Gunpowder Magnolia

Please note that the chapter below is an early draft. Names and world-building details subject to change. Early chapters are available on my Patreon.

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Lanthe was already awake when a servant shuffled in to rouse Tairo the next morning. She lay still, listening to the sparse exchange of words as the Yao boy helped the nobleman dress. Tairo’s spoken Yao wasn’t the best, but he didn’t seem to need many words here. Judging by the smooth shuffle of feet and swish of silk, he and the boy both knew this sequence. Tairo had, for all his rough training, grown up in a house with many servants.

Lanthe only sat up when the servant passed back through her chamber toward the exit.

“Boy,” she said sharply.

“My lord?” he turned to bow in her direction, his loose hair flopping forward to obscure his face. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“What’s your name?”

“Dunyi, my lord.”

“Next time, announce yourself at the door, Dunyi, and wait for me to respond.”

“Sir?”

Lanthe pulled the cover back to expose the sword beside her. “I don’t want to cut you in half.” The color drained from the boy’s face. “Do we understand each other?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“I’m not a lord. Yes, sir?”

“Y-yes, sir,” Dunyi stammered and bowed his way out of the room.

“You know, Captain,” Tairo said through the curtain that separated their quarters, “if you don’t like having the servant go in and out, you can dress me.”

“No thank you, my lord.” Lanthe swung her legs off the bed and stood. “I’m just teaching the kid to exercise some common sense. You should stretch.”

“Stretch?”

“We have open space,” Lanthe rolled her shoulders, “and time before our meeting. We’re going to spar”— she winced as the stitches pulled at her left shoulder and a twinge reminded her of the gash in her left palm— “one-handed.”

“You sure?” Tairo asked. One-handed meant the sword, Lanthe’s weakest weapon and Tairo’s strongest.

“Yes, my lord.” The servant boy had left clothes for Lanthe on a low bench by the bed. “Just give me a moment to dress.”

Tairo’s chambers adjoined Lanthe’s but he knew that she preferred to dress alone. All the explanation he needed was that she was self-conscious about her pox scars and he never looked. He did, however, offer an amused, “Having trouble over there?” when Lanthe had spent entirely too long fighting with the garments.

“Yes,” she admitted sullenly.

“Help?”

“Yes, please,” she said and Tairo pushed through the curtain. “These are different from the clothes they gave me yesterday.”

“Well, the princess invited us for a walk in the gardens. This is garden wear.”

“It’s what?”

“Here, let me.” Tairo moved forward. “See, this one ties over here, and this one ties over here. Rabbit goes down his hole… and… there are his ears!” He tugged the last tie snug and thumped Lanthe’s bound chest. “You look perfect.”

“Don’t lie, my lord. You’re bad at it.” She said it for the benefit of anyone listening in. If only it weren’t true. “Where’s your sword?”

“I’ll send for practice weapons.” Tairo crossed to a silk rope like the one Yelhwa had used to summon Lady Suzu. “We can’t very well spar with live steel.”

“Why not?”

Tairo held out his arms to indicate the fine silks they were both wearing. “Garden wear.” He pulled the rope and the servant boy came scurrying back.

“You rang, my lord?”

“Dunyi, do you know where to get us wooden practice swords?”

“I’ll ask, my lord.”

The swords Dunyi procured were too long and too light, and the sitting room adjoining the bedrooms wasn’t really suited for sparring. Every piece of furniture looked like it would break if Lanthe tripped on it. But if she didn’t start the day with some sort of training, was she even awake? Besides, sparring was the best way for her to test Tairo’s condition. If he was properly focused, he could beat Lanthe in a clash of swords; if he was scattered, he was an easy kill.

“Ah, I love a Yao sword!” Tairo gave the practice weapon a twirl and smiled up its length.

“Yeah, well,” Lanthe cracked her neck. “Let’s see if it loves you back.”

The first bout wasn’t promising. Lanthe drove Tairo onto his back foot in three strokes. Another three, the edge of her sword was at his throat.

“Combat with these weapons isn’t a game of brute force, you know,” Tairo said.

“Isn’t it? If brute force is what wins?”

A wooden point poked at Lanthe’s throat, right where the silk collar concealed the absence of a laryngeal prominence. Shit. How had Tairo gotten his sword there with her so close? And how long had it been there? Since before her swing had stopped at his neck? It didn’t matter, she supposed. Either Tairo’s focus was wanting or hers was. Neither boded well.

