To help with the large cast of characters,
I have put together a spoiler-free Dramatis Personae
After the gate closed the sounds of the town of Osenok were quieted to little more than a distant murmur. With the shade and the absence of the winter breeze, Min La felt both very contained and very exposed. The man before him was a stranger to him, but his House was not. He very much feared that he had been saved from one danger only to be thrust into another.
As Sen Lí Lăsoth waited for him to speak, Min La, uncertain what else to do, bowed and said, “I must thank you, my lord, for saving my life. I have troubled you greatly and you have my gratitude.”
When he glanced up at the young Lăsoth lord he saw that he had narrowed his eyes. Surprise and uncertainty clouded his face, not enough, however, to shake him. Min La could only hope that it was enough for him to find a way to wriggle out of this situation.
There was only one reason why the cousin of the Lăsoth Housemaster would be in such an unimportant mountain town so far from the capital: he was looking for the prince. Given the Lăsoth Housemaster’s relation to So Ga, Min La was inclined to believe that the Lăsoth intentions might not be as hostile as Táno Gín’s. But that didn’t make Sen Lí Lăsoth any less dangerous.
There was no avoiding the fact that So Ga was an incomparably important piece in the game of power that simmered always in the dark alleys between Houses and behind the Palace. Min La had known that it would only be a matter of time before some of the Houses — especially powerful ones like Lăsoth — learned that the king’s son was vulnerable. He had hoped that they would reach Osa Gate before then.
Maybe Sen Lí Lăsoth did intend to protect the crown prince. Or maybe he intended to use him to gain power for his House. But the fact was that anyone who would use So Ga to achieve his own goals also wouldn’t hesitate to kill him to achieve those same goals.
The simple truth was that Min La didn’t trust anyone to protect the prince. And as incapable as he was, at least he could trust his own intentions.
As he thought this, he remembered that not long ago he had been considering abandoning So Ga. But now, faced with the thought of surrendering him to the man who stood before him, he knew he never could.
Sen Lí opened his mouth to speak, but Min La said quickly, “I’m not sure who those men were. Maybe they thought I was stealing. I wasn’t my lord, I swear it. I never steal, I just beg. I might be poor, but I am honest.”
Sen Lí closed his mouth again and tilted his head.
Min La wrapped his arms around his bag. “Maybe they were trying to steal from me.”
“Tell me, friend,” Sen Lí Lăsoth said. “What’s your name?”
“My mother called my Minla,” he answered, deliberately obscuring the pronunciation. “Though she’s gone now. As are all the rest of my kin.”
“And your Housename?”
“I’ve never had a Housename, my lord. Born without it. Like being born without an arm, I suppose. Nothing to be done about it.”
Despite his easy tone, his heart pounded in his chest, partly from his prolonged flight from Táno Gín’s men, and partly from the precarious position in which he now stood.
“And what are you doing in Osenok?”
“Passing through.”
“To where?”
Min La let his gaze linger on the Lăsoth’s pointed face. Then he dropped his eyes as if embarrassed. “If you’ll forgive me, my lord, but what business is that of yours?”
Sen Lí started, and then he clasped his hands behind his back and offered Min La a thin smile. It was difficult to tell if he believed his act. Min La glanced over at the gate in the wall. It didn’t appear to have a lock and the men weren’t blocking his path to it. He wondered if they would stop him if he tried to leave. Gingerly, he put a little weight on his knee. A piercing needle of pain stabbed through his thigh, but it subsided after a moment.
Sen Lí took a step closer to him and Min La responded by taking a step back. “Tell me, young man,” he said. “How long had those men out there been chasing you?”
“I was walking through an alley over there—” Min La lifted an arm and pointed “—and then there they were. When I ran, they followed. I think they wanted to kill me.”
“Indeed?”
Min La held his bag tighter, but said nothing. A long silence passed during which Sen Lí Lăsoth’s gaze lingered on Min La’s neck, searching, he realized with a surge of panic, for So Ga’s seal. If they overpowered him in order to look for it they would find his brother’s martial seal instead and then the situation would change drastically, though it would be no less dangerous.
“Why would they want to kill you?” Sen Lí asked, still looking at Min La’s neck.
“Some types of people don’t need much reason for killing Houseless beggars.”
Sen Lí’s gaze returned to his face. “Those men,” he said carefully, “they have a reputation for hunting bandits—”
“I am no bandit, my lord.”
Sen Lí offered an amused bow of his head. “Forgive me,” he said. “I meant no offense.”
With a look of indignation, Min La stiffly returned his bow and turned toward the door. Sen Lí took a step after him. He did not block him, but seemed to be considering doing so. Min La held his bag tightly and looked at him.
“Where are you going, my friend?”
“Whatever it is between you and those men out there has nothing to do with me. I’d just as soon leave and see about finding some food, if it’s all the same to you.”
