Chapter 1:
Reirin Has a Breakthrough
SOMEWHERE DEEP IN THE MOUNTAINS amid the darkness of night, a bonfire crackled and popped. Vermillion flames swelled and shrunk, their flicker akin to a dance, and for a while, the circle of people seated around the fire simply watched in fascination.
“It’s so delightfully warm.”
“Sure is. Gets me in the mood to roast a potato.”
“Starting a fire in an instant is certainly a convenient trick.”
The first voice belonged to the freckled Shu Maiden—or the girl wearing her face, Kou Reirin—who nodded sagely as she warmed her hands over the flames. Her two brothers, Kou Keikou and Kou Keishou, signaled their agreement.
“And it doesn’t stop at building fires. There aren’t many other means of drying clothes in a flash. Not even my dragon’s qi has that particular perk.”
“Something tells me the Great Ancestor might be a little taken aback if you used the ultimate power as a laundry dryer.”
“Here, Your Highness. This fish is cooked to perfection. You there, court ladies—do we have any salt?”
The crown prince, Gyoumei, stroked his chin and admired the scale of the fire. Akim shrugged in disbelief, his chiseled features bared for all to see, while Captain Shin-u of the Eagle Eyes dispassionately grilled a fish and put the two court ladies on the spot.
And last but not least…
“Excuse me.” Likewise seated around the bonfire, the Kou Maiden with the gorgeous looks of a celestial maiden—or the girl in her body, Shu Keigetsu—listened to the group’s banter with growing impatience. “I have no objections to warming up, but time is of the essence. Shouldn’t we be encouraging that spy to spill His Majesty’s secrets?” Keigetsu pointed a finger at Akim, who was sitting across from her and blending seamlessly into the group.
“Who, me?”
After agreeing to turn a blind eye to their magic for a day, Akim had made himself right at home in Reirin and Keigetsu’s party of eight, as though the preceding clash had never even happened. Lip twitching at the sight of him lounging cross-legged on the ground, Keigetsu reflected on the events that had led up to this point.
Five days had passed since Akim disguised himself as a porter named Anki and left for Treacherous Tan Peak alongside the body-swapped Kou Reirin. There, he had used every trick in the book to put pressure on “Shu Keigetsu”: first dropping the food supply down a cliff, then inciting a court lady uprising, and finally inviting brigands to the scene. When she still refused to use magic, he had caused her palanquin to crash and subjected her to water torture. Upon hearing news of Reirin’s plight, Keigetsu and friends had rushed to her rescue and saved her from drowning just in the nick of time.
It hadn’t even been an hour since all of that had transpired. Reirin’s countermeasure of blowing up the ice dam appeared to have piqued Akim’s interest, and he had offered to tell them the emperor’s backstory. Still, Keigetsu couldn’t find it in her to trust a man who had been her enemy a mere hour ago. Her plan had been to stick around the rocky riverbank where they’d fought, get the necessary information out of him, and move on.
But then, the torture victim herself had proposed, “Say, why don’t we build a fire before getting into the story?”
Keigetsu was about to protest that this wasn’t some laid-back tea party, but Reirin had left the river without further ado, her mind already made up. According to her, the palanquin was sitting abandoned in the forest a short ways back; she had suggested that the group settle down there, as tree branches and straw would be abundant.
“We don’t exactly have time to kick back and relax!”
“I’m aware, but seeing as we’re all drenched and exhausted from the fight, we really ought to warm ourselves up. I would particularly appreciate it if you were to dry His Highness’s robes straight away,” Reirin had said, pressing a hand to her cheek.
That was when it finally dawned on Keigetsu that she had dried the spy’s robes and left the almighty crown prince to fend for himself. Reirin’s drowning scare had taken up all her attention, but in hindsight, Gyoumei had jumped into the river to save her and proceeded to fight while soaking wet.
“Oh no! Um, I beg your forgiveness, Your Highness! It was not my intention to leave you for last! I had to dry Kou Reirin off first to save her, and I dried the spy off next to imprint him with the ‘curse,’ so, erm…”
“It’s fine. Neither Shin-u nor I am particularly bothered by frigid waters. Our Gen blood at work, perhaps,” the distinguished man had replied, wringing out his sleeves. With the quirk of an eyebrow, he had added, “Though, admittedly, it’s a relief to see you both remember my official status.”
“A-allow me to dry you off at once! And as soon as that’s done, I shall get a fire started!”
