The Poison Prince

by S. C. Emmett

  “I feel stubborn as one.” Takyeo’s gaze did not alter, but he was not seeing the hanging, or even the wall it rested upon. “And if I were to visit the Council, it would be only temporary. I intend to leave Zhaon-An in a matter of days.”

  In other words, his decision was unchanged. Makar suppressed a sigh. “Some of your household have already left.”

  “To prepare the way.” It was the phrase for every summer’s corvée labor, smoothing the arteries commerce and travel both depended upon, instead of the more usual term for servants hurrying ahead to air out and refurbish neglected rooms. If it was a jest, it was an opaque one.

  Makar half-turned, studying the books afresh. If Takyeo would grant him the grace of an unseen expression, he might as well return it. “Much as our fourth mother did.”

  “Is that what she’s being called now? Not the suffering mouse in her bower?” The bitterness behind the words was harsh, and entirely new.

  “So you know of the First Queen’s venom.” Of course, who in the court did not? If Takyeo had merely given the appearance of unknowing, it boded well.

  But not well enough.

  “I have all my life, it seems.” A polite understatement; Takyeo had been ever filial and long-suffering toward Gamwone. “Tell me, did your mother stir a step or raise a finger to help the Second Concubine?”

  Why should she? There are more problems than yours afoot in Zhaon, Eldest Brother. Makar did not shrug. He could neither defend his parent as filial duty demanded nor rudely take exception to an elder sibling’s partially justified comment, so it was best to simply step forward along the path. “We are not our mothers, Takyeo.”

  “I should hope none of us are our father, either.”

  Ah. So now Takyeo could be induced to speak of Father. “It could happen at any moment, you know. And when it does, he is beyond explanation or reconciliation.”

  “He has never been fond of either.” A slight creak was Takyeo pushing against the desktop to aid his rising, and his cane tapped the floor as he stepped away from its shelter. “Very well, Maki. It pleases me to see things done thoroughly. But once Father…” The pause filled the study, brushed against flatbook-spines, and leached even Zhaon’s wet summer heat from the room. So he could not make himself say it, after all. Interesting. “I intend to abdicate, and to retire to the countryside to live a blameless life.”

  “Is that where such things are found?” Perhaps wisely, Makar did not speak against the plan yet again. “I hope it is that simple.”

  “Nothing is simple.” The cane tapped, the floor spoke softly under Takyeo’s weight. It was amazing the wood did not splinter under the bitterness in his tone.

  The Fourth Prince nodded. Perhaps there was hope after all. “You are wise to recognize as much.”

  “Makar, I would ask you something.”

  Good. “Then ask away.” Ask me for aid. Ask me to declare for you, ask me to give you a reason to stay, ask me what Kurin intends. I cannot help if you do not move, Takyeo. But would Ah-Yeo recognize as much?

  And if he did what Makar longed for him to, what would the repercussions be? Kurin claimed he slept easily at night, but no man who did spent so much time intriguing. Even Makar, safe for the moment, did his fair share. Very subtly, of course, but he was a prince and had his own eyes and ears in palace households, soft and retiring, only required to give a detail now and again in return for alloy sliver or small preferment.

  If Kurin even suspected Makar’s weight might be placed upon their eldest brother’s side of the scale instead of being kept from the counting, not only the Fourth Prince but also the Second Queen would feel certain unhappy effects.

  A brother was a brother, but a mother was more.

  “What would you do?” Takyeo paused, continued. “In my position.”

  “Strategic retreat is part of my nature— perhaps that is from my mother.” Makar freed a hand to stroke his shaven chin; his hurai was warm satin stone. The weight was a menace and a reminder, also a protection. Certainly his own sleep would be far more untroubled if the problem of Kurin were somehow addressed by their eldest sibling. “But surrender? No, that is not in my nature at all.” I did not think it in yours, either, no matter your forbearance. Makar paused. “May I give you advice?”

  “Of course.” Whether Takyeo chose to follow it was another matter, but at least his tone was kind. “I asked for as much, Maki.”

