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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The king of Yao was alive.

Lanthe ascertained that much before flattening herself into a bow. But with her head pressed to the floor of the lavish bedchamber, she had to ask herself what ‘alive’ even meant here. The king had looked so gray and small against the pillows that he may as well have been a corpse. This man was General Chang’s age peer. In Lanthe’s lifetime, he had ridden into battles and deftly juggled alliances with neighboring kingdoms. Now here he was, reduced to a barely breathing husk.

The first time Lanthe had felt the promise of death hang so thick in the air had been at her own grandfather’s deathbed. Over the years, she had come to recognize it in many a medical tent where comrades lay bleeding from the stumps where their limbs had been, moaning for wives and parents who weren’t there. Sometimes a man still drew breath. Sometimes he still spoke. But time, Heaven, and all those around him knew that he was gone.

When King Yeldan spoke, it was thin and vague. Like he was already halfway in a different world, trying desperately to push his way back to this one.

He rasped an aching “Yelhwa…” as though terrified his voice would no longer reach his daughter.

“Don’t waste your strength speaking, Your Excellency,” Yelhwa soothed, all her sharpness softened to daughterly concern. It couldn’t be genuine, Lanthe thought. Not given the utter scorn Yelhwa had shown the patriarchal order of Yao. A princess couldn’t truly love her father while flouting the cultural conventions that had given him his power. Could she? Brow furrowing against the polished floor, Lanthe recalled Yelhwa’s tears earlier. If Yelhwa could cry for the loss of General Inshu’s approval while working against him… perhaps she could also love King Yeldan while poisoning him and his legacy.

“I’ve brought one of our Ro guests with me today.” Yelhwa said nothing of Inshu’s betrayal or the attempted assassination. “He’s going to be leaving for the front with me tomorrow.”

“L-leaving…?” the king rasped. “No…”

“We talked about this yesterday, Your Excellency,” Yelhwa said softly. “I won’t be here, but I’ve seen that you will be safe and cared for.”

The king took a hoarse breath to say something, but he ended up coughing so hard that Lanthe worried the force might break his deteriorated body.

“Here, take your tea.” There was a clink as Yelhwa tipped something into the teacup before handing it to her father.

Poison was Lanthe’s immediate thought. Whatever she was giving Yeldan was keeping him too weak to rule.

Then again, the king’s physician was there too. Lanthe had seen him when she entered and recognized him as the man who had stitched up her hand. Doctor Toushi. His silk shoes were still there at the king’s bedside. If Yelhwa was poisoning her father, the king’s own physician was privy to the betrayal. For all her talents, there was no way Yelhwa knew medicine well enough to trick the best doctor in the country.

When the king had drunk his tea, Yelhwa turned and handed something to the physician. “You’ll have to take care of this for me while I’m away,” she said. “One drop each day.”

“No…” the king tried to speak again.

“You should rest, father. Don’t strain yourself. A word, Doctor. Outside.”

“Of course, Princess…” The physician hesitated, and Lanthe sensed his gaze turn to her. “But—”

“Now, please.”

Yelhwa’s feet and the physician’s shuffled out of the room.

And Lanthe was alone in the bedchamber… with the king of Yao.

What in the world was Yelhwa thinking? Lanthe still had her sword. Heaven, she still had a pair of hands. Unless Yelhwa really trusted Lanthe—and how could she possibly?—it wasn’t remotely safe for her to leave Lanthe alone with her father. Then again, maybe that was the point? Maybe Yelhwa didn’t trust Lanthe at all; she just wanted the foolish Ro to finish her father off for her. But that also didn’t make sense. Yeldan’s death would put pressure on Yelhwa to marry immediately. That wasn’t what she wanted, was it? Unless she was actually interested in marrying Tairo for some reason Lanthe didn’t want to contemplate—

“You…” the king whispered, and Lanthe stiffened. “My daughter told me you were here. Chang Tairo.”

Lanthe almost laughed. Only face-down on the floor could she possibly be mistaken for Tairo, even by a man whose sight was all but gone.

“I-I’m not Lord Chang Tairo, Your Excellency,” she spoke up as loudly as she dared in the presence of a king. “Forgive me. I’m his bodyguard.”

Yeldan didn’t seem to hear her. “I knew your father…” A slow breath shook his frame. “In another life. Had he offered one of his sons as a match for my daughter… I would not have denied him out of hand. But those are not the circumstances, are they, Ro?”