“The lighter weight allows for more wrist movement than a Ro sword,” Tairo explained with a smile. “Your striking range can be in tight”—he extended his arm and Lanthe stepped back with the sword point at her throat—“or it can be long.”

“If a man has long, willowy arms like yours.” Lanthe knocked the sword from her throat. If she wanted range, she had a glaive—or she should. “I’ll stick with my mid-range.”

Another clash put Tairo on his back and Lanthe pulled him to his feet. “How have things been going with Princess Yelhwa?”

Tairo could tell her how the plan was going, just only from the Yao-facing side of it. They both had to be careful not to reference their real goals, in case spies were listening.

“We haven’t talked much,” Tairo said as he raised his sword and circled on light feet. “I um…”

“You what?” Lanthe prompted.

“I proposed marriage.” Tairo shot forward, clearly hoping the attack would take Lanthe’s focus off the words that had just come out of his mouth. It didn’t.

“Marriage!” Lanthe connected harder than was necessary as she struck his thrust aside, then turned and struck the back of his thigh as he fell through the thrust.

“Easy!” Tairo stumbled. “I thought you were injured!”

“I thought you weren’t.” Lanthe broke through his guard before he got his feet back under him and shoved him into the wall. “Marriage? You were just supposed to talk to her!” Seduce her, not propose! “God in Heaven, Tairo!”

Did he realize how badly this compromised their plan? A marriage proposal meant the beginning of a long and highly structured courtship. It meant limits on where and how long Tairo could see the princess. There would be no withdrawing to dark rooms, unattended, on the pretense of other business. The only way Tairo was getting private access to Yelhwa now was if the courtship was a success and they actually got married—which was, of course, unthinkable.

“What were you thinking?” Lanthe hissed over their crossed blades.

“I just… I wasn’t.” Any resistance went out of Tairo’s arms and both wooden blades pressed to his chest. “I was flustered.”

“Why?” Lanthe demanded. Tairo seemed at home enough here in the finery of the Yao court, and he had been so sure that Yelhwa’s beauty wouldn’t throw him the way it did other men. He was born for this field of engagement. “What do you have to be flustered about?”

“It’s her, Lanthe. She… she’s not normal. She didn’t react the way women usually do.”

“You mean she didn’t fall head-over-heels silly in love with you immediately?”

“Not just that.” Tairo regained some of his conviction and shoved from the wall, pushing Lanthe back. “You met her. You know it’s not just that.”

Lanthe did.

The plan had been to get Tairo close to Yelhwa behind closed doors—close enough to steal her secrets and slip a knife in her back. Of course, that plan had been predicated on Lord Hyonang’s belief that Yelhwa was promiscuous, secretly taking many lovers, and that belief had been predicated on the number of strange men Yelhwa had into her interior chambers with no other explanation. But Lanthe had been in those chambers. She had witnessed the way Yelhwa controlled outside perception of what happened in those dark rooms. Did the princess take many lovers? Did she take any lovers at all? Or did she just want it to seem that way? Recalling the way Yelhwa’s gaze had speared and immobilized her, Lanthe didn’t know what kind of man would have the nerve to get closer than that.

“What…” What did she do to you? Lanthe couldn’t ask. What kind of mind trick did she pull on you? “What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just describe your first meeting to me,” Lanthe said. “I’m curious how it went.”

“There’s not much to describe, Captain,” Tairo said. “She had the guards remove my chains and then received me in the throne room with a limited audience present.”

“Limited?” Lanthe repeated. “Meaning?”

“Just a few of her ladies in waiting. She dismissed the guards.” Tairo didn’t seem to understand why this detail was important but continued. Everything he described fit their plan to perfection. When Yelhwa had questioned how Tairo could betray his country and his father, he said that his father no longer knew what was best for Ro, that he believed that Yao’s graphemancy was the way of the future. Being Tairo, he had sold the story with his genuine discomfort with Ro warfare and equally genuine love of calligraphy.

“And then what, my lord?” Lanthe prompted. What went wrong?

“Obviously, I asked for your sentence to be overturned. I didn’t realize you were already taking care of yourself. Then she…” Tairo seemed to lose his words. “She said that we could make an exchange for your life.”

