The fact that his elder brother had not appeared at dinner worried Yi Hyun. He tried to read Prince Rui’s expression for clues, but the regent seemed cheerful and benevolent, as he had for days now. There was nothing to do but play along.

  By the time the prince returned to his quarters, it was fully dark. Eunuch Noh carried a lantern, lighting the way. The night around them rustled, creaked, and breathed with tense anticipation. Sleep did not yet beckon, and Yi Hyun sat down to read one of the military treatises he had brought from Qing.

  The candle had burned down two fingers’ length when voices sounded behind the wall.

  “He is resting,” Eunuch Noh hissed. The idler disliked being sent for tea because of late visitors.

  “The Great Prince will be glad to see me,” a woman’s voice replied.

  Jade Butterfly, coming to him in the middle of the night? Yi Hyun looked at the door with interest. No, knowing the girl, she was unlikely to have decided on a sudden confession of overwhelming passion. Something urgent must have happened.

  “I am not asleep yet. Let her in,” Yi Hyun ordered, raising his voice, and closed the book.

  The gisaeng entered, bowed gracefully with her head inclined beneath the elaborate hairstyle, and stopped by the door. A trail of wine scent followed her — apparently her gathering with Magistrate Kwon had dragged on. Eunuch Noh sighed loudly, clicked his tongue, demonstratively shook his head, and went off to prepare tea. His shuffling steps faded down the corridor, while the gisaeng still stood by the entrance.

  “All right, forgive me, I should not have spoken so,” Yi Hyun apologized when the prolonged silence became awkward. “You do not even belong to me, for me to give such orders.”

  “Will I belong to the Great Prince when he ascends the throne?” the gisaeng asked, casting a long look at him from beneath thick lashes. There were so many promises and hints in that brief phrase that a flame flared inside Yi Hyun, dangerous and misplaced.

  “Why did you come?” he asked, not daring to continue that line of talk.

  The gisaeng gathered her skirts and stepped quickly to his table. She circled it, sat beside him, leaned toward his ear, bathing him in wine and musk, and whispered:

  “An attempt is being prepared on Envoy Zhao’s life.”

  “What?” Yi Hyun turned to her in shock. Their faces nearly touched, she sat so close.

  “Magistrate Kwon and Special Adviser Fan discussed it with the adviser’s Mongol bodyguard,” the gisaeng continued, barely audible. Yi Hyun felt her breath on his lips. “They think I do not understand Chinese, but I caught enough.”

  “Details?” Yi Hyun demanded in a whisper. An attempt on the regent of Great Qing had to be prevented at any cost.

  “Tonight, before dawn,” the gisaeng replied just as quietly. “They want to kill him to cause an uproar and divert attention from something else. They spoke of a body at the magistracy.”

  “Well done,” Yi Hyun praised her and briefly touched her soft lips with a quick kiss.

  “Your Highness!” his eunuch cried reproachfully. Eunuch Noh had just returned, carrying a tea tray. “How dare you, wretched girl!”

  Yi Hyun laughed and rose. Clever Jade Butterfly had framed her sudden night visit as an attempt at seduction. No one would suspect that she had just passed him information on which the fate of two states depended.

  “I will take a short walk,” he told the indignant Eunuch Noh. “Serve my guest some tea in the meantime. And do not you dare be rude to her, understood?”

  “But, Your Highness!” Eunuch Noh’s brows lifted in suffering.

  “Did you not hear me?” Yi Hyun hesitated, but decided not to take his sword as it would draw unnecessary attention. Besides, he needed to warn his elder brother first.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Judging by the footwear outside his room, the elder brother had finally returned. His eunuch made a desperate attempt to bar Yi Hyun from entering, even more desperate than lazy No’s earlier effort, which only piqued Yi Hyun’s curiosity. He doubted he would catch his ascetic elder brother naked in bed with a woman, and saw no other reason to keep him out. So he pushed the anxious eunuch aside and went in.

  And found his elder brother naked, barely covered by white undertrousers.

  Candlelight played over skin slick with moisture, emphasized pale bands of old scars, gave definition to the muscles of shoulders and abdomen. Yi Yun had just turned away, trying to reach something over his left shoulder. Yi Hyun saw a bead of sweat roll down his cheekbone and slide along his neck to the collarbone.

  “What do you want?” Yi Yun asked with irritation. He seemed to have mistaken him for a servant.

  “It is me,” Yi Hyun replied.

  His eyes adjusted to the darkness. Beyond the small bright pool of candlelight the room was in disarray: scattered clothes, some crumpled rags, a tray with dishes, a plate piled with rice buns in the far corner, a copper basin of water by the mattress.

