About a month had passed since his inglorious defeat, and Chuluun was certain that Adviser Fang was dead. Without the antidote pills, he had no means of surviving longer. In any case, now that the man had lost his position, it no longer mattered much. That branch of the great tree had withered. It could be broken off and burned so that a new one might grow in its place.

  Chuluun had no intention of being such a branch. He was part of the trunk, too important to rot ingloriously in some Joseon prison. And yet that was the future hanging over him.

  Broad-shouldered, with a scar slashing across his face and coarse features, Chuluun was accustomed to seeing fear and contempt in others’ eyes.

  They saw in him a dangerous beast, a Mongol savage, and he willingly maintained that image. He wore furs, large ornaments upon his clothes, and knew how to bare his teeth menacingly and thrust forward his square jaw.

  Few knew that he had grown up at court, that as a youth he had studied strategy and tactics, read and wrote in several languages… His adoptive father had loved and valued him not for his broad shoulders but for his sharp mind. And he would undoubtedly have helped Chuluun escape this cage had he known the situation in which he found himself.

  It was only necessary somehow to remain alive until help arrived.

  Chuluun considered options of escape and bribery, but for now the most realistic seemed to be winning over one of the princes. The damned Joseon officials were too frightened to lift their heads and defy the royal family’s orders. At least those assigned to guard him were.

  Once he had managed to attract the attention of the second prince. Chuluun cast out the most painful and obvious question of succession as bait and began to wait, hoping that greed or curiosity would take root in the mind of Great Prince Dojun before the royal interrogators tortured him half to death. Not even a month passed before his calculation proved correct.

  They had only just arrived in Hanyang. He was thrown into some damp, chilling cell in the underground prison, the soldiers took him to a first interrogation, where they beat him because he said nothing. Not even from pride, but because the fools questioned him in Korean.

  Later they seemed to realize he did not understand their language and kicked him back into the cage. And the following day an unfamiliar thin youth in spectacles and plain gray clothing visited him.

  The youth addressed him in Chinese and handed him a rice cake, which Chuluun swallowed greedily, scarcely chewing — in prison he was not fed, and he no longer cared whether the treat might be poisoned. Then the youth led out from behind a corner a pair of mongrel dogs and tied them to the bars of his cell. Thus Chuluun understood that this was one of the servants of Great Prince Dojun.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “He will not come to see?” the Mongol asked hoarsely, prudently avoiding names.

  “I shall convey everything,” the youth assured him.

  Very well. Chuluun shrugged.

  “Then I will need three more pieces of meat. For them.” He pointed at the restless dogs. “Of this size.”

  The youth nodded, departed, and soon returned with a woven bowl covered with leaves.

  That day many people were arrested at the magistracy.

  The royal guards were clearly unaccustomed to such matters and had not searched them thoroughly. They confiscated weapons and did not allow them to take bundles of belongings, but food, the clothes they were already wearing, and even money were left. And Chuluun carried with him something more valuable than any gold: several Konggu pills in a box the size of an ink stick, and a handful of pearl-like antidote pellets.

  The very existence of Konggu pills was a secret, and their name was not accidentally reminiscent of another, far more widely known medicine.

  The entire world had heard of Huan-Gu pills, which granted magical dreams (in Joseon they were called Hwangu), and trade in those brought considerable profit. But the power of his adoptive father did not rest upon a foolish drug. It rested upon Konggu pills, which bound a person from the first dose. Or a dog. For a dog, half a dose would suffice, so Chuluun carefully divided a pellet of crushed herbs with his fingernail and hid each half in two pieces of meat.

  “Come here, little dogs,” he called to the mongrels and handed each its treat. The dogs thrashed their tails and pounced upon the meat. Chuluun straightened and folded his arms across his chest, watching them.

  In less than a minute the dogs’ eyes began to glaze. One toppled onto its side, the other pressed its forehead against the bars of his cage and growled softly.

  “What is wrong with them?” the man in gray asked rather indifferently. The lenses of his spectacles caught a glint of sunlight, concealing the expression of his eyes.

  “They are sleeping,” Chuluun shrugged. “Now we must wait for them to awaken.”

  “Long?” The prince’s man was not yet impressed and made no effort to conceal it.

  “Not more than an hour,” Chuluun supposed. He had far more often seen these pills act upon men than upon animals.

  “And then?” the man asked again, still indifferent. Chuluun silently shrugged.

  He knew that when the dogs recovered, at first they would appear ordinary. Friendly, hungry or sated, but ordinary. Yet within the time it took a single incense stick to burn down, foam would begin to spill from their mouths, they would hurl themselves madly at anything that moved, and in the end they would perish.

  Therefore, while they were still calm, Chuluun would give one of them the antidote wrapped in the final piece of meat, and that one would survive.

  This demonstration, of course, would convince neither the prince nor his observer, for poisons and antidotes were not so rare in Joseon. Thus he would send the departing observer away with a crooked grin and meet him again some ten days later. When they would find the second dog dead, foam at its mouth, and begin asking questions.

  And then — then — he would speak of the Konggu pills and of the antidote that sustains life in its puppets in exchange for obedience. That tale would be meant only for the prince’s ears, and five Konggu pills would serve as the ransom for Chuluun’s freedom. The guarantee of his life would be the knowledge of how to prepare the antidote.

  Now that the dogs had been brought to him, this plan would inevitably come to fruition. No one would refuse such power.

  Chuluun sat upon the rotten straw in the corner of his cage, and his lips stretched ever wider into a smile. He only had to endure ten more days.