“Hm hm hmmm!” Chue hummed as she trotted through the palace.
It wasn’t that she had no job to do. It was simply that, as she no longer had the steady work of being the Moon Prince’s lady-in-waiting, her days somehow felt as full of free time as they did full of business.
Chue’s current job was to pinpoint the source of the dark rumors going around court.
There was some kind of plot afoot.
Although people probably assumed that it was some grand scheme, the biggest blazes could start from the smallest sparks. In this world, a great business could be sunk because of some silly story spread by children. The more nervous people became, the more easily they could be misled by such wild tales. She’d seen it happen many times in the western capital.
Chue liked to see people cornered. No, liked wasn’t quite the right word. The more frenzied people around her became, the more she could watch them with cool detachment. It was a boon, she thought, to be impervious to such chaos. It really helped with getting by.
Now cool, impervious Chue was heading for the soldiers’ training ground. She almost skipped along, letting her right hand dangle at her side, as she looked for one person in particular.
She saw the soldiers resting.
“Here, have some water.”
“Mm.”
The person who held out a bamboo canteen to them was awfully slim for a military man. He looked weak; a hanger-on if she’d ever seen one. He was attending to the other soldiers.
Weak creatures had their own way of surviving, as Chue knew very well. She herself was the weakest of the weak.
But even the weak could survive.
Sometimes, they survived because they were weak.
The proverb held that the strong inevitably ate the weak—but that only meant that carnivores needed the pliant herbivores to live. The herbivores, on the other hand, could go on perfectly well without the carnivores.
When the sycophant had finished giving out water and provisions, he moved off to somewhere else.
She’d heard from the soldiers that the water the man prepared was cold and delicious, and the snacks were perfect for a break between intense bouts of training. Sure, sometimes there was someone who didn’t like the food and gave the man a whack, but nobody beat him too severely. Without their weak little creature, training would only be harder—not just for the one who attacked him, but for everyone, so there was strong social pressure to leave him alone.
Chue followed the weak thing.
He went to a well some distance from the training area. It was fed not by a river, but by underground water, and it was colder and clearer than other wells. It was just far enough away that few other soldiers bothered to use it.
“May I have a moment, my dear Ujun?” Chue drawled.
“How can I help you? Oh, and you can call me Jun. May I work while we talk?”
“Oh yes, that’s just fine.”
As his name implied, Ujun was a member of the U clan, but the clan leader had forbidden him from using the character U. Everyone simply called him Jun.
His father had been the clan’s leader, but had fallen from grace. His younger sister had been brought up in luxury as a princess of the U clan, but she’d messed with the lady of the main family line, and now she was effectively under house arrest.
That left just Ujun, and he’d been spared only in order to serve as an example to others. He was a member of one of the named clans, but a failure. He was a failure, but a member of one of the named clans. He was like the bat—proverbially said to be neither bird nor beast.
Ujun had been appointed a bureaucrat by his father’s influence, and now that his father had no influence, Ujun had been made a soldier. It was almost unthinkable, under normal circumstances, but one could tell how his superiors felt from the way he’d been treated. They seemed to hope he would simply cry uncle and give up.
But Ujun did not give up.
He was simply too weak to become anyone’s real enemy. The fact that he wasn’t a threat put would-be aggressors at ease. They might ridicule him, but it was a kind of trust.
So no one thought—no one would imagine—that in the lightly salted jerky and chilled water was poison.
Which, of course, there wasn’t.
His poison was of a different kind.
“Jun, are you familiar with a man named Wang Fang?” Chue asked.
“Yes, I know him. A soldier who liked his jerky. He was handsome—I remember how often I saw him chatting with ladies-in-waiting.”
“Are you aware that he’s dead?” Still Chue kept her words drawled.
“Yes—the story’s very well-known. I gather he was hanged in Grand Commandant Kan’s office. I must say I was shocked.” Ujun continued to fill the canteen with well water as he spoke.
“What kind of chats did you have with Wang Fang?”
“Inconsequential ones. I simply told him that I ended up where I am because of what my father and my younger sister did.”
“So you talked to him about U family business.”
“Yes. I’m not a man with any hobbies to speak of. I don’t have many topics of conversation besides my family and my work.” A great big grin spread across Ujun’s face. Chue grinned right back at him.
She was sure now: She and he were the same kind of creature.
“In that case, have you ever seen the dragon statue that was at the U family’s house?”
“Dragon statue? You know, I have a vague memory of something like that. I think I caught glimpses of the clan leader looking at it from time to time.”
“And did you happen to share those recollections with Wang Fang?”
“That’s also very vague.”
Ujun was a weak creature. Stronger ones would sometimes put creatures like him to the test by demanding an amusing story. One always had to be ready with a supply of intriguing rumors.
Weak, a flatterer, always keeping his ears open. He was like a rabbit, this man.
“Oddly enough, all the young soldiers who have been causing such a commotion lately are people you spend a lot of time looking after.”
“You know how it is. Young blood runs so hot,” he said—as if he weren’t young himself.
“It does, it does. Young people’s passions are always looking for an outlet. Sometimes it’s an appetite for food, sometimes for women... Sometimes for power.”
“I can’t say it makes any sense to me.”
Ujun remained resolute in acting as if it had nothing to do with him.
“Well, the other day it finally got out of hand. Someone invited that unreachable figure: handsome but impregnable, impossible to tell what he’s thinking—they invited the Imperial younger brother on a hunt.”
“I heard. And—I could hardly believe it—I heard they attacked an innocent huntsman and tried to execute him as a criminal. They thought it was what the Moon Prince wanted.”
“I just don’t understand what they were thinking. Why put a hunter to death?” Chue mused.
Ujun continued drawing water.
“It seems this hunter was a descendant of someone who had harmed the Imperial family, and they thought the Moon Prince would be pleased if they punished him,” Chue went on. “My goodness, can you imagine trying to punish someone for a crime committed generations ago? Of course the Moon Prince never wanted that. So I wonder, who could have put such an idea in their heads?”
“Too many people just charge ahead once they get a notion in their minds.”
“Too true, too true.” Chue cocked her head and watched Ujun draw the water. “It was you who incited them, wasn’t it?”
“Whatever do you mean?” Ujun put a lid on the bamboo canteen.
“Oh, just a rumor. A rumor that says there’s a family out there that once lured a member of the Imperial family to their death. It goes on to say that they’re filthy huntsmen now, and that the Moon Prince can’t forgive what they did. May I assume you were the source of that rumor, my dear Ujun?”
“That’s a very broad interpretation of what I said,” Ujun replied, though he didn’t deny that the story had come from him. “I simply overheard some pale-faced physicians talking about some taboo. Don’t you think it’s possible a rumor that was already circulating got mixed in with what I said?”
“In that case, do you know who told them exactly where to find this hunter?”
“I said nothing about a location. But a clan of criminals has every reason to fear the Imperial family. I may have suggested that if a hunter rebuffed a request from the court to use his hunting grounds, it would be somewhat suspicious.”