Tonight, the king of Dahai would be throwing a sumptuous feast in celebration of the end of the annual sparring championships, and also the marriage of his precious daughter to the crown prince of Gi. The banquet hall was packed to the brim, the sounds of joyous laughter and chatter emerging from within.
Elsewhere in the palace, someone was busy teaching someone else a lesson.
"Let me go! Put me down!" a man screeched. He was hanging upside down from the branch of a tree, blindfolded and suspended from the legs by some coarse rope, wearing absolutely nothing but his undergarments round the bottom half of his body.
The Dahai palace had several secluded corners, including this particular corner at the south-east of the palace gardens which was overgrown and poorly tended because it was so far removed from the chambers of the royal household that hardly anyone ventured to walk this way. With the banquet underway in the main hall, all the more there wouldn't be a single soul chancing upon this sorry sight.
Yuehwa sat on the grass patch in front of the tree, a long whip in her right hand. Watching in amusement as the man continued struggling to free himself, she said, "Did you actually think you would get away with taking advantage of the princess? That the king would have no choice but to hand his precious daughter over to you?"
"Who the hell are you? I demand you set me free right this instant!" the man barked loudly, his current situation doing nothing to douse his arrogance. "Do you know who I am? I could have you slaughtered for this!"
"I'm sure you could," Yuehwa replied nonchalantly. "Unfortunately for you, I don't really care. It remains to be said whether or not you manage to leave this place alive." Raising her whip into the air, she swung it straight at him. The man howled in anguish as the whip sliced through the skin across his chest, leaving an angry red mark behind.
"To think that someone like you might become the king of a kingdom one day," she mused, "is slightly disturbing."
Her whip went lashing out again, and the man let out another ear-piercing scream.
"Drugging a girl and forcing yourself on her? Despicable." She whipped him again. And again. "There are some things that you shouldn't ever do if you consider yourself a human being, but clearly someone like you doesn't understand that. Today I'm going to teach you the lesson that your father failed to teach you after all these years. You messed with the wrong person."
"Don't overdo it. You don't want to leave a corpse for the king of Dahai to wake up to tomorrow morning," Shoya said calmly. He was lying along the branch of a nearby tree, partly watching the show that was unfolding before his eyes, partly cleaning his flute with a piece of scrap cloth.
"It's you!" the crown prince of Feng yelled angrily as he recognised the voice. "You're supposed to be on my side damn it! I hired you to fight on my behalf! What the hell do you think you're doing now? I demand you kill this bitch and rescue me right now!"
"I think our deal ended when the tournament ended, Your Highness," Shoya replied. "Besides, even if I wanted to rescue you, I'm not sure I'd know how."
"You're supposed to be the White Scorpion. What do you mean you don't know how?"
"Clearly he thinks very highly of you." Yuehwa rolled her eyes as she looked at Shoya. Picking herself off the ground, she walked over to the man hanging from the tree, yanking down the blindfold that was covering his eyes. "Maybe if you realised who it is that you're calling a bitch, you might be a little less pompous?"
She took out a single red dahlia from within her sleeve and waved it in front of his eyes.
The crown prince gulped, cold sweat immediately beginning to form across his forehead. He was looking into the eyes of the Phoenix, the one that they called the most vicious of all assassins across the five kingdoms. If ever the red dahlia was seen, it meant that someone's life had just been unceremoniously cut short.
"It wasn't me!" he immediately burst out, his voice trembling in fear. "I swear I didn't know anything! I returned to my room after the tournament and the princess was just lying there on the bed waiting for me. I wasn't the one who drugged her and kidnapped her, I swear!"
"Is that so? And that makes it okay then?" Yuehwa clenched her fists, feeling the rage slowly begin to bubble up within her again. Never in her life had she been so humiliated, and the culprit was here trying to justify his own misdeeds by pointing the finger at someone else.
"It really wasn't me! I had no plans on doing anything like that whatsoever, it was Lady Kang who arranged for everything!" the prince screamed as the whip rained down upon him once more. "She promised that she would help me get the princess by hook or by crook. I swear I didn't plan any of this! Why are you so upset about this anyway? This has nothing to do with you!"