  “Be careful of Kurin. I do not know quite what he intends, but…” That much was a lie, both of them knew very well what the Second Prince intended. And were Takyeo of a different temper, he might take the warning to its natural conclusion, and rid his impending reign of its closest, if not its greatest, danger.

  “Kurin.” Takyeo’s cane tapped as he skirted his desk. “Is that indeed where the danger lies?”

  Do you truly not know? “Danger lies everywhere.” Makar now turned to face his brother, obscurely nettled. Either Takyeo was being deliberately obfuscatory or he suspected Makar of impropriety, and neither was a welcome mistake from a brother he, after all, loved.

  “Do not mouth platitudes just at this moment.” Takyeo’s gaze was now sharp, and something moved behind pupils and iris, a depth rarely seen. In this moment, he looked very much like the Tamuron of Makar’s childhood, and a breath of uneasiness touched the Fourth Prince’s spine like a refined courtesan’s fingertip, a cool, promising stroke. “If you know of something definite, now is the time to tell me.”

  “I do not absolutely know.” The Awakened One once remarked you could not shake a man out of slumber who was only pretending it, and Makar did not like thinking himself capable of such internal untruth. Lying to others was a necessary skill; lying to one’s own liver was perilous indeed. “I have suspicions.” Strong ones. Ask me how strong, Ah-Yeo. Please.

  “So do I.” Takyeo shook his head and reached for the small bar-gong upon his desk. “Suspicion is not enough, Makar. Not yet. But where are my manners? I shall call for something to have with our tea.”

  The Crown Prince of Zhaon was required to give the appearance of such things as honor and truth and justice. The problem was, Takyeo believed in such things, and practiced them with the assiduousness of one born incapable of shameful actions. Makar’s eldest brother was everything the sages said a ruler should be— kind, wise, full of merit.

  What the sages said and what the world actually required were two very different things, even for those who found much utility in scrolls and flatbooks. “Please do not trouble yourself, Eldest Brother. I came only as a humble emissary upon Banh and that eunuch’s business.”

  “If you wish to leave, you may. But I would like to have a meal with you, Makar, while we both have time.”

  Do you realize how little time remains? But Makar assented gracefully. He had done all he could, and hinted all he might while keeping his own lovely, beloved mother safe.

  Now it was up to Takyeo to save himself.

  WORK WITHOUT FOOD

  At night, the shores of the slightly smaller of the two great markets of Zhaon-An murmured with languid brothel-songs and the higher, sharper-pitched melodies of those selling other services. The Yuin was flushed and scrubbed occasionally like any city midden, but all things had their place under Heaven, and it was best to keep the poisonsellers, the knife-dancers, and the practitioners of other shadowed arts easily accessible for questioning.

  Every good physician knew maggots only ate the dead flesh, cleaning away the rot so healthy tissue could be treated.

  Suitably muffled in a long dark cloak despite the swelter of a summer night, a shadow passed along the edges of the Yuin as loose-haired boys and decorated girls leaned from their casements, importuning in high singsong. In his wake a second smaller shadow scurried, barefoot and apologetic. Bursts of perfume mixed with redolent sweat and the spice from the all-night stalls, noodles made from rai, mil, me-mil, and mixtures of the three soaking up frying oil and fat from what claimed to be meat and perhaps even was upon the m
ore prosperous streets. In some stalls, the long thin Khir peppers provided heat, their harshness balanced by the longer, round-bellied Zhaon gulao with their slow but deeper burning.

  To work at night called for double the belly-filling a day required, and in summer the peppers forced the cooling humors to rise, slicking the skin with sweat and providing transitory relief. A makeshift stall selling long slivers of salted curltail-haunch over rai noodles smoked and sizzled as its proprietor, an old woman missing half her teeth, shook a knotted fist at the two Watch who had helped themselves to brimming bowls. The crests on their helmets bobbed as they grinned, slurping down the food— they must have strong stomachs, expecting such poor fare not to gripe them. But at least the old woman could go about her business for the rest of the night unmolested.

  Or until the next group of Watch came along.