Lanthe’s fists clenched slightly in guilt that was neither hers nor warranted. It seemed that Yelhwa had told the king that Tairo had come here against General Chang’s wishes. Just knowing that the King of Yao was looking at her as such a son—even having gotten her identity wrong—was mortifying. The idea of betraying General Chang stung even through a layer of lies and mistaken identity.

“I will not shame you, Chang Tairo,” King Yeldan rattled. “Nor will I commend you. But… it takes a sort of courage to abandon one’s birthright for the unknown.”

Lanthe didn’t understand. But she didn’t press. She had already attempted to correct the king of Yao, which was already far out of line.

“My Yelhwa was to be a twin, you know, just like you. The diviners saw two spirits in my wife’s womb. A girl more beautiful than all the nymphs of Heaven, and a boy who was Sunsai, come again. My son, Heaven rest his soul, was stillborn. And when I held my daughter, I knew that what had been promised to her brother had been absorbed into her. Her eyes were sharp as spears from the moment they opened. This was Great Sunsai, cursed to the body of a young girl.”

So, Yelhwa had been born a usurper. Why was that not a surprise?

“Until I lay here, I never understood my daughter’s anger. I no longer mourn the king I was. I mourn the king she could have been, and I grieve her pain. For her potential is greater than mine ever was and her captivity more absolute. Once, I was young and healthy. She has always been a girl, confined to a girl’s role in the world.”

Lanthe twitched, almost wanting to lift her head. Because Yeldan—this man who should have had nothing in common with a peasant girl from Ro—was describing her nightmare. He was putting to words what Lanthe had never been able to articulate. The fear of being an invalid, a prisoner, a woman—immobile at the point of a spear.

“How could I do this thing to my child, Chang?” A tremor had started in the king’s voice that Lanthe had to believe was just the sickness. Because the alternative was too confusing. “How could I give my country the soul of a conqueror in a vessel of porcelain, and then call myself any sort of king or father?”

Lanthe might not have any loyalty to Yao nor a drop of noble blood. But she was still a daughter. And her heart broke for this old man, trapped in a sickbed as his pride, his kingdom, and his family threatened to collapse around him.

“I would end it, Chang,” the king rattled, “useless as I am. But as long as I draw breath, she need not marry a king to rule. So, I take the antidote she gives me. Because if I can’t hold on, then she will lose Yao… and Yao will lose her. And then we are all lost, aren’t we?”

So, King Yeldan’s conviction was the opposite of General Inshu’s. The king believed his daughter was Yao’s only hope. But Lanthe wasn’t sure how much that meant; even the wise could be blind when it came to their own children.

“I wish I could give her more…”

The king’s manner of speech had shifted. Somewhere in his musing, he had gone from addressing his guest as an inferior to addressing her as an equal. It seemed that his slipping mind had mistaken not only the line between Lanthe and Tairo but the line between Tairo and his father. And Heaven, what Lanthe would have given to be who Yeldan thought she was. General Chang could have given the ailing king good counsel and wise words to ease his heart. Lanthe just clenched her fists as two tears dropped from her eyelashes and fell—tap, tap—to the floor before her.

A groan. With what seemed like monumental effort, the king lifted a sleeve to dry his tears.

“She will not know of this, Chang. She already carries all of Yao on her shoulders. She must not carry this old man’s grief as well.”

“You have my word, Your Excellency,” Lanthe said because it was all she could give him.

Lanthe quietly followed at Yelhwa’s shoulder when they left the king. The hallway adjoining the bedchamber was still empty of guards, but Lanthe stayed alert, eyes darting to each corner, ears straining for foreign footsteps. Yelhwa appeared more relaxed—perhaps because she expected Lanthe to deal with any back-up assassins who showed up to finish the job, more likely because she knew something Lanthe didn’t. The grate through which Lanthe had descended hung open, but no assassin dropped down on them as they passed beneath it.

“Your Excellency?” Lanthe said as they turned the corner into a wider hallway. “Where are we going?”

“You are going to return to your chambers and put some shoes on.” Yelhwa cast a glance at Lanthe’s bare feet. “I am going to confer with my advisors.”

“Your advisors…?” Including Inshu? Lanthe wanted to ask but held her tongue.

Yelhwa seemed to hear the implication anyway. “Someone will have to be punished for this attempt on my life. General Inshu tends to have valuable thoughts on how to handle such delicate matters.”

“But—he—”

Yelhwa stopped and turned to face Lanthe in the empty corridor. Lanthe cast her eyes down, expecting rebuke for speaking out of turn.