Yuehwa stopped and frowned. Lady Kang? She knew that the king's concubine was not on good terms with the princess, but she didn't know that the woman would have stooped this low just to ruin a poor girl's life. If she hadn't swapped places with Naying this morning, then perhaps the despicable ploy would have succeeded and Naying's chance at finding happiness would have been shattered forever.
She was so lost in her own thoughts that she didn't notice that Shoya had leapt off the tree and was now standing behind her. He placed one hand on her shoulder and said, "Sometimes things are complicated, especially in families like these. Come on, we should finish up here and go before anyone notices that he's missing."
Sighing, Yuehwa gave the prince a couple more lashings to vent her anger, before she rolled up her whip and tucked it back into her sleeve. She could have just ended his sorry life right there and then, but there were worst fates than death, and Shoya was right about there being too many repercussions with murdering royalty. A worm like this wasn't worth the trouble.
"Hey, aren't you going to let me down? Please, I beg you!" the prince called out to them when he saw them walking away.
"Enjoy the rest of the night," Yuehwa replied, waving at him with a smug smile on her face.
As the two of them walked back out of the palace gardens and back into civilisation, Yuehwa turned to Shoya and asked, "Did you already know that Lady Kang was behind all of this? Why didn't you tell me earlier?"
"I could have told you, but you never asked," he replied. "You only asked me who was the man who tried to— You know."
"If she was the one who masterminded the entire thing, how is it that they didn't realise that they had kidnapped the wrong person?"
"Do you honestly think that Lady Kang would have risked using her own attendants to carry out something as brazen as kidnapping the princess in broad daylight? My guess is that she made use of the large number of people flooding into the palace to watch the tournament to smuggle in a couple of mercenaries to help her carry out her dirty deeds. It wouldn't be surprising if those men didn't know what the princess really looked like, so they assumed that they had the right person. Besides, with that mask and blindfold covering half your face, no one would have realised it was the wrong girl, all they would recognise is that dress. The prince of Feng didn't even realise it was you that he came close to violating even after he saw you just minutes ago."
Gritting her teeth, Yuehwa suddenly did an about turn and started heading in the opposite direction towards Lady Kang's chambers. "Well then I guess it's time for round two," she said.
"She'll be at the banquet now, so you won't be able to find her unless you storm the banquet hall." When he saw her pause in her step, he continued, "It's not going to be as easy getting to Lady Kang as it was to get to the crown prince of Feng. No matter what, this is Dahai territory and the prince is merely a guest on foreign soil, with a limited number of guards by his side. Lady Kang, however, is pretty much the queen of this kingdom in everything but name. Do you think you have the ability to take on all of the king's royal guards on his own turf?"
Yuehwa turned around and looked at Shoya hopefully, but he simply threw up his hands in the air in surrender. "Don't look at me, I'm still injured," he said.
Pulling a face, Yuehwa did another turn and continued marching off in the direction that she had been heading. "Fine!" she declared. "If I can't get to her by force, then I'll have to take my revenge a different way!"
#
Later that night, Yuehwa slipped out of Lady Kang's chambers unnoticed, the right corner of her lips tilted upwards in a sly smile as she thought about the ruckus that would ensue the next morning. Behind her, a white shadow quietly followed along.
"You know by letting me use one of your balms, they might think that you're the culprit behind all this," Yuehwa remarked as they continued walking, glancing back at Shoya. "After all, everyone knows that the White Scorpion is in the palace, but they don't necessarily know that I'm here. The bastard probably won't say a word though, just in case I return to slit his throat in the middle of the night."
He shrugged his shoulders. "No matter, I'm done with what I came to do anyway. I'll probably leave this place before the sun rises."
"Where are you going?" Yuehwa frowned. "Back to Feng?"
Shoya didn't look all that surprised at her having mentioned Feng. Nodding his head, he said, "There is something that I need to do."
"Look, I don't know what's the story behind you and the kingdom of Feng, but are you sure this is a good idea? From the way I see things, the crown prince of Feng treats you like the dirt under his shoe, some chess piece he can use and dispose of as and when he likes. Why would you want to return to a place like that? Maybe it's better to live a carefree life, without being bound to a bunch of people who would rather you not exist."
