The Poison Prince

by S. C. Emmett

  “And?” One of Takshin’s eyebrows lifted fractionally. Now he looked like the Emperor instead of the First Queen, but telling him as much would simply garner a disrespectful snort in response.

  So Takyeo did not. “And wait for whatever transpires.” It was pleasant to choose his own course, after so long following a marked path.

  Even if it led to the same place, like the two roads in the old proverb.

  A short, pained silence bloomed between them. No bird sang in the garden beyond the study’s blinds, and the air was breathless-still as usual before every summer afternoon downpour.

  Finally, Takshin spoke. “You mean wait to be slaughtered like a fat curltail.”

  Put that way, there was not even the romance of filial piety to adorn the truth, and it would be difficult to keep his equanimity if Takyeo responded in kind. “If that is Heaven’s decree, nothing I do will change it.”

  “If Heaven wishes to kill us, it should bring an army.” His spike-tempered younger brother’s steady gaze changed not a whit. He obviously considered that an argument in and of itself. “Do you think she will be waiting for you, your foreign wife? How will she welcome you if you allow Kurin to win?”

  And of course, Takshin would see it so. Takyeo wondered if Father ever felt this weary, faced with those who saw the world as a simple toy or a mere test of brute strength. “It is not a matter of winning or losing.” None of them understood that everything was already lost.

  Even he had not understood as much before this conversation, either. At least Taktak was bringing the matter into absolute clarity.

  “It is precisely a matter of winning alone.” Now the Third Prince was an impatient tutor with a slow student, each word sharp-accented and precise. “No other outcome is acceptable.”

  “You sound like Father.” If Takyeo could irritate him past bearing, Takshin might temporarily leave him in peace— or at least, so he now hoped.

  “No.” His little brother— and his favorite, if in a different way than Jin or Kai— fixed his gaze upon the blinds behind Takyeo, and his tone was much softer than usual, almost kind. “I sound like a man who was sent to die and somehow fought his way out.”

  “Takshin…” There would never be a better time to ask, and Takyeo had wondered for a long while now. He brushed a pile of paper aside, folding his hands in the clear space upon his desktop. It was a day for uncomfortable questions and perhaps even more uncomfortable truths. “What precisely happened in Shan? You never seemed disposed to speak upon it, before.”

  “I died, Eldest Brother.” Takyeo tilted his head slightly, presenting the scar that vanished under his hair. His lip did not curl, but the scar was still there, glowing in the mirrorlight. The one upon his throat did not glare either, but it was more disturbing. “Can you not tell?”

  What was there to say? Forgive me, perhaps, but what could Takyeo have done? Ridden to Shan with his brother, refusing to let a younger sibling suffer alone?

  Perhaps he should have. “You seem very spry for a dead man.”

  “That you may attribute to a certain Khir lady.” Takshin put his chin down, stared at his eldest brother. The soft commotion in the hall crested another notch. Lunch would be brought soon; the tea upon the tray at the margin of the desk would be whisked away, and the stacked paper demand attention once more. “Now will you give me what I want, Takyeo?”

  I wish I could, Takshin, but what is it you truly desire? Once a man had what he was chasing, he turned to another pursuit. One need only look at their own father to see the truth of that maxim. “Have you courted the lady? Made yourself known?”

  “I took a lash for her.” Takshin shook his head like a horse scenting fire, his topknot-cage gleaming. “What else is required?”

  “Women like different things, younger brother.” Was he actually giving Takshin courting advice? The world had grown exceedingly strange of late.

  “There speaks a voice of experience.” Now, scenting worn-down resistance, Takshin tensed in the chair and leaned forward a fraction. The moment to pursue, to ask for details, had passed, and the business of living— such as it was— hemmed them both in.

  There was no harm in offering Lady Yala another choice, to add to the very few a noblewoman could consider. “Very well. Win her consent, and I shall give my blessing and write you not only imperial permission but a marriage contract.”

  “Her consent?” Takshin looked puzzled and his tone plainly asked, What on earth would I do with such a thing?