  Someone lay under the blanket on the mattress.

  Yi Hyun hurriedly looked away. In any case, his news was more important than whatever his brother had been doing.

  “Hyun?” Yi Yun turned and smiled tensely. “You came at a bad time, sorry.”

  “I need to speak with you urgently, elder brother,” Yi Hyun glanced at the covered figure under the blanket. “In private.”

  “He will not be getting up anyway,” Yi Yun shook his head. “And I think he is asleep. Speak, just quietly.”

  “He?” Yi Hyun repeated, swallowing. Among the clothes on the floor he had indeed seen nothing feminine.

  “Captain Chong,” his elder brother added for whatever reason, as if it were not bad enough already. Yi Hyun had already imagined all sorts of things when Yi Yun continued. “He was wounded. I did not dare leave him alone while the assassin is at large.”

  “Wait,” Yi Hyun raised his palms. “I do not understand what is happening. What assassin? What happened? Why is Captain Chong… in your bed? And what are you hiding behind your shoulder?”

  Yi Yun sighed heavily and shook his head.

  “Are you afraid of blood?” he suddenly asked.

  “No,” Yi Hyun shrugged, confused.

  “Then help me, and tell me why you came while you are at it,” Yi Yun suggested. “There are only three stitches left, but I cannot quite reach.”

  Yi Hyun stepped closer with misgiving and finally saw that his elder brother was trying to sew a wound on his left shoulder blade. The sight of the swollen, reddened edges made him feel faint.

  “Here,” Yi Yun handed him a curved needle with thread. “Pierce first, then pull tight. Try to press firmly right away, it will be quicker. Then smear it with that ointment.”

  He turned away, clenching his fist; his cheekbones tightened. Yi Hyun remembered how a physician had sewn his own wound once, and with some hesitation drove the needle into the bleeding flesh. Yi Yun flinched.

  “Did you consider calling a doctor?” Yi Hyun said, simply to break the silence.

  “For such a trifle?” Judging by the sweat pouring off his elder brother and his strained breathing, it was no trifle at all, but Yi Hyun was not going to argue. “If my servant did not faint at the sight of blood, it would be easier. It is good you came. So what happened?”

  “Well…” Yi Hyun tied the final knot, laid a bandage with ointment over the wound, and eased back. “They are planning to kill the regent tonight. I wanted to warn you, but it seems you are not quite in shape to—”

  “Nonsense,” Yi Yun snorted and cautiously moved the bandaged shoulder. “Do I have time to dress?”

  “The attempt is planned before dawn,” Yi Hyun nodded. “I think he should be warned, and perhaps asked to change bedrooms.”

  “Mine is already occupied, unless he comes to you,” Yi Yun laughed shortly. “He has enough soldiers of his own, does he not? I met them during the day, they are not bad.”

  “I would like to arrest the assassin, not simply destroy him,” Yi Hyun looked at his hands, wanting to wash the sticky blood away. “And do you know why they decided to kill Envoy Zhao for the uproar, to divert attention from the body at the magistracy?”

  “Oh!” Yi Yun for some reason glanced toward the corner with the plate of rice buns. “Magistrate Kwon, his steward, Adviser Fan, and his bodyguard? Those are your conspirators?”

  “How do you know?” Yi Hyun was surprised. Apart from the steward, his brother had named them all correctly, but that other man was just a little fly.

  “My investigation of the body at the magistracy led to the same people,” Yi Yun rubbed his chin. “The dead man is Secret Inspector Baek Jae-sung. He was investigating the narcotic pills, Hwangu. It seems he was removed when he uncovered evidence of Magistrate Kwon’s and Adviser Fan’s involvement in smuggling that filth from Great Qing. And judging by whom we ran into at the magistracy this evening, that bodyguard is the assassin. I did not see his face, but it was certainly someone from the embassy, and rather tall at that.”

  “So they do not even know whom they are preparing to assassinate?” Yi Hyun bit his lip. What a mistake these wretches were about to make, merely by raising a hand against the Prince Regent.

  “Seems so,” Yi Yun agreed. “I suppose we must warn him, then guard from a distance, since he will refuse direct protection.”

  “You understand him well, elder brother,” Yi Hyun smiled. The regent truly did not fear danger — he loved it, and missed it like a lover when they were long apart.

  “And I will need guards at my bedroom as well,” Yi Yun added, beginning to dress. “I do not think the assassin will return tonight, but I will feel easier that way.”