Before the Throne

The limousine passed through Danbongmun Gate of Changdeok Palace without a second's hesitation. The reporters waiting at the gate thrust their cameras forward, but it was over in a flash. No sooner had the limousine crossed the threshold than the gate boomed shut behind it with a heavy, grinding thud.

Tae-oh passed near Changdeok Palace several times a day. Each time he saw the imperial palace sprawling across the heart of Seoul, all manner of thoughts crossed his mind. But he had never once pictured the day he would step inside these high walls. To think he would pass so easily through Danbongmun Gate—the one entrance spared strict inspection, reserved for the comings and goings of the imperial family. It was beyond anything he could have dreamed.

Ha.

Complicated feelings came flooding in. He had thought of her as a royal sixth in the line of succession, with no real strength or power to her name. In the end, though, the world she lived in was not the one outside those walls. Tae-oh quietly revised the notion he had held that royals were nothing special.

"Your Highness, you have come."

The moment the car came to a stop, the Chief Court Lady, foremost among the palace women, was there to receive Seon in person. Seon stepped out through the door Seok-cheol held open and accepted the woman's bow with a light, practiced inclination of her head. It was also a statement that Seon was the one above her. Barely twenty-seven. A woman in her twenties stood before one well past sixty like a lofty crane.

Tae-oh could not help feeling the wall that stood between her and them. The old woman was a civil servant of the Imperial Household Agency; Tae-oh belonged to the police. Before Seon, the two of them were subordinates all the same. Something twisted in his gut. He could not have said whether it was desire or fury.

"His Majesty awaits you."

The Chief Court Lady addressed Seon with impeccable deference. Seon did not so much as answer properly; she simply followed the woman. Once again he felt the hierarchy between them—a bond that did not even call for a reply.

"But the person behind you..."

The Chief Court Lady's frost-edged eyes rolled sideways. A woman who had lived her whole life by rigid protocol, she regarded Tae-oh—who looked nothing like palace folk—with open suspicion.

"I've already told Sangseon. He's my guest."

At that, the court lady murmured, "Yes, Your Highness," and sealed her lips. A guest Her Highness had brought personally—there was nothing more to say. But the whole way to the Emperor she kept glancing back at them, making her displeasure plain. Whenever Tae-oh so much as looked at his surroundings, she drew a sharp hiss of breath, and at last, watching Seon's face all the while, she began tiptoeing around the subject with a stream of whispered scolding.

"Within the palace, one must see nothing and hear nothing. That is the rule."

Tae-oh reluctantly let his gaze sink slowly to the floor. Somehow it felt like the nagging of his childhood, rising up all over again. So a court lady seasoned by a lifetime of palace rice could best even a detective? With such a stubborn old woman bearing down on him, he didn't even have the heart to fight back.

Seon, whether she knew of his plight or not, moved along with graceful steps. For some reason, that felt a little heartless of her.

Before they had passed more than a few halls, the group's steps slowed. Tae-oh knew without being told: the Emperor was here.

Seon, watching the Chief Court Lady hurry ahead to announce their visit, faced forward and spoke. Her voice was so low that had he not been listening, he might not have realized she was speaking to him.

"The moment we step inside Huijeongdang, Inspector Kwon, you may find yourself walking a very different road than the one you walked yesterday."

A sparrow perched on the eaves burst into flight with a chatter. Leaves rustled loose from the branch it had left behind. Even through that small commotion of nature, Seon's voice carried with unusual clarity.

"And even so, I can only hope you will choose the truth."

Seeing the Chief Court Lady hurrying back toward them, Tae-oh shifted his gaze as well. The back of Seon's head—facing straight ahead, not sparing him so much as a sliver of a glance—kept shaking his convictions.

The Emperor was a royal with less sleep than anyone. He rose at five in the morning, and by half past he was receiving his first audience. Of course, among the indolent royals of the modern age, few came calling at such an hour. If not for Seon, the Emperor's idle hours would have stretched longer still.

The voice announcing Seon's visit was answered by permission to enter. Seon cast a brief glance at Tae-oh behind her, then glided forward to stand before the Emperor.

"Grandmother. I have come to inquire after your health."

Huijeongdang. The Emperor's audience chamber was furnished with unadorned simplicity. With the Crown Prince handling every practical affair of state these past few years, few visitors came in ordinary times. It had been arranged like a private study for his love of books, yet the scene would not have looked so very different from the home of an ordinary family beyond the palace walls.

"I trust Your Majesty has been in good health."

"Mm. You simply turned around and went home yesterday, didn't you. Summoned you all this way for nothing, honestly. This old grandfather must be getting old."

"Thanks to that, I get to pay you a morning call for the first time in ages."

Seon greeted the Emperor with affection. It was also a desperate effort to lift even a sliver of the grief from the Emperor, who had grown gaunt these past days.