“An exchange of what?” Lanthe demanded. “Was formal courtship her idea?”

“No. Her suggestion was more…” Tairo floundered miserably. “W-well… I… don’t want to be indelicate.”

And, with a horrifying jolt, everything clicked into place—like the hammer of one more pistol pointed right at the two Ro. Yelhwa had propositioned Tairo. Right in her father’s throne room. Nothing else would have made Tairo’s godmarks turn that deep a blue.

“Oh, Tairo…” Lanthe couldn’t say aloud what she had just realized. She read you. She scared you. “Tell me she refused the offer,” she said, although she could see the ‘no’ on Tairo’s face.

He shook his head. “She accepted—in front of a larger audience of her courtiers.” Which meant that this was what she wanted. Somehow, in the space of one meeting, Yelhwa had taken in all Tairo’s weaknesses and used them to drive him right into position for her purposes—whatever those were.

The judgment that rose up was quickly smothered with the sobering truth that Lanthe had been no different. She had picked up the men’s clothing, and now Yelhwa had her right where she wanted her. Had Tairo also acted without thinking? Had his self-preservation fired on impulse before he had time to consider the consequences? Lanthe still couldn’t help wanting to punch him. At least her form of self-preservation hadn’t thrown the whole mission off course. The aim of this entire journey had been to get Tairo into Yelhwa’s bed. And when she had offered—on their first meeting—he hadn’t been able to hold his nerve.

“I’m going to make this work, Luyang.” Tairo clearly read the wrath on Lanthe’s face, and it killed him. “Trust me. I can—”

Lanthe knocked his legs from under him and followed his sternum to the floor with the point of her sword.

“You’re right.” She straightened her arm, driving the wooden weapon into Tairo’s body just hard enough to extract a grunt of pain. “I do like the extra reach.”

“Um,” a small voice said from the doorway. And Lanthe turned to find an unfamiliar lady standing there. Well—not a lady, really. Just a girl, probably no older than sixteen.

“Oh,” Tairo said as Lanthe released him and he straightened out his garden wear. “Luyang this is Lady Ingna. Ingna, this is my bodyguard, Captain Luyang Lanthe.”

Ingna… Lanthe had heard that name before, but not in any of her memorization sessions with Hyonang and Tairo. Or maybe she had heard it and just couldn’t remember with Tairo’s idiocy still crashing around her head. Married? What had he been thinking?

“Sorry… what are you doing?” the girl said, intrigued.

“Training,” Tairo said as Lanthe tucked the practice sword under her arm and pulled him to his feet.

“Oh.” Ingna marveled, looking as intrigued as she was unnerved.

“Do you have a message for me, my lady?” Tairo prompted, doing a decent job sounding eager. “From the princess?”

“Oh—yes.” Ingna blinked. “She’s—General Runkai has returned from the west half a day before he was expected.” For a bare second Tairo’s gaze met Lanthe’s. Ro was east. What was one of Yao’s greatest generals doing in the west? Maybe Ingna was wrong. She was young and clearly distracted. Maybe she had meant to say east. “So… Her Excellency has unexpectedly found herself in meetings at least until midday. That is—she regrets that she will not be able to join you in the garden this morning. However, she looks forward to your response and will accept it whenever it is finished.”

“Right.” Tairo set his practice sword aside on a reedy piece of furniture. “I should get to work then.”

“Work on what?” Lanthe said, not following.

“My six poems,” Tairo said as he retreated back into the interior chambers, “in response to the three Princess Yelhwa sent me yesterday.”

He sounded a shade too eager to relinquish his sword for a brush. Maybe this was subconsciously another reason he had opted for courtship over an unstructured clandestine affair. This way, he could sit behind a desk fussing over poetry instead of wooing Yelhwa in person. He got to fawn over fine calligraphy instead of the physical reality of a woman. And there was another thing to worry about: Yelhwa stood a better chance of confusing Tairo through her prose and poetry than her looks. Not that Lanthe doubted Tairo’s ability to return delectable heart-fluttering poetry in kind—but he had never brought an entire aristocracy to its knees with his turn of phrase.

Ingna cleared her throat and Lanthe turned back to the girl, having almost forgotten she was there.

“My lady?”

“Well…” The girl colored shyly. “Her Excellency told me to wait here until Lord Chang Tairo had finished his response.”