  Turning sharply to his left, away from the fraying edge of the Yuin, the muffled man passed down a street of jumbled houses pressed together like pounded-rai cakes or meat-filled dumplings crowded into a steaming-basket. No torches or lamps hung over the doorways, but every pedestrian moved with purpose.

  It wasn’t wise to linger here.

  Still, the cloaked man slowed, and his boots were of very high quality. He might have been approached for the purpose of relieving him of that footwear and any other desirable item had not the long, slightly curved shape upon his back, with its leather-wrapped hilt, silently dissuaded such a maneuver.

  The man knew what he wanted, apparently. Or at least, he stopped at a certain door with a dagger-shaped character painted upon its lintel. His companion hurried forward to knock, though a short, imperative gesture said it wasn’t necessary; the second, slighter figure all but cowered at the irritation the movement managed to express.

  Inside, it was close and muggy, with only a coil of cleansing yeoyan-yao incense burning in a battered brass container. There was no bed, just a table with a low-burning, sputtering lamp of the kind known as mother’s eyeball and a single sag-bottomed chair.

  The slighter figure hurried to trim the lamp and turn it up, to arrange the chair, to do whatever might be required for the comfort of whatever rich man had bought her. His muffling cloak was hung on a handy though somewhat rickety peg near the door, which was swiftly barred.

  With that done, the slight figure stood, vibrating with what might have been terror or anticipation, near the table.

  “Take off your cloak,” the rich man said, touching his topknot to make certain it was still in proper order. Its cage was simple, stiffened leather and the pin merely carved wood, but his dark clothing was very fine and had been noted more than once as he penetrated the Yuin. “There we are,” he continued meditatively.

  The girl— for such she was, a wide-eyed waif of no more than twelve winters— smiled uncertainly and moved to obey, slipping the rag that could only charitably be called a covering from her thin shoulders. A peasant lass if the work-roughened hands were any indication, her teeth were still fine, and her nervous darting glances around the room calmed somewhat as she visibly noticed the absence of a bed.

  The rich man carried a small package, and as he unwrapped its cloth covering the girl’s eyes widened. Balls of polished rai, cabbage in qur sauce, and a waxed container of steaming beef-buns. There was also a small stoppered clay jug with crushed fruit.

  “You can’t work without food,” the rich man said, kindly, and indicated the meal. “Sit, eat. There’s no tea, I’m afraid, but the fruit will serve. Well, go on.” He made a little insisting movement, waving her for the chair.

  It was perhaps not quite polite to sit while your superior was standing, but hunger won out. The girl bowed several times, stammered provincially accented thanks to her benefactor, and finally climbed into the chair. There were no eating-sticks, but her kind did well enough with their fingers, and well she knew it.

  The buns vanished first, and she made a low happy noise like a curltail snuffling in its trough. The rich man smiled paternally, his arms folded over his chest and his back to the door, watching.

  She was halfway through the cabbage when she halted and swallowed heavily, her stomach making its own comment in the form of a long resounding belch she set free, it being a mark of politeness to speak when one of your betters has fed you well.

  “Is it good?” he inquired, kindly, his left thumb finding a divot upon his corresponding first finger where a heavy ring usually rested.

  “V-v-very,” the peasant girl stammered. “Though…though, my lord…”

  “It’s all right.” The rich man’s tone didn’t change at all. He witnessed her sudden stiffness, heard the soft, grating sound she made, and made no move as the girl slid from the chair, curling on the filthy floor like a spiral-shell taken from damp ground meal and thrown into a hot pan.

  When the gurgling and seizures were done, the rich man cocked his head. It was a good thing he’d taken the vial; this wouldn’t do at all and furthermore was definitely not what he had originally commissioned. Perhaps his brother had intended something messily public. It certainly fit Sensheo’s tastes, and if he had not thought to test the tool before using it, one or two crucial parts of his plans might have gone astray.

  No, this was unpleasant but necessary, and now he knew the dimensions of a brother’s treachery. They were utterly expected; he expected, as well, that a queen would soon see her chance to do a spear-wife’s son a disservice or two.

  The rai-pot, as the peasants would say, was boiling. All he had to do was wait.