"You spoke to the princess? What did she tell you?"
"Well... She said that the snowflake pendant was passed down to her by her mother and that it was given to every woman of the Joo family in Feng. Her mother had two other sisters, both of which married the king of Feng, so I suppose that must mean that one of them is your mother and you are..." She paused, waiting for a reaction from Shoya.
There was none.
Instead, all he did was shrug his shoulders again and say, "It doesn't mean anything. Whoever I might have been, that was a long, long time ago. As far as my memory can recall, I've always been Shoya, just Shoya."
"Are you intending to change that?" Yuehwa probed.
Shoya shook his head. "I don't want to change anything. I just want an answer. Whether or not that answer changes my decision, I suppose I'll wait for when the time comes."
"If you need any help... I mean, I still owe you one for what you did this morning—"
"Don't worry about me, Yuehwa. I've always been alone, and that's how it'll always be. About this morning, I just did what I needed to do, that's all, so you don't owe me anything." He pointed his finger towards someone who was waiting up front, near the gates to the princess's chambers. "Looks like someone's waiting for you. I'll walk you up to here then. If we don't meet again, then, well, it was nice knowing you I guess." Turning around, he gave her a casual wave and started walking off in the opposite direction.
It was nice knowing you? Is that all he can say?
Yuehwa didn't know why the feeling of irritation slowly began to bubble up within her. After everything they had been through since they day they met on that ship to Dahai, all he was going to leave her with was a casual "nice knowing you".
The person who was waiting for her had been pacing about outside the princess's chambers and when he caught sight of her, his face immediately lit up, although the sight of Shoya beside her made the smile stiffen ever so slightly.
Baixun walked over to where she was standing and said with a smile, "What were you doing with the White Scorpion? You know each other?"
"I don't think that's any of your business," Yuehwa replied drily. She really wasn't in the mood to entertain Baixun right now. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be at the banquet over at the main hall?"
"I left early, to find you," he replied. "This morning at the tournament, it was you wasn't it? You were the one dressed as the princess. What exactly is going on here?"
Yuehwa swore inwardly, realising the reason for Baixun's appearance. He must have realised that the princess at the banquet and the princess at the tournament were two different people.
"Nonsense, that was Princess Naying. Why would it have been me? I'm just an ordinary palace maid, Your Highness."
"An ordinary palace maid who doesn't bat an eyelid in front of assassins, who drags the real princess out into the streets at night, and who's acquainted with the White Scorpion?" Baixun raised an eyebrow. "I'm not an idiot you know."
Folding her arms, Yuehwa glared at him and said, "Alright, what exactly do you want?"
"Knowing your name for starters?"
Yuehwa hated the way this man was always so forward. She had already lost count of the number of times he had asked her for her name. "It's Yuehwa, for gods' sake!" she burst out irritably, just so that he would shut up and stop asking her the same question every time they met. She pushed past him to head into the princess's chambers, but Baixun immediately reached out and grabbed hold of her arm.
"Wait a minute," he said quickly. "There are some things I want to talk to you about."
"What!" She yanked herself free from his grasp.
"Will you come with me to Gi?" he asked, an earnest look in his bright eyes.
"You must be out of your mind," she muttered. "Look, you're the crown prince of Gi, and you're about to marry Princess Naying. So I suggest that instead of bothering me, you should just turn around and head back to the banquet to entertain your future wife and father-in-law."
What Baixun said next came close to making her jaw drop to the ground.
"If you agree to come with me, I promise that I'll be able to make you happy for the rest of your life. As long as you say the word, I won't marry the princess, if that's what you want."
"Are you utterly out of your mind?" Yuehwa gaped at him incredulously. "What in heavens' name are you talking about? Have you had too much to drink? You are the crown prince, why the hell would you even suggest something like that!"
"Just like you say, I'm the crown prince of Gi, and that gives me the right to make my own decisions. Before I met you, I was fully prepared to marry the princess of Dahai—after all, that was what I came here for, for the princess's hand in marriage and to seal the alliance with Dahai. But since I met you back there by the pond, I realised that I don't just need a wife who's a pretty vase and a political chess piece, I need someone who's intelligent and brave, someone who can help me look after affairs of the court when I'm out on the battlefield, someone whom I can confide in. Let's be honest, Princess Naying, for all her virtues, isn't that sort of a woman."
