Chapter 49
A Plea for Peace
P etals slowly drifted down from the plum tree toward the square of grass surrounding it. Its boughs swayed back and forth in the air.
A fountain burbled on the opposite side of the courtyard, with a bamboo lever occasionally thunking against the stones artfully placed around it.
Eli sat staring at the tree, her heart thrumming against her chest while she did her best to remain as calm as possible.
It was the morning of the second day since they’d arrived on the doorstep of Lord Kim.
Tam was still unconscious, and Luca was beside himself with worry—though it was a blessing that Jeong and Bong were with them and able to take turns distracting the boy.
Especially because…
Lord Kim was on a devout mission to convince Eli to become the next empress of Zinfera.
She had firmly refused him over and over, and yet he persisted.
And she couldn’t flee.
Not until Tam woke.
Her hands curled into fists against the pretty ivory skirt she wore. It was more than a decade out of style, and was far more conservative than the slimmer skirts that had become the trend recently. Of course this reflected Lord Kim’s nature. Followers of Acker tended toward more conservative looks.
Still, one particular detail of the religion served Tam and Eli well: Acker followers believed witches to be closer to the Goddess and Green Man, so they gave witches the utmost reverence and respect. Some even believed it acceptable for witches to take same-sex partners, since they presumably were capable of respecting the duality of the masculine and feminine in nature more adeptly than humans, regardless of their partner.
A soft tapping of porcelain being placed on the boards of the raised walkway around Lord Kim’s house made Eli turn her head. “I heard you are quite fond of tea,” Lord Kim was saying as he seated himself beside Eli. His servants were setting up a short table behind them, with two maids waiting behind him to finish placing it. One was holding a white teapot with a wicker handle, and the other, a three-tiered tower stacked with cakes.
However, Lord Kim had set an already filled cup beside her. The tea had a lovely, soft orange hue, and steam curled up invitingly. Eli raised an eyebrow at it, then allowed her eyes to drift upward to meet Lord Kim’s gaze.
“A white tea with peach?” The sweetness of the fruit melted into the softness of the white tea scent in her nose.
It instantly made her mouth water.
Lord Kim didn’t mask his surprise before letting out a chuckle. “Lord Tam was not jesting that you are a discerning tea drinker I see.”
Her gut twisted, but Eli masked her emotional reaction by plucking up the cup and lifting it to her lips to sip. The tea was smooth; its sweetness wasn’t overpowering, but rather light and pleasant. It was perfectly balanced as it glided warmly over her tongue.
“I know he cares for you very much,” Lord Kim continued.
Eli’s posture straightened and her eyes slid to the nobleman in silent warning about trespassing onto matters that were not his business.
Lord Kim held up a hand as though conceding. “I know I have argued my case for you to inherit the throne a good deal the past two days, but I realize I have failed as a scholar by not asking a very obvious question… Why do you not wish to take the throne?”
The tea suddenly tasted bitter. Eli set the cup down a little harder than she meant to. “The expectation that I would aim to take the throne was foisted on me as a child, and my fate since then has always been at the mercy of others. Out of curiosity, if I were still the eldest daughter of the Nam family, would you have such expectations of me?”
Lord Kim’s face stiffened. “Our emperor’s mother thought you were deserving of far more than what your former family could provide you.”
Eli bit back a horrible laugh. But Lord Kim seemed to understand from the twitch of her lips just how she felt about that thought.
“Then, Your Highness, what is it you do want?”
“I have already said it. If I say it again, will you listen?”
Lord Kim frowned. “You are unmarried. You will not share a bed with Lord Tam, and I am asking about your greater ambitions.”
Eli gave a huff of a breath, then leveled a hard stare at the Zinferan nobleman. “As a self-appointed scholar, you should review your philosophy. Look beneath my answer.”
Yet again, Lord Kim was stunned. He continued studying Eli, but his thoughts gradually climbed to her challenge. “You… wish to be the next duchess of the Ashowan duchy.”
Forcing herself to acknowledge that Lord Kim was at least trying to understand her point of view, Eli indulged him. “In your time coming to know Lord Tam, what is he like?”
“He was pretending to be someone else most of the time he was in my company,” Lord Kim pointed out flatly.
Eli shook her head, while a genuine smile started to sprout at the thought of Tam. “He was more himself as Mr. Voll than he ever was as a nobleman. So who was he?”
