“I regret exceedingly that I must remind you of this, my dear Magistrate Kwon,” Special Adviser Fang said in a honeyed voice.

  Neither of them was fooled by the gentle tone. If anything, it frightened the magistrate more than open shouting would have.

  “You know very well what situation we are in,” the magistrate said, lips pressed in irritation. “Your envoy cannot sit still for a moment, and now there is this investigation as well… While the royal guard keeps circling the Magistrate day and night, my hands are tied!”

  “I fear my patron will not be interested in your… minor inconveniences,” Adviser Fang continued to smile.

  “My inconveniences? Mine?!” the magistrate burst out. “Who arranged all of this? Was it not your bodyguard, my most gracious adviser, who killed the man whose corpse now lies in the Magistrate? Was it not your Envoy Zhao who decided to amuse himself with excavations in the middle of the road? Is it not because of the guard you brought from the capital that I cannot move and unload the carts with goods, since outsiders might see them? I think your patron would be very interested to know how many obstacles to my part of the work you personally created!”

  “Now, now, dear magistrate,” the Han official grew more serious. “I understand that circumstances have turned against you, which is precisely why I have not pressed the matter until now. But one way or another, the embassy will soon move on, and by that moment all the goods owed to us must be delivered and loaded. Let us understand how to arrange this.”

  “Circumstances, indeed,” the magistrate snorted. “Very well. Tell me how to distract all these unnecessary people for at least one night, and all your goods will be yours, and mine will be mine.”

  “The envoy has already been… warned,” Adviser Fang replied after a brief hesitation. “I hope he heeded the warning. Otherwise, an unfortunate accident might… occur. Accidents happen in Anju all the time, remarkably so.”

  “Not with me involved,” the magistrate waved his hands quickly. “If you want accidents, arrange them yourselves, but I refuse to cover up after your butcher again. Is he even normal? Does he not frighten you?”

  “This is not about me,” Adviser Fang frowned. “Your task is to prepare the carts by the day after tomorrow. I will do what I can, but do not test my patron’s patience. You know what he is capable of. Have I made myself clear, my dear Magistrate Kwon?”

  “Just remove the extra eyes,” the magistrate muttered, already understanding that refusal was impossible.

  ***

  Clay Pot turned out to be a young man of about twenty, filthy and disheveled. Yi Ho was amused by how often a person’s status could be determined by hairstyle alone. Educated men, even in dire circumstances, continued to gather their hair into neat knots and use headbands. Their heads looked orderly. Servants, on the other hand, were often content with a hastily tied tail, hair sticking out in all directions like a mangy old dog. And yet combing one’s hair required neither silver nor copper. It was a matter of self-respect, something uneducated slaves often lacked.

  That unidentified corpse, incidentally, had worn a neat hairstyle as well, just like the ghost hovering above it. A pity it was impossible to ask him his name, or the name of his killer. Until a memorial tablet was placed, the spirit remained lost, without memory of itself. A vile feeling. Yi Ho disliked recalling the day his own body had been prepared for burial, while he wandered nearby, unable to understand what had happened or why no one noticed him.

  Meanwhile, the maid who had led Yi Ho to an unremarkable house three streets away from the Magistrate, took Clay Pot by the hand, and they both knelt. Necessary ritual, part of repentance.

  “Tell me what you did,” the prince demanded.

  “I was in the mountains near the mine when the collapse happened,” the young man said in a hoarse, cold-ravaged voice. “I found a cave, and inside it a bundle.”

  “You did not take it?” Yi Ho remembered that the sword had been stolen from the guards. This hunter could not have taken it from the cave.

  “At first I only looked,” Clay Pot sighed. “Such beauty, I have never seen anything like it in my life! Don’t be offended, Your Highness. We have traders from everywhere here, I’ve seen painted vases and chased metal ornaments for bridles, but never this. The sword seemed to glow by itself, can you imagine? Just like a candle burning, only cold when you touch it.”

  “Let us assume so,” Yi Ho agreed, hiding a smile. He did not believe the peasant’s exaggerated, childlike awe. “What happened next?”