“You—” You don’t need to do that, Lanthe wanted to say, just wanting the girl out of the way.

“Would you show me how to do that?”

“To do what?” Lanthe asked.

“That…” Ingna nodded at the practice sword with a wistful look in her eyes. “Sorry… I wanted to train for the princess’s guard, but they said I was too young.”

“Too young!” Lanthe repeated, incredulous. “How old are you?”

“Sixteen, sir.”

Lanthe made an exasperated noise. “I’d already seen five battles and killed two dozen men when I was your age, my lady.”

“Oh…” Ingna said in obvious awe. “Th-that’s different though, my lord—Captain Luyang.”

“Is it?”

“You’re a man.”

Lanthe snorted. “I’m not sure that has anything to do with anything.”

“Then… you’ll show me?”

All Lanthe really wanted was for the over-eager girl to leave. “You don’t want me to start off with a sword, my lady.”

“I don’t?” Ingna blinked.

“No. Look at yourself.” Lanthe gestured vaguely to Ingna, who cast her eyes down on her own body in confusion. Soft, spindly arms and short legs—at least, as far as Lanthe could tell beneath three layers of fluttering rose and wisteria silks. “You’re not built for a sword, my lady. What you want is a good polearm.”

“Her Excellency Princess Yelhwa uses a sword.”

“Oh.” Lanthe’s mind slid back to the whistling slice of Yelhwa’s knife, her quick, light footwork. “Well, she would, wouldn’t she?”

“Sir.”

You can’t fight that light and slippery with a spear, Lanthe thought. Her left thumb curled in to brush the stitches across her palm. There was still so much she had yet to learn about Yelhwa, and Tairo clearly wasn’t going to do his part. “You should go now, Lady Ingna.”

“Go? But—I—”

“I’ll take care of Lord Tairo’s poetry,” Lanthe cut her off. Surely, if Lanthe was acting as Tairo’s servant at court, she could be his messenger.

“But…”

“Come back when you have a polearm.” To Lanthe’s surprise, that actually worked.

Ingna’s round little face lit up rather endearingly. “Do you mean it?”

“Yes,” Lanthe decided. Why not?

“I will, Captain,” she chirped and bobbed out of the chamber, nearly tripping on her silks in her excitement.

When she had gone, Lanthe stalked into the adjoining chamber, where Tairo was busily writing at a desk. Not as fast as Yelhwa, but just as irritating in his elegance.

“My lord—”

“Wait.” He held up a finger. “What’s a three-syllable compound that describes a deep blue?”

“Really? You’re asking me?”

“Well, if you haven’t got one you need to be quiet while I think of one.”

“Far ocean,” Lanthe suggested.

“Ah, not the right tonal progression. It doesn’t fit.”

Sighing in exasperation, Lanthe returned to the main chamber and gave her practice sword a few angry swings that swooshed clumsily through the air instead of whistling. She should probably try to learn to use the weapon properly, swivel at the wrist like Tairo said. She had the flexibility. She just didn’t have the patience. She ran through the moves of a rough and basic Ro form, hacking the air too hard and worrying.

Why, exactly, had Yelhwa agreed to Tairo’s offer of courtship? Lanthe supposed that Yelhwa’s sexual prowess was a matter of rumor, while her skill at manipulating formal suitors was confirmed. A traditional courtship gave Yelhwa every social right to pry into Tairo’s character and credentials without him ever having intimate access to her. It meant long walks in the gardens, long tea sessions, and interminable exchanges of letters. Opportunity on opportunity for Yelhwa to operate in her preferred field of engagement. By the time they married—if, Heaven forefend, it came to that political mess—Yelhwa would probably have peeled Tairo down to the bones of his being. She would know more about him than he knew about himself.

Not that the eventuality of marriage seemed like a real possibility. A hedonistic young ruler chose her lovers by their good looks, not her king. Lord Hyonang said that Yelhwa had feigned interest in marriage without committing to any because she wanted to hold onto power as long as she could. Any man she married would supersede her as heir to the throne of Yao. And no Yao ruler, even one as unconventional as Yelhwa, was going to hand that power to a man of Ro. Unless… did Yelhwa have some plan to manipulate this alliance that Lanthe just didn’t understand? If Yelhwa had taken out her own father for political gain, she could certainly take out her husband.