Lord Kim gave the question another moment of thought with a fond smile of his own lifting a corner of his mouth as he looked out at the flowering plum tree. “A man who loved the study of the stars, adored his wife and son, and was excited to talk about ideas… He found adventure by exploring the mind and its possibilities.”
“And with us? In private? When he didn’t have to do work for his studies, he stayed up with Luca and me telling us stories of the stars. In the morning, we had long breakfasts with Jeong and Bong, talking, jesting… During the day, I reviewed expenses, studied, and managed paperwork with my choice of tea. I went on walks, became overly invested in Luca’s education…” Tears started to tingle in Eli’s eyes as she thought about their time in Junya. “I finally felt… happy.”
The confession made her throat close and her heart ache.
“You want a peaceful life with Lord Tam. You wish… for simplicity,” Lord Kim concluded gently.
Eli lowered her chin and nodded, tears falling from her eyes. She flicked one thumbnail against the other one and clenched her teeth together to stop her jaw trembling. “All my life I have been directed and forced into roles others wanted for me. I’ve let it happen. Even Chin warned me that those without ambitions of their own will be swallowed by others who are ravenous with the desire for more.” Pausing at the vivid memory of the day Chin had said this to her, Eli forced herself to continue.
“Perhaps in another life, I would have been passionate or whole enough to want to change the world. But I’m tired, and the world has taken enough from me already. Can’t I just… be happy? Can’t I make Tam and Luca’s life better and make my own decisions? Can’t I have peace? If this is what I want, is it enough to stop being eaten by others?”
She dragged her eyes back to Lord Kim and saw the compassion on his face. “Or do I not deserve to have what I want?”
Lord Kim looked back at the plum tree in the courtyard and allowed silence to drift effortlessly between them.
Eli was rather glad for it. The quiet gave her a chance to blink back tears and get a hold of herself.
Tam… I need you to wake up.
◆◆◆
It was midday, and Eli stood with her hands braced on the table in front of her, where a map of Zinfera had been unfurled and weighted down at the corners.
Bong and Jeong gazed at her seriously. “Imperial soldiers and witches are patrolling the streets, and all exits leaving Junya are blocked. Even the ships are stuck at the docks. We should have left the first day,” Bong lamented with a shake of his head.
“The first witch could even come herself, given that everyone thinks the dead men on the docks were killed by the devil,” Jeong worried openly.
Eli nodded as she listened, but her eyes remained fixed on the map, her mind whirring through possibilities.
“You two could leave easily enough,” she pointed out. “Only Tam, Luca, and I are the problem. How are things with Lord Guk going?”
“Lord Kim says his reputation is sinking faster than a gem cargo ship filled with holes. Apparently, he keeps blurting out random truths, then complaining about how his skin itches. Whatever did our dear Tam do to him, I wonder.” Bong chuckled thoughtfully to himself.
“He used a form of itching powder in Lord Guk’s clothes and sheets. He then replaced some of the soaps in the lord’s quarters so it’d have the same component, only more potent. As for the blurting of true thoughts, he infused a drug derived from silo mushrooms into the lord’s hair oil. As a result, Lord Guk is hallucinating regularly.”
“Wouldn’t the maids also be affected as they apply it to his hair?” Jeong wondered worriedly.
Eli shook her head. “They apply it with a comb.”
Both the Ryu brothers gave a breathy, impressed laugh.
“You could disguise yourselves and try to leave that way,” Bong suggested.
Eli lifted her face, her expression grim. “No. It’s too risky. We just have to wait until Tam wakes up. We can escape with Lord Kim’s help, but we need Tam to be able to disappear and reappear for it to work.”
“I still don’t trust Lord Kim,” Jeong mumbled.
“Beggars can’t be picky,” Eli reminded him somberly.
The two men sighed and nodded, then Bong spoke. “I agree that your plan to get the three of you out of Junya could work, but where would you go from there?”
Eli’s finger tapped the table. “We travel south of Gondol, go around it, and then try to find a fishing boat or low-ranking merchant ship that’ll take us to Daxaria once we come up to the far west side of the kingdom.”
Both Jeong and Bong tensed. “You want to go near Gondol?”
“I do not want to. But it will be a very confusing path to track. Anyone chasing us will think I’m either avoiding Gondol, or heading straight for it. But going around the long way? It makes so little sense, they won’t bother with it. And it will take so long that you two will be able to go contact your father and get a message to Lord Finlay Ashowan. Then even if we can’t get a boat, at least we’ll know help is on the way.”
