The Poison Prince

by S. C. Emmett

  “When the Great Bell rings,” Kurin continued, softly, “our mourning will continue, and those we have hired so carefully will swear they were hired by Sensheo’s favorite bootlicker to do a certain prince a disservice. The bootlicker will say what he must, or his daughter will suffer.”

  Yes, now the head of Yulehi understood his nephew’s plan. It was an elegant one, certainly, and it preserved the appearance of Heaven working unassisted. “And if the Great Bell does not ring before…”

  “I have a plan for that too, Uncle, and you will be called upon.” Kurin shook his head as if he were the elder and his uncle the rash youth. “It is all well in hand, and you may rest easy. It might almost be time to think of retirement; you have served the clan well.”

  “My lord nephew.” And now it was time for him to set his cup down and grovel, a feat he had performed many a time in the last twenty winters. Ever since Garan Tamuron’s star began to rise, in fact— a mere stripling with a gift for inspiring soldiers taking slices of the Garan neighbors’ holdings, and keeping them.

  “Oh, don’t.” Kurin’s grin was now quite open and fetching, if you overlooked the gleam of sharp white teeth. He smoothed one fold of his muted, sober silken robe. “Drink your tea, Uncle. In a little bit we can be said to have had a decent visit, and then you’ll be off to do what you must.”

  The boy had become a man. When had that happened?

  It did not matter. What mattered now was keeping the brat’s favor, at least for the present. So Binei Jinwon steeled himself to finish his cup. For the fragrant, cloying tea was hrebao.

  SO LITTLE

  Sun lay thick upon golden dust, tents marching in rows, the glitter of helm and shoulders gilded or merely reinforced with metal edges. It poured over a temporary dais in the paved courtyard of the keep, where under a bright yellow canopy Zhaon’s greatest general sat upon a backless chair in gleaming full armor, watching the floggings.

  Even if Kai would have preferred not to mete out punishment this way, there was no choice. The traitorous shield-square— four men and a captain, including the armor-boy from Wurei— had fired a general’s tent, almost assassinated him, and killed loyal brother-soldiers.

  No mercy was allowed those who killed their own. There were exceptions, as when a shield-captain or square-commander was a certain type of martinet, but the skeleton of the Northern Army was not upon campaign and there were precious few chances to strike down the meritless during a melee. There was even a word for the erasing of a hated commander, its character akin to the sharp tool for pruning dead orchard branches.

  The characters for treason were differently shaped.

  The whip cracked again. Shield-captains and square-commanders stood in their allotted spaces, marshals and other officers in theirs, watching from under striped awnings. Some generals left the square when there was bekuya-in to mete out, but Zakkar Kai was not one. It was not meet for a man to close his eyes to what his orders wrought; Kai and Garan Tamuron had shared many a meandering conversation upon the topic and its implications.

  So Zakkar Kai watched every stripe laid against the broken bodies tied to metal posts, the three whipmasters stripped to the waist and gleaming, bright blood spattering from the sorrowful snakes of braided leather, the bone-stripping flechettes flaying meat from the faithless.

  There were no mutters among the spectators. A general was a father, soldiers his sons, and no mercy or intercession could be expected for attempted patricides— they would descend, skeletons with strips of meat hanging from cracked bone, to the Hell of the Many Weights. Besides, he was the hero of Three Rivers and the beloved of Heaven’s own chief general who used thunderbolts to strike evildoers and malignant spirits; the thought of celestial displeasure if the boy from Wurei and his compatriots had managed to strike true was enough to make even the least religious— or even merely superstitious— soldier blanch.

  “They were paid well.” Anlon stood at Kai’s right hand. The steward was not pale, nor did his shoulders slump, but the bandage around his midsection peered from under loosened half-armor. “Copper ingots found in their tents. They would not say who suborned whom.”

  I did not expect them to. Here, in camp, there were no eunuchs to practice the Art of the Tongue upon malefactors. Eunuchs did not belong among fighting men unless they were bearing orders from the Emperor, a few generals of the Second Dynasty notwithstanding. “No papers, I expect.”