Lanthe paced back into the interior chambers and back out several times as Tairo wrote.

“Give that to me, my lord,” she said as soon as he had put the final flourish on his sixth poem. “I’m taking it to the princess.”

“You?” Tairo said. “A servant can do that.”

“Well, I’m your servant, aren’t I? In this context?”

“You’re not—”

“I might not be able to dress you—or myself—right, but I can do this. Give it to me.”

“Patience, Captain,” Tairo said. “These things have to be done right.”

So Lanthe paced more, longing for something to stab, as Tairo pressed his seal to the bundle of poems just so, folded them into scented paper with an assortment of dried flowers, bound the packet in colored twine, added a few more dried plants, and finished with a knot that resembled a butterfly sitting on the last flower stem.

Finally, he rang for Dunyi, who nervously showed Lanthe the way through the palace.

“So, what do you do?” Lanthe asked as she followed after the child. “Do you just sit around waiting for the bell to ring?”

“I sit and study, my lor—s-sir.” Dunyi cast a nervous glance back over his shoulder as if to make sure Lanthe’s sword was still in its sheath.

“Study?”

“My characters, sir, per the princess’s orders.”

“Right,” Lanthe said sourly. “Going to be a little graphemancer, are you?”

“Oh, not me, sir. I’m not nearly good enough.”

“Yet Princess Yelhwa continues to have you study? When you could be doing something useful?”

“Her Excellency says that Yao language is an inherent good, no matter the student’s level of skill.”

“I see,” Lanthe said, although she didn’t. If graphemantic aptitude was as rare as it seemed, it must be obvious early on in a person’s schooling whether he was mage material or not. Why waste a poor servant’s time filling his head with characters he would never have occasion to use?

Dunyi brought Lanthe to a part of the palace unlike the gardens or any of the chambers she had seen so far. Wood gave way to tile and stone. The hallways grew wider, ceilings soared higher, and the walls came alive with murals depicting a hundred years of Kaisin glory.

“Where are we?” Lanthe asked.

“This is the way to the war room, sir,” Dunyi said as they approached a pair of guards standing at attention between gilt pillars. “This is as far as I can take you,” he murmured, bowing low to the guards.

“This… doesn’t seem like something I should interrupt for a handful of poems,” Lanthe said.

“That’s quite alright, Captain Luyang of Ro,” one of the guards said. “The princess was expecting you.”

She was? How had she known that Tairo would send her instead of Ingna or the servant boy? How could she possibly have known that?

“You may follow me.” The guard turned from his position to lead Lanthe on to a broad doorway at the end of the hall.

Sunsai’s jutting rock formations flanked the way to the royal war room, peaks stained with Ro blood in red and orange gems. Symbolic cranes rendered in white jade and pearl descended from the Heavens to pluck at the innards of the blue-clad dead. Lanthe raised her eyebrows at the bejeweled carnage, thinking that it was, perhaps, a little unfair that the people of the Ten Kingdoms called Ro bloodthirsty. She had certainly never seen a Ro mural depicting a massacre with quite so much glee and glitter.

“Ah, Luyang of Ro.” Princess Yelhwa sat behind the largest and most elaborate map of the Ten Kingdoms Lanthe had ever seen. Even in this most lavish of all war rooms, she seemed ridiculously out of place, a nymph clad in sunrise clouds and camellia petals, her winged headdress dripping with gemstones like a spiderweb of dewdrops against the dark of her hair. She stood, and the greatest men in Yao rose on either side of her.

Lanthe had struggled to remember the names of all Yao’s important aristocrats, but the generals stuck in her head like barbed arrows. Military achievement was a language she understood. There was General Hyudei, who had lost an eye to an arrow in his youth. There was General Ginsho, who had spent most of his career defending Yao’s southern border from barbarians. There was General Kongi, who had been the best mounted archer in the country in his day. The lavishly decorated old man at Yelhwa’s left hand was General Inshu. Yao’s master tactician—General Chang called him the Red Weasel—had been crippled decades ago, when Yelhwa’s father was just a youth and had served as the throne’s military advisor ever since. At Yelhwa’s right hand stood High General Runkai, who, according to Ingna, had just returned from the western front.