After that exchange, Keigetsu had obediently dried Gyoumei’s robes with her magical flames and promptly started a fire at their new location. She had assumed they would get down to business as soon as the fire was lit, but that prediction proved incorrect. Akim was lazing about, the Kou siblings were contemplating roasted potatoes, and Shin-u was even grilling fish he had caught back at the river. The whole scene looked almost harmonious.
Granted, Keishou and Gyoumei weren’t seated on either side of Akim out of a newfound rapport; they were poised to strike him down if the need arose. Neither man had given him a pass for torturing their dearly beloved Kou Reirin. Still, if they were actually on their guard, there shouldn’t have been any need to smile or make small talk. Keigetsu always got anxious when the lines between friend and enemy were blurred, so it was hard not to feel irritated at how effortlessly an outsider had wormed his way into their ranks.
“How long are we going to keep sitting around in a happy little circle?!” she demanded through gritted teeth.
Reirin nodded serenely. “Fair point. We’ve had plenty of time to warm up by now.” With the same easygoing air as ever, she turned a smile on the spy across from her. “We should be able to stay focused no matter how long a conversation this turns out to be. Will you tell us the whole story from start to finish, Akim?”
“Not one to get swept up in the mood, are you?” he teased. “We could be making nice around the fire one moment, and you’d still go for the kill the next.”
“Well, of course.” Reirin only tilted her head to one side, confused why this was even a question.
With a cynical shrug, Akim adjusted his sitting position. “All right, then. Where to begin? I’m not exactly used to spilling my guts.”
“Why don’t we ask you a question?” Reirin replied without missing a beat. “You claimed that His Majesty is persecuting sorcerers as revenge for the eldest prince of the previous generation, Prince Gomei. Does that imply that Prince Gomei fell prey to a sorcerer?”
“Cutting straight to the heart of the matter, eh?” Akim’s lips quirked up, and he bluntly answered, “You got it. He was ambushed by an assassin twenty-five years ago, and that assassin was a practitioner of the Daoist arts. After that, His Majesty developed a hatred for magic and vowed to take revenge on the sorcerer.”
“And who exactly was this sorc—”
“Hold on,” Keigetsu cut in, struggling to keep all this information straight. “Am I right in saying Prince Gomei was the one disinherited all those years ago? And if I remember correctly, he hailed from the Kou clan?”
She reached into the depths of her memory for the imperial family tree, which she had drilled into her head when she first came to the court. The current generation was an unusual case, with Gyoumei and Shin-u being the emperor’s only male descendants. There had been ten princes during the previous emperor’s reign, including Genyou. The firstborn and eventual crown prince was Gomei, the son of Pure Consort Kou. Although he was not born to the empress, the emperor had held high hopes for his eldest.
Meanwhile, the youngest, Genyou, had been nonverbal during his childhood years and accordingly deemed a dunce. Nowadays, no one would dare dredge up the emperor’s old stigma—it was a guaranteed death sentence—and his reserved, scholarly demeanor had gone a long way toward rehabilitating his image into that of an intellectual.
Per the records, the former emperor had chosen his successor quite early on. He had held the crown prince’s investiture ceremony on Gomei’s tenth birthday, without even waiting for the other princes to mature.
But the graffiti he left around the mausoleum had terrible handwriting, thought Keigetsu. The truth is that he was probably a talentless mediocrity.
In the history books of Ei, it was unfortunately common to fabricate facts to glorify those in the imperial line of succession.
Well, regardless of his gifts or lack thereof, a Kou prince should have presented a threat to a Gen like Emperor Genyou. I struggle to imagine why the latter would seek revenge on the former’s behalf.
It was especially odd in light of the Ten-Star Succession Struggle. The competition had been particularly fierce during Genyou’s generation.
Keigetsu voiced her thoughts freely. “From Emperor Genyou’s perspective, shouldn’t his half brother Prince Gomei have constituted a political adversary? Someone to tear down? Why avenge him?”
For some reason, Akim stole a glance at Keikou and Keishou. “You’ve got the wrong idea,” he said with a shake of his head. “As a matter of fact, His Majesty—the entire Gen clan, actually—owes Prince Gomei and the Kou a great debt.”
“It gets a bit complicated here, so allow me to explain this part,” Keikou offered after Akim shot him a meaningful look. As the eldest of the group aside from Akim, he was the most knowledgeable about past events. “A lot of the details of Prince Gomei’s past are under a gag order. I’m the heir to the clan, and even I’ve been kept in the dark about parts of it… But, eh, it shouldn’t be a problem to share what I know as long as it stays between us.”