  “Ah well,” the prince said, softly, as the death-rattle filled the peasant girl’s throat. Who would have thought a few drops of colorless liquid in a beef-bun would have such an effect? “Greedy girl. You should have known better.”

  The sudden stink of death-loosened bowels was his only reply. He wrinkled his nose, stepping close enough to gather the rest of the buns— it wouldn’t do to leave them lying about.

  A few moments later the lamp burned steadily in a silent room, and Garan Kurin, muffled again in the long dark cloak, was gone.

  DRY LIGHTNING

  Afternoon rose hot, breathless, and full of bruised stormlight. Zhaon-An seethed under smoke from cooking and other fires, hungry tongues kept shielded and contained. The palace complex, normally just as busy if slightly more well-regulated, lay under a pall of weary silence.

  The eunuchs hurried along on their jatajatas, but with the peculiar trick of the ankles that made those clickclack sandals land soft as a feline paw. Courtiers and ladies-in-waiting did not gather in the pavilions or stroll like bright proud birds in the many gardens.

  In the heart of the Kaeje— the original keep, built in the days of the First Dynasty— the hush lay even thicker in every corner, an almost physical weight. The mirrorlight was muted as if the antique, giant bronze shields used to bring the glow into the heart of living-space had been hung with gossamer cloth or moved just slightly on their oiled gimbals.

  Under a light silken counterpane Tamuron lay supine, his eyes glimmering through almost-closed lids. Occasionally one of his fingers twitched and Zan Fein the head eunuch— his usual draught of umu scent much abated in the last few days, perhaps to save his master some irritation— would lean his pinkened ear close to the cracked royal lips to discern whether a command or simply a groaning exhalation was at hand. Ministers came and went, seeking this decision or the other; the Crown Prince had been prevailed upon to take his father’s place in the great council despite his household’s ongoing preparations for removal to the provinces.

  The Second Concubine’s funeral arrangements had altered that event somewhat, but gossip whispered that the loss of his foreign wife and his royal father’s ruthless driving had forced that mild, patient prince to balk and turn aside like the snow-pard he had taken for his device.

  Dry lightning played upon distant hills. There was no danger of fire yet; the drought-time of summer had not yet begun. The rai burgeoned in the fields, other crops stretching from black earth
as well. It was the time of bent backs, of fighting weeds, of planting for the second harvest, of young animals frisking and their elders content merely to fatten.

  The heart of Zhaon lay upon his back, his thinning hair combed by a bath-girl excused from other duties because her hands soothed the Emperor’s temper. The suppurating lesions widened upon his body, but he had no will to scratch them, now. Once or twice he summoned his strength and called for Mrong Banh, who hurried to attend his lord. Their conversation was brief each time, and ever afterward no blandishment could induce the man to say what they had spoken of.

  The storm lowered over the city like folded wings, and even the most hopeful or stupid of courtiers could not escape the knowledge that there was no recovery or last-moment rallying to a standard that would break an enemy’s army. Their Emperor, strong in the saddle and matchless in battle, sank under the weight of his own failing body.

  The Second Concubine had merely gone ahead to prepare a place for her lord.

  THRIFTY STOCK

  Ever afterward, Mrong Banh would think of that day with a shudder. It started with a headache so severe he gave up watching the stars lose themselves in daylight’s skirts and tried to sleep, tossing and turning upon the narrow pallet that was the only bed he could stand when the riven-skull pain came. It lasted for hours, and eventually, when it receded enough that he was not blind, the astrologer poked his hair into an approximation of a proper topknot, ran his hands down the front of his wrinkled robe, and set off for the Artisan’s Home. He could have gone to Kihon Jiao for a tincture of sleepflower to halt the pain, but that would require visiting Tamuron’s bedside.

  Mrong Banh did not wish to appear haggard and head-tender before his lord. The Emperor had his own failing health to steward, and would look pityingly at his poor astrologer. As much as it hurt to endure a great man’s pity, it was even worse to see the great man laid low— especially when you had spent your life proud to be serving a master of such merit.