Proving One's Usefulness

Something warm settled on her eyelids.

Her whole body felt leaden, too heavy to stir even a finger, yet the sunlight kept fussing at her to wake up.

So this was what it meant to be cotton soaked through with water — this pleasant heaviness, this languor. Even the tender soreness in her chest and between her legs couldn't quite overcome it.

Seoin didn't want to wake.

Clank.

"!"

The sound of metal chains and the cold, heavy sensation at her ankle snapped Seoin's eyes open.

The moment she bolted upright, a dull ache shot from her lower back all the way up her spine — but pain was a problem for later.

"What do you think you're doing?"

He was fastening an ankle shackle onto her himself.

Rattle, clank.

When she lifted her foot, the chain attached to the shackle rose with it, then caught and stopped, as if snagged. One end of the chain was anchored to the leg of the bed.

"Is it the custom of Museon to shackle the feet of women who share your bed? Or is this because you fear I might run?"

"I want to see your self-restraint."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You, of all people, could smash the bed frame and free yourself if you wished."

"If you know that, why do something so pointless?"

"Don't. The commotion you caused last night has already reached the ears of the ministers."

"And what commotion might that be? The part where we coupled like beasts?"

"That was noisy enough, yes, but I mean the one before that."

"Before that — do you mean when the palace maids who came to 'correct my habits' received their lesson and withdrew?"

"No. The one where a prisoner who refused her bath and raged like a wild beast attacked the palace maids."

"Is that how you heard it?"

"That is how it was reported. Either way, it makes no difference to me."

"It makes no difference to you, but it has given the ministers leverage? I hadn't realized you were a king so powerless you must mind the ministers' eyes over a trifle like this."

Even at her contempt, Wiyeon replied as though it were nothing at all.

"So I've decided it's time to build a little strength of my own — by wise means, wherever possible. If I were you, I'd prove that I could refrain from stirring up any more commotion. Right now, that's the wisest course."

"Ah. So you mean to show the Emperor — or rather, the King — just how docilely he can tame a princess of an enemy state?"

"Clever girl."

"I am clever, yes, but not patient. My feet may be bound, but my hands are still free."

Seoin muttered the words as she turned her hands over this way and that, studying them.

"I do worry, you know — that no one will end up dying at these hands."

Wiyeon caught her meaning and answered with a brief, derisive snort.

"If you're so clever, then think of a way to kill without killing."

Killing without killing.

Seoin knew that method well. It was the stratagem women in the palace employed more than any other.

But with shackles on her feet, surrounded by her enemies, isolated with no ally in sight — what scheme could she possibly weave? All she could do was endure, and bide for what came after.

So why was he leaving her like this? He had shown her attention, and in the end had even taken her body. And yet he seemed to have no intention of protecting her — he simply pressed her into a corner.

Still, she felt no sense of being toyed with, or discarded. The night before had not been him violating her body. Quite the opposite — he had taken pains, with deliberate care, to satisfy her. He had plainly enjoyed himself as well; she could see it in his refreshed expression, in the way his gaze had softened when it fell on her.

Which meant he would come looking for her again.

It seemed her beauty trap had worked after all.

Having arranged her thoughts, Seoin drew her own conclusion.

"You demand a great deal from a prisoner."

He intended to make political use of her. Even this night of shared pleasure, which she had thought they'd both enjoyed, had been a tool to him.

"Because you're a pretty spoil of war. Surely I'm allowed to ask that much?"

She had fled an unwanted marriage into the battlefield, only to end up wed after all — to a man she'd never imagined. But this, too, was something she wanted. She had always meant to survive by proving her usefulness; if she could be of use, wasn't that a blessing?

"Then I want something as well. The captured soldiers and people of Danya — release them all. You have gained Danya; take its people in as people of Museon."

"For a prisoner, you do ask a great deal."

The words each had spoken to the other came back to them, returned in full.

"A man about to be Emperor can surely be asked as much."

The palace of Museon was dominated by an air of stately, heavy-handed grandeur. It had its own appeal — and yet it was also stark and barren.

What passed for a garden was no more than a small pond ringed by paths near the residences, and even that was a mere token effort, with little care given to flowers or plantings. Museon had spent its days as a minor kingdom, its fortunes forever precarious; a large tree that might hide an assassin's body was not to be tolerated, and flowers and ornamental trees were nothing but weakness of sentiment and vanity.

