With that cautious preface, he began his explanation in hushed tones. “I’ll start with their ages. Emperor Genyou is forty-four years old. Prince Gomei was the firstborn son and five years older than the youngest, so that would put him at forty-nine if he were still alive today.”
“A five-year difference, hm?” said Keigetsu. “I wonder if they were close.”
“I couldn’t say. All we know for a fact is that thirty years ago—meaning when Prince Gomei was nineteen and Emperor Genyou was fourteen—the pair was ambushed by an assassin. This turned out to be the work of the ninth prince, and the case has long been closed. The important part is that Prince Gomei supposedly lost his eyesight after shielding Emperor Genyou from an attack.”
The entire crowd gasped. It was the first time any of them had heard this.
“He got hit with an attack…that blinded him?”
“Exactly. Though the official explanation was that it was an accident. After that, Prince Gomei lost his ability to engage in politics and shut himself away in the Kou Palace with his mother. He was deemed unfit to serve as crown prince, and it wasn’t long before talks of disinheritance came about.”
At long last, Keigetsu understood why Prince Gomei’s public perception was so inconsistent and why there were so few rumors and records about him. He hadn’t been talentless; he was probably a very capable individual who cared deeply for his little brother. His disinheritance could be wholly ascribed to a disability that prevented him from carrying out his official duties.
An injury sustained while protecting family might constitute a badge of honor for a commoner, but it would be a blow to the kingdom’s reputation for its ostensibly farsighted emperor to be blind. It would look even worse when another relative’s treachery was the cause.
And so the imperial court chose to obfuscate Prince Gomei’s entire existence. Letting it come to light that their up-and-coming crown prince had been wounded amid infighting would be like broadcasting their weak leadership to the world. Instead, they strove to create a narrative where Gomei was relieved of his position due to his own ineptitude, hoping he would take the fall for the lot of them.
Why did the rest of the Kou allow him to be treated that way? They should have protested that Prince Gomei wasn’t a dunce to anyone who would listen!
At first, Keigetsu was outraged by the Kou clan’s apparent spinelessness, but she reevaluated that stance in light of the way Reirin, her brothers, and Kenshuu behaved. The family truly didn’t care about power or reputation. While they had no doubt lamented the misfortune that had befallen one of their own, they wouldn’t resent him being removed from his seat of power. No matter how he was maligned, Gomei knew his own capabilities better than anyone, and he would never begrudge the consequences of his choice to save someone.
Struck with a sudden realization, Keigetsu murmured, “Wait, then the poem etched into the mausoleum…”
A bitter smile rose to Keikou’s face. “Right. Prince Gomei did that to relieve his boredom after going blind. At first he wrote with ink, but as his eyesight deteriorated, he switched to carving so he could feel out the characters with his fingers.”
“I can’t believe it. All this time, I just assumed…”
“That it was a child’s scribble? That Prince Gomei was a washout with terrible handwriting? I used to think the same. But seeing as I’m the oldest son of the Kou, my aunt took me aside for a scolding and explained the situation.”
Keikou’s attempts at reassurance didn’t stop Keigetsu’s face from morphing into an awkward grimace. She remembered mocking that lousy graffiti in the privacy of her mind. Never had she imagined that what she’d assumed to be a child’s writings were actually the painstaking work of a blind man.
Beside her, Keishou had likewise cast his eyes down and pressed his lips into a thin line. No doubt he had conflicted feelings about criticizing Gomei’s calligraphy in the past. As a fellow member of the Kou clan, he was probably feeling even more ashamed and down on himself than Keigetsu was.
On the one hand, Keigetsu sympathized with him, but a sulkier part of her thought, Look, see what happens? The Kou were independent spirits who valued results above all else, but their unflappability could occasionally hurt the people around them. She could only hope that someone like Keishou, who was a bit more adept at understanding the human heart, might one day take charge and bring change to the clan.
“Anyway,” Keikou went on, hoping to dispel the gloom hanging over the group, “Prince Gomei’s vision loss left the Gen clan deep in his debt. When the other clans begged the emperor to disinherit Prince Gomei, Empress Gen wouldn’t even hear of it. Things carried on like that for about five years, until twenty-five years ago—when Prince Gomei was twenty-four—he was targeted by another assassin.”
“I assume this one was the sorcerer Akim mentioned.”
