The emperor pulled the sword out of the floor and hung it from his hip. He cast the flute sitting on the display shelf a single glance, then turned his eyes forward again.
“Take me to Shu Keigetsu.”
With that, he followed Akim out of the room.
Genyou and Akim arrived at a wood behind Cloud Ladder Gardens. Once upon a time, it had been home to the stream used to fill the artificial ponds on the encampment grounds, and it blended seamlessly with the mountains in the background. The dense canopy of trees made it dark even in the middle of the day, and no death throes would carry beyond its bounds. It was the perfect place for an interrogation.
Upon closer inspection, a few trees had been cut down to form a clearing. There, the Shu Maiden was tied to a stake by the hands. A short distance from her, Prince Gyoumei, Kou Reirin, and her brother and court ladies—a total of five people—were sitting in the shade of the trees, their hands likewise bound with rope. The gap between Shu Keigetsu and the rest of the group was presumably a measure to prevent her from using her body-swapping spell and escaping. According to the information Genyou had managed to gather, the caster needed to be in physical contact with the target to maintain control over the spell.
As soon as the girl tied to the stake picked up on the sound of footsteps, she looked up with a start and choked out, “Y-Your Majesty… I beg your forgiveness! Please spare me!”
Getting doused in water must have chilled her to the bone, as she was shaking uncontrollably. The most respect she could manage was an awkward, frantic bow of her head.
“I beseech you, please allow me to offer an explanation! I did indeed learn the Daoist arts from the texts my father left behind, and I can cast a handful of spells. However, I swear to you that I have no ambitions on the throne!”
She had apparently resigned herself at some point during Akim’s interrogation, as she made no effort to hide the fact that she was a practitioner. Whipping her sodden hair every which way, she babbled that she wasn’t plotting treason. At first, she made an effort to present her case calmly, but her voice gradually hitched with fear.
“A-all I really know is how to light a candle! I swear to the Great Ancestor that I have never once abused my power! I am Your Majesty’s, His Highness’s, and this kingdom’s loyal Maiden! S-so, please—”
“Excuse me,” Genyou cut in, cleaving off her caterwauling, “did I grant you permission to speak freely?”
He unsheathed his sword and pressed the blade to the girl’s throat, whereupon she gave a strangled cry. Their audience launched themselves forward, struggling against their bonds.
“Father, you mustn’t!” the crown prince exclaimed.
“Please stop this, Your Majesty!” the Kou Maiden pleaded. She leapt to her feet, shocked that Genyou had been so quick to draw a weapon. “I beg of you, please listen to what she has to say! I’m certain she can prove her worth to you!”
Kou Keishou tugged on her robes from where he knelt beside her, still bound. “Calm down.” In place of his sister, who was so pale in the face that she looked ready to faint, he prostrated himself and said, “Your Majesty, please consider this a request from Kou Keishou, a son of the Kou and nephew of the empress. I assure you she would never plot against you. We humbly ask for your pardon.”
Keishou was one of the empress’s darlings. The sight of him groveling and pleading his case allowed Gyoumei to regain his composure. “If you will forgive my saying so, Father, she is my fiancée, a loyal Maiden with no treasonous designs. Should you choose to spare her, I believe her magic could prove quite useful to you.”
“Useful?” Genyou sneered. “What use could I possibly have of such abominable magic? If she can cast powerful spells, that makes her a potential threat to be eliminated, and if she can only cast simple ones, there is no point in keeping her alive. One way or another, all practitioners of the Daoist arts must die. There is but one reason I might see fit to spare her.” His eyes narrowed, and the tip of his blade bit into the fair skin of her neck. “And that is if she knows something about the sorcerer I seek. Answer me this, girl: Have you heard anything of a body-swapping sorcerer in the form of a blind, middle-aged man?”
Blood beaded on the girl’s skin and trickled down her throat. She glanced down at it, her voice coming out in gasps. “A-a blind sorcerer, you say?”
“Indeed. Twenty-five years ago, that sorcerer ran off after trading bodies with the Kou-hailing Prince Gomei. He has been trapped in the prince’s body ever since, which means he should be blind and have a scar running down his leg. I have spent many long years following his trail.”