  “Their braziers were lit.” Anlon’s hair perhaps held a touch or two more grey now. He would become a snow-pard before long, with mottled fur.

  “Perhaps the rain chilled them.” Kai’s chin raised slightly as a commotion at the keep gate rose into stifling, dust-choked morning air. One of the traitors screamed before the whip descended again, and the high, piercing note was very like a woman’s.

  “My lord.” Anlon did not approve of levity in this situation, but he would not dream of scolding his master publicly. “I searched every corner personally. Hurong Tai and Sehon Doah are searching again.”

  “Distribute half the ingots among the soldiers who put out the fire.” Kai forced his gaze to lie quietly upon the three grieving pillars and their almost unrecognizable lumps of treachery.

  “And the bodies?” Anlon knew what Kai wanted done, of course, but this was for the benefit of the third of his marshals, lean, farsighted Hurong Baihan from the fringes of Daebo— no relation to round, smiling Tai, but the name was a common one indeed in Zhaon.

  Sometimes Kai suspected Mrong Banh did not change his name because agreeing to a more common one would touch his pride. He gave the required answer crisply, as befit a military man. “Leave them upon poles for three days. Then give them a common pyre. The families…”

  “Three of them had not been with us long enough to gain pension merit, my lord.”

  Kai almost winced. “Pension them anyway, at half.”

  “Just and kind.” Baihan, at his left, did not move to resettle his helm under his arm, which meant he had more to add. “The other half of the ingots?”

  “Into the treasury, Tall Hurong.” There was no army so laden it did not seek to make room for fresh spoils. “We may need it if Khir decides they are not quite supine.”

  “Bastards.” But Baihan said it softly. “What do they expect? If they come again, we shall hand them more death.” He carried a scar or two from the battles before Three Rivers, and was somewhat touchy about missing that crowning event while abed with fever and possible sepsis that had, miraculously, retreated when a shabby-robed Kihon Jiao became involved.

  The physician would be missed, but he was of more use in the palace. With the thought of the palace came Yala’s face again, somber and weary under drenches of multicolored light from flame-flowers on a hot spring night.

  At this hour, she might be taking tea in one of the Jonwa’s sitting rooms, listening to the junior ladies’ light conversation. Or she might even be visiting Kanbina, the two of them soft birds in a safe bower. The image was soothing, an anodyne for the sight before him.

  A courier appeared at the far end of the courtyard, the bright crimson plume nodding upon his close-fitting helm. He spared the briefest glance at the display and skirted the assembly with a light but determined step.

  Yala’s letters would not come so. This was an imperial messenger. New orders, perhaps, or something else had happened. It was the latter prospect that pulled Kai’s nerve-strings taut. “Send a fellow to bring him into the keep, Anlon. Unless it is a Red Letter, I am at business.”

  You do not look away from what you have wrought, Tamuron had said more than once, watching a broken army as the victorious one swept in pursuit, killing as they moved. It is the measure of a man.

  So little? Kai had said, once, and the warlord— he had not been Emperor then— had fixed him with a dark, piercing sidelong look.

  Very little, and yet beyond the capability of most.

  It would be a Red Letter if Tamuron had died. And here Kai was, mired with the bones
of an army, unable to return to his almost-father’s pyre because he was a shield over the heart of Zhaon.

  In more ways than one.

  The messenger was escorted inside, and Kai settled more firmly upon his padded bench. A hot, uneasy wind flirted with awnings and stirred stray hairs, ruffled decorative fringe and mouthed bright armor. Gongs and trumpets flared outside the keep’s low, ancient, single tower— the second day-watch was over, the third called to post and picket.

  The whipmaster handed the sorrowful snake to his understudy, a lad of about fifteen summers who looked green at the work but set himself to it with a clenched jaw. He did not have much to do— the master had applied fifty of the seventy lashes due apiece for the first of their transgressions, setting fire to army tents.

  The other hundred lashes, for the attempt upon the life of their general, could wait until tomorrow’s dawn, if any of the traitors were robust enough to survive until then. If not, the corpses would be scourged, to further punish their shades.

