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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Devastation.

Maybe that was a little dramatic, but Lanthe wasn’t a damn poet, and it was the only word she could think of to describe Yelhwa’s style of play.

Had Tenro burst into a game of Sen with the same strategy, Lanthe and Tairo might have fared a little better. After all, pure aggression was the sort of approach you expected from someone like Tenro. With Yelhwa being Yao and a lady, Lanthe had spent a few too many moves testing her nerves. Tairo had spent too many moves waiting for her to pull back. These turned out to be errors they could not afford.

Within an hour of play, Yelhwa had dismantled Tairo’s defensive line. Lanthe’s defensive line held, but Yelhwa’s archers severely limited her movement, meaning that she had to continue playing defense as the princess of Yao tore through Tairo’s cavalry.

The slaughter only abated when a guard appeared and bowed deeply. He whispered something into Lady Mina’s ear, who whispered into Yelhwa’s ear. The princess blinked, and for a flicker, Lanthe thought she saw something like an emotion cross that flawless face. With the next blink, however, it was gone.

“Tell him I’ll be there momentarily,” she said. “Chang Tairo, Luyang Lanthe, you’ll excuse my terrible rudeness. There is something I must attend to.”

“The game isn’t over yet,” Tairo protested.

“But it is, though.” Yelhwa gave him a smile that was a shade too smug to be sweet. “Lady Mina, would you entertain our guests by playing in my place for the last…” she took stock of the board, “six moves?”

“Yes, your Excellency.” Lady Mina bowed daintily as Yelhwa swept away from the table. A few of her handmaidens trailed behind her as she followed the male guard down the garden path.

“The Princess often drops everything to convene with her generals and advisors,” Lady Mina said as she took the princess’s seat opposite the two Ro. “You two shouldn’t take it personally.”

Lanthe didn’t; she would have thought less of a princess who prioritized board games over war. What she didtake personally was the horror Yelhwa had wrought on the board. It had been like playing General Chang. And not on one of the days he decided to be nice.

“And don’t feel bad,” Mina added, seeming to realize that the two Ro were frowning because of the board, not because Yelhwa had left. “You two did very well.”

“You don’t need to patronize us,” Tairo said.

“I wouldn’t, my lord,” Mina said earnestly but still smiling. “I’ve seen her Excellency dismantle shrewd generals in half the amount of time she took with you two.”

“She’s right,” Lady Suzu said as Mina moved one of Yelhwa’s carved jade cavalry pieces forward to finish Tairo’s sole remaining shield piece. “You didn’t bore the princess. That is a rare accomplishment.”

Lanthe didn’t doubt that, but it did nothing to loosen the knot of panic in her chest. Part of her wished she had flipped the board and put one of the pointed pike pieces through Yelhwa’s eye the moment the princess’s skill became clear. You didn’t let an adversary live when they were simultaneously that dangerous and that inscrutable. You definitely didn’t “keep them close” as you would some enemies. At least not any closer than you would keep a tiger. But the immediate opportunity to put the tiger down had passed.

Now, there was just Lady Mina taking too long to ponder her very obvious next move. Part of Mina’s problem was that her attention kept floating from the board to Tairo. And why shouldn’t it? She was just running out the moves to the finish, clearly enjoying the opportunity to look at Tairo’s perfect face up close. Lanthe used those spare moves to pull her shield pieces back, then back again to defend her last two pike pieces. Yelhwa would have noticed and caught on. Mina was too preoccupied with Tairo. When the noblewoman did look at the board, she hesitated for a moment before moving. She knew the rules to Sen, clearly, but she wasn’t confident.

At least for the moment, maybe Lanthe could ease her nerves by retaking the game—and buy herself a trip to the western border while she did it. She moved her sole remaining archer back into shooting position. It wasn’t a move she would have bothered with under Yelhwa’s razor-sharp gaze. It was too obvious. But Mina didn’t seem to notice.

Immediately understanding Lanthe’s intentions, Tairo moved his last remaining piece—a single white pike—into range of Mina’s cavalry. Probably assuming this had all been part of Yelhwa’s plan, Mina took the bait and moved to flank Tairo’s pike. The maneuver brought them back around to Lanthe, who plucked a green pike piece from Mina’s ranks.