General Runkai was injured, Lanthe noted immediately. And not from any gun or spear. Lanthe had seen injuries like his before in Ro. Three of General Chang’s soldiers had been standing near a wagon full of powder kegs and weapons when one of the kegs exploded. Bits of wood and metal had sprayed across the men, tearing their skin in a distinctively explosive pattern. General Runkai had the same red spray across his face, so fresh it matched his red military silks.

Lanthe had been staring a moment too long when she remembered to bow, dropping to her knees and pressing her head to the floor.

“Rise, Captain,” Yelhwa said almost as soon as Lanthe’s forehead had touched the tile.

Drawing herself back up, Lanthe trained her eyes on the floor just beneath the war room table, trying to parse the positions of the pieces on the map without looking directly. But Yelhwa’s battalion pieces were intricately carved instead of color-coded with paint, making it impossible.

“I believe you have something for me from Lord Chang Tairo.”

“Yes, Your Excellency,” Lanthe said, wondering why Yelhwa was allowing her to dally here, wasting what was obviously valuable time with her commanders.

“Well?” The princess extended a hand and curled pink godmarked fingers, beckoning Lanthe forward.

The stone table was too wide to reach over—by about two whole horse lengths. Lanthe had to cross around the carved map, past General Hyudei and General Runkai, to hand Yelhwa her silly scented love letter.

Mortality had never felt quite so near as when Lanthe bowed her head and offered Yelhwa the poems. General Runkai had gone tense at her back. Four pairs of wrathful Yao eyes had fixed on the Ro intruder. With bandits bearing down on her at Yansey, at least Lanthe had known it would be a grueling struggle to the death. Death here would be instantaneous. If General Runkai even imagined he saw Lanthe’s hand twitch toward her sword, she was quite sure he would cut her in half before her fingers touched the hilt.

Lanthe let out a quiet breath of relief when Yelhwa took the packet without incident and quickly took a step back from the princess.

“Captain Luyang, these are my generals,” she said, turning Tairo’s poems over in her hands. “I assume you know who they all are?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.” Lanthe bowed toward Yelhwa’s generals.

“Gentlemen, this is Captain Luyang Lanthe of Ro, the man who denied us Yansey.”

A few of the generals shifted, considering Lanthe anew—probably thinking that she didn’t look like much.

Yelhwa had unlaced Tairo’s response and was reading it right there in the presence of her generals, a hip leaned into the side of the war room table as she twirled one of the dried flowers beneath her nose. A smile turned the corner of her mouth as her eyes flicked over some turn of phrase, and a few of the generals looked away, clearly embarrassed.

“Captain Luyang followed his friend, Lord Tairo, when General Chang’s heir defected from Ro to court me,” Yelhwa explained as she read on.

“Court you, Princess?” This was, apparently, news to General Runkai, while the other generals looked disapproving but not surprised.

“Lord Tairo’s efforts have been earnest and his intentions pure, in my estimation,” Yelhwa said. “Luyang, on the other hand”—her dark eyes flicked up to fix on Lanthe—“is here instead of Lady Ingna for the same reason he forsook his country to follow his friend across the border.” She smiled. “He doesn’t trust me.”

Lanthe didn’t see any sense in denying what was obvious nor contradicting a ruler before her generals. Instead, she stood her ground. “Am I wrong, Your Excellency?”

General Runkai stiffened. His hand, already on his scabbard, inched closer to the hilt of his sword. Interesting. One of King Kaisin Yeldan’s most loyal generals showed the same ferocious loyalty to Yelhwa that he had shown to her father. He, at least, must not think she had killed the king. Perhaps, he had also tried to court her and fallen under her strange spell.

“Rumors eddy around any ruler’s name, Luyang,” Yelhwa said calmly. “Different ones stick in different peoples’ minds. May I ask what specifically people say about me that has you so worried?”

Lanthe looked icily at the princess. “My friend has decided to pursue not just your friendship but your hand in marriage,” she said, gathering her nerve, “so, to be blunt, Your Excellency, I am worried about what you did to the last king of Yao.”

She hadn’t said it to gauge Yelhwa’s reaction; the princess was always inscrutable. She wanted to see how the generals would react. The outrage was decisive. And fearsome General Runkai did not disappoint; that long, light sword flashed from its sheath with speed even Tenro would have respected. The flat of the blade smacked painfully into Lanthe’s chest—smarting even through two layers of bandages—before sliding up her silk tunic to press against her throat. She stood as still as one of the carved battalion pieces on the table, even as she felt the edge through her silk collar, one subtle turn of the wrist from ending her life.