  Takyeo had to hide a smile. His lips threatened to twitch, and his leg had temporarily stopped itching. “Unless you mean to carry her off like a Tabrak barbarian with a curltail upon his pommel.”

  “Do you think she would like it?” Takshin rubbed at his chin, a soft, reflexive movement. “Khir do love riding.”

  “No, Takshin.” Takyeo lost the battle on both fronts, and his mouth curled into an unwilling smile. He did not think Takshin was serious, but it was always best to be clear nonetheless. “I do not think she would like that at all.”

  It should have felt like a defeat, but Takshin’s immediate brightening— and his difficult little brother’s attempt to stay in the study and aid in the travel arrangements, now that he had achieved his purpose— made it seem otherwise.

  Maybe by the time any of this would make any difference Takshin would change his mind anyway. Or Yala would perform another of her small miracles, and soothe a difficult prince into smoothness.

  WHAT YOU CAME HERE FOR

  All manner of folk could hide in the skirts of a great city, despite the attempts of the Watch to control, corral, contain, and stamp seals upon passes and manifests. Of greater efficacy was the periodic cleansing of the streets, especially at the fringes of the great markets, both Yaol and Yuin.

  The close northerners— Khir, instead of those from the far fringes of Ch’han, with their smooth faces and their disdain for all younger civilizations— preferred a slice of tangled streets just north of the Yuin, where women walked with lowered eyes a few steps behind their men, spices foreign to Zhaon noses filled the cooking odors, and horses were generally accorded more spacious accommodation, not to mention better fodder, than the men who could afford their keep.

  A slightly larger room was available for those with the metal to pay for it, and the Khir waiting patiently in one of those comparatively luxurious apartments watched the strange yellow-green light of Zhaon’s close, oppressive summer days drain between slatted wooden blinds. Everything in the rented space was clean and neat, no distinguishing luggage left under the bed, in the wardrobe, or in the lath-fragile cabinet nailed to the wall.

  For a burrow, it was a strange one. Then again, his prey had ever been cautious.

  He waited through the long slow afternoon, breathing through a mouth left slightly open in order to keep some fraction of the ambient stench from his nose. Longing for a strong wind to clear this place of filth from the back of the earth was only natural, he told himself for the hundredth time, and once more he thought of home.

  His victorious return would not quite be celebrated, Narikhi Baiyeo thought— one did not reward a dung-sweeper for performing his function— but it would be remarked by his elders. And, more importantly, his clan’s honor would finally be free of a living, breathing stain.

  Yellowing stormlight and a wet, hot wind had risen by the time the door to the hall rattled and a man stepped through, his very fine boots whisper-light. The new arrival was mimicking a merchant’s status, a long dun robe and a plain leather topknot-cage, but those with some little knowledge would note the value of his footwear as well as the quick decisiveness of his movements and know he was of a quality.

  Or at least he had been raised to believe himself so, and trained in warlike arts his betters had perfected.

  Baiyeo made himself a stone in the deep shadow of the corner, the place most likely to grant him both escape through the close-by window and a certain measure of surprise should his quarry be inattentive. He
was a hawk upon a fist, hooded and impatient, awaiting the slip of the jesses in order to strike.

  Then he could wing swift and sure for home.

  His prey closed the door. There was no gleam of weapon-metal or visible shape under the dun robe, but that was no indication. The quarry did not pause, but strode for the small table set in another corner of the room, holding only some sheets of expensive paper and an ink-and-brush set of Khir make, robust but not terribly attractive. Perhaps he merely did the accounts of the merchant he was impersonating in this fetid little room, tainting whatever noble blood managed to speak through the shame of his birth with counting-beads and profit-dreams.

  The man’s back was to him. Baiyeo’s palms did not sweat. He had rehearsed this moment over and over, yet it was somewhat of a disappointment, like finding a famed courtesan was merely a creation of powder and cloth instead of true beauty or seeing an otherwise handsome horse stumble before it was bought.