  “They started digging there again, people appeared. All in all, the guards found it and took it away,” Clay Pot sighed. “And then I imagined that this marvel would end up with our magistrate, who has ruined so many people… So I crept under the shed where they kept it and swapped the sword for a branch. But someone must have seen me. First they questioned the neighbors, then I noticed an ambush. Those ones, with braids.”

  Manchus, then.

  The subjugation of Joseon was a recent event that occurred after Yi Ho’s death, but naturally he took no pleasure in the state of affairs. He had no intention of yielding either the imperial sword or a subject to northern barbarians.

  “Do you have the sword now?” The prince’s fingertips tingled with eager anticipation.

  Clay Pot nodded grimly.

  “They will kill you to get the sword,” Yi Ho remarked. “Or torture you first, then kill you. You have no idea what you are entangled in.”

  “What shall we do?” the maid gasped, covering her mouth with her hands.

  “If he gives the sword to me, I can protect him,” Yi Ho replied, nodding toward the grim hunter.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Do you hear that?” the girl jabbed Clay Pot in the ribs. “Don’t be a fool, give away the sword.”

  Clay Pot clearly hesitated, unable to decide.

  “Why is it so important?” he finally asked, staring at the floor. His voice came out rough and unclear; he coughed and tried again. “Why are they ready to kill a person over a pretty trinket?”

  “I suspect not just one person,” Yi Ho said with a grim smile. “Have you ever heard of the Ming dynasty?”

  In the end, the former crown prince patiently explained the sword’s history as he would to an eight-year-old child. The commoner lacked education and was naive in many ways, but he proved patriotic enough to agree that the golden sword could bring far more benefit — or harm — to the country in the hands of a king or emperor. At last, he pried up the floorboards, rummaged in a hiding place, and with a bow handed Yi Ho a golden sword in its scabbard, roughly wrapped in an old cloth.

  Strangely, no one ever spoke of the scabbard, yet it was magnificent. It vibrated, warming in the hand and purring like a well-fed cat on its master’s lap. It promised to share strength, imparting calm confidence the moment one grasped it in the left hand. Yi Ho found himself admiring the delicate golden patterns when a ghost’s shriek made him look up.

  Of course, mortals could not hear him, but the hunter tensed as well, straightened, and craned his neck. Yi Ho caught his gaze and raised his eyebrows. Clay Pot cast a warning glance toward the closed window, then yanked the maid toward him. A knife buried itself where she had been sitting moments before.

  Yi Ho stepped quickly toward the wall so that a solid beam, not a thin partition, was at his back, and drew the sword. It was not the single-edged hwangdo he was accustomed to, but a double-edged Chinese jian. Still, he had no other weapon on him. The unexpectedly light blade glowed with warm golden light, the hilt adorned with a bright yellow tassel fitting comfortably into his palm.

  At that same instant the window frame splintered inward, and two masked men leapt into the small room. Two more appeared in the doorway they had kicked open.

  The maid screamed.

  The hunter cursed hoarsely. Yi Ho noticed a long knife in his hand.

  And also Yi Ho noticed that though the attackers’ faces were covered, their hair was not tied in neat knots but in long barbarian braids. As always, a person was defined by hairstyle.

  “Leave me alone, dogs!” the hunter snarled, crouching low and began stalking toward one of the broad-shouldered attackers.

  In principle, he was right. If battle was inevitable, one should impose one’s own tactics, fully in accordance with Sunzi’s teachings. Yet the best war was the one that never happened, and Yi Ho hesitated before engaging in earnest. He had not truly fenced in a hundred years; the scuffle with costumed pirates hardly counted. And though he had once been competent training with his guard, he trusted neither this weapon nor this body.

  “You would be wise to retreat,” he addressed the attackers in Chinese. “I do not wish to wound anyone.”

  “What is he saying?” the hunter rasped.

  “I don’t know,” the maid replied fearfully. “I am scared. Please, don’t kill us!”

  The barbarians exchanged a few words in an unfamiliar tongue, and the first two rushed to attack. They were armed only with long daggers, giving Yi Ho some advantage with his sword.

  He had no time to watch the hunter, but from the sounds he was still alive. Yi Ho parried dagger strikes, marveling at how unused he was to a sword, and how comfortable this one felt. It seemed to grow into his hand, becoming an extension of his arm. A reckless joy surged at the sensation of power. Yi Ho bared his teeth and made a direct thrust appropriate to the jian. The tip sliced through a dark bracer; the opponent cried out and leapt back, clutching his forearm.