In the stillness, Yelhwa nudged from the table to square with Lanthe. She didn’t admonish General Runkai, but neither did she order him to finish the job—and he clearly wasn’t the sort of man to spill blood in his ruler’s war room without her permission. As Yelhwa stopped close enough for Lanthe to count her perfect eyelashes and smell the floral oils in her hair, Lanthe was disappointed to discover that she was not taller than the willowy ruler of Yao. They stood at perfect eye-level, Yelhwa’s loops of hair and winged headdress giving her a hand of height on Lanthe.

“Current,” Yelhwa said with the slightest edge in her voice. And when Lanthe only blinked, she clarified, “You said last. My father is the current king of Yao.”

“Is he?” Lanthe said, even as Runkai’s blade pressed into the vibration of the words, breaching the outermost layer of silk. “Surely, he can’t be too ill to hold audience with his generals in wartime.”

“Your Excellency, allow me to remove this man.” General Runkai sounded like he meant to remove Lanthe not just from the war room but from existence.

“Luyang of Ro has fallen victim to a common rumor,” Yelhwa said without any judgment in her tone. “But let me ask you something, Mage Slayer—and don’t kill him for answering—” She added with a fond glance at Runkai. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

“No, Your Excellency.”

“I consider my father to be among the wisest kings Yao has ever seen. Now, I’m as biased as any devoted child, but I believe your superior, General Chang Shuro, vocally shares this opinion?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“My father’s reign has been the most prosperous and stable in Yao’s history, thanks in large part to his extraordinary ability to balance mutually beneficial relationships with even the most difficult of our neighbors. Now, why would I want to remove a ruler like that from the throne with the serious threat of invasion mounting in the west? Do you think that I want to be executed before a crowd as invaders burn Kaisia to the ground?”

A moment ago, Lanthe’s answer would have been: I don’t know. You did strike a first blow against Ro. But her mind had caught on the first question. Ingna hadn’t misspoken earlier. Yelhwa had said it too: invasion from the west.

Lanthe’s gaze flicked momentarily to General Runkai’s shrapnel-torn face before returning to Yelhwa. The Yao didn’t use firearms of any kind. Gunpowder was banned across the kingdom. If General Runkai hadn’t been on the eastern border facing Ro forces…

“You said invasion from the west, ma’am? You mean Medyan?”

Yelhwa’s eyes narrowed slightly, matching Lanthe’s surprised curiosity. “You don’t know.” She turned her head in a clink of dangling gemstones to look at General Runkai. “He doesn’t know.”

Abruptly, she turned from the others to face the stone expanse of the Ten Kingdoms. Her fluid bearing had gone uncharacteristically stiff. A soft pink sleeve concealed her right hand, but a crumble of petals drifted to the floor and Lanthe realized that she had crushed a dried flower in her fist.

“He doesn’t know,” she murmured again, this time seemingly to herself.

“Your Excellency,” the elderly General Inshu spoke up in a gravelly voice. “We were aware that this was a possibility.”

“What—” Lanthe started before remembering herself and the blade at her throat. What was a possibility? she would have asked General Chang. What don’t I know?

Yelhwa acknowledged the aborted questions anyway. “Patience, Luyang. You will be satisfied.” At a subtle movement of her head, Runkai removed his sword from Lanthe’s neck and restored it to its sheath.

“As I was saying before Luyang arrived,” Yelhwa turned back to her generals, “I would like a moment with General Runkai alone. Gentlemen.”

Lanthe was equal parts grateful and frustrated to leave the room as a guard escorted her out ahead of the generals. She may have avoided death at the end of Runkai’s sword, but she was no closer to understanding Yelhwa’s plans or motivations. Instead, the exchange had left her with more questions than answers.

Dunyi was waiting for her in the hallway outside to show her back to Tairo’s chambers. But they had scarcely made it out of the military wing of the palace when a bent figure stepped out of a side corridor before them. General Inshu.

Lanthe’s brain faltered in confusion. She and Dunyi had left the war room at the same time as the crippled general, then maintained a brisk pace in a seemingly straight line. How had he gotten ahead of them?