"And what makes you think I'm that sort of a woman?" Yuehwa threw her hands up in the air in exasperation. This man, for all his good looks and charms, was being absolutely ridiculous. He was lucky enough to have won the hand of the most beautiful lady across the five kingdoms and here he was professing to want to throw that all away—for her. It was a joke.
Baixun grabbed hold of her hand, a look of utter seriousness etched on his face. "Yuehwa, I mean every word I say. I promise that if you come back to Gi with me, I will give you everything you could ever dream of. Even if I need to marry Princess Naying as well, you should know that my heart will always be yours."
"Wait a minute, now you are being even more ridiculous. You want to marry both of us?" Of course, it was normal for a king to have many wives, but Yuehwa had never in her entire life entertained the thought of being one of the many. In fact, she detested the polygamous nature of royal relationships. "Your Highness, with all due respect, I think you're not thinking straight right now. You'll probably regret everything you're saying tomorrow morning. In any case, my answer to you is no, because I have no feelings for you whatsoever and I don't intend on being locked up within palace walls for the sake of a man that I don't love. Princess Naying likes you, she really does, so I'm asking you to please be good to her because she deserves that much."
"Is it because of him?"
"Who?"
"The White Scorpion," Baixun replied.
"Okay, this is getting out of hand. Your Highness, it's late and I don't think it's appropriate for us to be having this conversation over here. If you don't mind, I'll be excusing myself now. Whatever you do with yourself after this is none of my concern, goodnight." Bobbing her head in a mock curtsey, Yuehwa quickly ran all the way back to her room before Baixun could stop her again, shutting the doors tightly behind her.
Looks like someone is having boy trouble, Ember chirped with amusement. I wonder what that fellow sees in you really—tomboy, rude, violent and vicious, not to mention extremely greedy as well.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Yuehwa yelled, grabbing the pillow and flinging it straight at the smug bird. Naturally, Ember managed to dodge it with ease, flying and landing on another beam instead.
Flouncing down onto the bed, Yuehwa lay there with her hands propped behind her head, contemplating the events of the day. Perhaps it really was time to leave this place, because she couldn't think of any reason why she should stay any longer.
The question was: Where to next?
#
The next morning, an ear-piercing scream shattered the silence of the dawn. The entire palace was up in arms, with royal physicians running in and out of Lady Kang's chambers trying their best to salvage the dire situation.
As it turned out, she had awoken and completed her usual beauty routine, after which she had headed over to the queen dowager's chambers for the usual morning greetings. Unfortunately, halfway during morning tea, painful sores and pustules had started appearing all over her face, creating a rather gruesome sight that had made more than one concubine come close to retching out their tea. One fainted altogether.
Over in the princess's chambers, Princess Naying was clutching her belly as she burst out in peals of laughter after hearing Yuehwa's story.
"You put what into her powder?" the princess asked, tears almost coming out of her eyes.
"I've already told you three times," Yuehwa deadpanned. "Is it really that funny?" Actually, she had found it incredibly funny too, and had to admit that it was a most satisfying punishment for that horrid witch. She had woken up before the crack of dawn this morning just so that she could be peeking through a hole in the roof at the moment when Lady Kang transformed into her worst nightmare.
Shoya's balm worked wonders. Lady Kang looked even worse than that poor sailor who had accidentally eaten Shoya's lunch back on the boat. It was a pity the effects would not be permanent.
"Anyway, I'm leaving," she declared, patting the bundle of clothes that she had already packed. "All the best, Princess, it was nice knowing you. Take care of yourself over in Gi, although I think it'll probably be a whole lot better than it is here. At least over there you won't have to face Witch Kang every day."
About what happened with Baixun last night, Yuehwa figured it was best that the princess remained in the dark. After the man got over his drunken stupor, he would realise that he had made a fool out of himself yesterday and then wished that everything had been a bad dream.
Princess Naying stopped laughin, a look of surprise appearing on her pretty face. "What do you mean you're leaving? Where are you going?" she asked.