  When it was done, the shuddering lumps were hauled roughly away and two details called to clean the courtyard. Kai climbed the steps into the keep’s drafty mirrorlit entry hall. The messenger had already unloaded his cargo and been taken to the field kitchen for something more substantial than the rai-balls they traditionally carried to eat in the saddle; the pile of dispatches and official correspondence held two surprises.

  First was a triangular-folded letter with familiar, exquisite brushwork upon its outside. Perhaps Takyeo had merely added Yala’s letter to an official bag before sending it. The second was a missive bordered with crimson ink, and its seal was Tamuron’s.

  Of course he longed to open hers first, but the red-bordered letter was far more concerning. He broke the waxen seal with a crisp sound and unfolded it as he paced his study, Anlon following to stack and sort the other correspondence into its own proper lanes and alleys, just like the tents outside.

  The characters refused to make sense for a few moments. When they did, he tipped his head back, staring at the dusty rafters. Soon Anlon would be at the shutters, drawing them against the afternoon’s sullen volcanic fury before the rain swept in, and the room would grow stifling.

  “My lord?” His steward sounded alarmed. “My lord!”

  It was not unexpected. Kihon Jiao had told Kai privately it would not be long, and if she lasted until autumn there would be celestial intercession instead of the medical arts to thank.

  And yet.

  My son, Kanbina had called him, proudly. Kai’s own parents were ash upon a wind pawing at a barbarian-burned settlement, their guessed-at names carved upon an ancestral tablet he performed duties before with filial regularity. He had not known of her plan to petition Tamuron for the hurai granted to Zhaon’s chief general, and was even more surprised when the Emperor agreed.

  The circle of greenstone clasped his left first finger, the characters carved into sacred material clear and sharp. Of course she had not labored to bear him— but her courage, brushing that letter when she knew it would expose her to unwanted attention at a court that had all but forgotten her, shamed him nonetheless.

  No doubt Yala’s letter contained the details. And no doubt Yala was grieving, too. Kanbina had never learned not to be kind to creatures in need, whether they remained grateful or not. In that, she was like the Great Awakener himself.

  “My mother,” Kai heard himself say, quiet as a peasant facing utter disaster. “My mother is dead.”

  And he could not attend her pyre, either. Duty would keep him here, as useless as the flogged lumps, the evidence of their shame even now being scrubbed from the courtyard’s wide, stony embrace.

  PRODUCT OF MERIT

  I was not sure you would see me,” Fourth Prince Makar said, his hands clasped behind his back as he studied the bookshelf with deep instead of merely polite interest. He found the Jonwa’s study restful, very much like his own with dark wood and clean lines, each book and scrollcase in its allotted place; much could be told about a man by the type of disorder he tolerated.

  “No?” Takyeo, of course, kept himself under such rigid control it was almost impossible to find a stray hair. Even now, he was possessed of impeccable patience regarding a younger brother who had appeared without invitation or preliminary letter and whose errand could not be pleasant, coming as it did in such a time of mourning and tension. He had even called for tea, as if this was a planned visit. “Why not?”

  “I thought you were retreating to the provinces.” If the move had any chance of succeeding, either as feint or— even less possible— to grant Ah-Yeo a life unmolested by the dictates of policy and rule, Makar might even admire the brazenness of its execution. As it was…well, he had always found his eldest brother admirable in other ways.

  If there was a sliver of likelihood that he could help his eldest brother remain alive, Makar was bound to at least attempt the feat. His arms ached from the morning’s punishing practice with his preferred sword-tutor, his legs held a bruise or two from a weighted wooden blade, and he had taken himself to the Jonwa at the earliest hour for any visit with a firm step and a thoughtful mien.

  “You start with business.” Takyeo had aged visibly in the past few months, his face acquiring a novel and quite handsome leanness, but his smile— always deployed far less frequently than it should have been, alas— was just the same.

