The Empress Calls
Yuna's fingers found the jade hairpin before her eyes opened.
The capsule was warm. Active. Six weeks of silence, and now—now, when the Chief Eunuch's hand was still wrapped around her throat, when Kaelen's body lay crumpled against the wall, when every breath tasted like copper and fear—now the Empress decided to make contact.
The Chief Eunuch's grip tightened. Those glowing eyes studied her face like she was a specimen pinned to a board. "Interesting. Your pulse just spiked. What are you thinking about, I wonder?"
She couldn't answer. Couldn't breathe. Black spots bloomed at the edges of her vision.
"No matter." He released her, and she collapsed against the window frame, gasping. "You'll tell me everything soon enough. The process is quite thorough."
Yuna's hand closed around the hairpin. The metal bit into her palm, grounding her. The message would dissolve in three minutes if she didn't read it. Three minutes to decide if the Empress's orders mattered anymore, if anything mattered beyond the next thirty seconds of survival.
The Chief Eunuch turned toward Kaelen's motionless form. "The Crown Prince has been a disappointment for years. Always asking questions, always digging where he shouldn't. I'd planned to deal with him after the coronation, but you've forced my hand."
He raised one hand, and the air around Kaelen began to shimmer.
Yuna moved without thinking. She yanked the hairpin free, felt the capsule's seal break against her thumb, and threw it at the Chief Eunuch's face.
He caught it. Of course he caught it. But for one second—one precious second—his attention shifted.
Yuna dove through the window.
The fall lasted forever and no time at all.
She hit the sloped roof of the servants' quarters, rolled, felt tiles crack beneath her weight. Her shoulder screamed. The burn scar tissue tore. She kept rolling, couldn't stop, the edge rushing up to meet her—
Her hand caught a drainage pipe. The metal shrieked, bending under her weight, but held. She hung there, three stories up, arm socket on fire, and looked up.
The Chief Eunuch stood at the window. He wasn't following. Why wasn't he following?
"Run if you like," he called down. His voice carried perfectly, as if he were standing beside her. "I know where you'll go. I know everyone you've spoken to, every ally you think you have. The physician. The kitchen girl. Even your little prince." He smiled. "Especially your prince."
Then he stepped back from the window and disappeared.
Yuna dropped the remaining story to the ground, landed in a crouch that sent lightning up her spine, and ran.
The palace gardens at night were a maze of shadows and moonlight. She knew the paths—had memorized them during her first week, the way she memorized everything that might save her life. Left at the chrysanthemum beds. Right at the koi pond. Through the bamboo grove where the guards changed shifts and there was always a thirty-second gap.
Her shoulder was bleeding. She could feel it, hot and wet, soaking through her silk robe. The burn scar had split open. Good. Pain meant alive. Pain meant moving.
She made it to the outer wall, to the servants' gate that Kaelen had told her about, the one that was supposed to be locked but never was because the kitchen staff used it to meet their lovers. Her hands shook as she worked the latch.
Behind her, footsteps. Multiple sets. Guards, or worse.
The gate opened. She slipped through, into the narrow alley beyond, and kept running.
Davos's safe house was in the merchant quarter, tucked between a silk trader's warehouse and a brothel that catered to foreign sailors. She'd been there twice before, always at night, always careful. Now she stumbled through the door like a drunk, leaving blood on the frame.
He was awake. Of course he was awake. Davos Kael didn't sleep like normal people—he took brief, tactical naps and spent the rest of his time reading intelligence reports or sharpening knives.
Tonight he was doing both.
He looked up from the blade in his hands, took in her torn robe and bleeding shoulder, and said, "Well. Shit."
"Kaelen." Her voice came out wrong, too high. "The Chief Eunuch—he has powers, real powers, he threw Kaelen across the room and his eyes were glowing and—"
"Slow down." Davos set the knife aside, crossed to her in three strides. His hands hovered over her shoulder, not touching. "How bad?"
"I don't know. I ran. I left him there."
"Smart."
"He could be dead."
"Then going back won't help him." Davos guided her to a chair, started examining her shoulder with the clinical efficiency of someone who'd patched up plenty of wounds. "The Chief Eunuch has powers. Explain."
She did. Told him everything—the glowing eyes, the telekinesis, the way the air had warped around him. Davos's expression didn't change, but his hands stilled on her shoulder.
"How long have you known?" she asked.
"Known? Never. Suspected?" He resumed cleaning the wound, his touch careful despite the steadiness of his voice. "About three years. Little things. The way he never seemed to age. How people who crossed him disappeared without a trace. The Emperor's sudden personality shifts." He paused. "I thought he was just very good at poison and manipulation. This is worse."
"He said I was going to be his next experiment."
"You're not." Davos's tone left no room for argument. "We're leaving. Tonight. There's a ship in the harbor that owes me a favor, and—"
"I can't."