A twitch of General Inshu’s head was the only cue Dunyi needed, and the servant bowed away with a soft, “Captain.”

Lanthe’s blood ran cold as the boy left her side and General Inshu extended a gnarled hand toward her. There were very few people of whom General Chang spoke with respect. There were even fewer of whom he spoke with fear. The Red Weasel was one of them.

“Come, boy,” Inshu said when Lanthe stood frozen. “Those long meetings are hell on the bad knee. Help an old cripple to the gardens for some fresh air.”

“Yes, sir,” Lanthe said—because what else could she say?—and hurried forward.

Switching his carved lacquer cane to his right hand, General Inshu slung his left hand over Lanthe’s shoulders to take the pressure off his twisted leg. They went on together down the main hall until General Inshu directed her into a narrow side corridor like the one he had emerged from. This part of the palace was dark, lit only at intervals with hanging lanterns, their smoke cloying in the closed space.

“You are right to be suspicious, young Ro,” he spoke at last. “But you are not wise in your suspicions. Like most men, you’ve caught on the gaudy distractions and missed the darker truth.”

Lanthe faltered in surprise, but General Inshu’s grip around her shoulders kept her moving in step with him. “S-sorry, sir?”

“Don’t worry,” he said when Lanthe’s eyes reflexively flicked around the surrounding hallway. “There are no ears in this particular corridor. And if there were… well, they mostly work for me.”

“I… don’t know what you’re talking about, General.”

“Don’t insult me with your attempts at subterfuge, child. You may save those for your secret audiences with the princess.”

“My wh—ah!” Lanthe cried out and nearly buckled from the shock as Inshu’s too-powerful fingers dug into her shoulder—right where Yelhwa’s knife had pierced muscle.

“As I thought. Had a little run-in with her hidden dagger, did you?”

Lanthe regained her composure, shaking only slightly as General Inshu maintained their shuffling pace. “H-how did you know?”

“Even disciplined men carry themselves differently in pain. And…” Inshu caught Lanthe’s left wrist in the crook of his cane and turned it, exposing her stitched palm. “Doctor Toushi’s work is quite distinct, if you know what you’re looking at.”

Lanthe held her breath, heart driving like a hammer on an alarm bell. How much did this man know? And what was he going to do? Call for assassins and have her murdered here in this back corridor? Kill her himself? In general, Lanthe liked to think she could out-grapple a seventy-something Yao with a bad leg, but the steel grip on her shoulder had her doubting.

“If you’re smarter than you look, you won’t let her smiles and little tricks obscure your judgment.” Inshu finally released Lanthe’s shoulder. “I would genuinely prefer that you and your fool lord live to serve your purpose.”

“Our purpose?” Lanthe repeated, unable to keep her voice from shaking.

“What you came here to do.”

So, Inshu wanted Yelhwa gone. That part wasn’t shocking; he certainly wasn’t alone in the opinion, though he seemed to have outlasted her more outspoken detractors in the aristocracy. But a significant part of Lanthe and Tairo’s plan involved feeding Yao secrets to Ro.

“All of what we came here to do, my lord?” she asked.

“All of it,” Inshu confirmed with the assurance of someone who had all the information he needed.

“Why, sir?”

Inshu didn’t answer the question directly. That would have been too easy, damn Yao and all its slippery politicians. “None of you youngsters see it yet, on either side of the border. But there is one way forward, and it involves a great deal of compromise. King Yeldan would see it if he was well.”

“So, he is alive?” Yelhwa had been telling the truth? Not that that absolved her of all Lanthe’s suspicions. Even Lord Hyonang, who despised Yelhwa, had conceded that she might be using a balance of poisons and remedies on her father, keeping him alive but too weak to rule. If a Yao ruler died without a male heir, his daughter was legally bound to marry within a year to give Yao a new king. If the true king was barely clinging to life, however, his daughter could rule indefinitely.

Inshu again neglected Lanthe’s question. “Rest assured: if Kaisin Yelhwa retains control of Yao and its armies, she will lead us all to ruin.”

“Respectfully, sir, if you’re so worried about Princess Yelhwa, aren’t you in a better position to remove her than most?” Lanthe asked in a low voice. “Why don’t you do something?

The Weasel slipped a tiny scroll into the fold of Lanthe’s tunic and pressed a hand to it. “I am.”

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