"Thanks to you, We no longer spend Our mornings in loneliness. It gladdens Us."

The Emperor replied in a kindly voice, but his eyes were on Tae-oh. She had reported in advance that she would enter the palace with him, permission and all, but how long an audience the Emperor would grant rested with him alone. Seon swallowed her tension and fixed a light smile at the corners of her mouth.

"You are sleeping, aren't you? The skin beneath your eyes is dark."

"Hard to say. I haven't slept properly of late. No good news comes, does it. Still, thanks to that omija tea yesterday, the weariness sits a little lighter."

Wariness flickered there, but the Emperor was warm with his granddaughter. Even to Tae-oh, who hardly knew them, she looked like a granddaughter who was loved.

To Tae-oh, it all looked deeply strange. However many sons he had left, however well-secured the line of succession, his son had died only yesterday. It was nothing like the bereaved families he had watched over the years. Were the imperial family simply built this way—unmoved even by the death of their own child? Tae-oh was pressing the toe of his shoe into the carpet as he wondered.

"So."

In an instant, his voice turned to a blade. He could feel it now—the man of steel who had led the war of independence and the great turning points of modern history. His voice was so vivid it refused to sound like that of a man in his nineties.

"I do hope the news Princess Cheongyang brings me is good news."

Tae-oh, who had been sneering at royals in the privacy of his own head, suddenly felt the air leave his lungs. His gaze, angled forty-five degrees toward the floor, wavered, and the fingertips he had folded with such care began to tremble.

At the very least, the Emperor was nothing like the royals Tae-oh knew. He felt like a man standing on a level no one else could touch. A heartless father he might be, but a cold, clear-eyed sovereign he most certainly was.

Unlike the strung-up Tae-oh, Seon—the one whose name had been called—was perfectly calm. In a voice barely changed from before, she carried on, unhurried.

"I dare not call it good news, Your Majesty. But it is a report I must deliver, and so I have come to you in such haste, Grandmother."

"There must be a reason you begged so urgently for an audience. Speak."

Seon, who had spoken to no one but the Emperor, finally looked back over her shoulder. And she beckoned lightly to Tae-oh. For someone she had met only three times, the gesture was intimate.

Yet Tae-oh moved obediently at her call. He took his place close at her side and bowed his head with respect. So much for the promise that he wouldn't be rude even to the old man—kept, it seemed.

"This man is a detective of the National Police Agency, and he heads the Special Investigation Task Force."

"Yes. Inspector Kwon Tae-oh, was it?"

The Emperor spoke his name. Tae-oh flinched, despite himself.

The Emperor's gaze cut colder than a midwinter freeze. Old as he was, here was a veteran general who had taken the field himself. His presence was enough to overwhelm even Tae-oh, a seasoned detective, for a moment. Had he crossed the Emperor as an enemy commander in wartime, that gaze alone would have broken him before the blade fell. A formidable opponent.

"I am beginning to find my answer to why Grandmother entrusted this matter to me."

The Emperor's gaze drifted slowly back to Seon. She did not divide her attention—did not give Tae-oh even a fragment of her eyes. She simply stood facing the Emperor, straight and unflinching.

"Princess Cheongyang is not a child who would neglect such matters."

The Emperor nodded.

"So—is the investigation proceeding as you intend?"

As he asked, the Emperor's gaze came to rest on Tae-oh. A crushing pressure rolled over him, as though pinned beneath something he had never once felt in his life.

"Her Highness is doing everything in her power."

Perhaps it was the weight of the room; before he knew it, Tae-oh was offering excuses.

"But it is true that the investigation is not an easy one, given the situation as it stands."

"I expected there would be those who would obstruct it."

The Emperor murmured, weariness settling into his voice. A man in his nineties. A woman without any real power to her name. Yet here they both were, stepping forward to drag the truth of the Crown Prince's death into the light—and for a moment, he felt pathetic for having weighed and doubted them.

"But if we can find the decisive evidence, we can pull the current our way, Grandmother."

Seon said gently.

"Decisive evidence? And just how do you mean to find it?"

The Emperor asked, sounding him out. In those wrinkled eyes, curiosity and something like delight glimmered.

Now came the hardest words of all, and Tae-oh hesitated in spite of himself. Asking parents to consent to their child's autopsy was never easy. Every parent wishes their child to leave this world whole.

"Your Majesty."

Catching his hesitation, Seon stepped forward a single pace and bowed her head. She had no intention of handing this to him. Even if it drew the Emperor's wrath, that burden was hers to carry. She was the one who had resolved to set all this in motion.

"Grant Your permission for the autopsy of the Crown Prince, I beseech You."

And in Tae-oh's stead, she dropped the bomb.

Tae-oh's eyes went as wide as they would go as he stared at her—but Seon and the Emperor alike wore the same blank, unreadable faces.