“How did your outing go, Your Highness?” Eunuch Mo asked in a coaxing tone as he sewed a new yellow strip with a spell into the lining of Yi Ho’s robe.

  “Councilor Kim has absolutely no taste,” the prince grimaced. “Japanese pirates, really? When they ran off, I heard them swearing in Korean. And the way they were dressed…”

  “Do you think the envoy suspected something?” the eunuch asked anxiously.

  “I think he has never seen a living Japanese in his life,” Yi Ho shrugged. “And I made sure to drive them away from him at once. Still, could the councilor not have released some kind of tiger instead?”

  “A tiger is difficult to control, Your Highness,” the eunuch hesitated, as if unsure whether to continue.

  “Oh, did you think I was clumsy?” Yi Ho clicked his tongue. “How disappointing. Tell me, should we expect more such gifts from the councilor, or will one performance suffice?”

  When he left the capital in haste after the successfully completed ritual, Yi Ho had not had time to discuss the details of the promised assistance with Councilor Kim. All that the councilor had prepared in support of the prince was known to Eunuch Mo. He was also the one who had warned Yi Ho that morning about the impending attack. So the prince had played this move correctly, even if the aftertaste remained unpleasant.

  “No, I do not think so…” the eunuch puffed, either struggling with the thread or searching for the right words. “There will be no more attacks like that.”

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  “And what will there be?” Yi Ho smiled faintly. Even a hundred years later, officials hungry for power were still trying to play with other people’s fates. Nothing ever changed.

  “Well, if matters turn against us, I do have one poison,” Eunuch Mo whispered barely audibly. “And an antidote. We could…”

  “Do not dare,” Yi Ho cut him off. “The first person suspected in a poisoning is the one who produces the cure too quickly. The envoy is not that foolish. Unless you somehow slipped the antidote to Great Prince Dojun, and he decided to use it without revealing its origin. No, that is a bad idea, and one that could easily spiral out of control. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” the eunuch said, bit off the thread, straightened up, and bowed. “I will not use this means, because it will not help you gain the envoy’s trust.”

  “Exactly. Good boy,” Yi Ho nodded.

  In truth, the crown prince who had once died of poisoning despised poisons and everything connected with them. An educated man was not to abandon virtue and resort to such despicable methods, no matter the goal. He was willing to demonstrate valor by fighting a wild tiger before the eyes of the embassy, agreed to bend common sense a little by playing along with costumed pirates, but poisons were a line Yi Ho would never cross, in life or in death. A cowardly, filthy weapon, fit only for scummy dogs like his younger brother.

  Yi Ho wondered whether he would have agreed to help these boys if the princes, in one of whose bodies he now resided, had been descendants of that younger brother. But his brother had died childless, despite the many concubines surrounding him from early youth. His only son had died in childhood, and no other children were ever born to the traitor.

  Perhaps the curse Yi Ho had uttered before his death had truly taken effect. Who knew.

  Fortunately, Yi Ho’s father had secured the royal dynasty for generations to come. He had nearly thirty children, and at the proper moment the throne had been given to one of Yi Ho’s young nephews from another brother. So there was no cursed, poisoned blood in the current branch of the royal family, only, as always, a younger brother looking up with envy. But this time Yi Ho already knew what to expect from him, and what to do about it.