Sen Lí said nothing for several long seconds. He studied Min La, as if endeavoring to memorize his face. He wasn’t sure why, but this thought chilled him. There had been something about the way this man’s eyes moved that had unsettled him since they first shone gray and piercing from the shadows. In that moment it occurred to him that Sen Lí had a look about him like a man who was perpetually hungry. In the next moment he realized that this look reminded him of someone else: Íojin, the strange, half-mad creature they had met at the inn in Ŏklo’s lands.
At last Sen Lí held out a hand to one of his men who put a small purse in his open palm. Pulling out a large silver coin, he offered it to Min La.
He stared at it as it gleamed between Sen Lí’s long, thin fingers, reflecting like glass in the dusty yellow light. “What’s this?”
“Buy yourself a warm meal and a warm bed. And see a physician about your injury.”
After a moment’s consideration, Min La decided it would be best to accept the coin. Then he held it in both hands and bowed. “Thank you,” he said.
Sen Lí’s men had opened the gate and gone out to check the street, looking for more of the mercenaries, no doubt. Min La watched as they shook their heads at their master. Then he tucked the coin into his bag and gave another deep bow.
“Thank you again for saving my life,” he said.
“Think nothing of it,” Sen Lí answered, once again offering his thin smile.
As he limped back to the Osenok market — keeping to the alleys and giving the apothecary shop a wide berth — Min La considered the possibility that his ruse had done nothing to convince Sen Lí Lăsoth. If word had spread that the prince was loose in the wilds of Sona Gen, no doubt this news had been accompanied by the detail that So Ga Sona was traveling with a single sword. Even if Sen Lí believed that Min La was not the prince, he might have guessed that he was the prince’s guard. Perhaps he had been let go in order to lead them to So Ga.
When he caught sight of one of the Lăsoth swords in the shade near the bakery where the woman and her twins were still selling their morning bread, he knew he was right. He would have to lose them in the woods outside Osenok. With Táno Gín’s men also nearby, there was no time to find So Ga’s medicine or anything else they needed. In the end the entire trip had been a waste.
Defeated, Min La turned toward the town’s humble gate, his path winding through a narrow passage between a basket shop and a dyeworks. The hanging lengths of brightly colored cloth of pink and violet had made a tunnel through which he walked, his path and his outstretched hands tinted by the reflected sunlight in a way that reminded him of their brief trespass in the Orange Grove. Glancing up as he neared the end of the colored tunnel, he stopped in his tracks.
Standing there — his back to Min La, his eyes on the town’s gate — was a man wearing the distinctive uniform of Táno Gín’s mercenaries. He was taller than the others Min La had seen and his long hair was white at the roots. He stood with his hands behind his back, his feet planted wide, as if he did not intend to move until he had found what he was looking for.
The sound of Min La’s shoes on the gravel road had reached his ears. Shifting in his stance, he began to turn. Min La glanced around for somewhere to hide but all he saw were the fluttering, translucent lengths of pink and violet silk.
At that moment a great crash shattered the relative quiet in this narrow passage. Looking back, Min La saw the man sprawled on the ground, a large, middle-aged woman half on top of him, both of them covered in a thick coating of spilled flour.
She was berating him and apologizing to him in a breathless torrent of words. Her age and her size was making it difficult for her to remove herself from him (“I’m so sorry, my lord, my knees aren’t what they used to be”) while she was surrounded by reminders of what she had lost (“do you have the slightest idea what all this costs?”). People were coming to help untangle them and so Min La took advantage of the chaos. Soundlessly he slipped by, shielding himself with the growing crowd.
Reaching at last the Osenok town gate, he glanced back. Sen Lí Lăsoth stood a little apart from the commotion watching him with that same thin smile on his sharp face. When Min La met his gaze, Sen Lí put his hand on his chest and offered a bow, as if to say, “you’re welcome.”
It was some hours before Min La finally reached the Nal Dor. Already well past midday, the blue sky was covered in a tattered cotton shroud of shining white clouds that moved in a strong, cold wind, casting their shadows on the ground under his feet.
So Ga and Ŏnin greeted him with alarm; he had been gone hours longer than they had expected and was returning somewhat disheveled and with a noticeable limp. Min La explained what had happened while Ŏnin bound his knee in another foul smelling poultice. And after Ŏnin had finished and gone, Min La told So Ga about Sen Lí Lăsoth.
So Ga listened closely, his eyes on his knees and his brow furrowed.
“I have never met Sen Lí,” he said when Min La was done. “I do not know him.”
“Would you trust him?”
So Ga shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Would you trust Bo Han Lăsoth?”
“My uncle?” So Ga sighed and rubbed his pale hands over his pale face. He didn’t answer.
“In any event,” Min La said massaging the muscles in his thigh. “This makes tomorrow a little more complicated.”
“How so?”
“For one thing, I couldn’t get your medicine—”
“I feel fine.”
“—but more importantly, both Táno Gín and Sen Lí Lăsoth are out there looking for you.”
So Ga sighed again and glanced at the upper corner of their little cabin, in the direction of the mountain and its gleaming black fort. “But we’re so close.”
Before Min La could answer, Ŏnin returned, bursting through their door without even a knock.