Instead, Yelhwa said, “I am about to leave the capital, taking General Runkai and General Kongi, while my father is defenseless. I need someone here not only willing to defend Kaisia and its king but competent to do so. If I break with General Inshu now, I lose that irreplaceable game piece.”

Lanthe glanced up at Yelhwa in disbelief. After all this—after Inshu had tried to have her killed—Yelhwa not only intended to keep him alive but to use him in her plans. Even for Yelhwa, this level of cool confidence was incomprehensible.

“What Inshu thinks of me—or whatever fate he wishes me—is irrelevant,” Yelhwa said, seemingly irritated by Lanthe’s shock. “Strip Inshu of all his complex machinations, and you would see that his underlying goals and loyalties are simple. His primary goal is always to ensure Yao’s survival. So long as he moves predictably on that motivation, he is valuable. Certainly more valuable than anyone else who might take the blame for this atrocious morning. Does that answer all the dumb questions I hear at the tip of your tongue, Luyang?”

“I… suppose so, Your Excellency.”

“Do you doubt me?” Yelhwa snapped, and Lanthe realized that she wasn’t relaxed at all. She hadn’t been for the entirety of their visit with the king and the walk from his chambers. Lightning and vitriol had been seething behind a cloud blanket of softness. It was only now that a flash of it peeked through, illuminating the army of dark storm clouds beyond the fluff.

“Is my confidence something you need, Your Excellency?” Lanthe asked.

“No,” Yelhwa said, and for the second time that day, her youth showed. Where there was the confidence of age, indignation was never quite that sharp. “I need you to do exactly as I say.”

“Princess?”

“If Inshu manages to contact you again before we leave, you will humor him. Tell him I immobilized you using magic you did not understand, if he asks after your failure—though he will probably infer as much when he sees me alive. He still believes that you are a man, yes?”

“I think so, Your Excellency.”

“Then you wouldn’t be the first to freeze in the face of my various feminine wiles.”

Lanthe cringed slightly. Because, of course, she wasn’t a man. There was no excuse for her to stand stupefied by a woman’s beauty or her tears.

“You wouldn’t be the first woman either.” Yelhwa’s lips curled in an almost conspiratorial smile. “But that’s the sort of thing that slips by even the most perceptive of men. General Inshu will accept that you were simply caught off-guard and outmatched, which of course, you were.” Yelhwa’s nose crinkled in mocking mirth. “Now, to the important part of your story: who did you throw to the wolves?”

“Who I…?”

“Obviously, given that I have spared your life, I must have done so in exchange for the name of the mastermind. Obviously, given that Inshu hasn’t been hauled off for execution, you must have refrained from giving me his name. Perhaps to protect your alliance with him, you lied about who sent you. Quickly then, Luyang.” She snapped her fingers. “Blade to your throat: a lie.”

Lanthe’s mind raced to Hyonang’s list of Yelhwa’s known detractors. “Lord, um… Gailu. Lord Gailu, the assistant treasurer?”

“Former assistant treasurer. He’s been taken care of. Try again,” Yelhwa said before Lanthe could contemplate what ‘taken care of’ meant. “Who sent you?”

“Um—Lord Feywu, Your Excellency?” That name had come up several times in Lord Hyonang’s account of the Kaisia court. Hyonang had named him as a safe potential ally, since he had been heavily involved in the movement against Yelhwa’s rule.

“Mmm,” Yelhwa hummed, seeming to turn the name over in her head. “Yes… That should do nicely. Now, do you think you can keep to that story with Inshu, should the occasion arise?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“Good.” Yelhwa turned in an imperious swish of silks and midnight hair. “Leave me now,” she said as they reached the end of the hall. “You and Lord Tairo will spend the rest of the day in your quarters. I will send for you both early tomorrow morning.”

“I thought we were leaving Kaisia today, Your Excellency,” Lanthe said.

“We were,” Yelhwa said with a sigh of annoyance. “Now, I have a public execution to organize.”

Rain may have blessed the morning of Lanthe’s ill-fated assassination attempt. The next morning brought blistering heat that pulled the previous day’s moisture from the ground in clouds of mist and scorched them dry just as fast.

Far overhead, a gang of scrubland eagles circled, black wings sweeping through the rays of the sun. Lanthe knew their spectral shapes too well. While the birds were known for their hunting prowess, they also liked to scavenge, and they remembered places they had found carcasses in the past. When they saw soldiers arraying for battle, they knew that meant food. And chillingly, they seemed to know that crowds before the Kaisia execution platform meant the same.

