Tying the Hwachim (8)

Fog was seeping in through the gaps of the door from outside.

If Seoin had not been asleep, or if her aching body had not left her mind in a haze, she would have recognized at once that something was wrong. But she could not even open her eyes, and even when she briefly surfaced from sleep, she was too muddled to tell dream from waking.

The fog spread like thick billows of smoke, blanketing her bed, and strangely, she sank deeper into her trance. It felt like wandering inside a dream. Perhaps because her body was so exhausted, the dream was far from a happy one.

It was a dark, dense forest that let in no moonlight. Seoin was trapped in a swamp at its heart, flailing, her body sinking further with every moment and refusing to obey her. Even lifting a hand or kicking took everything she had; all she could manage was to thrash in desperate futility. The mire had risen to her throat, and already she felt she was suffocating.

Then it happened. Something began groping for her feet inside that swamp.

What is that?

A foul, slick touch crawled over the top of her foot and started winding its way up her leg.

Is that a hand?

It seemed less a hand than something else entirely. Smooth yet sticky, thick and swollen. A flexible yet rigid, massive phallus. It coiled around her leg, past her calf, climbing toward her thigh.

It's climbing up?

The instant the thought formed, the scenery changed. Seoin lay on her bed, both eyes flung wide open, staring at the tip of that thing as it reared its head above her thigh.

She knew that cock. And yet, strangely, it brought her no comfort. The repulsive touch, the loathsome slickness, still clung to her. The tip, bobbing and straining, aimed itself at the inside of her thighs — like a head flicking its tongue before its prey.

Not on my watch.

Then it came. The split tip yawned open, baring fangs, and from the slit that had been dripping sticky fluid a red tongue shot out. The moment that massive column became the scaled neck of a serpent, Seoin's hand — which had not so much as twitched a finger until now — shot out like lightning.

Hsss—

Gotcha.

The snake seized in her grip thrashed its body wildly. This was no dream. The serpent was coiling around her wrist in one last desperate struggle.

Seoin, still clad in her thin nightshift, pushed herself upright and looked around. Her eyes caught a mist-like smoke dissipating across the floor. And now that she noticed it, there was an odd fragrance hanging in the room.

"What is this?"

Her head was still heavy, her mind not yet clear. But at least one thing was now certain: everything she had just seen was a ridiculous, nonsensical nightmare. Falling into a swamp in the middle of a forest out of nowhere — a hand groping her leg from within the mire. Even the fact that she had accepted it so blithely once the hand turned out to be a cock made the whole thing a lewd, deranged bad dream. Only at the very last moment, when she realized the thing was a snake, had her wits come back to her.

So what's the problem here?

Her aching body, or this suspicious fog? Seoin studied the snake still coiled around her wrist, squeezing tight.

Not venomous, at least.

If someone had burned a strange, sweet-scented smoke in her chamber and then loosed a harmless snake inside it — what would the point of that be? Even now, the skin of her legs beneath the thin nightshift retained the sensation of something crawling up them. That sensation, and this snake, were not dreams. What was certain was that no fever, however bad, could leave her this unable to tell dream from reality. Her fever had already broken, and her head no longer ached.

Smoke can't control a person's dreams... but it could dull the mind first, then use a snake like this to make the dream feel more vivid. More real.

Why bother? Release a harmless snake just to make me have an unpleasant dream?

Seoin watched the snake squirm for a long moment, then gave a little snort of laughter and shook her head.

Someone must find me a real thorn in her side.

She had watched the quarrels of palace women until they made her sick. Hair-pulling over a twisted word, biting sarcasm — those were everyday fare. The maids of rival consorts tearing at each other's hair on their mistresses' behalf were a common sight too. Whenever a powerless consort caught the king's eye or earned some small favor, she'd be warned off with petty torments.

"So the idea was to torment me with a snake?"

Most people feared snakes. Even men shuddered at their slithering movements, their repulsive scales, that flicking red tongue, those ghostly eyes. Any ordinary woman who found a snake in her room would scream and freeze in place, paralyzed with terror.

Seoin had been the same once — before she took the field. But compared to the things she had seen and lived through on the battlefield, snakes were almost endearing. With food always scarce, her starving soldiers would raise a ruckus over who got to eat any snake they spotted. It was the snake that bared its fangs in fear, never the man. She had watched countless wretched vipers lose their heads to a blade, get skinned, and roast over a fire.