“Wait.” Mina blinked down at the board. “How…?”

“It was six spaces from my archer.” Lanthe touched the piece she had moved in seeming retreat and then shifted it one space to the left, putting it six spaces from another of Mina’s pike pieces as well as the cavalry piece she had used to flank Tairo.

“Oh…” Mina looked down at the board, too late keenly aware of Lanthe’s archer.

There was a way for Mina to force Lanthe’s archery piece out of its position, but it would have required thinking about four moves into the future. Mina’s limit was clearly set at one. Eyes flicking between the two pieces in Lanthe’s line of fire, she made the predictable choice and saved her cavalry piece. It was the more powerful of the two, after all, and the most versatile. Mina had just watched the princess ride her cavalry all over the board, tearing through her opponents’ defenses. But she clearly failed to grasp the foundation of Yelhwa’s strategy. The princess’s cavalry pieces had only enjoyed such mobility because her archers had shifted threateningly around her side of the board, limiting Lanthe and Tairo’s movements. And Yelhwa had only managed to maintain that robust back line of archers by protecting them with a shield wall just mobile enough to thwart attacks from either side without fragmenting.

Smiling, Lanthe snatched Mina’s shield piece from the board. And like that, Yelhwa’s perfect defense was broken. Lanthe had evened the odds: Mina’s six remaining pieces against Lanthe’s six. Mina still had the advantage in terms of which pieces she had retained, but a couple cavalry pieces were no match for ten years of experience.

It was Lanthe’s turn to play the devastator.

Mina’s forces were gone within ten moves, and the lady was left looking down at the board in horror.

“Don’t feel bad, my Lady,” Lanthe smiled a little vindictively. “You did very well.”

“So…” Lady Suzu said stiffly. “I suppose you’ll be leaving for the front with us then, Lord Chang, Captain Luyang.”

“If that counts as a win, my Lady?” Tairo looked uncertainly from Lanthe, to Lady Mina, to Lady Suzu.

“Her Excellency left Lady Mina in her place,” Suzu said as though the words left a rather unpleasant taste in her mouth. “It counts.”

Mina looked like she wanted to disintegrate where she sat. “I um… I’ll see you back to your chambers then, shall I?”

“That was good, Lanthe,” Tairo said when Lady Mina had left them in their quarters.

“Was it?”

“You won.”

“No, I didn’t.” Not in the way that mattered.

Part of Lanthe wanted to accept the win and the self-assurance that came with it. She could tell herself she was in control of the situation, see what was happening at the western border, and then kill Yelhwa once Ro had the information it needed. But Lanthe couldn’t lie to herself; she had only won the game by a stroke of good fortune. It was a poor tactician who banked on miracles. During the part of the game that mattered—the informative part—Yelhwa had displayed a disturbing command of the board and understanding of her opponents. Lanthe’s attempts at strategy had only yielded openings when Lady Mina swapped in. Without General Inshu doing the work for her, Lanthe didn’t know that she could create a real opening against the princess.

Yelhwa had to die in the morning.

It was raining at dawn when Lanthe rose. A rarity in Yao and a good omen, she hoped. The patter masked the sound of Lanthe’s feet as she tied her sword on and slipped from the chamber.

True to General Inshu’s word, her way to the eastern wing was clear. The concealed door was right where he had said it would be, behind the panel depicting the death of Zenghar the Conqueror. The difficult part was ascending the ladder up through the wall, then crawling on her stomach through the ceiling.

The ceiling passage was well-maintained but old. At least, it smelled old to Lanthe. And it had clearly been constructed with spying in mind. At intervals, a needle of light would pierce the blackness, swimming with dust. When she crawled to the light, Lanthe would find a tiny peephole looking down on the passage below.