“You got it. After that, the trail of documentation ends, and it’s not even clear when exactly Prince Gomei was disinherited. His death was officially ruled an accident, leaving the truth shrouded in mystery. The prince was very firm about wanting to keep the peace while he was alive, so the Kou clan has respected his wishes by leaving it all in the past.”
“Allow me to summarize,” said Gyoumei, who had been listening from the sidelines. “The Ten-Star Succession Struggle notwithstanding, my father and his brother Gomei were on good terms. And yet, Father caused him to go blind, failed to prevent the sorcerer’s ambush, and ultimately deposed Prince Gomei and ascended the throne himself.” His gaze dropped as he tried to imagine what his father must have felt. “I assume guilt must be the driving factor of his revenge.”
“Wait, Your Highness. Before we move on to the motive, we need to know who gave the order to kill Prince Gomei,” Shin-u matter-of-factly pointed out, not a twitch in his expression. He had inherited even more of the ruthless Gen blood than Gyoumei.
Reirin nodded, then asked Akim, “Who sent the assassin after Prince Gomei?”
“The former emperor. Prince Gomei’s own father. Though, obviously, he was Emperor Genyou’s father too. No one does messy drama like the imperial family, huh?”
The group was flabbergasted by this.
“Why would His Majesty want to kill his own son?”
“At the time, the princes were embroiled in vicious mudslinging, and a few of them took the approach of feeding their father lies. They claimed that Prince Gomei was out to kill him as payback for getting disinherited. The emperor fell for it hook, line, and sinker.”
Despite this, he could never bring himself to order a formal execution. One night, in a drunken frenzy, he finally broke down and ordered a sorcerer getting tortured in the dungeons to kill the wicked, treasonous prince. He promised the man his freedom if he were to succeed.
Akim sneered. “The former emperor probably saw it as a long shot at best. Despite cracking down on the Daoist arts, the ideology was the only part of it he feared. He took it for granted that no one could actually use magic. But as it turned out, that sorcerer knew a spell to swap souls between bodies.”
“He cast a body-swapping spell…”
“Right. He stole Prince Gomei’s body with magic. His leg was severely injured during the scuffle, but he managed to get away. He’s been on the run in his new vessel ever since. As a consequence, Prince Gomei’s corpse could never be shown to the public, and his death was treated as an accident. They even concealed the truth from the prince’s family of the Kou.”
Everyone listening was dumbstruck. Prince Gomei hadn’t simply come under attack by an assassin; he’d had his body stolen.
“That’s awful!”
“Apparently, it takes a huge amount of qi to keep a body-swapping spell in place. As unbelievable as it sounds, the sorcerer has been draining other people’s life force to keep himself alive. Ever since he escaped all those years ago, shriveled corpses have shown up around war zones and disaster areas from time to time. We figure he hangs around areas where no one will think twice about coming across a disfigured corpse.”
Gyoumei thought back to what his father had said to him over breakfast. “The afflicted regions are often riddled with desiccated corpses. I cannot turn a blind eye to those deaths.”
At the time, he’d assumed that was the emperor’s indirect way of expressing concern for their starving subjects, but he was wrong. Genyou had been gathering information on shriveled bodies in hopes of tracking down the sorcerer.
“Is that the true reason for my father’s unusually high number of imperial visits?” Gyoumei asked. “Is that the story behind how he fell ill in a flood-stricken region and thrust my mother into the position of empress?”
“Sure is. He’s spent years frantically scouring every war zone and disaster area for a blind sorcerer, and that’s somehow earned him the reputation of a wise, benevolent ruler. As someone who knows his true colors, I almost have to laugh,” said Akim, sounding not the least bit amused.
“In that case…” As Reirin did her best to keep the facts straight, something occurred to her, and her face turned a shade paler. “What became of the body-swapped Prince Gomei?”
Akim caught on immediately and gave a small shake of his head. “He passed away in the sorcerer’s body soon after his own was stolen.”
“Oh no!”
“That’s why His Majesty is so hell-bent on revenge. He managed to keep his cool while telling me most of the story, but his face screwed up with guilt as soon as he touched on Prince Gomei’s death. ‘I made an irreparable mistake’ is how he put it.”
When Akim added that the man had clenched his fists tight enough to draw blood, everyone looked conflicted. Genyou was never seen without that artificial smile on his face; none of them could picture it contorted with guilt. It spoke volumes about how much he must have cherished Prince Gomei.