  Nearby, the ghost howled with delight.

  Yi Ho laughed and spun the sword just to hear the blade whistle through the air. For him, there were no obstacles now. He stood on the brink of becoming crown prince again, then king, defeating the barbarians and ascending the golden throne of All Under Heaven, reviving an ancient dynasty. Peoples would hail him as a liberator!

  The ghost suddenly yelped indignantly and began cursing. Yi Ho turned. To his astonishment, the spirit was lifting the wide sleeve of his half-transparent robe and glaring at a long, fresh tear in the immaterial fabric.

  “Watch where you swing that iron thing,” the ghost grumbled toward the prince. He clearly had not expected to be heard and was therefore rude.

  But how could the sword have cut ghostly matter? Was the legend that it had been forged in the Heavenly Gardens true after all?

  Unfortunately, Yi Ho had no time to ponder this marvel, because two barbarians attacked him at once. This time they came from opposite sides, and Yi Ho realized that even with a magical sword he could not parry both blows simultaneously. His golden dream shattered in an instant, having existed but for a few fleeting moments.

  Warmth flowed from the blade to the hilt, from the hilt into his palm, and spread through the body that had grown alien and clumsy.

  “Careful!” the maid cried, perhaps to him.

  Yi Ho braced for inevitable pain, but instead he was yanked downward, rolled over his shoulder, and ended up behind the attackers’ backs. A short sweep of the sword cut one man’s thigh; he howled and collapsed. The other was tripped by a kick to the knee, buying a few more moments.

  Yi Ho seemed to watch himself from the outside as his hands disarmed the second attacker, knocked the dagger away, and nearly drove upward into his belly. The one with the wounded leg managed to interpose his blade, saving his comrade. Then Yi Ho rose into a predatory, economical stance he had never been taught. The sword flowed through his body, along his veins, awakening the one hidden deep within his being.

  At last the prince understood that both the unfamiliar stance and the merciless, short strikes belonged not to him but to Yi Yun, who, gripping the sword, was once again trying to reclaim control of his body.

  “What are you doing?” Yi Ho whispered through clenched teeth.

  The hunter and his opponent were tangled on the floor. Two other attackers were wounded — one in the arm, one in the leg — but were not yet ready to retreat. The last one, who had lost his balance earlier, was already back on his feet and looked grimly determined.

  Yi Ho’s hand moved of its own accord again, dropped, and scratched a single word into the floor with the glowing blade: “sword.” He tried to resist the disobedient descendant, but the attackers allowed no time for discussion, and Yi Ho was forced to trust the one whose body they now shared.

  He fought entirely wrong.

  Instead of maintaining proper posture, he spun like a top, ducking under blows and bending to evade. He did not keep his left hand behind his back but tried to hook opponents with the scabbard as well. However, Yi Ho was forced to admit that against multiple foes, such a tactic was effective. The scabbard could block a strike or even smash into a throat, leaving a man choking and gasping. Brutal, nearly as barbaric as their enemies’ methods, but effective.

  With the final movement, Yi Yun struck the Manchu clinging to the hunter on the back of the head — fortunately with the hilt, not the blade — and the man went limp, unconscious.

  “Take him and get out!” Yi Ho barked, since the voice was still his.

  To his relief, the Manchus obeyed, hoisted their unconscious companion, and vanished through the broken door, black eyes gleaming with anger.

  The maid cautiously peeked out from behind the basket where she had hidden through most of the fight and hurried to wipe blood from her friend’s split brow. He sat holding his head and muttering low incoherent curses.

  The ghost drifted closer again and stopped before the prince, casting an annoyed glance at the sword that had torn its robes.

  Yi Ho slowly sheathed the blade and reluctantly released it. Now that it lay on the ground and no longer tempted him with sweet promises, he could think about what had happened.

  “Is anyone wounded?” he asked, simultaneously checking whether he himself was intact.

  “I am dead,” the ghost snorted into the air.

  “We are fine,” Clay Pot replied hoarsely. His scrapes were seemingly not too serious.