It was a good thing that Lanthe had taken the job instead of Tairo. Inshu had warned that the space in the ceiling would be limited, but in the tighter squeezes, Lanthe was thankful for her modest size. And there were places that even she struggled with her sword. Then again, perhaps that was just her being a terrible spy and assassin. Ro tried to train its soldiers for all terrain, from sodden marshland to airless mountains; none of Lanthe’s training had involved worming one’s way silently through a wooden ceiling. She could only hope that her clumsiness sounded enough like rats that no one in the chambers below paid it any mind.

This begged a troubling question: why had Inshu enlisted Lanthe and Tairo for this job at all? Clearly, he had other eyes and ears in the palace. Why ask a pair of foreigners with no experience as assassins? Lanthe had to shove the unsettling questions aside, if only because there was physically no turning back in the tiny space. She had made up her decision: Yelhwa was too dangerous to be left alive, and this opportunity was too precious to squander. Doubt would do Lanthe no good now.

Not liking the way her scabbard was bumping and scraping, Lanthe untied it from her belt and held it before her as she crept forward. Straight ahead, Inshu had instructed. Straight ahead until the first ventilation grate. The wooden grate itself was too narrow for any man to squeeze through, but when Lanthe groped in the dark for the latch, she found that it lifted a segment of the ceiling large enough for a grown man—if a rather small one—to slip into the dim corridor.

Lanthe had to appreciate the trickery of the design. The cautious palace resident might note any ventilation grates large enough to allow an assassin through. From the outside, this one looked innocently small. And with the undersized grate drawing the eye, the nervous aristocrat was probably less likely to notice the seam of a larger door around it.

Keeping her right hand clamped firmly on the lip of the secret hatch, Lanthe slid her body through the secret door until she was hanging from her fingertips. As she let herself dangle at the full length of her right arm, her feet were still disturbingly far from the wood floor below. Damn these high ceilings. Blowing out a slow breath, she braced herself and dropped. She had left her boots behind, hoping not to make any sound on the wood floor. But again, she made a lousy stealth operative. Her bare feet hit the floor with a thud that made her flinch.

The hallway around her was deathly still. No guards, just as Inshu had promised. Up to this point, at least, the general had been honest. Thank Heaven for that and for the rain. Lanthe’s heart was beating so hard that it would have been thunderous in the silence. Why? It had been years since her heart had beaten this hard before a fight. Was it the lack of her armor? Her gun? Her glaive? Was it because this quiet hallway was so unlike her usual battlefield? Because Yelhwa was so unlike her usual enemy? Or was it—she tried to shake the thought—that she had the wrong enemy altogether?

Lanthe stayed frozen there for a moment on the balls of her feet, left hand clutching her sword too hard. Then she set one of her heels down and shifted her weight over it. The floor creaked ever so slightly. She would have to be careful of that, set her ambush directly around a corner, so there would be no run-up of pounding, creaking footfalls. Lanthe had seen how fast Yelhwa wove a complex spell from nothing. If this was going to work, Lanthe would have to do it the cowardly way. Like a true assassin. She had to strike before the princess knew she was there.

Placing her feet carefully, Lanthe crept up to the corner that Yelhwa would turn into the corridor and settled into a ready position.

Soon, just as Inshu had predicted, Lanthe heard footsteps approaching. And again, it seemed that the weasel had been truthful. There was only one set of footsteps, and it was distinctly female. Soft and accompanied by the rustle of many layers of silk.

Lanthe held her breath. Two more steps. Maybe three, and the princess would step into striking range. Lanthe shifted her weight, prepared to attack, and then—of course, right then—the floor creaked.

The padding footsteps stopped. Silks swished to a stop.

Lanthe cringed so hard she nearly pulled a muscle in her face.

“Guard?” Yelhwa said.

Lanthe’s mind sputtered in panic. What should she do? If she answered, Yelhwa might recognize her voice. And even if Lanthe successfully imitated a Yao accent, Yelhwa would still hear that Lanthe wasn’t positioned where a guard should be. She was standing where an assassin would stand. Then again, if there was no answer, Yelhwa would know something was wrong.

“Your Excellency?” Lanthe said in her best approximation of a Yao accent. She grimaced, immediately knowing it hadn’t been convincing.