  “Of course; it is a mark of respect.” There was so little unmitigated truth a man could speak, and a prince even less, so Makar relished the opportunity. His nape was damp, more from the remains of a tepid, citron-touched bath than the day’s gathering heat. “I know how you hate to waste time.”

  “Speaking to you is never a waste.” Takyeo shifted in his chair. His leg had been well-nigh crushed; Zakkar Kai’s pet physician was capable of miraculous things. “I have missed our conversations of late.”

  “Learned men, come together and seek the Way.” Makar’s fingers gave a twinge. He had brushed that very sentence over and over, not stopping until his child-chubby fingers could perform it fluidly.

  “Dho Xilung, an old friend.” Takyeo did not have to search far for an appropriate answer of the same vein and exact number of Zhaon syllables. The game was a likewise friend, played between a patient elder brother and a precocious younger. “Where the wise have congress, the world is elevated.”

  When Makar had started winning their matches, his eldest brother still played with good grace. It had been Takyeo who brought Makar brushes and exercise books of lined rai-paper when the boy was thought too young, and Ah-Yeo who had put his arm over a still-child Fourth Prince after the assassin came that terrible year in the citron-cloaked house of Hanweo.

  You did what you must, Takyeo had said, gravely. And you did well. You may have bad dreams, too. Those are natural.

  No one else had thought to tell him as much, assuming Makar’s calm was a product of merit and his marked precocity, not the stunned, head-hanging exhaustion of a brutalized ox. “Ah, you have been reading the Green Book.” Makar could not help but smile, either, turning from the bookcase. His mourning-band glowed upon a blue silk sleeve; today he was not a scholar.

  Takyeo nodded thoughtfully. He was not in full mourning, though perhaps he would have liked to be. “There is much within it upon the subject of grieving.”

  “Yes.” Makar tucked his hands in his sleeves. Who had more cause to grieve than his patient, kindly eldest brother? The Khir princess had seemed docile and well-mannered, the type of wife any nobleman would be glad of. If Takyeo had not been a prince, they could have grown old in happy serenity. And Kanbina had been the only one of their father’s mates who did not see a dead wife’s child as an imposition or worse, a threat. “At least they are both beyond the reach of their enemies, now.”

  “At least that.” Takyeo considered Makar for a long moment; he did not ask who his brother meant. That was another of Takyeo’s fine qualities, the simple refusal to ask a question he already knew the answer to. “I know you, m
y brother. What have you come to ask of me?”

  From anyone else, it would have irked Makar. From Takyeo, it was a blessing. “Would I have come merely to demand a gift?”

  “No, but you would come to demand I swallow medicine.” Takyeo’s gaze turned to a wall-hanging— a restrained painting of the babu-jointed characters for serenity— giving his junior freedom from the weight of keeping a pleasant expression. “For my own good.”

  “And it did you good then, did it not?” It was extremely pleasing to be the person whose advice Takyeo took, no matter how long ago the event.

  “I am in need of no medicine at the moment.” His Eldest Brother’s chin set, somewhat stubbornly, and that was a new thing. For his entire life, the man had been obliging and forbearing. It stood to reason he would reach the end of his patience sooner or later, but now was the worst possible time for the knot to be placed in the rope. “Do me a second honor, Makar, and tell me what you wish of me so we may move to more pleasant subjects.”

  “It is not what I wish.” That was unadulterated truth as well. Were it left to Makar, Takyeo could retire to the countryside at will, and live the remainder of his life brushing scrolls and raising fine horses. “Mrong Banh and Zan Fein spoke to me. They ask if you will come to Council. Father does not, now. He does not even leave his bed.” Makar was also not the only one to think it would not be long now.

  Their imperial father’s condition was grave, and Takyeo’s position hardly secure. It was a configuration that could only mean disorder and despair.

  Takyeo nodded thoughtfully, but it was not a movement of agreement, merely of acknowledgment. “So they wish to put the ox to plow, do they?”

  “You are no ox, Eldest Brother.” But are you a snow-pard in truth? We have not yet seen your claws.

  Or, more disturbing, perhaps they had, and said claws were too small to pierce a single sheet of rai-paper.