“Little brothers,” he said breathlessly. “I think you should come.”
Wrapping themselves quickly in blue robes with hoods drawn low to shroud their faces, they followed the old monk up to the Nal Dor’s lantern-lit deck where many of the other monks were busy receiving and stowing an offering that had just been made. Afternoon was fading into evening and the day’s rites were drawing to an end. The crowd on the river bank had begun to thin and the candles flickering on the ground were growing brighter as the sky dimmed.
Ŏnin hurried to one of the monks and retrieved from him a small bundle wrapped in cloth. This he brought to Min La and gave it to him without a word, as if the bundle was expected to speak for itself. Unwrapping the knotted cloth, Min La found within a paper parcel fragrant with the herbal smell of medicine and, with it, a small folded message sealed with a wax imprint that Min La did not recognize.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
So Ga took the paper from him and examined the wax seal.
“Lăsoth,” he said, his voice sharp with surprise. Min La stared at him.
Ŏnin nodded solemnly. “Yes. The young lord Sen Lí Lăsoth has just offered his dead and also made an offering to the River Voyage.
Then he held out an arm, gesturing to a spot on the bank of the river.
Min La and So Ga both turned and saw there, apart from the crowd, a small clutch of armored swords and, standing at their head, the sharp-faced Sen Lí Lăsoth.
“Is that him?” So Ga whispered.
Min La nodded.
“Could he have followed you?”
Min La shook his head. “I think it’s possible that Sen Lí Lăsoth is a great deal smarter than anyone realizes.”
So Ga, who seemed always to fear being looked upon by a large crowd — a habit from his days as a hidden, masked prince, Min La assumed — turned away quickly and went back down to their cabin, Min La limping after him. Once inside with the door closed, he broke the Lăsoth seal and unfolded the message.
He seemed to read it many times over, his fingers moving down the page and then returning to the top, as if to be sure he hadn’t missed anything. Then, with a troubled look, he handed the letter to Min La.
Taking it, Min La read it quickly. It surprised him to see how simple and direct it was. Sen Lí was offering “the young traveler” safe passage to his uncle’s estate in Ŏno Soth. Though he did not name So Ga in the letter and he did not indicate that he knew who he was, it was otherwise very straightforward and bare of artifice.
“I cannot believe that the Lăsoth House would wish me ill,” So Ga said as Min La folded the message and returned it to him.
“Because the Housemaster is your uncle?”
“Is that naive of me?”
Min La thought for a moment. “Which is more important to Bo Han Lăsoth? House or family?”
“Bo Han adheres to the ancient ways.”
“He probably doesn’t mean you ill. But it is a possibility that he intends to use you.”
“Against my father, you mean?”
“Perhaps. Is that something he would do?”
So Ga shook his head. “I don’t know.” Then he looked at Min La with a pained expression. “What should I do?”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to return to the Palace. But I don’t know which path to take.”
“Well,” Min La began, stretching his aching knee. “You can accept Sen Lí Lăsoth’s offer of safe passage to his cousin’s estate and hope that Bo Han’s sense of loyalty is greater than his desire to reinforce the power of his House.”
“What about the Koda House? Did they not help us before when they told us that Táno Gín’s men were nearby?”
Min La nodded once. “I think they have been keeping an eye on us.”
“Why? It doesn’t serve them.”
“I don’t know Koda well. But even if they are helping you out of loyalty to your father, it can only go so far. They cannot afford a House war and so they will not try to use you and they will only help you as long as they can do so undetected.”
So Ga looked disappointed. He glanced again at the folded letter in his hand and then at the parcel of medicine. He murmured, “There is no family in the Palace.”
“Or,” Min La said, “we can continue alone. You know you can trust Ko Gŏth Enlin, after all.”
“Provided we can make it to Osa Gate.”
Min La laughed darkly. “Yes, provided we can make it up the mountain. Although I think Koda’s invisible aid might at least make that more of a possibility.”
“Is that what you think I should do?”
Min La shook his head. “I cannot answer this for you. It is not my life they want.”
“I want to trust my uncle,” So Ga said, squeezing the letter so tightly that the thick paper began to crumple in his hand.
“Would he kill you if it served his House?”
So Ga started at the directness of the question. But then he took a breath and shook his head. “I don’t know. Lăsoth has no loyalty to the throne. To them — to my uncle — the throne serves the Houses. And despite my blood, I am not Lăsoth, but Sona.”
“Would he save you for his sister’s sake?”
“I had considered that,” So Ga replied quietly, his eyes darkening. A look of such complete sorrow overtook him that Min La regretted the question.
So Ga sat in silence for several minutes staring at the parcel and the message as if the answer was hidden in them and he had only to decipher it. Min La pitied him but he knew of no other way to help him than to stay by his side no matter what happened. The only thing he could do was to try to keep him alive. There was nothing else a Houseless beggar could do for a royal prince.
After a while, Min La said, “If you don’t know—”
“I do know,” So Ga said resolutely. He turned and gave Min La a warm, tired smile. “I know what I have to do.”
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