“A scar on his leg? He swapped bodies with a prince?”
Visibly irritated with the blank look she was giving him, Genyou gritted his teeth and commanded, “Speak. Tell me all you know of his potential hiding places and allies, any weak points to his body-swapping spell, and how best to render him powerless.”
“M-my apologies, Your Majesty! I-I taught myself the Daoist arts. I have never belonged to a sect, so I am afraid I know nothing of this sorcerer!”
Genyou nearly stabbed her in a flash of rage. This had been a wild-goose chase after all.
As the Maiden watched his sword tremble with fury, she scrambled to crouch down and press her forehead to the ground. “H-however, I may be able to explain aspects of his magic! As I never received formal schooling, I know of no way to cancel out his spells, but I promise I can find some way to help you!”
Her desperate pleas of mercy couldn’t hope to make the emperor waver.
She doesn’t know the sorcerer I’m looking for, and she doesn’t appear particularly knowledgeable about the body-swapping spell.
In that case, there was no reason to let this pathetic, sniveling sorcerer live.
“I-I beg of you. Please spare me. Please forgive me! Have mercy!”
Sensing that she was moments from being cut down, the captive girl looked up and pleaded with the emperor, tears streaming from her eyes. Their audience likewise raised shouts of protest.
“Your Majesty, I implore you to pardon her transgressions!”
“I respectfully ask the same, Father! To kill a potential asset over a fleeting moment of anger would prove an irreparable mistake!”
“‘An irreparable mistake’?” As Gyoumei and his companions pleaded with all their might, rope digging into their skin, a dark laugh escaped Genyou’s lips. “None of you have the slightest idea what a true mistake looks like.”
Not one of them knew the horror of losing someone precious as a result of their own ignorance. The despair of snuffing out a glorious, irreplaceable life by their own hand.
Genyou narrowed his eyes into a cold glare and wordlessly raised his sword overhead.
“Y-Your Majesty! Please, no! Don’t kill me! No!” the groveling girl shrieked, her face frozen in fear. “I don’t want to die! Nooo!”
He felt like an idiot for ever proceeding with caution, concerned that she might be the Kou Maiden on the inside. This woman couldn’t be anyone but Shu Keigetsu herself. That distinguished niece of his would never so shamelessly give voice to her fear of death.
“It could never be a mistake to kill a useless disgrace like you.”
With a sneer, he swung his sword down.
Clang!
The moment Genyou should have cleaved the girl’s head from her shoulders, he felt a strange pushback. His eyes widened.
“Oh? Good to know.”
To his utter disbelief, the girl had caught the sword between her hands.
Or, more accurately, she had lifted her bound wrists and thrust the rope’s knot into the path of his blade.
“Eeeek!” screamed the Kou Maiden tied up in the background—or, rather, the girl who was supposed to be the Kou Maiden.
Meanwhile, the girl standing before Genyou didn’t so much as flinch. Neither did any of the men. Seconds prior, they had been sitting around the Maiden with their hands tied, but in the blink of an eye, they slipped out of their bindings, unsheathed the swords at their hips, and pointed them at Genyou. Akim sat back and let this happen.
“Wha…?”
The tables had turned.
The girl responded to Genyou’s gasp with a twist of her wrists, his sword caught between them. She slid the knot along the cutting edge, revealing what had been stashed inside.
Lo, it was a bundle of metal hairpins that had blocked Genyou’s blade.
“Dear me. You nearly shattered my hairpins.”
The Maiden slowly raised her arms, letting the severed rope plop to the ground. All that was left in her hand was a hairpin, and she leisurely stuck it into her hair, her distress of moments ago nowhere to be found. Now, she wore the gorgeous smile of a celestial maiden.
“Still, this proves my hypothesis. You have no way of seeing through a body swap, Your Majesty.”
“Ngh!”
Genyou’s reaction was stronger than expected. Not even the circle of swords pointed at him had made him relax his stance, but that comment made him drop his weapon, the color draining from his face.
Clank!