For a moment, there was no response from around the corner. Lanthe’s hand shifted on her sword. She should attack now, before the princess got a chance to sketch one of her graphemantic characters. But no. Who was Lanthe kidding? She had already given Yelhwa ample time to weave a spell, damn it. The board was already set. Lanthe was probably dead the moment she stepped around that corner, but she and Yelhwa were just about matched for speed. Lanthe still had a chance if she struck decisively. At the very least, she could take her target to Heaven with her.

This is what you decided, Lanthe! Do it now!

She had just shifted forward when there was a deep sigh from around the corner. The sound was so raw, so wounded, that Lanthe paused.

“Who?” Yelhwa said under her breath.

“Your Excellency?” Lanthe no longer bothered to disguise her voice.

“Tell me who gave me up, Luyang Lanthe?”

Lanthe didn’t answer. She didn’t move.

The moment they came face-to-face would be the end for someone. Lanthe just had to decide if she wanted to let Yelhwa know who had betrayed her before the deciding clash. If Lanthe succeeded in her killing Yelhwa, it wouldn’t matter what the princess knew in her last moments, and it would be the noble thing for Lanthe to at least tell Yelhwa who was responsible for her assassination. But if Lanthe failed the assassination, giving up Inshu could complicate things for Tairo.

“No,” Yelhwa said after the silence had stretched a moment too long. “Tell me, is this really the best Inshu could come up with?”

“How did you know—?” Lanthe started and realized she had fallen into the incredibly obvious trap. The princess had her answer.

Yelhwa made a strange noise then. Like she had tried to clear her throat but choked on something bitter midway through. The sound of shifting feet drove Lanthe into motion. She burst around the corner with her sword poised to strike. But Yelhwa was not quite where Lanthe had assumed she would be, centered in the passage, facing her assailant. Instead, the princess of Yao had slumped back against the wall with her face buried in her sleeve. A pair of characters glowed at the fingertips of her free hand, but the hand in question hung limply at her side. She sucked in a tremulous breath, and Lanthe’s brow furrowed.

“Princess… are you crying?”

“No,” Yelhwa lied. Petulantly. Like Lanthe’s little brother used to when he’d lost a wrestle.

Stabbing a woman was one thing, but stabbing a woman while she wept… Lanthe wasn’t sure she had that in her. Then again, maybe it wasn’t any sort of nobility that stilled Lanthe’s sword. Maybe it was something uglier. Fascination—gratification—to have finally found a chink in the goddess’s façade.

The tears were so uncharacteristic that Lanthe had to doubt whether they were genuine. This could be another calculated play. Just another way Yelhwa knew she could get the better of an idiot Ro. But if so, Lanthe had already come to a dead stop, giving the princess all the opportunity she could ask for. The magic was right there at her fingertips, presumably ready to deal death. And she just kept crying.

It didn’t make sense. In their previous meetings, Yelhwa had seemed comfortable with the idea that she had enemies in her own court—entertained by it, even.

“This… surely, this isn’t a surprise to you?” Lanthe said, genuinely curious.

“No,” Yelhwa said again. She still hadn’t lifted her head. The shaking in her shoulders only got worse, even as she tried to draw deep breaths. “I just hoped it wouldn’t be…”

“That it wouldn’t be him?” Lanthe supposed she understood that. When she considered which of the Yao generals she would least like to have as an enemy, Inshu certainly ranked high. But did that really explain the tears? And this wasn’t a fearful sort of crying. It was the kind of crying Lanthe had only heard at funerals and in the aftermath of slaughter. It was bereaved.

“I have a good father,” Yelhwa sniffed into her sleeve. “B-but… no father can be all things, you know. Even a king. And Inshu…”

General Inshu had taught Yelhwa to play Sen. It occurred to Lanthe that if Yelhwa had always been this way—shrewd, and conniving, and unnerving—Inshu was probably one of the only people who had ever understood her. Intellectually, he was on her level but older, wiser, able to offer counsel in the way that a father should.

Lanthe tried to imagine how it would feel to know that General Chang had plotted her death. She couldn’timagine. Her sword arm fell to her side.

