The Poison Prince

by S. C. Emmett

  It was a time for sorrow— Garan Tamuron had reunited the Land of Five Winds, after all— but also a time for rejoicing, since a new Emperor was now solidly upon the throne and life could settle into its normal rhythm again.

  The dry season meant work tending to aqueduct and canal, guarding growing rai, planting second crops, and though business with Khir was still strangled, it had been so for many a year and there was always Anwei to trade with instead. The new Emperor was also likely to teach the northern horselords a lesson or two in respecting their betters— or so many at the Palace, in the city, or among the civil servants in small town and village stated, more or less openly and more or less confidently.

  From Shan there was no news until a single lean rider furred with reddish hair and with skin the color of mourning presented himself at the gates of Zhaon-An’s great palace complex upon a dry, dust-choked afternoon some few weeks into the new reign.

  Led past garden upon garden, through richly appointed colonnade and brightly mirrorlit passages, the visitor was brought to a receiving-hall and left to cool his barbarian heels— still in their boots, for he had menaced the servants responsible for ensuring no profane shoe stepped inside the Kaeje with a flash of discolored teeth through the reddish beard choking the lower half of his face. The visitor stank, too, far more than the brightness of some of his clothing— the remnants of a Shan noblewoman’s colored rain-cloak, for one, and similar inappropriate scraps— should have allowed. A man who could dress in something other than drab was presumed to have the alloy sliver necessary for the bath-house, after all.

  The knee-high box the pale-skinned intruder carried stank just as badly, though it was wrapped in rich damask silk.

  Finally, the visitor was ushered into Zhaon’s greatest hall, and bowed— in unpolished fashion, but respectfully enough— after he had presented the leaden medallion and scroll of pounded-rag paper, thick and heavy, that passed for his credentials to a waiting eunuch.

  “And who is this, standing before me?” the new Emperor said, with a faint, ironclad smile. Perhaps his hind end had not yet become quite accustomed to long hours upon the throne listening, hearing, and deciding, for he shifted slightly as he took in the barbarian from booted toe to fuzzy top.

  “Turik, stirrup-holder to Aro Ba Wistis of the Horde, greets Zhaon.” The Tabrak straightened from his bow. “I bring thee a gift, oh lord of Zhaon.” His accent burred and butchered its way through the syllables, but they were still largely decipherable. “And a message.”

  “A gift? Quite kind.” The new Emperor gestured, and the box was brought to the steps before the throne, laid carefully. “I have not asked your lord Aro for tribute, Turik, but I shall view his bauble.” He handled the strange names passably well, but then again, a monarch should be peerless in learning as well as war.

  “Not tribute, lord of Zhaon.” Either he had not taken the time to learn proper address to the Emperor, or he was deliberately insulting— but the Emperor merely smiled, graciously, and gestured for the silk-wrapped box to be opened.

  It had ridden many weary leagues, bumping against a saddle; now, a eunuch’s nimble fingers teased at its wrappings. Zan Fein, standing among others of his dark-robed kind at the Emperor’s left hand, murmured to a much younger, very somber eunuch who hurried away, his jatajatas hushed instead of announcing their name.

  The barbarian stood, grinning stolidly, and the wooden box was cunningly designed to fall open once its lid was removed. The sides thumped down upon the stair, and one of the ministers— Lord Yulehi, still in his half-year of primacy, newly confirmed by his very filial nephew— let out a short, coughing sound of disgust.

  “The gift is this, oh lord of Zhaon.” The stirrup-holder’s rotted teeth showed even more as his lips pulled back, a grimace of high amusement. “We have brought one of your fillies home, to replace one lost by another.”

  Kurin stared at the thing upon the steps. Its ear-drops, still held by blue ribbon, were familiar, as were the two hairpins thrust through a nest of sadly bedraggled braids. He knew the jewelry, and even though the features were blurred they were still perfectly recognizable.

  The Emperor’s gaze rose to take in the barbarian again. “Sabi,” he said, blankly.

  “And the message from Aro Ba Wistis is thus,” Turik said, in loud, careful Zhaon. “We are coming. Shall I repeat it?”