Which was why these harmless things — no matter how thick their bodies — were nothing more than oversized earthworms to her. Granted, an earthworm can be an unpleasant sight. But ever since Seoin had watched corpses rotting in the field, devoured by insects, hardly anything struck her as disgusting anymore.

"First the cold bath water, and now this. Someone's determined to be childish."

She gave a short, derisive snort — but she could hardly let it pass.

"If you want to kill me, learn how to do it properly."

The king had clamped shackles around her ankles and still expected her to fight him fairly.

It wasn't poison — but tampering with my chamber is crossing a line in itself.

If that smoke or that snake had carried poison potent enough to threaten her life, she would already be dead. The smoke had scattered, leaving no evidence, and there was no way to prove who had released the snake or whether it had crawled in on its own. At best, the palace attendants who failed to notice a serpent slithering into her quarters would be reprimanded. Childish — but not a bad way to torment someone.

Then I'll just have to pay her back in kind, childishly.

Even if she wanted to return the favor measure for measure, she lacked the strength to do so yet, and without hard proof of who was behind it, all she could do was show her.

"If you pick a fight, you'd better be ready to bet your life on it."

Seoin murmured the words toward the only other consort in this palace — the one who wasn't her.

Darkness lifted, and the palace stirred to life. The king's attendants filed in a line toward his residence. Before long, the king — attended and fully robed — received his morning tea from the aged chief chamberlain.

"Your Majesty. Word has just reached us that Princess Jin Seoin of the Danya Kingdom has fallen ill. Ought we not send a physician at once?"

Chief Chamberlain Jeong Dalho asked with careful deference.

When a consort fell ill, sending a physician was the most natural thing in the world. Yet the fact that he had to ask permission for something so obvious was entirely the doing of the Noble Consort. Precautions had been taken to ensure that even the news of Jin Seoin's illness never leaked out, so sending a physician would amount to an open act of disregard for her. In this palace, the Noble Consort's word sometimes outweighed the king's own.

The young king had never been meek before the consort or her father, the Prime Minister. But the court had rolled to their will time and again — which was precisely why the king had taken to the field himself. Defying the minister's counsel to submit quietly to the Museon state, he had built his own strength on the battlefield, winning the loyalty of his soldiers before returning home.

That was all that had changed. While the king was absent, the consort and the minister had turned the palace into their own domain. And so the chamberlain's question was not really whether to send a physician to Jin Seoin — it was whether His Majesty even wished to know that she was ill.

Seon Wiyeon understood the man's meaning perfectly. He cooled his hot tea with unhurried ease before answering.

"Which physician, exactly? Would you fetch one from outside the palace?"

"...My thinking was short-sighted."

The chief chamberlain bowed low. He had briefly forgotten that the palace physicians, too, were the Noble Consort's people. But when he straightened, a smile was spreading across the king's face. Not a sneer — a guileless, openly delighted grin.

The woman His Majesty had twice taken to his bed since returning from the field was ill, and what could possibly be so pleasant about that? He had thought the king fond of the princess, but apparently not?

Unable to fathom the young king's heart, the chamberlain was thrown into confusion.

"Your Majesty. Might I ask what pleases you so?"

"Her 'illness.' It amuses me."

"I beg your pardon?"

"That woman's body is not so frail as to be laid low by a common fever."

"Then... you believe Jin Seoin is feigning illness?"

Consorts feigning sickness to lure the king to their chambers was nothing new.

"No. She wouldn't bother with anything that cheap."

"Then... why...?"

If it was not feigned, then she was truly ill — and that amused him?

The chief chamberlain barely swallowed the rebuke that wanted to ride the question out of his mouth.

"Because I suspect that fever is my doing."

"I beg your pardon?"

Which made it all the less a laughing matter, surely. The chief chamberlain grew afraid, sensing that the king had come back from the battlefield a crueler man. He asked no further questions and took a stiff step backward.

Unaware of the misunderstanding he'd sown, Seon Wiyeon sipped his now-cooled tea, a warm contentment settling over him.

She was worn down badly enough to take a fever, was she?

State affairs he had pressed through from afternoon until deep into the night — and still she had had more than enough left in her. Even after her peak, she had not tired but burned hotter, clinging to him and demanding more, her shameless breath astonishing him at every turn. If she had emerged unscathed after all that, his pride would never have recovered.

Still, if she's ill, I ought to send her a gift.

He could see plainly what Yu Munhui would try against a sickened Jin Seoin. Better to give her, right now, the thing she needed most.

"Summon the commander of the Imperial Guard."