  His position wasn’t quite right for a strike yet, so he took a single soundless step. The blackened knife, drawn free of its sheath before the victim’s entry to keep the whisper of blade leaving its home from alerting the intended target, raised slightly as he stepped forward.

  “Put that away,” Ashani Daoyan said, somewhat irritably. “You should have kept your boots on, Bah, and come through the window.”

  The single, dismissive syllable of his childhood nickname filled Baiyeo with an unsteady colorless feeling, like too much sohju igniting in a man’s head all at once. He froze, and the honorless bastard actually laughed, a short disdainful chuckle.

  His quarry turned. His eyes— as clear and noble as Baiyeo’s own, a grey gaze that should have veiled itself before his betters— glowed in the uncertain illumination from the slats; the heap of Zhaon-An under an oppressive storm-hooded sky held a strange dim furnace-glow giving a fitful gleam to metal, damp, or polished things. “I wondered when I’d see you,” his prey continued, as if politely greeting a distant, impecunious relative.

  Baiyeo’s throat was dry. How did this bastard say such things, with such an air of noble disdain? Had he no shame?

  Of course not. Narikh Arasoe, an accursed honorless shoot of the clan’s great tree, had spread her thighs for a man not her husband, and this was the result. “Fitting.” Baiyeo managed not to clear his throat or spit. “To find you in this dungheap, Dah.” One childhood nickname for another, and Bah remembered, with great satisfaction, holding this fellow’s head in a trough when both of them were eight winters high.

  He had been punished for it, of course. But it had been so satisfying. And the punishment, while showy, had not really hurt, especially when his own father had patted him on the shoulder and smiled with quiet approval afterward in private.

  “No more a midden than the halls of Narikh. Did you ride a gelding all this way, Bah? It would suit you.” His bastard cousin tilted his head, raising a languid hand to scratch at his stubble-roughened cheek.

  To hear this foulness compare the great dim, cool hall of his clan’s home to a refuse heap was the larger insult, but the smaller jab stung more. He was like that, this bastard, quick with a reply or worse, irritatingly lordly silence.

  “Don’t answer that,” Daoyan continued, almost kindly. It rankled that he was accorded the honor of the Great Rider’s clan-name, but a Khir, especially a Narikhi, was only called upon to clear the insult to his own family. “You never have anything interesting to say. Did you come to beg me to return, or to attempt murder? I hardly think it the former.”

  To be anticipated stung also. Bah took two more sliding steps forward, gauging his victim’s readiness. No weapon was apparent, and the bastard did not flinch.

  He never flinched. He hadn’t since the beginning. If he had just once acted as if he knew the depths of his own humiliation, Baiyeo would not be here.

  “Murder, then,” the Great Rider’s bastard son continued, thoughtfully. “And with a knife. How very droll.”

  “You miscalculated,” Bah hissed. “Leaving your father’s protection. Did you think to present yourself to the princess, and make yourself a lord? Or did you—”

  “My affairs are none of your concern, cousin.” Light and dismissive, the tone of an elder to an erring child. And still the man did not move. “And never have been.”

  “You are a stain upon the honor of Narikh.”

  It should have made him crumple, but the bastard merely lifted one shoulder a fraction, dropped it. “So I’ve been told.”

  “You will never rule Khir.” It was the final insult, flung like a round clay bulb packed with the black powder that made Ch’han flame-flowers and bearing a sparking fuse, ready to send sharp shards in every direction. “No noble rider will follow an honorless bitch’s whelp.”

  “My very dear cousin,” his victim said, rather gently, “you are a fool, your clan is a collection of buggering longtails, and the Great Rider of Khir may kiss my fundament.”

  Bah was on him almost before the words had died, the knife sweeping in; there was a great red burst of pain in his neck and the world turned over. The room rotated upon a hidden axis; it happened so swiftly Narikhi Baiyeo was not quite aware of his own knife, taken from his hand and buried in his throat.

  “I’d ask you what is happening at home,” the other man said softly, “but you would have nothing of interest to tell me. Just die, Bah. It’s what you came here for.”