  “No.” The new Emperor had gone pale. There was a rustling, a thumping of footsteps, and the Golden guards, warned by Zan Fein’s messenger, burst into the hall. The four attendant upon the throne leveled their spears, and several ministers cried out in disgust and disarray as they recognized the thing contaminating the steps. “Sabwone. No.”

  The Tabrak was still laughing when they bore him away to the dungeons, and Garan Sabwone’s head, flesh sloughing from its cheeks and its eyes, not to mention the back of the horribly collapsed, crushed skull, leered at her now-eldest living brother.

  To Be Continued…

  The story continues in…

  BOOK THREE OF THE HOSTAGE OF EMPIRE

  Coming December 2021

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks are due to Sarah Guan, without whom there would be no series; Nivia Evans, whose endless patience has oft kept a writer from utter despair; Angeline Rodriguez, whose organization has made miracles possible; Mel Sanders, for too many things to count; Miriam Kriss, who worked very hard to make this possible; and Lucienne Diver, for shepherding a weary word-wright through the final gates. A heaping share of gratitude is also due to the sensitivity readers— anonymous at their request, but never forgotten— who kindly and firmly showed hurtful lacunae in the manuscript, as well as those whose scholarship kept the author from numerous errors. Any remaining blunders or flaws are simply and solely my own fault.

  Much gratitude goes to my children, who think it’s amusing to share their distracted parent with imaginary people, and several friends, online and off, who commiserate and celebrate as the occasion calls for.

  Finally, my very dear Reader, let me as usual thank you in the way we both like best, by telling you yet another story…as soon as I recover from this one.

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  meet the author

  S. C. EMMETT is a pseudonym for a New York Times bestselling author.

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  if you enjoyed

  THE POISON PRINCE

  look out for

  THE WOLF OF OREN-YARO

  Chronicles of the Bitch Queen: Book One

  by

  K. S. Villoso

  Born under the crumbling towers of her kingdom, Queen Talyien was the shining jewel and legacy of the bloody War of the Wolves. It nearly tore her nation apart. But her arranged marriage to the son of a rival clan heralds peace.

  However, he suddenly disappears before their reign can begin, and the kingdom is fractured beyond repair.

  Years later, he sends a mysterious invitation to meet. Talyien journeys across the sea in hopes of reconciling their past. An assassination attempt quickly dashes those dreams. Stranded in a land she doesn’t know, with no idea whom she can trust, Talyien will have to embrace her namesake.

  A wolf of Oren-yaro is not tamed.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE LEGACY OF WARLORD TAL

  They called me the Bitch Queen, the she-wolf, because I murdered a man and exiled my king the night before they crowned me.

  Hurricanes destroy the villages and they call it senseless; the winter winds come and they call it cold. What else did they expect from my people, the Oren-yaro, the ambitious savages who created a war that nearly ripped Jin-Sayeng apart? I almost think that if my reign had started without bloodshed and terror, they would have been disappointed.

  I did
not regret killing the man. He had it coming, and my father had taught me to take action before you second-guess yourself. My father was a wise man, and if the warlords could’ve stopped arguing long enough to put their misgivings behind them, he would have made them a great king. Instead, they entrusted the land to me and my husband: children of that same war they would rather forget. The gods love their ironies.

  I do regret looking at the bastard while he died. I regret watching his eyes roll backwards and the blood spread like a cobweb underneath his wilted form, leaking into the cracked cobblestone my father paid a remarkable amount of money to install. I regret not having a sharper sword, and losing my nerve so that I didn’t strike him again and he had to die slowly. Bleeding over the jasmine bushes— that whole batch of flowers would remain pink until the end of the season— he had stared up at the trail of stars in the night sky and called for his mother. Even though he was a traitor, he didn’t deserve the pain.

  More than anything, I regret not stopping my husband. I should have run after him, grovelled at his feet, asked him to stay. But in nursing my own pride, I didn’t give him a chance. I watched his tall, straight back grow smaller in the distance, his father’s helmet nestled under his arm, his unbound hair blowing in the wind, and I did nothing. A wolf of Oren-yaro suffers in silence. A wolf of Oren-yaro does not beg.