The first thing Yu Munhui did upon entering the palace as Prime Minister Yu Sookhyun's daughter was to build her own garden. She did not believe that a beautiful garden was mere sentiment and luxurious vanity. She believed the opposite. A garden demanded leisure of mind, and beyond that, wealth and capability. The fact that Museon had never managed such a thing was proof enough of how incompetent its royal house had been.

Deliberately, ostentatiously, she laid out her garden in the sunlit inner courtyard of the palace and named it Janghwawon — the Garden of Unfolding Splendor. It was a declaration: let the beautiful culture and dignity of this nation be brought forth into the light. Her father's power as Prime Minister quieted the objections of ministers and royals alike, and no one could refute her argument.

"The royal house's devotion to frugality is truly noble — but Museon will not remain as it is. The time will come when we must receive state guests from abroad, and I fear our frugality may be mistaken for shabbiness. If all Museon has to show the world is brute force, how contemptuously they will call us barbarians."

She had entered as a concubine, yet everyone regarded Yu Munhui as the woman who would be Queen. With her mistress now the lady of the inner palace, no one found it strange that she proposed readying the palace to receive state guests.

Under her hands, flowers bloomed, autumn colors deepened, and the trees grew abundant.

Even today, Munhui tended Janghwawon with her own hands. The gardeners worked diligently, but mostly to her taste and at her direction, and much of the work passed through her hands.

Yu Munhui despised idle hours spent staring at nothing, and she despised lazy people. And yet she never lost her composure. Tending a garden suited her temperament perfectly. Strolling through Janghwawon in appreciation, taking tea there — these too were part of her daily routine. Shaping a garden beautiful to her own eye, with her own hands — it went without saying.

The royal house of Museon has lived its whole life barren and harried, without so much as the leisure to admire a garden in season. I have no intention of living that way. If one holds power, one should have the rewards that come with it.

"It seems His Highness finally yielded to the ministers. They say he has shackled that woman's ankles."

As Munhui wiped the leaves of a maple she cherished, a palace maid reported beside her, her voice bright with satisfaction.

It was Bae Ilhwa — leader of the maids who had gone to attend Seoin and returned having heaped insults upon her. When the royal decree came down that a woman brought from the enemy state after the inner-palace affair was to be looked after, Munhui had sent her own people.

Just what sort of woman is she, that she was sent to the inner palace the moment she entered the palace grounds? It went without saying — some woman taken captive on the battlefield. A base woman who spread her legs for the general of the nation that crushed her own country. Sending such a creature into the inner palace under the pretense of care was unmistakably the King's provocation, an assault on her pride.

She knew it — and yet she had wanted to see for herself. Whether the woman was worth provoking her at all. If the King meant to scratch at her temper by propping up some insignificant girl, she would dismiss her utterly and laugh in his face. If she scorned the woman, the King would soon lose interest in such a thing himself.

Even if he did take some interest, it hardly mattered. He was a noble king; embracing a base, filthy creature now and then could be its own amusement. Surely a woman of the royal house could understand that much.

But the maids she had sent to the woman had all come back wrecked, every one of them.

"She is no ordinary woman!"

"So arrogant and violent — utterly without decency!"

"She has no shame at all, and carries on so brazenly that I doubt her life will be a long one."

At the maids' indignant outpouring, Munhui asked, calm and even.

"So — strong, fearless, and insolent. It seems a mere handful like you lot was no match for her."

"Th-that's...! We... we had no choice."

"Setting aside how mindlessly strong she is — well, His Highness did command that she be cared for..."

Before the excuses could stretch on, she cut them off cleanly.

"Is she pretty?"

"Pardon?"

"Is she pretty enough for His Highness to play with?"

"She's... she's somewhat f-fair, I suppose."

"Next to Her Ladyship the Consort, she's a hag! Her skin is common as dirt."

"That's right! Not a beauty worth troubling yourself over. Looks like hers could be found by the dozen in any cheap brothel."

"Then tell me — why do you suppose the King has not discarded that woman, why he's poured an entire inner-palace affair into her? What could be so special about her?"

The maids had no answer, only exchanging glances among themselves. At last, Ilhwa gathered her courage and replied.

"C-could it be her wild temper and strength? Perhaps he brought her in for her brazenness in bed."

Munhui was far from satisfied with that answer.

There is something more. Would he go to the pains of dragging in some random woman and stirring up discord just to scratch at my pride? If not just anyone, then there must be a reason it had to be her.

Just as she was puzzling over it, a story drifting out of the great hall provided the answer. A princess of the enemy state. And not merely that — a commander who had led armies herself.

A woman worth being curious about, indeed.