  There was a strange gurgling sound and the pain swallowed him whole before a sharp blow hit his solar plexus. Shocked heart and lungs struggled to function, the liver blindly attempting to pour courage into its carrying-case. Dah’s hand struck again, flickering at two places where the invisible subtle body touched the physical, and all Bah felt was a dozing, faraway concern.

  He had never guessed his bastard cousin was so good at unarmed combat. But then, Ashani Daoyan had survived more than one attempt upon his bastard life even as a child. The Great Rider of Khir could spread seed where he willed; it was a man’s prerogative.

  But a clan had to punish a woman’s transgression. Such was the way of the ordered world, and Baiyeo was Heaven’s hand righting a wrong. Or so he had thought, listening to his father tell the other clan heads that bastard brat has gone missing.

  It had not been difficult to follow; he had known this man from childhood. And yet, he was still surprised.

  When the body upon the floor finished its kicking and choking, the intended victim straightened, shaking out his fingers. He hadn’t needed the sword under his dun robe, or the brace of knives similarly hidden. He hadn’t even needed the thin, almost flexible blade in his boot. Bah had a very pretty seat upon one of the Narikh’s blooded mares, and was very showy when it came to saber practice. But the art of striking without mercy or warning was not his.

  He, like plenty of others who sought to assassinate the Great Rider’s indiscretion, was not overly bright.

  Still, if he had found his cousin, more would follow. A water-seller was chanting in the street below, hoping to dispose of the last half of his tank before retiring to tend his rain-jars; the cry overlapped with an early bone collector, the two tunes harmonizing in pleasing fashion for a few moments before a scuffle broke out.

  The once-bastard, now legitimized Crown Prince of Khir considered the body, then glanced at the window as the stink reached his nose. It was just like Baiyeo to fill his trousers like a common soldier when death arrived.

  It didn’t matter. Ashani Daoyan had disposed of more than one assassin’s body. They had, after all, started arriving when he was eight winters high and looked likely to survive into adolescence, if not maturity.

  He would shake the dust and filth of this place from his person soon enough, but he would not be rushed. Not until he had accomplished everything he had set himself to.

  And certainly not before he had seen Komor Yala at least once more.

  UNREMARKED FOR LONG

  The sky deepened to the color of an old, yellowing bruise, and the air was thick
enough to cut with a blunt rai-scoop. Nevertheless, she was glad she had worn this particular dress; it reminded her of Khir, and even if it was too warm for southron summer, she would gladly suffer for the privilege of comfortable armor.

  “You are very kind.” Yala folded her hands in her lap. This had become her other daily visit; in the morning her princess’s tomb required care, in the afternoons the Second Concubine’s tiny gemlike quarters closed around her with a soap-bubble’s iridescent, fragile peace. “The Crown Prince spoke to me today.”

  “Does he still intend to leave the Palace?” Kanbina, her loosely dressed hair piled high atop her pale face, lay quietly against square and rectangular pillows stuffed with fragrant herbs, cloudfur, and spent, washed feathers. “Poor boy.”

  “There seems some uncertainty as to his true plans,” Yala admitted. “And our chat was interrupted; he had not time to speak fully. But as far as I know, he is determined. I begin to think he may even accomplish it.” Not only that, but she devoutly hoped he might find some peace in the change of scene.

  Of all the princes she had met in Zhaon-An, she was beginning to think she admired her princess’s husband the most.

  “Perhaps he may.” Kanbina’s eyelids, thinning almost to transparency like the rest of her, lowered a fraction. “Men are not like us; they may leave where they are placed.”

  “It is not the leaving that requires thought.” Yala looked across the bedroom to an exquisite illustration scroll of bronzefish in winter, swimming slowly before they sank into mud to hibernate. Many of the Second Concubine’s hangings were similarly retiring and peaceful. “It is surviving where you arrive.”

  “Well said.” The Second Concubine now moved fretfully, sighing, her feet two tiny hillocks under a pair of loose-weave cotton summerblankets with silken trim. Evidently she was cold even in this terrible oppressive weather. “I wish I could play, but the sathron disdains my weakness.”