“It’s a tricky plan. The longer you’re traveling, the more likely it is that you’ll be captured,” Bong pointed out seriously.
Pushing off from the table, Eli folded her arms and glanced out the window at fresh green leaves, which brightened the otherwise unremarkable second-story room filled with maps and shelves of books that lined the beige walls. “We’ll stick to the forests as much as possible, and only go into small towns where there will be fewer patrols.”
Jeong and Bong glanced at each other uncertainly. “That’ll be difficult. Tam is a tall man, and being of Troivackian descent, he definitely sticks out.”
Eli pursed her lips briefly. “True. In that case, I can go into the towns on my own for supplies.”
The two Zinferans frowned. “That’s too dangerous. I’ll come with you,” Jeong proposed firmly.
Eli gave a half smile. “While appreciated, wouldn’t that leave Bong exposed?”
Bong shook his head. “If anything, it’ll be better. No one would think of me, a lord, traveling alone.”
Thinking about this briefly, Eli eventually bobbed her head in assent. “Very well.”
While she didn’t want to show it, Eli was secretly glad to have Jeong join them. If Tam were to disappear, she’d worry about guarding Luca on her own.
“Alright. So all we need to do is have Lord Guk experience his big bout of madness at the blossom festival, where we can utilize the imperial soldiers’ presence. The more witnesses, the more word will spread. With Lord Guk out of the way, the figurehead for naming Junya a capital removed, ideally Soo Hebin will be stopped from expanding her power amongst the nobility anytime soon.”
“Lord Yangban’s presence is a problem,” Bong reminded. “He could pick up where Lord Guk leaves off. Which is probably why he is here in the first place—to make sure the remaining lords agree to the change in capital no matter what.”
Hearing the nobleman’s name had the familiar effect of making Eli’s gut roil.
“It’s too bad we can’t kill him,” she commented darkly.
Jeong and Bong looked up, startled, but after a moment they shrugged and nodded in agreement. The man was a key figure in pushing human trafficking in Zinfera. Because of that, he’d amassed power that he used to support his equally rotten family member Soo Hebin.
“If Tam were here, we could have a chance to make that happen. The way he dealt with those men the other night? It was…” Jeong’s eyes lost focus as the memories of the recent attack played in his mind.
“It was like he was death itself. Snuffing them out,” Eli said aloud, her expression cool.
The Ryu brothers looked at her, at each other, then back to her.
“Are you alright with what happened the other night?”
Eli’s hand tightened around her sleeve, then released. “I don’t enjoy violence, but I was…” She trailed off, trying to find the words to describe how she had felt at the time that would make sense.
What even had she felt when Tam kept disappearing and reappearing, dropping lifeless bodies on the ground as he moved? She had been frightened at first. She wouldn’t pretend otherwise, but then she had felt…
Electrified.
As though rushing excitement and giddiness had filled her.
Why was that?
Was it just the awe of seeing such power?
Was it shock?
Or was it simply gladness that Tam had at last seemed to master the void…
Eli gave her upper left arm an idle rub as though chilled.
“I think what we all are feeling is… hopeful.”
Her eyes snapped up to Jeong who had a subtle smile quirking his bow-shaped mouth. “I think we all have heard countless stories about the abilities of the Ashowan family, and how they are capable of turning the tides however they choose. And yet Tam seemed to fall through the cracks. The rumors always said he was strange and troubled, but it feels like we are seeing the start of great power in him. It’s hard not to feel like we may have a chance to fix Zinfera.”
Jeong’s words left Bong and Eli in stunned silence.
But once she had overcome the heavy insight into what they were all feeling, she added, “Fix Zinfera. Then Luca, Tam, and I are getting out of here, and then—forgive me, but the only problem I want to deal with from then on is how to stop Luca being influenced by the three hellion Daxarian princes.”
Jeong and Bong grinned at this. “What? You don’t want farm animals finding a way into Tam’s home?”
“Or for Luca to experiment with setting people on fire?”
“Or try putting sea slugs in someone’s bed?”
“No. No, I would not like any of that,” Eli snapped. “You haven’t told him those stories, have you?”
The two brothers were suddenly unable to look her in the eye.
“I think I’d like some lunch now, hm?” Bong nodded to his brother, then moved quickly over to the door with Jeong scampering behind him. Eli’s glare bored into their backs.
With a final grumble, she cast one last glance at the map.
I can do this. I can get out of Zinfera after getting rid of Soo Hebin, and then… And then I’m going to get what I want. No matter what.