He looked at her. Really looked, the way he did when he was reading someone, cataloging their tells. "Why not?"
Yuna reached into her torn robe, found the jade hairpin. The capsule had broken when she threw it, but the message was still there, etched in rice paper so thin it was nearly transparent. She'd read it during her run through the gardens, the words burning into her mind with every footfall.
She handed it to Davos.
He read in silence. When he finished, he set the paper down very carefully, like it might explode. "Ten days."
"Ten days to seduce you, steal invasion routes I don't even know you have, and kill your chief strategist." Yuna laughed, and it came out jagged. "Oh, and prove my loyalty to the Empress. Can't forget that part."
"The Empress doesn't know about the kill order I received."
"No."
"Which means there are multiple handlers. Multiple chains of command." Davos picked up the knife again, turned it over in his hands. "Your spy network is eating itself."
"Apparently."
"And if you don't comply, they send cleanup crews. Which means they kill everyone involved, including you." He looked at her. "Including me."
Yuna's throat was still sore from the Chief Eunuch's grip. She touched it, felt the bruises forming. "Yes."
"So." Davos set the knife down. "Are you going to do it?"
She should say no. Should say it immediately, without hesitation. They'd been allies for weeks now. More than allies. She'd told him things she'd never told anyone, and he'd done the same. They'd planned an escape together. They'd—
"I don't know," she said.
Davos nodded. Didn't look surprised. Didn't look hurt. Just nodded, like she'd confirmed something he'd already suspected. "Fair."
The word hung between them. Fair. As if her uncertainty was reasonable. As if he understood.
"What would you do?" she asked. "In my position."
"I'd kill me." He said it easily, like he was discussing the weather. "I'm the logical choice. High-value target, already compromised, and my death would send a clear message to your handlers that you're still loyal." He picked up the knife again, offered it to her handle-first. "Want to get it over with?"
She didn't take the knife. "You're not afraid."
"Terrified. But fear doesn't change the math." He set the knife on the table between them. "You're a spy, Yuna. A good one. Good spies make hard choices. That's why they survive."
"I don't want to survive if it means—" She stopped. Couldn't finish the sentence.
"If it means what? Killing me? Going back to the Empress?" Davos leaned back in his chair, and for the first time since she'd met him, he looked tired. Actually tired, not just physically exhausted but soul-deep weary. "You know what the worst part of this job is? It's not the violence. Not the lies. It's the moments when you realize you've become exactly what you swore you'd never be, and you can't remember when it happened."
Yuna's hands were shaking again. She pressed them flat against her thighs. "I'm not like her."
"The Empress? No. You're not." He switched to Jade dialect without seeming to notice, the words flowing faster, rougher. "She chose power. You're still choosing survival. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Ask me again after you decide whether to kill me."
The the pause extended longer than comfortable. Outside, someone laughed—drunk sailors, probably, stumbling back from the brothel. Normal people living normal lives, unaware that three stories above them, a spy and a strategist were discussing murder like it was a business transaction.
Yuna touched her shoulder. The bleeding had stopped, but the wound was deep. It would scar. Another mark to add to her collection. "The skin graft. Is it ready?"
Davos blinked at the subject change, then nodded slowly. "Was supposed to be. But there's a complication."
"Of course there is."
"The physician was questioned by the Chief Eunuch. About the dead concubine." He switched back to the common tongue, his voice careful. "He didn't break. But he's being watched now. We can't use him again."
Yuna closed her eyes. The physician had been their only reliable contact in the palace medical wing. Without him, they couldn't stage her death. Without staging her death, she couldn't disappear. And if she couldn't disappear—
"We stage it anyway," she said.
"Without the physician?"
"We don't need him. We have the body. We have the skin graft—you said it was ready, which means he already prepared it. We just need to retrieve it and set the scene ourselves."
Davos studied her. "That's a terrible plan."
"You have a better one?"
"Several. They all involve you getting on that ship tonight and never looking back."
"And the cleanup crews? They'll kill you. They'll kill Kaelen if he's still alive. They'll kill everyone I've spoken to in the past six weeks." She opened her eyes, met his gaze. "I won't let that happen."
"Noble. Stupid, but noble."
"I'm not being noble. I'm being practical." She stood, ignoring the way her shoulder screamed in protest. "If I run, I'm a traitor. Traitors don't get to disappear quietly. They get hunted. And everyone they've ever cared about becomes a target."
"You care about me?" Davos's tone was light, but his eyes were sharp.
Yuna didn't answer. Couldn't answer, because the truth was complicated and terrifying and she didn't have time to examine it. "Help me stage my death. Then we deal with the Empress's orders."