"Wherever the wind takes me," Yuehwa replied. "I came here to watch the tournament and that's over. You've also got yourself a husband that you're satisfied with, so I figured my job here is done. Tons of people still on my hit list you know, I've probably accumulated a back log by now."
Naying hesitated for a second, then to Yuehwa's surprise, the princess chose to throw caution to the wind.
"Do you think you could stay? Please?" she asked timidly, tugging at Yuehwa's sleeve. "Or do you think you could at least accompany me to Gi before you leave? Father says I am to leave with Prince Baixun when he sets off from here and that'll be any day now. This is the first time I'm leaving the Dahai palace so... do you think you could come with me?"
"What? You must be joking," Yuehwa scoffed, tossing some roasted pine nuts into her mouth. "I wasn't planning on going to Gi, sorry about that."
"I thought you said you didn't know where you were going? So why not Gi?"
Yuehwa frowned. It was true, she didn't know exactly where she was headed next, but she was almost certain that it wasn't going to be Gi. The last thing she wanted was to be harassed by Baixun for an extended period of time.
Since they parted ways last night, she had not seen any sign of Shoya anywhere. As for the crown prince of Feng, he had beat a hasty retreat from the Dahai palace in the middle of the night without even bothering to bid goodbye to the king. By daybreak the rumours had already been spreading all across the palace of the prince's rather bizarre circumstance, thanks to the guard who had been lucky enough to have found him hanging half-naked from that tree. Yuehwa's first instinct was to follow Shoya to Feng just to find out what exactly it was he was trying to achieve—just out of curiosity, mind you—but she wasn't quite decided on that yet.
After all, Shoya always told her that it wasn't any of her business. How rude.
"I suppose I'll need to pass through Gi in order to get to Feng," she mused to herself, tracing a possible route on the imaginary map in her mind.
"Why are you going to Feng?" Naying asked, looking up at Yuehwa curiously.
"I have my reasons," Yuehwa said dismissively. "Naying, what do you know about the royal family of Feng? You must know something, given that your aunt is the queen."
"What's there to know? I already told you almost everything I know about my aunts and the king of Feng when you asked me the last time." Princess Naying pulled a face, recalling how she had been rudely awoken in the middle of the night, only to be interrogated about things that she barely had any recollection of.
"What about relations between Dahai and Feng? Would there be any reason why a treasure from Feng would be kept here in the Dahai palace? Have you heard about something like that?"
Naying shook her head. "Emissaries from Feng visit our kingdom all the time and they usually bring with them some exotic gifts like silks or jewellery or perfume, but Father mostly distributes them to us. They'd probably be worth a lot in the market but I wouldn't go so far as to call them treasures? Once in a while it could be an antique that father keeps in the treasury I suppose. Why are you so interested in matters related to Feng?"
Yuehwa rested her chin in her hands, pondering about the mystery that was Shoya and his true identity. She had somewhat of an inkling, but there were still parts of the puzzle that didn't quite fit in. Like how that sword with the crystal hilt ended up within the Dahai palace, kept under the watchful eyes of the bronze guardsmen.
Just then, a commotion could be heard outside the princess's chambers, and within the next second one of her palace maids came rushing into the room in a fluster.
"Your Highness," the girl quickly bobbed her head in a curtsey, "the royal guards are here. They are demanding to search the premises because there's supposedly a thief hiding within the palace grounds."
"What?" Naying stood up in alarm. "What's been stolen?"
"We don't know, Your Highness," the maid replied. "The palace guards didn't say anything further, but they've started searching through all the rooms and they should be here shortly."
"They're even searching my room?" the princess remarked incredulously. "This is ridiculous, this has never happened before. Tell them that they're not to come in here, how dare they demand to search the princess's room!" She turned to say something to Yuehwa, but to her surprise she turned around to face nothing but empty air. Yuehwa was nowhere to be seen.
Up on the roof, the missing girl was peering curiously down at the ruckus that was taking place all around, with the royal guards ransacking room after room so as to find what they were looking for.
So that's why he was in such a hurry to leave, she thought to herself. Because now that the annual sparring championships was over, the king finally had the time to realise that something of his had gone missing.
A sword with a crystal hilt.