Tairo and Lanthe were situated at Yelhwa’s left hand, displacing General Inshu, which Lanthe didn’t quite know how to interpret. Perhaps, it was simply Tairo’s right as a guest; Lanthe didn’t know these little nuances of court culture in any country. But the seating arrangement could also be an intentional slight against Inshu. That would seem counter to Yelhwa’s goal of pretending she didn’t suspect Inshu of treason. But Lanthe wasn’t going to pretend she understood the game of triple—or quadruple or quintuple—Sen Yelhwa was playing with her surrogate-father-turned-attempted-murderer.

As an attendant helped the crippled general into his seat, Lanthe had met his eyes for a moment. If she had hoped she would ascertain anything from his expression, that had been foolish. Inshu’s face was a mask of civility as he offered the two Ro a nod of acknowledgement. Not a trace of wrath or fear. No one in the world could have guessed that this man had just tried and failed to assassinate his ruler.

Standing rigid at Tairo’s shoulder, Lanthe was thankful for the tasseled awning that sheltered the nobles from the worst of the sun. Even in the shade, sweat trickled, itching, through the short hair on the sides of her head. Glancing to Yelhwa and her ladies in waiting nearby, Lanthe thought sympathetically of how hot it must be in their excessive layers of silk. Yelhwa herself was not only draped in finery but veiled, as all unwed princesses were at public events. Dazed in the heat, Lanthe found herself thinking about all that silk sticking to those perfect thighs—then shook herself. She’d marched in worse heat than this. It wasn’t nearly hot enough for her mind to start melting into… well, since when had her mind ever melted into thoughts of a woman’s thighs? Let alone usurper thighs. Silken, nymph-like fratricidal thighs—

Attention, Luyang! she told herself and fixed her eyes ahead. There were far more important things to think about now, which was probably why Lanthe’s cowardly eyes were determined to focus anywhere but ahead.

On a stone platform one step lower than the nobles’ seating, seven chopping blocks stood baking in the sun. Beyond that lower platform, citizens of Yao massed in fear and excitement, filling the pale stone square and the street beyond.

Yelhwa kept everyone waiting in that terrible heat until the crowd extended down the neighboring streets and out of sight before motioning to the palace Speaker. Clearly, the princess wanted an audience to her vengeance. At Yelhwa’s signal, the Speaker stepped forward in his distinctive red robes. He raised his hands, and the crowd quieted.

“Citizens of Yao!” True to his title, the Speaker had a voice as commanding as it was piercing. His words reverberated over the heads of the commoners and far into the distance like an alarm bell. “Yesterday, there was an attempt on the lives of His Excellency King Kaisin Yeldan and his daughter, Her Excellency, Princess Kaisin Yelhwa.”

The wording took Lanthe by surprise. But as murmurs broke like ripples through the crowd, she appreciated the subtle change to the story. Yelhwa had been ambushed just outside her father’s chambers. The guards who should have been there were the king’s guard, not the princess’s. No one could reasonably disprove that the assassin had intended to kill both father and daughter.

“This was an underhanded attack planned from within the palace,” the Speaker continued, “by men who have sworn loyalty to the king before Heaven. Fortunately, the would-be assassin was stopped and made to give up the names of his co-conspirators.”

Interesting. Yelhwa wasn’t taking credit for stopping the assassin. Looking at the princess, so delicate in her silks and veil, Lanthe wondered if Yelhwa had decided that making herself the hero of the story would have strained belief. The Speaker went on without mentioning Lanthe or Yelhwa’s role in the events of the previous morning.

“By order of Her Excellency, the princess of Yao, endorsed by His Excellency, the king of Yao, the responsible parties have been brought before you now to face the judgment of Heaven.”

The first six men brought out for execution were the guards who should have been stationed in the eastern wing. Lanthe had to wonder: had they known they were committing treason when Inshu removed them from their posts? Or had they been following what seemed like mundane orders? Did the distinction matter to Yelhwa?

The seventh man dragged onto the platform in chains was Lord Feywu. Thus far, Lanthe had tried not to think about the fact that when she had given Yelhwa a name, she had condemned a man to die in Inshu’s place. Now, she had to face the man himself. His robes in disarray from struggling, tears cutting tracks through the sweat on his cheeks. The six former guards were stoic in the face of execution, looking contrite and devastated. The two who were crying did so quietly. These men, Lanthe understood. They were game pieces. They followed orders knowing they could lose their lives any day in the power struggles between greater men—or women. It wasn’t their place to make noise about their lot before all of Yao.

