know the details myself. Even learning of psilocybin's existence was a matter of chance."
"Truly?"
"How could I lie? The truth is... in my third year at the Academy, while I was out on a field assignment, I happened to meet an elf named Psylocin, and from him I learned of the mushroom and its effects. The medicine's name was taken from that elf as well."
"You learned something from an elf? Things aren't exactly warm between us and the elves."
"We grew close by chance. Besides, elves are a people who live on grass and mushrooms to begin with, aren't they? I suppose the old ones seek out mushrooms with special effects to pass their idle hours. They put on airs of elegance, but they're damp, sordid things, unlike how they look."
For something invented on the spot, it sounded plausible even to me. I had slandered the elves in the process, but it couldn't be helped.
"All right. If you say so, then it must be."
"I will continue to prepare the psilocybin for the Empress myself. There are more than eighty kinds of mushrooms that look alike, so it would be difficult for anyone else to sort them."
"..."
Sienna studied me closely, then nodded at last. She did not seem to believe all of it. Coming right after the great results of my work, she was probably letting it pass. She might also think I was holding my tongue because I didn't want to be cleaned out of my stock in trade. As expected, Sienna was not someone to take lightly. I must not relax my guard for a single moment.
Even so, what was owed had to be collected.
"Your Highness. As promised, please grant me the reward and the leave."
Now it was time to settle accounts.