Yelhwa pinched her fingers together at the bridge of her nose, eyes squeezed shut as if to force the tears out efficiently if she couldn’t force them back. “Shit,” she said with vulgar intonation to match the roughest of bandits. “Fuck.”

“Your Excellency…” Lanthe was momentarily scandalized, and then immediately felt ridiculous for it. The curses were tame in comparison to some of the things that came out of Githya’s mouth. But this was the princess of Yao.

“Given the rain, this will sound natural to the rest of the palace,” Yelhwa said through clenched teeth. “And you’ve seen me unmannered before, Luyang. You won’t mind if I…” She paused and pulled in another shaking breath.

“If you what, Princess?”

In response, Yelhwa let out a roar of pure rage. Shriller than a bandit’s battle cry, perhaps, but every bit as bloodthirsty. She whirled in the direction she had come and thrust her right hand into the empty hallway. The characters at her fingertips flashed brighter than the sun, and thunder split the world, deafening Lanthe and shaking her to her marrow. Ribbons of lightning burst from Yelhwa’s hand, sizzling against wood and searing themselves into Lanthe’s eyes. The blue-green impressions lingered, blinding, as the thunder dissipated into rolling echoes. Yelhwa’s wrath had left walls blackened and floorboards smoking in its wake.

Lanthe tried to blink the shadows from her eyes, frozen at the thought that she had almost taken thatto the chest.

Caught in the fizz of electricity, Yelhwa’s hair shivered for a moment before settling back into its flawless black sheen. “You know what this means, Luyang?” she said in a low voice that Lanthe just registered over the ringing in her ears.

“That… you could have killed me easily, your Excellency?” Lanthe said numbly. “Point taken.”

Even if Lanthe’s sword had hit its mark first, Yelhwa would have at least been able to raise her right hand before she died. And Lanthe would have cooked where she stood. Maybe split in half. Did humans come asunder when lightning struck them? Or was that just trees?

“It means that the greatest tactician in the Ten Kingdoms has bet against me… and Inshu doesn’t bet wrong.” Yelhwa turned back to Lanthe, her eyelashes dark and sodden, red coloring the skin around her perfect eyes. “Are you sure you don’t want to finish the job, Mage Slayer?” Her gaze drifted softly down to rest on the blade hanging idle at Lanthe’s side.

Lanthe swallowed and considered the question. Yelhwa wasn’t crying anymore. She was facing Lanthe in challenge, ready to meet her fate. Lanthe could cut her down in clear conscience. But indecision had set into Lanthe and bound her muscles in place.

People said that a woman had two weapons to use against a man: her beauty and her tears. Lanthe had always scoffed at the truism, which didn’t seem to apply to her from either end. As a girl, she had been neither beautiful nor prone to crying in the presence of others. As a false man, she should be immune to a woman’s manipulations. She should be… Yet here she stood before Yelhwa, a fool, disarmed once by the princess’s beauty and now again by her tears. Lanthe had come here to kill Yelhwa believing this would be her only chance. But ridiculous as it was, the tears had changed everything.

He who controls the information controls the field, General Chang reminded Lanthe softly.

Lanthe might still understand nothing of Inshu’s games or the goings on at Yao’s western border, but she knew something about the princess now: Yelhwa was a human girl. For all her mocking lack of fear and her freakish Sen prowess, the princess of Yao did have weaknesses. And where there were weaknesses, Lanthe could create an opening. With or without General Inshu.

Lanthe took another beat, choosing her words carefully. “You said Lord General Inshu is like a second father to you, your Excellency. Well, my second father is Lord General Chang, and he wouldn’t trust Inshu with one shield piece of his money.” She slid her sword into its sheath.

“Really?” Yelhwa’s eyes narrowed. “Then why did you trust him?”

“I don’t trust anyone here, Your Excellency. I made a gamble… to protect Lord Tairo.” It was only half the truth, of course. If possible, Lanthe wanted to preserve the illusion that Tairo was an honest defector seriously seeking Yelhwa’s affections.