Lord Feywu, on the other hand, had decided to make a lot of noise.

“You can’t do this!” he roared, in tears. “I had no part in this, Your Excellency! You can’t do this to me!”

“Oh!” a voice squeaked, and Lanthe glanced right to find little Lady Ingna clinging to Lady Mina, her blistered hand over her mouth.

Lanthe hadn’t thought about the fact that the Feywu family had been close to the Hyonang family. Ingna would have known Lord Feywu since she was a little girl. As Tairo had been kind enough to remind Lanthe the night before, Feywu had a family of his own. Of course, Lanthe had killed many men who had families. It was just that she didn’t usually leave those men alive to shriek and sob beforehand.

“This is all a plot against me!” Feywu wailed. “I did not try to have anyone assassinated! I would never!” As the guards tried to lead him to the central chopping block, total panic seemed to seize him, and he started bawling. “NO! Mercy! Your Excellency! Mercy!”

People said that a woman reacted instinctively to the cry of an infant. Maybe it was the latent woman in Lanthe that tensed up with this man’s howling. And Lanthe would make an atrocious mother, wouldn’t she? Because her first thought on hearing that sound was: kill it! Heaven have mercy, kill it! It occurred to Lanthe that the sick feeling in her gut might be guilt. She was, after all, the reason this man was dying. But when she cast a glance at the other nobles and attendants on the platform, she wasn’t the only one grimacing in distaste at the display.

That should do nicely, Yelhwa had smiled when Lanthe had given Feywu’s name. Now Lanthe could see why. Feywu’s conduct was so cowardly and shameful that the princess could only appear reasonable by comparison. Even if the populace saw the execution as cruel, Feywu was making it very hard to sympathize with him. By the time the axe fell, anyone with ears could only consider it a mercy.

“I’ll do anything you want, Your Excellency! Anything!” he wailed. “Anything you want! You will have it!”

As the blubbering continued, Yelhwa motioned to Feywu’s guards. Turning from the central chopping block, they dragged the weeping lord to the princess’s feet. Close enough that only those on the platform could hear when she leaned forward and spoke.

“You have nothing to offer me, Lord Feywu,” she said, and Lanthe could hear the smile through her veil. “That is why you are here. Your death will serve Yao better than anyone else’s.”

Feywu’s face curled into a snarl. And for the first time Lanthe had seen, he was a man. “My death will serve Yao?” he said savagely, his bandit ancestry showing for just a moment. “You have some nerve, Princess.”

“That I do,” Yelhwa said sweetly. “Thank you for noticing, my Lord. And thank you for providing such a damning example of the nonsense I have to endure in my own court. If you want to put the finishing touch on your disgrace, you may go to the block ranting of my madness and power hunger. Or”—she shrugged—“you may want to spare your poor family any more shame and go quietly. The choice is yours.”

Yelhwa won either way. Either she looked like the victim of a fickle, ranting lunatic or a reasonable ruler who had managed to talk her enemy into a dignified death. Feywu’s snarl grew uglier for a moment, but he seemed to realize that he had lost. When Yelhwa nodded to the guards to remove him, he did not resume his tantrum.

“Behold the price for betraying Yao!” the Speaker called as Lord Feywu and the six former guards were forced to their knees and pushed down over the chopping blocks. “Not the death of the body but the death of the soul! For no traitors pass the gates of Heaven!”

Lady Ingna buried her face in Lady Mina’s shoulder.

Seven axes fell in beautiful unison, landing with the distinctive crunch of blade through bone.

Blood burst stickily in the unbearable heat, and a swell of noise rose from the crowd. Some cheered the deaths in glee; others in vengeful rage. Others cried out in sympathy. Still others seemed to shout just to be part of the great upswell of voices. After the initial fountain of red, blood spread slowly from each stump to trickle down the sides of each chopping block and pool on the stone. As the blood slowed and spread, so did the crowd, quieting and trickling away down the many streets off the square.

Yelhwa rose, a picture of classical serenity in her pale silks—with blood drenching the scene at her feet. The soul of a conqueror in a vessel of porcelain.

“Well, that’s done.” Smoothing her silks, she turned to her attendants. “Time to clean up, ladies. Now, we head for the front.”

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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.