  Almost at once, the rumours spread like wildfire. They started in the great hall in the castle at Oka Shto when I arrived for my coronation, dressed in my mother’s best silk dress— all white, like a virgin on her wedding day— bedecked with pearls and gold-weave, with no husband at my side. My son, also in white, stood on the other side of the dais with his nursemaid. Between us were the two priests tasked with the ceremony— a priest of the god Akaterru, patron deity of Oren-yaro, and a priest of Kibouri, that foreign religion my husband’s clan favoured, with their Nameless Maker and enough texts to make anyone ill. They could pass for brothers, with their long faces, carp-like whiskers, and leathery skin the colour of honey.

  My husband’s absence was making everyone uncomfortable. I, on the other hand, drifted between boredom and restlessness. I glanced at my son. He had stopped crying, but the red around his eyes had yet to disappear. It was my fault— on the way to the great hall, he asked for his father as any two-year-old would, and I snapped in return. “He’s gone,” I told him in that narrow corridor, where only the nursemaid could hear. “He doesn’t want us anymore.” The boy didn’t understand my words, but the sharp tone was enough to send tears rolling down his cheeks, a faint reflection of how I had spent the night before.

  Now, Thanh rubbed his eyes, and I realized I didn’t want to wait a moment longer. I turned to the priests and opened my mouth. Before I could utter a single word, the doors opened.

  “Crown her,” my adviser said, breaking into the hall. His face had the paleness of a man who had looked into a mirror that morning and seen his own death. His sandals clicked on the polished earth floor. “Prince Rayyel Ikessar left last night.”

  You could hear the weight of the words echo against the walls. In the silence that followed, I thought I could make out the rising heartbeats of every man and woman in that room. Not a day goes by that I am not reminded of what was lost to my father’s war; even bated breaths could signal the start to that old argument, that old fear that I, too, may one day plunge the land into blood and fire once more.

  Eventually, the Kibouri priest cleared his throat. “We must delay until the prince can be found.”

  “This day was approved by our order, set in stone years ago,” the Akaterru priest replied. “It is a bad omen to change it.”

  “Every day is like any other,” the Kibouri priest intoned. “You and your superstitions…”

  My adviser stepped up the dais to face them. Both priests towered over him. His mouth, which was surrounded by a beard that looked like a burnt rodent, was set in a thin line. “Warlord Lushai sent a message this morning, congratulating Jin-Sayeng’s lack of a leader. He will march against us by tonight for breaking the treaty if we do not crown her.”

  I didn’t bother to pretend to be surprised. “Rayyel is hiding there, I assume,” I said. It was such a bald-faced move: put me in a situation where I could not do anything but create trouble. Throw the wolf into a sea of sick deer— whatever will she do? Warlord Lushai once considered himself my father’s friend, but daring me to make trouble in front of the other warlords was one step too far.

  My adviser turned to me and bobbed his head up and down, like a rooster in the grass.

  I gritted my teeth. “Get that crown.” I didn’t want to give them a reason to think I wasn’t fulfilling my end of the bargain.

  The Kibouri priest was closer to it. He didn’t move.

  “My lords,” I said, looking at the warlords, the select few who were not too ill or infirm or couldn’t find the right sort of excuse to avoid the coronation. “You agreed to this alliance. You all signed it with your own blood. Do you remember? Years ago, you all cut your arms, bled into a cup, and drank from it to mark the joining of Jin-Sayeng as one. Not even Lord Rayyel and I have the power to stop this.”

  There was a murmur of assent. A whisper, not an outcry, but I went with it. I turned to the priests. The Akaterru priest had already dropped his head, eyes downcast. The other eventually forced his knees into a bow.

  They took the smaller crown. It was made of beaten gold, both yellow and white, set on a red silken headpiece. My father had it made not long after I was born, commissioned from a famous artisan from some distant town. I stared at it while the priests began their rituals, one after the other. I could have done without the Kibouri, but I didn’t want to risk offending the Ikessar supporters in the crowd.