"By 'deal with' you mean—"
"I mean we make it look like I'm following them while actually doing the opposite." She picked up the knife from the table, tested its weight. Good balance. Sharp. "I seduce you—or pretend to. I steal fake invasion routes that you feed me. And I kill your strategist."
"I'm my own strategist."
"Even better. We fake your death too."
Davos laughed. Actually laughed, sharp and disbelieving. "You want to fake both our deaths, feed false intelligence to your handlers, and somehow convince them you're still loyal while we're both supposedly corpses. That's your plan."
"Yes."
"It's insane."
"It's all we have."
He looked at her for a long moment. Then he stood, crossed to a cabinet in the corner, and pulled out a bottle of rice wine. He poured two cups, handed her one. "To insane plans."
She took the cup. "To survival."
They drank.
The palace medical wing was locked, but locks had never stopped Yuna before.
They went in through the garden entrance, the one the physicians used when they needed to dispose of medical waste without alarming the courtiers. Davos picked the lock while Yuna kept watch, her stolen guard uniform itching against her skin.
"Got it." The door swung open. "After you."
The medical wing smelled like herbs and death. Yuna's nose cataloged the scents automatically—ginseng, chrysanthemum, something bitter she didn't recognize. The skin graft would be in cold storage, preserved in salt and ice.
They found it in the third room they checked. The physician had done good work—the graft was nearly perfect, a mask of Yuna's face that would fool anyone who didn't look too closely. Beside it, wrapped in silk, was a vial of poison.
Davos picked up the vial, held it to the light. "Nightshade. Fast-acting. Painful."
"Perfect."
They took both items and left the way they'd come. No guards. No witnesses. Too easy, Yuna thought, but didn't say it aloud. Davos was thinking the same thing—she could see it in the tension of his shoulders, the way his hand stayed near his knife.
They made it back to the safe house without incident.
"Now what?" Davos asked.
"Now we go back to my quarters and set the scene." Yuna laid out the skin graft on the table, studied it. "We need to make it look like I was poisoned. Nightshade in the tea. Body on the floor. Signs of struggle."
"The Chief Eunuch will know it's fake."
"The Chief Eunuch isn't the target. The Empress is." She looked at Davos. "We need to send her proof. A message that I completed the first part of her orders—eliminating myself as a liability—and that I'm ready for the next phase."
"You're going to tell her you faked your own death."
"I'm going to tell her I had no choice. That the Chief Eunuch discovered me, that I barely escaped, and that I need extraction." Yuna picked up the skin graft, felt its weight. "She'll either send help or send assassins. Either way, we'll know where we stand."
Davos was quiet for a long moment. Then: "You're not planning to run, are you. You're planning to go back."
"I'm planning to end this." She set the graft down. "The Empress has been using me since I was twelve years old. She's used hundreds of others the same way. Someone has to stop her."
"That someone doesn't have to be you."
"Yes, it does." Yuna met his eyes. "Because I'm the only one who knows how her network operates. I'm the only one who can get close enough to—"
The door exploded inward.
Guards poured through, six of them, weapons drawn. Behind them, moving with the unhurried confidence of someone who knew he'd already won, came the Chief Eunuch.
His eyes were still glowing.
"Lady Yuna," he said pleasantly. "Did you really think I wouldn't have you followed?"
Davos moved first. He threw the knife—the same one he'd been sharpening earlier—and it flew straight and true, aimed for the Chief Eunuch's throat.
The blade stopped in midair. Hung there, suspended, then clattered to the floor.
"Disappointing." The Chief Eunuch stepped over it. "I expected better from the infamous Davos Kael. Then again, you've always been more reputation than substance."
Yuna's hand found another needle in her braid. Poison-tipped. Her last one. She pulled it free, held it ready. "What do you want?"
"I told you. You're going to be my next experiment." He gestured, and the guards moved forward. "But first, I think we'll start with your friend here. I've always wondered how much pain a strategist can endure before his mind breaks."
Davos looked at Yuna. Mouthed two words: The window.
She shook her head. They were on the ground floor. No escape that way.
He mouthed them again, more insistent.
Then she understood. Not escape. Distraction.
She threw herself at the window, and Davos threw himself at the guards.
Glass shattered. Men shouted. Yuna hit the alley outside and rolled, came up running. Behind her, she heard Davos fighting—heard the wet sound of blade meeting flesh, heard him grunt in pain.
She didn't look back. Couldn't look back. If she looked back, she'd go back, and then they'd both die.
The alley twisted. She followed it, her breath coming in ragged gasps, her shoulder bleeding again. Behind her, footsteps. The guards were following. Of course they were following.
She turned a corner and nearly collided with someone.
A woman. Tall, elegant, wearing the silk robes of a high-ranking courtier. Her hair was pinned with jade ornaments, and her smile was soft and maternal.
"Hello, Yuna," said Empress Lirien Seo. "We need to talk, yes?"