“I see. Come here a moment, Luyang.” Yelhwa crooked a perfect, deadly finger. “Come closer.”

Uncertainly, Lanthe stepped forward.

The slap landed with Yelhwa’s trademark speed, a lightning strike of its own. It certainly wasn’t being stabbed in the shoulder, but a prickle of remaining magic in the princess’s fingers left an oddly distinct sting in the moment after Lanthe’s head snapped to the side.

“That’s for double-crossing me.”

Lanthe thought that was fair enough. She had started to nod when Yelhwa’s hand flashed back the way it had come, cracking across Lanthe’s other cheek.

“That’s for being so stupid about it.”

That one, Lanthe didn’t understand as well. She looked at Yelhwa in question.

“You know, General Inshu is the only person ever to best me at Sen. But you…” Yelhwa held up a finger. “You’re the second.”

“I didn’t best you, Your Excellency,” Lanthe said honestly. “If you had played to the end instead of Lady Mina, you would have seen what I was doing. You would have stopped me.”

“Please,” Yelhwa huffed impatiently. “Half a leader’s job is delegating. If I have placed my trust poorly, then I have played the game poorly. The same applies to you, Captain.”

“Princess?”

“I don’t know your purposes yet—whether you’re a bad Ro assassin, a bad Ro spy, or you really are just trying to protect your beguiling friend—but if you really think that making yourself into Inshu’s errand boy will further your ends…” She tilted her head. “Maybe you are just a dumb commoner. Not the Sen player I took you for.”

“You can’t wound my pride as a noble, Your Excellency,” Lanthe said. “I am a dumb commoner.”

“Mmm,” Yelhwa hummed in thought. “What did General Inshu say to you, then? To play on your impressionable common mind?”

Lanthe frowned for a moment, considering whether she wanted to tell the truth or attempt a lie. After a beat of silence, she decided that it would be unwise to try putting words in the mouth of a man Yelhwa knew far better than she did.

“He said that your rule would be the downfall of Yao.” This time, Lanthe caught the distinct flicker of pain that passed through Yelhwa’s expression. “He said that if your reign goes on, you’ll bring not just Yao but the rest of the Ten Kingdoms to ruin.”

Yelhwa drew a sneer over the pain. “That’s where he’s played you for a fool, Mage Slayer. If your dear General Chang has told you anything of Inshu, you should know that Inshu is devoted to Yao before all else. He doesn't care about the rest of the Ten Kingdoms. Least of all Ro.”

“What about you then?” Lanthe demanded. If Yelhwa hadn’t killed her for two near assassinations, she was hardly going to kill her for an insubordinate question. “What is your first devotion?”

“My first devotion is to Yao,” Yelhwa said. “General Inshu and I just seem to have different ideas of what that means.” And Lanthe didn’t understand how so much grief could register in such a carefully placid expression. “What is Yao anyway, Luyang?”

“Your Excellency?”

“Is a country its king, its people, its land, its language, its great works of art?”

“It’s… all of those things, your Excellency.”

“Mmm.” Yelhwa pushed her lips into a pout and chewed the inside of her cheek, not for the first time reminding Lanthe of a school child in thought. “You’re not wrong, of course. But when a nation faces existential threat, the world demands that you weigh these things against each other. You have to start putting one before the other, before the other… like Sen pieces.”

“Are you facing existential threat, your Excellency?” Lanthe asked.

Yelhwa let out an amused scoff with a pointed look at Lanthe’s sword. “You tell me.”

And Lanthe realized she had phrased her question wrong. “Is that what Yao means to you, Princess? Your dynasty?”

“You won the game of Sen,” Yelhwa said. “You’ll travel to the border with me and see for yourself. Now, come.” She smoothed her green silks and motioned for Lanthe to follow. “Since I am deprived of my guard, you will escort me.”

“Escort you where, Princess?” Lanthe realized that Inshu had said that Yelhwa walked this way every morning without saying where she was going.

“To see the king, Luyang. Where else?”

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I hope you enjoyed this chapter of Gunpowder Magnolia! You can get early chapters + more serialized content from the world of Altima on my Patreon.