  They crowned me with reluctance. No spirits came to crest a halo around my brow or send a shaft of light to bless the occasion. In fact, it was cloudy, and a rumble of thunder marked the beginning of a storm. I wondered when they would discover the body, or if they already had and were just too afraid to tell me.

  Even after I became queen, the rumours continued. I was powerless to stop them. I should have been more, they said. More feminine. Subtle, the sort of woman who could hide my jibes behind a well-timed titter. I could have taken the womanly arts, learned to write poetry or brew a decent cup of tea or embroider something that didn’t have my blood on it, and found ways to better please my man. Instead, Rayyel Ikessar would rather throw away the title of Dragonlord, king of Jin-Sayeng, than stay married to me.

  It changes a woman, hearing such things. Hardens your heart. Twists your mind along dark paths you have no business being on. And perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered if I hadn’t loved Rai, but I did. More than I understood myself. More than I cared to explain.

  I don’t like to talk about the years that followed. Even now, pen in hand while I splash ink over my dress, I find it difficult to recall anything past the cloud of anger. All I know is that five years passed, quicker than the blink of an eye. I was told the anger could do that. That it could rob whatever sweetness there was in the passage of time, add a bitter tinge to the little joys in the life of an unwanted queen. “Will my father come?” my son would ask on his nameday without fail. Each year he would grow taller, stronger, more sure of himself, and each year the question would lose a touch of innocence, be more demanding. “Will my father come?” Soft eyes growing harder, because we both knew that wasn’t what he was really asking anymore. When will he be home? Why did you send him away? Why didn’t you stop him?

  And each year, I would struggle to find an answer that wouldn’t make the courtiers turn their heads in shame. They knew I couldn’t have thrown him out— I didn’t have the power to lord over the heir of the most influential clan in Jin-Sayeng. Yet I could not allude that he abandoned his duties. I could say it easily enough to the Oren-yaro, but not in court— not in front of his family’s supporters. As if the weight of the crown wasn’t heavy enough, as if I wasn’t spending every waking hour fending the war
lords off each other, off of me. After centuries of Ikessar Dragonlords, I was the first queen of Jin-Sayeng, and all the difficulties didn’t bode well for my rule.

  In late summer of the fifth year, I returned after an afternoon riding my horse through the rice fields, where I had been surveying the damage caused by last year’s storms. There was very little a monarch could do about such things, but it gave people strength to see me, or so I liked to think.

  Arro stood by the gates, waiting. I slowed my horse to a walk. It was always amazing how I could predict the future simply by my adviser’s expression. If it was going to be a good week, he often greeted me with a smile, his eyes disappearing into the folds of his face. That meant most provinces had paid their taxes, there were no land disputes (or at least none that people had lost their heads for), and every single warlord was accounted for.

  He didn’t smile now. His lips were flat— not quite a frown, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to expend his energy all that way yet. I dismounted from the horse, allowing a servant to take her back to the base of the mountain to the stables. Arro wiped his hands on his beard and held out a letter, which had been opened. No doubt it was checked thoroughly by the staff, in case someone tried to poison me by sprinkling dust on the inside of the scroll that I might later inhale. The Ikessars loved to use such tactics— I had even lost a great-uncle to it during the war.

  “What’s this?” I asked, just as my dog Blackie appeared between the trees. I whistled, and he bounded to me, ears flopping while his tail wagged so fast it felt at risk of falling off. I patted my tunic before taking the letter.

  I read it once, and then a second time. I could feel my heart pounding, my mouth growing dry. I wanted to ask if this was a dream. It must be. I had so many others like it before. The details were always different: Sometimes it would come from a messenger, his horse slick with sweat. Sometimes it would be a falcon with a note attached to its leg. Sometimes a hooded Ikessar would come bearing gifts before revealing himself to be my husband, years changed and begging for my forgiveness. In each dream, I had fallen to my knees and wept with joy. It felt odd that I now couldn’t muster any emotion beyond cool detachment.